# Stupid (in your opinion) mistakes people make **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 1, 2013, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212 "2013-05-01T15:45:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Furious\_Marmot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dfb087/32.png) [@Furious\_Marmot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Furious_Marmot)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/61 "2013-05-02T15:05:40Z")
Upon tendering my resignation at an old job, the boss’s boss told me I’d have to do a lot more keeping up with the Jones’s in Dallas. I blurted out “Why would I give a shit about that?”. Good thing I was quitting. In truth, there is an incredible level of conspicuous consumption here, and some people really do care, but they are assholes you’d never want to be friends with. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/62 "2013-05-02T15:43:51Z")
**Getting some stranger who charges way too much money to pump silicon in your butt.** ---
**Author:** ![pancakes3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@pancakes3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pancakes3)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/63 "2013-05-02T16:38:09Z")
Hard drugs. Either you love it and become hopelessly addicted, you hate it, in which case just save you and your body the trauma, or you OD so fast you can’t decide if you love it or hate it. Sacrificing time for money. People do this all the time. Waiting in a 3 hr line for a free $2 ben and jerry’s cone. Driving hundreds, if not thousands of miles instead of flying. Willfully sitting through timeshare presentations to save on a hotel room. Etc. ---
**Author:** ![Kaio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c68b51/32.png) [@Kaio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaio)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/64 "2013-05-02T16:53:31Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > **Have kids without thinking it through.** They go ahead and have kids because it is the “next” thing to do, and they’re not ready for the responsibility, or their spouse isn’t much of a parent, and next thing they know they are a single parent. This, and I’ll go a step further and say maybe not even a single parent, but parents that are very badly equipped to actually do the work of parenting. This is the one life decision you make which will have _a much more profound effect on someone else than on you._ A person _cannot_ make that decision lightly; that person will be responsible for the formative development of another human being, and will set that person up to either succeed or fail in life. That one decision will affect that child’s _entire life._ It’s a big deal, and a BIG responsibility, and a person should be brutally honest with themselves about whether they are really and truly up to the task. Having a child is not, should not, be about you. It’s about the child. Anything else is selfish. Also: cheating. Oh my lord, the excuses I see to justify cheating. “It’s okay if my partner never finds out.” No, it’s not. “It’s okay if my partner doesn’t satisfy me.” Fucking break up then! Then you can go fuck whomever you want. “It’s okay if I’m the other woman/man – _I_ didn’t make any vow.” No, it’s not okay, and you damn well did BREAK that vow, which wasn’t even yours to break. There’s also that little matter of respecting other people and their boundaries. If any of your “ethics” are predicated on not getting caught, you’re not actually being ethical. Lying and deceit is wrong, full stop, end of story. There _is_ no wiggle room. ---
**Author:** ![Tethered\_Kite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@Tethered\_Kite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tethered_Kite)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/65 "2013-05-02T17:14:04Z")
Not understanding the commitment part of marriage and mistaking a rough patch in a relationship for incompatibility. It takes time to develop compatibility. And sometimes unhappiness, too. Maybe the problem is that some people expect to have it all without the work? Entering into another relationship within a year or two of breaking up from one. I see this repeatedly. If a person hasn’t worked through what attracted them to an inappropriate partner and smoothed out their rough edges chances are good they will unconsciously do it again. When I hear someone going on at length about what a bad partner they had my first thought is, “Why did you choose them?” ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/66 "2013-05-02T17:54:31Z")
> [@Furious\_Marmot](#): > > Upon tendering my resignation at an old job, the boss’s boss told me I’d have to do a lot more keeping up with the Jones’s in Dallas. I blurted out “Why would I give a shit about that?”. Good thing I was quitting. > > In truth, there is an incredible level of conspicuous consumption here, and some people really do care, but they are assholes you’d never want to be friends with. What a curious statement to make. Were you moving to Dallas? Why did he think keeping up with the Joneses was important there? Did he think you had not been adequately keeping up while you were employed there? ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/67 "2013-05-02T18:11:36Z")
> [@Kaio](#): > > This, and I’ll go a step further and say maybe not even a single parent, but parents that are very badly equipped to actually do the work of parenting. This is the one life decision you make which will have _a much more profound effect on someone else than on you._ A person _cannot_ make that decision lightly; that person will be responsible for the formative development of another human being, and will set that person up to either succeed or fail in life. That one decision will affect that child’s _entire life._ It’s a big deal, and a BIG responsibility, and a person should be brutally honest with themselves about whether they are really and truly up to the task. Having a child is not, should not, be about you. It’s about the child. Anything else is selfish. There’s a thread going about child support currently, and people are bitching about having to pay child support to their evil exes. And I want to say, well, you had kids with her, didn’t you? She is raising your own child. Is she really so evil that you begrudge her even buying a sweater or a cellphone for herself? If she is, why did you have kids with her? I’m sure occasionally people go crazy after marriage, but most of the time I am quite sure the red flags were there; people just chose to ignore them. ---
**Author:** ![Furious\_Marmot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dfb087/32.png) [@Furious\_Marmot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Furious_Marmot)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/68 "2013-05-02T18:33:33Z")
> [@Red\_Wiggler](#): > > What a curious statement to make. Were you moving to Dallas? Why did he think keeping up with the Joneses was important there? Did he think you had not been adequately keeping up while you were employed there? I should have been clearer. I was leaving the city at the center of the Worst State in the Union for a better job in Dallas. Boss of boss was criticising my choice, in a backhanded way. The keeping up comment was part of longer “Dallas is worse than here, you clearly haven’t though this through, you’ll regret it, you inexperienced pup, don’t worry we’ll hire you back when you come to your senses” commentary. Keeping up is very much a part of the culture of management in my industry and the standards are much higher in Dallas than OKC, ie. AMG vs. regular S-class. Thing is, managers tend not to realize that the technical staff do not think like them. Since we had no contact outside of work, he had no way to gauge how or if I kept up with anyone. It was sincere, but cluelessly misplaced advice. Like a squirrel telling a turtle that the trees in Dallas aren’t as good for climbing. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/69 "2013-05-02T19:05:06Z")
> [@Saraya](#): > > **Owning a credit card** \ Not having a credit card will be terribly limiting in our modern society in many ways. It is possible to be a responsible user of the credit products available to you. > [@pullin](#): > > This is a good description of one of the things I came to say. I make sure my kids know the Six Things Guaranteed to Fuck Up Your Life (I know, sounds like something from Cracked). > > In no particular order, the List of Six (as I call it): > > 1. Having kids before you’re ready or can afford them. > 2. Poor mating choices > 3. Squandering education opportunities > 4. Crime. > 5. Drugs > 6. Unmanageable (or unnecessary) debt.\ I read something a while ago (I think it might have been in “Freakonomics”) where they said something like, the keys to getting ahead in life are finishing high school, getting married and staying married, and getting a job and staying employed. It sounds like a simple formula, but a whole lot of us have a whole lot of trouble with it. > [@ralph124c](#): > > \ > -not bothering to learn anything about the mechanics of money (loans, compound interest, debt and its implications). Most of my daughter’s friends don’t know anything about this-and this ignorance is NOT bliss I was recently working with a 24 year old who didn’t know anything at all about finances and economics. I made a point to teach her as much as I could in the time we had. Hopefully she got interested enough to learn more on her own. > [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > **Getting some stranger who charges way too much money to pump silicon in your butt.** That’s another good one. I’d add getting most kinds of plastic surgery - you’re going to get old, and you’re going to get wrinkled and saggy, and it isn’t worth risking your life for something as futile as trying to hold back time. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/70 "2013-05-02T19:06:08Z")
Thanks, Marmot. It’s apparent that I haven’t been around a culture of “keeping up.” Though I’m sure the appearances of financial success are very important in some professions, I find it strange to think that there might be some kind of competition _within_ organizations. Interesting subject, triggers my few remaining thinking cells. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/71 "2013-05-02T19:14:25Z")
> [@Saraya](#): > > **Owning a credit card** > \*\* > Voting Democrat\*\* > \*\* > Attending a full blown college/university\*\* > > **Casual sex** > > **Facebook** > > Hmm did I just describe the last generation? No. But it makes me wonder a bit about you. ---
**Author:** ![R3d\_Anonymous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/aeb1de/32.png) [@R3d\_Anonymous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/R3d_Anonymous)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/72 "2013-05-02T19:20:15Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > No. But it makes me wonder a bit about you. +1 ---
**Author:** ![mcgato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac8455/32.png) [@mcgato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mcgato)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/73 "2013-05-02T19:26:57Z")
> [@Iggy](#): > > [Douglas Adams wrote about the problem](http://wso.williams.edu/~rcarson/lizards.html) in _So Long and Thanks for All the Fish_. Creating a text heavy website with a bright blue background. And to echo some others mentioning starting to smoke when all of the info is available about how bad it is. A female nurse in my running club was having a party. I figured that there would be other female medical people there. I’m chatting with two cute nurses in their 20s, and it turns out that both smoke. My mind boggled. Nurses who spend all day treating health issues, and they smoke. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/74 "2013-05-02T19:28:24Z")
Waiting too long to get married. If you don’t start looking until your 30 then if it takes you two years to find the right person, two years to date enough to know they are the right one, one year to plan a wedding. Being a newlywed is stressful enough without kids so you wait two years and then your 37. Every year after 30 makes it harder to conceive and after 40 birth defects become more likely. So there is a three year window to have as many kids as you want to have. If anything takes longer than you planned then it may never happened. I feel so sorry so people who miss out on life’s greatest joy, because they didn’t get serious about it and stayed with the wrong guy too long, or didn’t start seriously dating until they had a succesful career. ---
**Author:** ![Septima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Septima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Septima)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/75 "2013-05-02T19:30:49Z")
[QUOTE=panache45] We’ve been on that “step” for over 25 years. Hopefully, someday we’ll be allowed to marry in our state. Dunno about the “family” part. [/QUOTE] No need to be snarky with me. Gay marriage is legal where I live, as it should be everywhere. Your choice to live in a place where you are made to be second class is your own damn business. And I consider two people to a perfectly valid family. Not that my opinion should matter any, you don’t need my approval. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/76 "2013-05-02T20:04:30Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > That’s another good one. I’d add getting most kinds of plastic surgery - you’re going to get old, and you’re going to get wrinkled and saggy, and it isn’t worth risking your life for something as futile as trying to hold back time. I spent the morning of 9/11 in a plastic surgeon’s office, having a cyst removed from my scalp. I had several appointments related to this, and at every visit, ALL the other people in the waiting room were elderly. I’m guessing they were there to have small cancers and other skin conditions remedied. This surgeon did do purely cosmetic surgery, but it appears that most of his patients were people like me, or them. ---
**Author:** ![Kaio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c68b51/32.png) [@Kaio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaio)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/77 "2013-05-02T21:07:37Z")
> [@drastic\_quench](#): > > Oh, how about people who don’t understand that they own their smartphones, and actually turn them into their service providers when they upgrade? NOT, turning them in for a warranty/insurance phone, but purchasing a new device with a new service contract, and handing over the old equipment. So stupid, and it happens all the time. To be fair, technology loses value so fast, it may just be more hassle than it’s worth to do anything else. How much are you going to be able to sell an old phone for? People want the latest and greatest, so the only people who’d be interested would be the people who can’t afford much. Your other options are to stick it in a drawer indefinitely (because we just don’t have enough clutter in our lives), or take it to a electronics recycling center ourselves. In Chicago at least, there’s exactly one drop-off location for electronics recycling, with no public transit nearby, so that option is an enormous pain in the ass. As long as I’m in the phone store, I’d probably toss the old phone in the store’s recycling bin too, unless prior research showed me I could get a reasonable amount of money for selling it. > [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > That’s a good one, too - you hear people telling other people so often, “You can do it if you just keep trying and believe hard enough.” No, actually, sometimes you can’t (see: American Idol). If you can’t sing, you can’t have a career as a singer. Same with dancing, modelling, acting, etc. Your parents haven’t done you any favours, telling you that you’re great when you just aren’t. Cold, cruel truth: more often than not you can’t have that career even if you ARE really talented, AND really skilled (no one can get there on talent alone, and I know several successfully working actors who are not exceptional actors, but very exceptional businesspersons). Luck, right place/right time, and who you know is more a factor than talent is; the arts/entertainment industry is chock FULL of very talented, out-of-work performers. And for that matter, even if you do get lucky, odds are much more in favor of the work-a-day career, rather than the BIG FAMOUS STAR career. Fame is _rarely_ a part of the deal. Same with the seven-figure contracts. You get your $20 an hour (or less) just like the schmucks who work in an office. You almost certainly won’t get rich doing this. > [@](#): > > That one makes me wonder. Go somewhere else, get some experience, move back when a job opening comes up. It might not be ideal, but if someone told you all of your life was going to be ideal, they were lying. Moving is expensive as shit, though. Movers for an IN-TOWN move are over a grand. Plus you’d have to float your new security deposit while waiting for the old one to be returned to you. If you skip the movers, you’d have to buy furniture at your destination. All with absolutely no more guarantee of a job that pays enough to recover all this, than by staying where you’re at. I don’t think it’s a completely dumb move, unless you literally have nothing AND you have a job waiting for you (tough to find these days, and even moreso if you’re not local – employers don’t want the hassle, and they don’t have to put up with it these days, with the glut of workers on the market). > [@puddleglum](#): > > Waiting too long to get married. If you don’t start looking until your 30 then if it takes you two years to find the right person, two years to date enough to know they are the right one, one year to plan a wedding. Being a newlywed is stressful enough without kids so you wait two years and then your 37. Every year after 30 makes it harder to conceive and after 40 birth defects become more likely. So there is a three year window to have as many kids as you want to have. If anything takes longer than you planned then it may never happened. I feel so sorry so people who miss out on life’s greatest joy, because they didn’t get serious about it and stayed with the wrong guy too long, or didn’t start seriously dating until they had a succesful career. :rolleyes: 1. Because things always go exactly to plan in life, and everyone who is single is that way because they chose to be. 2. Because everyone is _exactly the same_ and have all the same ambitions in life, including [del]shackling themselves to[/del] having kids at the cost of their career and social life. (Hint: my “life’s greatest joy” has nothing at all to do with having kids around. Kids would be a serious detriment to it, in fact.) ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/78 "2013-05-02T21:50:31Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > I spent the morning of 9/11 in a plastic surgeon’s office, having a cyst removed from my scalp. I had several appointments related to this, and at every visit, ALL the other people in the waiting room were elderly. I’m guessing they were there to have small cancers and other skin conditions remedied. This surgeon did do purely cosmetic surgery, but it appears that most of his patients were people like me, or them. You got from my post the idea that I’m against plastic surgery for cancer and skin conditions? I was talking about people who are carving away at their faces and bodies for no other reason than vanity. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/79 "2013-05-02T23:43:59Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Waiting too long to get married. If you don’t start looking until your 30 then if it takes you two years to find the right person, two years to date enough to know they are the right one, one year to plan a wedding. Being a newlywed is stressful enough without kids so you wait two years and then your 37. Every year after 30 makes it harder to conceive and after 40 birth defects become more likely. So there is a three year window to have as many kids as you want to have. If anything takes longer than you planned then it may never happened. I feel so sorry so people who miss out on life’s greatest joy, because they didn’t get serious about it and stayed with the wrong guy too long, or didn’t start seriously dating until they had a succesful career. 1. Your timeline only applies to women, men have a much larger window in which to become parents. 2. No, dear, every year after 25 it becomes harder for a woman to conceive although the real drop off doesn’t occur until after 30. 3. No, dear, the risk of birth defects goes up sharply for a woman after 35, not 40. Even so, the _vast majority_ of kids born to mothers past the age of 35 are perfectly normal. 4. Not everyone view kid’s as the pre-eminent goal in life and there are many of us childless couples who are quite happy that way. Biologically, women are best suited to childbearing in their 20’s. However, most children are born either before or after that decade of their mother’s life. ---
**Author:** ![Namkcalb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c89c15/32.png) [@Namkcalb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Namkcalb)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2013, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212/80 "2013-05-03T00:01:11Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > Dunno about the “family” part. Well, I guess you can have a lot of fun trying [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-in-your-opinion-mistakes-people-make/657212.md?page=5)