The advice wasn’t given to me, but I would have been impacted had my mom taken it. Shortly after my father passed away, and my mom moved in with me, she had to have some microcalcifications removed from one breast. The surgeons she talked to assured her that it was nothing to be concerned about, but that it should be removed to prevent future issues. She was discussing this with a relative that she respected (and who had also survived breast cancer); this relative proceeded to tell my mother that even though two surgeons had assured her that it wasn’t cancer, it most definitely was, and that the insurance she had wouldn’t pay for much so she needed to get her hands on as much money as possible very quickly. This lead to the nastiest argument I’ve ever had with my mother, as she was adamant that she was going out the next day to sell her engagement ring, a diamond ring my father gave her for an anniversary, both vehicles (including the vehicle I needed to get to class – I was still in college, so that vehicle wasn’t registered in my name), and the house. A financial advisor was finally able to talk her down from this.
This same relative later convinced my mother that something was horribly wrong with me for not having a job immediately after graduating from college, prompting me to take the first job that I was offered. I still have that job 13 years later; it pays well, and I do have some excellent coworkers, but it’s so specialized that it has prevented me from getting a job elsewhere.
Heh…when I was in high school (late '90s), our guidance counselor took us to the computer lab so we could use some marvelous software provided by the county that would assess our interests and skills, then provide us with a list of career paths. This software turned out to be some '80s-era crap that apparently had no way of being updated – it still listed my hometown as a booming textile hub, for example. I dutifully sat down and worked through the questions; apparently, my interest and skill level with computers and science qualified me for a career in childcare.
Kinda like my first assignment after being commissioned - I’d been an avionics technician when first in the Navy, and I got my pilot’s license, then graduated from Purdue with a degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering. Naturally, that led to me being sent to the Pentagon as a Communications Officer. It took a lot of talking to a lot of people to get my designator changed so I could get back into the aviation community. Those 6 months as a CommO were sheer hell!
Girl, the guidance idiot tried to load me into home ec courses and secretarial shite - I got a job in a machine shop and was plunked into an industrial tech course much to the protest of the moron trying to make me girly =)
I worked for a civil engineering company in college as an intern. Most of the time, I was in the office doing white collar stuff, but maybe 2-3 weeks every summer, I’d sub in on the survey crews when someone went on vacation.
One summer, a particularly rustic surveying co-worker advised me that I should get myself an overweight girlfriend, because to put it simply, they’re grateful to have anyone dating them, and they’ll go out of their way to do stuff for you, such as laundry and cooking. (that’s not how he actually said it, but there’s no reason to actually quote his profane and sexist commentary)
I was taken aback to say the least. Not because of the overweight woman recommendation, but the reasoning behind it.
Not at all. In a nutshell, all CBT’s about is being aware of, and taking control of your thoughts/inner monologue, and using some techniques to either change the language that you think with, or to more rationally evaluate what you’re thinking.
This is an anecdote I’ve shared early and often with anybody who’ll listen, preferably after a pint or two, and delivered with as much merriment as I can–because it is stupid, vapid, ignorant, and shatteringly gormless. It is also effin’ hilarious.
I cornered my father in my early teens, and I demanded he tell me about “the birds and the bees”. Well, his advice, and I remember it verbatim, was, “Son, there’s no recipe to follow. God will tell you what to do.”
" I have no stocks. I advise people not to invest in the stock market, not now. Way too dangerous ." Film maker Michael Moore, August, 2017.
" It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover? A first-pass answer is never… So we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight. " Paul Krugman of the New York Times
" I have never seen an election in which the markets have so strong of a view as to what was good and bad about the outcome. And what you saw was the markets rallying yesterday because of the FBI thing on Sunday. And the reason I mention this particularly is if the likely event happens and Trump wins you will see a market crash of historic proportions, I think…The markets are terrified of him ." Steve Rattner, MSNBC economics guru and former Obama Car Czar, October, 2016.
" Wall Street is set up for a major crash if Donald Trump shocks the world on Election Day and wins the White House. New research out on Friday suggests that financial markets strongly prefer a Hillary Clinton presidency and could react with panicked selling should Trump defy the polls and deliver a shocking upset on Nov. 8. " Ben White, Politico, October 2016.
" Moving your portfolio to 90% equities a month before this election is insane! " Unnamed financial advisor, to me, October 2016.
When I was on the basketball team at school and talking about an upcoming, competitive game a teacher told me that when the guy I’m guarding goes up to take a shot, when his arms are upraised with the ball, that I should jab my hand into his solar plexus.
I couldn’t believe it was an adult, let alone a teacher telling me to do this.
Co-worker eons ago: “when are you going to grow up? What you need is an ugly woman- they make the best wives”. Said another co-worker: “he oughta know.”
Note: I was a single parent from the time my child was 10 months old. Never married her father.
Co-worker, while discussing how I had no desire to have another child: You shouldn’t think that way. You should get married and have another baby; it would bring respectability to the one you had in sin.
Reminds of my careers advisor at school. My A Level subjects were art (my main focus), history and English Literature. ‘Have you considered engineering?’
I have two stories of bad advice. When I was in 8th grade, I had chosen to go to HS in the all-academic HS in the city, what we would call a magnet school today. The son of a friend of my mother’s who had dropped out of that school after a year spent a half hour trying to convince me not to go there. I ignored him. It was one of the best things I ever did. When I got to college, my classmates told me it was a shock to move from HS to college. Not to me it wasn’t.
The other advice I wish I could have ignored. I had had cataract operations on both eyes. One of them was botched and had to be redone. Several months later I had an appointment with my regular ophthalmologist and mentioned that there were lots of spots in one eye–the once that had been operated on twice. He told me to ignore it; they were floaters of no consequence. He was wrong. They were symptoms of a retina about to tear. Maybe I would still have binocular vision if I had seen the surgeon immediately (long story).
Did anyone else get the “Bullies are really cowards at heart-If you stand up to them they will back down” advice when you were a kid? What a load of dangerous crap.
That bully advice is kinda funny, because as I recall it, you have the beat the bully up as well for this to really work.
This might work in elementary school, but it’s mostly in the realm of those ridiculous Disney movies from the sixties: The ghost of Don Knotts comes back from the US civil war or whatever and teaches the kid a couple quick lessons in fistfighting which are juuuust enough, with a dose of courage, to take on the bully and win. Then everyone becomes fast friends and the bully doesn’t bully anymore. High fives all around, let’s go get a soda lads.
And the secret is that the boy was brave enough all along, and just had to give himself permission. It’s aspirational garbage.
In reality, standing up to the bully will result in being pushed into the dirt, if you’re lucky, and a couple extra kicks or punches if you’re not.
Anyway, the REAL way to stand up to a bully is to dedicate one’s whole life into uncovering lost ninja secrets, mastering them, and then finally hunting the bully down when you have perfected your technique, probably when you’re both in your mid-fifties at the earliest. He’s now a moderately successful middle manager with a loving wife, a decent house with a white picket fence and two kids who’ve moved out of the house some years ago. He’s forgotten entirely about you.
The advice maybe wasn’t the worst, but the delivery sure was awful. A co-worker said to me, in between drags of the most putrid generic cigarettes, “You might want to avoid onion-rings for lunch when working in a retail environment”.
I had a 66% success rate with that advice. But yeah, standing up is not enough, you have to actually do physical damage. Case #1 - Junior High - kick in the balls - never bothered me again. Case #2 - High school - punch on the shoulder to make him fall off his chair - never bothered me again and we actually became close friends. Case #3 - Boy scouts - the little psycho continued to escalate until he eventually got kicked out of the troop.
Most useless advice: My project at work was abruptly cancelled by the customer, and there was a massive scramble to get picked up on other projects. Management is supposed to help with setting up interviews and get leads. After two weeks, my manager gives me this gem: “I’m not finding anything. You may want to circulate your resume outside the company”.
Oh, really, captain obvious? By the way, I already found an internal position on that new project that just picked up about 70 of the people from the cancelled project. Glad to see you’re earning your paycheck.
It took a lot of talking to a lot of people to get my designator changed so I could get back into the aviation community. Those 6 months as a CommO were sheer hell!