People Share The Best Advice For Someone Starting Their First Job
Reddit user CampDreamy asked: 'What advice would you give someone starting their first job?''
Starting your first job is always nerve-wracking. The start of anything new usually is. That's why it's helpful to get some advice.
Before I started my first job, a friend of mine told me that there were a lot of things I should be willing to do in order to become indispensable, but one thing I should never do is give up lunch.
Even if it's a busy day and everyone is working through lunch, take five minutes to buy something at the deli next door or pop something in the microwave. You will not do your best work if you do not eat a meal.
I was very glad to get that advice, and it was something I always followed.
I also followed my own personal rule of writing down the process to do anything at work, even if it was as simple as where to look for a particular file. Anytime I thought 'oh, I'll remember,' I ended up having to ask again. It's always better to write it down so you not only know how to do it, but are the one that people come to when they need to know how to do it.
I'm not the only one that has good advice for someone starting their first job. Redditors are full of advice and are ready to share.
It all started when Redditor CampDreamy asked:
"What advice would you give someone starting their first job?"
Think Positive
"95% of success is showing up on-time and not having a bad attitude."
– Firebolt164
"There’s a quote that goes something like: you don’t need an advanced degree to show up on time, work hard, and have a positive attitude."
"I basically used this as my mantra as I built my career (and still do)."
– tyrannosean
"This has been my experience in my first ~5 years of employment. Being someone that people enjoy interacting with, sticking to deadlines, and broadly trying to make lives easier rather than harder will get you pretty close to the top, and it’s a lot easier than working overtime every day."
– 2catsinatrenchcoat
"Yep, when I was younger I always thought that just showing up on time, being a decent person to work with, and doing a good job were the bare minimum that everyone did....I learned later that this will put you above approximately 90% of your co-workers."
– raoulduke212
Sound Advice
"Poop on company time."
– 1320Fastback
"Well, sh*t."
– CampDreamy
"Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That's why I poop on company time."
– mrselfdestruct066
Everyone Makes Mistakes
"Don't worry about f**king up. You're going to f**k up. We all f**k up. Constantly."
"Learn from it when you f**k it up so you do it better next time and you'll be the best employee in any job."
– MaximumZer0
"And when (not if) you f**k up, own up to it, and do your best to fix it. It's way easier to fix a mistake when it first happens than 3 weeks or even hours down the line. This applies to basically any field."
– super5aj123
Gossip Girl
"Listen to gossip if you want, but never spread it."
– GamerMomLife
"Yep. I worked in a private pool snack bar kitchen last summer, and nearly all of my coworkers were high school girls. The amount of sh*t they talked on each other was insane, but I just tried my best to not get involved. It never became anything other than sh*t-talking, but it's just a good idea in general to keep your head down."
– super5aj123
"I work in a kitchen with majority middle-aged women, and it's simular to what you described."
– DeadStar800
Do It All
"If they tell you to sweep, just sweep. You still make the same amount. Unless you’re an MD or something else, in that case you’re f**ked!"
– PublicEnema11
"A programmer consultant I knew in the 90s lived by the motto "it all pays the same.""
"You want him to spend his $50/hr time doing things that an unpaid intern could handle? Sounds like an easy day."
– Cacafuego
(Don't) Let It Burn, Burn, Burn
"Don’t burn bridges if you quit or get fired."
– kbrown423
""Never cut what you can untie.""
"- Robert Frost"
– sophistt_
It's All Public
"Assume everybody in the company plus clients will read every email you send."
– CouchieWouchie
"Yeah this is genuinely a great rule that will save your @ss. Write every email as if it will be read by the whole org."
– FrungyLeague
"Also speak as though anything you say is being recorded."
– squished_frog
Protect Yourself
"Document EVERYTHING. Every time punch. Every direction from your supervisor."
– DejectedDonut
"Do this if you are working outside your duties/responsibilities as well, or directed to do things. You want a paper trail of why you did what you did if something screwy happens."
"Ideally, the work place should concentrate on policy, protocol, training, engineering and admin controls and such... but well stuff isnt always ideal."
– Zech08
Work Friends
"You're going to feel tempted to make strong relationships with your coworkers - but remember that you shouldn't share with anyone what you wouldn't want known by everyone. You may think you can trust someone, but you should have a bit of caution."
"A lot of work relationships feel a bit like a friendship, but they are not. If they move on, or you do, it is rare that you will stay in touch. Accept it for what it is."
– Mobtor
Education
"Take advantage of tuition reimbursement to get degrees/certifications that will benefit your career and don't worry about "owing" the company for it."
"Many industries have pretty generous tuition reimbursement programs where they cover your school but you owe them time after they cut those checks. A typical program might have a requirement that if you leave the company you need to pay back anything they had paid out in the last two years."
"The thing is that you want to leverage that degree for a salary jump and the current company won't give it to you because they have you "locked" in now, right?"
"So you interview for your next job and when that company gives you an offer you explain that you're on the hook for the tuition reimbursement at your old company "and since you will be getting the benefit of that education I will need a signing bonus to cover my financial obligation to my current employer.""
"Keep in mind that the signing bonus will be taxable income so you need to shoot for an amount that will have taxes taken out and leave what you need to pay back the tuition."
"I've known too many people who didn't get a degree that could have really helped them but they didn't want to be "on the hook" to their employer. I even know one guy who spent close to $30k out of his own pocket to get a master's degree because he didn't want to "be stuck here" when he was done."
– tacknosaddle
The Little Moments Matter
"Don’t miss any major life events (or the major life events of close family/friends) for work. You might feel pressure from your employer not to take the time off."
"The family/friends will still be around for many years, the first job probably won’t."
– mxxiestorc
Learn To Save
"Pension! Pension! Pension!"
"Put as much as you can afford to into your pension. Retirement might seem a lifetime away but the sooner you save for it the sooner you can achieve it."
– Grayzo
Money, Money, Money
"Pack a lunch! Eating out can put a huge dent in your paycheck!"
– awileycat
"Can't stress this enough. For the price of eating out unhealthy food for 1 day you can usually pack healthier lunch for 2-3 days."
– QuantumExileMusic
Oh, yes! I found out about that last one the hard way...and still haven't learned!
The One Mistake That Ended Peoples' Careers
Reddit user DankGamer135 asked: 'What one mistake ended your career?'
From a young age, we've all had it drilled into us the importance of finding a good job that we can work at for the rest of our lives.
But sometimes those jobs don't work out for one reason or another, and sometimes all of the fault gets pinned on the employee.
Redditor DankGamer135 asked:
"What one mistake ended your career?"
A Scam Order
"While working at a builders’ merchant's, a customer called to place an order over the phone (not unusual) and wanted to give me the card details, there and then (red flag)."
"I initially refused, but another member of staff vouched for them as they were regulars. I put the order through, knowing that whoever came to collect would need to come into the office for their paperwork before loading, so we would have them on CCTV if it did turn out to be suspect…"
"Except the yard crew didn’t follow the process. When a van turned up for the goods, they loaded it all up and sent them away without asking for any kind of ID or manifest."
"The payment card was later reported as stolen, and the staff member who vouched for the customer denied even being in that day, which was a f**king lie as she never took time off. I got fired and everyone else got to keep their jobs."
- Shas_Erra
"That sounds like a setup. They should’ve been easily able to verify whether the person that vouched for them was working that day (check her clock in/out times, CCTV, etc)."
"At the very least, someone on the yard crew should’ve gotten fired too because they didn’t follow procedure either (and it’s even worse because if they had, it could’ve been stopped dead in the tracks)."
"I’m sorry, man."
- princessleyley
Lifting Wrong
"I lifted wrong. 14 years of arboriculture coming to an end now, and I'm not sure of the next job."
- Spaghettitrees
"14 years might be enough to move into a supervisory/managerial role if one exists in the field. It would allow you to still utilize your experience to some degree."
- srentiln
A Screaming Match
"I worked retail pharmacy for 10(ish) years. One day in the drive-thru, we had a belligerent patient. The guy's doctor sent his script to our other chain about 1.5 miles down the road. We were on the same street, and addresses get mixed up all the time. No biggie, give me 10 minutes and I'll have it ready..."
"But the dude just starts laying into me for no reason. Calls me an id**t. Calls me incompetent. Says he knows where his doctor sent it and I'm a lazy, lying piece of s**t. Etc, etc."
"After a few MINUTES going back and forth, with this guy yelling loud enough in my drive-thru that other staff inside the store can hear him, I tell him he needs to leave and find a new pharmacy."
"The guy lays into me again. Refuses to leave. I tell him, 'F**k off or I'm calling the police.'"
"Apparently, that was over the line for my company. No interview with HR. No discipline. No suspension. They just straight up fired my a** about three weeks later after an 'internal investigation.'"
- frithjofr
Physical Space
"One of the Directors wasn't happy with some work I'd done and started poking me hard with his finger to punctuate his comments."
"I punctuated back considerably more forcefully."
- jonnymars
The Angel of Death
"I called the HR lady the 'Angel of Death' to a coworker on chat. (HR was in a different state, so any time they came to town we all knew it was most likely to lay off people.)"
"The Angel of death came to get me shortly after, lol (laughing out loud)."
- michaudra2
"I once worked in a company as the help desk tech that would come collect tech while people were in with HR getting fired. I got the nickname Grim Reaper, because if I showed up with my cart and nobody in that department called, then one of their colleagues wouldn't be coming back from their meeting with HR."
- Houseplantkiller123
Home Sweet Home
"I built a castle out of Christmas chocolate biscuit boxes in the warehouse of a major retailer on a night shift and proceeded to fall asleep in it for a few hours."
- masontraining
The Wrong Recipient
"I sent a scathing email about my boss directly to my boss. It wasn't meant for him."
"To this day, I still have no idea what possessed me to put his name in the address bar. I noticed his name the exact moment I hit send."
"You have never felt that much panic."
- Happy1327
A Brand New Car
"I was a part-time intern making $9 an hour (USD) and my boss asked if I had any plans for the weekend."
"I had said I was going to buy a new car (very much old and used as that's what I could afford) and he asked if I was buying a brand new car. My response was that my budget isn't big enough for a new car."
"A couple of weeks later during my one-year review, my manager said they didn't have the work for me and that I was disrespectful for telling the boss I didn't make enough money."
"At the time I was living comfortably as a college student who just needed different transportation. I tried not to be disrespectful but apparently I was."
- Kulee43
Fired in Retaliation
"I got security responsibilities added to my duties as a sysadmin at a small university. I was asked by my boss' boss, the IT director, to do a security audit. He asked me to report on the audit at a department meeting."
"I asked if I could present my results to him privately instead and have him present at the meeting, but he insisted I could take care of it."
"My report showed major security holes, demonstrations of tests of said holes, and recommendations for patching said holes. Many of the patches were at the level of 'change the administrator password from 'password' to something less obvious.'"
"As my political acumen was near zero at the time, I didn't realize how the report on major security problems made the IT Director look completely incompetent in front of the entire department. He had built and configured the campus computer system pretty much on his own, at least in his mind, and was quite proud of his accomplishment."
"He suspended me on the spot, demoted me, and tried to convince the university to fire me and try to bring me up on criminal charges for hacking into the university's computer systems."
- firelock_ny
A Terrible Accident
"I had a workplace accident, a fall from an extreme height. I didn't get fired but broke enough bones that I'll never work in that industry again."
- Malromen
Out of Context
"I was opening my packages in the mailroom, using a pocket knife to slice open the packing tape. The secretary came in and chatted. We’re both Italian so we gesture a lot while talking."
"Sometime after the conversation, the Ops manager came down from his office and escorted me out of the building. I had forgotten the knife was in my hand while talking with the secretary, and she made an accusation that I had threatened her with it during our conversation."
"I was fired three days later."
"I had worked with this woman for almost a decade. I helped her children with their homework, etc."
"Years later, I learned corporate wanted to take down my boss and started the process by going after his biggest supporters. I was the third domino to fall. After I was railroaded, almost 40% of the branch’s staff left the company. I guess the secretary was in on it and leaped at any excuse to take me out."
"Shame. Really loved that job. And got fired when my first child was due in only four weeks. It was very demoralizing for quite a while."
- Bokuden101
Stolen Cigarettes
"This isn't about me, but a guy I worked with was caught stealing two cigarettes from a colleague's bag. He was on a six-figure salary. Not anymore!"
- Rude-Scholar-469
"How can anybody be so dumb? Especially as a smoker, he should be aware how other smokers are very likely to share their cigarettes with you if you just ask them."
- SherifGames
The Stolen Lunch
"This didn't happen to me, but I remember a coworker of mine getting fired because he put laxatives in his own lunch bag. Some d*ckhead kept stealing parts of our lunches. Turned out, it was our supervisor."
"I'm not too keen on the specifics since that coworker and I weren't exactly friends or anything. I just kind of had simple conversations during lunch and whatnot."
"Apparently, it is illegal to poison food with malicious intent. And some of my friends who worked there said he got into some legal trouble because of it. Nothing came of it from what I heard. But that's about all I know."
- DeicideandDivide
A Slanderous Date
"I went on a first date with a girl who turned out to be a horrible person 20 minutes in."
"I did what I could to get out of it because she was telling stories about crazy things she’d done and was proud of. I didn’t pull anything to get out of it, just dodged land mines and asked a ton of questions about her so I could get out of it sooner."
"Then I said I wasn’t feeling the connection and I wanted to be honest so we didn’t waste each other's time."
"I found out a week later that she contacted my previous employers, because she found my LinkedIn, told them all stories about how I talked a ton of s**t about them all. And now I can’t get a reference from my previous three jobs… and people I was on good terms with."
"All because I went on a date with a psychopath."
- FirstFlight
Taking Sides
"I sided with the peeps under me as their manager."
- ThunderClap449
"It's more important to have the back of the people you represent. In my experience, you get better production out of people who know you go to bat for them. Then your numbers and team performance look good and they figure, well, he must be doing something right."
- A_Vile_Person
While it is always terrible to lose a job, these stories make it clear that sometimes we lose jobs for reasons that really should be no fault of our own. From fraud to accidents to false charges, people have been fired for things they certainly shouldn't have been.
And for those who were fired for reasons that wholly were their fault, well, at least that was a learning experience.
There are some professions out there that always leave us wondering how they found their way into that job.
While there are some jobs that not everyone would see for themselves, like dentistry, there are still a fair number of kids who claim they want to be dentists on Career Day.
But something like gynecology mysteriously never seems to come up...
Redditor dialgapalkiagiratina asked:
"Male Gynecologists of Reddit, why did you pursue your job?"
A No-Brainer
"Male OB/GYN in my 30s from Europe here. Several reasons, but maybe the most important and formative experience for me was when after med school I was living in the Horn of Africa for a couple of years."
"I witnessed some soul-crushing things, like obstetric fistulae, young women with advanced cervical cancer that could have been prevented easily, and complicated and traumatic deliveries."
"To put it mildly, women's health leaves much to be desired in a global context."
"I also met there some extremely inspiring and charismatic people, like Edna Adan Ismail and Catherine Hamlin. In general, I'm usually not very easily captivated by people, but these women were just something else with their endless kindness, charisma, and altruism. If on my deathbed I could say that I spent my life trying to do want they did, I could die peacefully."
"So when I, as a young doctor, had the opportunity to get training in the most important medical specialty of all and do my small part in making the world a kinder place for women, I mean, who really would need to think twice?"
- johnnywayfarer
Variety of Tasks
"I get to do a nice mixture of office, surgery, and labor and delivery, which is its own unique thing. I like the busyness and the high intensity. And I like being a part of one of the biggest days of people's lives."
"The hours could be better though; babies have no respect for other people's schedule."
- Justpracticing
Happiest Moments
"I originally didn’t know what I wanted to do when I entered medical school, and if you had asked me then, OBGYN was at the bottom of the list based off of everything negative I had heard."
"During my third-year rotation, I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed it. You get to do a little of everything: medicine, surgery, primary care, office procedures and obviously delivering babies which were awesome. On top of that, I lost my Mother during medical school, who was my biggest role model."
"Being able to be there in the room with new moms during their happiest moments just kinda made it all click for me. Don’t regret my decision at all."
- EpeePaul
"Happy Medicine"
"This is what most of my colleagues in the field say. It's the variety and the mix of primary care and pretty awesome procedures. Tends to be more happy medicine."
- PreetHarHarah
The Realities of the Field
"I'm a male gynecologist of six years. Albright working in a hospital outside the US. During our education, we do rotations in every field and gynecology was one of the most diversified fields."
"I'll do deliveries, small operations (D&C), or laparoscopic surgery as well as bigger stuff. Here we even do breast surgery and administer adjuvant chemotherapy ourselves. So I get to do all the fun stuff and it never gets boring."
"Sorry to everyone thinking I'm looking at vulvas 24/7. Most of what I do is talking, to be honest."
- Myd00m
Improved Women's Healthcare
"Male OB/GYN here. Lots of reasons! I am genuinely excited every time I get to be part of bringing a child into the world."
"As a dad to daughters, I feel responsible for making the world a safer place for women to seek healthcare. Women’s health is full of mystery, which isn’t the case in more studied clinical areas."
"Some reasons for this include Women’s health only getting about 1% of biopharma research funding, women being excluded from clinical trials until 1993 (thank you thalidomide scandal), and research animal models almost exclusively being male until 2016."
"There are common woman’s health problems, like endometriosis (10% of women), which we simply do not yet understand. As an academic, I love the research component of my job. The list goes on and on. In short, I think it’s the most rewarding area of medicine and wouldn’t do anything else."
- risenpixel
Fascinated by the Research
"I just finished my Ph.D. and am doing female aging and fertility research at an IVF clinic. It’s wild how much difference in sex has been ignored in tons of research."
"It’s definitely changing, especially with respect to female aging since the ovaries age faster than anything else, and that aging affects a woman’s overall health."
"I got into the field by accident, took a random job in a lab out of college and it ended up being an ovary lab. I wound up loving it and stuck with it for grad school, and here I am starting a career in the field."
"As important as the work is for women’s health and fertility overall, female reproduction is incredibly interesting. I’m biased towards repro in general obviously, but sperm is boring, in my opinion. There’s tons of sperm and you’re always making more."
"But eggs are formed in the embryo and arrested in the cell cycle for decades before being fertilized and making a whole new person. They’re absolutely wild cells. It makes you appreciate how exact our molecular biology is."
- ImJustAverage
Compassionate Care
"It felt like an extremely well-rounded profession. You get to do inpatient and outpatient. You get to do office procedures, laparoscopic surgery, robotic surgery, vaginal surgery, and open surgery. You get to do hands-on ultrasound and not just read it. You get to deliver babies!"
"If you’re doing Gyn Oncology, many will do the chemo and the surgery and not just the surgery like Surg Oncology. If you do MFM, you get to do ultrasound-guided procedures such as fetal blood transfusions and such."
"I feel like this thread wants to focus on the discrepancy between physician and patient sex/gender. We are physicians who take care of patients regardless of their demographics/characteristics, and the profession itself can have high acuity, high points, and low points, you are caring for vulnerable populations, and it is rewarding."
"The other question we always get is, 'Don’t female patients prefer a female physician?' Many do! And that is great! I want patients to see whomever they feel comfortable seeing."
"I ultimately find that for 99% of patients, they want someone who is going to take care of them as a compassionate and empathetic physician, and this transcends what the race/sex/gender/etc of their physician is!"
- The_White_Lotus
Surgical Specialty
"I played football in college. Offensive line. Burly, bearded, white dude. Everyone had me shoehorned for orthopedic surgery or sports medicine. I hated them both."
"Loved being in the operating room, so I knew I had to do a surgical specialty. General surgery rotation was very… ahem…abrasive where I went to school. I had ruled out the other specialties for one reason or another and was left with Urology or gynecology. Urology was too competitive for me, so OB/GYN it was!"
"I also had a very, very good friend four years ahead of me, so she was just about to finish residency when I started. She mentored me and actually took a position as an attending where I matched for residency. I absolutely LOVE what I do! I have a truly amazing team right now between my scribe, my nurse, the surgery techs, and the LDR girls. It’s a great job!"
- CBow63
Treating the Whole Person
"I think it's one of the most generalist areas of medicine still around."
"You dual-specialize (at least where I practice), so you get to do both Obstetrics and gynecology."
"With gynecology, you deal with both medical and surgical issues, things that may have been dismissed for ages by other doctors where you can make a difference, or things where people are truly worried they are not normal when they actually are."
"You deal with sexual health, cancer, chronic pain, and fertility issues, to name a few. A lot of treatments can be medically based, but surgery is occasionally used. Communication is key here, and teaching the patient about the condition is paramount to helping them deal with it."
"I enjoyed palliative medicine as a young doctor, and early pregnancy issues like miscarriage allow me to look after a family unit in a similar way, as does later losses from an obstetric point of view."
"Surgically you can do open surgery, laparoscopic, vaginal, plastics (Urogynecology and general), robotic, etc. Your work can be elective or emergent, and ruptured ectopics/hemorrhaging miscarriages can be the most urgent of urgent, allowing you to save someone's life very quickly."
"With obstetrics, you can deal with any medical issue (with help mind from other specialties) as your population of patients can have pretty much any medical disorders. You get to watch a patient move through their pregnancy, and can even support and deliver them if it is needed."
"The emergency component in Obstetrics is broad and frequent and these are usually easy to deal with. However, the skill comes in communication in these fraught scenarios, which came make or break a patient's experience."
"Overall you deal with young, old, normal, abnormal, cancer, STIs, life, death, grief, happiness, fear, and support."
"A vagina is only part of it, there's a uterus, ovaries, hormones, and a complete, whole person that I treat."
- mzyos
Listening Skills
"To people outside of medicine, this is a common question. And it’s usually included with something along the lines of, 'How can you effectively care for women with women-specific issues if you haven't experienced those yourself?'"
"Seems like a very reasonable question."
"But it’s helpful to remember that most oncologists haven’t gone through cancer treatment. But they’re still well-equipped to guide someone through cancer care. Sure, the patient might benefit from talking with someone that has been through it, but that’s a good role for group therapy or a support class. Doesn’t have to be a role that’s filled by the doctor."
"Most surgeons who fix heart valves, take out gallbladders, remove tumors, etc. have never had heart problems, gall bladder problems, or a tumor. It’s not necessary to have personally experienced those things in order to be excellent at taking care of those things."
"Where we run into trouble is when men dictate the care of women. But doctors shouldn’t be dictating anyone’s care in this day and age. Patients should be provided with the resources to make their own decisions."
"For women seeking care from an OB/GYN, the best equipped OB/GYN is the one that can listen, make a logical plan, advise their patient of their options, and respect their wishes. That OB/GYN could be a man or a woman and be equally good at those things."
- bigwill6709
Emotional Rollercoaster
"Male OB/GYN here, with a post on fetal medicine, sexology, and a fellowship in fertility/reproduction."
"As others have already said, OB/GYN is an extremely diverse field with always a lot going on."
"There's major surgery to be done, then you're off in an office talking about anything, then on an ultrasound machine performing morphology checks, and then a phone rings and you're over there helping bring someone to the world."
"It's all very engaging, emotional, and rewarding."
"But for me the core of it comes directly from its literal meaning, Obstetrics derives from the Latin 'obstare,' which means, 'to be by the side.'"
"It's also an emotional rollercoaster, I get super elated from a birth, and have and will continue to cry with my patients during a miscarriage."
"But, have you ever seen the gaze of a mother to her newborn son for the first time?"
"Have you experienced the pain that comes with the loss of someone who's never ever been born?"
"I get to see the joy of a cancer-free patient, I hear the sweetest sound of a baby's first cry. I even made a blind lady 'see' it's baby during an ultrasound exam once."
"I get to work with amazing and caring people like Kipros Nicolaides and Yves Ville."
"I do good for the people around me. It makes me feel proud and accomplished in every way. What else is there to say?"
- prpg04
Humbling Experience
"I'm a male MD working right now at a family practice here in Sweden, but considered OB/Gyn seriously for a while and worked at a women's clinic for a short time."
"Medically, it's the perfect sweet spot for a person who wants to do it all. You get emergencies and save lives on a daily basis, you get really cool surgery ranging from real emergency life-threatening operations to long cancer operations. You are almost an endocrinologist, a geriatrician, a pediatrician, and a therapist all at once. You get to meet life and death literarily all the time."
"I have seen and assisted a fair amount of deliveries and seen the joy and pain in the parents' eyes. I have held an older patient's hand while consulting and telling them that the cancer is inoperable and that there isn't anything more we can do. It's just a wonderful specialty overall."
- meniscusmilkshake
Would Do It For Free
"Gynae Oncologist for 20 years. Great job that has always had lots of variety and evolved over time. Started with a focus on obstetrics, delivering babies, and experiencing the adrenaline and privilege of being there for that big moment with people."
"Slowly evolved towards gynae and cancer, learning high-end surgery, using a cool kit, dealing with highly challenging scenarios, and constantly learning and developing. This coincided with moving away from the exhausting after-hours work."
"Love my job and if I was independently financially comfortable, I would still do it for free."
- needlenoise
An Alternate Perspective
"I’m a female ID scientist (obviously not the subject of interest here). However, I’ve had a history of poor OB/GYN experiences in my past; a ruthless doctor who snipped my malformed hymen without numbing at 13, ones who completely disregarded my concerns, getting kicked out of the office immediately after IUD."
"All of them were women. Now this isn’t to crap on female OB/GYNs, since some are amazing, just not the ones I’ve found in my area."
"However, I was at the end of my rope and desperately needed someone to help me with what ended up being a ureaplasma infection and finally bit the bullet and saw a male OBGYN who was well-reviewed. He spent 30 minutes listening and getting to know my information. When he needed to examine me, he brought in a female colleague to hold my hand and made sure to give me ample warning before touching or examining."
"Needless to say, I realized that sometimes, people who have no idea what another is going through are the most empathetic."
"Moral of the story, I think sometimes female OBGYNs get into the mindset of 'if I can deal with it, so can you,' therefore it can be better to see male doctors who have no experience and won’t compare themselves to you."
- kahlllee
While there are a lot of stereotypes about what actually goes on during a gynecologist's work day and "what type of guy" would choose this profession, these accounts were really eye-opening and, honestly, heartwarming.
After wading through the onslaught, convincing that your personal and professional elements make you worth thousands of dollars per year, days off, and a healthcare package, the tables turn.
But when given the chance to ask a question of their own during a job interview, many people don't seize the opportunity as well as they could.
For many, the interview process is an excruciating pocket of time dedicated to impressing somebody that's more experienced, far more embedded in their comfort zone, and has a dope name plate.
That attitude holds firm when the interviewer asks of any questions the prospective candidate may have.
Thus, a unique opportunity to learn about any problems, concerns, or get an accurate picture of the job and the work is given away.
Usually, folks just ask something that, again, impresses.
Some Redditors shared their ideas for empowering interviewees to do right by themselves despite the intimidating context.
And some, of course, just got plain silly.
u/PsychologyToGo asked, "What are great questions to ask your interviewer at the end of a job interview?"
So What REALLY Goes On In This Joint?
"Walk me through a typical day in the position I am hiring for."
Third Month Ream-Out Prevention
"What do you expect me to accomplish in the first 60 to 90 days?"
Quick Question, is it Toxic Here?
"How would you describe morale in your workplace, and what does the company do to help build morale?"
Getting Down to Brass Tacks
"Can I see the fridge I will be using so I can size my lunchbox purchase appropriately?"
You People Realistic About Your Expectations?
"What are some of the projects you have coming up, and what's the timelines to get them implemented?"