Redditor Enguzelharf asked:
"What's your profession's myth that you regularly need to explain 'it doesn't work like that' to people?"
Stock
"I work in a hardware store and apparently people think we have a huge underground storage big enough to hide every product in existence."
"No, I can't just go and fetch a part for your 20-year-old fireplace or power tool from the backroom."
- Mjarf88
"Also- an extension cord with two sets of male ends isn’t needed for Christmas light installation. No, you didn’t but one last year. Yes, I know this. I worked here last year. We didn’t have them then either. There is a use for those cords but it’s not Christmas lights."
- pherring
"Retail. If an employee tells you they're sold out of that hot sale item. They're sold out. They're not hoarding them in the backroom, because f**k you. They know they're sold out, because you're the 10th person to ask about it, in the last 20 minutes."
- RagingHolly
Pain Meds
"Your terminally ill grandmother isn't 'becoming addicted' to her pain medication. She's dying in as much comfort and with as much dignity as we can provide."
- Aggressivecleaning
"As an add-on to this, the pain medication isn't going to kill them faster."
- fiducia42
"Honestly, I needed someone to remind me of this when we were at the morphine phase with my mom. They explain how they’ll stop all treatment and make her comfortable with the morphine, and somehow it just felt like we’d be killing her. The doctor took her time to explain that was not what was happening. I am a relatively smart person but in this situation I just really needed to hear this."
- Scullyxmulder1013
Antibiotics
"Antibiotics don't work on viral diseases."
- The_Max_V
Conservation Of Energy
"As an engineer, I have to explain a lot of time that the law of energy and mass conservation can't be broken."
- Bobraie
"Are you telling me that my childhood invention of a solar-powered car with a big lamp on it pointing at the solar panels *wouldn't* be able to run forever? I don't believe you.
- JayGold
"One time the HVAC went out in my office and my boss brought in a portable air conditioner. I asked where we were going to vent the hot air, and he was like 'What heat? It's an A/C, it just makes cold.' It took 20 minutes on a whiteboard to explain that you can't 'make cold,' you're just transferring the heat somewhere else."
- KickFacemouth
Accounting
"When someone finds out you're an accountant 90% of the time they will say "great, so you can help with my taxes haha" . There are loads of accountants who may never see taxes in their day-to-day and have minimal knowledge from their certification only."
- dahliafluffy
"So much this, and no I’m not busy in April because it’s tax season, it’s because the quarter just ended."
- jaaaaagggggg
Video Editing
"Video production. Your only options in the edit are what the camera captured."
- JhymnMusic
"Dude this. I have clients sometimes ask me to add slow motion to certain shots. 'Make it look slick and smooth.'"
"Well, you shot everything at 24fps so, no. It’s gonna look like sh*t."
- try_by
"'Just fix it in post' I will end you."
- DefinitelynotDanger
Grants
"There aren’t just buckets of grant money available for your wacky idea. You have to have a track record, an organization, a plan and a budget. It’s highly competitive."
- Soobobaloula
"I’m a professional grant writer too. The number of times I have to explain that the 'airport grant' cannot be used to replace East Main Street is too damn high."
- PrideofPicktown
"I tried to explain this to an interim administrator at the school where I worked. I had asked to meet and discuss ideas for grant projects, as writing grants had previously been part of my job. Wouldn’t accept that I couldn’t just say 'it’s for a school' and that would be that."
- Sheepeys
scrooge mcduck 80s GIFGiphyArboriculture
"Putting an angled back cut when felling a tree against the lean does absolutely nothing and will result in a tree falling on your house. Just pay us to do the job"
- spjnr
"Learned this the hard way when my landlord came over to take down a tree in the back yard by lassoing it with a rope tied to a water skiing handle and cutting a notch into the tree with a chainsaw. Turns out trees are heavy, who knew? Granted it was his house but my family living in it. We moved into our own place a little later and I’ve hired arborists ever since."
- Top_Chef
"Yep. Every good redneck knows to pull the tree down with a buddy's pickup."
"Preferably a buddy you don't like with a pickup that's not worth much."
- imdatingaMk46
Ordering In A Bar
"I work in a bar. People frequently ask for drinks to be “extra strong”, but when I explain that they can just order a double, but we can’t add extra alcohol to their drink for free, they look at me like I’m speaking a language they’ve never heard before."
- Fabulous_Piccolo_178
"For a strong drink you either have to tip very well every time you are in, or be friends with the bartender outside of work."
- Idrinktears92
"Pretty much yeah. But if I’m not behind the bar, I can’t ask whoever’s bartending to f**k up their inventory by just giving away liquor—it’s like people don’t understand that we keep track of how much is in each bottle and when the sales reports don’t match the inventory, it’s a problem. Like if you work retail and somebody asks if they can just add an extra item to their purchase without ringing it up or paying for it you’re going to look at them like they’re insane."
- Fabulous_Piccolo_178
Photo Editing
"Photo editing. It's amazing how many people think they can give me a tiny, blurry, digital image of the back of their daughter sitting on a park bench, with uneven lighting in the shade, and think I can magically and quickly turn that into a banner of her standing next to the Eiffel Tower, smiling in the sun, facing the camera. Neither Photoshop nor I have any idea what your daughter's face looks like. I can't just 'turn her around'. I literally have to work with exactly what you are seeing in the photo you hand me or email me. Now if you give me several photos, some containing her face, some with her standing, etc., then yes, I can do some quite magical things."
- nollaf126
"ENHANCE"
- whateverathrowaway00
Super Troopers Reaction GIF by Searchlight PicturesGiphyThe moral of the story is: if someone who is an expert in a field tells you that something is a certain way, it's probably best to believe them.
They will just feign ignorance or pretend certain events never happened.
But here on Reddit, where participants are under the veil of anonymity, strangers spoke freely about the things in their country's history that left them feeling a deep lack of pride.
Redditor CloudsExpert asked:
"What are the 'we don't talk about these things' history of your country?"
European countries are rich in history–but not everyone recognizes these regretful events.
Romanian Peasant Uprisings
"In Romania we don't talk about the pre WW1 and interwar peasant uprisings that have been violently put down. Everybody gives the image of a perfect Romanian state and society in this time, but many forget that in our Independence War we had more frontline deaths from diseases that should've been relatively easy for us to treat at that time than from enemy gunfire. Not the mention the 1907 peasant uprisings."
"Also the Second World War and the politics in our country at the time."
– El_scauno
Romanian Holocaust.
"Romanian people deny that we had mass murders during WW2, that Jewish and Gipsy were killed and that we sent lot of them in concentration camps, like Auschwitz."
– Wooden-King-7949
A "Neutral" Country's Child Slavery History
"Switzerland: We don't talk about 'Verdingkinder!' it's basically child slavery as recently as 1960! You cant imagine the horror of poor people's children being sold to farmers for fieldwork, getting abused in the richest country in the world! Yeah, we don't talk about that!"
– Fripser ·
Sweden And Eugenics
"People in Sweden get really uncomfortable when you point out that we, as a country, were really into eugenics. The Race Biological Institution was founded in 1922, supported by every political party and the king at the time. It existed until 1958 and, as you might expect, did some really f**ked up things."
– PanickingTastefully
The South American war–also known as the War of the Triple Alliance, which lasted from 1864 to 1870–is not a topic that is frequently brought up by Brazilians.
So Much Bloodshed
"Brazil DESTROYED Paraguay, killing almost every man and a lot of its women and children. It was a proper massacre."
– heitorrsa
Another Member Of The Alliance
"Argentina was involved, too. Paraguay ended up with a 7:1 women-to-men ratio. But it's taught openly in Argentina, as far as I can tell."
– Tinchotesk
An American's Perspective
"American who lived in Paraguay for a couple months here! The truly, truly disturbing thing is that many Paraguayans don't really know this either..."
"I had read up about the Triple Alliance War (la guerra de la triple alliance) before I went to Paraguay for the summer, and knew historians considered it a bloodbath, mostly caused by (f'k him) Francisco Solano Lopez, dictator of Paraguay. He did in fact order that they start sending male children into battle near the end when they were losing. He was a f'king idiot. F'k that guy."
"So imagine my surprise when I got to Paraguay and TONS of stuff was named after him. I asked my host dad about it and he said it was because he 'won Paraguay the war'. He called him a hero. I was pretty horrified."
"Fwiw, I checked with the local high school principal to see how far this miseducation rose and he said Paraguay was 'annihilated' in that war, so at least the true history isn't completely buried. Fascinating, terrible war."
– toast_is_ghost
Are these topics relating to the following Commonwealth Nations taught in their classrooms?
South African Natives
"Here in South Africa the true native people, the Khoikhoi, are the most politically and economically disadvantaged people and NO ONE gives a sh*t. Not locally, not internationally."
"When the remains of Saartjie Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman (read her story, it's pretty awful), were returned to South Africa not only were Khoikhoi people not invited to her burial, they were actively kept out."
– Wahooney
A Shameful Legislation
"New Zealand very nearly had legal eugenics. In 1928 a bill nearly passed parliament that forced sterilisation for 'the mentally defective' and the Ministry of Education was required by law to give names of 'defective' children to the Ministry of Health. A separate part of the law said that such people weren't allowed to get married."
"The Opposition lobbied for these sections to be cut out, not because Eugenics was immoral and insane, but because there was no evidence that it changed the gene pool in any way."
– LampWickGirl
Other shameful historic events were mentioned.
Croatia And Nazism
"In Croatia people don't like to talk too much about Croatia's involvement with Nazism because it was too recent, and because the Croatian nazis were never the majority of Croats but the few that there were, were given power by Hitler. Yet people still to this day go around saying Croatian nazi salutes and using Croatian nazi flags (the Croatian flag is a red and white checkered crest, the flag the nazis used started with a white checker instead of a red checker) and because of the recent Croatian war of independence - Croatian patriotism during the war somehow got mixed up with outdated Croatian nazism and now it's this weird thing nobody really wants to talk about and you got kids as young as 15 saying sh*t like 'Za dom spremni!' which is an old nazi salute."
– gabrielcro23699
Ignored Mexican Past
"we dont talk about la guerra cristera in mexico they dont teach it on school or talk about it on tv and media."
– supernword69
The Cristero
"The Cristero wars, the indigenous people who got sold as slaves during The Porfiriato, the attempt to invade Cuba by Santa Anna and mabye even the Massacre of the londiga de Guanajuato."
"Edit: I deleted a part where I said there was a law that allowed to deport anyone that didn't 'look Mexican', I was told about this a long time ago by a teacher I constantly trust but upon further research I couldn't find any information about the matter."
"I shall now apologize for this."
– MbMgOn
The White Terror
"The martial rule KMT placed on Taiwan when the escaped from China. This led to a period called 'White Terror', where hundreds of innocent people and bright college students were killed for not joining the party, including some who many thought could go on to win Nobel Prizes and do groundbreaking research."
– Numerous_Tune_1461
The Japanese In WWII
"I live in Japan for 3 years and have some Japanese friends. Everytime I asked them about WW2, they mostly did not know the atrocities that Japan did in WW2. They knew Japan was in the wrong side, but it seems the details were lost. It seems like there is a national effort to forget this history because it was 'shameful.'"
"Edit 1: A lot of you mentioned about the unit 731. I read it and it was awful beyond any reasonable standard human being. All of those horrible things happened to the civilians and pows were unfortunate and I couldn't imagine how bad their sufferings before dying."
"I was pretty much disgusted knowing that the inner circles of the unit 731 got pardoned by the US and lived their lifes until old-age for giving the US the result of their horrible experimentations. This thing should not have happened. Those people in charge must got the justice that they deserved for allowing and facilitating those kinds of horrible experimentations to other human being."
– laluzam
When I was a kid, I learned about the Japanese concentration camps from my great uncle.
I thought his story about him and his wife relocating to live in barracks located in Heart Mountain in Wyoming during World War II wasn't real.
Here's why. As a California student, I was never taught in my school district about President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066–which was drafted out of fear of espionage on American shores following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
This led to the cruel eviction of 120,000 innocent Americans of Japanese ancestry–including my great aunt and uncle– from their homes.
Countries have their shameful secrets. But until they can recognize and own mistakes from the past and make reparations, we are doomed to living in a perpetual cycle of fear and uncertainty.
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Often, a doctor's work is hindered by a patient's own closely held theory, which is unprofessional, not proven, and comes from God knows where.
Reddit's doctors have no shortage of horror stories in this regard. They shared the most concerning examples of a time when the patient waited way too long to seek medical attention, or disregarded it completely when they finally did.
It's a thread that throws serious doubt over home remedies and, more importantly, shows the perils of that self-deception which a health crisis can often provoke.
cinnamon_woods asked, "Doctors of Reddit, what's the worst case of patient ignorance you've come across?"
ELECTRONIC DEVICES ARE NOT PROVEN TO CURE CANCER
"Doc here. I had a patient come in with tumors in many parts of his body. I'm not an oncologist - he came to me for an unrelated issue. But his shirt was bloody in several areas where the tumors had ulcerated through the skin."
"Judging by his chart, all his other docs had tried to get him to get biopsies done and see a specialist and he always adamantly declined."
"His reasoning was that he believed an electrical device was the cure for his cancer and that the entire medical community was completely wrong."
"He had a manual for this electrical device with color coded tabs and he practically had the thing memorized and was trying to convince me that it says xyz here, which indicated it may be able to help with his condition."
"I tried, like all those before me, and failed."
-- olunarorbit
Cleaning a Wound IS Something You Can Do at Home
"Corpsman here . Had a Marine come in to clinic on Monday for abrasions to the hands on Friday. His hands were dirty AF which begged me to ask if he had washed his hands since at all to clean the wound."
"MARINE: I thought that was your job."
"The wound was gross and starting healing over the dirt and grime. Ended up debriding the wound which is very painful and basically tears the old dirty skin away to clean the wound."
-- wizard4life
The Profound Capacity for Self-Delusion
"I worked for an optometrist and a patient came in for a routine eye exam. When she checked in, the left half of her cheek/eye was covered under a loose band-aid. Under the band-aid, her face was completely eaten by cancer."
"I could see the flesh hanging from her cheek bone it was so deep. I looked at her chart shortly after and this had been going on for years with the doctor's note, 'Still waiting for God to heal cancer.' "
"The oddest part of it all was she would only try on designer frames from the optical and insisted she wanted high end frames. Lady, no one is going to be looking at those frames."
-- SucculentOwl
Gonna Need More Than Lotion
"Not a doctor, but a paramedic. Had a lady call 911 for foot pain. Got there, this lady had advanced gangrene to both feet to the point that they were turning black and had that unmistakable smell of gangrene."
"She told me that she had some cuts on her feet and had been applying lotion (like jurgens type lotion, not antibacterial stuff) to her feet and then had been putting slippers on them.
"She was honestly shocked when I told her that she could lose her feet and possibly her life. The smell was so strong that I could smell it when I entered the house."
Clinging to Hope
"I had a sad one happen to me. I saw a patient with very advanced colon cancer, who was convinced that she was misdiagnosed. She had gone to multiple doctors who told her she had cancer, using blood test results, imaging, and biopsies to back them up, but she was sure that we were all missing something."
"She had brought in a copy of her official pathology report with the results of her biopsy. She was so excited, 'look doctor, they told me it was cancer, but I've been through this report over and over, and it doesn't say cancer anywhere!' "
"The whole report had 'carcinoma' plastered throughout it (medical lingo for malignant cancer)."
Tough to Square That Circle
"Just yesterday I got a call for chest pains. Show up on scene and the dude meets us at the ambulance. Hops in and we start assessing him and his chest tightness."
" 'Sir do you have an past cardiac history?' "
" 'No I don't think so.' "
"I lift up shirt so we can do a 12 lead and see a scar from a CABG--'Sir are you sure you don't have any cardiac history? What's this scar from?' "
" 'Oh I'm not sure my wife might know though.' "
A Politically Charged Ignorance
"Anything anti vaccine. Real talk, parents who don't get their kids vaccinated should be charged for murder should their kids fall victim to the disease."
"Yes, you can refuse the vaccine, but children should have the right to common vaccines, Hep A and B, Polio, tetanus, etc. Nothing crazy fancy, but a select few vaccines which we know will keep them somewhat safe."
'If their kid gets the disease and is treated, parents are fined or serve community service, and the children are educated and allowed to make their own vaccination choice."
-- PLEASEHIREZ
Here's to That Losing Popularity
"Pediatrician here. Once working in the ER I was brought a septic 6 days old newborn. He had a weird stinky thing over his umbilical cord."
"The mother said it was a popular remedy to make the umbilical cord fall faster. It was made from horse manure, spider webs and some plant."
"I lost that baby."
-- Wicz69
Even Drinking Water Can Be an Impasse
"Pregnancy woman is admitted for severe dehydration. My mom is her nurse and apparently their first interaction was something like..."
"Mom: the Dr. said you're very dehydrated and we need you to drink at least x amount of water before you leave."
"Patient: I don't drink water."
"Mom: your baby is becoming stressed and you should try to drink as much as you can for your baby."
"Patient: I hate water. I only drink soda."
"Rest of the day she basically refused to drink any water no matter what anyone else said to her."
-- aislyng99
A Wild Pain Tolerance
"Saw a guy came in with a R hemisphere stroke. Completely paralyzed on his left side. Symptoms started 2 days ago."
"I asked him why he waited so long. He said he thought he slept on it funny so wanted to wait a day. Unfortunate too. He had a big clot in his r mca artery."
"Probably could've fixed it if he had shown up earlier."
-- Goseki
Healthiest Meal of the Day
"Not a doctor but when I was at university my Chinese teacher who was about 60 at the time said she is retiring early because she got diabetes and also said she was shocked to learn that eating 5 eggs at breakfast is unhealthy."
Wildly Obedient
"I'm not a doctor but somebody who is a doctor told me that one time a guy was sick, so they told him to drink lots of fluids, but the guy really went to town and drank gallons a day. He didn't die, but it apparently wasn't great."
A Couple Lessons to Live By
"Hmm.."
- "sex causes babies, yes anal counts. (Horrible one due to religious lack of sex ed, and a low enough IQ that consent to sex was a very grey area)"
- "If one of your balls is the size of a large grapefruit, please go to hospital. This had been going on for a year."
Don't Go Willy Nilly with the Herbs, People
"(Third world country here) Once a child was brought to the ER because of sleepyness, and vague response. The mother gave the kid in a normal basis herb tees. It was hard to determine the cause, but people really don´t think that herbs could cause harm."
"Herbs are a very important cause of liver failure... And in kids its way more toxic/potent. Watch what you drink/eat. Everything is a potential poison, even oxygen and water!"
-- Wazabie
Gotta Cut Corners Somewhere
"Years ago we had a patient come into the ER for a broken arm, she was treated and received a full arm cast. She was given a date to come back to remove the cast. The week she was due back she came by ambulance for a partially amputated arm..."
"...her boyfriend had decided that since they didn't have insurance he would take off her cast with some kind of electric saw, he almost took off her whole arm."
-- MiMisViews
Doctor's Orders
"Not a doctor, but I went out to eat with my friend who had just seen a nutritionist for her diabetes. She told me the nutritionist told her to eat more vegetables, so my friend ordered fried pickles."
"No, I did not try to set her straight because I knew it would lead to a fight."
-- chenliiin
Missing the Point
"A patient newly diagnosed as a diabetic was instructed how to use insulin by nursing staff before being discharged to home. The nurse showed them their insulin vials and injector, using an orange as a pin cushion so to speak, in order to demonstrate how to inject the insulin."
"The patient returned to the emergency department several days later, very sick, with diabetic keto acidosis, a life-threatening complication of poorly controlled blood sugar."
"They told the emergency staff that they don't understand why they got sick because they've been injecting and eating oranges every day just like they were shown."
-- Mohrisbetr
Attention All Males--Be Nipple Mindful
"First patient I saw as a medical student presented to the ER because, as he put it, 'my nipple fell off.' Very nonchalant."
"Turns out he'd been watching his left breast get bigger over a period of months until the underlying tumor finally eroded through the skin causing said nipple to 'fall off.' "
"Male breast cancer is more common than most people realize."
-- SloTriMan
Do you have something to confess to George? Text "Secrets" or "