Terrible Meeting You: The Worst First Impressions Of All-Time
Reddit user Dizzy-Effort-1375 asked: 'What was the worst first impression you ever had with someone?'
We can all agree that first impressions are important. No matter what may happen after that first encounter, the first impression has a way of lingering.
But some bad first impressions are absolute deal-breakers. No matter how kind or awesome a person might seem, there's really no coming back from that...
Redditor Dizzy-Effort-1375 asked:
"What was the worst first impression you ever had with someone?"
Know Your Place
"When I went before the Judge, I was drunk and argued with him."
"That earned me 10 extra days for contempt of court."
"Fortunately, I'm now six years sober."
- TrailerParkPrepper
Cruelty Is Unattractive
"I met a girl at work. I thought she was cute until she bragged about purposefully hitting a bird with her truck because 'birds are stupid.'"
"There's nothing quite like some animal cruelty to kill your attraction level."
- Numerous_Share7920
Know-It-Alls Not Welcome
"A family friend wanted to introduce her new boyfriend to her friend group."
"The dude was a know-it-all. He talked over everybody, was very condescending, and was just a rude jerk."
"We gave him a do-over and he was even worse the second time."
"That was over 15 years ago and they're still together. I don't see my friend much anymore."
- dadobuns
How Rude, Indeed
"I went into a dealership to support my wife as she shopped for her car. A skeezy salesman came up, introduced himself to me, and immediately acted all buddy-buddy with me, and started calling me by my first name. He never acknowledged my wife."
"I told him she was actually the one car shopping, and he barely batted an eye and kept trying to sell to me."
"I politely reminded him, and he still refused to deal with her."
"We walked right out without a word. F**k that guy. And f**k Bob HowardToyota in North Oklahoma City."
- Misdirected_Colors
"More like 'Bob Howrude Toyota in North Oklahoma City'!"
- fueelin
Stop Micro-Managing Me
"I was 19 years old and just starting my first real full-time job. I was taken around by the foreman and introduced to my new co-workers."
"All was well until I was introduced to Walter, the resident old pr*ck, who was to be my supervisor. He took one look at me and said, 'When are you quitting?'"
"I never even got a chance. He rode my a** every day. He repeatedly told the boss I was no good and I should find another job."
"He got fired two months later for being a d**k to everyone. I lasted 36 years."
- Crazy-Rip-6496
He Probably Thinks The Moon Landing Was a Hoax, Too.
"I had to pick up a new coworker to drive to the location we'd be working for the week. After talking about the job for about 25 minutes, he asked, 'So what do you think about 9/11?'"
"I knew it was going to be a long week."
"I said the most non-committal thing I could imagine because we still had hours in the car. 'It was a thing that happened.'"
"He rolled his eyes and said, 'Oh, so you think it happened.'"
- YetAnotherZombie
The Impression That Sticks
"I was dating this girl in another town and I was there visiting her. We were walking around downtown and these six or seven guys cornered me in a dark parking lot."
"This one guy started shoving me, going on about how I was 'in his town' and he should kick my face in for being where I shouldn't."
"I was so p**sed. If he didn't have six other guys with him, it would've gone down very differently. He really embarrassed me in front of my girl. Thankfully, the cops showed up before it escalated though, with those 6 other guys there... I might be dead."
"20 years later, he married my sister. He's actually a really great guy, a great husband, and a great father to my nieces and nephew... but I still have a hard time getting past that first encounter. I HATE the fact that I have to think of him as a decent person."
- KingGuy420
The Worst Priorities
"I'm a nurse and when I worked on a ward for the elderly, I had to call and ask the family of a very lovely lady who was dying to come and see her."
"They only lived a few miles away from the hospital but took seven hours to arrive. By that time, the lady had passed away."
"I had to tell the family as soon as they arrived. I expected tears and sadness, but the daughter only said, 'It's okay. Mum had a great life insurance policy.'"
"No tears. No upset. They were all smiling and trying to hide it. I hated them."
- curiousopenmind22
That Hidden Sense of Humor
"My best friend. We met in middle school and she’s blonde, gorgeous, and seemed super stuck up when I first met her. Obviously, I made assumptions about her."
"As it turns out, she’s super socially awkward, and once I got to know her, I found out that she has a super bizarre sense of humor (which I love), but she doesn’t show it to strangers."
"20 years later and we’re still best friends."
- littlepinch7
The Entitled Parker
"I came to work one day when I knew a new person was starting. In the employee parking area was a car I'd never seen before using up two spaces."
"My first thought was, 'She's one of THOSE people.'"
"And she was."
- ctruemane
Troubling At Best
"I met a woman who went on to defend torture at length. Even when her arguments were debunked, she was still in favor of it."
- TheMoniker
Just So Humble
"A new hire I was supposed to train, let's call him Chad, because that's his name, came in on day one and said during introductions, 'Some people say they're a jack-of-all-trades, but a master of none; not me, I'm a master at everything I touch.'"
"And that was that, instant dislike. He was gone the next day, lol (laughing out loud)."
- cdaisycrochet
The Teen Cringe Is Real
"For me? I was 13, my brother brought home some college roommates with no warning, and I was (apparently) having a bad enough hair day to literally dive behind our couch to hide from them."
"My mom called me to come introduce myself, and I continued to hide, but when my mom sent my little sisters to find me, I was worried I’d get found, so I popped up out of nowhere and said hi, still standing behind the couch."
"To this day, my brother's roommates said that was one of the funniest things they’d ever experienced, lol (laughing out loud), and one of my cringiest memories. Haha!"
- ChewsOnRocks
No Point of Reference
"I guess it wasn't really bad, but it was weird."
"I was getting ready for work, went outside for a smoke, and my upstairs neighbor said 'Hey,' from her balcony."
"She wanted to introduce me to her visiting sister, so I said 'Hey there, how's it going,' and pointed at my name tag while saying, 'I'm Bob, of course.'"
"The sister looked at me a bit weird, but I didn't think much of it."
"Then I went back in to finish getting ready and realized I did not in fact have my work shirt on yet, so there was no name tag. So... as far as that lady knew, I just said my name and randomly pointed at my manboob. Like, 'Hey, I'm Bob... check THIS out.'"
"I mean, you can't go back and explain at that point. I have no idea what she thought of me but I am guessing it was somewhere between moron and weirdo, and I never tried to find out."
- Divayth--Fyr
The Lie of First Impressions
"It was an old school friend's partner I'd never met before. My friend's parents emigrated in the late 1960s and we were penpals after she went to New Zealand."
"Her partner was coming over alone for three weeks for some research to do with his MA at Otago University in Dunedin, and I said he could stay with us. This was back in the 90s."
"When he turned up at our door, he was in shorts and a vest and waving a bottle of spirits in one hand and a skateboard under the other arm. He was heavily tattooed (including his face) and dreadlocked."
"I maintained a friendly smile, but my heart did sink, I can't lie."
"I was so very, very wrong. He's a brilliant bloke. I didn't know he was half Maori and had never encountered Maori tattoos before. The spirits were for us (he's teetotal) and he was a great house guest."
"He always cleaned the bath after he used it, bought food and cooked really brilliant meals, very funny, the cats loved him, he took the dog for walks (who spent about three weeks gazing adoringly at him and slept at his feet) the kids and my husband loved him."
"He taught my kids the Haka. My kids got major kudos because the cool Maori skateboarder was staying at their house."
"When he left, he gave us a beautiful framed drawing he'd done of a native NZ bird on a Manuka shrub as a thank-you present."
"It taught me an important lesson. First impressions can be very misleading. I wish he'd been here for more than three weeks (although he's visited since)."
- PeggyNoNotThatOne
For the first impressions that were genuinely terrible, it's clear why these Redditors would not want to continue interacting with the people involved, or how they would not be surprised by people not wanting to interact with them.
But there are also reminders here of how first impressions, however lasting, can be wrong, and the relationship beyond the first impression can be wonderful if we manage to look past it.
People Describe The Dumbest Thing They've Seen A Coworker Do On The Job
Reddit user Adrian0091 asked: 'What‘s the dumbest thing you‘ve seen a coworker do on the job?'
When I was in college, I worked at a restaurant as a hostess. Since I previously only babysat and tutored, a restaurant was a whole knew world to me.
Two of the girls who worked the same days as me were the ones to train me. They were a couple of years older than I was and had been working there for a year already, so they had a lot of experience. They not only taught me how to do the job, but gave me a lot of tips to make some of the more tedious tasks easier.
They both seemed like responsible girls, so when I came in the week after my training was over, I was shocked to hear they were both fired. According to a server I'd become friends with, the girls had snuck in some alcohol on what was supposed to be a slow day (it was a Tuesday, which was always our slowest day) and decided to have a "party at the host stand."
They got completely wasted and basically kept tripping as they led guests to their seats, even as they told the guests to watch their step. When one of the girls accidentally poured a milkshake over one guest and had to call a manager to smooth things over, they were caught and fired on the spot. I was cringing at their stupidity!
Apparently, I'm not the only one who has had to deal with co-workers doing something utterly stupid while they were on the job. Redditors have borne witness to this and are eager to share their stories.
It all started when Redditor Adrian0091 asked:
"What‘s the dumbest thing you‘ve seen a coworker do on the job?"
Such A Pretty Display
"I asked one of the new kids to stack the shoe department."
"Easy if but a bit boring. I showed her, stack by brand then size, big at the bottom, small top yeah?"
"She decided to organise it by the color of the boxes instead because it looked prettier."
"Took me hours to fix that mess."
– Lizzy_Of_Galtar
Oooh, Burn! (Quite Literally)
"In high school, working at a Chinese restaurant, was there basically to take orders and bus tables. Another dude I vaguely knew from high school got hired there. Nice, popular dude, but not much common sense. Within his first two weeks, he went to make himself some food (we were allowed to do that to a certain extent), and he dropped some wontons into the deep fryer. When he decided they were done, and as we were having a conversation, he just REACHED HIS HAND into the oil to retrieve it. I don’t think I even reacted for a moment or two, and then rushed forward. He somehow ALSO didn’t react for a moment or two before pulling his hand out and yelling out a cartoon-style “YEEOUCH!”"
"He went to the hospital, and quit the job."
– CwAbandon
Umm...Huh?
"One dude once photocopied a slice of pizza. We found cheese and stuff inside the machine for weeks. Was pretty funny though."
– LinusMeindl
"Inside? Did the idiot put the pizza into the document feeder or something?"
– MechanicalHorse
"How else would you feed the machine pizza."
– andtheIToldYouSos
Spelling
"I saw a tattooist I worked with tattoo "Laugh now cry Ladder" across a guy's chest..."
"He was let go, and a few years later, a guy came in with "Warior" across his upper back in bold letters, wanting it fixed. Same tattooist lol."
– hurrythisup
"Cry me a ladder."
– Deleted User
"Cry me a liver."
– iqtrm
"Crimea river."
– MagicSPA
Yikes!
"Telling the manager on duty, “I’m not the one eating it, so why should I care?” when the manager was trying to explain to her how to correctly prepare a customer’s food."
– 2gecko1983
"Watched a coworker of mine at a Pizza Hut (1976) clean off the food prep counter with a gross floor broom. The kitchen was open, so people at the tables could see the food being made, and someone saw him and yelled out to the other customers, and people started walking out."
"Cleared it out."
"Once the manager figured out what happened, he fired the guy on the spot."
– big_d_usernametaken
Misstep After Misstep
"Admitted to not having spoken to any of the business stakeholders, but instead "made up their own story.""
"This was at the end of what was supposed to have been a four-week information-gathering phase of the project."
"That afternoon, when one of the managers went to escort her from the premises, they found her by the printer with a stack of confidential documents."
– WitShortage
No Cell Phones At Work
"Worked with a lot of hazardous chemicals. Had a coworker who was notorious for being on his phone. We had to use a pump to put a hazardous chemical into a tank. Problem was you couldn’t look at the destination and pump the pump at the same time. Someone had to pump and someone had to watch. So I specifically asked said coworker to not look at his phone this one time. Tank overflowed and spilt the chemical everywhere because he was staring at his phone. Took hours to clean up."
– BigTiddyOstrogothGF
"A coworker of mine was fired for using his cellphone in an electrically classified area, cell phone wasn't explosion proof, not to mention the fact no cell phones on the floor, they gave him a warning, second time they walked him out."
"Bad part for him was that his wife found out he was talking to his girlfriend."
"Twenty years down the tubes."
"As we liked to say, "He fired himself.""
– big_d_usernametaken
Ewww!
"A guy I worked with sent a spreadsheet round with all the women in the office ranked in a spreadsheet and graded overall based on 1-5."
"He was somehow shocked he didn’t pass his probation."
– downfallndirtydeeds
Thank God He Was Fired
"My best friend, he took his mop bucket and poured it down a water fountain instead of using the closet with a sink that was literally right next to the water fountain. He got fired the next day."
"He told me he was in “f**k it” mode with the job and he didn’t care. We worked at a hospital."
– MrFavorable
""Who cares if sick people get exposed to a little bit of antibiotic-resistant flesh-eating bacteria.""
– Brett42
Get Right Back Up
"There were 2 of us installing an air conditioner. He had a bit of work outside that required him going up a ladder about 3 or 4 feet, not high. I was inside doing wiring."
"I heard a loud thud and scream, so I ran out to see what happened. He fell off the ladder. I've seen gruesome injuries from stupid thing like this before, so I ran outside to help him out. No injuries, he picked himself up and got back at it, I went back inside."
"Five minutes later, same thing. I walked out to check on him again after a small fall. He was ok again, but I told him to chill out and watch what he's doing. I went back inside."
"Heard another thud from outside. He fell again. I just looked out the window the third time and went about my business."
– DrVanNostrand6
*Cringing*
"He opened a Skype window (yes, this was ~10 years ago) and started messaging me to sh*t-talk a person who was in the same call as us."
"Except, he forgot he was sharing his screen."
– zyygh
R.I.P. Press
"After checking the correct lock-out tag-out procedure was followed, I assured an employee that it was safe to change dies on a horizontal press. But he was skeptical so unbeknownst to anyone he put a piece of tooling steel about the size of a coffee can under the die base. Some of you know where this is going. He made the tooling change, forgot his “safety measure”, and cycled the press. We all heard a $400k press eat itself in a fantastic swan-song of a noise that would take Stephen King four pages to describe."
– Idontfeelold-much
The Stupidity Of The Human Race
"Late 90’s, I was a custodian in a NYC public school to pay for college. One of my coworkers accidentally spilled about 15 gallons of gasoline in the school parking lot. He didn’t want to get in trouble for spilling that much gas so he thought the best course of action was to burn off the gasoline. Of course gasoline burns with huge billows of black smoke so he panics and tries to put out the fire BY DRIVING HIS CAR OVER THE GIANT PUDDLE OF BURNING GASOLINE. Fire department shows up within minutes and sees him doing donuts in the giant fire and they spend a whole hour screaming at my coworker about how f**king stupid he was."
"Edit: and in 1997 when this happened, gas was 97¢ a gallon. He could have replaced all the gas for less than $15."
– -Words-Words-Words-
"I'm a veteran of the Internet, and enjoy reading accounts like this. I must have read thousands."
"This is, hats off, quite literally one of the most stupid decisions I ever heard anyone make."
– MagicSPA
I really don't want to believe that last one really happened!
Do you have any great stories? Let us know in the comments below.
There are certain theories most deem to be "crackpot."
But, there are some conspiracy theories that have a surprising amount of evidence behind them.
Enough that those conspiracies almost seem to hold water as it were.
If only we could all get a little truth from the higher-ups.
A little truth goes a long way, but they insist on holding onto secrets and lies.
I have a laundry list of questions.
And I'm not the only one.
Redditor CommonBeginning3132 wanted to hear about everyone's theories on what we're NOT being told by our elected officials, so they asked:
"What is something that you’re for sure the US government is hiding from us?"
I want to know about the money they "burn."
I refuse to believe it's all trashed.
The Harvest
"That comment sections are just one large data harvest of random human thoughts and that data is used to fine-tune AI."
SLObro152
"Well, time to break out the REAL gibberish then."
nogtank
Past Due Date
"How many members of Congress are taking medications that would early retire anyone in the private sector."
TheBubbaDave"
There are likely several members of Congress taking Aricept or Namenda for dementia. Typically once someone needs to start taking those kinds of meds, they're no longer capable of working in an office job (or any job, to be honest)."
BananaPants430
"I wonder at what moment aging politicians realize they're no longer considered a leader in their party and from now on they'll just be occupying a seat for that party for the rest of their lives."
Stumpfinger1
Live Missiles
"I'm convinced that our ICBM protection system is far more accurate than the Pentagon is willing to admit."
KCalifornia19
"The problem with a system protecting the US from nuclear attack is that such a system, no matter how well designed, would be hugely complex, can never be fully tested, and must be close to 100% effective on its first use to have any value."
Renaissance_Slacker
"I was in the navy and my ship was the designated ICBM test ship for the new AEGIS system, we shot down decoy missiles all the time and were 100% effective."
"The missiles are live, there are just no active warheads on them."
iSniffMyPooper
Locations
"The location of nuclear submarines."
Pennsyltuckey54
"The only people who know exactly where the subs are are the navigational and commanding officers on the sub. Even the intelligence and commanding officers that assign the zones for the subs don’t know exactly where they are at any given point. Only the general area they are designated."
TheEveryEmpireFalls
Look Up
"UFOs and not the alien kind. I'm talking about super high-end secret stuff the military has and is still testing out."
DiamondOrBust
Are they out there?
Will we ever truly know?
They keep a tight lid on that one.
Follow the Money
"How many politicians have secret offshore bank accounts full of embezzled taxpayer dollars."
Firetaymer70
Money Talks
"The impact wealthy individuals with personal interests have in politics, inside and abroad."
contessamiau
"Just remember when they talk about American interests abroad they aren't talking about the normal citizen's interests. Realistically what happens in some far away land is going to have little impact on my daily life. What they are really talking about is corporate interests every single time. Smedley Butler tried to warn us almost 100 years ago but we just brushed him off."
Slumminwhitey
Budgets
"Good Lord. Clearly, no one commenting here has ever known anyone working for the federal government. The biggest secret they’re keeping from you is that every government agency spends money like a coke addict in the month of September so that their budgets won’t get slashed in the next fiscal year."
tonovay
"Every single bureaucratic organization in the world does this. It’s not a secret at all."
sdreal
What Did They Find?
"I have a very personal reason for wanting to know what they found at Roswell. My grandfather was in the Air Force and was present at the site. All he ever said about it was, 'It wasn’t a damn weather balloon,' then shut down. He was low-ranking, basically just there to drive the higher-ranking personnel, but he saw something, and I wanted to know what it was! He also firmly believed in aliens, so that just adds to my curiosity, especially given how Southern Baptist he was."
GloInTheDarkUnicorn
Happenstance
"Used to believe in this stuff until I started working in government. I’m now convinced that most conspiracy theories can be explained by pure incompetence."
Puzzleheaded_Ice_233
Do you have anything to add? Let us know in the comments below.
Many high school graduates face the conundrum of what to major in when they go on to pursue higher education.
Teens who haven't already sparked an interest in a particular field by the time they graduate wind up buying more time waiting for enlightenment by electing "undecided."
But to avoid any stigma of being an idle scholar, some students settle on majors they thought never existed.
"Fun with pasta," anyone?
While such a major might not exist, I wouldn't put it past some academia for coming up with it.
Curious to hear what those unheard-of specialized fields of study are out there, Redditor GazelleHistorical705 asked:
"What is the most ridiculous college major you’ve ever heard of?"
Majors with one word, please.
Sounds Like A Hard Major
"PENIS. My school offered a major in Political Economy of Newly Industrialized Societies, but eventually realized the acronym and changed the name. Pity. I hope some were able to get their degrees with a concentration in PENIS."
– OhMaiMai
Hidden Objective
"Golf."
"It was made so the Vice Chancellor could buy a private golf course for the university, so he could play on it. I believe it had 5 enrollments ever, and one was a joke that didnt show up or pay. It got cancelled the first year, but he got to enjoy his own personal golf course for some years after."
– jadelink88
Just Throwing Ideas
"Frisbee. A friends roommate at Amherst was in some kind of 'create your own major' thing and chose frisbee. His family had momey and college was just a formality."
– hightower65
Certain concepts as a major were hard to grasp.
Seed Of Despotism
"IIRC, like 20 years ago some college in Indiana offered a major in World Domination."
– Rev_Christopheles
"You can only get a job as a henchman with a BS."
"You need a full PhD to be an evil mastermind."
– JimBean823
A Vague Focus
"PhD in general studies."
– dravik
"Tf do you even write your dissertation about."
– Fragile_Line
"Everything."
– ProsciuttoPizza
"Generally."
– cropguru357
Let's Take It Outside
"An old friend has a Bachelor's degree in Outdoor Activities. He was never able to explain exactly what that meant, though."
– EnlargedBit371
"A guy I know majored in Recreation."
– kmsc87
"When I was there, my college had one of the top Parks Recreation and Tourism Management (PRTM) programs in the country."
"It had the nickname 'Party Right Through May.'”
"It was extremely popular with student athletes, especially football players."
"There’s always a demand for graduates too. It seems like one of those fields where you shouldn’t need a college degree to do the work, but you need one to get in the door."
– JimBeam823
Going At Your Own Pace
"When I was in uni my friend dated a guy who was majoring in leisure studies. I used to joke that leisure studies is a 4 year program, but if you’re good enough at it you can do it in 6."
– Mtldoggogogo
Things went up a notch.
Arghhh Ya Kiddin' Me?
"At MIT you can be certified in being a pirate if you complete the courses of pistol, archery, sailing, and fencing."
– yhdreytaweatrst
"It’s not a major, it’s a certificate. But if I ever get my own office it’s going in a very nice diploma frame and I’m gonna see who notices."
– PoorCorrelation
Veritable Hodgepodge
"My university had an Interdisciplinary Studies department that served mainly to get super duper seniors graduated. They would cobble together the random credits people got because they changed majors every semester into a 'degree.' You get some wild majors like a BA in Culinary Traditions and Music in the Former British Empire."
– pinelands1901
Sapphic Education
"My college briefly had a major in Nordic Lesbianism."
– WhizzleTeabags
"I've read many of the responses on here where most of them weren't ridiculous imo but you gave the best one!"
– 90DayTroll
"HUH."
– OP
Make It Up
"At a graduation at the University of Redlands. They have a degree whereby you basically take the classes you want and call it what you want."
"The degree conferred was, I kid you not: 'Still trying to figure out who I am.'”
– dmur726
Clearly there's a major for all occasions.
But at the end of the day, does it really matter as long as you have a BA in something to show you were academically tenacious?
Now go out there and carve out your own path, young scholars!
Just make sure you can pay off those student loans.
Maybe there should be a major on how to avoid debt.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is defined as:
"the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making and translation between languages."
AI is broken down into four types—from most basic to most advanced:
- Reactive machines
- Limited memory
- Theory of mind
- Self-awareness
The first two—reactive machines and limited memory—currently exist.
Reactive machines AI have no memory—it responds directly to current information. An example is a recommendation based on your streaming activity.
Limited memory looks into the past and monitors specific objects or situations over time, and adds the information to adapt responses. Self-driving cars are a good example of limited memory AI.
The other types—theory of mind and self-awareness—don't exist yet.
Theory of mind AI would be able to understand intentions and predict behavior while adjusting its own responses, simulating human interpersonal relationships.
The final step in AI is self-awareness. These would be systems that have a sense of self, a conscious understanding of their existence.
As AI advances, some human work functions will be done cheaper or more efficiently by AI.
Reddit user othersimon asked:
"Those who actually had their jobs replaced by AI, what was the job? What replaced it? What do you do now?"
Not Me!
Redditors definitely had feelings about businesses implementing AI.
"To everyone who argues that AI isn't capable of doing their job yet I say, so what? All that matters is your boss thinks it can do the job."
"Laughing at their failure is small solace when you're unemployed."
~ obscureferences
"I mean how many people were fired because they had been working for 10 or 20 years and earned high pay, to be replaced by some minimum wage worker who completely botched the job and took twice as long?"
"Lots."
~ Black_Moons
WUT U MEEN IZ RONG SPELD?
"My entire editing team was replaced by a robot that was supposed to write and edit text like a human can."
"They didn't test the robot first—it was terrible, and their entire project failed."
"No tears were shed."
~ IllustriousNight4
"My wife was a copywriter/wrote blogs for internet optimization online primarily for legal and medical fields."
"AI took over and her company either fired everyone or severely reduced the amount of pay that was offered per job—wife is still unemployed."
"But we heard just last week that it sounds like the company is now going under."
~ The_SchnitzelMan
"AI-written articles are obvious from a mile away and they’re terrible."
"I think Google should penalize search rankings for AI generated content as it’s often not valuable to the reader who is looking for useful information."
"And these articles bastardize Google’s own value in a sense as the info showing up in search results is materially less valuable than genuine content."
~ mokikithesloppy
1, 2, 3...
"Worked at Amazon for a few years. Did inventory basically all night."
"Then they installed cameras, scanners, AI, etc..."
"Still need a human, but yup, a lot of us were no longer needed."
"SBC (simple bin count, just count everything in the bin, easy) is redundant."
~ somecow
Unexpected Development
"I was on a very small software development team at a relatively large company."
"We were often tasked with not only working on our project, but utilizing new cutting-edge technologies to test whether they would be viable before rolling them out to the rest of the dev teams."
"We were asked to start leveraging AI to help us with our development and we gave it pretty high praise."
"Apparently we talked it up too much though and they decided to see if they could simply bypass needing software developers and have the business analysts generate code from their requirements and then send that code straight to QA."
"They didn't really test if that would work before laying off our entire dev team, and a couple of months later they laid off the remaining members of the team because it wasn't working out."
"It was just one of many bad decisions they made around that time and they're currently struggling and losing market share because of it."
"I'm still working as a software engineer and use AI as a useful tool, but I'm sure to always let my supervisors and managers know what its pitfalls are and how its just supplementing my work, and not completely doing my job for me."
~ karma_aversion
"Software dev here, new exec came in and replaced me (only dev) with 'no-code' software."
"From what I hear from my friends still there, they shot themselves in the foot."
~ tanMud
"In order to get AI to work well for you, you’d have to spell out your specs in great detail and spoon feed it. Of course, in order to do that one would need to know exactly what they want first."
"Unless they have a helluva business analysis team, that is a fantasy."
"Oh, and how are they going to update the AI generated code down the line? There is a guy on my team who is sharp as a tack but his code is actual mental gymnastics. I make him spell it out to me because it simply makes no sense."
"Turns out he was writing code that was assisted by ChatGPT. AI writes code that computers can read, devs need to write code that other devs can maintain/expand."
"AI can create stuff from scratch, sure, but I don’t think it’s prepared as of yet to digest complex code, interpret it, and then add to it with more complexity. They could try to run everything we do with AI but will hit some dense walls quickly."
~ skyphoenyx
No Injuries If There's No People
"Some warehouses have some self driving high reach forklifts."
"Someone said that their warehouse has only 2 human high reach drivers & 9 self driving high reaches."
"Crazy stuff."
~ wistteria_
"Lights off manufacturing is getting closer by the day."
"I work in a facility that’s about 800k sqft. It has 20 employees in it and hundreds of not thousands of robots. We make millions of widgets a week."
"Single use medical devices. All plastic. Huge boom in business during Covid, back down to earth now! But still very profitable."
"All the lights are on sensors because there are areas people don’t go into for weeks at a time. It’s eerily quiet and creepy. If there’s an issue we fly someone in from another location."
"Trucks unload raw material into large totes. Robots collect the totes and deliver to the material storage area. A human inspects quality and quantity."
"Machines mold the widgets, a robot pulls them out, cameras inspect the parts. Data is sent to a central quality facility in Mexico."
"When the lot is approved, robots pick up the totes and delivers to packaging lines where it gets boxed up, weighed, labeled, and taped shut—all by robots."
"Then the completed pallets get delivered back to the warehouse where a truck picks it up and delivers to the customer."
"We have a few engineers (I am one) that maintains, inspects, and reports out on the systems. We have three security guards—one whose job is a ‘buddy’ to escort people to dangerous areas."
"If you had an accident we wouldn’t know about it until your shift ended."
"There’s a plant manager, a pair of quality techs, a couple material handlers. And two maintenance folks."
"That’s the entire operation."
~ bondsman333
Digital Age
"I used to be a projectionist."
"Now a movie is on a hard drive and it's programmed to run remotely."
~ FlintWaterFilter
Facing the Future
"I'm about to lose my job to a layoff, but I will be replaced by 2025."
"Working in semiconductor manufacturing, most of production is fully automated already with plans to automate more. My job is basically to babysit idle machines right now."
"The maintenance crew will always be necessary but as soon as AI can do the rest of my job, I am not necessary at all."
"I can be replaced by code, the company would love to get all the product made without paying people for their time. I know I am expendable to them but it's the best paycheck in the county."
"Sad but it's the truth. Gonna have to try and stick it out while I apply to new jobs."
~ DERtheBEAST
It Is What It Is, But Isn't What It Isn't
"I feel like this is going to happen a lot in the next few years."
"Don't get me wrong, AI is an incredible technology, and depending on the specific implementation, it's capable of great things."
"But the unveiling of ChatGPT and AI art bots started a bubble of sorts, which we're currently still in."
"People seem to be over-conflating and misunderstanding how AI works, what AI is, and what AI is capable of, and for that reason, I think we're going to see a lot of misguided layoffs coming."
~ AbyssalRedemption
Technological advancements have eliminated human labor forever.
This isn’t a new dilemma created in the computer age.
All we can do is pay attention and adapt.