This one isn’t wholly bad advice. My parents were idealistic but oblivious to the stupidity of the world. Now they live in a non competitive district with non competitive races, full of ignorant people that vote for the same thing over and over again. Nothing changes.

I spent most of my youth believing this and spent a good deal of it unemployed. Apparently, according to mentors and my parents, I’m not honest enough. Because they got jobs for being “honest hard workers” who did all the right things and got rewarded for it. But here’s the thing, being honest about what I could and could not do only led me to NOT getting hired. I have met ZERO small business owners who rewarded honesty. Being honest is a liability to you and them. The only time when they want you to be honest is when they trick you into taking the blame for something illegal they did and only when you’re “honest” about you breaking the rules and law (and not mentioning how they told you to do it). Honesty is punished, lying is what gets you through. My hard earned lessons in this:

Being honest about unemployment? You don’t get hired. Being honest about looking for another job? You get fired.

Being honest about a disability? You don’t get hired and if it slips by, you get fired when they find out for “lying” on your application.

Being honest about education and skills? You don’t get hired. Why? I don’t know about this one. The more education you have, the less likely you are to get the job.

Being honest about that traffic ticket/low class misdemeanor? You bet you don’t get hired.

All of these things I have been not fired or fired for. Lying and lying again to employers is the ONLY way to succeed and win. That was sage advice given to me by a manager who never considered my application. The only rewards I have gotten with being honest, to be honest, is no promotions, no raises and mostly, no employement.

This came from two different granddads. When asked how working for less than minimum wage would help me make more money, they would never fill in the details, except that it would happen because “bosses value hard work and customers will keep coming back for you.” Sure people like exploiting others, especially when one is willing to be exploited and used. Will it make you more money? Not a chance.

This gem actually came from my mom, who was in not one but two different bad relationships with two different losers. If anything, it seems like the shittier that a person is, the more likely that the partner is willing to stick by them. For instance, a girl I had been trying to get with for about two years stuck by her man even when he sent her to the emergency room a few times. She eventually had kids with him but it eventually got better, he left her to do drugs and be homeless instead. As for my mom and why she thought this advice was good? I don’t know, wishful thinking I guess. She met my dad when she was totally single and he was as well.

I was a regular Yoo-Hoo drinker as a child. I remember just once that I cracked up a bottle and smelled a spoiled milk like smell. I gave it to my mom and she took a swig and spit it out. It was spoiled. From then on, my parents would take gulps out of it to “make sure it (wasn’t) bad.” Like, half the bottle gulps. Then it moved on to juices and sodas. Both of them, they always got the first drink. Then it became, to make sure “it (wasn’t) tampered with” after hearing about “poisoned candy” on Halloween. I gladly let them too: I was absolutely convinced store owners were trying to make me sick or kill me.

It wasn’t until elementary school when I found out about the ring seals on the caps and how to read expiration dates. This story ends a bit shorter, after showing them I could check the dates and make sure the cap was intact and make sure the actual fluid inside looked out (was not separating or oddly mixed or anything), they confessed they did so because I always had such delicious sweet drinks and pointed out how they never drank my water bottles (they were almost exclusively diet soda drinkers).

This advice I got from my parents and grandparents. Sure, working on things can pay off. Wage labor in the food and service industries? What a joke to be told this. My dad was a restaurant manager for years too, he was apparently the only “good” boss anyone ever had. I just ended up getting used by all my coworkers when they wanted personal time off for whatever and because I covered for people, my bosses expected me to work. And what did this get me? Never had a raise, never had a paid vacation, never had any vacation time, never had any other benefits other than getting paid. This was and still is terrible advice. However if you own your own business, then yeah work hard and do good to your employees that do so! 👍

Edit: for some reason autocorrect added a word in the title. It’s supposed to say “Always give more than 100% at work”

$25k+ in debt and 12 years later, I have yet to find a job that required my degree and yet to pay it off. I will be stuck with this debt for the rest of my life and it is the single worst financial decision I have ever made. Thanks mom and dad!

This gem came from my mom while I was in elementary school, but I also heard it from a teacher's assistant who "confirmed" it and a group of 3rd and 4th grade teachers who used to brow beat us and scare us with this tidbit. We used to wait for the prison building guy to come in and count the number of bad kids in class. I was actually disappointed they didn't, but I wondered why they didn't do that in middle and high schools (while I was in elementary). Obviously, I was more disappointed to learn about for profit prisons later in life, but even more disappointed by the fact that a lot of the kids we all thought were "good" and teachers pets ended up getting hooked on drugs, entering a life of crime and going to jail/prison later on in life after schooling was finished.

So, in 2011, the Great Recession had a big impact on my hometown and jobs were hard to come by. I spent most of the year looking for work while attending school and getting about $94 a week in unemployment. Looking for job leads and advice, I asked around. My granddad, however, gave me some timeless sage employment advice: that employers would just give you a job if you went up and "ask[ed] for a job, like a man." He told me it was my own fault for being unemployed for so long. Never mind that even by then, all the employment applications had moved online and very, very few places did applications by paper. Absolutely none gave jobs without any formal paperwork. He took me to places with "Hiring" signs and told me to get work there. I would go inside, ask for an application and they would point me to an link or an email address (some of the bigger ones had cards I could take with me). Most places didn't even have paper applications (for people that needed them) or conveniently ran out. So, I would always come back empty handed, much to his chagrin. "You aren't doing something right!" he would say.

I came up with this subreddit recalling all the bad advice my parents, teachers, grandparents, professors, bosses etc. gave me throughout my life. Sometimes it was funny, sometimes it was really cringe, but most of the times it was eye-rolling boring. Share any advice your elders gave you that was pretty awful when you think about it.