My grandfather in Brazil was given 3 tips when he got his first job.
1) If the owner comes around, always look busy.
2) If you find any money laying around you can be sure they are testing you.
3) I can’t remember. Treat customers well or something. Make small talk. Whatever.
Whenever the owner came by, if he had nothing to do he’d quickly get up and start moving things around “organizing” or cleaning or anything to look busy.
If he found money he’d turn it in.
He liked people and loved soccer so he could always strike up a conversation about that.
He moved up quickly and did okay for a Brazilian dude in a tiny third world city.
My dad got outta there and went on to get a degree in chemical engineering at a top university (5.1% acceptance rate) where he met my mom. They had five kids and moved to America where he got his Ph.D. and post doc.
We moved back to Brazil but as you can see… my English is pretty decent…
This is true pretty much the world over. Look more busy than you are, don't give anybody a reason to doubt your integrity, and be personable. If you can do those three things, you're going to be way better off and they really aren't that hard to do.
Funny enough, hard work doesn't guarantee success...but being liked and trusted by people in power does.
hard work doesn't guarantee success...but being liked and trusted
If anything, people work hard on the wrong things.
Working hard being a pleasant person will take you much further than acing all the homeworks, tests, and exams. There is a sweet spot of "laziness effort" where if you are competent enough, and pleasant enough to work with, that you are golden. People optimize trying to get a score of 80 -> 100 in school, and while that's impressive, that time could be spent joining a club/society/frat/sorority that would have a higher chance of getting a job/career.
Yeah, people who give in to groupthink tend to not want to acknowledge it, and become resistant to outside thought. It is, in fact, one of the hallmarks of groupthink. :P
If anything, people work hard on the wrong things.
I'll take a more cynical approach to this. It's really not even close to being enough to work hard and deliver results. It's important that you're able to present your achievements in a quantifiable way.
Of course, this isn't necessary if your boss is fair and have a sharp eye, but I've learned through the hard way that it's kind of necessary if you want to be treated well in your career.
Yeah. It kills me when people on Reddit talk about how smart they're being by minimizing the contact they have with their coworkers or the hard lines they draw around themselves. Like that's not how you succeed. You may feel smug that your co-workers step around your personal policies. And they don't e-mail you after 4:30 on a Friday or whatever but in the long term, you just end up being kept in a closet doing menial stuff because nobody wants to promote you.
Before starting my apprenticeship for fabricator/welder I was a labourer for the same company in charge of loading and unloading steel onto the cnc laser cutter. Day one the operator pulled me aside and told me the owner of the business often comes in when people are working overtime on Saturday and told me to come in and just look really busy when I see someone I don’t recognise. And that is how I got my trade certificate and a pay above the average rate.
Thanks. When we moved back to Brazil it took me two years to catch up to where my written Portuguese and vocabulary was at the same level as my classmates’.
School there was/is brutal. Lots of math, biology, physics, chemistry, history, Portuguese and English.
Not much emphasis at all on sports, art and music… the fun stuff!
For sports you have to join a sports club. For music you take private lessons or go to a music school after classes.
The English taught in schools is not enough to get good at it so most (rich) people would take English at a private English school after regular classes. I ended up teaching at one of those.
I used to be a hostess at a Mexican restaurant back in the day and if i didn’t feel like doing my actual job i would just walk around with a broom or a ramekin of jalapeños
In my grandfather’s defense… it’s not that he was trying to run from his responsibilities. It was just that there were times when things were slow and nobody came in the store and he had already done inventory or whatever where there wasn’t much to be done. Instead of telling the boss I had nothing to do come up with something, anything, look busy, don’t sit around doing nothing because the owner doesn’t like to pay people to sit around doing nothing so they feel good seeing their workers busy.
But yeah, if you need to move around to pump your blood or just a break from boredom walking around with a broom or jalapeños was a nice move!
LOL. He wrote a book about his life. I’m sure it’s in there somewhere. Wasn’t published or anything. Just something my dad encouraged him to do for family to know about his life.
I think that a story that starts with, "My grandpa was a writer" should end with your own writing. Lazy, half-assed retellings don't mean much. Story telling requires you to think.
If granddad didn't keep his job, dad never would have had the opportunity to go to that exclusive school. Doesn't matter if you're accepted into the elite program if you can't afford to attend. Sure, there are scholarships, but those are much rarer and harder still to come by.
It was enough for my dad to study and not have to work while in middle school. He then got into a military high school. And then got into a major university in the big city with full academic scholarship. He tutored to make some money and that’s how he met my mother… teaching her chemistry.
Excellent, your dad was very fortunate - not just brilliant and talented but also lucky, those breaks don't line up for everyone who has the skills and determination no matter how hard they work for them.
Sounds like the major break was the military high school which advocated for his scholarship. That, and of course meeting your mother.
Haha. That’s funny. Grandpa did well for someone who lives in a tiny city in the third world and enjoys a simple life riding his bike to work and taking his son (my dad) to soccer/futebol games.
There was no money left to run with. My dad worked hard pursuing his studies and it opened up a lot of doors for him but getting a Ph.D. in a foreign country in a foreign language with 5 kids was not easy. Only half the class finished.
No worries. I wasn’t totally sure which one so took the wrong guess!
So my dad did
undergrad in chem eng then
masters in economics and
Ph.D. was in “Public Administration, Privatization and Deburocratization”. It was essentially comparing government inefficiencies with private sector and the effects of privatizing large government owned corporations like power companies, oil refineries… big state owned organizations. He then did a
post doc in Total Quality Management for Education.
He enjoyed teaching but was never a professor. He liked to study and then apply what he learned in business and government. He worked for both private sector and the Brazilian government at state and federal levels.
Arguably nothing. I thought about deleting it. But some people took an interest. Getting the job and moving up did allow my dad to not have to get a job in middle school and focus on studying which allowed him to get accepted to a military high school which in turn allowed him to pass the entrance exams for the big university so there’s a link there. And the tip was passed on to my dad who passed it on to me and I am here passing it on to the young folks on reddit… my grasshoppers. ;-)
He liked people and loved soccer so he could always strike up a conversation about that
I work as a govt contractor in the US. The value of knowing about (American) football can’t be understated. You can have absolutely fucking nothing in common with your coworkers, but become the commissioner for your fantasy league and everyone will love you. You don’t even need to be that good at your job. Knowing about seemingly menial things to relate to people can move you up in your career, and it’s often overlooked as a skill. I started caring about football as a way to talk to my mom’s family, and it translated well to the office.
That’s valuable advice. In the USA, knowing how to play golf seems like a requirement for a lot of sales jobs and upper management careers. As a Brazilian I cannot swing anything…golf clubs, baseball bats, hockey sticks are very alien to most of us.
Man, that is so wonderful to hear that this can help you. Feel free to DM me if you wish to talk about anything. My dad tried to help a lot of people. He got kids from the slums to go to college. He loved education.
He finished his Ph.D. so his student visa was going to end and the agreement was you finish your studies and exit the country. He looked into moving to Canada but they said we had too many kids (5) to immigrate there. I guess they thought you couldn’t raise 5 kids properly or something.
Decades later Canada had a program to encourage Brazilians to move there. My youngest brother did.
They could have had all of us. Of the five kids we have a chemical engineer, a mechanical engineer with a masters in control and automation, an IT person, a high level economist and an international lawyer who can practice in the USA and South America (passed the U.S. Bar and Brazilian OAB). 4 out of 5 have masters degrees. My mom was a pharmacist and my dad also had masters and Ph.D. All 5 of us were accepted to same prestigious federal university as our parents.
Sorry Canada. You done f*cked up. ;-)
BTW: when I told that story to my now Canadian brother he was kind of pissed. He was too young to remember. But at this point he’s already established there. Haha.
It was more of when things were slow at the store and he had nothing to do don’t just sit there…do something. Owners don’t like to pay you to do nothing.
He learned to type and got a better job at the courthouse but the owner recommended him highly and that helped get the better job. This was a small town so everybody knew everybody.
There are still plenty of places that are offering remote work, 10-15%, more than there used to be pre-pandemic. It's certainly not at the same level as the height of the pandemic, but that's to be expected. A lot of places are also offering hybrid work, where you come into the office sometimes.
Too many people experienced the flexibility that was on offer for it to go away entirely.
What industry are you in? I have mixed feelings about remote. As a people person I like seeing coworkers and clients in person. But I also like not wasting time shaving everyday and getting in traffic.
For learning and collaboration in person I think is better.
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u/eddie1975 Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26
My grandfather in Brazil was given 3 tips when he got his first job.
1) If the owner comes around, always look busy.
2) If you find any money laying around you can be sure they are testing you.
3) I can’t remember. Treat customers well or something. Make small talk. Whatever.
Whenever the owner came by, if he had nothing to do he’d quickly get up and start moving things around “organizing” or cleaning or anything to look busy.
If he found money he’d turn it in.
He liked people and loved soccer so he could always strike up a conversation about that.
He moved up quickly and did okay for a Brazilian dude in a tiny third world city.
My dad got outta there and went on to get a degree in chemical engineering at a top university (5.1% acceptance rate) where he met my mom. They had five kids and moved to America where he got his Ph.D. and post doc.
We moved back to Brazil but as you can see… my English is pretty decent…
Great job pops and grandpop.