Posts by silentmason15

Seriously, how many years has it been where being thick-headed isn't even synonymous with being dim? Like, who even showed up to say this? 😁

analoggardener51 said:And then you'll be stuck dealing with the fallout for months!
If I were in your shoes, I would think twice about this one!

Look, I can handle it. If I have to get aggressive with the business side of things to make it happen, so be it. No big deal.

Anonymous said:Reading through all the posts here has actually been a huge help—it almost talked me out of going to this seminar this Saturday... so I figured I’d write down my own experience regarding Prudential and connect it to what I already know... maybe it helps someone else...

A "friend" recommended this job to me because I'm about to graduate college, acting like she was helping me get ahead in life and make some real money. She told me they were checking within the company to see if anyone knew who to talk to so they wouldn't have to post a public job opening (which is just code for Multi-level marketing; basically, a friend tells you it's amazing and you blindly believe them because you're young and haven't learned how to spot red flags yet). And of course, they make money off me, since she made sure to mention that if I knew anyone else interested, I should let her know...

She didn't even tell me what the actual job was... (and I hate it when people act like that, I'm immediately suspicious). Some guy called me and we set up a meeting; I asked him when, and then I showed up. The building looks fine, the people look professional and all that... I arrived thinking I was just grabbing a coffee to see what the deal was. Then he starts asking me questions like who the Secretary of the Treasury is or what newspapers I read... It's ridiculous because I don't read those things, nor do I care who the Secretary of the Treasury is. I don't see why anyone would pay me to know who holds certain political offices...

We go inside, and I didn't even bring a resume or anything...
I intentionally switched to using "you" instead of "sir" or "Mr." right away, just to see how he'd react. I was messing around, answering him like Bora with Jess...
I didn't check a box for what kind of job I wanted because I had no clue what they did, so I asked him to explain. He just kept rambling about how great they are and how they make millions and so on... Then he asks me if I actually understand what my job would be. I asked him straight up, "Am I supposed to be recruiting clients?" He said, "No, the clients come to us, you just enter data at the beginning..." I'm sitting there thinking: wait, I drive all the way there just to enter data 15 hours a week to earn $1167 (with an hourly rate of roughly $17)... That's when things started smelling really fishy to me...

Afterward, I felt like I was watching *The Office* starring Donald Trump. Such stupid questions, like how am I supposed to run a firm tomorrow (even though this isn't even my field) and what would I do if they handed it to me today... My favorite part was when I pointed out, "Hey, I have an hourly rate of $133, why would I spend an hour educating you?" I was thinking, if you have a rate of $133 (which is $20 per month), why are you sitting in such a crappy chair, and why are your business cards so cheap? (A friend of mine represents a major American firm here in the States, and I can't even begin to compare him to this guy at Prudential who supposedly earns an hourly rate of $133).

So, I walk out, and honestly, I still have no idea what my job would actually be... And that's never a good sign. When I interviewed for the job I have now, everything was crystal clear; they repeated exactly what I'd be doing, what the pay was, and they were totally upfront about everything. That's how it should be.

Then the guy calls me to say I'm hired and tells me to show up at the office this Saturday for a seminar. Now, if I use my brain for a second—okay, I acted dumb on purpose, I was joking around during the interview, being blatantly disrespectful to a stranger, showing zero responsibility, etc...
And they still want me to work for them?

Either they are absolutely desperate to hire anyone (the guy mentioned there were 50 people at the interview), or this man saw something in me that he liked and thought I was "special" (which feels pretty good, I guess)...

Everything clicked into place once I looked into what people were saying online. This is the type of person they hire.
It reminds me of *Big Brother*; everyone wants fast cash, everyone acts like they have 3 million bucks and drive luxury SUVs.
They just feed you these lines: "If you act like you're rich, people will treat you like you are." They inflate their egos with massive numbers,
all sorts of ups and downs... and they claim you can do it all if you just work hard enough and do this and that... But to me, it all sounds like those street hustlers or people in cafes trying to sell you watches; they have this whole choreographed routine on how to present themselves and their product, wearing suits because they think people associate suits with success. But when reality hits, these people are clueless. Others have filled their heads with nonsense that they follow because they've been promised all their financial dreams will come true, and they just daydream about what they'll do with all the money. It's always: "Just do this, listen to that, if you deposit this..." and it never ends.

Nowadays, people call this NLP, or neuro-linguistic programming. It’s not my first time running into this stuff, and honestly, it kind of makes sense—human psychology is complex enough that people find ways to weaponize it just to squeeze more profit out of others. Basically, some folks sat down, figured out what drives people, and realized how to exploit those triggers for their own gain. It’s a textbook example: you want fast cash? You want to work minimal hours and live like royalty? Right... It’s hilarious how almost everyone peddling this has zero actual expertise or formal training for these roles, but hey, don't worry—you can just learn everything at a weekend seminar. Who needs a university degree anyway? Right...

It’s a perfect example of how many gurus are out there selling books on this topic. And you have to wonder: why are people who are already loaded writing commercial self-help books and promoting them everywhere if they already have more money than they know what to do with? Is it just pure greed, or are they just trying to pass the torch? Righttt

In this business, "success" means climbing high enough to be the one recruiting a bunch of friends and family to make money off them, or maybe an even larger pool of strangers. To me, it feels exactly like those old Craigslist scams where someone asks you to send $83 in an envelope, only for them to tell you it doesn't exist and that you should follow their specific method instead. By the time you realize what's happening, it’s too late. All you can do is keep praising the system and spreading the word because your entire livelihood depends on it. Plus, anyone working there loses all objectivity, unless, of course, they want to show you a detailed breakdown of their earnings or scan some document showing their $133 hourly rate or $6.75.
The people working purely on commission usually do it because they don't have any other options. I highly doubt anyone with a solid education or specialized training would touch this. Personally, I much prefer having a steady monthly salary plus performance bonuses for extra tasks that actually help the company turn a profit. That way, it's a win-win. Sure, you can always move up the ladder, but having a stable foundation is a lot better than relying solely on commissions. The market is absolutely saturated with this nonsense; nobody trusts anyone, there’s no liquidity, which means you aren't actually going to make massive amounts of money...

The more I see this stuff, the more I value my own skills and
investing in myself, because that’s what truly pays off in the long run. If I decided to quit my job tomorrow, I know I could find another one without breaking a sweat.

I'm with you on that. An acquaintance of mine reached out to explain all this investment hype to me because she works for Charles Schwab. It caught me off guard, so I agreed to meet up, mostly because she's a cool person we met out in a more relaxed setting 😬. There is zero chance she's going to sell me some bullshit; I'm going purely out of curiosity, not expecting to hear anything life-changing. For me, the most important thing will be whether we actually go out that night—now *that* is something I'll definitely invest in, with the smile of a satisfied customer. 😬

Eighteen hours—basically a total cakewalk 😬

I'm telling you, if you want to be a doctor in this country, you’ve gotta have some serious guts.

by karmela

Seriously though, you need nerves of steel to pull this off.😬

Personally, I think dexamethasone is a solid way to go. I mean, why would anyone be breaking out in hives if they’ve had their shots within the last five years? Besides, we're talking about an insect bite here, not some jagged piece of glass or a rusty nail you stepped on in a dirt lot. Honestly, the only reason I was asking what they gave him was because I had a hunch, and if this is the call, I say it makes sense. Look, Susan Martin24, don't come at me—I'm just a lowly plumber, and I really don't have the energy for a fight since I can be a total jerk when I want to be. Plus, I actually respect your experience 😈😬

Look, I know you've been through this a million times and definitely know your stuff😁 ,but I just wanted to double-check what you said because something about it was really bugging me.

Kimberly Wright, if you happen to know, could you let me know which injection he got and what kind of prescription pills I should pick up?

Hey Susan Martin24, I was wondering—couldn't that be a stronger local allergic reaction rather than just simple inflammation? Even if my hand wasn't super swollen right after a few hours, but then it flared up later. Honestly, if we're talking about an insect sting, that’s the first thing that pops into my head. It doesn't always have to involve the whole arm swelling up; sometimes you just get a localized, milder reaction.

Hey Susan Martin24, what's with the new avatar? Trying to charm the patients now? Or maybe you're just going after Arslan, hahaha!😬

I caught the '98 game and honestly, it was alright. A bunch of the guys were out there playing, most of them performing for the first time in over twenty years, and man, it was actually pretty cool to see them still got it. Back then, they were in their prime, but I am definitely not dropping $700 right now just to watch a bunch of old geezers show up eight years from now. No way in hell 🙂. Aside from that, I’m probably gonna shell out about $55 for some Facebook merch on a t-shirt the day before. One thing I don't get, though—why does it feel like The Stones always show up right when we're playing in the World Cup? Last time they were in town, we ended up taking third place. This could be a massive omen, so fingers crossed for 🙂 😁

So, I spent a full month with my arm stuck in a cast. To make matters worse, they didn't even bother resetting it properly until three weeks in, which was obviously way too late. I was supposed to head back to the doctor for some follow-up after doing six weeks of solo rehab exercises, but honestly, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. These days, I can squeeze my hand and straighten it out just fine, though there’s definitely a noticeable lump where the break was. As for the exact angle of the joint? Who knows. It’s probably slightly less than when the cast first came off, but if I can actually use it, I don't really care that much about the specific degree of the bend.

I went through something pretty similar myself—ended up with a subcapital fracture of the fifth metacarpal. To make matters worse, the folks over at the local VA hospital did a pretty lousy job setting it. We’re talking a forty-degree angle that looked straight-up wrong. But, as Susan Martin24 pointed out, the bone actually started correcting itself slightly just from the natural movement. I’ve still got a bit of a bump there, but honestly, my hand works perfectly fine. My big takeaway? There are zero hard-and-fast rules in medicine; everything is wildly different from one person to the next.

Judging by their username, you’d almost think they were diagnosed with a mental disorder or something, am I right?😛

Look, you can drink milk just fine. Honestly, that link > dropped is total garbage. If you’re lactose intolerant, yeah, milk is going to mess with you, but for everyone else? It's totally fine. Also, just a heads-up: whenever you read some "health fact" online that sounds scary, most of the time it doesn't even apply here. Most of those studies and food standards are based on how things work in the USA, which is a whole different ballgame compared to what we deal with locally.

And why’s that, kiddo? I didn't get the vibe that he was some little brat, unless you're just being way too old-school about it, huh?

Look, I eat when I’m actually hungry. I'm not going to force myself to scarf down a meal first thing in the morning just because some wellness guru says it's "healthy," especially if I don't feel like eating. Honestly, I function perfectly fine without breakfast. Don't get me wrong, there are mornings where I do end up eating, but that's only because my body is actually sending me hunger signals.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: when they open up applications for a medical specialty, everyone already knows who’s walking away with the prize. Among those of us actually heading in for the interviews, the rumor mill is constantly churning because it’s pretty much a given that the spot goes to some director's son or daughter. Honestly, for certain interviews, don't even bother showing up—they won't even call you in. They just announce the winner after the fact because the whole process was nothing more than a complete farce. Take the big university hospital in Chicago, for example; I don't even know who landed the residency there. Aside from the fact that they didn't even invite me to one of the interviews, they couldn't even be bothered to send out a courtesy notice by mail letting us know who was selected, which is what's standard practice. Now, the local community hospital over in Evanston is actually decent about that stuff, but most places? It's all rigged. These job postings are nothing but a damn formality.

I don't really see the injustice here; it just sounds like someone wishing their parents could swoop in and fix their mess.
Or am I totally missing the point?

by karmela

The reason I said that is because, let's be real, it’s almost always the people with the right connections who land those coveted residencies. And in like 90% of cases, those "connections" come straight from parents who happen to be doctors. With how many students go to medical school these days, you've got tons of kids with one or both parents already in the field. While some of us were practically living in the library—me included, I basically lived on caffeine and textbooks—there are plenty of others who weren't pulling 24-hour study sessions but still snagged a specialty spot just because of who their parents know. It's frustrating. Some people try to volunteer, but let's be honest, volunteering in your late 20s means you're working for free while essentially carrying your parents on your back. There's no way they get a fair shot when the "connected" crowd snatches up everything right in front of them. Others work as junior residents at hospitals just waiting for a residency opening, getting promised time and time again that "it's coming soon," only to be left hanging indefinitely. So yeah, when I used the term "Mommy and Daddy," it might sound sarcastic, but it's the blunt truth.

I honestly can't say for sure if things were easier back in the day—if you were around during those years, you’d probably have a better handle on it than I do—but trying to land a residency in a major hub like New York City these days feels like playing the lottery. It’s basically impossible unless you’ve got some serious connections or a massive amount of leverage with med school and the hospital networks. As for all this talk about "soft" guys running around? Honestly, we had our fair share of that when I was in school, though it wasn't nearly as widespread. The crowd I hung out with back then was actually pretty solid. What really used to get under my skin was how intensely serious everyone took medical school. Everyone was obsessed with publishing research papers and acting like they were part of some elite demo, or even turning down patients just to protect their GPA. For me, the goal was simple: pass the exam, get out, and go find something fun to do. I didn't give a damn about the prestige. But hey, life comes at you fast—now I'm stuck dealing with the fact that my parents aren't surgeons, so I don't have anyone pulling strings to smooth out my path to a specialty.