Unpopular opinions (non road related)

[Scott5114]

Here's an unpopular opinion: hard work and dependability doesn't get you ahead in life, it just gets you exploited by someone who will take credit for your hard work and dependability. Which is why the value of hard work is drilled into everyone–the powerful need suckers to believe that so they have someone to take advantage of.

source: personal experience

Fully agreed on that - I run when I hear managers/co-workers brag about how many hours they work. It either means you're 1) too incompetent/bad at managing time to get your work done during business hours (this seems like it happens a lot) or 2) you have a terrible job. Either way it's not something to be proud of and I don't respect you or think more highly of you as a worker for it. It just makes me question your competence or judgement.

Hard work and dependability is usually part of what helps you get ahead

Not really. It's all either 1) being lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time to make the most of an opportunity 2) knowing someone in power that wants you to get ahead 3) already having enough money that you can just have your money make money for you.

[Max Rockatansky]

Here's an unpopular opinion: hard work and dependability doesn't get you ahead in life, it just gets you exploited by someone who will take credit for your hard work and dependability. Which is why the value of hard work is drilled into everyone–the powerful need suckers to believe that so they have someone to take advantage of.

source: personal experience

Fully agreed on that - I run when I hear managers/co-workers brag about how many hours they work. It either means you're 1) too incompetent/bad at managing time to get your work done during business hours (this seems like it happens a lot) or 2) you have a terrible job. Either way it's not something to be proud of and I don't respect you or think more highly of you as a worker for it. It just makes me question your competence or judgement.

Hard work and dependability is usually part of what helps you get ahead

Not really. It's all either 1) being lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time to make the most of an opportunity 2) knowing someone in power that wants you to get ahead 3) already having enough money that you can just have your money make money for you.

Hard work just gave me an ulcer and blinded me as how to be truly effective in my job/career.  What made me successful wasn't that I was better than my counterparts, it was because I survived and saw opportunities when they didn't. 

[webny99]

Hard work and dependability is usually part of what helps you get ahead

Not really. It's all either 1) being lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time to make the most of an opportunity 2) knowing someone in power that wants you to get ahead 3) already having enough money that you can just have your money make money for you.

For 1) and 2), you still need hard work and dependability. Consider just as one example, recent NFL prospect Isaiah Wilson. He was drafted in the first round last year, clearly in the right place at the right time to be successful, but with what appears to be zero hard work and zero dependability, his career is going nowhere after being traded by his first team and waived by the second three days later.

And for 3), "getting ahead" doesn't mean much if you're starting from a high baseline.

[oscar]

Here's an unpopular opinion: hard work and dependability doesn't get you ahead in life, it just gets you exploited by someone who will take credit for your hard work and dependability. Which is why the value of hard work is drilled into everyone–the powerful need suckers to believe that so they have someone to take advantage of.

source: personal experience

Fully agreed on that - I run when I hear managers/co-workers brag about how many hours they work. It either means you're 1) too incompetent/bad at managing time to get your work done during business hours (this seems like it happens a lot) or 2) you have a terrible job. Either way it's not something to be proud of and I don't respect you or think more highly of you as a worker for it. It just makes me question your competence or judgement.

Hard work and dependability is usually part of what helps you get ahead, but it's certainly not the full picture. I believe in working smarter, not harder, and I must agree that longer hours (and especially talking about your long hours) doesn't do anybody any good.

When I was working, and saw others working their asses off while I wasn't, I would remind them of Dilbert's "work smarter, not harder" formulation. Or what Gen. Patton said (more or less, in real life and not just the movie, perhaps with some expletives deleted), "you don't win a war by dying for your country, you win it by making enemy soldiers die for their country".

Output, not input, is what matters.

[Zeffy]

I generally don't go to the doctor unless something's wrong.  Checkups of any kind are just not really a "thing" for me.  So no, I don't particularly "want to get checked for gum disease or cavities".

For what it's worth, the last time I went to the dentist, I had gum disease and receive a deep-cleaning for it.  Maybe I have it again/still but, unless it's causing me pain, I don't really care.  I can still chew, and that's what teeth are for, after all.

Cavities?  Yeah, I probably have some of those.  I had four molar fillings from back when I was a kid.  One of them came out while I was chewing gum back in 2009 or so, so I just had a hole in my tooth for a decade.  In 2019, part of the remaining tooth broke off while eating lunch.  Eventually, I'll probably need to go in and have it extracted, possibly with a root canal, but I see little point in doing so before it starts causing me pain.  Until then, I just pick bits of food out of my tooth with a toothpick.  (That gets kind of interesting when it's a piece of black pepper that got stuck, then I pick it out and chew it.  Surprise!)

Man I'm hyper anxious of the dentist and know my mouth is pretty gross (cavities, probably gum disease). I brush once a day though so it's not like I'm just letting it rot.

[kphoger]

Bowtie pasta sucks.



Nimbya started the war.

[kphoger]

Black coffee is disgusting.

I already agreed with you about this.  But allow me to add my own unpopular opinion:  this means you and I don't actually like coffee.  We just like coffee-flavored cream and sugar.  And we just need to make our peace with that.

[Scott5114]

Hard work and dependability is usually part of what helps you get ahead

Not really. It's all either 1) being lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time to make the most of an opportunity 2) knowing someone in power that wants you to get ahead 3) already having enough money that you can just have your money make money for you.

For 1) and 2), you still need hard work and dependability.

Nah–everyone with first-hand experience in a hierarchical structure like a business or government has seen someone fail upward. Hard work and dependability can sometimes even work against you, because if you work hard and are dependable, you're difficult to replace while keeping the same quality of work output. So they keep you in the spot you're good at, and promote someone who sucks at their job to "get them out of the way", because it's much easier to replace a crappy employee with someone better. That is, they do less damage as a supervisor than they do working frontline where their work output makes it directly to the customer.

And of course hard work and dependability don't matter at all if they never get noticed. Like if you have a supervisor that never pays attention to whether anyone is doing good work or not. Or if you work hard and put out a quality product at a small business, your large competitors have enough of an edge over you (because they have more money for advertising than you do) that nobody will ever end up buying your product in the first place, so they have no idea how hard you're working.

Nimbya started the war.

THERE IS NO WAR WITH NIMBYA

god

[kphoger]

Hard work and dependability sure help when it's time for your prospective employer to call your former employer for references.

[Max Rockatansky]

Hard work and dependability sure help when it's time for your prospective employer to call your former employer for references.

Most big businesses won't even allow references anymore.   All you tend to get is just confirmation of employment.

[interstatefan990]

I already agreed with you about this.  But allow me to add my own unpopular opinion:  this means you and I don't actually like coffee.  We just like coffee-flavored cream and sugar.  And we just need to make our peace with that.

*takes deep sigh* I guess you're right...

[1995hoo]

I generally don't go to the doctor unless something's wrong.  Checkups of any kind are just not really a "thing" for me.  So no, I don't particularly "want to get checked for gum disease or cavities".

For what it's worth, the last time I went to the dentist, I had gum disease and receive a deep-cleaning for it.  Maybe I have it again/still but, unless it's causing me pain, I don't really care.  I can still chew, and that's what teeth are for, after all.

Cavities?  Yeah, I probably have some of those.  I had four molar fillings from back when I was a kid.  One of them came out while I was chewing gum back in 2009 or so, so I just had a hole in my tooth for a decade.  In 2019, part of the remaining tooth broke off while eating lunch.  Eventually, I'll probably need to go in and have it extracted, possibly with a root canal, but I see little point in doing so before it starts causing me pain.  Until then, I just pick bits of food out of my tooth with a toothpick.  (That gets kind of interesting when it's a piece of black pepper that got stuck, then I pick it out and chew it.  Surprise!)

Man I'm hyper anxious of the dentist and know my mouth is pretty gross (cavities, probably gum disease). I brush once a day though so it's not like I'm just letting it rot.

Hopefully I don't jinx myself by saying this, but I've never had any dental issues other than having my wisdom teeth pulled when I was 21. Never had a cavity. So you can understand why I'm not inclined to stop going to the dentist for routine cleanings every six months.

I will emphatically suggest that if you change to an electric toothbrush (I use a Braun Oral-B), it'll feel like you've never brushed your teeth before because it does so much better than an old-fashioned manual brush.

[bandit957]

Records sound better than CD's.

[kphoger]

The correct amount of garlic for the dish you're cooking is three times whatever the recipe says.  And if you're cooking from a recipe that I gave you, then correct amount is still three times whatever the recipe says.  Because there's no such thing as too much garlic.

(When my parents were first married and learning how to cook, they thought "clove" meant "bulb".  So, if a recipe called for a clove of garlic, they put a whole bulb in.  Eventually, they figured out their error, but their taste for garlic remained.  I am their child, so that might explain things.)

[Scott5114]

Hard work and dependability sure help when it's time for your prospective employer to call your former employer for references.

Most big businesses won't even allow references anymore.   All you tend to get is just confirmation of employment.

Right, it's too much of a potential liability because if you say something negative that can't be proven black and white, you can easily trip over libel/slander laws. And if they're not going to be your employee anymore, what motivation do you have to say something nice about them? If it gets them the job, they leave and you're the one who has to hire someone.

At the companies I've worked for, these sorts of reference requests are routed to HR rather than anyone in a supervisory capacity anyway, so the person on the phone probably doesn't have any sort of first-hand experience with the employee anyway. Really all they can do is say "they worked here from X date to X date."

Modern hiring practices tend to rely a lot on automated processes that screen applicants anyway, and possibly-biased or nuanced judgements of an employee can't easily be incorporated into that type of workflow.

[SectorZ]

Records sound better than CD's.

I don't think that's too unpopular. The brickwalling of CD mastering starting the loudness wars ensured that records would sound better.

[hbelkins]

The correct amount of garlic for the dish you're cooking is none.

FIFY.

(Expressing my opinion for disliking garlic got me called all sorts of names by a now-inactive forum member a few years ago.)

[CNGL-Leudimin]

Arizona switches from Mountain time to Pacific time when DST starts.

[formulanone]

Records sound better than CD's.

I don't think that's too unpopular. The brickwalling of CD mastering starting the loudness wars ensured that records would sound better.

Hot take: Audiophiles are just kidding themselves, or belong to a weird cult.

Yes, there's a very noticeable difference between $5 headphones/speakers and $50 ones, but none that I can tell at $500. But that could just be my ears; I seriously can't tell the difference between a CD and an MP3, cassette and record, et al.

[Rothman]

Records sound better than CD's.

I don't think that's too unpopular. The brickwalling of CD mastering starting the loudness wars ensured that records would sound better.

Hot take: Audiophiles are just kidding themselves, or belong to a weird cult.

Yes, there's a very noticeable difference between $5 headphones/speakers and $50 ones, but none that I can tell at $500. But that could just be my ears; I seriously can't tell the difference between a CD and an MP3, cassette and record, et al.

Oof.  Different resolutions of MP3s can be anywhere on the spectrum from crap to pristine in my ears.

[vdeane]

Arizona switches from Mountain time to Pacific time when DST starts.

No they don't.  They may be observing the same time as all the locations in the Pacific time zone, but that doesn't change the fact that Arizona is on MST and those areas are on PDT.

[kkt]

I don't believe most audiophiles could tell the difference between the $50 and $500 headphones they're listening to, in a double-blind experiment.

[andrepoiy]

Unpopular opinion: Hip hop is the ABSOLUTE worst genre of "music" ever invented by man

[CoreySamson]

Unpopular opinion: Hip hop is the ABSOLUTE worst genre of "music" ever invented by man

I actually agree. Some rap is good, but a lot of it is just the same crappy computer generated sounds over and over (not to mention the lyrics). Ditto for pop.

My unpopular music opinion: Christian rock is awesome.

I don't believe most audiophiles could tell the difference between the $50 and $500 headphones they're listening to, in a double-blind experiment.

I feel like they'd be able to physically notice the difference in the hardware, though.

[Max Rockatansky]

Unpopular opinion: Hip hop is the ABSOLUTE worst genre of "music" ever invented by man

While I'm not a fan of it I've also noticed that most people who do also don't like all the late 70s, 80s and early 90s stuff I listen to.  I would probably attribute to not being all that different to me hating my parents taste in music and then likewise with me.

I know noticed that a lot of hip hop and rap songs tend to have similar baselines.  It is really hard not to notice it sometimes when my wife is listening to modern music.