Good evening everyone, and I hope all is well and enjoying the day.
Me and Dad always get caught into a heated debate while discussing mistakes behind the wheels.
I’m the kind to point out errors in my driving behavior and to seek improvement. Whereas for Dad he’s blinded by others mistakes and unable to see his own.
Dad isn’t the only kind I’ve stumbled across who is totally clueless to his mistakes behind the wheels; I’ve ran into many others in real life and on online forums.
When driving, individuals tend to focus on their own actions and intentions, making it easier to spot the mistakes of others while overlooking their own.
I personally don’t see a problem with identifying one own’s weakness and discussing it with others to get some insight and valuable opinions on the matter.
However, when discussing a mistake behind the wheels, people will focus mainly on your mistakes rather than to share their own and teach you how they learned from them.
“ So Dad, have you ever made a mistake behind the wheels?”
“ None I can think of,” he answered. “ I’m always aware of my surrounding.”
“ I see, but how come you had a head-on collision with another car while I was in the back seat and your car was on the other person’s side of the road ?”
“ It was raining and the car slid, “ he answered.
What about you CarTalk folks ? Have you made mistakes behind the wheels and what did you learn from them ?
First mistake, new driver, turning left on 2 lane road, could not see cars coming up in far lane due to traffic, guy waves me on from backed up southbound lane, so I went through the space and hit a guy going north.
One of my most memorable mistakes being behind the wheels was when I sank the clutch of a Ford pickup truck ( see photo example below) before turning the ignition on and took the gear out from 1s to neutral and then the truck started rolling backward down a slight slope. Interestingly, the truck had power steering and power brake for its age but since I failed to turn the ignition on, those features weren’t powered, and so a friend had to chase down the truck on “ legs “ while I was in it trying to stop the vehicle. The friend was fortunate to climb into the truck and he slammed the brake while my foot was already on the brake and sprained my ankle.
My legs were too weak to stop the truck without the truck was on.
Had he failed to climb into the truck, I would be severely injured as the truck was heading towards a more steep gully.
My experience is that some people are quite willing to admit their mistakes and learn from them - and those who refuse to admit their mistakes and therefore, don’t learn from them. I do not understand the psychology of the second group. I wish I did because it would help in dealing with those folks!
I wish I could say the same for my lifetime work history.
I held as many jobs, from 1990 to present, as there are years, and for a dumb reason: I would quit whenever the going got even slightly tough!
By 2011, I had quit arguably the best fit for a job in my entire life, and after that, most employers would not even consider me, despite the fact that I had dozens of interviews in the 20-teens.
My mistake, NH, was simply assuming that it would always be easy for me to land yet another job. Well, something happens when one gets over 40, especially guys. We are considered ‘senior’ work force by 45-50, and less likely to be picked for the job, even if everything checks out.
A good friend of mine, retired from the Information tech field, still gets job offers for stuff relevant to his field, and even not. Because he did not make the mistakes I did.
I think it really depends on the type of work you do or career you have. Been retired for over a year now as director of software engineering for a small telecom company. Last 3 people I hired were OVER 50. In this field the average job for engineers is between 3-5 years - then you move on.
Most aren’t. Anyone I ever brought in for an interview was fully vetted and I knew if they had the qualifications for the job. Part of the interview was technical to see if the vetting process missed anything. But MOST of the interview was to see if the person would be a good fit. We had a small tight group of engineers and needed to make sure they all could work together. And I’m proud to say it was a good diverse group of people that I enjoyed working with.
This speaks a lot to my situation, and thanks for your patience and inshight in bringing it up.
Admittedly, I was fired from one of the thirty-plus jobs I held, over the last thirty plus years, in 2002.
One of the reasons given by my direct manager, as I recall, included that term, “fit”. That “it wasn’t a good fit” he felt, among other issues for which I was let go.
I have often been told, over stretches of time, about my “not being a fit” for this or that job, when I pressed the company after receiving ‘that letter’ in the mail.
That is my story through the 2010s to present, as far as job interviewing goes…. ‘fit’.
From my experience a person who isn’t a good fit is 95% on the person themselves. They don’t like to or have a hard time working with others. Prime example of one guy I let go when I took over as director of engineering. He was a BRILLIANT engineer, but he butted heads with EVERYONE. He was always confrontational. He felt that his solution was the ONLY solution and refused to even consider anyone else’s opinion. I don’t care how brilliant or educated you might be - if you can’t work with the rest of the team either you have to leave or you have to do all the work by yourself because no one is willing to work with you. After I let this guy go an engineer who left the year earlier called me up and said he’d like to come back now that this guy is gone. A toxic work environment is one of the leading causes of why people quit.
You have given me some serious soul searching to do.
#1. My impatience, which led to me quitting the majority of my jobs.
#2. My personality.
Due to circumstances at birth and growing up, which I will not go into detail here, I was resultedly a recluse through most of high school, and had less severe issues away at university. I did not like college, but was afraid to ‘toot my own horn’ and ‘go my own way’ (at the time, radio school which my mother insisted on not subsidizing, vs university, which she did). I did complete my degree, but never put it to any serious use.
Consequently, I have never been true to myself, afraid to open up about as I have just now, which I feel was reflected in job interviews. On top of documented learning disabilities from grades 2 through 12. I would come across awkward, blurting out responses that did not make sense, etc. Albeit that, I at least was dressed appropriately for interviews, no body odor, was punctual, arriving 10 min. before scheduled time, attempted to maintain eye contact without staring, etc.
But once I was sitting across the desk or conference table from the interviewer/s, I felt exactly like a deer in the headlights, or as if I were facing a 12-gun firing squad.
I guess that I haven’t made too many mistakes over the 60 years that I’ve been driving, but I did make two expensive mistakes in my younger years.
A few months after getting my DL, I was crawling along in stop & go traffic with a couple of friends, and I allowed myself to get distracted by the friend sitting in the back seat. The result was that I “crunched” the hood of my father’s '63 Plymouth when I hit the back of an 18-wheeler that had stopped suddenly.
To my surprise, my father wasn’t furious, and his only words were, “Tomorrow, you will start getting estimates for the body work, and you will be paying for it, as I won’t submit this to the insurance company”.
Then, a few years later, I was driving a bit too fast on a wintery road surface and because the lanes had been narrowed by an accumulation of plowed snow, I hit the left rear fender of another car with the right front fender of my father’s '66 Galaxie 500. If I had been driving more slowly, I would have been able to stop the car in time.
Again, my father advised me to get a few estimates, because I would be the one who would pay for the damage, rather than his insurance company.
These two experiences must have taught me a few things, because I haven’t had a subsequent car accident (not even a scratched fender) or a traffic ticket since 1970.
