Since Friday Reddit has accumulated a massive thread full of advice from users in a wide variety of different jobs, which ranges from the banal to the absurdly specific. While you may have heard many of these tips before, it’s fascinating to see what people in a huge variety of jobs think the general public doesn’t know about their work–or wish they did know.

What are some useful secrets from your job, Redditors?

They range from the obvious:
- Always ask for hotel room upgrades.
- Don’t teach your children to swim in a water park.
- Never go to Geek Squad.

To the helpful, though possibly dubious:
- Use incognito mode to buy your plane tickets.
- Don’t buy fancy butter, it’s all the same.
- …and so is frozen food.
- Schedule your surgery for early in the morning.

To this doozy:

I work at a gas station. If you are getting something that you’re going to microwave, buy it before you nuke it. If you microwave it first, we ring it up as taxable; purchase it first, it’s rung up as non-tax. I just saved you a quarter. Those add up

I also learned that there is a specific subreddit for night auditors, which is somehow not at all surprising.

Read them all here.

h/t to Chris Blattman, whose money secret is that social science master’s programs exist only as cash cows for the university. 

1. You can dress nice for that big dance by buying swanky clothes and then just returning them when the dance is over. Ditto patio furniture and a cookout.

2. Why spend money on lunch? Costco has copious free samples. So does Whole Foods, and they don’t even have anyone manning them. Make a couple rounds of the store for a nutritionally balanced meal.

3. McDonald’s has an essentially infinite supply of free salt, pepper and ketchup.

4. Most movie theaters give a discount to people over 60, and most movie theaters don’t check your ID to confirm your age. You look like you could be 60, anyway.

5. HomeTown Buffet switches from breakfast to lunch at 11. Get there at about 10:45. Let your food digest until you’re hungry for lunch. That’s two meals for the price of one!

6. Need new reading glasses? Go to a CVS, grab a pair from off the rack to read an ibuprofen label and then just slide them up your head. Continue shopping. If you “forgot” you were wearing them by the time you walk out, it doesn’t count as stealing.

7. Waiters and waitresses are a renewable pen resource.

8. Instead of giving out candy at Halloween, why not just things you have around the house? An old box of raisins, or maybe some peppermints. Heck, you haven’t even eaten some of those Cadbury Cream eggs—perfect!

9. Complain, complain, complain. Is there something wrong with your hotel room? Was the concierge rude to you? Can anyone prove he wasn’t? With enough persistence, anything can be dissatisfactory enough to warrant a refund.

Matt Crowley is a comic, writer and director living in Brooklyn. His mother taught him everything he knows. You can follow him on Twitter here. Photo: goodiesfirst

His advice is great. He is great. Here’s how he opens it:

Man, I’m very sorry to hear that. That is terrible, and I wish you the best.

There are about a million different ways to answer this question, depending on one’s circumstances, but here’s what I did immediately after getting fired last year:

1. Called my mom and told her not to freak out and that I was going to be fine – Because my mom is a worrier, I waited about 45 minutes after hanging up with her the first time and called her again to reassure her I was going to be OK. She said, “I’m so glad you called again. I was trying to lie down for a nap but I’m just so on edge now.”

2. Deposited my severance check – Hopefully you got a severance check. If not, to hell with that company.

3. Got a haircut – Try this. It feels good. I turned off my phone, sat down in the barber’s chair, and closed my eyes. When the lady asked how my day was going, I said, “It’s really great,” and I 90 percent meant it.

Read his whole response here. (Also: Last year we talked a bit about his Career Journey.)

This list of “99 life hacks to make your life easier” is really, really great. [via]

Twice a year, in Washington, D.C., we are graced with D.C. Restaurant Week. Restaurant Week—the week or so when restaurants you couldn’t normally afford to eat in create special affordable menus for diners—usually happens in the winter and summer seasons in cities across the country. In D.C., it started Aug. 13, and will end on Aug. 19. The prix-fixe dinner menu is a mere $35 (compared to the $100 or more you’d probably spend at these places). Total bargain! Of course, this doesn’t include a tip, and all those drinks you’re probably getting to celebrate this fine dining experience.

Choosing which restaurant you want to go can be a challenge. Plus, everyone and their mama will be making reservations, so you have to grab a timeslot quickly. Here’s some advice from past experiences I’ve had.

• Make reservations as early as you can. Restaurants vary on how far in advance you can do this, but calling and figuring out the earliest you can make one is the best tactic.

• Do Lunch. It’s cheaper ($20 bucks), and you’ll have a better chance of getting a reservation. You might be able to do a walk-in.

• TIP. TIP. TIP. Considerably. This is a tough week for waiters because of the crowds of people that will be churning in and out of these restaurants. And hey, these people are running around bringing food back and forth, and sometimes working doubles. Be nice. They’ll appreciate it and the experience will be so much better.

• Try not to go to restaurants that serve small plates, for example, tapas restaurants. It calculates to the same prices as if it wasn’t Restaurant Week. You’ll get less bang for your buck, and the point of this is to save money on good food.

• No big dinner parties. This is not the week to get together with all your friends you haven’t seen in ages. Large dinner parties make it complicated for everyone involved.

• Be aware that some restaurants extend their restaurant week specials for an additional week. So save room for more.

Restaurant Week is the time to try out places you can’t normally afford, or have never taken the opportunity to try out. Be adventurous, and dine well my friends.

Lourdes Diaz likes traveling, laughing, dancing and going for runs. You can catch her singing is her car and probably wearing lipstick. She sometimes tweets tweets. Photo: The Hungry Dudes

Everyone is always saying, “Learn to cook!” (I have said, “Learn to cook!”) But how to start? Here are a few hot tips that helped me:

1. Start drilling it into your head that every time you see a cafe or restaurant or fast food joint, that those places are forbidden. Mantra: “You will not go there and give them your money for things you can do yourself.”

2.Think about what you ate as a kid. Your parents are great resources, either for what to do or what not to do. Google the type of dish you’ve got a craving for and the word “easy”. (This sounds stupidly simple, but I think a lot of people just don’t know where to start.) Soon enough, you’ll find a few go-to sites. Mine are Inn at the Crossroads, Broke Ass Gourmet, All Recipes, and Mark Bittman. 

3. Make sure what you’re planning on making is within your scope of experience. Do not try to make something complicated or with multiple steps if you’re just starting out (“cornish game hens with pancetta, juniper berries, and beets”). Keep it short and easy and you’ll be less frustrated and more likely to keep trying new things.  Mexican and Italian dishes are good to start. It doesn’t take a master chef to brown some beef in a pan or boil some water.

4. If you’re scared you don’t have the time, chill. You probably have the time. (Shut your laptop, maybe.) Even if you can’t spare a whole lot, any kind of sandwich, tacos, fajitas, spaghetti, or salad take under 30 minutes from start to finish. Take short cuts when you need to, like buying pre-cut or frozen vegetables, pre made sauces, sliced or shredded cheeses, or seasoning packets.

5. Keep a realistic shopping list. If that bag of spinach keeps going bad, you’re not a spinach eater. Stop buying it.

6. Include treats on your shopping list—special fruit, crackers, chips and salsa, fancy yogurt, stinky cheeses,  cookies. Whatever it is, buying it in bulk at a grocery store is a lot cheaper than buying it impulsively at a cafe.

7. Clean up while you cook. A sink full of dishes is daunting. Avoid it.

8. Start small: Make your coffee at home. There are so many simple ways to do this. You can buy a cheap coffee maker, use a pour over filter, get a French press—you can even just use instant coffee if you’re not picky on flavor.  Acup of coffee is about $2. You do that five days a week that’s $520 a year which is about the same as the cost of one cross country plane ticket. Just sayin’.