“Doctor, when my hand heals, will I be able to play the piano?”
“Certainly!”
“That’s great, I wasn’t able to do so before!”
“It comes up pretty early in the screening process at my company. We can not waste time with applicants who don’t pass a background check, so anything that delays that, including no SSN, would be disqualifying, and we would move on to the next applicant. Faster and no follow up required.“
I have 2 clients that run these checks for potential employees and your employer is not typical. The vast majority only pay for this when they have a tentative offer out. Besides doing it on everyone creates hassles. Federal law not only requires the employer to notify the applicant that the background check may be used to help make a decision about employment, but notice must usually be provided in writing on a separate document than the other application materials.
Moreover “ no follow up” isn’t quite true. Before an employer takes adverse action, he or she must provide the applicant with a notice that includes a copy of the report that was relied upon to make the decision, a copy of a summary of rights, the knowledge that the applicant was rejected due to information on the report and the applicant’s right to review the information and report any discrepancies within 60 days of receiving notice.
Almost no employers do this before they have made or are planning to make an offer.
The best practice is to make a contingent offer and do the background check post-offer. All sorts of legal pitfalls otherwise.
Gentle suggestion: Could we discontinue discussing the legal implications of social security numbers on employment forms?
So back to topic, I’ve shared this before, but my brother had no idea how to do laundry when he went to college, but knew to separate whites and darks. So he put in all his tighty whitey underwear into the machine and poured in bleach. As we refer to it… it was a religious experience… lots of holy underwear. Had to buy all new underwear.
When my oldest was in preschool, he flunked some sort of general knowledge test because he couldn’t identify the iron in the “house” area. Since he’d never seen anyone in our house using one, that wasn’t surprising.
I’m pretty sure he doesn’t own one today, either.
Many, MANY years ago there was a cognitive assessment test that had a famous faces recognition component. One was a photo of a younger/youngish Martin Luther King. One young boy looked at it and exclaimed “Little Richard!!”
This is a conversation from yesterday. My son, now 18, doesn’t know how to tie a tie. To be fair, he has rarely needed one. But next month he is traveling by himself to a week long event where he needs to wear ties several times.
Instead of him learning how, he suggested that I could just tie each tie once leave it that way permanently. Whenever he needed it, he would just slip it over his head and tighten the knot, and slip it off when he’s done. Problem solved as far as he was concerned. 
Pretty sure my son (as a recent college grad with a full time job) has one of those pre-tied ties (tied by me) in his closet. Don’t think he wears it much though. T-shirts and shorts are daily work attire.
He finally figured out how to hang up a pair of non-jean pants on a hanger (without essentially balling them up on the hanger). Part of that may be though that he is now the one who has to pay to have them dry cleaned (he doesn’t own an iron and would have no idea how to iron anything even though I iron a lot of clothes – clothes for everyone in the house as needed even my wife).
This is so funny… My junior in college avoids ties at all costs. He does look sharp with just a sports coat though. Do they still make clip on ties anymore… Lol
I remember when S first learned how to drive and I sent him to the grocery store to pick up ingredients for a couple of recipes I was making for our family Easter lunch. He was out doing some shopping using a gift card he got for his birthday. On the way home he stopped at Whole Foods to grab the ingredients. The total was almost $100. If he had gone to Ralph’s or Stater Brothers it would’ve been much less. When I mentioned this to him…he said he only went to Whole Foods because it was convenient and a cool store. That’s when he learned why we don’t shop there very often…its expensive! Perfect lesson in learning about budgeting and shopping for cheap!
My MIL loves to tell the story of DH at his Kindergarten entry “test”. The teacher asked him where milk came from and he said “Grandma”. The teacher spoke to MIL about his ‘wrong’ answer and MIL (dairy farmer) replied that not only did he know where milk came from, he knew the name of the cow that gave it!
I taught my kids the basics:
-How to make pasta on the stove
-How to boil, scramble, poach, fry eggs
-How to make a sandwich
-How to cook other easy meals
I had a friend who said her kid always complained about being broke. That was because her kid always went out to eat or ordered delivery. You don’t have to be a gourmet cook, but you save a lot of money by buying food and making stuff at home. Much cheaper to buy lunch meat and bread and condiments and make a sandwich.
My kids don’t know how to change a tire. But, we did teach them how to call for help and describe the problem. My kids did learn how to get gas when they learned how to drive.
We also taught them about paying bills, writing checks (just in case), and how to call and make a doctor appointment. I’m sure there are some things we didn’t teach them, but oh well!
Thank you @hebegebe for this thread as my husband and I were just questioning how anyone has trusted us to raise kids- this happened this morning…
D- who is almost 20, been driving the same car since her learner’s permit at 15, ran out of gas this morning on her way to work on I-4 in Orlando! Her reason- my car usually can go 470 miles, I was at 430! Um, the dashboard with the dashes on the gas gauge mean something! She put on her hazards and luckily got over to the side of the road. She called AAA and work and then got lucky that a truck from the Dept. of Commerce came by within a few minutes, stopped and filled her tank with 5 gallons for free! The only positive for us- she didn’t call or text during the whole thing for help! So maybe a little bit of a win???
My girls know how to change a tire- but I doubt they are strong enough to take off the tire bolts. I wish they knew how to drive a manual transmission- if you ever need to drive in Europe, it’s a necessity.
As I was telling DH about our daughter, one of his coworkers shared a story of a kid who borrowed the car and then put diesel in it- when asked how she got the nozzle in she said she “made it work”- at least we aren’t in that situation!
Standing on the end of the wrench usually does it for most adults*. Loosen the nuts or bolts slightly before jacking up the car to avoid knocking the car off the jack.
Also, the spare may be low on air, because it goes unnoticed for years until needed. Check its pressure and inflate it to spec as soon as you can. Also, tighten the nuts or bolts to spec with a torque wrench as soon as you can.
*Torque is usually 70-100 ft-lbs, so a >= 100 lb adult standing on the end of a foot long wrench should be able to loosen the nut or bolt.
Although my sons were taught cursive in elementary school, neither of them can write cursive as adults and their signatures are scrawls.
They were both taught to do laundry when they were around 11yo because I got tired of laundering their clothes only to see them on their bedroom floors undistinguishable from the dirty laundry.
I don’t believe either of them knows how to change a tire. I did teach S2 to drive a standard though. I didn’t trust S1 to follow instructions and not burn out my clutch so he never learned.
Neither can tie a tie and relied on DH doing it for them and then slipping the tie over their heads while keeping it still tied. Ties don’t stay looking nice doing that for very long.
They knew where to place a stamp on an envelope, but S1 couldn’t figure out how to center the address. He usually wrote in the upper 1/3 of the envelope. Based on cards I’ve gotten from him more recently, I think he’s figured it out by now.
I had a couple of early parenting fails when D was a toddler. First, she was in the church nursery, playing with the plastic toy kitchen. The nursery worker suggested she could wash the dishes. My D looked around, and finally said “there’s no dishwasher.” She didn’t know she could (pretend) wash dishes in the sink.
Second, I got one of those plastic toy vacuum cleaners at a garage sale. D promptly took it to the back yard and pretended to mow the lawn with it.
My otherwise brilliant older S got a parking ticket the day he got his license. He parked the wrong way on our street. He claimed nobody ever told him that was illegal. I asked “Have you EVER seen anyone on our street parked the wrong way?” We live on a main road that serves as a pipeline from the police station to elsewhere in the city. The chances of a policeman missing his car was about zero.
And if we’re going back to younger kids, I will never forget going to a group lunch with friends. After one ordered their selection, younger S loudly piped up “What’s a salad?” At least he was in pre-school?
My kids had it drilled into them NOT to give out their SSN. In fact, so much that when they really do need to provide it (credit application, new jobs) they won’t. They do call me.
But they know not to just write it on a form.
My daughter was told that the first check would be paper check and alll future ones would be direct deposits for the TA job. All her past employments were direct deposits.
She texts me coyishly yesterday saying she went to the bank to deposit her first check and the bank teller told her, that was not a check but a confirmation of the direct deposit. 
Our son never looked at the pay stubs from his graduate school fellowship… Pay gets automatically deposited and he never verified how much was taken off and for what. Beginning of last year the fellowship ended and he was getting paid through other funding. But as usual he was paying quarterly estimated taxes for federal and state while they were withholding taxes from the pay check as well. Now he realizes he over paid way too much and will get a big refund… He still doesn’t seem to check the paycheck for all the deductions 