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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/CrestRime on 2026-04-01 15:33:35+00:00.
My sister has been coaching her son (he's 19) for his first real job interview for about two months.
He called me the night before to ask how I actually handle nerves before interviews because he was anxious and couldn't sleep.
I told him what works for me which is to stop trying to sound impressive and just talk like a normal person. That interviewers are tired of rehearsed answers and the thing that usually gets people through is just being direct and a little relaxed about it.
He seemed relieved. We talked for maybe 20 minutes and he went to bed feeling better.
The interview went fine, he said it felt natural and he didn't freeze up once.
Turns out my sister had spent weeks teaching him a specific method with structured answers and key phrases and he basically threw all of it out after our call and just winged it.
She called me the next day and said I had undermined everything she had built with him and that even if the interview went okay I had no right to override her approach the night before without talking to her first.
I genuinely thought I was just helping him calm down. I didn't know there was a whole system. I didn't tell him her method was wrong, I just told him what works for me.
Tl;dr my nephew called me nervous before an interview, I told him to relax and be himself, he ditched his mom's two month prep plan, she's upset with me for interfering