S03E57 What is a Doctors Car and What Car do YOU Drive? Car Choice and Stereotypes

Ever caught yourself judging someone based on the car they drive? We all do! So, in today's episode, we're shaking things up by challenging the stereotype of the 'doctor's car'. After reading an article from a "prudent plastic surgeon," who skipped a luxury car lease for a used 2011 Toyota Avalon, Dr. Rhee discusses his thoughts about what is a 'doctor's car."

Hear his compelling arguments on the benefits of going against the grain, and get ready to question your perceptions about what a car can say about someone's personality or status.

Switching gears, we delve into an intimate conversation about the importance of cherishing life's simple moments. A poignant story from a dear friend served as a much-needed reminder of our 'why' in life - to love and appreciate our family and friends wholeheartedly.

Tune in as we ponder on the significance of these small yet meaningful moments, and how they contribute to our overall happiness. This episode invites you to reflect on your own 'why' and encourages you to make sure your loved ones know and feel your love.

And as always, a weekly thankful to remind us of the big and little things in life. Do you remember having to hit Control-S constantly to save your work?

#thoughtfulplasticsurgery #podcast #plasticsurgery #cosmeticsurgery #boardcertified #plasticsurgeon #beauty #aesthetic #botoxandburpeespodcast @crossfittraining @crossfit #crossfit #sports #exercise #health #movement #crossfitcoach #clean #fitness

00:00:05 The Significance of a Doctor's Car

00:13:32 Appreciating Life's Little Blessings

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S03E57 WHAT IS A DOCTORS CAR AND WHAT DO YOU DRIVE

[00:00:00]

Sam Rhee: What is a doctor car? What kind of car do you drive? I recently read an op-ed article on a physician's website written by a plastic surgeon who brags, he doesn't drive a doctor car. So what the heck is a doctor's car anyway? And how's that different from say, a regular car? Does it matter what kind of car a doctor drives?

Do you judge people by the kind of car that they drive? Let's look at doctor's cars, other people's cars, and what I think about people and their choice of cars. Maybe you agree with me on this one. Maybe you don't. Let's find out.

Dr. Jordan Frey from Buffalo, New York recently wrote on doximity.com an article titled. Three biggest advantages of my non-doctor Carr. Now, Dr. Frey isn't the stereotypical plastic surgeon doc Hollywood type. He lives in Buffalo, focuses on microsurgery, and he has a finance blog called the Prudent Plastic Surgeon.

So maybe you are already starting to develop a mental image of this particular [00:01:00] surgeon, and most likely he's not a Dr. 90210. Dr. Frey says that instead of spending a planned thousand dollars a month on a luxury car lease, he changed his mind and recently bought a used 2011 Toyota Avalon for $4,000.

And the advantage he states for buying in inexpensive car are pretty obvious, I think, to everyone. Number one, he doesn't care what happens to his car. He says he's nicked the sides a bunch, knocked off the driver's side mirror, had the bumper cover fall off and scratched it up a ton.

So it is kind of refreshing not to have to worry about your car. I remember in college my friend had a brand new BMW M3, which was probably the hottest looking car on campus, and he would park it so far away from all the other cars. It was probably an extra half mile just to get to where he was parked.

Heaven forbid you bring any food into his car. His girlfriend used to joke or maybe complain that he loved that car more than he cared for her, which is probably true and he would admit it I bet, even after all these [00:02:00] years.

Number two, Dr. Frey isn't worried about someone stealing his car, and that's absolutely true. I can't imagine anyone salivating over a 2011 Toyota Avalon.

And most importantly, Dr. Frey mentions no car payments. He says he has had no car loan, so he saves a thousand dollars a month, which at after three years is almost enough to buy a rental property. Or two, possibly invest in a broad low cost index fund for 20 years with an estimated value of a hundred thousand dollars after that time, or three, buy something else for $36,000 that brings you equal or greater joy after three years.

Now when I read this article, I both agreed and disagreed with Dr. Fray. I'm glad that he felt comfortable enough to buy a low-cost car, which saved him a lot of money and concern.

Unlike what Dr. Fra says in the article about other people not caring about what he drives. I would disagree. I absolutely believe people judge people by their cars. I do all the [00:03:00] time. Just like, I judge people by their body type, their parent hygiene and their choice of clothes.

Now, none of these things are absolutes. I realize just because someone comes to my office and flip flops, cut off jean shorts and a tank top that says, "Tequila Because it's Mexico Somewhere," does not mean that they are somehow less of a good person than someone who comes in wearing elegant business attire.

But pretty much everything that people see about you is a statement. Usually conscious, but sometimes partly unconscious about who you are or at least what image you are trying to project. And sometimes that image even means I don't care.

I know I am saying something about myself with my choice of hairstyle, clothes, and car. It's just part of your appearance. And cars are a huge part of that image projection in the United States. My gym parking lot is probably one of the best places where I see what image my athlete's cars say about them.

In North Jersey, a lot of the guys at my gym drive pickup trucks, big pickup trucks. [00:04:00] 1500, 2500, and even a very few swing into class with a 3500 truck.

It doesn't seem very practical for a lot of these guys to be driving them, actually. Almost none of them actually have a job where they need a truck. The biggest payload that a lot of them might carry is a venti green tea mocha latte from Starbucks. But a pickup truck does say something about a guy, right? With a giant hood and towering driving position.

As negative as some of those stereotypes of guys who drive pickup trucks are, I personally really like the guys who drive the pickup trucks at my gym. Many of them are my friends and they're very down to earth people for the most part, but they definitely just like projecting a certain image. It's mainly a, "I don't do tea and cucumber cakes," man, or a, "I'm a slightly unrefined and tough kind of guy," or "I'm an all American sort of dude," and hey, I appreciate that. I really do.

Now on the other side, I don't think a single woman drives a big pickup truck at my gym, but a lot of the moms drive various size SUVs, [00:05:00] very practical cars, and their sizes range from compact to medium to really, really big. Yet for as many families with large number of kids at my gym, I can only think of maybe two people in 10 years who drove minivans at the gym. One of those drivers wasn't even a mom. Well, I guess he was sort of a Mr. Mom. I think the general avoidance of minivan speaks to the image conscious moms out there. The concept that I wanna be practical, but I have aesthetic limits to my practicality.

Now, honestly, there's nothing wrong with minivans, and I love one of the drivers of the minivans at our gym. Really awesome person. Plus my brothers both drive minivans and every time I visit them, I'm always amazed how awesome, comfortable, and generally excellent their Honda Odysseys are. It's the perfect family vehicle.

But I also understand the cultural aversion to minivans. I'm not a car person, but I would find it hard, not impossible, but it would be hard to have a minivan as my daily driver. To me, minivans are the car [00:06:00] equivalent of stretchy elastic waistband pants. Sure, they're very comfortable, but sometimes you have to pull it together and realize it just isn't about not feeling too tight after the all you can eat buffet at Golden Corral.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are a couple pretty expensive vroom, vroom cars. Always driven by guys who you might expect to be driving those kind of cars. Fantastic guys, a lot of style, and it's just that type of car, which seems to fit that kind of personality.

Most of our younger athletes drive small sedan types, whatever they can afford. Sometimes they're brightly colored, sometimes more subdued. I don't think they would say that their car represents their image except for the concept that they're trying to save money.

Like I said, I personally am not much of a car guy. I've gone through the nice car, not so nice car, and the nice car again. My first real car was an old Lexus SUV. We got it when I was in residency and it was expensive when we first got it in 2003. It cost an insane amount at that time for us at $39,000, but we kept it for 18 years. So [00:07:00] maybe it was a so-called doctor's car when I first got it, but it was definitely not a doctor's car for the past 10 years.

I drove that thing for as long as I could, for exactly the reasons that Dr. Frey outlined in his article. I never worried about keeping that car nice and shiny. No one would ever think about stealing it, and it was paid for for many, many years. So recently when my 18 year old car was finally on its last legs, by the time I gave it up, three of the windows wouldn't open anymore, but the final kicker was that the power steering started to go.

I got a used Mercedes two-seater convertible, which is much more flashy appearing. It actually wasn't my first choice, and it's totally impractical, but it was too good a deal to pass up.

It was literally driven by a little old lady who only drove it on Sundays to church. No joke. At first. I was uncomfortable driving it around because it does look like something that a cliched, middle-aged plastic surgeon might drive. One of my friends called it a P word mobile, and no, not the female word, the male version.

[00:08:00] But I figured if I didn't care about what people thought of me when I drove my beat up car, then I shouldn't care what they thought of me in this car either.

And it's not a very practical car, but on the days when you pop the top and drive around when it's nice, it's a lot of fun. Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. Someone famous from a movie who also drove a convertible said that once.

Dr. Frey is unusual because he is a plastic surgeon driving a very plain car. Nearly all the plastic surgeons that I know drive very nice cars. However, I would say the specialty that drives the nicest cars hands down are the oral surgeons. Every single oral surgeon I know drives something expensive and flashy. Many times they own multiple expensive and flashy cars. The newest Corvette, the Mercedes G Wagon, Ferraris, and the only person I know personally who drives an Aston Martin is an oral surgeon.

I'm not exactly sure why the oral surgeons I know drive the most expensive cars. Some [00:09:00] of it may be that they all work really hard and they make a ton of money working really hard. Oral surgery isn't as flashy as being a neurosurgeon or a cardiac surgeon, so maybe driving the latest hotness makes up for that lack of street cred. I don't know for sure.

Reading the comments under Dr. Frey's article, it's pretty clear that certain specialties are very proud that they drive inexpensive cars.

Here's a list of specialties and the cars that they said they drove.

Family medicine: I drove a 1975 Jeep CJ5 for 40 years for work and pleasure having purchased it before med school. It's showing its age due to its faded paint and some ugly rust holes. I was asked by another physician not to park it in the doctor's parking lot because my Jeep made a bad impression for the other doctors.

Pediatrics: I drive a 2005 Toyota 4Runner with 210,000 miles on it.

Infectious disease: Hyundai Santa Fe, the best!

Psychiatry: my Honda Odyssey is the sexiest car I have owned.

So you get the picture. [00:10:00] Funny, the specialties driving the nicer cars were very defensive, but would actually not comment on what car they were driving.

Anesthesiologist: I currently drive a german sports sedan and I don't like having anyone tell me what I should drive.

Gastroenterologist: I love driving nice cars and I get great enjoyment out of every luxury car that I drive.

Cardiologist: what I drive and what I do with my hard-earned money is no one else's business.

What are my recommendations about what car you should drive? Number one, absolutely drive anything you want. Are you a car nut? Not a car nut? Like big cars? Small cars? Super comfortable cars? Safe cars, fast cars, eco-friendly cars? You do, you. Don't listen to anyone else. It's one of the most personal choices that you can make that impacts you on a daily basis.

Number two though, just make sure whatever car you do drive, you can handle what people may think or say to others about you. I have plastic surgeon friends who do cosmetic surgery in big cities, and I almost [00:11:00] feel like if they didn't drive an expensive car, it would actually hurt their business with their referrals, physicians and patients alike. You can't work without projecting competence and success. And while you may wanna be that rule breaker, just know that there are consequences potentially to doing so.

Of course, there are the people that are so successful that they can dress like hobos, drive beat up vehicles, but obviously those are the exceptions that prove the rule. And are you that guy yet? Maybe you're not that guy, pal. Trust me, you're probably not that guy.

In general, rule of thumb, my recommendation is not to let your car outshine you. Here's an example I read from a car reviewer. While they were test driving a $325,000 Lamborghini Hurrican for a magazine review, the reviewer stopped at a restaurant and with a flourish handed the keys to a valet driver.

The valet driver then said, ah, what a waste, meaning the person who stepped out of the car wasn't a Dave Grohl or a Gigi Hadid, or even someone really good looking like an aspiring [00:12:00] starlet, but instead was a much less attractive, ordinary looking person who completely didn't match the car. The valet didn't think the reviewer was special as they hoped. They just looked like someone who shouldn't have been driving that car at all.

The solution: be that person who should be driving the Lamborghini. How? I have no idea, but I'm not the one trying to drive one. It would be like me wearing a $10,000 suit. Not only does it look like I'm trying way too hard, I'm actually doing injustice to the suit. I would have to do a lot to look like I was meant to wear one.

So what kind of car do you drive? What do you think it says about you? Do you even care? Does that matter? Does that say something about you too? Let me know.

My weekly thankful is the Auto Save feature on my word processor. Do they even still call them word processors these days?

I was writing out my thoughts about this podcast last night when the power flicked off in our neighborhood. I had my computer hooked up to one of those battery uninterruptible power supplies, but it's a couple years [00:13:00] old, and so it hasn't held a charge for a while because I never bothered to replace the battery.

So of course I'd been writing for over half an hour when we lost power. Now, in the old days when we still call them word processors, I think nowadays they're called document editors, unless I had been regularly saving my document, I would've been fuming and lamenting about my lost work.

That's actually happened more times than I care to admit in college and medical school. But now in the modern world of 2023, when the power came back on after an hour, I simply logged back into Google Docs and kept typing away. Probably anyone under the age of 30 simply takes it for granted that everything is auto saved.

But for me, it's one of those harsh lessons in the past, which makes me grateful for the little things like automatic auto save. Now all I need to do is get a new battery so I can continue to work on my computer in the dark.

What little lifesaving features or devices are you grateful for? Let me know.

Finally to follow up with my friend, if you listened to last week's episode, he asked me what my "why" was in regards to podcasting, [00:14:00] and I said I'd ask him what his why was in life. And he replied to me: it was very simple, love. He said, love your family and friends every moment and make sure they know and feel it.

That's a pretty powerful message. Especially coming from my friend who if you knew him in person, doesn't look like at first glance, the lovey-dovey type. It's surprising and special what your friends can say when you ask them to speak from the heart.

I would like to thank my friend for that answer and I really appreciate it when people share their thoughts and feelings with me. Definitely the highlight of podcasting.

Please share your own thoughts. DM me @BotoxandBurpeesPodcast on Instagram, or leave me a comment at youtube.com/@BotoxandBurpees. Thank you for listening.