I've been doing this work for about 15 years, so I'll have a go at answering some of your questions, one by one. [BTW, I posted on this topic in a more recent thread from today, but that was before I read this one. And I have more time tonight than I did then.]
"I bet you and others have a treasure chest of stories pertaining to notary work."
Yes, we sure do! And a huge number of them have already been posted on this forum, which is precisely why we refer people to the archives accessible via the orange search button. There's at least a decade and a half of stories from a very wide array of notaries, already there for the looking. Some of them are also incredibly funny, others extremely insightful, even if some of the info is dated. [There's also a lot of stuff and nonsense, but that can be skipped over.]
"By the same token, don't you experienced notaries learn from us newbies?"
Honestly? Rarely. Only if someone has a novel idea or comes up with a question that hasn't been addressed previously and it starts up a new discussion, but that's really unusual. The vast majority of the time, people ask the same kinds of questions that newbies have been asking for many years, and it's often extremely obvious that they haven't even made an attempt to find answers on their own. [An exception might be tech issues, as that stuff changes so quickly these days. But people should always search first, as there could be a thread on the exact same topic from the day before. Happens a lot!]
"Doesn't it take you back to when you first started doing notary work? Don't you laugh when you read some of the newbie postings here because you've already been there?"
You want honesty again? Not really. That's because we've heard nearly all of it before, many times over, so it's more like an eye roll, sometimes a cringe. I'm not saying this to be mean or to put anyone down. I'm just trying to offer a different perspective which will hopefully help others see these things a little differently. Frankly, those of you newer notaries who have posted in this thread have come here with a better attitude than most. But that doesn't negate the message to anyone else who might be reading this. [And perhaps you'll see things a bit differently, too.  ]
One more thing to be honest about is that it takes time to formulate a response. The faster someone dashes out a message, the more likely it is to be abrupt and risk offending someone, but we may not have time to smooth the edges so that no ones' feelings get ruffled. The choice is usually to offer nothing or offer at least something that might help the poster move forward in the right direction. When you're just starting out and don't have much work, you may have plenty of time to spend on this forum, but many 'seasoned' members here are scrambling, printing docs, making phone calls, driving from place to place, handling bookkeeping [yuck!], etc. to say nothing of trying to have a life. Some of us come here to de-stress, or do some reading over lunch, (when we manage to fit that in), so the most we might be able to kick out is a quick reference to searches. I can't count how many times I start a message, but don't complete it until later (and often not at all), trying to avoid sounding mean. I don't know if that's good or bad.
I could go on, but instead of repeating myself, I'll refer you to some similar thoughts I wrote over 11 years ago in response to a poster whose message was typical of many: Msg #95880. It proves that some things never change! And for those of you who really ARE interested in growing and learning this business [as someone else posted, most questioners never bother to even post a reply], that message is part of a very large compilation of some of the best, most useful posts over many years, started by Dorothy/MI with Msg# 33325 in early 2005. It was added to up until 2013. For many, many years, that was the message we always referred newbies to as the ultimate starting point. Some of the factual data is outdated, of course, but there is still VERY much there that's well worth the time to read it all.
As I finish this, I'm realizing that this will probably get lost in the archives, too, but what the heck...
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