My cousin had a terrible experience _____ she was working for a big advertising agency.

My cousin had a terrible experience _____ she was working for a big advertising agency.

• A. where
• B. which
• C. when
• D. that

Answer: (C)

A temporal connection is needed to signal when the experience happened. The sentence works best with when because it introduces a time clause: when she was working for a big advertising agency. This clearly ties the terrible experience to the specific period of her work. Using where would point to a place, which isn’t appropriate for describing timing. Using which or that would start a relative clause that wouldn’t fit naturally here, and it can make the sentence awkward or imply something different about what the experience was related to. So the natural, smooth choice is when to express the timing of the experience.

A temporal connection is needed to signal when the experience happened. The sentence works best with when because it introduces a time clause: when she was working for a big advertising agency. This clearly ties the terrible experience to the specific period of her work. Using where would point to a place, which isn’t appropriate for describing timing. Using which or that would start a relative clause that wouldn’t fit naturally here, and it can make the sentence awkward or imply something different about what the experience was related to. So the natural, smooth choice is when to express the timing of the experience.