I have a new employee on my team. This is her first full-time office job, which is common for employees at my company. I’ve recently heard from other managers that she’s primarily working from a nest of blankets and pillows she built on her office floor. We are a very casual office and she’s getting her work done, but this is still weird. I’d like to address it with her before we move another new hire into her shared office area next month.
My first step is to stop by her office a couple of times to verify the hearsay, but overall how do I address this with her? We have a company policy handbook but it is pretty vague (to the point of tongue in cheek) about “professional” behavior.
I admit my first reaction was to laugh, and my second was to think about whether I would like to work from a blanket/pillow nest of my own.
But yeah, in most offices this is going to stand out as really odd — hence the comments you’re getting about it.
There is a larger philosophical question about why “odd” is bad, and whether it needs to be bad. If she’s comfortable working like that and she’s getting her work done well, should anyone care? Personally, if I were creating work norms from scratch on a new planet where they didn’t yet exist, I would be pro-pillow-fort. Why not? Some people work well from a desk, some work well from a couch, some apparently work well from a nest of blankets and pillows. It shouldn’t matter.
And yet, in the world we live in, not the hypothetical one I’m creating on a distant planet, it will matter. Something this far out of the norm — and so associated with “bed”— is going to read strangely in most offices and raise concerns. That goes doubly, if not triply, when the employee is very junior and hasn’t established a reputation for herself yet.
If she were more senior and known to be very good at what she did … well, it still wouldn’t fly in a lot of offices! But in others she could get away with it; it could be an idiosyncrasy people accepted because her work was great. But when you are entry-level, you don’t have nearly the same freedom to flout norms; instead, it’s likely to become the thing she’s known for — along with connotations like “immature” or “unprofessional” — and could end up holding her back significantly. I’m not defending that, but it’s the reality of it. It’s sort of like showing up to work in pajamas — it won’t affect the quality of your work, but in most offices it would impact the way people see you. (Caveat: different industries have different norms. This could go over far more easily in some parts of tech, for example, and apparently at NPR. But it sounds like your office isn’t one of those, since you’re getting the comments about it.)
When you have enough capital built up to push back on these norms, you can! But since she’s a junior employee at her first job, it’s more likely that it would take your capital, as her manager, to fight this battle on her behalf and I’m guessing it’s not something you want to spend your own capital on. If I’m wrong about that, by all means, spend capital on it. It helps nearly everyone if we revisit our definitions of “professional.” But otherwise, here we are.
So … start by asking her about it before you do anything else. Who knows, maybe there’s some reason for it that you’d want to know, like that something about her desk or chair is uncomfortable and she needs a more ergonomic set-up. But then it’s reasonable to explain that generally in your office people are expected to work at their desks and that, rightly or wrongly, working from a nest of blankets and pillows will read as not terribly office-appropriate, and risks becoming the thing she’s known for right as she’s trying to establish a professional reputation for herself … and that especially with a new hire about to move into the space with her, sadly the blanket/pillow nest must go.
This is one of the first papers from the project Bennett has been leading, if you're interested. If you're not interested, what you need to know is that as my friend, I need you to get way richer.
There are two new NBER papers written by large teams, headlined by Raj Chetty. Here is an excerpt from the first paper:
The fraction of high-SES friends among low-SES individuals—which we term economic connectedness—is among the strongest predictors of upward income mobility identified to date, whereas other social capital measures are not strongly associated with economic mobility. If children with low-SES parents were to grow up in counties with economic connectedness comparable to that of the average child with high-SES parents, their incomes in adulthood would increase by 20% on average.
And this as a general introduction to the project:
….we measure and analyze three types of social capital by ZIP code in the United States: (i) connectedness between different types of people, such as those with low vs. high socioeconomic status (SES); (ii) social cohesion, such as the extent of cliques in friendship networks; and (iii) civic engagement, such as rates of volunteering. These measures vary substantially across areas, but are not highly correlated with each other.
The core data are taken from Facebook and anonymized. And from the second paper:
We show that about half of the social disconnection across socioeconomic lines—measured as the difference in the share of high-socioeconomic status (SES) friends between low- and high-SES people—is explained by differences in exposure to high- SES people in groups such as schools and religious organizations. The other half is explained by friending bias—the tendency for low-SES people to befriend high-SES people at lower rates even conditional on exposure.
There is then this concrete result:
…friending bias is higher in larger and more diverse groups and lower in religious organizations than in schools and workplaces.
Here is a tweet storm with a relevant map. These papers are sure to have considerable influence on how we think about social connections. Yes this is sociology, but has not this team done it better?
what's more embarrassing, being associated with jk rowling's personal views or playing professional quidditch
Published by BANG Showbiz English
Real-life Quidditch leagues have changed the name of the ‘Harry Potter’ sport to distance the competition from J.K. Rowling in response to her views on trans people.
The fictional sports game was invented by the best-selling author as part of her ‘Harry Potter’ book series – which began in 1997 with the release of first novel ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ in June 1997 – and sees the pupils of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry compete in two teams flying on broomsticks and scoring points with four types of balls.
The game – which is ultimately won if the player known as the Seeker captures the Golden Snitch – has thousands of real-life players who simulate the matches without the ability to fly on magical broomsticks.
Following a survey at the end of 2021, the US Quidditch and Major League Quidditch have decided to rename the sport as quadball.
They explained that the change had come about because the name “quidditch” had been trademarked by American film company Warner Bros. – who own the movie rights to ‘Harry Potter’ – and because Rowling “has increasingly come under scrutiny for her anti-trans positions in recent years”.
In a statement, Major League Quidditch said on Tuesday (19.07.22): “[The new name] opens unprecedented opportunities for growth, exposure and partnerships. It is a game changer and we are looking to make the most of it.”
Meanwhile, Mary Kimball, executive director of US Quadball, explained that the game was first played by students at Middlebury College in Vermont back in 2005 but has grown exponentially since and the organisations will continue to “push” with the new name.
She said: “In less than 20 years, our sport has grown from a few dozen college students in rural Vermont to a global phenomenon with thousands of players, semi-pro leagues and international championships. Our organisations are committed to continuing to push quadball forward.”
The governing body for US Quidditch changed its name with immediate effect, while Major League Quidditch said that the new name would come into effect after the 2022 MLQ Championship in August
Rowling – whose real name is Joanne Rowling – has sold more than 500 million copies of the seven-book series since it was first published in 1997 and is thought to be the world’s richest living author with a reported net worth of $1 billion.
She first came under fire for her trans views back in June 2020 for rebuking the idea that the act of menstruation should be regarded as gender neutral.
She tweeted: “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”
Rowling has since continued to back women’s rights over the call for inclusion of self-identifying women, attracting much criticism from the trans community, whilst simultaneously being backed by many feminist campaigners.
new information about the vaguebooking !rest up, jason!
Hello, everyone. I’m going to be taking an extended break from kottke.org, starting today. I’ve been writing here for more than 24 years, nearly half my life — I need a breather. This is something I have been thinking about and planning for years1 and I’d like to share why I’m doing it, how it’s going to work, what I hope to accomplish, and how you can help.
This is a long post and was a hard one to write — I hope you’ll give it your thoughtful attention. But first, let me introduce you to my plant.
(This is going somewhere. Trust me.)
Eight years ago when I still lived in NYC, I bought a fiddle leaf fig tree from a store in the Flower District. Here it is a couple of years ago, thriving next to my desk here in Vermont:
I’d recently moved into my own apartment after separating from my wife and figured a large plant in my new place would add some liveliness to a new beginning that was feeling overwhelming, lonely, and sad. For the first couple of months, I didn’t know if my tree and I were going to make it. I’d never really had a plant before and struggled getting a handle on the watering schedule and other plant care routines. It started losing leaves. Like, an alarming number of leaves.
I’d brought this glorious living thing into my house only to kill it! Not cool. With the stress of the separation, my new living situation, and not seeing my kids every day, I felt a little like I was dying too.
One day, I decided I was not going to let my fiddle leaf fig tree die…and if I could do that, I wasn’t going to fall apart either. It’s a little corny, but my mantra became “if my tree is ok, I am ok”. I learned how to water & feed it and figured out the best place to put it for the right amount of light. It stopped shedding leaves.
The fig tree was a happy plant for several years after that. And I was ok because my plant was ok — I found new routines and rhythms in my altered life, made new traditions with my kids, got divorced, met new people, moved to a new state (w/ my family and tree), rediscovered who I was as a person, and, wonderfully and unexpectedly, forged a supportive and rewarding parenting partnership and friendship with my ex. We made it through that tough time together, that plant and me.
Recently however, my fiddle leaf fig has been struggling again. It’s been losing leaves and has become lopsided — some branches are going gangbusters while others are almost bare and the plant is listing so badly to one side that the whole thing tips over without the weight of water in the pot. This is what it’s looking like these days:
My plant is not ok. And neither am I — I feel as off-balance as my tree looks. I’m burrrrned out. I have been for a few years now. I’ve been trying to power through it, but if you’ve read anything about burnout, you know that approach doesn’t work.
I appreciate so much what I’ve built here at kottke.org — I get to read and learn about all sorts of new things every day, create new ideas and connections for people, and think in public — and I feel incredibly lucky to be able to set my own schedule, be my own boss, and provide for my family. But if you were to go back into the archive for the past several months and read the site closely, you’d see that I’ve been struggling.
Does what I do here make a difference in other people’s lives? In my life? Is this still scratching the creative itch that it used to? And if not, what needs to change? Where does kottke.org end and Jason begin? Who am I without my work? Is the validation I get from the site healthy? Is having to be active on social media healthy? Is having to read the horrible news every day healthy? What else could I be doing here? What could I be doing somewhere else? What good is a blog without a thriving community of other blogs? I’ve tried thinking about these and many other questions while continuing my work here, but I haven’t made much progress; I need time away to gain perspective.
· · ·
So. The plan, as it currently stands, is to take 5-6 months away from the site. I will not be posting anything new here. I won’t be publishing the newsletter. There won’t be a guest editor either — if someone else was publishing here, it would still be on my mind and I’m looking for total awayness here. I’m planning on setting up a system to republish some timeless posts from the archive while I’m away, but that’s not fully in place yet. If you send me email (please do!), it might take me awhile to read it and even longer to reply — I plan to ignore my inbox as much as I can get away with. I probably won’t be on Twitter but will be more active on Instagram if you want to follow me there.
The goal of my time away from the site is resting, resetting, recharging, and figuring out what to do going forward. In this NY Times feature, Alexandra Bell said this about how art is made: “I need some space to think and live and have generative conversations and do things, and then I’ll make something, but I can’t tell you what it is just yet.” That’s the sort of energy I need to tap into for a few months.
Here’s the way I’ve been thinking about it: there’s a passenger ferry that goes from Cape Cod to Nantucket and there’s a stretch of time in the middle of the journey where you can’t see the mainland behind you and can’t yet see the island ahead — you’re just out in the open water. That’s what I need, to be in that middle part — to forget about what I’ve been doing here for so many years without having to think about where I’m going in the future. I need open water and 5-6 months feels like the right amount of time to find it.
· · ·
This is probably a good time to admit that I’m a little terrified about taking this time off. There’s no real roadmap for this, no blueprint for independent creators taking sabbaticals to recharge. The US doesn’t have the social safety net necessary to enable extended breaks from work (or much of anything else, including health care) for people with Weird Internet Careers. I support a lot of individual writers, artists, YouTubers, and bloggers through Substack, Patreon, and other channels, and over the years I’ve seen some of them produce content at a furious pace to keep up their momentum, only to burn out and quit doing the projects that I, and loads of other people, loved. With so many more people pursuing independent work funded directly by readers & viewers these days, this is something all of us, creators and supporters alike, are going to have to think about.
I’ve said this many times over the past 5 years: kottke.org would not be possible today without the incredible membership support I have gotten from the people who read this site. Members have enabled this site to be free for everyone to read, enriching the open web and bucking the trend towards paywalling information online. I hope you will continue to support me in taking this necessary time off.
If, for whatever reason, you would like to pause/suspend your membership until I return, email me and I would be happy to do that for you. You’re also free of course to raise or lower your membership support here if you’d like. Regardless of what you choose to do, I hope I will see you back here in the fall.
· · ·
If you’re curious about what’s on my agenda for the next few months, so am I! I’m leaving on a long-planned family trip soon, but other than that, I do not have any set plans. Suggestions and advice are welcome! I’d like to spend some unrushed time with my kids, who too often see me when I’m stressed out about work. I want to read more books. Watch more good movies. Take more photos. Go on pointless adventures. I want to exercise a little more regularly and figure out how to eat a bit better. Maybe travel some, visit friends or the ocean or both. Bike more. Stare at the walls. I hope to get a little bored. I need to tend to my fiddle leaf fig tree — if my tree is ok, I will be too.
I’m going to miss this — and all of you — more than I probably realize right now, but I’m ready for a break. I’ll see you in a few months.
P.P.S. Big big thanks to the many people I’ve talked to about this over the past few months and years, especially Anil, Alaina, David, Adriana, Tim, Caroline, Matt, Joanna, Meg, Aaron, Edith, Kara, Megan, Anna, Jackson, and Michelle. (Forgive me if I’ve forgotten anyone.) I value your wise counsel and your pointing me, hopefully, in the right direction.
Update: Hello, everyone. I want to thank you all so much for your emails, tweets, and DMs…yesterday was just a little overwhelming. I was apprehensive yesterday morning about publishing this post — I had no idea what the reaction was going to be — and, well, you folks turned it into a party. I’m so grateful for your support, advice, well-wishes, and understanding. I should not have doubted you — if this site is anything, it’s that way because of all of you. Thank you again for the support and I will see you in a few months. ❤
The original plan was to do this in late spring 2020 but….you know.↩
I'm an Apple Maps partisan now after driving all over LA county for a week. It consistently announces all driving directions *before* you are supposed to do them, in contrast to Google Maps, and it handles lane changes and complicated intersections way better.
(Waze is still the goat for when you are running late and have to do tricky shit to beat traffic, like getting off an exit and getting on the next one)
“Man who never wanted to ride in fighter jet accidentally ejects himself”
A man who was terrified by his retirement gift from co-workers — a ride in a fighter jet — grabbed the ejector handle in a panic and was launched through the skies 2,500 feet above the ground, says the official government report on the incident.
The ride on March 20, 2019, had been arranged as a surprise gift to the 64-year-old man, who was leaving his job at a French defense contractor. His co-workers took him to the Saint-Dizier air base, 100 miles east of Paris, and announced he would be flying in a Dassault Rafale B.
The man had never expressed any desire to fly in a fighter jet and had no military aviation experience, said the report by investigators for France’s aviation safety agency…
Safety checks were apparently lax, and he was allowed to adjust his own gear. His helmet strap was unfastened, his oxygen mask unattached, his visor was up, and his seat harness was loose.
On takeoff, the pilot and passenger were subjected to 4 Gs. Leveling off around 2,500 feet, that dropped to negative 0.6 Gs, a feeling of weightlessness. At that point, said a translated version of the report, “the insufficiently strapped and totally surprised passenger” grabbed for the nearest handle — which turned out to activate the ejector seat.
He landed in a field near the German border with only minor injuries. Here is the full story.
“There’s definitely a sci-fi element to it,” Ian Clark, an engineer who worked on Perseverance’s parachute system, said of photographs released on Wednesday. “It exudes otherworldly, doesn’t it?”
Part of the reason NASA had Ingenuity go take a look is to see how all of that equipment held up during the landing process. Data from the photos will inform future missions.
“Perseverance had the best-documented Mars landing in history, with cameras showing everything from parachute inflation to touchdown,” said JPL’s Ian Clark, former Perseverance systems engineer and now Mars Sample Return ascent phase lead. “But Ingenuity’s images offer a different vantage point. If they either reinforce that our systems worked as we think they worked or provide even one dataset of engineering information we can use for Mars Sample Return planning, it will be amazing. And if not, the pictures are still phenomenal and inspiring.”
In the images of the upright backshell and the debris field that resulted from it impacting the surface at about 78 mph (126 kph), the backshell’s protective coating appears to have remained intact during Mars atmospheric entry. Many of the 80 high-strength suspension lines connecting the backshell to the parachute are visible and also appear intact. Spread out and covered in dust, only about a third of the orange-and-white parachute — at 70.5 feet (21.5 meters) wide, it was the biggest ever deployed on Mars — can be seen, but the canopy shows no signs of damage from the supersonic airflow during inflation. Several weeks of analysis will be needed for a more final verdict.
It is really remarkable, the images we’re seeing from Mars, taken by a robotic helicopter.
I am fortunate to be fairly well-known in my field and attend a lot of professional events. I try to meet as many new people and existing contacts as possible during these events, as part of my purpose in attending is to make the contacts I need to do my work. At the last few events, though, I’ve met individuals who really monopolize my time and are resistant to social signals that I want to end the conversation. For example, I’ll say, “Sorry, there’s Bob, I’ve been wanting to talk to him!” and they’ll follow me and join that conversation too. Then I’ll say, “I got to use the restroom, see you later,” and they’ll follow me there and wait outside.
Usually these are people I’ve never met who are in the same industry and are familiar with my work, but sometimes I have a minor professional connection with them (for example, my old company was their current company’s customer, and we were in the same meeting once two years ago). Occasionally they have a purpose for the the conversation, such as wanting a job at my company or needing help with a project, but usually they are just fans of my work who want to hang out with me but don’t have anything specific to say about it.
Even worse, people have started to approach me when I’m walking somewhere nearby the event, ask me where I’m going, and then join me. This gets awkward if I’m doing something personal. I even once ended up not getting something I needed at the drugstore because someone had followed me despite my protests, and I didn’t want them to know about the medical problem I needed it for. I’ve also had people sit down with me at an empty seat at a restaurant I’m eating at without asking, including once when I was celebrating my anniversary with my boyfriend!
Can you think of some polite but direct ways to say “please stop following me,” “I want to end this conversation right now,” and “I want to do what I’m doing right now alone”? I don’t want to be rude, as it’s a small industry and word gets around, but this is really impacting my ability to do my work.
I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.
I’ve been reading David Whyte’s Consolations over the past couple of weeks, skipping around, seeking illumination, counsel, and understanding for some of life’s present challenges. The chapter on giving was particularly resonant; here’s an excerpt:
Giving means paying attention and creating imaginative contact with the one to whom we are giving; it is a form of attention itself, a way of acknowledging and giving thanks for lives other than our own.
The first step in giving may be to create a budget, to make a list or to browse a shopfront or the web, but the essential deed is done through the door of contemplation: of the person, the charity, the cause, finding the essence of the need, the person or the relationship. Out of this image comes the surprise of understanding and the ability again to surprise the recipient by showing that someone else understands them and, through a display of virtuosity, can even identify needs they cannot admit themselves. The full genius of gift-giving is found when we give what a person does not fully feel they deserve, but that does not overstretch the point; it is the appropriate but surprising next step in their lives. It disarms and moves and empowers all at once, while gratifying the one who gives beyond most everyday satisfactions.
To give is to make an imaginative journey and put oneself in the body, the mind and the anticipation of another. To give is to make our own identities more real in the world by committing to something specific in the other person and something tangible that could represent that quality. To give is also to carry out the difficult task of putting something of our own essence in what we have given. The perfect gift may be tiny and inexpensive, but accompanied by a note that moves the recipient; the perfect gift may be enormous, extravagant, expensive and jaw-dropping as a courageous act of flamboyance and devil-may-care love, but to give appropriately always involves a tiny act of courage, a step of coming to meet, of saying I see you, and appreciate you and am also making an implicit promise for the future.
See also Friendship, an essay of Whyte’s I revisit every few months.
ps if you're a weed person you gotta watch the first half of this doc, wow wow wow (it gets weird in the second half when they talk about psilocybin)
Documentaries about mushrooms like Fantastic Fungi are interesting but it turns out that short documentaries about how mushroom documentaries are made are fascinating as well. For this short video, Wired talked to Louie Schwartzberg about how mushroom time lapses are filmed. I don’t know why I assumed they filmed these outside…of course they are done indoors to help control lighting, weather, and other factors (like rogue wildlife). And after decades of working on nature films, Schwartzberg has integrated his process deeply into his life:
I realized I’ve turned it into a spiritual practice. It actually literally gets me up in the morning because as soon as I’m out of bed, I’m thinking ooh, “I wonder what the flower did last night? Is it still in frame? Is it in focus?”
I have to imagine what the framing and the composition is going to look like tomorrow, or two days from now, or a week from now. That is a transformational experience because you have to put your mind into the mindset and the intention of the flower or the fungi, thinking where it’s going to grow, how big will it get. And if you’re right, boy, it’s a rush. If you’re wrong, it means you just gotta do it all over again.
Last week I asked about the most astounding first impression you’ve seen made by a new coworker. Here are some of my favorite stories you shared.
1. The axe
We had a guy apply for a staff job. His very first day he was helping clean up brush along the edge of a mountain biking course. One of the other staff said “when you’re done with that axe, I need it,” and the new guy proceeded to say “OK” and THROW THE AXE AT HIM. It went within a yard of his torso. New guy’s first day was his last day. He protested that he didn’t mean to hurt anyone, he just didn’t think about the risk, and was told “Look, we know you didn’t mean it, but you’re so stupid you’re dangerous.”
2. The beneficiary
New hire insisted on naming himself as the beneficiary on his life insurance policy “in case I’m around when it pays out.”
3. The men
Years ago I worked in the cataloging department of a library. No public there at all, ever, just staff. Our New Hire had been at work about 2 hours when she asked, “Where are the men?” “uh, what men?” we replied. “MEN! I took this job so I could meet MEN!” She marched to her desk, gathered up her belongings, and stormed out, never to return.
4. The dinner
We had a new hire and there was a work dinner with clients his first week.
He got loudly drunk and started asking “okay.. so who’s f—king who at this table? I need to know the lay (ha ha) of the land.”
At times, I’ve felt like my company was too slow dealing with extremely problematic employees. But they moved fairly quickly in this case.
5. The security guard
I work at a commercial property management company and we have security guards on duty 24/7. We hired a guard to start on a Thursday at midnight who no-called no showed. He came into the office the next day with a friend, asked me for some Gatorade and told me he and his friend would be working together (that’s . . . not how it works).
We told him to go the security desk and train in if he still wanted to work, and he agreed. He went to the desk and told the guard on duty he would be back in an hour because he had to “take care of something” and never came back. We called him and told him it wasn’t going to work out, so he called everyone in the company he could get a number for and told him we couldn’t fire him before he started.
6. The oblivious new hire
Manager hired someone from a conference without conducting any interviews. First day she walks up to the administrative assistant and asks for a list of who she gets to “boss around” (in those terms).
(Then later, when a small local conference took place she introduced herself as the “Improved [name of former person in that position]” … to the person who used to be in that position and had left to a different local job which was a step up in terms of position.)
Not great at reading a room.
7. The shoes
I was wearing slides that had a bit of fluff over the toes. New hire yelped when she saw them, bent down, AND PROCEEDED TO PET them. It was both horrifying and delightful (as I knew it would be a funny work story for years). It was 22 years ago and it’s still a top story.
8. The disaster
The New Guy sat behind me, in the other half of the shared cubicle.
Day 1: He spent his entire day making a chart on graph paper, of every writing implement that the last person had left on/in that desk, with a column for each writing implement’s nickname, long description, and examples of solid and dashed lines. This despite me giving him the standard training materials and a practice assignment to complete.
Day 2: First thing in the morning he asked me a lot of questions, then told me my answers to each was wrong – in each instance running down his whole resume of how he’d done things “in my last 20 jobs” (the guy wasn’t old enough to have had 20 jobs unless the average tenure was +/- 3 months.) After he was done with me he moved on to my supervisor in the next cubicle, who had heard the whole thing and repeated everything I told him. After lunch he moved on to one of the higher-ups in the big offices, barging in on a closed door to repeat all the questions and complain about our previous answers. That guy marched him back to his desk, told him not to do that again, and to direct all his questions to me.
Day 3: He brought in a radio and played it loudly. I told him that wouldn’t go over well in that firm. He told me I was wrong. 5 minutes later people from all over the office started coming by to complain. He would turn the radio down, then gradually inch it up again to loud. The guy from the closed office came and yanked the cord out and walked away with the radio.
Day 4: The partner in charge of the office announced a full staff meeting in half an hour. New Guy decided to impress him by making coffee for everyone. But he didn’t put the coffee pots under the machines. A coffee river started rolling by our cubicles and everybody but New Guy rushed in with paper towels.
Day 5: New Guy played video games all day. I didn’t do anything about it because at least he was quiet and not flooding the office. Around 3 PM he handed in his two weeks notice. The boss said that’s ok, you can leave today and not come back. New Guy applied for unemployment. Maybe that was the plan all along.
When I was cleaning up his space for the next guy, I found a little notebook in which he’d recorded his judgements about each of us coworkers. They weren’t kind. Leaving that behind was probably also intentional.
9. The MLM
When we hired a new rep for a call center I used to manage, she spent the better part of her first week pushing her awful jewelry MLM to everyone in the office. She didn’t understand what she was doing wrong (despite being shown in our handbook that sales of any kind (think: Girl Scout Cookies or fundraisers not sponsored by the company) were not allowed.
It might not have been so bad, but she was terribly pushy, saying things like “I know for a fact everyone here can afford $5!”, and had told another new hire during orientation that she mainly got this job to obtain a “new customer base”. She refused to stop harassing others with her toxic pyramid scheme (many who would be ON the phone with a customer. She would tell them to put them on hold briefly so she could give them the newest catalogue). Thankfully she left before being shown the door, probably because she realized she wasn’t going to make a dime in this office.
10. The carpet glue
Many moons ago, I worked for a company that rented office space on the third floor of a building that was showing its age. In particular, the elevator made some weird noises. The certificate in the elevator was also not up to date, although we were told that the current certificate was on file somewhere. We had a new hire, let’s call him Bo, who was especially vocal about the elevator.
One night in his first month of work, Bo was especially determined to take a smoke break. Unfortunately, the building owner was replacing the carpet. At the time of Bo’s smoke break, the carpet layers were replacing the carpet on the one and only staircase. Bo refused to use the elevator and he REALLY wanted his smoke break, so he decided to use the stairs anyway. The stairs that were covered with super sticky, smelly carpet glue. He walked through the glue-covered stairs, got to the second floor, and realized that his shoes are now gross. He decides to use the second floor bathroom to try to clean them. The carpet has already been replaced on the second floor, so he and his glue-covered shoes are now walking on brand new carpet. The carpet layers were trying to get him to stop but did not speak English; they put a carpet scrap down on the floor in front of him so he could wipe his shoes off. He JUMPED OVER the scrap and continued to the bathroom, where he apparently made another mess.
Building management was obviously not happy and complained to my boss. Boss was out of town and asked me to let Bo go before he got back. (There had been other issues involving Bo’s attitude, so it was not the first strike, just the funniest.)
11. The cocaine queen
Working as Corp Trainer at a call center. CEO comes storming down to our offices asking who owns a car with a car wrap on the hood that says “Cocaine Queen.” We find out whose car it is and tell them they can’t park the car in the office parking lot because it isn’t appropriate. She gets indignant and tells us that it is her “stage name” she worked nights as an exotic dancer. When we tell her that is fine, but it can’t be parked in the parking lot, she tells us that she picks her kids up from school and no one has ever said it wasn’t appropriate.
12. The geese
This wasn’t their fault at all but I’ve never forgotten it. I happened to look out the window as one of the new hires was walking towards the building. He noticed that there were geese in the fountain and detoured to go look at them. They had nested and if you know anything about Canadian geese, they can be vicious! The geese started chasing him, he freaked out, ran around to get away from them, slipped on the geese poop, landed on his back in the grass, and had 4 geese honking at him. Poor guy came in covered in poop and wet grass. I told him to go home and we would try again tomorrow.
13. The hero
We hired a new volunteer manager at my mid-sized nonprofit. Young guy, not completely new to work but only a couple years out of school. His role has very little authority built in – he recruits volunteers, gives them the orientation spiel, and then hands them off to the department manager where they’ll be working. Well his first group volunteer orientation comes around and because Covid, it’s being held on Zoom. Because it’s New Guy’s first one, our CEO has logged in to say hello and whatnot. Well apparently CEO logged in from his phone in his vehicle because New Guy stops the orientation and PUBLICLY ASKS HIS BOSS’S BOSS’S BOSS’S BOSS NOT TO ZOOM WHILE DRIVING. He did, all is well, and I’ve never been so impressed with someone in my life!
14. The skunk
This happened to me – first day of new job and my dog got sprayed by a skunk that morning. You know how bad skunk smell is, I showered multiple times, sprayed air freshener on my clothes, etc. I knew it was still on me but it was my first day and I was young and so scared to call and say I wasn’t going to show up. I thought I would look like a flake. So I went and I could immediately tell how overpowering it was. I swear, people looked like they wanted to vomit as soon as I got close to them. I guess they were too polite to say anything, and I was just trying to pretend it wasn’t happening. Manager called me in the office and told me to go home. He was nice about it. When I went back the next day I could still smell the skunk smell lingering in my chair / office area. They must have hated me! No one ever said anything. I am gone from there now, but I always wonder if people at the office thought of me as Skunk Lady.
15. The office supplies
So many years ago I hired a new receptionist (we can call her Erma) to manage our busy front office. Erma interviewed very well with myself and the rest of the hiring team and had prior experience that included some great references.
One of the receptionist’s responsibilities were ordering office supplies for the company. Erma was provided with an account with a local office supply company and could order whatever was needed within reason. Anything over a certain amount, or including items needing special approval, would trigger and e-mail asking for me to review and provide approval. Erma went through training on how to order office supplies and was given a list of items we normally stock along with our monthly supply budget. The former receptionist who was doing most of Erma’s training was very pleased with her positive attitude and how quickly she seemed to be picking up on her new tasks. No red flags at all.
Fast forward a week and Erma’s first day after her finishing her training was off to a good start. She was showed up a little early and was busy rearranging her new work area and making it her own. She said she noticed that there were a few things that would make her life easier such as a pop up post it note dispenser and clip boards to make it easier for candidates coming in to complete paperwork. I told her that I was totally fine with that and to go ahead and order what she needed. Later on that day I get an e-mail from the supplier….Erma had ordered…. an expensive new chair for herself, a side desk, a lamp, a coat rack, a computer stand, an ergonomic keyboard, a light up bathroom mirror, pink glitter pens, pink chair cover, foot rest, artwork for the wall, a pink fuzzy rug, about 20 bags of candy, and a candy dish, a bunch of fancy lotions and soaps along with matching dispensers… and those are the items I remember!! The invoice was several thousands of dollars.
I thought this has to be an accident. So I approached her on it and she said oh no it was very much her doing. I explained to her why this was not ok as it was way over budget and included many items that require special approval such as furniture and artwork and she pitched a fit! How can she work in this environment? Her chair was too high, the office was drab, the pens all blue and black… lack of a candy dish is soooooo uninviting…. and forcing her to work in such an environment would be bad for her health. I showed her how her chair was adjustable and told her I was fine if she wanted the special pens and a couple of bags of candy, but we just did not have the budget, or the authority to purchase those other items. Corporate had a specific “look” for the office and well pink fuzzy rugs were not part of our corporate colors or their vision. She had a full-blown toddler fit and said she could not work with such a micromanager and she left. The next day she tried to show up to work like nothing happened. Security turned her away at the door. A few months later she actually put me down as a reference for a new job. I told them that I was not comfortable being a reference for her. I will never forget Erma!
16. The terrible judgment
I had to train a new accountant for another manufacturing plant in our company. He came down to our company was immediately set everyone’s back up because he knew everything about everything and WOULD NOT SHUT UP. And I’m talking stuff he literally didn’t know anything about, like arguing with the middle aged lady with 2 kids about how much it costs to raise children, him being a 21 year old unmarried just out of college young man. He rearranged the furniture in my office because he felt “trapped” behind the L-shaped desk during training, and would randomly make barnyard animal noises while he was working on the computer (like random moos, or snorting like a pig or whatever..appropo of nothing, just like a tic or something). I muddled through the training steadfastly ignoring his utter weirdness, just telling myself everyone is different, it’s not on me to judge.
He went back to the plant after training, and OH BOY. Apparently he unplugged his desk phone because “people kept calling him and he didn’t want to have to figure out the answers” he was told multiple times by multiple people, up to the plant manager that he had to leave it plugged in, and he just kept unplugging it each day. After a couple weeks he went straight to the plant manager (this was an entry level accounting position) and demanded a raise, because he was so much smarter than everyone else he was working with. He caused such a ruckus over this that he was eventually frog marched out the plant by security and told never to return. And this is a company where previous employees might stop by and hang with old coworkers, ie super chill. After all this went down a couple of us did some after the fact digging and found his FB page which was a veritable hotbed of wackadoodle conspiracy theories and nonsense. Turns out his first impression was indeed correct.
17. The mistake
I was in my 20s, working at a new job in marketing. I had recently read a memoir of someone who seemed confident and funny, if a little bit of a mess, and she was relating tales from her previous jobs. For some reason, I thought that using some of her language at work would help me portray the image of myself that I wanted–smart, funny, perceptive, a little irreverent. So, in a meeting with my boss and a couple other people, I offered an insightful critique of a proposed marketing campaign: “I think this would be us blowing our wad too early.”
18. The student worker
I was asked to see if I could find the brand new student worker who was supposed to be staffing a front line desk, as everyone who walked past noticed no one was sitting there. I happened to go around the desk- and discovered her sitting underneath the desk, absorbed with her phone. (She’d taken off her shoes, for an added touch.) I politely asked her to sit in the chair. She climbed out from under the desk, said something about not feeling “people-y” today, and sat in the chair, eyes never leaving her phone.
19. The temp
We had a temp-to-hire in an office setting that seemed normal in a short interview, but the crazy came out strong in her first week. She was stressed out her first morning about having left her bird home alone all day. She talked about having connections to the mob. She also spent a fair amount of time complaining about the work she had to do – which was exactly the tasks and responsibilities discussed in the interview.
And then about day 3, she said she was a medium and told a coworker she had a message for them from a dead relative, but would only relay the message if the coworker went to lunch with her. A little emotional blackmail anyone?
Fortunately, she only lasted a week. But what a week it was!
20. The coding genius
Someone joined my team fresh out of school. A few months into it he said he was going to teach himself to code to figure out a problem that was pretty complicated. I was sort of like “yeah, OK, cool” and figured he’d take months to do it, never do it, or it was just the start of a longer learning process.
I was wrong.
Somehow he self-taught a coding language in a week and googled all of the glitches and hitches that would’ve stopped most senior people in their tracks.
He realized he had a huge talent for it and eventually left to be more data focused.
I clearly could have written that better, since when I explained to my wife why I was asking who Dwight Shrute was she laughed at how far the character is from a match to my personality. I blame writing the letter in a hurry and editing for a thorough list of examples and brevity rather than tone or context. I see how statements like “I’m not particularly self-conscious” could make it sound like I’m being intentionally conspicuous rather than merely being willing to explain why I’m in stance to write on a low counter or mop a floor.
Anyway, I’ll probably continue some of it since my current job (like many in my past) is pretty solitary, and I still find that incorporating the movements I am already familiar with frequently makes tasks easier, more ergonomic, or faster for me. I started incorporating most of these movements to solve specific practical problems. To use the fall as an example, I needed to basically get low enough to have a shoulder on the floor dozens of times per grocery night shift to pull products on the bottom shelf from the back to the front, and I found that a sit-down back fall was quicker and less fatiguing (for me) than other techniques I tried. The least practical things I do with these at work are things like doing a stance to vary my position to fight hip stiffness (what I had in mind when I made a comment about keeping muscles active), doing a technique or form as a stress reliever/brain break/stim (I’m likely autistic), or killing time around the corner when the work is done but we need to stay a few more minutes in case there’s a last second forklift delivery. I’ll probably trade that last one for something else, but I’ll continue doing the stimming and stiffness examples for the time being.
That said, I will certainly be toning it down. That comments section made it clear that martial arts techniques have too much risk of going beyond my usual “quirky geek” vibe and into “sideshow geek” or “Spongebob in karate gear at the Krusty Krab” territory. I’ll avoid the gentle falls anywhere anyone could possibly be in eyeshot with less than 10 seconds notice (easy at my current job since I don’t take falls anyway due to product contamination concerns and obstacles), and I’ll do the same with forms. I didn’t do those where people could see anyway since I try hard not to be disruptive (and forms are something I actually do get self-conscious about), but I’m increasing my safety margin. I’ll also try to reduce the frequency of stances around people, but there really are times when I need a position between standing and crouching or a way to generate some pushing power or something else where they would be practical for my non-office job. I’ll think about other ways to fill the role of martial arts in my solutions to practical, ergonomic, and stimming problems, but it’ll be a slow process to come up with solutions and retrain my body not to default to these motions in the cases I decide it’s worth it.
In short, message received, commenters, but it’ll be a slow process to tone most of it down.
How do I give an effective peer review of a coworker who I do not like personally and professionally?
We work in a busy medical clinic and our doctors see 30-60 patients a day. We fill a niche need (think specialized pharmacy, but not quite). There are three of us in this location: Lana (she/her), who is the trainer for the 13 other locations, Mike (he/him), and me (she/her.)
Mike got yelled at by a customer, and took it out on me because I hadn’t put notes in. When I asked him to stop shouting at me, he shouted that he was NOT shouting at me. He pouted and sulked for 14 minutes. He left work for the rest of the day without saying anything to Lana or me. Our direct supervisor is in the building maybe once every 10 days.
Mike is openly angry with me and about 20 % of patients. He has flounced off the retail floor saying, “I won’t talk to you if you’re being like that” or “No need to get an attitude with me!” to customers. He will burp audibly in public, and not say excuse me. He had explosive diarrhea in the employee bathroom and left poo all over the seat. Another employee called housekeeping to clean up his literal sh*t. He suffers from depression and gets irrationally angry for small reasons. Yes, I have read most of your posts on accommodating coworkers with mental illness. About once a week, he will refuse to work with a returning patient because of his bad experience with them. He believes in the silent treatment and noticeably pouts.
He has sleep apnea and doesn’t wear his C-Pap machine, so he is often tired when he comes in and routinely falls asleep in his chair at work. I’m talking closed eyes, light snoring. The doctor’s techs and patients apologize for waking him. At work! An actual text message he sent at 8:37 am for his 8:30 shift read: “Hey team. Just about made it to the highway before realizing my phone was sitting on my kitchen table. Too many irons in the fire to be without it today. Sowwy.” Then followed by: “Be there in 12ish.” He arrived at 9:08 am.
Our supervisor Chad did talk to Mike about his tardiness after our doctors complained. The next day, Mike called out sick. I have only worked here a year, and there has never been a week where he is on time. No, it’s not cultural. Mike’s a middle-aged white guy. Yes, Chad is ineffective, because there is no consequence for Mike’s continued tardiness.
It is tough to find a qualified person to fill our niche position, so firing Mike would put a severe work burden on Lana and me. Our location is the busiest location, doing over $1.5 million in sales for the year.
I have been asked to do peer reviews for Lana and Mike. We are asked to evaluate strengths, weaknesses, and how each employee meets the seven listed corporate values. Do I just damn with faint praise? “Mike meets expectations.” Or do I say the truth? “Mike’s mood and mental health issues burden the us and make patients feel unwelcome?
Don’t damn him with faint praise! That’ll just make it easier for Chad to go on not managing him.
Frankly, Chad’s management negligence sounds severe enough that he may not take any action no matter what you say — but this is as clear-cut an opportunity to give input on Mike as you’re likely to get, and you should take advantage of it. If you don’t, you’re basically resigning yourself to living with Mike as he is — and while that might ultimately be where things end up, there’s no point in starting there without at least trying to highlight what’s going on. Plus, managers like Chad often take the path of least resistance; make his current course of non-action more painful by laying out all the problems Mike is causing and he might be nudged into doing something.
That said, you should keep your feedback factual and leave Mike’s mental health out of it. If Mike wants to raise his mental health with Chad and ask for reasonable accommodations, he can do that (although yelling at people and sleeping around customers are unlikely to be considered reasonable accommodations). But his mental health is his to raise; you should keep your feedback focused on what you’re seeing at work, without speculating on the causes.
It’s absolutely fair game — and, I’d argue, necessary — to point out that Mike yells at customers, yells at you, sulks when asked to stop shouting, is angry with 20% of customers, leaves work in the middle of the day without saying anything, refuses to work with returning patients who he doesn’t like, gives people the silent treatment, sleeps at work and in front of customers, is routinely late, and is generally obstreperous and difficult to work with. In fact, to really illustrate what’s going on, I’d group your feedback into three categories — behavior with customers, behavior with coworkers, and reliability — and then list the relevant concerns under each area.
I wouldn’t bother with the burping because it’s not on the same scale as the rest of the issues. The same goes for the toilet incident, which although gross and unacceptable hasn’t been repeated. Including those introduces the risk that you’ll sound like you’re listing anything and everything you don’t like about Mike; you’ll be more credible if you stick to the obvious and severe work issues above. They’re plenty on their own.
I’d begin your written feedback with something like, “Mike’s behavior at work is causing significant difficulties for his colleagues and for our customers, and has made our working environment unpleasant and hard to tolerate. We are at the point where we cannot manage around these problems on our end, and we need a serious and sustained management intervention to resolve the situation.” Then go on to list your three categories and the specifics under each of them, and then end by again stressing the need for solutions.
Also, while I know you said that firing Mike would put a severe work burden on you and Lana, it’s worth considering how that compares to the severe work burden Mike is putting on you both now. There’s a good chance that not being yelled at, not having someone yell at and alienate customers, and not counting on someone who’s not going to show up would go a long way toward making up for whatever gap Mike’s absence would leave. He’s not there or reliable now much of the time anyway! If that were made that permanent and you could subtract all the yelling and attitude issues you’ve got to deal with now, you might come out ahead.
And keep in mind that there’s never any guarantee that any coworker will stay. For all we know, Lana could leave tomorrow if the Mike problems aren’t dealt with — and then you’d be down Lana and still have to deal with Mike. Of the two, it’s better to lose Mike.
Last, if the market where you are is so tight that you’d struggle to replace someone who left, that’s a great sign that you yourself might have an easy time walking away from this situation and into a better job, one with a manager who actually manages. Give that some thought.
PLEASE click on 1 and 2. It's the funniest research I've seen in forever. WHAT DO BRITISH PEOPLE CALL ZITI?!?!?!? How can we fix the gender equality gap in KATANA OBSESSIONS?? lololololo i will never stop laughing
i think you will like this, but i also think that you might not like it or that you will think it's fine
John Green shares his technique for roasting potatoes while fighting “the creeping sense of dread” that many of us may be experiencing right now.
All right, let’s make some potatoes. You want enough potatoes that they will sustain the sack of flesh that contains your soul for several hours. And ideally you want these little red potatoes, which you then cut into sixths — or eighths if they’re too big. Don’t overthink the size of your potato wedges but also don’t underthink it. This is the key not just for cooking but also for most things.
From Veritasium, a video about an experiment in evolution that’s been running continuously for more than 33 years.1The LTEE (the E. coli long-term evolution experiment) was started with 12 identical bacterial populations in 1988 and as of early 2020, they have reached 73,500 generations (the equivalent of 1.5 to 2 million years in human generational terms). When you can fast-forward evolution while also preserving past generations (the bacteria can be easily frozen and reanimated), you can discover some surprising things about it.
Well, sort of. As you will learn in the video, the bacteria can be frozen without damaging them or ending the experiment, so the experiment was interrupted for 6 months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But they’re back at it now.↩
The winners of the Best Illusion of the Year Contest for 2021 have been announced and among the top 3, the one that really baked my noodle is the second place winner, Michael A. Cohen’s Changing Room Illusion:
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Back in March 2021, I wrote about cascatelli, the new pasta shape invented by Dan Pashman. Eater recently visited the Sfoglini factory to see how cascatelli (and all of their other pastas) are made. Interesting tidbit from the video: Sfoglini originally thought they would sell 5000 boxes and be done, but cascatelli is now the company’s third-best-selling pasta with no signs of slowing down. (thx, david)
It’s the Thursday “ask the readers” question. A reader writes:
So this is an enragingly dumb breach of basic manners and I need to know I’m not crazy. I’m technically in an executive role but I don’t have authority over people, just finances, but I was told I should have “acted like a better manager” during this whole fracas. I kind of can’t believe someone would do something like this, especially since our office finally got 100% vaxxed (group decision, everyone pulled together, very cool) and we’ve had to be so careful about even breathing near one another for the last two years.
My coworker, “Jessie,” is pregnant and decided she wanted to film a reaction video announcement telling everyone in our office. This is a marketing firm, but we’re a small satellite office so corporate encourages us to do a lot of “meet the staff” and “it’s Tiffany’s Birthday” type sharing posts to attract clients. We’ve had problems before with the higher-ups encouraging some oversharing, and just a LOT of bad personal boundaries in the office. I feel like this inspired Jessie and another coworker, “Daniela,” to do this pregnancy announcement by tossing people a positive pregnancy test so they could film the reactions.
Two quick things:
A positive pregnancy test is a used pregnancy test, which means it was urinated on. I used to be a lab tech before I made a career switch so yes, even if it was wiped down with the cap on, it still has urine on it, and if it was a test from home that she brought with her it, bacteria and other unpleasantness could be incubating inside the plastic.
We just spent two years disinfecting our mail.
Jessie started by tossing the used pregnancy test to “Abby,” who flung it when she realized what it was and yelled “oh gross,” which got a lot of people’s attention and “ruined” Jessie’s announcement. It’s kind of office knowledge that Abby is a germophobe so while part of me gets that Jessie was excited and maybe didn’t think things through, the rest of me feels like this was a really unfair position to put Abby in, along with all the other staff she was planning to throw a used peed-on pregnancy test at.
Jessie and Daniela got super upset and offended and everyone in the cubicle block started arguing. Because there were no managers or HR on site that day, and I would be the next “ranking” executive, I stepped in and defused the situation as best I could.
I pulled Jessie and Daniela aside and congratulated Jessie. But here’s the part everyone’s mad at. I told them it’s never okay to hand someone something they urinated on, regardless of if they wiped it down and put the cap back on it. I said we’re excited for Jessie but that wasn’t okay and to throw the test out or take it home.
By the time the managers and HR got back in office, they were told multiple versions of the whole thing. For the record, they’re also all men. I got called in to explain what I saw. HR told me they’re considering disciplinary actions for Abby and anybody else who “reacted poorly” unless they publicly apologize to Jessie. I told them that was a terrible idea and, not knowing what else to do, I called corporate HR and relayed the situation to our female head of HR, outlining what I saw, who said what, and the low-level bullying that Abby’s been subjected to now. (If someone asks Jessie about her pregnancy and she knows Abby’s in earshot, she’ll say loudly, “Oh, well I guess my baby is GROSS according to SOME PEOPLE.”) Corporate HR (which is separate from our on-site HR) was horrified and put out a company-wide memo about keeping bodily fluids to yourself.
Nobody’s really doing anything about how badly Abby’s getting bullied, and several of us (me included) are still being encouraged to write Jessie an apology letter, which I won’t do. I get that a lot of people feel like they need to perform for social media, but I’m still stuck on the science and the double standard of it all. If I threw anything with my urine or bodily fluids on it other than a pregnancy test at coworker, people would be livid. So I guess my question is: WTF do I do?
I have a question about work attire and what I consider my “work uniform.”
I work in a professional office of about 12 people. We’re in a small town and therefore are a bit more casual. The office dress code is officially business casual, and we have casual Fridays where most people, including our boss and owner of the business, wear jeans. I work as an admin assistant/receptionist, so I have a more front-facing position than anyone but the boss and his associates, who receive clients. No one has ever had any issues about the way I dress until recently.
I recently discovered this dress. I bought it in black, and I fell in love with it because I think it looks put-together enough for work while also being insanely comfortable. I also learned that the dress brand sponsors a 100 day challenge, where people wear the dress 100 days in a row and document it, then can submit photos for a gift card. I admit that I love the brand so much that the gift card incentive was enough to clinch it for me, but I also like the idea of investing in more sustainable pieces and having a professional yet comfortable “work uniform.”
I started the challenge, and when at work I usually put it together with tights and nice flats or booties, and I throw a cardigan or jacket over top, and accessorize with different jewelry and scarves. Everything I wear with the dress is what I would wear (and have already worn) to work before the challenge. It honestly feels dressier than my previous work clothes, but I feel like it fits the vibe for our office. I didn’t say anything about the challenge except to my husband and some friends, so no one at work knew. I made it to Day 37 before anyone said something.
Jan is our office manager, and she’s been known to be a bit of a busybody. She’s not a direct supervisor (we all report to Owner/Boss) but she sometimes acts like one because she does all the ordering for the business, and she also does payroll. She’s also a friend of the owner’s mom, so I think she feels like she can report back to our boss about issues she perceives in the office? She caught me in the break room a week ago Frdiay and said, “Wow, you really like that dress, you wear it a lot.” I sort of responded with a vague, “Yep, it’s a great dress.” She then went on to question why I wasn’t wearing jeans, like the rest of the office. I said something like, “Oh, this dress is way more comfortable to me than jeans,” which is totally true. Plus, casual Fridays aren’t “you must wear jeans” Friday. Just an option to be more casual, and sometimes the boss participates but sometimes not. I figured it was always up to me if I wanted to dress down. Jan made a couple more comments about how she’d seen me wear the dress a lot lately, and I realized she was going to fixate on this (she does this for other things, too!) so I decided to just tell her about my challenge, figuring it’d get her off my back. I said something to the effect of, I was doing a sustainability challenge and wearing the same dress 100 days in a row, so she’d see me wearing it a lot of different ways.
Well, it backfired spectacularly. The following Monday I was called into my boss’s office and he looked really uncomfortable but said he had to talk to me about how I presented myself at work. I immediately began to panic internally that I’d said or done something inappropriate but then he said, “Jan tells me you wear the same thing to work every day, and she has concerns about hygiene.”
I was kind of stunned, so I stammered out, “What concerns?” He hemmed and hawed (clearly he didn’t feel comfortable talking about my dress, which … same) and finally I realized that when I told Jan about my challenge, she assumed that I wasn’t washing it for 100 days. I was mortified but I rushed to explain that while yes, I am currently wearing the same dress every day, I do wash it and I take a lot of care with my presentation. I didn’t want to outright ask if I stank at work but Alison, I know I don’t. My husband would have noooo problem telling me if I did before I left for work in the morning. This was clearly Jan misrepresenting the issue.
I thought that once my boss understood that I was washing the dress, and if there were no issues with my hygiene or the dress itself, then we could just drop the issue. He seemed relieved when I explained, then said, “Well, just to be on the safe side, probably best to vary things up.”
I was stunned and frankly, insulted. This was coming from the man who wears the same sports coat to work every day. That’s none of my business, and frankly, I figure if I want to wear the same dress every day, and change things up with accessories and other pieces of clothing, that should be none of his business. For all he knows, I could have seven identical dresses and wear a different one every day. I was still rattled so I just said “Mhmm” and got back to work.
But then I got home and got really upset. The challenge isn’t the issue—I can always put on the dress when I’m home from work, which is what I’ve been doing this past week. But I liked the way I dressed, I was comfortable, and I thought the dress looked good. I feel like Jan, for whatever reason, didn’t like that I was wearing a dress on casual Friday (when everyone else was wearing jeans) and decided to make a mountain out of a molehill by going to our boss with (unfounded??) concerns rather than talking to me about it first. (She hasn’t said a single thing to me since about my clothes, but she gave me what I thought was a smug look when I came in on Tuesday wearing something else.) My husband says I should just do as my boss says, but I feel like this is a ridiculous request and since there isn’t a real issue with what I wear, I kind of want to keep wearing my dress anyway. But I also don’t want to get in trouble.
We don’t have HR (small company) but I feel like this is absurd. Can I really get in trouble for continuing to wear my dress every day? Should I do as my boss suggested and vary things up to “be on the safe side”? Does that mean I can maybe get away with wearing my dress some days? Should I talk to Jan and explain that I do wash it frequently? I would really love to go back to wearing my comfortable and classy dress to work, without it being an issue.
Jan’s a real busybody.
If you’re clean and you look professional, who cares? Many, many men wear identical outfits every day and no one comments. Jan and your boss are making an issue of this because you’re a woman, whether they realize that or not. I can practically guarantee you that if Jan complained that Bob in Accounting wore the same suit every day, your boss would not have spoken to Bob about it.
I think you should keep wearing the dress if it’s important to you. But in theory your boss can indeed tell you that you need to change it up, or penalize you in some way if you don’t. Theoretically, you could then have a lawyer help you argue that you were being subjected to different rules based on gender. Whether you’d want to expend the money and energy on that is a different question, as is how it might affect things between you and your boss. Sometimes people decide it’s worth it, and sometimes they don’t.
However, I think it’s likely that your boss won’t take it that far. He doesn’t sound like he really cares about the dress himself; it sounds like he’s just trying to appease Jan. If you make it clear that by appeasing Jan he’ll create a different problem he’ll need to deal with (you) and allude to how gendered this is, there’s a pretty good chance that he’ll back off.
Go back and talk to him again and say, “I was surprised by our conversation, because I’m confident that my appearance is professional and polished. Lots of people wear identical items multiple days in a row — men with suit jackets, for instance. I take a lot of care with my appearance and put a lot of thought into accessories and my presentation overall. I don’t think a man would be told he needed to vary his suits, so I don’t think I should be told I need to vary mine. However, I didn’t want you to think I was simply ignoring our conversation.”
If he pushes back, you could say, “I want to make sure I’m clear: Are you telling me that I need to change what I’m wearing even though I look professional and am in compliance with our dress code, just because Jan thinks I should look different each day?” You might also ask whether men in the office will be told the same thing about varying their blazers.
I’m betting that your boss hadn’t thought this through and was just trying to make the situation go away … and that once you push back, he’ll backtrack. But if he doesn’t, then you’ll have to decide how much capital you want to spend and how okay you are with things becoming more contentious.
This is bait for us. It's a fun read, it's getting some viral traction, but after sleeping on it, I have to consider the possibility that she's an unreliable narrator.
Here are my flags: -The biggest one is that she doesn't think that slurping a foam out of a plaster cast replica of the chef's mouth is funny!!!!!! Spidey sense engaged -She's a food blogger but didn't photograph the 27 courses. I googled this restaurant and plenty of people have posted all the courses, there is clearly plenty of food and multiple protein courses, and she's not showing her work here -Lastly, she has a section on her website for travel guides for various cities. There's only one city. The only city she has a travel guide for... is Philly. We have a taste problem, not a restaurant problem.
anyway this is a fun meaningless thing to fight about so let's have at it
Geraldine DeRuiter, aka The Everywhereist, documents a high-concept fine-dining meal that, for reasons yet unexplained, went all kinds of wrong.
It’s as though someone had read about food and restaurants, but had never experienced either, and this was their attempt to recreate it.
What followed was a 27-course meal (note that “course” and “meal” and “27” are being used liberally here) which spanned 4.5 hours and made me feel like I was a character in a Dickensian novel. Because — I cannot impart this enough — there was nothing even close to an actual meal served. Some “courses” were slivers of edible paper. Some were shot glasses of vinegar. Everything tasted like fish, even the non-fish courses. And nearly everything, including these noodles, which was by far the most substantial dish we had, was served cold.
Even forearmed with this overall description, some of the individual moments in the meal play like (bad) theatrical surprises:
“These are made with rancid ricotta,” the server said, a tiny fried cheese ball in front of each of us.
“I’m… I’m sorry, did you say rancid? You mean… fermented? Aged?”
“No. Rancid.”
“Okay,” I said in Italian. “But I think that something might be lost in translation. Because it can’t be—”
“Rancido,” he clarified.
Another course — a citrus foam — was served in a plaster cast of the chef’s mouth. Absent utensils, we were told to lick it out of the chef’s mouth in a scene that I’m pretty sure was stolen from an eastern European horror film.
Not just bad. Memorably bad. Award-winningly bad. Which is, as DeRuiter writes, something of an achievement in itself.
Update: You can scroll down to the end of this piece to read a “Declaration by Chef Floriano Pellegrino” that responds to DeRuiter’s review.
But a restaurant is not a museum, or an art gallery. If anything, the stakes are even higher, because you aren’t simply creating, you are creating something for someone. Every meal that comes out of the kitchen at Bros. is for a paying customer. It is for someone who has a minimum expectation of what a meal should be. A meal might be innovative, or cutting edge, or require a great deal of technical skill (and indeed, many of the dishes at Bros. were). But if it is insubstantial, or contains something that the customer is allergic to, or it simply doesn’t taste good, then what the hell does it matter if the chef thinks that he’s created art? He’s still failed at being a chef.
But beyond that, it’s a baffling sort of gatekeeping, to tell someone that the reason they didn’t enjoy a meal is that they didn’t understand art. That the reason the meal was awful was because we don’t appreciate the avant garde. It’s a sort of culinary gaslighting.
I have been lucky enough to have eaten at a few restaurants whose food & dining experience could be considered art and the one thing they all had in common was that they were able to ask tough questions of the diner and deliver some of the most surprising & delicious food I have ever tasted.
there's a part that's LOOOONG LOOOONG MAAAAAN that made me lose it
In the second video by Brick Experiment Channel I’ve posted here in the past week, a Lego car is repeatedly adapted to cross larger and larger gaps, until it can cross a massive gap just a little narrower than the length of the car. As I said before about their climbing car video, watching the iterative process of improving a simple car performing an increasingly difficult task using familiar design objects is such an accessible way to observe how the process of engineering works.
One of the things you get to witness is when a particular design tactic dead ends, i.e. when something that worked across a shorter gap is completely ineffective crossing a wider distance. No amount of tinkering with that same design will make it work…you have to find a whole new way to do it.
GoodMove teamed up with top architect and 3D designer, Chris Lawson, to visualize what our homes might look like in the future.
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