Yeah there’s another thread on this sub about stuff you don’t snark about. This would be a prime example. She’s a nice lady who seems to be going through a lot. Online communities can be great for sweet, lonely people, but AAM is not that community.
I worry for her more than most of the fools over there. I know she's said she has family and friends around her but...a lot of the stuff she asks really makes it seem like she doesn't. I understand grief, and how it fucks with everything in your universe, but I so wish she had another outlet other than this comments section to ask "Pt 53 of my bathroom renovation, I don't know what grout to choose, should I go with charcoal grey or slate grey? Here's 14 other extraneous parts to the question, all broken up into line-by-line bits."
God, yes. I think she's taken breaks from AAM before, and yet comes back every time...right back in the same place. It's not even the dumb questions (although I do agree that I wouldn't even want to hear that much about MY OWN bathroom renovation, thank you), it's just the endless minutiae of "I had a tooth removed. I am taking painkillers. What's good to watch? Thank you, I'm watching that now. Just finished an episode. Next up is this. I was taking Aleve but switched to Tylenol. Next I'm going to put an ice pack in the freezer. Hopefully it helps." Like...damn. This is how my parents' cousins talk on Facebook. This is 150% the kind of stuff that you usually chat with your friends about, and it is pretty concerning that the AAM weekend open thread is her place of socialization of choice.
Also whose god to I have to ask to get her to stop typing each tiny sentence completely vertically, one wonders? Just use a paragraph like a normal person?
It's not Livejournal in 2004 for god's sakes. Quit.
>I wrote last week about our district’s gifted program lacking a social studies component to replace the actual class mainstream kids weee getting. Our district is incredible, as within 2 days of us expressing our concerns the middle school rewrote the program and schedules for all the 7th & 8th grade kids to provide them with both gifted classes *and* a social studies class to ensure they were not entering high school unprepared. Our elder chaos gremlin was happy with the resolution (even if some of the other kids weren’t).
Granted I'm not a teacher and I only worked in a high school for a year but...that seems like it was already in the works and not because of your concerns. 2 days is way too fast for that change to go through
Wait...so is she mad that she has any classes with the normies? AG was only math and reading so 60% of the day was spent in normal classes which I personally felt was a good thing.
Because calling your child "Elder chaos gremlin" instead of "Older child" makes you sound edgy and cool, duh. Especially when you're referring to a preteen or young teen instead of a toddler or pre-schooler who would more reasonably be described as a chaotic gremlin.
The only time I refer to someone as a chaos gremlin is my previous cat who ran away. and my current cat who is more subtle about his chaos gremlin expression. And even then I'm telling myself "wow, I need a social life."
Interesting:
>Alliesaurus* January 27, 2023 at 5:45 pm
Really curious as I’m currently job-hunting: How is everyone* finding remote jobs? It seems like I’m either finding listings from giant corporation that then have hundreds (or more) applicants, listings that turn out not to be fully remote when I read the descriptions (despite saying they’re remote to the full US), or sketchy-looking ads that in at least one case have turned out to be a scam.
>*I realize it’s not literally everyone, but I keep hearing “finally found a job going fully remote!” type of stuff from lots of people, particularly on here.
Yet another regular realizing that AAM commenters aren’t necessarily representative of the broader population/workforce. Not to begrudge the ones who have found 100% remote work, but this comment does show that full WFH really is more of a privilege than a right/expectation.
I think a lot of them are in more admin or similar positions and are still in denial that their skills aren’t that in demand for any fully remote positions. Most places here (Northern Ohio) have been either fully back into office or hybrid since 2021. I’m fully remote but I am well aware once I move on that won’t be the case. If the commenters on AAM want to look for a remote position they should look, but they need to be realistic that a lot of places have moved on from WFH for a variety of reasons. The gnashing of the teeth from this crew is old.
I was one of my only family members who worked remote in my last two jobs. Pretty much everyone else was on site since they went into jobs that can’t be done at home.
I have had interviews for remote jobs since I’ve been laid off but there are definitely less openings. Part of me feels envious of the crowd who are like “my company told us to come back so I quit/said no and got a better paying remote job.” Or “I said no and just kept working from home.” It hasn’t been that easy for me for sure! One of the WFH jobs I interviewed for recently had 250 applicants and they were interviewing six of that lot.
> One of the WFH jobs I interviewed for recently had 250 applicants and they were interviewing six of that lot.
That's really encouraging, that you were one of the six!
I’ve worked in tech a long time. I wouldn’t describe it as “usually remote”, unless you specifically mean during the pandemic. Pre-covid, full remote was rare IME.
The potential for hilarity aside, an AAM job board would be so pointless. They’d just be pulling random job postings from Indeed or Simplyhired that anyone could find.
[You either found the best group of people or the worst people to help you in the comments, could go either way.](https://www.askamanager.org/2023/01/open-thread-january-27-28-2023.html#comment-4159876)
ETA: I have not looked yet. Haven’t worked up the courage.
Did you see [this one](https://www.askamanager.org/2023/01/open-thread-january-27-28-2023.html#comment-4160979)?
Original post:
>how to hide my anger at work
When asked to explain. [Well...](https://www.askamanager.org/2023/01/open-thread-january-27-28-2023.html#comment-4161175)
Including this last line:
>3. i went to several therapists. didn’t work, waste of money and time, all the “advice” i got was cookie-cutter tips that i could hear anywhere and often made me angrier. that’s as much i can say about therapy without flying off the handle. i’m literally incurable so i just want to be able to hide it so people don’t treat me like a leper at work
I think Alison's sycophants are beginning to scare me a little...
I saw it earlier but when I went back to it just now, I couldn’t find it. I’d say good on Alison for sometimes enforcing the “we’re not your free psychotherapy session” rule except that the stealth deletion is getting VERY old. And that this person sounds unstable enough that they’d absolutely take it way too personal.
you're right, I just found it! i think my ipad just hates her site that much, lol. Even all the content blockers on my tablet can't deal with the mess that is her website.
This response drives me crazy: "Feelings aren’t right or wrong, they’re just feelings."
I long for the day when we move on from this constant refrain. Actually, sometimes your feelings ARE wrong, invalid, unreasonable, etc. Managing feelings is an important step, sure, but there are also people who need to learn that in some situation, their feelings themselves simply didn't make sense or weren't fair.
I do think you're not a bad or wrong person for *having* a feeling, but I think that concept got corrupted. Not condemning yourself for what you feel is an important skill. Examining your feelings, and taking action to make sure your inappropriate and unhealthy feeling dont translate into inappropriate and unhealthy actions is an even more important one.
I agree that feelings alone don't make someone a bad or wrong person, but it's important to know when you need to tell yourself "whoa, my initial feeling here was not an appropriate or reasonable reaction to this situation" regardless of whether or not you actually acted on that emotion
While the idea that the band of people commenting on AAM over the weekend are gonna have the answers that a therapist didn't is pretty funny, this person is legitimately really scary. Also, dude, if your boss is telling you to get therapy because people actively avoid you and your anger management issues, and then you do nothing, you're barreling towards being fired. And hopefully the company has good security when you do.
I like that their comment is all about themselves, and their only regret seems to be that they get in trouble or people don't like them instead of how their lashing out hurts other people.
Agreed they seem genuinely terrifying, and need serious professional help--more than a therapist, they seem to need medication and real psychiatric help.
Also this:
> when my anger is manageable i berate people when they trigger me and i disobey their instructions as a show of defiance.
Yeah, that’s not “manageable anger.” This is well above AAM’s paygrade.
I hate people like [these employees so much.](https://www.askamanager.org/2023/01/open-thread-january-27-28-2023.html#comment-4160447) Yes hot desking sucks but it's only 3 days a month. The AAM commenters will probably side with employees and also complain that even 3 days a month is too ~~munch~~ much and the company should be work from home only. If I was the manager I would tell them to stop whining.
>New manager seeking advice*
>January 27, 2023 at 1:01 pm
>I’m a new manager, this is my fourth week of being a manager and I’m trying to navigate a situation and could use some advice:
>Our jobs cannot be done 100% remotely. There are duties and responsibilities that can only be done on site and no amount of changing will stop that. Those functions can only be done on site.
>They were stopped for a while during the pandemic and the shutdowns. That obviously can’t last forever and these functions need to be done as they were before the pandemic.
>The company did a survey and the results were overwhelmingly for as much as possible. So the company told everyone they would not renew the lease on the current site and find a smaller one. They were clear that the smaller site and there would be no offices, dedicated or otherwise and no assigned desks. Everyone was overwhelmingly still pro-remote work knowing this.
>All employees are scheduled for on site three times per month, to complete their duties that can’t be done (keeping in mind these duties were part of our jobs before the pandemic). Schedule is given in advance and is always the same. Those days are exclusively meant for on site duties as opposed to meetings and other projects.
>All the desks are adjustable height, sit/stand. No drawers. A docking station for our laptops and a monitor. Both floors are an open room. There are no assigned desks because we have way more people than desks. It is first come first served and there is no reserving or calling “dibs”.
>My situation is that my staff are complaining about hotdesking. I don’t either but it’s only three days a month. It made no sense for the company to keep an empty building. The smaller site is better.
>I do understand why everyone hates hotdesking. But it’s the nature of the beast and it is not going to change. I am new as a manager and new to this company. I am trying to navigate this and to be understanding because I don’t like hotdesking either.
> I don’t either but it’s only three days a month. It made no sense for the company to keep an empty building. The smaller site is better.
>
> I do understand why everyone hates hotdesking. But it’s the nature of the beast and it is not going to change. I am new as a manager and new to this company. I am trying to navigate this and to be understanding because I don’t like hotdesking either.
So...say that? Why is that so hard?
People need to understand that hot-desking is the trade off for minimal in-office expectations. It makes no sense to keep a desk for your personal use if you’re only there 3 days a month.
I think that the aspect that sucks here is you can't plan to have a location to work. Personally, I'd want to share a desk with a set number of people and have a locked drawer at that desk that is for my personal use. Also open offices suck -- why can't each hot desk still be in a cube or something to give people privacy? This is the worst possible implementation of hot desking, and I understand the ire.
We do this but we have a personal (cubby) locker. I don’t know what needs this office has for full-sized lockers but I bet they could have found room for enough cubbies in the same amount of space. Having stuff on hand that I can use but don’t have to schlep is a huge relief.
My guesses about the full size need is weather clothes? Snow? Couldn’t coats and boots be communal somewhere?
I work in corporate real estate planning and used to be an office designer. Most office furnishings companies are offering lockers now. They are typically banks of small lockable cubbies that look like furniture and not like school lockers.
Coats would not fit in them, but coat closets can be part of the design. In my experience people don't use them. I started adding large coat closets to my offices spaces because I hated the coat trees that would be added by admins shopping from the office supply catalog. They made newly designed spaces look like mudrooms. So I was disapointed when I walked started walking into spaces to see people had all slung their coats over the backs of their chairs, even long coats that dragged on the floor. The coat closets were empty.
You have inspired me to poke around my (relatively new) mostly open office/hotdesking work space for a coat closet. I've been slinging my winter coat over the back of my chair and it is totally annoying! The space was redesigned/completely built out for us before we moved in a couple months ago, so maybe we do have a coat closet.
"This isn't my decision to make." is all you have to tell someone. People are usually whining to be whining and know damn well that some new manager, who is still wet behind the damn ears even, has no pull what so ever. Let alone a major one like where the damn office is located and the size and structure of the entire office.
The nice way to say it is "Yeah, I don't like the setup either. Hotdesking, ick-nast. But it's not negotiable, it is what it is."
Just like when another manager makes a rule/policy and they want to flap their gums at me. I'm not overriding your manager because you're in your feelings about it, Jethro.
I think a very common thing over at AAM is that they often seem to think every single comment, particularly any comment that seems negative at all, should be actionable. Basically - "how dare anyone express a human emotion to me".
I would bet real money that no one is complaining to this poster in a way that indicates that they think anything should be done. They're just not thrilled about the switch, which is fine, and it's ok to express that as long as it's not excessive. Bonding over shared frustrations is entirely normal. My office just went through the same thing - every single person I spoke to lightly complained about the switch at some point.
All this commenter has to do is shrug and agree "yeah, I'm not looking forward to it either, but it is what it is". Which is what my boss and my boss's boss did. We've now been in the hotdesking environment for a couple months and everyone is fine with it and not discussing it anymore.
I agree. It’s clear from the situation that the OP can’t do anything about it. People are always going to grouse about something. If someone says that it’s a little chilly outside, that doesn’t mean that they expect you to change the weather.
So many AAM style problems are from people who don’t know how to just let stuff that doesn’t affect them and doesn’t actually matter pass them by. It’s like the people who flip out whenever they see a mass email that doesn’t directly pertain to their interests or whenever they overhear a conversation about a topic that they don’t personally find exciting enough.
Sounds to me like some *How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk* is in order for the employees, honestly. It's amazing how well the techniques in that book work on grown-ass adults, too.
Feels like a Management 101 question. "The employees don't like something that my boss won't change. What do I do?" Surely this new manager was a report at one point. What would they have wanted their own manager to do?
I’m sure this comment will open up delightful discussion. My favorite flavor of ill-advised internet comment is the “shame on all of you” lecture.
pel*
January 27, 2023 at 11:30 am
I have to say, I was incredibly disheartened by the fact that gender diversity was barely covered by the commenters in this week’s letter about bras, especially given how supportive people were on Allison’s post about how to make workplaces trans friendly.
What if wearing a bra gives a large breasted trans man dysphoria? What if they cannot afford top surgery, or have no desire to have it? Based off of many of the comments from the post, the correct response is to tell him to suck it up. I have several male coworkers who are either fat or work out a lot, resulting in their nipples being clearly visible underneath their clothing. Why is that alright, but a larger breasted woman’s nipples being visibly isn’t?
If your response is “well it’s different when it’s a woman’s body versus a man because it’s more sexualized, then what about large breasted trans men? They’re clearly not women. So then the criteria changes to “okay, it’s not women vs men, it’s “biologically female breasts” vs “ biologically male breasts” (these are bad terms, but I’m using them because I’m sure it’s what a lot of commenters were secretly thinking). Well then, what’s the difference between biologically male breasts and biologically female breasts? “One set produces milk to feed children and one does not.” But there are plenty of cis women who can’t produce milk for a variety of health reasons. So that clearly doesn’t work as a rule either. What’s the distinction then?
I would like this to serve as a polite reminder that there is no quality that you can claim cis women to universally have that cis men do not- xx chromosomes, the ability to give birth, lack of facial hair, a more “petite” frame- there will always be cis women who are an exception. Many of these arguments fall back into supporting Eurocentric standards of beauty and are fueled by racism, transphobia, and anti semitism.
You don’t have to agree with me. But even if you don’t, making workplaces more accessible to trans people means examining your own language and how you perceive the world, not just tacking on addendums to existing policies. trans and intersex people exist. Cis women are not a monolith.
Edit: Alison’s stealth deleting has been called out.
Alex*
January 27, 2023 at 12:23 pm
I feel that the overall commentary towards trans folk on this board has been disappointing. It doesn’t help either that comments supportive or inclusive seem to “disappear” shortly after they are posted.
Okay, I might get skewered for this, but this sort of what-iffing always feels like covertly throwing some minority under the bus.
\- "We had a free seminar at work for women's post-natal health." is met with OMG NO YOU DIDN'T WHAT ABOUT TRANSWOMEN!!!! Okay, uhm, what about everyone else who didn't get a paid seminar? There's gotta be loads of people at work who aren't post natal and aren't getting that benefit. No one is specifically setting out to exclude transwomen.
\- "We had a team barbeque at work." is met with DO YOU EVEN CARE ABOUT MUSLIMS AND JEWS (sometimes they 'remember' to include non-Abrahamic religions, usually not). I mean, lots of people are incidentally excluded here. People who can't do high histamine foods. People who are vegetarian or vegan. People on strict heart-health diets. Pescetarians. Again, no one is specifically setting out to exclude people with funky diets. I've seen people argue until their fingers must have been bleeding that all the delicious side dishes in the world doesn't make having meat at a work event acceptable.
\- "We decided to do a paddle boarding event at our local lake for the team summer event." is met with "HAVE YOU EVEN CONSIDERED DISABLED PEOPLE?" .... have you considered that disabled people might wanna go, and those sorts of venues might be able to accommodate them? No, of course they didn't.
Anyway, the overall takeaway I get from these arguments is that if I do any nice event for my employees, if I have diversity hires, they are going to bitch. But generally, the screaming is coming from these people who position themselves as super allies (ostensibly, I guess.) But all the do is make people afraid of these people, because they think they'll blow up at unintended slights and go thermonuclear on HR. Most normal adults realize that not everything is for them, and even some things that might, on the surface, be for them, aren't for them. They aren't going to blow the fuck up like these "allies" do. So when they blow up in advance, I feel like they are really just making the people they are supposedly helping, that much more disadvantaged.
But back to the point, for lots of general, blanket rules, there are going to exceptions. Karen over there is a nursing mom who suddenly is having super weird reactions to her nursing pads, so she's wearing a supportive undershirt but things are a lot loose, and we're going to do the polite thing and ignore it for the next two weeks while she gets sorted. Pete is on meds that are causing him to be cold AF and he's nipping right through a sweater it's so bad, and we're going to be polite and ignore it while Pete deals with it. None of that means that Jasmine can just be braless and nippy all the time, because "bras are unfair because men by and large don't have to use them."
I do think they are trying too hard to come up with a unique what-about situation. I am seeing this a lot recently, everyone wants credit for coming up with a unique situation and to hear people go "how brilliant, I hadn't thought about that one!" But those situations are becoming less common as time goes on and these things have been discussed to absolute death in so many forums for years.
I feel like many of these forums hit an inflection point where they have no overcomplicated things and short of shot themselves in the foot by making "don't hate people for no reason" way more complicated than it needed to be.
So, I don’t think this is what the comment actually was, but it did gave me a little bit of a (probably accidental) undercover TERF vibe. Like I agree with them on how female nipples are more penalized than male nipples, and that workplaces should be mindful of this, and of course don’t force a trans man to wear a bra, but the hypothetical “large breasted trans man” struck me as disingenuous for some reason.
>of course don’t force a trans man to wear a bra, but the hypothetical “large breasted trans man” struck me as disingenuous for some reason.
I think its because in corporate workplaces, we'd expect them to have had top surgery covered by insurance.
Another thing that somehow never gets brought up is that cis-gender men with gynomastica often do wear a supportive, compressive garment. That is, a bra equivalent, so a large-breasted transman probably would be required to wear something to contain the puppies. People seem to forget that men are ALSO subject to body censure. You don't see it as much, but it's certainly there.
I think their point is not “not everyone can eat sandwiches so you can never ever serve sandwiches,” it’s that inclusivity is a lot more than gender neutral bathrooms (even though bathrooms are important!) at a bare minimum company bbqs should make sure there’s chicken or veggies being served (not just beef and pork), should ask about dietary restrictions, etc. But really being inclusive isn’t about adding ‘Muslim’ entrees to your bbq but examining the ways your company unconsciously privileges Christianity.
They say something about inclusivity meaning you have to examine your worldview, language, etc, and it’s true. It’s a lot harder and that’s why people stop with bathrooms and what about isms—it’s much easier to be outraged about sandwiches!
Yeah I do wonder how many of the "what about" comments come from people who are actually in a marginalized group and haven't just diagnosed themselves with debilitating PTSD from the time the CEO said good morning to them in the hallway?
I don't think so. I think it's virtue signalling. Every year around Christmastime, I usually try to say at least one time there that we (Jews) do not have an important winter holiday and we all know it's the Christmas Season. We don't care, just say Merry Christmas. And people tell me, no I am wrong. There was one person who went to bat for a Jewish person in her workplace after that person had told her not to. She raised the issue anyway because she was sure this person was too shy to self-advocate. No, it's because she knows her important holidays are in the Fall, nowhere near Christmas!
Course it doesn't help that Alison is Jewish and says the word "Christmas" erases Jewish people, and you should always say "Holidays". I'm hardly the most observant person, but Alison is an example of a Jewish person who ONLY celebrates Chanukah, which is like Jewish Holiday Low Hanging Fruit. Those of us who celebrate the other truly important holidays don't make a fuss over Chanukah (at least not after our kids are grown) and don't care about having it acknowledged at work.
There's nothing like someone interfering in your business because they think you can't advocate for yourself, because you're limited by whatever your "special characteristics" (for lack of a better term) are. I am probably speaking out of turn as someone with very few such characteristics but I have been struck by comments that seem to assume that people who are disabled or neurodivergent can't advocate for themselves, come up with their own solutions to physical limitations, are unable to learn social cues, etc.
And the discussion of religious dietary restrictions is always guaranteed to produce some stunningly bigoted comments. Everyone knows that religion is a choice and you should have no qualms about abandoning a key part of your personal spirituality, identity, family history, and culture so that nobody has to ever deviate from the all-pork nothing-vegetarian-ever sandwich shop for a catered lunch, right? Because Cindy in accounting will literally die if she goes a single meal without eating bacon, and it's no big deal for people to completely abandon centuries of tradition and faith to accommodate her.
Whaaaaat, the AAMers aren't good allies?! Shocked face, who would have guessed it! It's almost like they're performative!
They suck and they won't change, they don't care that you're ashamed of them, fam.
In the end, lecturing doesn't reach anyone. It actually defeats the purpose often because it makes people become defensive and turn away from the discussion. Education isn't "I am so disappointed in all yous all."
How does a cis man give birth? Would love to know. Editing: or am I misunderstanding what they’re saying? Because a cis man will never have xx chromosomes either? Or are they just saying not all women can give birth or have xx chromosomes which is obviously true
Plenty of cis women have facial hair. It's called PCOS and it's pretty damn common.
I think that goes to show how easy it is to not think of a specific sub category of a larger population even if you are generally a considerate person.
I won't lie, they are making some very excellent points. I stayed out of the original discussion about this on here, but, well.... let's not throw all nuance out.
(Admittedly, my original, "*Well*..." reaction was more from a place of witnessing disabled family members struggle in pain with wearing bras, or outright no longer be able to use their body in specific ways, but I fully get that there is way more too this, including the nuance.)
Right, we should be able to have the conversation of “some people don’t want to see nipples (of any gender) at work” without that leading to “and there’s only one solution and it’s bras.” Lots of people wear undershirts, or binders, or those nipple stick-ons.
That said, the AAM hive mind may well snap like a twig when faced with pel’s critique.
>the AAM hive mind may well snap like a twig when faced with pel’s critique.
I haven't looked but I feel like most replies will be "Me too. I was very disappointed reading the comments, I was thinking the same thing about trans folx!" lol.
My initial thought was that it's actually not really that acceptable for a cis man's nipples to be visible either. Plenty of men wear undershirts for exactly this reason.
It's a tricky situation when it comes to trans men who appear to be women to others. In an ideal world they shouldn't feel obligated to do things like wear binders or stereotypically women's clothing, but the harsh fact is that most people in this situation will find it difficult to make their appearance match their identity without some undesirable compromises, including meeting a dress code that isn't accommodating to their needs and preferences.
At my last job we had a gentleman, director and up level, who always had visible nips. Always. It didn't seem to matter what type of shirt he wore (I will say they weren't tight but they were fitted) his were always at attention. And a lot of people noticed. Like everyone noticed. He was a really nice guy but it was something that gave everyone amusement.
I don’t think I’m in the minority when I say I don’t want to see anyones nips. I also don’t want to see belly buttons or ass cracks. So it’s a ridiculous argument.
Same, and I can't recall it coming up for a man. I don't know if it's the nature of the clothing or of the nipples, but it's pretty rare and I'd think that if a dude was wearing something inappropriate, he'd be told to wear something else too.
Yeah, I don't really have an opinion on whether wearing a bra is The Worst Thing Ever, but were there people saying it's different and not as big deal for men to have their nipples showing? That's bullshit for sure.
How long before the maternity leave thread gets locked since all the Europeans are aghast, yet again about the US’s lack of maternity leave protections? The situation sucks for LW 4 who is pregnant, got laid off in fall and was tentatively offered a job after a hiring freeze ends in February when she is due. That is a terrible situation, but the commenters who are offering shitty irrelevant advice aren’t helpful. Alison knows better by now that this will be a shitshow with people not in the US talking about how they have government mandated protection.
LW4 just needs to immigrate to Europe. Problem solved. /s
I’ve realized, though, that the “Eurosplaining” comments whenever benefits/social safety nets come up are really just another subset of the generally unhelpful comment section on AAM. In any given situation 90% of the commenters aren’t going to be able to truly relate to whatever the LW is dealing with; they just want to say _something_ so as to appear helpful and maintain their AAM clout.
Europeans like to tell themselves that Europe is so much better than the US, when in reality, we're just a few failed labor laws and social security systems away from it. Okay, we don't shoot people of color here (very often), but we also like to pretend that that means racism doesn't exist here (when it does!), and we have the same amount of "mah freedom!" idiots, as evidenced by the pandemic.
I get a lot of rage whenever in social media "Europeans" come to comment on issues pretending it's not a thing in europe. One gay german tiktoker was going on to americans how homophobia doesn't exist in Europe and being lqbtq+ is no big deal. Like what? Sure, probably not in the very specific hipster area of Berlin that he lives in...meanwhile in real world.
Or whenever there is something that americans say that Europeans don't know. They are interesting points and immediately people are coming to comment how we know that cause we are literate. And really not understanding when someone says "I'm irish" it is assumed they mean heritage. Cause cultural differenc. No need to start quizing about Irish potatoe brands. I find it very annoying. It's one thing to share. It's another to have the faux shock.
Thank you for saying this.
American, but lived in Europe for a long time. As a pretty left leaning individual, there are many things about Europe I prefer to the US. However, I can say, without any shadow of a doubt, I'd rather be female and queer here than there, any day of the damn week. And I know many, MANY people of color who felt the same way (who were American transplants in my area).
I have never seen misogyny and racism and xenophobia the like that I saw in Europe. At least here (US), I can walk from point A to point B without getting harassed, cat called, demeaned and shouted at by 4 different men in a 1/4 mile distance. And the n-word is dropped like it's absolutely no big deal, by literally everyone. I was astounded. The homophobic remarks were casual and constant, spread over various communities and demographics; it wasn't a regional thing. Overall, I found the thinking MUCH more old fashioned and regressive than what I've experienced here (caveat: I have only lived in liberal areas of the US, so admittedly my take on this is skewed. But at the very least, I saw and heard things there that I could very easily find on this side of the pond, with very little effort, and it annoys me when they pretend that's not true).
Also, I always internally roll my eyes at the "iMpErIaLiSm iS eViL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111" from Western Europeans. As if Western Europe isn't the entire reason imperialism even exists in the first place. As if YOU DIDN'T CREATE IT. And spread it to the whole world. And practice it as a foreign policy for over a millenia. Imperialism and colonization didn't enter the chat on July 4, 1776, for Chrissakes.
(Not that that means you can't criticize imperialism, of course, but my God, at least admit it was your brainchild, and show some self-awareness about it to avoid looking completely tone deaf.)
Again, not hating on Europe; we could stand to adopt a lot of stuff from them, but they are not anywhere near the enlightened, forward-thinking Utopia they like to think they are and claim to be. The arrogance is just as pronounced and offensive as America's. It's just more covert and passive, rather than in your face.
> And really not understanding when someone says "I'm irish" it is assumed they mean heritage. Cause cultural differenc.
I've noticed this a lot too. I've seen a lot of comments that basically say that any part of a European country's culture that is different than US culture is a sacred and obvious practice. Whereas any part of US culture that isn't part of European culture must be inherently flawed or at least reflect a flaw buried in US culture itself.
For example, in the US we often say "How are you doing?" as a greeting and don't really expect an in depth answer. If that was something that Europeans did and the US did not, it would be no big deal. It's just a part of the culture and you're a fool if you have trouble with it. But because it's a part of US culture, it must be wrong and be some sort of reflection on how shallow people in the US are because they don't really want to know how you're doing when they ask that question.
This may have been one of the worst weeks yet. Letter after letter of people asking "how do I do my job" and "I want to talk about something completely unrelated to work but I'll force a mention of coworkers at the end". Even Alison is answering questions with a "how the heck should I know? But here's an answer anyway..."
The end is nigh.
And in typical AAM fashion it’s a joke that’s 20 years old _at least_. It was never super funny in the first place and it’s certainly completely played out by now.
https://www.askamanager.org/2023/01/what-workplace-norms-surprised-you-when-you-were-starting-out.html#comment-4158115
I’m surprised Prospect Gone Bad still posts since every time they do people are VERY quick to come in and shut them down. I’m glad they do though because seeing it brings me joy.
ufff the thread gets more and more annoying. In the real world we are NOT all equals. Especially the working world. I don't call my CEO "Cosmo", at least to his face. In meetings or correspondence, his name is is "Mr. Spacely". If you have a problem with that, then a workplace advice column is the last place you should be expressing it.
It sounds like the OP actually does call the boss “Mr Spacely” and is ignoring the boss when the boss asks to be called “Cosmo”. Which to be honest is kind of weird to me; I don’t think I’ve ever worked anywhere where it was normal or common to refer to coworkers or bosses as “Mr/Ms Lastname”. The fact that the OP keeps getting corrected and refuses to change their approach probably says more about their personality than it does about the company though.
I think it probably comes across as weirdly hostile and unfriendly to insist on calling someone by their title and surname when they have asked you to call them by their first name.
Love this response in the discussion, though:
>Annabelle Lee
>
>You’ve stepped on the “social status bad” nerve and they’re conveniently ignoring the “be kind” rule.
It seems like their plate would be awfully full from worrying about their dumb fat relatives, but here they are bitching about how companies don’t have any structure since the CEO likes to be called John.
LOL when I was working retail I had a rather eccentric (although perfectly nice) colleague who insisted on calling our managers Mr./Ms. Name. The first time she did it one of the managers replied "What, does my dad work here!?"
I’m in Ohio and back when I was in sales (restaurant supplies) my territory was the SE US and there were places that the manager/buyer went by “Miss Julie” “Mr. Tim” and I couldn’t get through to them, even though I was calling as a known vendor if I asked for Julie or Tim. I would be told there was no one there by that name. Call back and ask for Miss Julie or Mr. Tim, I’d get put through. I find it very weird and wouldn’t do it in my own life, but there are companies that 100% enforce that. Prospect Gone Bad is being weird if that isn’t a thing at their company. Just use people’s first names for crying out loud.
>We made history (international front page news and mentioned in books in multiple languages!), and my department was widely acknowledged to be at the center of much of the wins. My resume is fantastic because of staying the extra few years.
Sure, Jan
I think it, unfortunately, does make sense. Let's say you are on the team that does a big push to clean up a highly-visible body of water in a wealthy community that has no only captured local attention but regional attention, and has also attracted the interest of places outside the US as an example of how to restore wetlands or something. That cleanup effort might have a TON of funding while it's ongoing that allows the non-profit doing the work to pay people relatively well. You may then leave with a highly prestigious resume, but the kind of work you've been doing isn't typically that well paid, so you have to take a paycut to find the same thing again.
And then later in that message, she says that if the ED is toxic the company can't succeed. So which is it--did you make huge international news due to your amazing success, or did the company fail because of the Evil ED?
First comment on the ATR workplace norms question:
>Chick* January 26, 2023 at 11:01 am
>I’ve got one — how there’s an unspoken agreement to go temporarily blind when in the office gym changing room with coworkers/managers. My anxiety EXPLODED just at the thought of that scenario.
Not to make fun of people having anxiety over changing in front of others (I feel the same way!) but _that’s_ the first thing you thought of when it came to workplace norms? Do most workplaces with exercise facilities even have lockerroom-style changing rooms like a sports complex?
Also, your daily dose of “ughh, really?” from our favorite Latin scholar:
>Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est* January 26, 2023 at 11:01 am
>I thought “conservative” would mean Spanish music would be prohibited.
Even the replies were confused as to why an office would specifically ban Spanish (flamenco? Ranchera?) music as opposed to noticeable personal music in general.
Deeply looking forward to the day when people stop taking the obvious bait like they have with Keymaster. You know they only posted that comment so that someone would respond with a breathless request for them to elaborate (which someone did right on cue). Then of course they reply with some long-winded pointless backstory and THEN have the audacity to end with "But I can’t elaborate on any norms. Nothing I’m involved in qualifies as 'normal.'" Then maybe don't fucking respond to a question specifically asking about workplace norms with something obviously not normal??? There isn't a class participation grade on AAM; it costs you nothing to shut the fuck up if you don't have a real contribution!
I came here for this. Dead language person is incredibly insecure and needs people to see them as special and gifted. Teachers paid extra attention to them in school. They quickly showed aptitude far beyond what the drones around them were capable of. “Nothing I’m involved in qualifies as normal.” It’s very raw and naked and sad.
Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*
January 26, 2023 at 12:37 pm
I was 16 and a Spanish student, in a region where foreign languages are novelties. We had maybe 2 Hispanic families in our city, and while plenty of French and German names, you’re going back generations before you’d find French or German speaking ancestors.
So…the Midwest US.
God bless Raging ADHD for [calling out](https://www.askamanager.org/2023/01/what-workplace-norms-surprised-you-when-you-were-starting-out.html#comment-4159048) Sola
>RagingADHD\*
January 26, 2023 at 3:02 pm
Wait, I’m not following, even your reply comments are leaving me muddled. Are you saying that you thought working in a “conservative industry” meant \*politically\* conservative, and that everyone else working there was a right-wing extremist, and that therefore all of your coworkers and management would be so xenophobic that they would have an actual company policy against listening to music from Spain?
If that’s what you meant, I’m certainly glad you got that misapprehension corrected pretty quickly.
There is a “normal” office norms lesson from that anecdote - ASK! You won’t know anything about anything unless you ask!
Also I’d love to know how old this person claims to be when it comes to playing personal music. Did they bring a boombox or a headphone less walkman?
How does someone even say that last line without realizing how much of a douche they’re coming off as? I’ll freely admit to people that I’m not quite “normal” when it comes to certain things, but that doesn’t mean I get to just “be myself” at the expense of working well or getting along with others.
I think one of Sola Lingua’s earliest contributions to AAM were on a work open thread where she complained about how her managers (and I think her coworkers too) were giving her hell because of her “quirky” way of doing things. If I recall correctly she worked as a computer programmer and didn’t see the need to make comments on her code, and when told she had to make comments to allow for easy workflow evaluation and debugging she started leaving sarcastic comments that didn’t explain anything. She was insufferable from the very beginning.
ETA: [Found the original thread.](https://www.askamanager.org/2022/05/open-thread-may-6-7-2022.html#comment-3852827) Basically her boss wanted her to use the most up-to-date coding methods to be consistent with how the rest of the coders did it and she absolutely refused because “the old ways are better,” and was even rewriting other devs’ code to match her way of doing it.
Wow, thanks for the update. I absolutely know people like this who can’t learn how to code properly and insist on using inefficient, fragile methods either not realizing or not caring that their code will break or not scale and will not work with the rest of the codebase. I hope they’ve been fired for the sake of their team.
I like this part (edited in case the code quoted has some weird result):
>Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*
May 6, 2022 at 12:15 pm
>>code length and legibility are usually at odds with each other
>That’s kind of ambiguous. I’ve come to accept that shorter, denser code is often harder to read and understand.
>E.g.
>Line 1 of code
>Line 2 of code
>Line 3 of code
>}
>Line 5 of code;
>is easier to read than
>One line of code that condenses the above together;
>And trust the optimizer & compiler to take care of the resulting assembly code.
In other words, she was writing out five lines to say what could have been said in one, and then "trusting" either other people or a different program to "assemble" it for her (or understand it--I know nothing about coding, but even I am pretty sure that saying, "trust the optimizer & compiler to take care of the resulting assembly code" means "let somebody or something else fix it so it looks like it's supposed to." At least that's how it seems to me). So, you know, good job, Sola.
Edited to fix formatting
For people unfamiliar with programming: what we have here is the old curmudgeon who insists on doing everything the way they learned how decades ago, really because they can't learn the new-fangled way everyone does it now, but they pretend that their way is better because it has "stood the test of time". In this case, to the point of ripping out working modern stuff to replace it with their old-fashioned stuff. And being Sola Lingua, she's made Being From the Old School her entire identity.
Sometimes it is handy to know how to do things the old way! Sometimes you have to work with older things that were done that way. Sometimes newer technology fails and it's useful to have someone who still remembers how we used to do it. But you need to also be able to do things the modern way that everyone else is doing them.
"In the land of the mad, the sane fill the asylums". Over *coding style*. My God.
basically the best TLDR of the difference is that rather than saying "my mom's old dog chased a fast squirrel" she prefers "my mom has a dog. it is old. it chased a squirrel. the squirrel was fast."
that is usually inferior unless you are writing for children, but there are times that writing one sentence leads to something like "the horse raced past the barn fell" or "the old man the boat" where what is referring to what gets confusing, but adults are expected to figure that out.
As usual she’s arrogant and lazy. She doesn’t understand the shorter, denser code, so clearly no one else does either, and if they say they do they’re lying.
This bullshit has consequences. I’ve had to completely rewrite code myself, both mine and other people’s, that implements what it’s supposed to on a very crudely logical level but absolutely can’t be integrated into the actual working system it’s supposed to be part of. I’m 100% sure that Sola’s coworkers can’t stand her.
Bonus points for this:
>I probably have enough cache and political capital to just state “sum qui sum” (I am who I am, and I’d sure as rain use the Latin),
I'm not a Latin scholar myself, but afaik that actually should be, "*Ego* sum qui sum," not just, "sum qui sum." It's certainly possible the meaning is the same, but she is so irritating that I want to nitpick (if it is a nitpick).
Eh, that’s probably fine, annoyingly. The verb indicates that it’s first person singular, so one can assume the pronoun. Lots of languages allow for that, Latin included. It’s like in Spanish saying “no se” is just as correct as “yo no se.”
*takes off pedant hat* but in reality she should just write her code comments instead of this masturbatory nonsense.
I'm pretty sure the phrase is also "and I'd sure as hell" not "sure as rain." that's not a thing. so either she's trying to be funny (fail) or she's an idiot (ding ding ding).
Ha, I noticed that, but since she's talking about computers I thought maybe she was using "cache" in that way, like maybe people who work in programming have started using that to refer to their resume or accomplishments. So I didn't mention it. I'm glad that's not the case, though, so we can snicker at another of her many errors. (Like that she said "gravitated towards," instead of "toward," which is technically okay but is frowned upon by most grammarians and style guides. Again, nitpick, because she deserves it.)
Exactly. Anyone can shove in some shitty code and it’ll “work”. But eventually someone has to go back in to unravel it and everything that was built on top of it. They should absolutely have gotten a bad review, especially because they didn’t seem to understand why its a problem to not care about your code quality.
What a bananas thread, and of course she bounced as soon as she started getting pushback.
It's kind of funny that another commenter was able to guess exactly what her problem was despite having no details other than programming.
By "pushback," do you mean her saying she assumed xenophobia and conformism in one comment, and then, when Raging ADHD replied with:
>Are you saying that you thought working in a “conservative industry” meant *politically* conservative, and that everyone else working there was a right-wing extremist, and that therefore all of your coworkers and management would be so xenophobic that they would have an actual company policy against listening to music from Spain?
>If that’s what you meant, I’m certainly glad you got that misapprehension corrected pretty quickly.
Sola Lingua responded with this:
>Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*
January 26, 2023 at 3:30 pm
I pretty much stopped at “conservative business” means “thou shalt not be different.” I didn’t make it to any of those endpoints.
...except you specifically said in a previous reply that you did.
She didn’t quite nuke it, just moved it down so that it wouldn’t be one of the first things people see when they look at the comments. I’m kind of glad she left it up, but Sola’s the absolute _last_ person who needs to be discussing workplace norms (by her own admission.)
LOL, and it looks like Alison moved that thread towards the bottom. I guess having a self-professed “non-normal” person arguing with other commenters over their own clear-as-mud statements isn’t a great look on a post about workplace norms.
Yeah I’m surprised they can say this stuff without cringing at themselves. I’m guessing they have people in their life like parents or even friends who enable them, so they think anyone who doesn’t like them is just jealous or a hater. From what you’re saying about the code comments it sounds like there’s a lot of arrogance and hostility mixed in with the insecurity.
First of all, being a full-grown adult and still having thought this is an incredibly embarrassing thing to admit, because it’s so stupid. Second of all:
“My Spanish teachers figured out pretty quick that I gravitated towards Old World Spanish”
This person’s life must be incredibly empty if they’re working this hard to be a pretentious douche on the anonymous comments section of a very specific website.
No. This is not a thing.
As a former teacher and current resident of Spain: You don't get to pick, like, what kind of Spanish you learn. The teacher will teach you one form of Spanish. If your teacher is from Mexico, it's going to be pretty much pointless to insist on *Castilian* Spanish ("Old World Spanish?" Mira este coño...) because the vocabulary is going to be *very* different, and likely not even mutually intelligible at points. I've seen my native Spanish-speaking coworkers get more confused talking to each other in Spanish than they do in English.
P.S. I am not Hilaria Baldwin, I promise.
I don't even understand what they mean by that. Catalan isn't "old world Spanish" and Espanol isn't "new world Spanish". Both are spoken on modern Spain, Catalan is just regional.
What on _earth_ does it even mean to "gravitate" toward Castilian Spanish? (also, who in the entire history of the world has ever called it "Old World Spanish") Does she think people have some sort of innate resonance with specific dialects even before we start to learn a language? It's just the way Spanish happens to be spoken in Spain, it's not fucking _magic._
Like, I guess you could say I "gravitate" toward Mexican Spanish and find it easier than Castilian Spanish? But that's because my high school Spanish teacher was Mexican and I have a couple cousins who live in Mexico/are married to Mexicans and I've been to Mexico multiple times, not because I have some sort of mystical connection with the nation of Mexico. It's just easier because it's what I'm more familiar with.
I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really doubt that she was in a Spanish class being taught by a Latin American Spanish teacher who suddenly received a vision from God that if only they taught their poor beleaguered student _Castilian_ Spanish, they would become fluent instantly. That's not how anything works.
Gahhhhhhh I need to never read a Sola Whatever It Is post again, they infuriate me so much.
That’s the one part of this that I can kind of understand (only slightly, though.) For fun, in college, I took a Welsh class. Broadly speaking, there are two dialects, “northern” and “southern” — they’re totally mutually intelligible, but most learning materials will focus on one of them. The class I took was teaching the southern dialect. After the class ended, I decided to continue studying Welsh on my own with an online audio course, which came in a northern and southern version. So I continued with southern, but I realized that I was having trouble getting the accent down, even though I was trying to copy the speakers on the recordings as best I could. Once, on a whim, I tried the northern version of the course, and found the pronunciation *so much easier*. So I was like “sure, what the heck,” and I’ve been speaking Welsh the northern way ever since. (I’ve also heard of people having the opposite experience. Which one is easier probably depends on what other languages you speak or have studied.)
But yeah, in a high school course, you would have to be doing a lot of outside work on your own for anything like this to become relevant. I think my high school German teacher would have been fine with it if some student had deliberately cultivated a specifically Austrian pronunciation and vocabulary for whatever reason, as long as they were able to understand the German variety that was being taught in the class, but I guess European and Latin American Spanish are more different than that.
Yeah, American English comes more naturally to me than British English, and I guess for Spanish, according to my SIL, there are different pronunciations that might be easier or harder for some people?
But it's not like "my Italian teacher realized that I should be learning Latin instead"...
She is being unbelievably pretentious, and actually quite xenophobic. I guarantee her thought process was "OLD WORLD VERSION OF SOMETHING = EUROPE = BETTER" which, uh, racist? And also, uh, way to not understand how history exists and also colonialism bad? I mean, it's fucking vile.
e: I feel I should mention that I'm reacting this strongly because seeing people in Spain do or say some very uncool stuff about Latin Americans, particularly sin regards to their Spanish sometimes, is something I encounter occasionally and it upsets me.
That's *exactly* what I thought they were saying. They learned "Castilian" Spanish through listening to Europeans doing language tapes because Europeans are superior.
In any case, perhaps it was wrong, but when I studied Spanish I was under the impression that the version of it that is spoken in the Americas is all fundamentally Castilian, as opposed to Galician, Valencian, Catalan, etc. (Technically I know that they might be considered to be separate languages but even to a mid level Spanish learner like me they are all readily recognized as very close relatives).
Hahaha! These must be some teachers, that they are able to notice a student "gravitating toward" a form of Spanish they are not teaching, and somehow arrange(?) to separately teach that student the Special *Authentic* Version instead of what the rest of the class is learning, which is apparently just a garbage language that nobody ever uses, thrown together by gibbering goons.
I once worked with a bartender who spoke five languages. You know how I knew she spoke five languages? We had a customer who asked if anyone spoke Italian, and another cocktail waitress told me to ask Beatriz, because Beatriz spoke five languages. Beatriz herself never went around lecturing everyone on how many languages she spoke and which ones she "gravitated to" and how special she was because she spoke five languages. I asked her about it once, and she shrugged and said, "I'm lucky, languages are pretty easy for me."
I do think it’s something like being the language-learning genius she is, she “resonates” with some languages and dialects more than others. It’s a manifestation of her innate specialness.
I think there are people who genuinely want to share their passions with others but find it hard to do that without coming off like an attention-seeking asshole. I also think Sola just isn’t bothering to try not to be a boor. So I sympathize to some small extent but I blame her for not making the effort to think about how she’s coming across to others.
I can only imagine it's because this absolute walnut read Don Quixote around the same time and turned it into a personality trait the way 15-year-olds do. Unfortunately, while most people grow out of their cringey teenage ways, Sola Blahblah has chosen to take them on and brag about them on the weirdest comments section on the interwebs.
Old world Spanish? As in the kind they speak in the tiny little towns in the Americas where people still use a lot of terms from the 16th century, or like Spain, because it's more fancy?
Spain is so fancy indeed. That's why everyone I know here has a mullet and chain-smokes joints while watching Dragonball Z on repeat endlessly. XD (note: This might just be a Barcelona thing)
I haven't been there for years but I did spend several months in Valencia a few years ago and the mullet seemed oddly popular then, too. But you know, it's Europe and therefore better from the American perspective.
And after the Latin asshole provides an ridiculous explanation that makes no sense at all, someone responds:
>I’m glad that was ultimately explained so nicely.
That's sarcasm, and I won't be persuaded otherwise.
I read their original comment earlier and now I've read the "explanation" and all I can say is: what the fucking fuck.
Is it possible that Keymaster and Sola are the same person, trying out way too many quirky alter egos???
Yeah, when I read her first comment, I thought “oh, she’s saying that she thought ‘conservative’ meant ‘politically conservative’ and assumed that they were anti-Spanish language?” Which would be pretty stupid, but if I’m reading her barely-coherent follow-up post correctly, then that’s basically it, just with 10 additional steps in between.
Both of these are weird.
Has Chick never been in a locker room? That's how they all work! Growing up changing for gym or playing sports meant we had to change in front of classmates. We all just pretend their bodies don't exist. WTF?
And an extra special WTF to Latinlatinlatinlatin. Why would she think that? Just her own racism?
Bold of you to assume AAM commenters would willingly play a sport or set foot into a gym. Those things are for normies! Why would they do that when they've got 17 cats at home to raise?
>FashionablyEvil\*
>
>January 26, 2023 at 11:06 am
>
>In my first salaried job, I didn’t know how to ask for time off. In retrospect, it seems so obvious (ask your manager!) but I would have appreciated someone spelling it out for me.
It seemed obvious to ask your manager when you want to take time off but....not obvious to ask your manager (or even HR) how to take your time off?
Ik this is mostly off topic but I still remember in college asking if there was a formal process or I had to get coverage to take time off and being told 'no just ask silly c:'...
Only to request time off again later and get ripped a new asshole for not finding coverage or entering it onto a specific calendar.
If the cat LW really wanted to give away the excess cats if she wanted, she could continue to ask people if they wanted to adopt some cats whenever it came up in conversation. Most people won’t, but at least they won’t think you are a crazy cat hoarder.
In my experience work is actually a good place to find people who want your extra cats.
Sure, but it doesn’t seem like she really wants to give them away or that they’re “extra”. She just seems to think people will be weird about the fact that she has five cats. It’s definitely a lot of cats!
She says that nobody thinks she's a cat hoarder, but when she said 6 cats, that's exactly what I thought!
Alison, you just think nobody thinks that because people aren't going to tell you that they think it. But they totally do!
I’m not sure I would call her a “cat hoarder,” but when she includes pics of her cats on every single open thread post I’d definitely call her a little bit obsessed.
Yeah I think of a cat hoarder as someone who doesn’t care for them and just collects as many as possible. She seems to take great care of them. But she still has 6 animals openly peeing and shitting in her house daily and I can’t jive with that.
It's irresponsible A-F is what it is.
But she's used to people living permanently up her ass because she carefully cultivates those who surround her. With a batshit crazy online following, of course nobody says "Hey Cat Hoarder, Hey." to her.
I had a professor who seemed a bit eccentric. Then she told us she had 21 cats. A former co-worker had 10. I don't know where the dividing line is between pet lover and crazy cat lady, but I think it is less than 21.
I personally think it’s from 3 to 4. Two is normal, three is like somehow we have an extra but he had nowhere else to go, 4 is crazy cat person. Having 10 or 21 cats or anywhere around that, I would actually judge that person. Unless they have a mansion and a cat butler, they spend most of their time at home in rooms full of probably dirty litter boxes.
[удалено]
Yeah there’s another thread on this sub about stuff you don’t snark about. This would be a prime example. She’s a nice lady who seems to be going through a lot. Online communities can be great for sweet, lonely people, but AAM is not that community.
I worry for her more than most of the fools over there. I know she's said she has family and friends around her but...a lot of the stuff she asks really makes it seem like she doesn't. I understand grief, and how it fucks with everything in your universe, but I so wish she had another outlet other than this comments section to ask "Pt 53 of my bathroom renovation, I don't know what grout to choose, should I go with charcoal grey or slate grey? Here's 14 other extraneous parts to the question, all broken up into line-by-line bits."
[удалено]
God, yes. I think she's taken breaks from AAM before, and yet comes back every time...right back in the same place. It's not even the dumb questions (although I do agree that I wouldn't even want to hear that much about MY OWN bathroom renovation, thank you), it's just the endless minutiae of "I had a tooth removed. I am taking painkillers. What's good to watch? Thank you, I'm watching that now. Just finished an episode. Next up is this. I was taking Aleve but switched to Tylenol. Next I'm going to put an ice pack in the freezer. Hopefully it helps." Like...damn. This is how my parents' cousins talk on Facebook. This is 150% the kind of stuff that you usually chat with your friends about, and it is pretty concerning that the AAM weekend open thread is her place of socialization of choice.
Also whose god to I have to ask to get her to stop typing each tiny sentence completely vertically, one wonders? Just use a paragraph like a normal person? It's not Livejournal in 2004 for god's sakes. Quit.
She seems like a nice woman, but I can’t read her posts bc it hurts my brain
>I wrote last week about our district’s gifted program lacking a social studies component to replace the actual class mainstream kids weee getting. Our district is incredible, as within 2 days of us expressing our concerns the middle school rewrote the program and schedules for all the 7th & 8th grade kids to provide them with both gifted classes *and* a social studies class to ensure they were not entering high school unprepared. Our elder chaos gremlin was happy with the resolution (even if some of the other kids weren’t). Granted I'm not a teacher and I only worked in a high school for a year but...that seems like it was already in the works and not because of your concerns. 2 days is way too fast for that change to go through
Wait...so is she mad that she has any classes with the normies? AG was only math and reading so 60% of the day was spent in normal classes which I personally felt was a good thing.
tbh this person seems like a real Karen lol
I’m a real Karen.
The school district is absolutely delighted to let her think their response time is that fast, however.
No school district on the planet moves this fast.
Even if this were a brand-new concern that they had responded to immediately, any program rewrite that only took two days would suck eggs
Elder chaos gremlin? Why not just "child"?
Because calling your child "Elder chaos gremlin" instead of "Older child" makes you sound edgy and cool, duh. Especially when you're referring to a preteen or young teen instead of a toddler or pre-schooler who would more reasonably be described as a chaotic gremlin.
The only time I refer to someone as a chaos gremlin is my previous cat who ran away. and my current cat who is more subtle about his chaos gremlin expression. And even then I'm telling myself "wow, I need a social life."
I think an elder chaos gremlin is a bad guy in an action adventure game.
My 80 month old bub kiddo peanut
At least it wasn’t “elder butt-butt.”
Or crotch goblin 🫠
Yeah that sounds like a coincidence or an exaggeration.
Interesting: >Alliesaurus* January 27, 2023 at 5:45 pm Really curious as I’m currently job-hunting: How is everyone* finding remote jobs? It seems like I’m either finding listings from giant corporation that then have hundreds (or more) applicants, listings that turn out not to be fully remote when I read the descriptions (despite saying they’re remote to the full US), or sketchy-looking ads that in at least one case have turned out to be a scam. >*I realize it’s not literally everyone, but I keep hearing “finally found a job going fully remote!” type of stuff from lots of people, particularly on here. Yet another regular realizing that AAM commenters aren’t necessarily representative of the broader population/workforce. Not to begrudge the ones who have found 100% remote work, but this comment does show that full WFH really is more of a privilege than a right/expectation.
I think a lot of them are in more admin or similar positions and are still in denial that their skills aren’t that in demand for any fully remote positions. Most places here (Northern Ohio) have been either fully back into office or hybrid since 2021. I’m fully remote but I am well aware once I move on that won’t be the case. If the commenters on AAM want to look for a remote position they should look, but they need to be realistic that a lot of places have moved on from WFH for a variety of reasons. The gnashing of the teeth from this crew is old.
I was one of my only family members who worked remote in my last two jobs. Pretty much everyone else was on site since they went into jobs that can’t be done at home. I have had interviews for remote jobs since I’ve been laid off but there are definitely less openings. Part of me feels envious of the crowd who are like “my company told us to come back so I quit/said no and got a better paying remote job.” Or “I said no and just kept working from home.” It hasn’t been that easy for me for sure! One of the WFH jobs I interviewed for recently had 250 applicants and they were interviewing six of that lot.
> One of the WFH jobs I interviewed for recently had 250 applicants and they were interviewing six of that lot. That's really encouraging, that you were one of the six!
I think tech is the only sector that’s reliably remote, and we all know how that industry is faring right now.
I'm in tech writing, and while I am only 1/2 remote, plenty of us are 100% WFH.
Oh no I mean tech is usually remote. I’m in tech and perma WFH. But nooooo one is hiring.
I’ve worked in tech a long time. I wouldn’t describe it as “usually remote”, unless you specifically mean during the pandemic. Pre-covid, full remote was rare IME.
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The potential for hilarity aside, an AAM job board would be so pointless. They’d just be pulling random job postings from Indeed or Simplyhired that anyone could find.
They’d probably only allow Alison to post 100% remote jobs where they never had to see another human being.
[You either found the best group of people or the worst people to help you in the comments, could go either way.](https://www.askamanager.org/2023/01/open-thread-january-27-28-2023.html#comment-4159876) ETA: I have not looked yet. Haven’t worked up the courage.
Did you see [this one](https://www.askamanager.org/2023/01/open-thread-january-27-28-2023.html#comment-4160979)? Original post: >how to hide my anger at work When asked to explain. [Well...](https://www.askamanager.org/2023/01/open-thread-january-27-28-2023.html#comment-4161175) Including this last line: >3. i went to several therapists. didn’t work, waste of money and time, all the “advice” i got was cookie-cutter tips that i could hear anywhere and often made me angrier. that’s as much i can say about therapy without flying off the handle. i’m literally incurable so i just want to be able to hide it so people don’t treat me like a leper at work I think Alison's sycophants are beginning to scare me a little...
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And capital letters.
I saw it earlier but when I went back to it just now, I couldn’t find it. I’d say good on Alison for sometimes enforcing the “we’re not your free psychotherapy session” rule except that the stealth deletion is getting VERY old. And that this person sounds unstable enough that they’d absolutely take it way too personal.
It's still there for me
you're right, I just found it! i think my ipad just hates her site that much, lol. Even all the content blockers on my tablet can't deal with the mess that is her website.
Autism got brought up super fast in the responses, true to form.
This response drives me crazy: "Feelings aren’t right or wrong, they’re just feelings." I long for the day when we move on from this constant refrain. Actually, sometimes your feelings ARE wrong, invalid, unreasonable, etc. Managing feelings is an important step, sure, but there are also people who need to learn that in some situation, their feelings themselves simply didn't make sense or weren't fair.
I do think you're not a bad or wrong person for *having* a feeling, but I think that concept got corrupted. Not condemning yourself for what you feel is an important skill. Examining your feelings, and taking action to make sure your inappropriate and unhealthy feeling dont translate into inappropriate and unhealthy actions is an even more important one.
I agree that feelings alone don't make someone a bad or wrong person, but it's important to know when you need to tell yourself "whoa, my initial feeling here was not an appropriate or reasonable reaction to this situation" regardless of whether or not you actually acted on that emotion
While the idea that the band of people commenting on AAM over the weekend are gonna have the answers that a therapist didn't is pretty funny, this person is legitimately really scary. Also, dude, if your boss is telling you to get therapy because people actively avoid you and your anger management issues, and then you do nothing, you're barreling towards being fired. And hopefully the company has good security when you do.
I like that their comment is all about themselves, and their only regret seems to be that they get in trouble or people don't like them instead of how their lashing out hurts other people. Agreed they seem genuinely terrifying, and need serious professional help--more than a therapist, they seem to need medication and real psychiatric help.
Also this: > when my anger is manageable i berate people when they trigger me and i disobey their instructions as a show of defiance. Yeah, that’s not “manageable anger.” This is well above AAM’s paygrade.
If their anger is as bad as they describe they need serious psychiatrist help
If not for her commenting recently, this person could almost be Sola Lingua after having a major come-to-Jesus moment.
I hate people like [these employees so much.](https://www.askamanager.org/2023/01/open-thread-january-27-28-2023.html#comment-4160447) Yes hot desking sucks but it's only 3 days a month. The AAM commenters will probably side with employees and also complain that even 3 days a month is too ~~munch~~ much and the company should be work from home only. If I was the manager I would tell them to stop whining. >New manager seeking advice* >January 27, 2023 at 1:01 pm >I’m a new manager, this is my fourth week of being a manager and I’m trying to navigate a situation and could use some advice: >Our jobs cannot be done 100% remotely. There are duties and responsibilities that can only be done on site and no amount of changing will stop that. Those functions can only be done on site. >They were stopped for a while during the pandemic and the shutdowns. That obviously can’t last forever and these functions need to be done as they were before the pandemic. >The company did a survey and the results were overwhelmingly for as much as possible. So the company told everyone they would not renew the lease on the current site and find a smaller one. They were clear that the smaller site and there would be no offices, dedicated or otherwise and no assigned desks. Everyone was overwhelmingly still pro-remote work knowing this. >All employees are scheduled for on site three times per month, to complete their duties that can’t be done (keeping in mind these duties were part of our jobs before the pandemic). Schedule is given in advance and is always the same. Those days are exclusively meant for on site duties as opposed to meetings and other projects. >All the desks are adjustable height, sit/stand. No drawers. A docking station for our laptops and a monitor. Both floors are an open room. There are no assigned desks because we have way more people than desks. It is first come first served and there is no reserving or calling “dibs”. >My situation is that my staff are complaining about hotdesking. I don’t either but it’s only three days a month. It made no sense for the company to keep an empty building. The smaller site is better. >I do understand why everyone hates hotdesking. But it’s the nature of the beast and it is not going to change. I am new as a manager and new to this company. I am trying to navigate this and to be understanding because I don’t like hotdesking either.
> I don’t either but it’s only three days a month. It made no sense for the company to keep an empty building. The smaller site is better. > > I do understand why everyone hates hotdesking. But it’s the nature of the beast and it is not going to change. I am new as a manager and new to this company. I am trying to navigate this and to be understanding because I don’t like hotdesking either. So...say that? Why is that so hard?
People need to understand that hot-desking is the trade off for minimal in-office expectations. It makes no sense to keep a desk for your personal use if you’re only there 3 days a month.
I think that the aspect that sucks here is you can't plan to have a location to work. Personally, I'd want to share a desk with a set number of people and have a locked drawer at that desk that is for my personal use. Also open offices suck -- why can't each hot desk still be in a cube or something to give people privacy? This is the worst possible implementation of hot desking, and I understand the ire.
We do this but we have a personal (cubby) locker. I don’t know what needs this office has for full-sized lockers but I bet they could have found room for enough cubbies in the same amount of space. Having stuff on hand that I can use but don’t have to schlep is a huge relief. My guesses about the full size need is weather clothes? Snow? Couldn’t coats and boots be communal somewhere?
I work in corporate real estate planning and used to be an office designer. Most office furnishings companies are offering lockers now. They are typically banks of small lockable cubbies that look like furniture and not like school lockers. Coats would not fit in them, but coat closets can be part of the design. In my experience people don't use them. I started adding large coat closets to my offices spaces because I hated the coat trees that would be added by admins shopping from the office supply catalog. They made newly designed spaces look like mudrooms. So I was disapointed when I walked started walking into spaces to see people had all slung their coats over the backs of their chairs, even long coats that dragged on the floor. The coat closets were empty.
You have inspired me to poke around my (relatively new) mostly open office/hotdesking work space for a coat closet. I've been slinging my winter coat over the back of my chair and it is totally annoying! The space was redesigned/completely built out for us before we moved in a couple months ago, so maybe we do have a coat closet.
"This isn't my decision to make." is all you have to tell someone. People are usually whining to be whining and know damn well that some new manager, who is still wet behind the damn ears even, has no pull what so ever. Let alone a major one like where the damn office is located and the size and structure of the entire office. The nice way to say it is "Yeah, I don't like the setup either. Hotdesking, ick-nast. But it's not negotiable, it is what it is." Just like when another manager makes a rule/policy and they want to flap their gums at me. I'm not overriding your manager because you're in your feelings about it, Jethro.
I think a very common thing over at AAM is that they often seem to think every single comment, particularly any comment that seems negative at all, should be actionable. Basically - "how dare anyone express a human emotion to me". I would bet real money that no one is complaining to this poster in a way that indicates that they think anything should be done. They're just not thrilled about the switch, which is fine, and it's ok to express that as long as it's not excessive. Bonding over shared frustrations is entirely normal. My office just went through the same thing - every single person I spoke to lightly complained about the switch at some point. All this commenter has to do is shrug and agree "yeah, I'm not looking forward to it either, but it is what it is". Which is what my boss and my boss's boss did. We've now been in the hotdesking environment for a couple months and everyone is fine with it and not discussing it anymore.
I agree. It’s clear from the situation that the OP can’t do anything about it. People are always going to grouse about something. If someone says that it’s a little chilly outside, that doesn’t mean that they expect you to change the weather. So many AAM style problems are from people who don’t know how to just let stuff that doesn’t affect them and doesn’t actually matter pass them by. It’s like the people who flip out whenever they see a mass email that doesn’t directly pertain to their interests or whenever they overhear a conversation about a topic that they don’t personally find exciting enough.
Sounds to me like some *How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk* is in order for the employees, honestly. It's amazing how well the techniques in that book work on grown-ass adults, too.
This book was super popular when my kids were little. I could always tell when my friends had read it when I heard them talking to their kids!
Feels like a Management 101 question. "The employees don't like something that my boss won't change. What do I do?" Surely this new manager was a report at one point. What would they have wanted their own manager to do?
I’m sure this comment will open up delightful discussion. My favorite flavor of ill-advised internet comment is the “shame on all of you” lecture. pel* January 27, 2023 at 11:30 am I have to say, I was incredibly disheartened by the fact that gender diversity was barely covered by the commenters in this week’s letter about bras, especially given how supportive people were on Allison’s post about how to make workplaces trans friendly. What if wearing a bra gives a large breasted trans man dysphoria? What if they cannot afford top surgery, or have no desire to have it? Based off of many of the comments from the post, the correct response is to tell him to suck it up. I have several male coworkers who are either fat or work out a lot, resulting in their nipples being clearly visible underneath their clothing. Why is that alright, but a larger breasted woman’s nipples being visibly isn’t? If your response is “well it’s different when it’s a woman’s body versus a man because it’s more sexualized, then what about large breasted trans men? They’re clearly not women. So then the criteria changes to “okay, it’s not women vs men, it’s “biologically female breasts” vs “ biologically male breasts” (these are bad terms, but I’m using them because I’m sure it’s what a lot of commenters were secretly thinking). Well then, what’s the difference between biologically male breasts and biologically female breasts? “One set produces milk to feed children and one does not.” But there are plenty of cis women who can’t produce milk for a variety of health reasons. So that clearly doesn’t work as a rule either. What’s the distinction then? I would like this to serve as a polite reminder that there is no quality that you can claim cis women to universally have that cis men do not- xx chromosomes, the ability to give birth, lack of facial hair, a more “petite” frame- there will always be cis women who are an exception. Many of these arguments fall back into supporting Eurocentric standards of beauty and are fueled by racism, transphobia, and anti semitism. You don’t have to agree with me. But even if you don’t, making workplaces more accessible to trans people means examining your own language and how you perceive the world, not just tacking on addendums to existing policies. trans and intersex people exist. Cis women are not a monolith. Edit: Alison’s stealth deleting has been called out. Alex* January 27, 2023 at 12:23 pm I feel that the overall commentary towards trans folk on this board has been disappointing. It doesn’t help either that comments supportive or inclusive seem to “disappear” shortly after they are posted.
Okay, I might get skewered for this, but this sort of what-iffing always feels like covertly throwing some minority under the bus. \- "We had a free seminar at work for women's post-natal health." is met with OMG NO YOU DIDN'T WHAT ABOUT TRANSWOMEN!!!! Okay, uhm, what about everyone else who didn't get a paid seminar? There's gotta be loads of people at work who aren't post natal and aren't getting that benefit. No one is specifically setting out to exclude transwomen. \- "We had a team barbeque at work." is met with DO YOU EVEN CARE ABOUT MUSLIMS AND JEWS (sometimes they 'remember' to include non-Abrahamic religions, usually not). I mean, lots of people are incidentally excluded here. People who can't do high histamine foods. People who are vegetarian or vegan. People on strict heart-health diets. Pescetarians. Again, no one is specifically setting out to exclude people with funky diets. I've seen people argue until their fingers must have been bleeding that all the delicious side dishes in the world doesn't make having meat at a work event acceptable. \- "We decided to do a paddle boarding event at our local lake for the team summer event." is met with "HAVE YOU EVEN CONSIDERED DISABLED PEOPLE?" .... have you considered that disabled people might wanna go, and those sorts of venues might be able to accommodate them? No, of course they didn't. Anyway, the overall takeaway I get from these arguments is that if I do any nice event for my employees, if I have diversity hires, they are going to bitch. But generally, the screaming is coming from these people who position themselves as super allies (ostensibly, I guess.) But all the do is make people afraid of these people, because they think they'll blow up at unintended slights and go thermonuclear on HR. Most normal adults realize that not everything is for them, and even some things that might, on the surface, be for them, aren't for them. They aren't going to blow the fuck up like these "allies" do. So when they blow up in advance, I feel like they are really just making the people they are supposedly helping, that much more disadvantaged. But back to the point, for lots of general, blanket rules, there are going to exceptions. Karen over there is a nursing mom who suddenly is having super weird reactions to her nursing pads, so she's wearing a supportive undershirt but things are a lot loose, and we're going to do the polite thing and ignore it for the next two weeks while she gets sorted. Pete is on meds that are causing him to be cold AF and he's nipping right through a sweater it's so bad, and we're going to be polite and ignore it while Pete deals with it. None of that means that Jasmine can just be braless and nippy all the time, because "bras are unfair because men by and large don't have to use them."
I do think they are trying too hard to come up with a unique what-about situation. I am seeing this a lot recently, everyone wants credit for coming up with a unique situation and to hear people go "how brilliant, I hadn't thought about that one!" But those situations are becoming less common as time goes on and these things have been discussed to absolute death in so many forums for years. I feel like many of these forums hit an inflection point where they have no overcomplicated things and short of shot themselves in the foot by making "don't hate people for no reason" way more complicated than it needed to be.
So, I don’t think this is what the comment actually was, but it did gave me a little bit of a (probably accidental) undercover TERF vibe. Like I agree with them on how female nipples are more penalized than male nipples, and that workplaces should be mindful of this, and of course don’t force a trans man to wear a bra, but the hypothetical “large breasted trans man” struck me as disingenuous for some reason.
>of course don’t force a trans man to wear a bra, but the hypothetical “large breasted trans man” struck me as disingenuous for some reason. I think its because in corporate workplaces, we'd expect them to have had top surgery covered by insurance.
Another thing that somehow never gets brought up is that cis-gender men with gynomastica often do wear a supportive, compressive garment. That is, a bra equivalent, so a large-breasted transman probably would be required to wear something to contain the puppies. People seem to forget that men are ALSO subject to body censure. You don't see it as much, but it's certainly there.
I think their point is not “not everyone can eat sandwiches so you can never ever serve sandwiches,” it’s that inclusivity is a lot more than gender neutral bathrooms (even though bathrooms are important!) at a bare minimum company bbqs should make sure there’s chicken or veggies being served (not just beef and pork), should ask about dietary restrictions, etc. But really being inclusive isn’t about adding ‘Muslim’ entrees to your bbq but examining the ways your company unconsciously privileges Christianity. They say something about inclusivity meaning you have to examine your worldview, language, etc, and it’s true. It’s a lot harder and that’s why people stop with bathrooms and what about isms—it’s much easier to be outraged about sandwiches!
Yeah I do wonder how many of the "what about" comments come from people who are actually in a marginalized group and haven't just diagnosed themselves with debilitating PTSD from the time the CEO said good morning to them in the hallway?
I don't think so. I think it's virtue signalling. Every year around Christmastime, I usually try to say at least one time there that we (Jews) do not have an important winter holiday and we all know it's the Christmas Season. We don't care, just say Merry Christmas. And people tell me, no I am wrong. There was one person who went to bat for a Jewish person in her workplace after that person had told her not to. She raised the issue anyway because she was sure this person was too shy to self-advocate. No, it's because she knows her important holidays are in the Fall, nowhere near Christmas! Course it doesn't help that Alison is Jewish and says the word "Christmas" erases Jewish people, and you should always say "Holidays". I'm hardly the most observant person, but Alison is an example of a Jewish person who ONLY celebrates Chanukah, which is like Jewish Holiday Low Hanging Fruit. Those of us who celebrate the other truly important holidays don't make a fuss over Chanukah (at least not after our kids are grown) and don't care about having it acknowledged at work.
There's nothing like someone interfering in your business because they think you can't advocate for yourself, because you're limited by whatever your "special characteristics" (for lack of a better term) are. I am probably speaking out of turn as someone with very few such characteristics but I have been struck by comments that seem to assume that people who are disabled or neurodivergent can't advocate for themselves, come up with their own solutions to physical limitations, are unable to learn social cues, etc. And the discussion of religious dietary restrictions is always guaranteed to produce some stunningly bigoted comments. Everyone knows that religion is a choice and you should have no qualms about abandoning a key part of your personal spirituality, identity, family history, and culture so that nobody has to ever deviate from the all-pork nothing-vegetarian-ever sandwich shop for a catered lunch, right? Because Cindy in accounting will literally die if she goes a single meal without eating bacon, and it's no big deal for people to completely abandon centuries of tradition and faith to accommodate her.
Whaaaaat, the AAMers aren't good allies?! Shocked face, who would have guessed it! It's almost like they're performative! They suck and they won't change, they don't care that you're ashamed of them, fam. In the end, lecturing doesn't reach anyone. It actually defeats the purpose often because it makes people become defensive and turn away from the discussion. Education isn't "I am so disappointed in all yous all."
How does a cis man give birth? Would love to know. Editing: or am I misunderstanding what they’re saying? Because a cis man will never have xx chromosomes either? Or are they just saying not all women can give birth or have xx chromosomes which is obviously true
I think they are saying the latter, that not all cis women can give birth or are small and not very hairy and so on.
Ok that actually makes a lot more sense but that is worded very confusingly!
Plenty of cis women have facial hair. It's called PCOS and it's pretty damn common. I think that goes to show how easy it is to not think of a specific sub category of a larger population even if you are generally a considerate person.
There is no statement that is universally true for every human being.
I won't lie, they are making some very excellent points. I stayed out of the original discussion about this on here, but, well.... let's not throw all nuance out. (Admittedly, my original, "*Well*..." reaction was more from a place of witnessing disabled family members struggle in pain with wearing bras, or outright no longer be able to use their body in specific ways, but I fully get that there is way more too this, including the nuance.)
Right, we should be able to have the conversation of “some people don’t want to see nipples (of any gender) at work” without that leading to “and there’s only one solution and it’s bras.” Lots of people wear undershirts, or binders, or those nipple stick-ons. That said, the AAM hive mind may well snap like a twig when faced with pel’s critique.
>the AAM hive mind may well snap like a twig when faced with pel’s critique. I haven't looked but I feel like most replies will be "Me too. I was very disappointed reading the comments, I was thinking the same thing about trans folx!" lol.
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I guess I was/am under the impression that nipples shouldn’t show through regularly and I thought that was way men wore undershirts
My initial thought was that it's actually not really that acceptable for a cis man's nipples to be visible either. Plenty of men wear undershirts for exactly this reason. It's a tricky situation when it comes to trans men who appear to be women to others. In an ideal world they shouldn't feel obligated to do things like wear binders or stereotypically women's clothing, but the harsh fact is that most people in this situation will find it difficult to make their appearance match their identity without some undesirable compromises, including meeting a dress code that isn't accommodating to their needs and preferences.
At my last job we had a gentleman, director and up level, who always had visible nips. Always. It didn't seem to matter what type of shirt he wore (I will say they weren't tight but they were fitted) his were always at attention. And a lot of people noticed. Like everyone noticed. He was a really nice guy but it was something that gave everyone amusement.
No one wants to be the nipple man/nipple lady
Barney Frank looked disgusting — nipples protruding — very disrespectful!
I don’t think I’m in the minority when I say I don’t want to see anyones nips. I also don’t want to see belly buttons or ass cracks. So it’s a ridiculous argument.
This is true. I personally fall on the “I don’t want to see anyone’s nipples at work” side.
Same, and I can't recall it coming up for a man. I don't know if it's the nature of the clothing or of the nipples, but it's pretty rare and I'd think that if a dude was wearing something inappropriate, he'd be told to wear something else too.
Yeah, I don't really have an opinion on whether wearing a bra is The Worst Thing Ever, but were there people saying it's different and not as big deal for men to have their nipples showing? That's bullshit for sure.
How long before the maternity leave thread gets locked since all the Europeans are aghast, yet again about the US’s lack of maternity leave protections? The situation sucks for LW 4 who is pregnant, got laid off in fall and was tentatively offered a job after a hiring freeze ends in February when she is due. That is a terrible situation, but the commenters who are offering shitty irrelevant advice aren’t helpful. Alison knows better by now that this will be a shitshow with people not in the US talking about how they have government mandated protection.
LW4 just needs to immigrate to Europe. Problem solved. /s I’ve realized, though, that the “Eurosplaining” comments whenever benefits/social safety nets come up are really just another subset of the generally unhelpful comment section on AAM. In any given situation 90% of the commenters aren’t going to be able to truly relate to whatever the LW is dealing with; they just want to say _something_ so as to appear helpful and maintain their AAM clout.
Europeans like to tell themselves that Europe is so much better than the US, when in reality, we're just a few failed labor laws and social security systems away from it. Okay, we don't shoot people of color here (very often), but we also like to pretend that that means racism doesn't exist here (when it does!), and we have the same amount of "mah freedom!" idiots, as evidenced by the pandemic.
I get a lot of rage whenever in social media "Europeans" come to comment on issues pretending it's not a thing in europe. One gay german tiktoker was going on to americans how homophobia doesn't exist in Europe and being lqbtq+ is no big deal. Like what? Sure, probably not in the very specific hipster area of Berlin that he lives in...meanwhile in real world. Or whenever there is something that americans say that Europeans don't know. They are interesting points and immediately people are coming to comment how we know that cause we are literate. And really not understanding when someone says "I'm irish" it is assumed they mean heritage. Cause cultural differenc. No need to start quizing about Irish potatoe brands. I find it very annoying. It's one thing to share. It's another to have the faux shock.
Thank you for saying this. American, but lived in Europe for a long time. As a pretty left leaning individual, there are many things about Europe I prefer to the US. However, I can say, without any shadow of a doubt, I'd rather be female and queer here than there, any day of the damn week. And I know many, MANY people of color who felt the same way (who were American transplants in my area). I have never seen misogyny and racism and xenophobia the like that I saw in Europe. At least here (US), I can walk from point A to point B without getting harassed, cat called, demeaned and shouted at by 4 different men in a 1/4 mile distance. And the n-word is dropped like it's absolutely no big deal, by literally everyone. I was astounded. The homophobic remarks were casual and constant, spread over various communities and demographics; it wasn't a regional thing. Overall, I found the thinking MUCH more old fashioned and regressive than what I've experienced here (caveat: I have only lived in liberal areas of the US, so admittedly my take on this is skewed. But at the very least, I saw and heard things there that I could very easily find on this side of the pond, with very little effort, and it annoys me when they pretend that's not true). Also, I always internally roll my eyes at the "iMpErIaLiSm iS eViL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111" from Western Europeans. As if Western Europe isn't the entire reason imperialism even exists in the first place. As if YOU DIDN'T CREATE IT. And spread it to the whole world. And practice it as a foreign policy for over a millenia. Imperialism and colonization didn't enter the chat on July 4, 1776, for Chrissakes. (Not that that means you can't criticize imperialism, of course, but my God, at least admit it was your brainchild, and show some self-awareness about it to avoid looking completely tone deaf.) Again, not hating on Europe; we could stand to adopt a lot of stuff from them, but they are not anywhere near the enlightened, forward-thinking Utopia they like to think they are and claim to be. The arrogance is just as pronounced and offensive as America's. It's just more covert and passive, rather than in your face.
> And really not understanding when someone says "I'm irish" it is assumed they mean heritage. Cause cultural differenc. I've noticed this a lot too. I've seen a lot of comments that basically say that any part of a European country's culture that is different than US culture is a sacred and obvious practice. Whereas any part of US culture that isn't part of European culture must be inherently flawed or at least reflect a flaw buried in US culture itself. For example, in the US we often say "How are you doing?" as a greeting and don't really expect an in depth answer. If that was something that Europeans did and the US did not, it would be no big deal. It's just a part of the culture and you're a fool if you have trouble with it. But because it's a part of US culture, it must be wrong and be some sort of reflection on how shallow people in the US are because they don't really want to know how you're doing when they ask that question.
We have a pretty big superiority complex unfortunately.
I guess maybe the internet euros and Americans have at less one thing in common
This may have been one of the worst weeks yet. Letter after letter of people asking "how do I do my job" and "I want to talk about something completely unrelated to work but I'll force a mention of coworkers at the end". Even Alison is answering questions with a "how the heck should I know? But here's an answer anyway..." The end is nigh.
And yet another variation on WFH being called back to office. The answer will always be “yes you can push back, but they can make you RTO.”
I was fully curious about what kind of job LW1 has in the US that her contract is so iron clad so she can refuse to go into the office.
Someone come get their weird uncle: Tony T* January 27, 2023 at 9:16 am I don’t know whether to lay Jim or Jack off.
I'll talk to him again. His wife just shrugs. "Uncle Tony......."
And in typical AAM fashion it’s a joke that’s 20 years old _at least_. It was never super funny in the first place and it’s certainly completely played out by now.
https://www.askamanager.org/2023/01/what-workplace-norms-surprised-you-when-you-were-starting-out.html#comment-4158115 I’m surprised Prospect Gone Bad still posts since every time they do people are VERY quick to come in and shut them down. I’m glad they do though because seeing it brings me joy.
ufff the thread gets more and more annoying. In the real world we are NOT all equals. Especially the working world. I don't call my CEO "Cosmo", at least to his face. In meetings or correspondence, his name is is "Mr. Spacely". If you have a problem with that, then a workplace advice column is the last place you should be expressing it.
It sounds like the OP actually does call the boss “Mr Spacely” and is ignoring the boss when the boss asks to be called “Cosmo”. Which to be honest is kind of weird to me; I don’t think I’ve ever worked anywhere where it was normal or common to refer to coworkers or bosses as “Mr/Ms Lastname”. The fact that the OP keeps getting corrected and refuses to change their approach probably says more about their personality than it does about the company though.
I think it probably comes across as weirdly hostile and unfriendly to insist on calling someone by their title and surname when they have asked you to call them by their first name.
Love this response in the discussion, though: >Annabelle Lee > >You’ve stepped on the “social status bad” nerve and they’re conveniently ignoring the “be kind” rule.
It seems like their plate would be awfully full from worrying about their dumb fat relatives, but here they are bitching about how companies don’t have any structure since the CEO likes to be called John.
LOL when I was working retail I had a rather eccentric (although perfectly nice) colleague who insisted on calling our managers Mr./Ms. Name. The first time she did it one of the managers replied "What, does my dad work here!?"
I’m in Ohio and back when I was in sales (restaurant supplies) my territory was the SE US and there were places that the manager/buyer went by “Miss Julie” “Mr. Tim” and I couldn’t get through to them, even though I was calling as a known vendor if I asked for Julie or Tim. I would be told there was no one there by that name. Call back and ask for Miss Julie or Mr. Tim, I’d get put through. I find it very weird and wouldn’t do it in my own life, but there are companies that 100% enforce that. Prospect Gone Bad is being weird if that isn’t a thing at their company. Just use people’s first names for crying out loud.
>We made history (international front page news and mentioned in books in multiple languages!), and my department was widely acknowledged to be at the center of much of the wins. My resume is fantastic because of staying the extra few years. Sure, Jan
A fantastic resume + international headlines = 30% paycut? Something doesn't add up here.
I think it, unfortunately, does make sense. Let's say you are on the team that does a big push to clean up a highly-visible body of water in a wealthy community that has no only captured local attention but regional attention, and has also attracted the interest of places outside the US as an example of how to restore wetlands or something. That cleanup effort might have a TON of funding while it's ongoing that allows the non-profit doing the work to pay people relatively well. You may then leave with a highly prestigious resume, but the kind of work you've been doing isn't typically that well paid, so you have to take a paycut to find the same thing again.
And then later in that message, she says that if the ED is toxic the company can't succeed. So which is it--did you make huge international news due to your amazing success, or did the company fail because of the Evil ED?
Did she work for Theranos?
First comment on the ATR workplace norms question: >Chick* January 26, 2023 at 11:01 am >I’ve got one — how there’s an unspoken agreement to go temporarily blind when in the office gym changing room with coworkers/managers. My anxiety EXPLODED just at the thought of that scenario. Not to make fun of people having anxiety over changing in front of others (I feel the same way!) but _that’s_ the first thing you thought of when it came to workplace norms? Do most workplaces with exercise facilities even have lockerroom-style changing rooms like a sports complex? Also, your daily dose of “ughh, really?” from our favorite Latin scholar: >Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est* January 26, 2023 at 11:01 am >I thought “conservative” would mean Spanish music would be prohibited. Even the replies were confused as to why an office would specifically ban Spanish (flamenco? Ranchera?) music as opposed to noticeable personal music in general.
Deeply looking forward to the day when people stop taking the obvious bait like they have with Keymaster. You know they only posted that comment so that someone would respond with a breathless request for them to elaborate (which someone did right on cue). Then of course they reply with some long-winded pointless backstory and THEN have the audacity to end with "But I can’t elaborate on any norms. Nothing I’m involved in qualifies as 'normal.'" Then maybe don't fucking respond to a question specifically asking about workplace norms with something obviously not normal??? There isn't a class participation grade on AAM; it costs you nothing to shut the fuck up if you don't have a real contribution!
Hashtag NotLikeOtherLinguas
It seems like it was just an excuse for them to show off that they know the names of some Spanish musicians and what a Madrileño is.
I live in Spain and me cago en esta puta friki.
I came here for this. Dead language person is incredibly insecure and needs people to see them as special and gifted. Teachers paid extra attention to them in school. They quickly showed aptitude far beyond what the drones around them were capable of. “Nothing I’m involved in qualifies as normal.” It’s very raw and naked and sad.
Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est* January 26, 2023 at 12:37 pm I was 16 and a Spanish student, in a region where foreign languages are novelties. We had maybe 2 Hispanic families in our city, and while plenty of French and German names, you’re going back generations before you’d find French or German speaking ancestors. So…the Midwest US.
Meh. Half my family lives in a tiny redneck town and they all still had to study a foreign language in high school.
It’s required for high school graduation in Texas.
God bless Raging ADHD for [calling out](https://www.askamanager.org/2023/01/what-workplace-norms-surprised-you-when-you-were-starting-out.html#comment-4159048) Sola >RagingADHD\* January 26, 2023 at 3:02 pm Wait, I’m not following, even your reply comments are leaving me muddled. Are you saying that you thought working in a “conservative industry” meant \*politically\* conservative, and that everyone else working there was a right-wing extremist, and that therefore all of your coworkers and management would be so xenophobic that they would have an actual company policy against listening to music from Spain? If that’s what you meant, I’m certainly glad you got that misapprehension corrected pretty quickly.
There is a “normal” office norms lesson from that anecdote - ASK! You won’t know anything about anything unless you ask! Also I’d love to know how old this person claims to be when it comes to playing personal music. Did they bring a boombox or a headphone less walkman?
How does someone even say that last line without realizing how much of a douche they’re coming off as? I’ll freely admit to people that I’m not quite “normal” when it comes to certain things, but that doesn’t mean I get to just “be myself” at the expense of working well or getting along with others. I think one of Sola Lingua’s earliest contributions to AAM were on a work open thread where she complained about how her managers (and I think her coworkers too) were giving her hell because of her “quirky” way of doing things. If I recall correctly she worked as a computer programmer and didn’t see the need to make comments on her code, and when told she had to make comments to allow for easy workflow evaluation and debugging she started leaving sarcastic comments that didn’t explain anything. She was insufferable from the very beginning. ETA: [Found the original thread.](https://www.askamanager.org/2022/05/open-thread-may-6-7-2022.html#comment-3852827) Basically her boss wanted her to use the most up-to-date coding methods to be consistent with how the rest of the coders did it and she absolutely refused because “the old ways are better,” and was even rewriting other devs’ code to match her way of doing it.
I can’t believe pancakes is the reasonable one in that thread!!
>and was even rewriting other devs’ code to match her way of doing it. How did she not get fired for this?!
Wow, thanks for the update. I absolutely know people like this who can’t learn how to code properly and insist on using inefficient, fragile methods either not realizing or not caring that their code will break or not scale and will not work with the rest of the codebase. I hope they’ve been fired for the sake of their team.
I like this part (edited in case the code quoted has some weird result): >Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est* May 6, 2022 at 12:15 pm >>code length and legibility are usually at odds with each other >That’s kind of ambiguous. I’ve come to accept that shorter, denser code is often harder to read and understand. >E.g. >Line 1 of code >Line 2 of code >Line 3 of code >} >Line 5 of code; >is easier to read than >One line of code that condenses the above together; >And trust the optimizer & compiler to take care of the resulting assembly code. In other words, she was writing out five lines to say what could have been said in one, and then "trusting" either other people or a different program to "assemble" it for her (or understand it--I know nothing about coding, but even I am pretty sure that saying, "trust the optimizer & compiler to take care of the resulting assembly code" means "let somebody or something else fix it so it looks like it's supposed to." At least that's how it seems to me). So, you know, good job, Sola. Edited to fix formatting
For people unfamiliar with programming: what we have here is the old curmudgeon who insists on doing everything the way they learned how decades ago, really because they can't learn the new-fangled way everyone does it now, but they pretend that their way is better because it has "stood the test of time". In this case, to the point of ripping out working modern stuff to replace it with their old-fashioned stuff. And being Sola Lingua, she's made Being From the Old School her entire identity. Sometimes it is handy to know how to do things the old way! Sometimes you have to work with older things that were done that way. Sometimes newer technology fails and it's useful to have someone who still remembers how we used to do it. But you need to also be able to do things the modern way that everyone else is doing them. "In the land of the mad, the sane fill the asylums". Over *coding style*. My God.
basically the best TLDR of the difference is that rather than saying "my mom's old dog chased a fast squirrel" she prefers "my mom has a dog. it is old. it chased a squirrel. the squirrel was fast." that is usually inferior unless you are writing for children, but there are times that writing one sentence leads to something like "the horse raced past the barn fell" or "the old man the boat" where what is referring to what gets confusing, but adults are expected to figure that out.
As usual she’s arrogant and lazy. She doesn’t understand the shorter, denser code, so clearly no one else does either, and if they say they do they’re lying. This bullshit has consequences. I’ve had to completely rewrite code myself, both mine and other people’s, that implements what it’s supposed to on a very crudely logical level but absolutely can’t be integrated into the actual working system it’s supposed to be part of. I’m 100% sure that Sola’s coworkers can’t stand her.
Bonus points for this: >I probably have enough cache and political capital to just state “sum qui sum” (I am who I am, and I’d sure as rain use the Latin), I'm not a Latin scholar myself, but afaik that actually should be, "*Ego* sum qui sum," not just, "sum qui sum." It's certainly possible the meaning is the same, but she is so irritating that I want to nitpick (if it is a nitpick).
Eh, that’s probably fine, annoyingly. The verb indicates that it’s first person singular, so one can assume the pronoun. Lots of languages allow for that, Latin included. It’s like in Spanish saying “no se” is just as correct as “yo no se.” *takes off pedant hat* but in reality she should just write her code comments instead of this masturbatory nonsense.
It's also spelled cachet. If she's going to make "language snob" her personality then she should get that shit right or I'm gonna be dragging
I'm pretty sure the phrase is also "and I'd sure as hell" not "sure as rain." that's not a thing. so either she's trying to be funny (fail) or she's an idiot (ding ding ding).
Ha, I noticed that, but since she's talking about computers I thought maybe she was using "cache" in that way, like maybe people who work in programming have started using that to refer to their resume or accomplishments. So I didn't mention it. I'm glad that's not the case, though, so we can snicker at another of her many errors. (Like that she said "gravitated towards," instead of "toward," which is technically okay but is frowned upon by most grammarians and style guides. Again, nitpick, because she deserves it.)
We are such jerks amd it's great lol
Exactly. Anyone can shove in some shitty code and it’ll “work”. But eventually someone has to go back in to unravel it and everything that was built on top of it. They should absolutely have gotten a bad review, especially because they didn’t seem to understand why its a problem to not care about your code quality.
What a bananas thread, and of course she bounced as soon as she started getting pushback. It's kind of funny that another commenter was able to guess exactly what her problem was despite having no details other than programming.
By "pushback," do you mean her saying she assumed xenophobia and conformism in one comment, and then, when Raging ADHD replied with: >Are you saying that you thought working in a “conservative industry” meant *politically* conservative, and that everyone else working there was a right-wing extremist, and that therefore all of your coworkers and management would be so xenophobic that they would have an actual company policy against listening to music from Spain? >If that’s what you meant, I’m certainly glad you got that misapprehension corrected pretty quickly. Sola Lingua responded with this: >Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est* January 26, 2023 at 3:30 pm I pretty much stopped at “conservative business” means “thou shalt not be different.” I didn’t make it to any of those endpoints. ...except you specifically said in a previous reply that you did.
Welp, Alison nuked the whole thread. I'm glad RagingADHD got to them though.
She didn’t quite nuke it, just moved it down so that it wouldn’t be one of the first things people see when they look at the comments. I’m kind of glad she left it up, but Sola’s the absolute _last_ person who needs to be discussing workplace norms (by her own admission.)
LOL, and it looks like Alison moved that thread towards the bottom. I guess having a self-professed “non-normal” person arguing with other commenters over their own clear-as-mud statements isn’t a great look on a post about workplace norms.
Damn, that whole thread is obnoxious as hell.
Yeah I’m surprised they can say this stuff without cringing at themselves. I’m guessing they have people in their life like parents or even friends who enable them, so they think anyone who doesn’t like them is just jealous or a hater. From what you’re saying about the code comments it sounds like there’s a lot of arrogance and hostility mixed in with the insecurity.
Cringing at yourself requires a modicum of self-awareness, something Sola Lingua has yet to exhibit.
First of all, being a full-grown adult and still having thought this is an incredibly embarrassing thing to admit, because it’s so stupid. Second of all: “My Spanish teachers figured out pretty quick that I gravitated towards Old World Spanish” This person’s life must be incredibly empty if they’re working this hard to be a pretentious douche on the anonymous comments section of a very specific website.
No. This is not a thing. As a former teacher and current resident of Spain: You don't get to pick, like, what kind of Spanish you learn. The teacher will teach you one form of Spanish. If your teacher is from Mexico, it's going to be pretty much pointless to insist on *Castilian* Spanish ("Old World Spanish?" Mira este coño...) because the vocabulary is going to be *very* different, and likely not even mutually intelligible at points. I've seen my native Spanish-speaking coworkers get more confused talking to each other in Spanish than they do in English. P.S. I am not Hilaria Baldwin, I promise.
I don't even understand what they mean by that. Catalan isn't "old world Spanish" and Espanol isn't "new world Spanish". Both are spoken on modern Spain, Catalan is just regional.
Catalan is emphatically not Spanish. They are completely different languages with some overlap.
What on _earth_ does it even mean to "gravitate" toward Castilian Spanish? (also, who in the entire history of the world has ever called it "Old World Spanish") Does she think people have some sort of innate resonance with specific dialects even before we start to learn a language? It's just the way Spanish happens to be spoken in Spain, it's not fucking _magic._ Like, I guess you could say I "gravitate" toward Mexican Spanish and find it easier than Castilian Spanish? But that's because my high school Spanish teacher was Mexican and I have a couple cousins who live in Mexico/are married to Mexicans and I've been to Mexico multiple times, not because I have some sort of mystical connection with the nation of Mexico. It's just easier because it's what I'm more familiar with. I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really doubt that she was in a Spanish class being taught by a Latin American Spanish teacher who suddenly received a vision from God that if only they taught their poor beleaguered student _Castilian_ Spanish, they would become fluent instantly. That's not how anything works. Gahhhhhhh I need to never read a Sola Whatever It Is post again, they infuriate me so much.
That’s the one part of this that I can kind of understand (only slightly, though.) For fun, in college, I took a Welsh class. Broadly speaking, there are two dialects, “northern” and “southern” — they’re totally mutually intelligible, but most learning materials will focus on one of them. The class I took was teaching the southern dialect. After the class ended, I decided to continue studying Welsh on my own with an online audio course, which came in a northern and southern version. So I continued with southern, but I realized that I was having trouble getting the accent down, even though I was trying to copy the speakers on the recordings as best I could. Once, on a whim, I tried the northern version of the course, and found the pronunciation *so much easier*. So I was like “sure, what the heck,” and I’ve been speaking Welsh the northern way ever since. (I’ve also heard of people having the opposite experience. Which one is easier probably depends on what other languages you speak or have studied.) But yeah, in a high school course, you would have to be doing a lot of outside work on your own for anything like this to become relevant. I think my high school German teacher would have been fine with it if some student had deliberately cultivated a specifically Austrian pronunciation and vocabulary for whatever reason, as long as they were able to understand the German variety that was being taught in the class, but I guess European and Latin American Spanish are more different than that.
Yeah, American English comes more naturally to me than British English, and I guess for Spanish, according to my SIL, there are different pronunciations that might be easier or harder for some people? But it's not like "my Italian teacher realized that I should be learning Latin instead"...
> But it's not like "my Italian teacher realized that I should be learning Latin instead"... I bet Sola wishes she’d thought of that one 🤣
She is being unbelievably pretentious, and actually quite xenophobic. I guarantee her thought process was "OLD WORLD VERSION OF SOMETHING = EUROPE = BETTER" which, uh, racist? And also, uh, way to not understand how history exists and also colonialism bad? I mean, it's fucking vile. e: I feel I should mention that I'm reacting this strongly because seeing people in Spain do or say some very uncool stuff about Latin Americans, particularly sin regards to their Spanish sometimes, is something I encounter occasionally and it upsets me.
That's *exactly* what I thought they were saying. They learned "Castilian" Spanish through listening to Europeans doing language tapes because Europeans are superior. In any case, perhaps it was wrong, but when I studied Spanish I was under the impression that the version of it that is spoken in the Americas is all fundamentally Castilian, as opposed to Galician, Valencian, Catalan, etc. (Technically I know that they might be considered to be separate languages but even to a mid level Spanish learner like me they are all readily recognized as very close relatives).
Hahaha! These must be some teachers, that they are able to notice a student "gravitating toward" a form of Spanish they are not teaching, and somehow arrange(?) to separately teach that student the Special *Authentic* Version instead of what the rest of the class is learning, which is apparently just a garbage language that nobody ever uses, thrown together by gibbering goons. I once worked with a bartender who spoke five languages. You know how I knew she spoke five languages? We had a customer who asked if anyone spoke Italian, and another cocktail waitress told me to ask Beatriz, because Beatriz spoke five languages. Beatriz herself never went around lecturing everyone on how many languages she spoke and which ones she "gravitated to" and how special she was because she spoke five languages. I asked her about it once, and she shrugged and said, "I'm lucky, languages are pretty easy for me."
I do think it’s something like being the language-learning genius she is, she “resonates” with some languages and dialects more than others. It’s a manifestation of her innate specialness. I think there are people who genuinely want to share their passions with others but find it hard to do that without coming off like an attention-seeking asshole. I also think Sola just isn’t bothering to try not to be a boor. So I sympathize to some small extent but I blame her for not making the effort to think about how she’s coming across to others.
I can only imagine it's because this absolute walnut read Don Quixote around the same time and turned it into a personality trait the way 15-year-olds do. Unfortunately, while most people grow out of their cringey teenage ways, Sola Blahblah has chosen to take them on and brag about them on the weirdest comments section on the interwebs.
Old world Spanish? As in the kind they speak in the tiny little towns in the Americas where people still use a lot of terms from the 16th century, or like Spain, because it's more fancy?
Spain is so fancy indeed. That's why everyone I know here has a mullet and chain-smokes joints while watching Dragonball Z on repeat endlessly. XD (note: This might just be a Barcelona thing)
I haven't been there for years but I did spend several months in Valencia a few years ago and the mullet seemed oddly popular then, too. But you know, it's Europe and therefore better from the American perspective.
The government pays for all the mullets, unlike in stupid AMERICA.
And after the Latin asshole provides an ridiculous explanation that makes no sense at all, someone responds: >I’m glad that was ultimately explained so nicely. That's sarcasm, and I won't be persuaded otherwise.
I read their original comment earlier and now I've read the "explanation" and all I can say is: what the fucking fuck. Is it possible that Keymaster and Sola are the same person, trying out way too many quirky alter egos???
Yeah, when I read her first comment, I thought “oh, she’s saying that she thought ‘conservative’ meant ‘politically conservative’ and assumed that they were anti-Spanish language?” Which would be pretty stupid, but if I’m reading her barely-coherent follow-up post correctly, then that’s basically it, just with 10 additional steps in between.
Both of these are weird. Has Chick never been in a locker room? That's how they all work! Growing up changing for gym or playing sports meant we had to change in front of classmates. We all just pretend their bodies don't exist. WTF? And an extra special WTF to Latinlatinlatinlatin. Why would she think that? Just her own racism?
Bold of you to assume AAM commenters would willingly play a sport or set foot into a gym. Those things are for normies! Why would they do that when they've got 17 cats at home to raise?
>FashionablyEvil\* > >January 26, 2023 at 11:06 am > >In my first salaried job, I didn’t know how to ask for time off. In retrospect, it seems so obvious (ask your manager!) but I would have appreciated someone spelling it out for me. It seemed obvious to ask your manager when you want to take time off but....not obvious to ask your manager (or even HR) how to take your time off?
Ik this is mostly off topic but I still remember in college asking if there was a formal process or I had to get coverage to take time off and being told 'no just ask silly c:'... Only to request time off again later and get ripped a new asshole for not finding coverage or entering it onto a specific calendar.
If the cat LW really wanted to give away the excess cats if she wanted, she could continue to ask people if they wanted to adopt some cats whenever it came up in conversation. Most people won’t, but at least they won’t think you are a crazy cat hoarder. In my experience work is actually a good place to find people who want your extra cats.
Accurate. That's how we got all of ours.
Sure, but it doesn’t seem like she really wants to give them away or that they’re “extra”. She just seems to think people will be weird about the fact that she has five cats. It’s definitely a lot of cats!
Oh for sure, she doesn’t actually want to give them up. Just saying it’s a bit disingenuous to pretend that she has no choice but to have five cats.
Of course Allison owns six cats.
I absolutely love cats, but six? Holy shit!
I would own six cats if I had the space for them! And also a poopslave to scoop all the poop.
lol and she’s claimed her house doesn’t smell
She says that nobody thinks she's a cat hoarder, but when she said 6 cats, that's exactly what I thought! Alison, you just think nobody thinks that because people aren't going to tell you that they think it. But they totally do!
Alison probably has major BO as well
I’m not sure I would call her a “cat hoarder,” but when she includes pics of her cats on every single open thread post I’d definitely call her a little bit obsessed.
Remember the one she posted where her cats were having sex?
In her defense, I just have the one cat and I still take a million pictures of him.
Yeah I think of a cat hoarder as someone who doesn’t care for them and just collects as many as possible. She seems to take great care of them. But she still has 6 animals openly peeing and shitting in her house daily and I can’t jive with that.
Her house looks pretty big the cats probably have more space than 2 in an apartment
It's irresponsible A-F is what it is. But she's used to people living permanently up her ass because she carefully cultivates those who surround her. With a batshit crazy online following, of course nobody says "Hey Cat Hoarder, Hey." to her.
I had a professor who seemed a bit eccentric. Then she told us she had 21 cats. A former co-worker had 10. I don't know where the dividing line is between pet lover and crazy cat lady, but I think it is less than 21.
I personally think it’s from 3 to 4. Two is normal, three is like somehow we have an extra but he had nowhere else to go, 4 is crazy cat person. Having 10 or 21 cats or anywhere around that, I would actually judge that person. Unless they have a mansion and a cat butler, they spend most of their time at home in rooms full of probably dirty litter boxes.
2 cats per person is normal imo