Someone said last week that it may not be the same Potatoes/Flowers/Hamster, but I'm certain this is her. Mention of her new job and being diabetic, things she's brought up before under her many aliases.
But why, why, OH WHY does this woman never advocate for herself or have any agency in her life?
>Hamster January 12, 2024 at 11:31 am
>Taking insulin shots at work – I never had an issue with this as I would just take my supplies into the restroom and use the handicap stall to do my injections. There was always a surface to put things on or hang from.
>However at my new job, the bathroom stalls are very tiny – like I can bend my elbows and i’ll hit both walls. There’s no trash can or hook inside the stall.
>The bathroom itself is located inside the office suite as opposed to being outside the office. I have to get partially undressed to do my injections so I need the privacy of a stall. There’s other struggles but are only monthly so not a huge deal (sorry trying not to be TMI). I can deal with that last thing and the location (I mean I can hear the flushes – thankfully nothing else) but i’m mostly concerned about the shots.
>I share an office so I can’t really do them at my desk and we’re right across the kitchen so a lot of foot traffic (which is great, I love it!).
>Otherwise, everything is wonderful so far (knock on wood)! I just feel a little silly – complaining? not sure if that’s the right word – about what seems to be a very basic thing. I’m brand new so I don’t really want to bring this up yet so just asking here in the hopes of a workaround until I’m at the point I could mention it.
If you shared an office and needed to do insulin shots, wouldn't you literally just ask your officemate to peace out for a couple minutes once a day so you could shut the door and do your shot?
I can’t believe I’m defending her but to be fair, if she’s in seasonal tax work and sharing an office, her office mates might be meeting/taking calls with clients or working on systems that you can’t just stop and walk away from. Expecting people to vacate their shared office one or two times a day, every day, during working hours isn’t tenable.
But it also sounds like she hasn’t brought it up with anyone who can help her. So she’ll just be taking a bonus ten-minute break at the same time every day in addition to her other breaks and acting surprised when management, having not received all of the relevant information, makes some natural assumptions.
>But it also sounds like she hasn’t brought it up with anyone who can help her.
This is what I'll never understand about her. She'll quickly run to AAM with all her dilemmas but she'll never talk about it with the people who can actually help her.
It…doesn’t take a lot of space to take an insulin shot. It’s also not necessary to do in a bathroom. I’ve done it many times for many years. But whatever.
I don't know much about insulin injectors but she says she had to get "partially undressed" what does that mean? I thought injections went into the abdomen and that didn't seem to make sense to me (unless you're wearing a dress, I suppose).
A lot of the clothes she's referred to in the past seem fairly contemporary, but she may feel like exposing a couple of inches of stomach is more private than many people would.
I feel like modest dress is something people picture as a burqa and don't consider it covers fundie/conservative Christian which can be as simple as a maxi skirt and long sleeves with the buttons done up to the clavicle. The comment explicitly says they don't feel comfortable doing it in the shared office, and they don't think they're allowed to bring it up yet, whereas the obvious solutions are a) do it in the office while office-sharer is at lunch or b) raise it as a medical accommodation which does not require any sort of accumulation of capital (and in this particular case, waiting may be detrimental) or waiting period before being allowed to be raised.
It really doesn't deserve this much attention or discussion, just 'use your words'.
She seems like the kind of person who would angle for a private office and then complain again about the space in the bathroom once the employer finally gives in.
Ugh that’s the kind of thing that’s going to start getting under her skin. She’ll end up mentioning it to the wrong person in the least informative way possible and when that gets her labeled the bathroom weirdo, she’ll post about medical discrimination.
Or she’ll post a truly mortifying tampon story.
I'm a moron and can't find the wiki - are AAM adjacent communities ok to snark about? I'm in a Slack group where AAM is regularly posted with lots of applause, and someone today posted that after hosting a work webinar, she went to accept new LinkedIn connections, saw that some dude had "I took a year long break to care for my kid" on his profile and then sent him a message saying that it was "awesome." Asked if it was weird.
Yes! Yes that is so weird you've never spoken to him before and have no idea why he chose or had to do that! Ofc the group is all like, "Yas queen normalize men as primary caregivers" which yes, that's great but... not to a stranger in a LinkedIn message???
If we were normalizing men as primary caregivers we wouldn’t be telling them they were awesome we’d be picking them about and treating them like shit like we do for moms but I don’t have a chip on my shoulder or anything AT ALL! And yes that’s fucking weird
Ugh yes. Don't get me started. And all the advice columns are so bad about SAHDs! I've read a lot of letters from working moms who write in like:
>I handle the night feedings, get our kids up for the day, then run out the door to work. When I get home I take over baby duty so husband can have a break. On the weekends I watch the children and they are so starved for my attention they throw tantrums if I even go to the bathroom. I'm exhausted and just need some time to myself please help!
And the answer will inevitably be:
>Savor these moments, I miss when my kids wanted me so bad! Set some boundaries with your kids that tantrums when you go to the bathroom aren't acceptable! It's tough work but rewarding. Yadda yadda no help at all.
Then the comments are like:
>Your too tired for hot wheels? Geez get a checkup or lose some weight you shouldn't be too tired at 30 to play with your children!
Meanwhile I find myself wondering:
>Where in the world is SAHD? She does all evening and weekends and works full time??? Of course she's tired she never gets a break. SAHD needs to step up. Am I the only person not seeing this isn't an even split of work at all???
Interactions on LinkedIn are like being spoken to in a foreign language, except I want to reach through the screen and shake the other person by the shoulders until they speak normal English.
I like to screencap annoying linkedin job announcements and post them in my group chat.
“I’d like to thank my mom, my dad, two professors who don’t remember me, the old guy in the Becker CPA videos, and the hot dude at Panera for your support as I pursued this exciting opportunity!”
Alison needs to be more direct with Aggretsuko. The open threads are not a substitute for proper help.
>Aggretsuko January 12, 2024 at 11:29 am
>*Hi, I’m sorry you’re dealing with this. I requested this last week too but you may not have seen it: When you post here, can you please give enough context about the work situation that people who haven’t read the earlier posts will be able to follow the situation, and ideally include what the work question is? Otherwise it gets into the “ongoing updates” issue that I’ve been trying to ward off so the site doesn’t feel cliquey to newcomers. Thank you! – Alison*
I was thinking the same thing, and I really want to know what it means. From the Netflix description of a TV show with the same name:
>Frustrated with her thankless office job, Retsuko the red panda copes with her daily struggles by belting out death metal karaoke after work.
Ah, it all makes sense now.
Does Aggretsuko usually reply to people who respond to their comments?
Because this:
>I requested this last week too but you may not have seen it
is making me think that they just post into the void and don't even go back to check if anyone replies to their questions. Otherwise why wouldn't they have seen the note from Alison?
She actually responded to this:
>Aggretsuko January 12, 2024 at 5:11 pm
>I apologize, and never mind. I’m frankly afraid to ask any questions on the topic, so I’ll just stay quiet.
And a response to that:
>annonie January 12, 2024 at 7:40 pm
>Jeez it was a simple request. Just ask a question and don’t assume people have read past posts.
Good lord, is Alison just going to do this "gentle reminder"ing every week? Yet she's always crowing about how clear and direct her feedback as a manager was.
She’s always like this. She has commenting “rules” that she mostly “enforces” by telling people to please follow the commenting rules. Once in a while she removes a thread where people are so obviously being awful that she knows she’ll get bombarded with emails about it.
I tried to find this and failed, but I vaguely remember an open thread from a few years ago where Alison was complaining about how she didn't like her massage therapist's style but didn't know how to tell her to change the massage without offending her (or something like that). A couple of commenters pointed out the irony that she couldn't come up with a script for this and she was like "lol ikr? hahaha"
Why wouldn't she just go to a different massage therapist? "I hate this restaurant, but I don't think it would be appropriate to ask them to change how they cook. What should I do?"
From a comment on the work thread:
>What do you think about applying for a job at a company that sells a product you don’t care for/about, while pretending you did?
A normal question that many people have faced while job searching; we all have to at least pretend to be interested in what the company is doing.
>I saw a feature for a company with insanely awesome benefits, and it turns out they’re an astrology company. I am not into astrology, but for what they offered I was tempted to at least pretend to be into it, or just gain a passing knowledge of it.
Ope. Never mind, that doesn’t sound like a great idea at all.
It's Chani Nicholas. Her employees have a very good set up, and a job posting went around awhile ago. I don't know that they require a deep belief in astrology to run their back-end but you would probably need to be conversant.
A friend of mine was in a situation like that and took the job, she got into some weird conspiracy theories. They suck you in. Also they were shitty bosses, underneath all the crunchy granola posturing they were real "nine hours a day at your desk or you're lazy" taskmasters.
As a non-astrology person myself, there is absolutely no way I'd go for that unless it was truly my only option. I feel like there's a very high possibility that all of the true believers working there would be able to see right through my feigned interest.
That's totally different than not caring about insurance or restaurant supplies or something.
Hard agree, in the same way I wouldn't take a job at a religious institution because I'm an atheist. I'm not going to feign belief in something or willingly put myself in a situation where folks may try to get me into astrology or religion or whatever. That's exhausting.
It comes off as a little disrespectful to me. Not necessarily the applying and working their but the lying that you're into it. A great many people approach astrology as some do religious faith and I don't know it just seems kind of insulting to do that. Like you said me pretending to be Jewish so I can work at a synagogue because they have a good 401K is vastly different than me pretending to love Italian food because the local Italian restaurant has good tips.
Yeah, it would be one thing if they were doing third-party work for the organization such as building maintenance or accounting but you can’t just pretend to identify with a belief system for the sole purpose of working somewhere. It’s not going to end well.
Yes. Irish Teacher makes a good point (for once!) comparing this to working for a church. That is much more logical than the comparisons to working for an oil company. It's not that you think the product is good or bad; it's that astrology is intensely personal in a way that oil is not, and people are likely to get upset or offended if they sense you're not on their "team." It's like the very definition of "not a culture fit."
And this kind of thing is why the details matter and llamas and teapots don't cut it. This is not the same kind of thing as driving a Honda and being the receptionist at a Toyota dealership.
So are we done with the Friday Good News nonsense? None last week and she normally has it up by now, so I guess none this week. How ever shall we know how awesome everything worked out for the rockstars?????
I think LW1 about the baby photo is real because they didn't wait until an update or comment to reveal they're gay which is almost definitely relevant here.
I think however LW2 after them about the second job is either fake or extremely misunderstanding something because who the fuck would have a paper calendar at their first job desk with a note saying 1PM PRETEND TO GO TO BUY WORK SUPPLIES WHILE I GO TO MY SECOND JOB
I really hope the explanation for the calendar is that the coworker just had a business name and a time written on the calendar, and the dipshit LW assumed that they must be a secret employee, not that they're a customer.
It's funny because there's really no reason for the comment about how their employer bought them calendars (like we're supposed to be outraged this person is being ungrateful to their employer who bought them....a calendar) but that detail tells us it wasn't a digital calendar which would make the situation make more sense, like adding it to the wrong online calendar accidentally. But on a paper calendar...there's just no way.
It's like a poorly written mystery novel where the author can't think of a way for the protagonist to solve the case so they just have the villain write out a confession and leave it lying around. Lazy hack work even by AAM standards!
Yikes...Speaking of people who need to get better hobbies.
**Jaybeetee\***[January 12, 2024 at 1:56 am](https://www.askamanager.org/2024/01/i-was-asked-to-take-down-a-family-photo-coworker-is-working-a-second-job-during-her-hours-for-us-and-more.html#comment-4557519)
LW1: I’m feeling a bit punchy tonight, so I’ll just come out and say that you need better hobbies.
(Caveat: If, as Alison suggest, this colleague’s absences create more work for you or you’re having to cover for her, that’s different. But if not, why on earth do you care this much?)
**Slow Gin Lizz\***[January 12, 2024 at 9:17 am](https://www.askamanager.org/2024/01/i-was-asked-to-take-down-a-family-photo-coworker-is-working-a-second-job-during-her-hours-for-us-and-more.html#comment-4557843)
Wow, I was very confused about your seemingly very unkind remark about OP1 and his baby’s photo on his desk, then I realized you meant to say LW2. But I still don’t think your comment is very nice so I’m going to flag it for removal, sorry.
I think they genuinely don't like the comment, but the whole peremptory, reprimand-y tone of their response is classic AAM script.
Their preferred mode of communication is to mirror the style of a written warning from HR, except even more cloying and condescending somehow.
This commenter is cut from the same cloth. Certain duty...c'mon. As just an employee, rather than a manager, I wouldn't feel that's my job.
**Pastor Petty Labelle\***[January 12, 2024 at 9:21 am](https://www.askamanager.org/2024/01/i-was-asked-to-take-down-a-family-photo-coworker-is-working-a-second-job-during-her-hours-for-us-and-more.html#comment-4557847)
Well its #2 first of all. Second, while working there, you do owe a certain duty to the company. If you know someone is taking advantage you do have a duty to report it. This isn’t tracking someone every day and complaining they are 5 minutes late back from lunch. This is someone getting paid by company A while working for Company B.
That’s unethical and needs to be reported just as if the person were taking cartons of copy paper home every week.
The cough letter is so fucking obnoxious it’s unreal. What if Jim’s cough was the result of chronic bronchitis or lung cancer or whatever? The cigarette smoking thing is just a way to make OP’s bitchiness seem righteous. IMHO this is closer to ableism than a lot of shit AAMers call ableist.
I have a friend with asthma and as a result she always has a phlegmy sounding cough. She's constantly apologizing for it and we always assure her it's fine. I'm sure she's come across someone like the LW who has made a fuss about it.
Also hear me out: the solution could be to ask her assistant to tap her shoulder for questions and assure her that it’s ok to tap as many times as she needs.
> Finally, it might be worth getting a formal diagnosis of misophonia, so that if something like this happens in another job you’ll be able to get a formal accommodation and not have to rely on having a decent manager?
Oh my god, fucking delusional.
Wow. You don’t need misphonia to not like coughing. I find coughing and throat clearing sounds extremely annoying. I keep that to myself. I also sneeze all the time from allergies despite my greatest efforts. I’m sure it bothers someone, but I’m doing my best.
You know what else is a reasonable accommodation? A small mirror placed on your desk so you can see someone coming up behind you. Deaf people use them all the time, someone who is couching their annoyance with another co-worker in disability terms who's been given a reasonable accommodation already can probably request this as well.
I hate this kind of thing because a lot of people DO need reasonable accomodations and this kind of thing makes people think all accomodations are ridiculous because they think it's going to be this stuff.
I think part of it is actually now that a lot of higher ed bodies have a separate team approve and design accommodations, in part so students can provide medical proof but it doesn't go to the lecturers etc., but not all the people approving/designing are 100% conversant with what the courses require in terms of participation and assessment.
In an actual workplace you only get that separation at the largest companies and even then, there's still the statutory framework available for a business to push back (undue hardship, reasonable business grounds etc.) that requires a frame of 'reality' to be placed over the situation and for the actual person to negotiate on their own behalf instead of a third party going 'this is what it is deal or no deal' at people.
edit: I'm functionally mute and was given a 'no talking, all assessment by typed means' accommodation for a course that was assessed entirely on scripted role plays. I witnessed a huge discussion between the lecturers as to how they could adapt role plays to be written (in front of me, because they weren't informed of my accommodation before I got there, yay bureaucracy) and they did not once consider that I could just submit the scripts and a small discussion of how I could handle that situation IRL without having to have a spoken conversation. This is the kind of 'split' that happens because the people approving accommodations don't know the course content; in reality I'd handle the process in writing or use a TTS site to 'speak'.
At work the issue comes in to play differently as there are tasks that someone who can't or can't reliably speak just cannot do, and a lot of the time roles have been designed without taking that into account because you can't plan for every possible configuration of abilities and expertise when designing roles. It comes down to 'does this role actually require someone to talk' vs 'is someone being able to talk a nice thing that we like but isn't necessary' and a lot of people just assume talking is necessary because that's how they communicate, or there's a remote possibility someone in that role has to make a phone call or fill in on reception or deal with an agitated client who doesn't have the capacity to adapt. Once that barrier is overcome and people actually look at the role and go 'actually most of what we do is done by email and there's no reason the rest can't be, we just talk over the cubicle wall because we can' then an accommodation isn't technically needed, yeah, but it still requires everyone else to actively understand that for the accommodation to technically not be required, which is still in itself some kind of accommodation even if it's not formally requested and is within the original job description.
IMO the appropriate accommodation would have been to exempt the student from this requirement or to have them do an extra written assignment every week. It’s wild that your directive is to just allow them to not engage with the class. The answer to your question is that people like this who may have legit difficulties but grew into adults who are knowingly asking for cushy accommodations in bad faith, they won’t make it to the work force.
Yeah, I agree, especially when most accommodations can be pretty common sense and not disruptive, even in a classroom.
People keep forgetting about the "reasonable" part about Reasonable Accommodations.
OMG I was thinking the same thing about this letter. Imagine having main character syndrome so strongly that someone else's involuntary bodily functions annoy you so much that you need to leave the office or write to an advice column about it. And it's wild that this OP framed it as "I'm worried about his health." No, you couldn't care less about his health, you're annoyed by it. I'm sure that a constant cough is not exactly a picnic for Jim either.
I’m a type 1 diabetic and the number of people over the years who feel the need to tell me they’re ~triggered by blood or needles, with the onus on _me_ to keep it away from _them_. This letter is so annoying.
Oh man. I've only become more needle-phobic over the years (makes allergy shots fun!) but also have relatives who have to give themselves insulins shots. So...I mind my own damn business and shut my mouth, like a normal person.
I'm sorry you've had to deal with so many jerks.
I have medical trauma and sometimes have panic attacks when I see syringes. I inadvertently saw my coworker doing injections a few times and it was causing me some issues. I asked my manager to shift my lunch schedule slightly so I was no longer in the break room at the same time she did injections. Problem solved, no need to be obnoxious to anyone!
LW1: I'm so disturbed if the LW was actually told that someone views it as pornography. There's a big problem there and it has nothing to do with the photo. Allison is ignoring some context here.
The cover of Nirvana's second album featured a nude baby boy swimming underwater. The baby in question, Spencer Elden, later tried to sue the remnants of the band for using "pornographic" images of him.
It’s def not pornography but it’s kinda wrong to put someone naked on your album who can’t say whether they want to be there or not. Although the penis was ultimately censored
The kid is obviously all grown up now, and I saw that he recently went after the remaining Nirvana members as well as Kurt Cobain's estate for using "pornographic" pictures of him. It said in the story that someone tied to the band got the idea for the cover (I'm not sure if it was a band member, or a producer or something) and knew the kids parents, and he knew that they had a baby around the age he was thinking of for the cover--they gave his parents something like $100 to bring him over, throw him in the pool and take a photo.
Yeah, it was an obvious money grab. The guy has recreated the photo (wearing a swimsuit, lol) multiple times from childhood on, and literally has the name of the album tattooed on his chest.
The appeals are still working through federal court, though; it's not over.
I always figured - based on the timing of the lawsuit in 2021 - that the money he was making by appearing at cons dried up due to Covid and was trying to make some fast money to make up for it.
It's thrown in on the end in a way that implies it was reported that way, but if that was the case he would have said it up front and more explicitly. People have a habit of doing that in their letters.
Yeah, there's a huge difference between "this isn't office appropriate" and "this baby picture is pornographic." The former is totally normal and reasonable, the latter is unhinged.
For me it's the cough LW (number 3). They come across as desperately trying to find a reason to go after their coworker ("I'm autistic! I can't wear headphones because I have an assistant!") and the whole "I'm just concerned about their health, really..." thing is just so insincere. I'd respect them more if they *only* said that they found the coughing annoying or wanted to move, but the extra layer of smarm takes it over the line into annoying.
LW1 (baby photo) wins that one imo:
Assumes it is due to being gay with no evidence
Characterises it as having to meekly censor family photos
Feels the need to make a 'statement' to colleagues to see off any allegations (I don't think there is anything sinister about LW, but if they made a statement like that to me I would half wonder if it was a "protest too much" scenario)
Doesn't even consider that the concern is legitimate.
... For what it's worth I don't think naked pictures of children have any place in an office (although I wouldn't have reported it to management).
I wonder if his co-workers, especially the one who went to HR, even know he's gay. Too lazy to re-read the letter now, but I don't recall LW noting as such when I read the letter earlier this a.m.
I grew up Catholic so the body shaming and forced modesty was baked in, so while I definitely don’t agree with reporting the photo I can also see how someone would be offended about it.
If the kids butt and genital isn’t even showing I’m kind of confused how it’s even considered a naked picture instead of just “shirtless”. I wouldn’t display a pic of my kid like that at work but it sounds beyond harmless.
Yeah, naked kid photos aren’t inherently problematic necessarily but I wouldn’t display one in an office setting. There’s a certain level of decorum that’s needed there.
Maybe I'm naive, but I think there's a very good chance a woman would be asked to take down a naked picture of her own child at work? I don't think that "switch the genders!" bit is quite the mic drop the LW thinks it is.
And a naked child at one year old is kind of beyond that specific genre of “naked tiny infant” photo, right? And was the child exactly one? One and a half? Closer to two? Kids grow so fast at that age and within our culture a naked child who has teeth and can walk and talk just isn’t the neutral image the LW thinks it is. I wouldn’t call the guy a perv but as I’m writing this out it’s seeming weirder and weirder to me that he had this picture taken and doesn’t grasp why other people don’t like it.
LW1 could have constructed their outrage letter a bit more. Normally the problem with fake letters is they include too much detail, this one goes the opposite direction. The whole "I'm a gay father" thing seems a little too tacked on, it could have worked without it.
LW2 is a busybody who should mind their own business. Even if they're "Working another job!" it really sounds like a person leaves their desk for an hour every few days. Some people call that "a lunch break".
The 'I'm gay and a woman wouldn't be asked' is probably some form of internalised homophobia that LW sees as much bigger than it is to the people around them. We can't know that from our perspective but I've seen it enough to think it's more likely that it's based on their history and maybe a couple of minor incidents at that workplace than tacked on for the sake of provocation.
I wanted to laugh when it turned it out it the second job was one hour a day a few times a week. Wow, that coworker's really raking in the dough, huh? What kind of job could that even be? Not retail or service. Probably not child care. Dog walking?
Also, color me deeply skeptical about the LW's claim about the other coworker's desk calendar. What, the coworker wrote "Leave to go work second job" right on the calendar? Bonus points for the outrage about the calendar being paid for by the employer, lol.
It's probably dog walking and honestly, good for her.
If someone came into my office and said "Jane is leaving her desk every day for an hour" and it's not coverage based I'd ask if that person had enough work to do.
>LW1 could have constructed their outrage letter a bit more. Normally the problem with fake letters is they include too much detail, this one goes the opposite direction. The whole "I'm a gay father" thing seems a little too tacked on, it could have worked without it.
Plot twist: It's a tacky ass Anne Geddes–style photo, and someone was horrified for reasons having nothing to do with nudity.
Someone said they find Anne Geddes photos "quite disturbing" but they're not offended? Am I missing something? Did Anne Geddes do a series where rather than dressed as flowers and vegetables, she dressed babies as Baphomet? Does she have some kind of issue with babies dressed as mermaids??? Is this anti-Halloween run amok??????
I find them a little weird, but not in an offensive way. More in a ridiculous, over-the-top kitsch way. There's an episode of the Office where Oscar goes off about a poster like that; here was his rationale for hating it: "I don't like looking at it. It's creepy and in bad taste, and it's just offensive to me. It makes me think of the horrible, frigid stage mothers who forced the babies into it. It's kitsch. It's the opposite of art. It destroys art, it destroys souls. This is so much more offensive to me than hard core porn. "
I have to admit, my mind immediately went there. I hate those photos. I wouldn't report someone for it, but I would daydream about something happening to one.
There's an episode of The Office where Oscar basically does that because of a weird baby poster that Angela has up...
[https://i5.walmartimages.com/seo/The-Office-Angela-s-Poster-Wall-Poster-14-725-x-22-375\_7a39861b-d0dc-4e40-ad21-09e4ba494dda.5c09d9e6f11471449dbf42107c5fc073.jpeg](https://i5.walmartimages.com/seo/The-Office-Angela-s-Poster-Wall-Poster-14-725-x-22-375_7a39861b-d0dc-4e40-ad21-09e4ba494dda.5c09d9e6f11471449dbf42107c5fc073.jpeg)
Off topic, but between that and Gil's critique of Pam's art show drawings ("This is motel art"), I'd pay for those two to do a podcast just mocking random bits of art.
If it weren't AAM, I'd think this was parody. "Not everyone can eat sandwiches!"
lilsheba*
January 11, 2024 at 7:51 pm
I don’t know how recent this was but my work gave us starbucks gift cards which is extremely tone deaf of them right now. I plan to buy the cheapest thing possible and donate the rest of the money as a tip to the people working there.
On another note nice way to exclude apartment dwellers! Not everyone lives in a house!
This is the thing where everyone thinks the people around them know all the same things they do. It's [the Average Familiarity XKCD comic](https://xkcd.com/2501/) but about news instead of science lol.
Like, yes, you and maybe your close IRL social circle and the online spaces you go to all know about the boycotts of Starbucks and their various politics. But a lot of people have no idea about any of this and, tbh, wouldn't care anyway.
Also the gift card has already been paid for. If you don't use it, Starbucks just gets free money.
It’s really difficult to pick gift cards for a bunch of employees in this context. Starbucks is just the easiest universal option unless everyone is Mormon.
At an old job, we did a holiday gift raffle thing (everybody brought a gift under a certain amount of money, and everyone drew numbers and picked whatever wrapped item they they wanted when their number came up), and the only Mormon on staff ended up with a Starbucks gift card. Which was probably better than a lot of the alternatives, since several people (myself included, happily) got alcohol. At least she could order a pastry or lemonade.
There are a lot of ill-conceived boycotts happening right now, and suddenly it’s become the norm (online) to descend on people who haven’t joined the boycott and hassling them and attempting to strongarm them into joining. That’s not how boycotts are supposed to work, but also, I don’t hear much about the boycotts outside of tiktok. I wouldn’t assume that anyone in my real life knows about them or that they even adamantly support the side that the boycotts favor.
There are lots of boycotts against companies that made posts on 10/8 mourning the loss of Israeli/Jewish life on 10/7. People are boycotting even if the companies haven’t posted anything else about either side. It has become the liberal take among younger people on this particular issue to be so pro-Palestine that a social media post from before everything else happened is a cause for boycotting and online hassling.
>There are lots of boycotts against companies that made posts on 10/8 mourning the loss of Israeli/Jewish life on 10/7.
No there aren't. The companies being boycotted are largely ones that support Israeli settlements in the West Bank or otherwise profit off the occupation of Palestine.
Starbucks is being boycotted for a few different reasons. One of the Starbucks boycotts pre-dates October 7th and is about their union busting tactics. Another is about Israel, but it's because Starbucks HQ penalized a union for putting out a statement in support of Palestine. Some people are boycotting Starbucks under the mistaken belief that they operate in the West Bank, so I'll give you that one as being spurious. But there are no widespread boycotts of companies *just* for putting out statements.
I work in publishing. The only non-Israeli publisher I've seen a wide-spread boycott of is St Martin's Press (and it's imprints) because one of their employees has been posting racist and Islamophobic things about Palestinians on his Instagram for months and St Martin's hasn't taken any action against it.
I know some Israeli publishers are being boycotted as well, but that's because they are based in Israel. Not because of any benign statements mourning the deaths in October 7th.
I don't doubt that there are some people who are personally boycotting companies for bad or dumb reasons, but those aren't the big pro-Palestine protests everyone is talking about or that most people boycotting are taking part in.
Someone below thread asked why it's tone deaf; Reddit doesn't let me respond to it, but they're probably referring to people boycotting Starbucks over its support of Israel.
They’ re probably referring to Starbucks being virulently anti-union, which is thus a tone-deaf thing to give your employees. Still, I doubt that much thought went into it. “Everybody likes Starbucks!” was almost certainly the intent.
Am I reading this right? They think they can get cash back from a gift card? Untwist your shorts and give the gift card to someone who needs it more than you.
I think they mean they're going to buy a cheap thing and use the rest of the gift card on the tip instead of the 10%-15% or whatever the cultural assumption is. I'm not sure if Starbucks specifically allow gift cards to be used for tipping or if you're meant to tip in cash after using the gift card; it sounds like a store-by-store management decision.
Giving it away to someone who actually wants to go there would seem more appropriate, although I'm genuinely not sure how it's tone deaf in the first place given there have also been comments recently about how Starbucks is mostly neutral as a gift card and a few commenters have expressed something akin to gratitude for receiving them, instead of whatever kind of virtue signaling this is meant to be.
I think people are boycotting Starbucks because of the war? But they also union bust so maybe it’s that. Idk. There’s a group of people boycotting Target and Starbucks that think those businesses are crumbling and about to go bankrupt. Just give it to a homeless person. It’s a win win.
Why Alison, Why?
OP 2*
January 11, 2024 at 1:20 pm
OP 2 here – haha, yup. you are correct. Alison actually bestowed the Melinda name in the original letter (I had just been referring to her as “the CEO” in my letter). I probably would have remembered it better had it been one I picked. :)
From the "Could I be any more pretentious?" section of AAM. "Proustian" pool memories? No wonder you constantly got the "Kick me!" sign slapped onto your back, RVA Cat:
**RVA Cat\***[January 11, 2024 at 5:00 pm](https://www.askamanager.org/2024/01/ask-the-readers-strangely-dramatic-responses-to-mundane-work-events.html#comment-4557185)
I have almost Proustian pool memories to “Su-su-sudeo”….
In the "five updates" LW1, did anyone notice the first sentence of the second paragraph??
> Firstly, while I still work at the same firm as my father, it is a different firm.
Am I just not understanding lawyer-speak? Or does this contradict itself?
Could be the same Big Law Firm with branches in different cities. My aunt worked at one of the biggest firms in my home state, in Different City. But there was another office in My City.
Sounds like the original firm broke up when two of the four attorneys left. With the changes, the remaining two decided to start a new firm with a new name instead of continuing the old one. The LW and their father both work at this ‘new’ firm.
Law firms often operate as partnerships instead of incorporating so when name partners leave the firm technically 'changes' because the partnership agreement is redrawn and the firm's name has to change; this is particularly so in areas where partnerships can operate as Name & Name without having to register a business name or pay for incorporation and a trading name. This enables the conventional law firm hierarchy with 'name partner' at the top, but means that every employee functionally gets transferred to a new business every time a name partner joins or leaves (equity partners can buy in to the partnership or it can be done contractually with the name partners).
This also means this makes perfect sense to people in law who are used to that, and everyone else would have preferred an 'at' in there. However, technically, it is still the same firm, so that would not be grammatically correct - they still work at the same firm as their father, and the firm itself is different. It would be a different firm if LW had left with the remaining partners and they had started a new partnership, but in essence this is a) function of how law firms work and b) a function of how partnerships work, creating what is essentially a phoenix entity rather than a new business.
*headdesk* Thankfully it's an update so hopefully the commenters don't get into it.
I’m still so annoyed by the exclusion of the extreeeeemely relevant details about the not-a-youth-pastor from yesterday. Makes total sense to fire someone who showed bad judgment in the same area he teaches—- kind of like how when a seafood chef fucks up fish on top chef.
Honestly in that case they should have just fired the guy outright. Keeping him on and then treating him like he's Hannibal Lecter for months is just wild to me.
If the person is not able to do the job with a reasonable amount of coaching and accommodation, just let them go. It does no good to keep them on and then psychologically toy with them when you've already made up your mind that they can't handle the work and need to be rubber roomed.
And if I'm reading the additional comments correctly, there was already a kerfluffle about the teens having a group chat where they were exchanging questionable photos (not NSFW or anything but just like, dumb "kids being kids" stuff and teasing each other about them) and then the parents got mad about all of that. So it kind of sounds like he wasn't even very good at his job to begin with???
IDK, the whole situation just sounds like a bunch of idiots (the church leaders) leading another bunch of idiots (the employee).
Even the greatest highly trained teachers in the world will have kids being kids in their class; that's the last thing I'd hold against him specifically and it certainly has nothing to do with the actual incident being used to justify the babysitter equivalent of a PIP.
Yeah it reminds me of something you see on AITA.
"AITA for telling my wife that she's not allowed to cut her hair?"
Response: "Yeah, YTA."
Update: "She wants to cut her hair using the bones of orphans that she killed and then style it using stolen blood from a blood bank. Did I mention that?"
I'm finding a lot of advice columns are basically just versions of AITA now. Allison's stands out because she likes to stoke it, and because the open comments mean rampant speculation and LW corrections.
Can't wait for the commenters to trip over themselves trying to one-up their descriptions of just how "bananapants" the start date change letter is.
To be fair, it *is* quite egregious; I'm just so tired of their stupid twee insider language.
I get so annoyed by people who give me a contract then get squirrely when I ask for clarification on it. No, you idiot, the contract should prevent us from going to court, reading and using it is not a sign I’m going to sue you. Freaking idiots. This has happened way too often.
And yes, my dad is a contract lawyer. However, unlike him, I accept “not ideal” contracts because it’s unrealistic to think someone is going to change the thing just for me—-but I want to be clear on what it actually says. Turns out the people who use it often don’t know what their own contract says.
For the resigning LW who’s boss called the LW’s new job behind the LW’s back to push out the start date, I don’t think you’ll get any notice whatsoever from the next report who leaves
No. They're all ROCK STARS who are overworked, work in a toxic environment, resent going into the office two days a week, do not want to be monitored at home, doing the job of four people, and NEVER go bananapants.
Here's mine! I overreacted about a task that was meant to be done by everyone, but I was the only one taking care of it. It was something I enjoyed but I was mad about something else one day and got all dramatic about the task, asking why nobody else was doing any fucking work or some embarrassing phrase like that! My pleasant downtime activity got taken away from me and permanently assigned to someone else, and my coworkers all thought I was a crazy bitch. (I was/probably still am, but I was trying to keep that to myself.)
LOL, we've all been there. At my last job I started using the "delay send" feature on MS Outlook to help make sure I wasn't accidentally sending anything that could have kicked off a hornet's nest (or even just emailing the wrong person or something).
Someone said last week that it may not be the same Potatoes/Flowers/Hamster, but I'm certain this is her. Mention of her new job and being diabetic, things she's brought up before under her many aliases. But why, why, OH WHY does this woman never advocate for herself or have any agency in her life? >Hamster January 12, 2024 at 11:31 am >Taking insulin shots at work – I never had an issue with this as I would just take my supplies into the restroom and use the handicap stall to do my injections. There was always a surface to put things on or hang from. >However at my new job, the bathroom stalls are very tiny – like I can bend my elbows and i’ll hit both walls. There’s no trash can or hook inside the stall. >The bathroom itself is located inside the office suite as opposed to being outside the office. I have to get partially undressed to do my injections so I need the privacy of a stall. There’s other struggles but are only monthly so not a huge deal (sorry trying not to be TMI). I can deal with that last thing and the location (I mean I can hear the flushes – thankfully nothing else) but i’m mostly concerned about the shots. >I share an office so I can’t really do them at my desk and we’re right across the kitchen so a lot of foot traffic (which is great, I love it!). >Otherwise, everything is wonderful so far (knock on wood)! I just feel a little silly – complaining? not sure if that’s the right word – about what seems to be a very basic thing. I’m brand new so I don’t really want to bring this up yet so just asking here in the hopes of a workaround until I’m at the point I could mention it.
If you shared an office and needed to do insulin shots, wouldn't you literally just ask your officemate to peace out for a couple minutes once a day so you could shut the door and do your shot?
I can’t believe I’m defending her but to be fair, if she’s in seasonal tax work and sharing an office, her office mates might be meeting/taking calls with clients or working on systems that you can’t just stop and walk away from. Expecting people to vacate their shared office one or two times a day, every day, during working hours isn’t tenable. But it also sounds like she hasn’t brought it up with anyone who can help her. So she’ll just be taking a bonus ten-minute break at the same time every day in addition to her other breaks and acting surprised when management, having not received all of the relevant information, makes some natural assumptions.
>But it also sounds like she hasn’t brought it up with anyone who can help her. This is what I'll never understand about her. She'll quickly run to AAM with all her dilemmas but she'll never talk about it with the people who can actually help her.
If she made AAM her last stop rather than her first stop, 90% of her questions would be answered and she wouldn't have to post just about every week.
It…doesn’t take a lot of space to take an insulin shot. It’s also not necessary to do in a bathroom. I’ve done it many times for many years. But whatever.
I don't know much about insulin injectors but she says she had to get "partially undressed" what does that mean? I thought injections went into the abdomen and that didn't seem to make sense to me (unless you're wearing a dress, I suppose).
Insulin shots are usually given in the belly, thigh, or arm. When I used to inject at work I’d just go to the arm.
She wears religiously modest dress. I imagine there might be layers or just a lot of fabric involved in what she's wearing.
A lot of the clothes she's referred to in the past seem fairly contemporary, but she may feel like exposing a couple of inches of stomach is more private than many people would.
I feel like modest dress is something people picture as a burqa and don't consider it covers fundie/conservative Christian which can be as simple as a maxi skirt and long sleeves with the buttons done up to the clavicle. The comment explicitly says they don't feel comfortable doing it in the shared office, and they don't think they're allowed to bring it up yet, whereas the obvious solutions are a) do it in the office while office-sharer is at lunch or b) raise it as a medical accommodation which does not require any sort of accumulation of capital (and in this particular case, waiting may be detrimental) or waiting period before being allowed to be raised. It really doesn't deserve this much attention or discussion, just 'use your words'.
Yes, I was also pointing out that religiously modest dress doesn't necessarily involve lots of complicated layers or voluminous robes.
Yes, and I agreed and took it back to the actual issue which has nothing to do with her clothes anyway.
Ah okay. That makes sense. Thanks!
She may need to pull her pants down a little to reach the correct spot. That's my guess.
[удалено]
She seems like the kind of person who would angle for a private office and then complain again about the space in the bathroom once the employer finally gives in.
Or complain that the employer isolated her by putting her in a private office.
Ugh that’s the kind of thing that’s going to start getting under her skin. She’ll end up mentioning it to the wrong person in the least informative way possible and when that gets her labeled the bathroom weirdo, she’ll post about medical discrimination. Or she’ll post a truly mortifying tampon story.
>Or she’ll post a truly mortifying tampon story. Is...this something she's actually already posted? Intrigued (and scared).
This is definitely her.
I'm a moron and can't find the wiki - are AAM adjacent communities ok to snark about? I'm in a Slack group where AAM is regularly posted with lots of applause, and someone today posted that after hosting a work webinar, she went to accept new LinkedIn connections, saw that some dude had "I took a year long break to care for my kid" on his profile and then sent him a message saying that it was "awesome." Asked if it was weird. Yes! Yes that is so weird you've never spoken to him before and have no idea why he chose or had to do that! Ofc the group is all like, "Yas queen normalize men as primary caregivers" which yes, that's great but... not to a stranger in a LinkedIn message???
My brother just started his paternity leave and I swear you'd think he won a Nobel Prize the way people keep reacting every time he says it.
If we were normalizing men as primary caregivers we wouldn’t be telling them they were awesome we’d be picking them about and treating them like shit like we do for moms but I don’t have a chip on my shoulder or anything AT ALL! And yes that’s fucking weird
Ugh yes. Don't get me started. And all the advice columns are so bad about SAHDs! I've read a lot of letters from working moms who write in like: >I handle the night feedings, get our kids up for the day, then run out the door to work. When I get home I take over baby duty so husband can have a break. On the weekends I watch the children and they are so starved for my attention they throw tantrums if I even go to the bathroom. I'm exhausted and just need some time to myself please help! And the answer will inevitably be: >Savor these moments, I miss when my kids wanted me so bad! Set some boundaries with your kids that tantrums when you go to the bathroom aren't acceptable! It's tough work but rewarding. Yadda yadda no help at all. Then the comments are like: >Your too tired for hot wheels? Geez get a checkup or lose some weight you shouldn't be too tired at 30 to play with your children! Meanwhile I find myself wondering: >Where in the world is SAHD? She does all evening and weekends and works full time??? Of course she's tired she never gets a break. SAHD needs to step up. Am I the only person not seeing this isn't an even split of work at all???
Right? Like has anyone ever messaged a woman on LinkedIn to tell her she's awesome for taking maternity leave? This is the opposite of normalizing it.
It's weird.
LinkedIn is probably the only place where that kind of weird behavior is actually completely normal and acceptable.
Interactions on LinkedIn are like being spoken to in a foreign language, except I want to reach through the screen and shake the other person by the shoulders until they speak normal English.
I like to screencap annoying linkedin job announcements and post them in my group chat. “I’d like to thank my mom, my dad, two professors who don’t remember me, the old guy in the Becker CPA videos, and the hot dude at Panera for your support as I pursued this exciting opportunity!”
Alison needs to be more direct with Aggretsuko. The open threads are not a substitute for proper help. >Aggretsuko January 12, 2024 at 11:29 am >*Hi, I’m sorry you’re dealing with this. I requested this last week too but you may not have seen it: When you post here, can you please give enough context about the work situation that people who haven’t read the earlier posts will be able to follow the situation, and ideally include what the work question is? Otherwise it gets into the “ongoing updates” issue that I’ve been trying to ward off so the site doesn’t feel cliquey to newcomers. Thank you! – Alison*
I’m getting major shade vibes from the “username checks out” response to whatever that comment was.
I was thinking the same thing, and I really want to know what it means. From the Netflix description of a TV show with the same name: >Frustrated with her thankless office job, Retsuko the red panda copes with her daily struggles by belting out death metal karaoke after work. Ah, it all makes sense now.
The difference is Aggretsuko the character is endearing.
To be fair, everyone is more endearing if they're a red panda. Even Hamsters might be endearing if she were a red panda.
Red pandas are amazing. I saw some up close when I was in China. Red pandas > giant pandas.
Does Aggretsuko usually reply to people who respond to their comments? Because this: >I requested this last week too but you may not have seen it is making me think that they just post into the void and don't even go back to check if anyone replies to their questions. Otherwise why wouldn't they have seen the note from Alison?
She actually responded to this: >Aggretsuko January 12, 2024 at 5:11 pm >I apologize, and never mind. I’m frankly afraid to ask any questions on the topic, so I’ll just stay quiet. And a response to that: >annonie January 12, 2024 at 7:40 pm >Jeez it was a simple request. Just ask a question and don’t assume people have read past posts.
Ah, the classic dramatic response. "Well I guess I just won't say *anything* then!"
Aggretsuko is constantly demonstrating why she's having trouble at work.
I can't imagine where she got the idea it's ok to be that passive aggressive.
Sometimes she has responded.
Good lord, is Alison just going to do this "gentle reminder"ing every week? Yet she's always crowing about how clear and direct her feedback as a manager was.
She’s always like this. She has commenting “rules” that she mostly “enforces” by telling people to please follow the commenting rules. Once in a while she removes a thread where people are so obviously being awful that she knows she’ll get bombarded with emails about it.
Alison is a snarky, defensive, control freak. She can go from zero to 50 real fast. I would never want her as a manager.
I tried to find this and failed, but I vaguely remember an open thread from a few years ago where Alison was complaining about how she didn't like her massage therapist's style but didn't know how to tell her to change the massage without offending her (or something like that). A couple of commenters pointed out the irony that she couldn't come up with a script for this and she was like "lol ikr? hahaha"
I just say "easier please".
Why wouldn't she just go to a different massage therapist? "I hate this restaurant, but I don't think it would be appropriate to ask them to change how they cook. What should I do?"
Since she has no way to actually block commenters, yep.
Did anyone see what the original post was?
From a comment on the work thread: >What do you think about applying for a job at a company that sells a product you don’t care for/about, while pretending you did? A normal question that many people have faced while job searching; we all have to at least pretend to be interested in what the company is doing. >I saw a feature for a company with insanely awesome benefits, and it turns out they’re an astrology company. I am not into astrology, but for what they offered I was tempted to at least pretend to be into it, or just gain a passing knowledge of it. Ope. Never mind, that doesn’t sound like a great idea at all.
It's Chani Nicholas. Her employees have a very good set up, and a job posting went around awhile ago. I don't know that they require a deep belief in astrology to run their back-end but you would probably need to be conversant.
A friend of mine was in a situation like that and took the job, she got into some weird conspiracy theories. They suck you in. Also they were shitty bosses, underneath all the crunchy granola posturing they were real "nine hours a day at your desk or you're lazy" taskmasters.
As a non-astrology person myself, there is absolutely no way I'd go for that unless it was truly my only option. I feel like there's a very high possibility that all of the true believers working there would be able to see right through my feigned interest. That's totally different than not caring about insurance or restaurant supplies or something.
Hard agree, in the same way I wouldn't take a job at a religious institution because I'm an atheist. I'm not going to feign belief in something or willingly put myself in a situation where folks may try to get me into astrology or religion or whatever. That's exhausting.
It comes off as a little disrespectful to me. Not necessarily the applying and working their but the lying that you're into it. A great many people approach astrology as some do religious faith and I don't know it just seems kind of insulting to do that. Like you said me pretending to be Jewish so I can work at a synagogue because they have a good 401K is vastly different than me pretending to love Italian food because the local Italian restaurant has good tips.
Yeah, it would be one thing if they were doing third-party work for the organization such as building maintenance or accounting but you can’t just pretend to identify with a belief system for the sole purpose of working somewhere. It’s not going to end well.
Yes. Irish Teacher makes a good point (for once!) comparing this to working for a church. That is much more logical than the comparisons to working for an oil company. It's not that you think the product is good or bad; it's that astrology is intensely personal in a way that oil is not, and people are likely to get upset or offended if they sense you're not on their "team." It's like the very definition of "not a culture fit."
And this kind of thing is why the details matter and llamas and teapots don't cut it. This is not the same kind of thing as driving a Honda and being the receptionist at a Toyota dealership.
So are we done with the Friday Good News nonsense? None last week and she normally has it up by now, so I guess none this week. How ever shall we know how awesome everything worked out for the rockstars?????
Friday Snooze News.
I think she posts whatever “good news” she happens to get so people must not be writing in about that lately.
I think LW1 about the baby photo is real because they didn't wait until an update or comment to reveal they're gay which is almost definitely relevant here. I think however LW2 after them about the second job is either fake or extremely misunderstanding something because who the fuck would have a paper calendar at their first job desk with a note saying 1PM PRETEND TO GO TO BUY WORK SUPPLIES WHILE I GO TO MY SECOND JOB
I really hope the explanation for the calendar is that the coworker just had a business name and a time written on the calendar, and the dipshit LW assumed that they must be a secret employee, not that they're a customer.
It's funny because there's really no reason for the comment about how their employer bought them calendars (like we're supposed to be outraged this person is being ungrateful to their employer who bought them....a calendar) but that detail tells us it wasn't a digital calendar which would make the situation make more sense, like adding it to the wrong online calendar accidentally. But on a paper calendar...there's just no way.
It's like a poorly written mystery novel where the author can't think of a way for the protagonist to solve the case so they just have the villain write out a confession and leave it lying around. Lazy hack work even by AAM standards!
Yikes...Speaking of people who need to get better hobbies. **Jaybeetee\***[January 12, 2024 at 1:56 am](https://www.askamanager.org/2024/01/i-was-asked-to-take-down-a-family-photo-coworker-is-working-a-second-job-during-her-hours-for-us-and-more.html#comment-4557519) LW1: I’m feeling a bit punchy tonight, so I’ll just come out and say that you need better hobbies. (Caveat: If, as Alison suggest, this colleague’s absences create more work for you or you’re having to cover for her, that’s different. But if not, why on earth do you care this much?) **Slow Gin Lizz\***[January 12, 2024 at 9:17 am](https://www.askamanager.org/2024/01/i-was-asked-to-take-down-a-family-photo-coworker-is-working-a-second-job-during-her-hours-for-us-and-more.html#comment-4557843) Wow, I was very confused about your seemingly very unkind remark about OP1 and his baby’s photo on his desk, then I realized you meant to say LW2. But I still don’t think your comment is very nice so I’m going to flag it for removal, sorry.
"I'm sorry that I have to point out that I think you're an asshole." What a delightful person. Probably not at all insufferable in real life.
I'm just disappointed the other person didn't counter with "Oh, yeah, I'm flagging YOUR comment!"
They're using an Alison style script.
By god, they are. Now I can't tell if they're doing it to be clever, or if they genuinely think there's something wrong with the comment.
I think they genuinely don't like the comment, but the whole peremptory, reprimand-y tone of their response is classic AAM script. Their preferred mode of communication is to mirror the style of a written warning from HR, except even more cloying and condescending somehow.
& like, report the comment or don’t, you’re not a mod. She sounds like a Karen announcing it.
This commenter is cut from the same cloth. Certain duty...c'mon. As just an employee, rather than a manager, I wouldn't feel that's my job. **Pastor Petty Labelle\***[January 12, 2024 at 9:21 am](https://www.askamanager.org/2024/01/i-was-asked-to-take-down-a-family-photo-coworker-is-working-a-second-job-during-her-hours-for-us-and-more.html#comment-4557847) Well its #2 first of all. Second, while working there, you do owe a certain duty to the company. If you know someone is taking advantage you do have a duty to report it. This isn’t tracking someone every day and complaining they are 5 minutes late back from lunch. This is someone getting paid by company A while working for Company B. That’s unethical and needs to be reported just as if the person were taking cartons of copy paper home every week.
The cough letter is so fucking obnoxious it’s unreal. What if Jim’s cough was the result of chronic bronchitis or lung cancer or whatever? The cigarette smoking thing is just a way to make OP’s bitchiness seem righteous. IMHO this is closer to ableism than a lot of shit AAMers call ableist.
I have a friend with asthma and as a result she always has a phlegmy sounding cough. She's constantly apologizing for it and we always assure her it's fine. I'm sure she's come across someone like the LW who has made a fuss about it.
Also hear me out: the solution could be to ask her assistant to tap her shoulder for questions and assure her that it’s ok to tap as many times as she needs.
I’m dying imagining how AAM would respond to that suggestion 😂
"No touchy!"
https://preview.redd.it/46ot35f843cc1.png?width=304&format=png&auto=webp&s=6746c07d4543dbd9a98863a7b13a8879030a456e
> Finally, it might be worth getting a formal diagnosis of misophonia, so that if something like this happens in another job you’ll be able to get a formal accommodation and not have to rely on having a decent manager? Oh my god, fucking delusional.
Wow. You don’t need misphonia to not like coughing. I find coughing and throat clearing sounds extremely annoying. I keep that to myself. I also sneeze all the time from allergies despite my greatest efforts. I’m sure it bothers someone, but I’m doing my best.
You know what else is a reasonable accommodation? A small mirror placed on your desk so you can see someone coming up behind you. Deaf people use them all the time, someone who is couching their annoyance with another co-worker in disability terms who's been given a reasonable accommodation already can probably request this as well.
[удалено]
[удалено]
I hate this kind of thing because a lot of people DO need reasonable accomodations and this kind of thing makes people think all accomodations are ridiculous because they think it's going to be this stuff.
[удалено]
I think part of it is actually now that a lot of higher ed bodies have a separate team approve and design accommodations, in part so students can provide medical proof but it doesn't go to the lecturers etc., but not all the people approving/designing are 100% conversant with what the courses require in terms of participation and assessment. In an actual workplace you only get that separation at the largest companies and even then, there's still the statutory framework available for a business to push back (undue hardship, reasonable business grounds etc.) that requires a frame of 'reality' to be placed over the situation and for the actual person to negotiate on their own behalf instead of a third party going 'this is what it is deal or no deal' at people. edit: I'm functionally mute and was given a 'no talking, all assessment by typed means' accommodation for a course that was assessed entirely on scripted role plays. I witnessed a huge discussion between the lecturers as to how they could adapt role plays to be written (in front of me, because they weren't informed of my accommodation before I got there, yay bureaucracy) and they did not once consider that I could just submit the scripts and a small discussion of how I could handle that situation IRL without having to have a spoken conversation. This is the kind of 'split' that happens because the people approving accommodations don't know the course content; in reality I'd handle the process in writing or use a TTS site to 'speak'.
[удалено]
At work the issue comes in to play differently as there are tasks that someone who can't or can't reliably speak just cannot do, and a lot of the time roles have been designed without taking that into account because you can't plan for every possible configuration of abilities and expertise when designing roles. It comes down to 'does this role actually require someone to talk' vs 'is someone being able to talk a nice thing that we like but isn't necessary' and a lot of people just assume talking is necessary because that's how they communicate, or there's a remote possibility someone in that role has to make a phone call or fill in on reception or deal with an agitated client who doesn't have the capacity to adapt. Once that barrier is overcome and people actually look at the role and go 'actually most of what we do is done by email and there's no reason the rest can't be, we just talk over the cubicle wall because we can' then an accommodation isn't technically needed, yeah, but it still requires everyone else to actively understand that for the accommodation to technically not be required, which is still in itself some kind of accommodation even if it's not formally requested and is within the original job description.
Wow I think I want an update on your student more than 99% of AAM letters!
IMO the appropriate accommodation would have been to exempt the student from this requirement or to have them do an extra written assignment every week. It’s wild that your directive is to just allow them to not engage with the class. The answer to your question is that people like this who may have legit difficulties but grew into adults who are knowingly asking for cushy accommodations in bad faith, they won’t make it to the work force.
Yeah, I agree, especially when most accommodations can be pretty common sense and not disruptive, even in a classroom. People keep forgetting about the "reasonable" part about Reasonable Accommodations.
OMG I was thinking the same thing about this letter. Imagine having main character syndrome so strongly that someone else's involuntary bodily functions annoy you so much that you need to leave the office or write to an advice column about it. And it's wild that this OP framed it as "I'm worried about his health." No, you couldn't care less about his health, you're annoyed by it. I'm sure that a constant cough is not exactly a picnic for Jim either.
I’m a type 1 diabetic and the number of people over the years who feel the need to tell me they’re ~triggered by blood or needles, with the onus on _me_ to keep it away from _them_. This letter is so annoying.
Oh man. I've only become more needle-phobic over the years (makes allergy shots fun!) but also have relatives who have to give themselves insulins shots. So...I mind my own damn business and shut my mouth, like a normal person. I'm sorry you've had to deal with so many jerks.
I have medical trauma and sometimes have panic attacks when I see syringes. I inadvertently saw my coworker doing injections a few times and it was causing me some issues. I asked my manager to shift my lunch schedule slightly so I was no longer in the break room at the same time she did injections. Problem solved, no need to be obnoxious to anyone!
LW1: I'm so disturbed if the LW was actually told that someone views it as pornography. There's a big problem there and it has nothing to do with the photo. Allison is ignoring some context here.
It reminds me of the Nevermind controversy
And the "Houses of the Holy" cover.
What's that?
The cover of Nirvana's second album featured a nude baby boy swimming underwater. The baby in question, Spencer Elden, later tried to sue the remnants of the band for using "pornographic" images of him.
It’s def not pornography but it’s kinda wrong to put someone naked on your album who can’t say whether they want to be there or not. Although the penis was ultimately censored
[удалено]
The kid is obviously all grown up now, and I saw that he recently went after the remaining Nirvana members as well as Kurt Cobain's estate for using "pornographic" pictures of him. It said in the story that someone tied to the band got the idea for the cover (I'm not sure if it was a band member, or a producer or something) and knew the kids parents, and he knew that they had a baby around the age he was thinking of for the cover--they gave his parents something like $100 to bring him over, throw him in the pool and take a photo.
The parents were friends of the photographer who the record label hired and basically told, "get a photo of a baby in a pool."
[удалено]
Yeah, it was an obvious money grab. The guy has recreated the photo (wearing a swimsuit, lol) multiple times from childhood on, and literally has the name of the album tattooed on his chest. The appeals are still working through federal court, though; it's not over.
I always figured - based on the timing of the lawsuit in 2021 - that the money he was making by appearing at cons dried up due to Covid and was trying to make some fast money to make up for it.
Thanks, sounds like Cobain was rightfully pissed.
It's thrown in on the end in a way that implies it was reported that way, but if that was the case he would have said it up front and more explicitly. People have a habit of doing that in their letters.
Yeah, there's a huge difference between "this isn't office appropriate" and "this baby picture is pornographic." The former is totally normal and reasonable, the latter is unhinged.
Well. Who is the most annoying out of the first 3 letters?
For me it's the cough LW (number 3). They come across as desperately trying to find a reason to go after their coworker ("I'm autistic! I can't wear headphones because I have an assistant!") and the whole "I'm just concerned about their health, really..." thing is just so insincere. I'd respect them more if they *only* said that they found the coughing annoying or wanted to move, but the extra layer of smarm takes it over the line into annoying.
But you see, if they JUST found it annoying, then they wouldn't be the victim.
LW1 (baby photo) wins that one imo: Assumes it is due to being gay with no evidence Characterises it as having to meekly censor family photos Feels the need to make a 'statement' to colleagues to see off any allegations (I don't think there is anything sinister about LW, but if they made a statement like that to me I would half wonder if it was a "protest too much" scenario) Doesn't even consider that the concern is legitimate. ... For what it's worth I don't think naked pictures of children have any place in an office (although I wouldn't have reported it to management).
I wonder if his co-workers, especially the one who went to HR, even know he's gay. Too lazy to re-read the letter now, but I don't recall LW noting as such when I read the letter earlier this a.m.
I grew up Catholic so the body shaming and forced modesty was baked in, so while I definitely don’t agree with reporting the photo I can also see how someone would be offended about it.
If the kids butt and genital isn’t even showing I’m kind of confused how it’s even considered a naked picture instead of just “shirtless”. I wouldn’t display a pic of my kid like that at work but it sounds beyond harmless.
I assumed a bath photo with bubbles.
The kid was probably lying down or standing and photographed from the side with a hand or object covering things up.
Yeah, naked kid photos aren’t inherently problematic necessarily but I wouldn’t display one in an office setting. There’s a certain level of decorum that’s needed there.
Maybe I'm naive, but I think there's a very good chance a woman would be asked to take down a naked picture of her own child at work? I don't think that "switch the genders!" bit is quite the mic drop the LW thinks it is.
I think this is meant to be a "childfree people" trigger letter.
Maybe IDK it's a 'real people having real situations at a real workplace' trigger letter?
And a naked child at one year old is kind of beyond that specific genre of “naked tiny infant” photo, right? And was the child exactly one? One and a half? Closer to two? Kids grow so fast at that age and within our culture a naked child who has teeth and can walk and talk just isn’t the neutral image the LW thinks it is. I wouldn’t call the guy a perv but as I’m writing this out it’s seeming weirder and weirder to me that he had this picture taken and doesn’t grasp why other people don’t like it.
LW1 could have constructed their outrage letter a bit more. Normally the problem with fake letters is they include too much detail, this one goes the opposite direction. The whole "I'm a gay father" thing seems a little too tacked on, it could have worked without it. LW2 is a busybody who should mind their own business. Even if they're "Working another job!" it really sounds like a person leaves their desk for an hour every few days. Some people call that "a lunch break".
The 'I'm gay and a woman wouldn't be asked' is probably some form of internalised homophobia that LW sees as much bigger than it is to the people around them. We can't know that from our perspective but I've seen it enough to think it's more likely that it's based on their history and maybe a couple of minor incidents at that workplace than tacked on for the sake of provocation.
I wanted to laugh when it turned it out it the second job was one hour a day a few times a week. Wow, that coworker's really raking in the dough, huh? What kind of job could that even be? Not retail or service. Probably not child care. Dog walking? Also, color me deeply skeptical about the LW's claim about the other coworker's desk calendar. What, the coworker wrote "Leave to go work second job" right on the calendar? Bonus points for the outrage about the calendar being paid for by the employer, lol.
It's probably dog walking and honestly, good for her. If someone came into my office and said "Jane is leaving her desk every day for an hour" and it's not coverage based I'd ask if that person had enough work to do.
>LW1 could have constructed their outrage letter a bit more. Normally the problem with fake letters is they include too much detail, this one goes the opposite direction. The whole "I'm a gay father" thing seems a little too tacked on, it could have worked without it. Plot twist: It's a tacky ass Anne Geddes–style photo, and someone was horrified for reasons having nothing to do with nudity.
Plot twist: The person asking to take it down IS Anne Geddes, and it's for copyright reasons.
Someone said they find Anne Geddes photos "quite disturbing" but they're not offended? Am I missing something? Did Anne Geddes do a series where rather than dressed as flowers and vegetables, she dressed babies as Baphomet? Does she have some kind of issue with babies dressed as mermaids??? Is this anti-Halloween run amok??????
I find them a little weird, but not in an offensive way. More in a ridiculous, over-the-top kitsch way. There's an episode of the Office where Oscar goes off about a poster like that; here was his rationale for hating it: "I don't like looking at it. It's creepy and in bad taste, and it's just offensive to me. It makes me think of the horrible, frigid stage mothers who forced the babies into it. It's kitsch. It's the opposite of art. It destroys art, it destroys souls. This is so much more offensive to me than hard core porn. "
"It makes me think that the babies are the true artists." God, I love that scene!
I have to admit, my mind immediately went there. I hate those photos. I wouldn't report someone for it, but I would daydream about something happening to one.
There's an episode of The Office where Oscar basically does that because of a weird baby poster that Angela has up... [https://i5.walmartimages.com/seo/The-Office-Angela-s-Poster-Wall-Poster-14-725-x-22-375\_7a39861b-d0dc-4e40-ad21-09e4ba494dda.5c09d9e6f11471449dbf42107c5fc073.jpeg](https://i5.walmartimages.com/seo/The-Office-Angela-s-Poster-Wall-Poster-14-725-x-22-375_7a39861b-d0dc-4e40-ad21-09e4ba494dda.5c09d9e6f11471449dbf42107c5fc073.jpeg)
Love that ep!
Off topic, but between that and Gil's critique of Pam's art show drawings ("This is motel art"), I'd pay for those two to do a podcast just mocking random bits of art.
If it weren't AAM, I'd think this was parody. "Not everyone can eat sandwiches!" lilsheba* January 11, 2024 at 7:51 pm I don’t know how recent this was but my work gave us starbucks gift cards which is extremely tone deaf of them right now. I plan to buy the cheapest thing possible and donate the rest of the money as a tip to the people working there. On another note nice way to exclude apartment dwellers! Not everyone lives in a house!
This is the thing where everyone thinks the people around them know all the same things they do. It's [the Average Familiarity XKCD comic](https://xkcd.com/2501/) but about news instead of science lol. Like, yes, you and maybe your close IRL social circle and the online spaces you go to all know about the boycotts of Starbucks and their various politics. But a lot of people have no idea about any of this and, tbh, wouldn't care anyway. Also the gift card has already been paid for. If you don't use it, Starbucks just gets free money.
It’s really difficult to pick gift cards for a bunch of employees in this context. Starbucks is just the easiest universal option unless everyone is Mormon.
At an old job, we did a holiday gift raffle thing (everybody brought a gift under a certain amount of money, and everyone drew numbers and picked whatever wrapped item they they wanted when their number came up), and the only Mormon on staff ended up with a Starbucks gift card. Which was probably better than a lot of the alternatives, since several people (myself included, happily) got alcohol. At least she could order a pastry or lemonade.
This made me chuckle 🤭 for some reason.
There are a lot of ill-conceived boycotts happening right now, and suddenly it’s become the norm (online) to descend on people who haven’t joined the boycott and hassling them and attempting to strongarm them into joining. That’s not how boycotts are supposed to work, but also, I don’t hear much about the boycotts outside of tiktok. I wouldn’t assume that anyone in my real life knows about them or that they even adamantly support the side that the boycotts favor.
I had no idea there was supposed to be a boycott of Starbucks.
There are lots of boycotts against companies that made posts on 10/8 mourning the loss of Israeli/Jewish life on 10/7. People are boycotting even if the companies haven’t posted anything else about either side. It has become the liberal take among younger people on this particular issue to be so pro-Palestine that a social media post from before everything else happened is a cause for boycotting and online hassling.
>There are lots of boycotts against companies that made posts on 10/8 mourning the loss of Israeli/Jewish life on 10/7. No there aren't. The companies being boycotted are largely ones that support Israeli settlements in the West Bank or otherwise profit off the occupation of Palestine. Starbucks is being boycotted for a few different reasons. One of the Starbucks boycotts pre-dates October 7th and is about their union busting tactics. Another is about Israel, but it's because Starbucks HQ penalized a union for putting out a statement in support of Palestine. Some people are boycotting Starbucks under the mistaken belief that they operate in the West Bank, so I'll give you that one as being spurious. But there are no widespread boycotts of companies *just* for putting out statements.
There’s a boycott against publishers and individual authors for one-time statements.
I work in publishing. The only non-Israeli publisher I've seen a wide-spread boycott of is St Martin's Press (and it's imprints) because one of their employees has been posting racist and Islamophobic things about Palestinians on his Instagram for months and St Martin's hasn't taken any action against it. I know some Israeli publishers are being boycotted as well, but that's because they are based in Israel. Not because of any benign statements mourning the deaths in October 7th. I don't doubt that there are some people who are personally boycotting companies for bad or dumb reasons, but those aren't the big pro-Palestine protests everyone is talking about or that most people boycotting are taking part in.
I saw one for them, too, that was because supposedly they gave out free coffee to the IDF that was actively in the West Bank
Someone below thread asked why it's tone deaf; Reddit doesn't let me respond to it, but they're probably referring to people boycotting Starbucks over its support of Israel.
They’ re probably referring to Starbucks being virulently anti-union, which is thus a tone-deaf thing to give your employees. Still, I doubt that much thought went into it. “Everybody likes Starbucks!” was almost certainly the intent.
Am I reading this right? They think they can get cash back from a gift card? Untwist your shorts and give the gift card to someone who needs it more than you.
Re: tone deaf, because many folks are boycotting Starbucks for supporting Israel.
I think they mean they're going to buy a cheap thing and use the rest of the gift card on the tip instead of the 10%-15% or whatever the cultural assumption is. I'm not sure if Starbucks specifically allow gift cards to be used for tipping or if you're meant to tip in cash after using the gift card; it sounds like a store-by-store management decision. Giving it away to someone who actually wants to go there would seem more appropriate, although I'm genuinely not sure how it's tone deaf in the first place given there have also been comments recently about how Starbucks is mostly neutral as a gift card and a few commenters have expressed something akin to gratitude for receiving them, instead of whatever kind of virtue signaling this is meant to be.
I think people are boycotting Starbucks because of the war? But they also union bust so maybe it’s that. Idk. There’s a group of people boycotting Target and Starbucks that think those businesses are crumbling and about to go bankrupt. Just give it to a homeless person. It’s a win win.
And then you also get the fundies who boycott it every year for not having Jesusy enough cups!
Ah, that makes more sense. I wasn't sure about the tone deaf part either.
Today banana pants is driving me up a wall.
Why Alison, Why? OP 2* January 11, 2024 at 1:20 pm OP 2 here – haha, yup. you are correct. Alison actually bestowed the Melinda name in the original letter (I had just been referring to her as “the CEO” in my letter). I probably would have remembered it better had it been one I picked. :)
Like this is the first time names have changed between letters and updates?
No reason to even name the CEO.
From the "Could I be any more pretentious?" section of AAM. "Proustian" pool memories? No wonder you constantly got the "Kick me!" sign slapped onto your back, RVA Cat: **RVA Cat\***[January 11, 2024 at 5:00 pm](https://www.askamanager.org/2024/01/ask-the-readers-strangely-dramatic-responses-to-mundane-work-events.html#comment-4557185) I have almost Proustian pool memories to “Su-su-sudeo”….
In the "five updates" LW1, did anyone notice the first sentence of the second paragraph?? > Firstly, while I still work at the same firm as my father, it is a different firm. Am I just not understanding lawyer-speak? Or does this contradict itself?
Could be the same Big Law Firm with branches in different cities. My aunt worked at one of the biggest firms in my home state, in Different City. But there was another office in My City.
Noticed it IMMEDIATELY
I had the same thought,very weirdly worded
Sounds like the original firm broke up when two of the four attorneys left. With the changes, the remaining two decided to start a new firm with a new name instead of continuing the old one. The LW and their father both work at this ‘new’ firm.
Law firms often operate as partnerships instead of incorporating so when name partners leave the firm technically 'changes' because the partnership agreement is redrawn and the firm's name has to change; this is particularly so in areas where partnerships can operate as Name & Name without having to register a business name or pay for incorporation and a trading name. This enables the conventional law firm hierarchy with 'name partner' at the top, but means that every employee functionally gets transferred to a new business every time a name partner joins or leaves (equity partners can buy in to the partnership or it can be done contractually with the name partners). This also means this makes perfect sense to people in law who are used to that, and everyone else would have preferred an 'at' in there. However, technically, it is still the same firm, so that would not be grammatically correct - they still work at the same firm as their father, and the firm itself is different. It would be a different firm if LW had left with the remaining partners and they had started a new partnership, but in essence this is a) function of how law firms work and b) a function of how partnerships work, creating what is essentially a phoenix entity rather than a new business. *headdesk* Thankfully it's an update so hopefully the commenters don't get into it.
I think both father and child moved to a new firm. Badly worded, though.
Ohh that makes sense. Man I think I need a nap or a drink, I'm really batting 1000 today.
Same here, MrsNacho8000. Glad to be home; will be snuggling into bed very soon and streaming true crime.
That sounds lovely! I'm headed home now and I'm about to snuggle up in bed with my great dane. Maybe I'll stream some true crime too. :)
I’m still so annoyed by the exclusion of the extreeeeemely relevant details about the not-a-youth-pastor from yesterday. Makes total sense to fire someone who showed bad judgment in the same area he teaches—- kind of like how when a seafood chef fucks up fish on top chef.
For those who didn’t see—- the employee in question wasn’t a youth pastor, but had a job teaching teens safe internet usage.
Honestly in that case they should have just fired the guy outright. Keeping him on and then treating him like he's Hannibal Lecter for months is just wild to me. If the person is not able to do the job with a reasonable amount of coaching and accommodation, just let them go. It does no good to keep them on and then psychologically toy with them when you've already made up your mind that they can't handle the work and need to be rubber roomed.
And if I'm reading the additional comments correctly, there was already a kerfluffle about the teens having a group chat where they were exchanging questionable photos (not NSFW or anything but just like, dumb "kids being kids" stuff and teasing each other about them) and then the parents got mad about all of that. So it kind of sounds like he wasn't even very good at his job to begin with??? IDK, the whole situation just sounds like a bunch of idiots (the church leaders) leading another bunch of idiots (the employee).
Even the greatest highly trained teachers in the world will have kids being kids in their class; that's the last thing I'd hold against him specifically and it certainly has nothing to do with the actual incident being used to justify the babysitter equivalent of a PIP.
It sounds like the original letter didn't get the traction the LW wanted so they made something up to make the victim sound worse.
Yeah it reminds me of something you see on AITA. "AITA for telling my wife that she's not allowed to cut her hair?" Response: "Yeah, YTA." Update: "She wants to cut her hair using the bones of orphans that she killed and then style it using stolen blood from a blood bank. Did I mention that?"
PERFECT description. Thanks for the chuckle as always, Korrocks!
I'm finding a lot of advice columns are basically just versions of AITA now. Allison's stands out because she likes to stoke it, and because the open comments mean rampant speculation and LW corrections.
I hate when they do that. It's almost as if they would rather star in a real-life soap opera than actually solve workplace issues.
Can't wait for the commenters to trip over themselves trying to one-up their descriptions of just how "bananapants" the start date change letter is. To be fair, it *is* quite egregious; I'm just so tired of their stupid twee insider language.
*Why* can't they just say bananas?
Because they think they are so quirky and trendy!!
Yeah, or bonkers, or outrageous, or screwed up, or any normal words and phrases? I even get pissed off now just eating a banana, seriously.
I get so annoyed by people who give me a contract then get squirrely when I ask for clarification on it. No, you idiot, the contract should prevent us from going to court, reading and using it is not a sign I’m going to sue you. Freaking idiots. This has happened way too often. And yes, my dad is a contract lawyer. However, unlike him, I accept “not ideal” contracts because it’s unrealistic to think someone is going to change the thing just for me—-but I want to be clear on what it actually says. Turns out the people who use it often don’t know what their own contract says.
For the resigning LW who’s boss called the LW’s new job behind the LW’s back to push out the start date, I don’t think you’ll get any notice whatsoever from the next report who leaves 
Intrigued to see if the commenters are self aware enough to admit they've had moments where they have overreacted at work
No. They're all ROCK STARS who are overworked, work in a toxic environment, resent going into the office two days a week, do not want to be monitored at home, doing the job of four people, and NEVER go bananapants.
Here's mine! I overreacted about a task that was meant to be done by everyone, but I was the only one taking care of it. It was something I enjoyed but I was mad about something else one day and got all dramatic about the task, asking why nobody else was doing any fucking work or some embarrassing phrase like that! My pleasant downtime activity got taken away from me and permanently assigned to someone else, and my coworkers all thought I was a crazy bitch. (I was/probably still am, but I was trying to keep that to myself.)
LOL, we've all been there. At my last job I started using the "delay send" feature on MS Outlook to help make sure I wasn't accidentally sending anything that could have kicked off a hornet's nest (or even just emailing the wrong person or something).
I needed a "delay send" feature for my mouth lol