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snopes_feed) wrote2025-09-10 10:00 am
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scans_daily2025-09-10 10:49 amWriter: Chris Claremont
Pencils: Marc Silvestri
Inks: Dan Green
It’s another Brood story, so you know that means tentacles and body horror.
( Read more... )
nanila) wrote in awesomeers2025-09-10 08:32 amgirlgenius_main_feed) wrote2025-09-10 04:00 amaskamanager_feed) wrote2025-09-10 04:03 amIt’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Can I tell a coworker I dislike him?
Is it ever safe to tell a coworker you dislike them on a personal level?
There’s a colleague I find very annoying. He hasn’t done anything wrong, but his personality is extremely different from mine. He’s far more optimistic and cheerful than I am. The disparity in our attitudes comes partly from me hating my job.
Even though there are all sorts of ways in which it could backfire, I think I would very much enjoy telling this person I don’t like him, even if only via email. If not while we’re in the same workplace, maybe on the day one of us moves elsewhere (I’m applying for other jobs at the moment). What do you think?
Don’t do that under any circumstances.
It’s a bad idea on a practical level — anyone who hears about it is likely to think of you as a jerk after that — and it’s pretty mean on a human level. People are allowed to be different from you; that doesn’t warrant randomly informing them that you don’t like them. Why does he need to know? Just to make him feel bad? Think about why you want that; it’s almost certainly about something going on with you, not him (and “the disparity in our attitudes comes partly from me hating my job” might be a clue to what that is).
You’re allowed to dislike people. You’re not allowed to be gratuitously cruel to them as a result.
Also, for what it’s worth, doing it in email makes it an even worse idea. That email is highly likely to be forwarded. (That doesn’t mean you should do it in person! Don’t do it at all.)
These are thoughts to keep to yourself or vent to friends at happy hour.
2. Having to take religious holidays as flex days
My company offers three flex holidays per person with about a dozen choices of when to use them. Most are bank holidays like Veterans Day and President’s Day, but Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are included.
Maybe because the High Holidays fell partially over weekends the last few years I wasn’t so bothered, but this year I’m feeling a little extra bitter about having to use two of my flex holidays for religious reasons while my coworkers are using theirs for long weekends.
Am I off-base? I might just be grouchy about all things work-related these days — I work in an industry greatly affected by the tariff situation and it’s definitely making some things that I’d normally not be bothered about feel like mountains instead of molehills.
FWIW, I’m definitely not the only Jew in the office, but we are (of course) the minority and not all are observant. I don’t think I have anyone else who would join me to push back as a group as I’m imagining you advising.
This is actually very normal (and better than what many companies offer), and there’s not really anything here to push back on. After all, what would you be asking for — for some people to receive extra days off on top of what everyone else gets? Right now you all get the same number of days off, because your company recognizes that not everyone celebrates the same holidays . Yes, you have to use some of those days for religious observance, but that’s the same thing that other people who are religiously observant do. (I suppose you could argue that people who celebrate Christmas get a “free” holiday that they don’t have to use any of their flex days for, but you’re also getting that same day off to do whatever you want with.)
3. We upset our boss by organizing stuff
I’m part of a small organization and we host lots of events throughout the year. Our office is small and we don’t have much storage space, but we need things for different types of events (canopy tents for street fairs, centerpieces for fancy tables, etc.) so we rent a storage unit. The storage unit, being off-site (though not far), is inevitably a pain to go to, so it tends to be a “catch-all” where one big trip is made and stuff is thrown in there post-event. This results in quite a mess of unorganized bins, boxes, bags, etc., where the events coordinator (Rachel) has to struggle through the mess to find what she needs for the next event and the chaos snowballs.
With another event coming up, Rachel was dreading the next trip to the unit. I had some spare time so we decided we’d go together and take a couple hours to organize it all (put things in labeled bins, put bins for the same event type on the same shelves, throw away torn/unusable items, that kind of thing). Our boss, Monica, said that was fine, and we did it! It made a big difference and we’re proud of what we accomplished (and Rachel is relieved to have a system going forward).
Later, Monica had a conversation with Rachel where it turned out she didn’t know we were moving anything around, she thought we were just gathering the stuff for the event like usual (which we also did in the process). While Monica hasn’t yet been to the storage unit, she’s apparently really unhappy that we “changed things.”
Rachel and I are both baffled as to why what we did is a problem, so we’re not sure what to do now other than going back in time and making sure we were clear enough in talking to Monica beforehand. We were trying to make life easier for Rachel, who is the main person who needs to use the unit, but neither of us considered that it could upset Monica. Monica is a lovely person and is already under stress during a highly difficult time for our org, and we definitely didn’t want to add to that with something we did to be useful! We can’t exactly put it back how it was, nor would that make sense to do, but we both feel bad about upsetting her.
Since we’re just confused about what the problem even is, is there some obvious perspective you, as a third party and a manager, can see that we missed? We’d like to apologize and make sure this isn’t adding to her already-full plate, but we’re not sure the best way to approach or solve it.
My guess is that it’s about her stress level more than anything else. She’s stressed, something changed that she didn’t fully realize was changing, and now she feels stressed about that too. She may be picturing something different than what you did — in her head, the reorg might have made it harder for her to find things there now than it used to be, or she might worry things were thrown away that she wanted the chance to weigh in on first — and when you’re already stressed, that sort of thing can feel like it’s just adding to the chaos pile. She might feel quite differently once she sees it, or even once this particular period of stress has passed.
If you want to go back and address it, you could say, “We wanted to apologize — we thought we had your sign-off for organizing the storage unit and didn’t realize we hadn’t clearly conveyed that that’s what we were going to do.” You could add, “It’s a lot easier to find things now though so hopefully when you get a chance to see it, you’ll agree!”
4. Not getting a referral bonus because the candidate was hired as a freelancer instead of an employee
A few months ago, a former colleague of mine applied for a full-time position at my wife’s Fortune 50 company. Both of them made official mention that my wife had referred him to the position.
Last month, after three rounds of interviews, this person’s future direct manager told my wife that he was being offered the job. Excellent! Three hours later, their grand-boss (the person who would sign off on the hire) quit, with no notice.
In the chaos, the powers-that-be decided they would no longer hire for the permanent position my colleague had applied for; instead, they would offer a freelance position and figure out the company’s needs from there. My old colleague, whose severance was running out, decided he needed to take the job. So: bad circumstances, but good person gets employed, and that’s something of a win.
But this company offers a $1,000 bonus to employees who recommend candidates for a job if they are hired for that job. My wife would have received that bonus, but since the company changed the position from full-time to freelance and the candidate had to re-apply, she is apparently no longer eligible. This seems ludicrous to us — our acquaintance was hired freelance because all of the groundwork had been laid.
Is it worth it for my wife to go to HR to lay all of this out? She probably won’t see the money. But it has certainly left a bad taste in her mouth after 14 years of solid service.
She should let it go. If they end up converting him to an employee, she could make the case for the referral bonus at that point — but it’s very unlikely that they’re going to pay it out for a freelancer.
I’d also argue it shouldn’t leave a bad taste in her mouth! Yes, she referred him, but it’s reasonable for them to only pay out employee referral bonuses for employees … and just referring someone isn’t really a lot of work. If she’d done a huge amount of work to recruit him to work with the company and had to woo him for months or something similar, I could see being more aggravated.
5. Should I disclose my FMLA to the people I manage?
I’m working on intermittent FMLA for myself. I’m personally comfortable disclosing this, but didn’t know if I should share as a supervisor. Is it okay to let my employees know?
Yes. I’d probably wait until it’s finalized so you have something specific to share, but there’s no reason you can’t share it and it will give people useful context to understand why you’re suddenly out more than they’re used to. If you want, you could add, “I don’t want my sharing this to make anyone feel they’d need to share their own use of FMLA with the team in the future; it’s fine to work with me to keep that private if you prefer.”
The post can I tell a coworker I dislike him, we upset our boss by organizing stuff, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.
questionable_content_feed) wrote2025-09-09 10:10 pm
Questionable content
snopes_feed) wrote2025-09-10 01:30 amrmc28) wrote2025-09-10 12:43 am... so I could watch Kpop Demon Hunters, after half my friends mentioned it, and my child told me it was good, and the songs kept turning up on my instagram feed, and I listened to the soundtrack yesterday.
Anyway, it was a great deal of fun, the music is so catchy, the film absolutely leans into its premise, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I'm not great at watching TV at all, and especially not by myself, but I'm glad I did. (I might put it on again, maybe the singalong version, at some point.)
I watched approx 2/3 of it between skating lesson and uni hockey practice and the other 1/3 after getting home. I'd just turned it off to get changed, when in walked the students with the speaker playing the soundtrack (and one of the songs, Golden, lived on repeat in my head throughout practice).
snopes_feed) wrote2025-09-09 11:07 pmconuly) wrote2025-09-07 06:05 pmsnopes_feed) wrote2025-09-09 09:37 pmsnopes_feed) wrote2025-09-09 08:52 pmkaberett) wrote2025-09-09 09:56 pmBetween one thing and another we wound up having a semi-impromptu mini-break in Chester, including a few hours at Chester Zoo.
... where we went into the bats enclosure and were transfixed for about an hour, basically from the moment we walked in until chucking-out time.
It's a big dark room, artificially crepuscular, with lots of trees (dead) for roosts, and somewhere in the vicinity of 350 bats (Seba's short-tailed and Rodrigues fruit bats). THEY WILL COME SO CLOSE TO YOU. THEY WILL COME SO CLOSE TO YOU. They were flying well within a foot of our faces. You could FEEL THE WIND FROM THEIR WINGBEATS.
And A was greatly honoured by one LANDING ON THEIR TROUSERS.
There were many other Excellent Creatures -- the Humboldt penguins in particular were very excited by the rain (so much porpoising), and the giant otters were indeed giant, and there was an enormous dragonfly, and the flamingos went from almost entirely asleep (including one baby that had not yet got the hang of the whole one-leg trick) to YELLING INCESSANTLY after being buzzed by the scarlet ibis.
Extremely good afternoon out, 13/10, would recommend.
cellio) wrote2025-09-09 04:37 pmThe other day, I saw something cute and reposted it on Mastodon:
Overheard, and for Internet old-timers: "Today is the 11,691st day of September 1993".
Someone responded to tell me that Debian has the sdate command "which keeps track for all of us".
I laughed. And then I found that there are also online calculators, for people who don't use Debian.
I am amused, even if -- or perhaps because -- those of us who remember the September that never ended are now a very small minority of the online population. Back then people were frustrated; today it's quirky history. Whatever your online community is -- Usenet, mailing lists, Twitter, Reddit, Dreamwidth, Stack Overflow, whatever -- it's going to change just from the people using it, let alone technology and companies. Don't get too comfortable.
cellio) wrote2025-09-09 04:27 pmI've had my Visa card for a very long time (decades). I've been happy with the provider, and the few times I needed the weight of Visa behind a dispute, they came through. No fuss, just like I want a credit card to be.
A few months ago they started sending me email to invite me to add another authorized user to my card, suggesting it as a safety net (so if something happens to me, someone else can administer my account). Maybe that appeals to someone, but I'm not interested so I ignored it. More recently they have been offering minor inducements (a one-time small credit) to do this, and that makes me wonder what their real goal is.
If this is merely a service they offer for peace of mind, the peace of mind is the inducement and nothing else is needed. That they are trying to entice people to do it means there's some other motivation that benefits them more directly. I'm assuming this is not a way to add your minor children so they can more easily make in-app purchases or whatever the kids are doing these days -- and anyway, unless they're giving you a way to throttle spending from other users, that would be a very bad idea.
The only thing I can come up with is that this is a way for people with bad credit scores to get access to credit cards. They aren't going to issue cards to such folks directly, but if they can get you to add your deadbeat cousin with a terrible credit rating (to "help" your family member), then the credit-card company gets more transactions and thus more transaction fees at very low risk to them. They know an existing customer who'd like to keep a good credit rating is on the hook for the charges; they're going to get paid. This might be in Visa's interest, but how is it in mine? It's not, which is presumably why they're trying to buy folks off.
Have I missed some benign reason for them to push this scheme?
(Still not doing it, but curious.)
andrewducker) wrote2025-09-09 02:01 pm
Sophia is having her evening snack while sitting on the window ledge
watching the world go by.
Original
is here on Pixelfed.scot.
askamanager_feed) wrote2025-09-09 05:59 pmA reader writes:
My fiancé and I just broke up after 6.5 years together. The underlying factors contributing to the split had been percolating for a long time, but the actual break-up happened very suddenly and unexpectedly, and I’m in a lot of pain right now.
I was wondering if you had any scripts for how to broach this subject at work. I’ve talked about my partner, his career, our upcoming wedding, etc. a lot to my coworkers, and many of them have met him. I don’t know how to now announce that we broke up without trauma-dumping, but obviously I can’t just pretend that we’re still together.
I’m sorry!
You don’t need to make a big announcement at all. You can simply stop mentioning him and if it comes up organically (like if someone asks a question about him or is otherwise says something that clearly assumes you’re still together), you can say, “Oh, we’re not together anymore.” The person might look sad and say they’re sorry to hear it, and you can say “thank you” and quickly pivot to a different topic. That’s really it! People at work aren’t likely to be expecting you to go into the details, and it’s perfectly fine to just deliver the news when it’s directly relevant and not let the conversation get mired in it.
If at some point it gets weird that people are clearly still assuming your wedding is approaching, you can always address it more proactively (“I’d mentioned I’d be out in November for my wedding and honeymoon, but Ray and I actually split up so unfortunately that’s no longer the plan”) but the same principles apply — don’t dwell on it, don’t give details, just deliver the basic fact of it and leave it there.
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