In preparation for St. Patrick’s day … a reader writes:
Back in 2010, I sent the most horrifying email to my boss (by accident!) and I thought you might get a kick out of it.
For context, there was a St. Patrick’s Day parade that a group of friends and I attended for several years. It was the kind of thing where you’d start the day with coffee and Bailey’s at 9 am, be dancing at a club by 3 pm, and somehow still be at a pub at midnight. I’m tired just thinking of it now. Ahead of the parade, I sent an email to get things organized, complete with an original limerick about drinking. Seven people were replying-all, all morning. The I realized, in the truest horror I’d ever felt, that I had sent it to my boss named Susan, rather than my friend named Susan. She was working from home that day and I tried to call her but she didn’t answer. Finally I emailed her apologizing profusely. She claimed she didn’t open it because of the “strange subject line” but suggested I might want to send personal emails on personal time. Noted.
Here’s the email for your viewing pleasure. I actually later entered a doctoral program where I wrote my dissertation on contemporary Irish poetry, so I suppose this was very on-brand for me.
Subject line: call me st. patrick, cuz i can make your sham rock
Once every March, there is a day full of cheer When people wear green and drink beer They chug, dance and fight Take shots morning till night And gals, that day is quite near!
Yes, its true!!! That time of year is upon us again! What time of year, you ask? Only the best day ever!!! Better than Christmas? YES! Better than a birthday? YES? How can that be? Well, gather all your friends and dress them in ridiculous green outfits. Add some boas, perhaps a tiny hat. Set them free in a city of people similarly dressed, where the local police turn a blind eye to public intoxication. The hottest firemen in the state march down the street. Men in kilts wink at you. Strangers invite you to parties. You dance all day. You get tired, but you pull another beer from your purse. You drink through it. The streets are littered with green, white and orange. You’ve had more Guinness in one day than in the past year. Someone offers you a whiskey shot. Can you do it? You’ve been drinking since 10 a.m., when you started with Irish coffee. You aren’t sure. But then, St. Patrick smiles upon you. He drove the snakes out of Ireland and his next mission is to ensure your good time. You CAN take that shot of whiskey. You straighten your tiny hat, raise the shot glass, and with a Slainte! and a smile it goes down. It is St Patrick’s Day. And it is the best day of the year.
March 13, bitches! Lets meet by 8:30 a.m. and caravan to Newport, where Susan has so generously offered to host us, yet again.
My favorite thing about this is that it ends with the line about Susan having offered to host this extravaganza; I like to think that she spent some time wondering whether a horde of drunken women was about to descend upon her.
This is such a niche and gross question. I work in a very upscale building in a large city, where we have high-end, VIP, A-list celebrity clients on our floor at least several times a week. Needless to say, it’s important for us to always look and act in the most professional manner possible.
There are four office suites on my floor, and all of the employees in all offices are generally very courteous and kind and very professional and discreet. However. One employee in one of the other higher-end offices has a habit of taking/making phone calls in the shared bathroom, while she is doing her personal bodily business. This is so disgusting and unprofessional, and two of our clients have mentioned something to us about being weirded out while trying to do their personal bodily business, during a time that this (outside of my company) employee does hers. Additionally, I was just in there, she came in, CLEARLY DID NUMBER TWO WHILE ON THE PHONE WITH A BUSINESS CONTACT AND DID NOT WASH HER HANDS BEFORE LEAVING.
This is so gross, and it makes the shared bathroom experience really uncomfortable. She’s maybe in her 30s, not American (I am in a large west coast city), and speaks very loudly. I thought that this was a cultural thing maybe? I asked my partner (who is from the same city/country she is) if this is the norm/not as obscene as it seems to me in their home country? And they told me, no, officially no, “I’ve never heard or seen anyone do that, ever.”
What do I do? This is such a fragile/awkward thing to talk about. Do I bring it up with her boss? Do I leave an anonymous note? We all need our clients to have a wonderful experience from top to .. er.. bottom, when they are in our office space, and this kind of shit (pun intended) does not help!
Ew.
The next time you’re in the bathroom with her, why not just say, “This is awkward to ask, but could I ask you not to take calls in the stall? We’ve had some clients say they don’t feel comfortable using the toilet while someone is on the phone right next to them.” You could even wait for one of the calls to wrap up and say this when she comes out.
Obviously it’s going to feel awkward, but that’s okay! Don’t take the awkwardness as a sign that you shouldn’t proceed; there is no way to address this that won’t feel weird. You just have to move through the awkwardness. In fact, ideally you’d even embrace it! If nothing else, though, remember that the awkwardness is being created by her, not you. She is the poopetrator, and any weirdness that results from saying this out loud stems from her choices, not yours.
But if you just can’t bring yourself to say something directly, another option is to talk with your boss (as long as you’re not so senior that you’d be expected to handle this on your own). The fact that clients have mentioned it makes it easier to bring up without seeming like you’re monitoring someone else’s bathroom habits or making too big a deal out of something that’s gross but not necessarily escalation-worthy.
You could explain that clients have mentioned this, that you’ve noticed it yourself, and that you’re wondering if there’s a way to address it since clients are squicked out. From there, your boss gets to make the call about whether to do anything. If she chooses not to, it’s officially not your problem. (Although if you think it’s grossing out your clients to the point that it’s affecting your company’s relationship with them, tell your boss that too, because if nothing else, your company needs a strategy for how to handle that.)
But I would not do the anonymous note, no matter how tempting. It’s going to be an awfully weird sign for your clients to see, and people are notorious for ignoring signs left in bathrooms. I’d also leave the hand-washing out of it, no matter how grossed out you are by that, because that’s about her personal hygiene and you don’t the same standing to comment on it as you do with the calls (and I’m sorry to say, she’s almost definitely not the only one guilty of that).
Chasten Buttigieg, the husband of South Bend mayor and presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, spoke at the Human Rights Campaign dinner in Houston, Texas on Saturday night.
“So I’ve had a busy couple months,” Buttigieg began. “Never underestimate what can happen when you agree to go on a date with a cute guy from South Bend, Indiana.”
“I now live in a world where people take photos of me in the deodorant aisle at the grocery store,” he added. “But it is not lost on me that I was able to marry the man I love by the grace of one Supreme Court vote.”
Buttigieg then joked about the historic nature of his position, drawing cheers: “I could be the first man in history to pick out the White House china.”
Buttigieg said that he moved out of his home in Traverse City, Michigan shortly after coming out to his parents.
“Eventually, I thought to myself, ‘I can’t be here any more.’ So I moved out, without a plan. I was scared, living between my car and friends’ couches.”
Buttigieg, who said he’s since developed a good relationship with his parents, talked about finding community, and a teacher who saved him by allowing him to sleep in the school auditorium when he needed to. That teacher inspired Buttigieg to become a teacher himself, he said.
Buttigieg talked about the importance of passing the Equality Act, which would enshrine LGBTQ protections in the Constitution under existing civil rights laws, and praised HRC for the work it has done over the years.
“We need someone in the White House who will sign the Equality Act into law, and luckily I know a guy,” he said.
“My husband Pete Buttigieg – you can call him Mayor Pete – was commissioned as a naval intelligence officer when ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ was still the law of the land,” he continued. “And served a seven month tour in Afghanistan when a certain vice president was governor of his home state.”
“Peter is ready to serve our country in the highest office, and just as importantly I think America is ready for him,” Buttigieg added.
“Over the last three months of traveling the country at his side, meeting people from all walks of life, we have discovered that people are united in protecting our values of freedom, Democracy and security. Especially freedom to live an authentic life regardless of who you love or how you identify.”
You were a diamond in the rough, the long form social network that could; the learned man’s Tumblr. It’s now been two years since we last shared a connection (and 25 articles about the supposed fate of Walter White) and I need you now more than ever.
We fell in love the day that I discovered that I could subscribe to friends feeds. You were all articles, only articles – and full articles at that. No longer just an RSS feed of the 5 blogs I love, but a curated RSS feed of my friends who had great stuff to share and say. We began to comment on articles, we had great conversation. I made friends. ACTUAL FRIENDS that went from online to real life.
No other network will do. Facebook? Yes, there are links there, but I’m friends with random people who post click-bait articles and fill my newsfeed to the brim. Twitter? I follow over 1K people. For a small group of like-minded people, Reader, you were the only one for me.
Two years ago, almost to the day, you took it all from me. Everything we had built together. Everything we shared (no, I shared). You wanted to “retire [your] sharing features” and move them to G+. The betrayal I felt – I thought I may never love again. By July of last year, you were gone for good.
I’ve found a new lover, enter… The Old Reader. He looks just like you, he shares just like you (NOTE: with premium payment). Is it too little too late? Can we begin again?
Honestly. He’s everything you’re not. We got to a point in our relationship where you stopped trying. No more new features, no more supporting the die-hard fan base that would have done ANYTHING FOR YOU. He cares. He innovates. He’s linked to my Pocket account.
That’s right, Google Reader! You heard me! I read my Old Reader articles off line without WIFI in the subway. Could you ever have dreamed of doing that?
You never cared about the rag-tag group of followers that only wanted to share interesting and thought provoking articles in long form. You took something great and tried to move it over to Google+. You didn’t even know what you had.
Well, we don’t need you anymore. We’ve rebuilt.
So join me, everyone. Use my new favorite site on the World Wide Web, The Old Reader and link it to Pocket, for the ultimate one-two combo of ‘read well’ + ‘read later.’
