Steve Dyer

This post, the best time of day to apply for jobs, working for an unethical industry, and more , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Is my CEO stringing me along in her succession planning?

I work for a small nonprofit (12 employees). Seven years ago, I was wooed to my current position of vice president by the CEO/president, with the explicit plan that I will take over and run the organization once she retires. It appeared to be forward-thinking succession planning on her part, and I took a pay cut from my previous job to make the leap. She was nearing traditional retirement age, and she also hinted at some specific timelines (“this is the last time I’ll be in charge of this project”); I was expecting to lead the organization within five years.

Fast forward to now, and we’re still in the same position. Worse, she refuses to engage in communication about the future of the organization and my role. Over the last year, I’ve tried to broach the subject in a “big picture” way, yet she cuts me off and insists she won’t be forced out. I recognize that she has to make the decision that’s right for her. But I also need information to make the decision that’s right for me.

Everyone at the organization is aware I was brought in as her replacement, and I often get questions (from employees, board members, and community partners) about when I’m taking over. I tempted to subtly share some of my frustration the next time a board member asks, in attempts to spur some conversation about succession planning at the board level, but I fear that might be overstepping. Am I out of line for making the assumption that I would have a clearer picture after seven years at the organization? What should I do?

Seven years?! No, you are not out of line. If she has changed her mind, so be it, but she owes you a direct conversation about what’s going on so you can make the right decisions for yourself.

If you knew that it definitely wasn’t happening in the next several years, what decisions would you make? I’d start assuming it’s not happening for at least the next several years, if at all, and plan accordingly.

But since it sounds like the board assumes you’ll be taking over at some point (and presumably has approved that) and board members are asking you about the timeline, you also should be able to talk with a board member about your concerns. Explain the CEO has refused to discuss any timeline with you and you’re at the point where you’re thinking about whether you need to leave the organization to pursue your own goals. Ask if they have any insight or can initiate a conversation about timeline. (Before doing this, you should factor in what you know of the CEO — if she’ll freak out that you raised this with a board member on your own, be sure to pick the specific board member and your wording carefully … and consider asking the board member to help shield you from that.)

2. Working in an ethically dubious industry

I’m an attorney working at a mid-sized national firm with a big law annual billable hours requirement. My firm primarily focuses on litigation, but after five years here (nine years in practice total), I’m sure this isn’t the right fit for me. I’m a wreck when it comes to public speaking, I’m terrible at generating my own business, and hitting the annual billable hours target is a consistent source of stress. Moreover, the regional office I’m in is small and my role isn’t as defined as other associates, meaning I often find myself low on work while younger, less experienced coworkers are busy with their niche projects or cases. Basically, I’m over it and looking for a way out. Going in-house for a major company is an attractive option because it will gel with my experience, generally pays well, and will get me out of having to bill.

An international tobacco company is hiring for an in-house position doing primarily commercial and transactional work (contracts and such) and I’m thinking about applying. However, I’m concerned about the ethics of working for a tobacco company and the potential ramifications of doing so when I’m ready to move on in the future, particularly if someday I want to transition to public service (my goal in law school before the realities of having to pay back my huge loans set in). Will having worked for a tobacco company, even one that isn’t US-based and so wasn’t embroiled in decades-long litigation regarding lying to the public about the dangers of smoking, be a black mark on my resume to future employers?

It’ll be a black mark to some employers, and others won’t care. To some extent it depends on the kinds of jobs you’ll want afterwards. If you’d want to work for, say, a public health group or a progressive charity, it’s going to be more of an issue than if you want to work for a bank. (Even at a bank, though, you’ll find individual hiring managers who find it distasteful.) You said you’d like to move to public service at some point, and it’s more likely to be an obstacle there — not across the board, it’ll depend on the specific organizations you’re applying for, but I’d weigh that pretty heavily in your decision-making.

And of course, there’s a reason it’ll be a black mark to some people — you’ll have signed on to help support a product that kills people. Are you comfortable with that work? Maybe you are! But I’d think hard about your own comfort level with it, first and foremost.

3. Does time of day matter when sending in a job application?

I’ve come across a couple of articles indicating that applications are more likely to receive a response if sent in early in the morning. I’m somewhat of a night owl and often am working on applications after business hours or on weekends. If a position is reviewing applications on a rolling basis but the deadline is still a few days to a few weeks off, is it better to send in my application ASAP, even if that means sending it at 10 p.m. or on a weekend, or should I hold it until the start of the next business day?

It doesn’t matter. Apply when it’s convenient for you. What matters most is that you have a compelling, personalized cover letter and a resume that shows a track record of achievement in the area they’re hiring for — not the time of day you apply.

In fact, most hiring managers won’t even notice what time of day your application was received. Few people read applications in real time as they come in. Most people read them in batches. Those batches might be organized from oldest to newest, or newest to oldest, or alphabetically, or they might be in no order at all. Apply as soon as you have time to do it well and don’t get hung up on the timing.

The one caveat I would give about timing is not to wait until just before the application deadline. Employers don’t always stick to those deadlines; if they find someone great before then, they may hire that person. Other times the deadline is artificial because the site where the job ad requires one so they just put in a date, but it doesn’t have real meaning. So apply as soon as you can.

4. Can I opt out of using electronic calendar invites and other widgets?

I work as an academic at a university. For years I happily used old-fashioned, text-based email software, but we have all been pushed onto Microsoft Exchange.

Increasingly, I’m getting emails that are not just emails. If I’m being invited to a meeting, these emails will often contain a calendar
widget with an RSVP button, which will add the event to “my calendar.”

I don’t use the university-provided calendar to manage my schedule, and I have no desire to start. You’ve written about Microsoft’s creepy “MyAnalytics” productivity analyzer, and I want no part of that. And moreover, I don’t want to invite assumptions about when I am and am not free. Much of my work takes place outside formal meetings, and I need to protect my time.

All this said, I don’t want to be rude to others. If someone sends me one of these calendar widgets, do good manners oblige me to use the widget to reply? And, more generally, to what extent am I obliged to get on board with whatever communication and time-management systems my employer tries to push?

You’re not obligated to use that kind of widget. Nor are you necessarily obligated to accept calendar invites that automatically add things to your calendar if you don’t use your calendar that way.

That said, if the culture of your workplace is to use shared calendars to see people’s availability and set up meetings, it might not fly to opt out of that system. So I’d look at whether it would inconvenience colleagues or be strongly out of sync with your culture before you make up your mind. That’s partly the answer to your broader question too — the extent to which you’re obligated to get on board with whatever systems your employer is pushing depends on how that system is used, how onerous it’ll be for other people if you don’t use them, and how much autonomy you have to do your own thing. An academic may find it pretty easy to opt out of that stuff; a junior accounts person may not.

5. Organization refuses to credit me for my volunteer work

I volunteer for an organization and I was the one to suggest hosting an online meeting (they’ve never done that before). When it came time to publicize the event, literally everyone else’s name was included but mine! I need to get credit for the work I’ve done in order to maintain the membership I hold, as it is based on a points system.

I’ve spent hours telling the chair of this organization to “click this link” or “do this” in order for it to succeed. It would seem this person barely knows how to turn a computer on. When I confronted them about how I need my name to be published on the event link, they babbled on something about data protection, and how I am just “an admin for this event.” So, they won’t publish my name. For a volunteer event. That I’m doing all the work for.

At the time I barely concealed my disappointment, but is it worth fighting over? Should I quit before the event? Or should I just let it go?

What benefits, if any, are you getting from this volunteer organization? If the answer is few to none and you’re volunteering purely out of a desire to do good in the world, it’s hard to see why you should keep giving this one your time. There are other volunteer organizations that would happily accept your time and work and wouldn’t refuse to credit you in a situation like this, especially when you directly ask.

On the other hand, if there are professional or other benefits to remaining a member, I’d let this go as a very annoying one-off … but if similar things happen and you’re seeing a pattern, it’s hard to imagine continuing to lend your time.

As for whether to push for credit now, it sounds like you’ve tried and been told no. Make sure you still receive the points toward membership that this work should have earned you, though.

Glaciologist Megan Thompson-Munson recently posted an “unofficial but passionate petition” for scientists and science publications to start drawing icebergs correctly.

While it’s true that only ~10% floats above the surface of the water, the “classic” orientation is unstable and would actually not be found in nature. An elongated iceberg would not float on its head, but instead on its side.

Inspired by her plea, Joshua Tauberer made a cool little iceberg simulator called Iceberger — you can quickly draw an iceberg and see how it will float. Here are a couple of weird ones I drew:

I would love to see a gently gamified version of this where you compete to draw the slowest-orienting icebergs or icebergs closest to their stable orientation. Would be similar to some of the puzzles in Brain It On!

Curiosity is about to get some company. NASA’s newest rover, Perseverance, is set to land on Mars beginning tomorrow at around 3pm EST. The video above walks us through the 7-minute landing routine in which the rover ditches its spacecraft, heat shields its way through the Martian atmosphere, deploys its parachute, uses an onboard guidance system to navigate to a good landing spot, and finally is lowered down to the surface via a sky crane. The rover’s destination is Jezero Crater, site of an ancient river delta and lakebed.

Jezero Crater tells a story of the on-again, off-again nature of the wet past of Mars. More than 3.5 billion years ago, river channels spilled over the crater wall and created a lake. Scientists see evidence that water carried clay minerals from the surrounding area into the crater lake. Conceivably, microbial life could have lived in Jezero during one or more of these wet times. If so, signs of their remains might be found in lakebed or shoreline sediments. Scientists will study how the region formed and evolved, seek signs of past life, and collect samples of Mars rock and soil that might preserve these signs.

Here’s how you can watch the landing “live” tomorrow (i.e. delayed by the 11 minutes & 22 seconds it takes for signals to travel from Mars). I’ll do a separate post tomorrow w/ the proper YouTube embeds so we can all follow along together.

In a recent issue of the MachinePix newsletter, Kane Hsieh interviewed Dr. Steve Gass, the inventor of the SawStop, the table saw that automatically stops cutting when it detects human skin (therefore saving fingers and hands from being cut off). Before we get to that, you’ve probably seen the company’s hot dog demo but if you haven’t, check out these super slow-motion clips of the SawStop blades stopping in a matter of milliseconds after making contact:

The minuscule amount of damage to the hot dog is mind-blowing. Where did this demo idea come from? From the interview:

What was the first thing? It was probably a stationary blade with me just touching it with my finger. Once we started spinning the blade, I wasn’t too eager to do that test with my finger, so we just thought ‘what do we have that’s sort of finger like with similar electrical properties’ — hot dogs are similar, and I had one in the fridge, so I grabbed one and ran it into the blade. Sure enough, it worked.

There was a point where we had to know a hotdog was a good surrogate for a finger. You can imagine, we could do this demo at trade shows with a hot dog, but there’s always a smart-ass that says they don’t care about hot dogs, and wanted to see it with a finger. So before the first trade show I had to test it with my actual finger. Thankfully it worked!

And because what the saw is detecting is “the capacitance of the human body”, you have to be holding the hot dog in order for the demo to work.

The whole interview is worth a read — like this bit about why big tool companies were not interested in licensing this feature: because they aren’t liable for the injuries caused by their products:

The fundamental question came down to economics. Almost a societal economic structure question. The CPSC says table saws result in about $4B in damage annually. The market for table saws is about $200-400M. This is a product that does almost 10x in damage as the market size. There’s a disconnect — these costs are borne by individuals, the medical system, workers comp — and not paid by the power tools company. Because of that, there’s not that much incentive to improve the safety of these tools. Societally if there was an opportunity to spend $5 to save $10, we’d want to do that. But in this chain there’s a break in people that can make those changes and people that are affected, so it’s not done.

Werner Herzog doesn’t know anything about skateboarding. But suspecting the director was a kindred spirit, Ian Michna interviewed Herzog for skate mag Jenkem. My favorite bit is when Michna asks Herzog if he shot a skateboarding video, what music would he choose as a soundtrack:

What comes to mind first and foremost would be Russian Orthodox church choirs, something that creates this kind of strange feeling of space and sacrality — so what you are doing is special, bordering the sacred.

(via @mathowie)

For four years, Maxwel Hohn filmed the movements of millions of tadpoles in a small lake in British Columbia, resulting in an 8-minute short film called Tadpoles: The Big Little Migration. The underwater cinematography in this is absolutely incredible.

People don’t think of tadpoles as being photogenic, but when you take the time to look at their features, they’re actually very cute. They have a permanent smile on their face that you form an instant connection with. Witnessing their journey each day, there’s a strong emotional bond I can’t help but feel.

Hohn’s work here is proof that nature is infinitely fascinating and worthy of attention, even beyond the bounds of nature documentaries about charismatic megafauna. (via the kid should see this)

This interview on This American Life with a Black Capitol Police officer who defended Congress against the domestic terrorists who stormed the Capitol Buidling on Jan 6th is essential listening. BuzzFeed’s Emmanuel Felton interviewed an anonymous officer he calls “Officer Jones”:

Emmanuel Felton: Have you ever been in a fight like that?

Officer Jones: No, not like that. No way. These people were deranged, and they were determined. I’ve played video games before. Well, you know, zombie games — Resident Evil, Call of Duty. And the zombies are just coming after you, and you’re just out there. I guess that’s what I could relate it to — Call of Duty zombies. And the further you go, the more and more zombies just coming. You’re just running, running, running. And they wouldn’t stop. You’re seeing they’re getting their heads cracked with these batons, and we’re spraying them, and they don’t care! It was insane.

Jones appealed to some of the mob who were carrying “Blue Lives Matter” flags and that stopped them for a bit. A couple of the insurrectionists pulled out their own police badges. But then the invaders turned hostile again:

They looked at me. They yelled at me. They were yelling at me. And I would not let them go past. They all want to go past me? I’m going to beat all your asses. One by one, I’m going to deck all of y’all. Come on. And that’s when one of the guys that was a cop said, “Hey, man, we’re going to stand here with you.” I was like, “No, get the fuck out of my building.” He was like, “This is our building.” And I was like, “This is my goddamn building. I’m in charge here. Get the fuck out.” And that’s when I started losing my temper even more. I mean, I got tears streaming down my face.

Felton wrote a related piece for BuzzFeed News: Black Police Officers Describe The Racist Attacks They Faced As They Protected The Capitol.

bob-belcher:

Is Michelle Obama a fan tho

Tiger King star Joe Exotic, who was so sure that he was getting a pardon from Donald Trump that he had a pick-up truck limo waiting at the prison for him, did not receive the commutation. Exotic is in prison after being convicted on 17 federal charges of animal abuse and two counts of murder-for-hire for a plot to kill his rival Carole Baskin.

“I was too innocent and too GAY to deserve a Pardon from Trump,” Exotic claimed in a distraught tweet. “I only mattered to Don Jr. when he needed to make a comment about me to boost his social media post. Boy were we all stupid to believe he actually stood for Equal Justice? His corrupt friends all come first.”

The post Tiger King’s Joe Exotic Says He Was ‘Too GAY’ to Get a Pardon from Trump: ‘Boy Were We All Stupid’ appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

stream:

WandaVision (2021 -) “Episode One”

After Terri Nelson noticed people complaining online about a lack of scent from newly purchased scented candles, Kate Petrova analyzed Amazon reviews for candles from the past three years and found a drop in ratings for scented candles beginning in January 2020 (compared to a smaller ratings decline for unscented candles).

The hypothesis is that some of these buyers have lost their sense of smell due to Covid-19 infections and that’s showing up in the ratings.

A reader writes:

HR recently shared an applicant’s email address with me (think “firstname.nickname_69@yahoo.com”) and when I saw it, I chuckled a bit and thought it must be someone quite young and immature. HR saw my reaction and told me that he included a note mentioning that he was born in 1969, and that is the reason for number in his email address.

I have to admit, my immediate thought was WHY? If your email address has a somewhat “inappropriate” number (69, 420, 666) and you feel the need to clarify to people when you use it, why on earth are you still using it? It immediately made me think that my applicant was a 12-year-old boy.

So: am I an overreacting prude? Or are people born in 1969 doomed to never use their birth year in email addresses?

You’re overreacting. He was born in 1969. 69 has not become an off-limit number like the way some hotels skip a 13th floor, and we’d all be doing society a favor if we don’t contribute to a culture where another number gets taken out of circulation, especially for a ridiculous reason like this one. 69 is not an inherently scandalous numeral.

If anything, I’d argue that the “12-year-old boy” reaction is to be horrified that it’s in someone’s email address. I’d ask why your first reaction was to assume an email in a professional context was making a crude sexual reference rather than reflecting the far more common practice of referencing a birth year!

I do think it’s awfully odd that the candidate included a note explaining the number. If he feels like he needs to do that, then at that point just choose a different email address for job searching, dude — do not include notes to employers about how you’re not talking about oral sex — but the email address itself is not a big deal.

is it unprofessional to have an email address with 69 in it? was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

Making a digital clock in Google Sheets. "'This is cool, really cool, but I feel like maybe you need an intervention' - Friend's reaction when I showed them this." [therobinlord.com]

Several ways to think about the question "Is a hot dog a sandwich?" I love the incorrectly cut bagel halfway down the thread: "Gaze upon it. Can you accept this, in your heart? Can you call this a sandwich?" [twitter.com]

American schoolchildren are going through school shooting drills while learning from home. Our society is sick sick sick. [slate.com]

New cosmological observations confirm that the universe is expanding faster than expected. The search continues for "some unknown quickening agent" that's driving the expansion. [quantamagazine.org]

True bookstore stories from the holiday season. "...a book called The Shrunken White Elephants of Style..." [twitter.com]

Death to 2020 is a mockumentary by the Black Mirror creators about the year that was. Leslie Jones in the trailer: "I'd say [2020] was a train wreck and a shitshow but that would be unfair to trains and shit." [youtube.com]

---

Note: Quick Links are pushed to this RSS feed twice a day. For more immediate service, check out the front page of kottke.org, the Quick Links archive, or the @kottke Twitter feed.

This is an upsetting, puzzling, and incredible read about a journalist who fell in love with "pharma bro" Martin Shkreli. "Over the course of nine months...Smythe quit her job, moved out of the apartment, and divorced her husband." [elle.com]

Just like a broken clock is right twice a day, here are 13 positive effects of Trump's presidency. "Trump's legendary laziness has left the world a cleaner and greener place." [theatlantic.com]

Mohammad Hussain has some observations about Christmas – his first – which he is approaching with "anthropological precision". "Observation 7: The religious aspect of Christmas is optional." [twitter.com]

---

Note: Quick Links are pushed to this RSS feed twice a day. For more immediate service, check out the front page of kottke.org, the Quick Links archive, or the @kottke Twitter feed.

Tales of wedding photographers in the time of Covid. "I've been in hotel ballrooms inside and it's been packed like sardines and everyone's having a great time. No one's wearing masks." [texasmonthly.com]

Wow, This American Life is 25 years old. [thisamericanlife.org]

Several notable copyrighted works will enter the public domain in the US in 2021: The Great Gatsby, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Alain Locke's The New Negro, films by Lloyd & Keaton, music by Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, and Duke Ellington. [web.law.duke.edu]

A division of the CDC is developing standards for face mask filtration effectiveness. Great, but where was this in April or May? [nytimes.com]

Virus levels are high in the US so gathering is dangerous right now. But with effective vaccines arriving and treatment improving, there is genuine hope. So, a suggestion from @zeynep: hold off on gatherings for a few months to keep everyone safe. [theatlantic.com]

---

Note: Quick Links are pushed to this RSS feed twice a day. For more immediate service, check out the front page of kottke.org, the Quick Links archive, or the @kottke Twitter feed.

This pinhole solargraph, taken using a beer can pinhole camera over a period of eight years and one month, is thought to be the longest exposure image ever made. The photo shows the path of the Sun across the sky over that time period, almost 3000 trails in all. Regina Valkenborgh set the camera up in 2012 and then forgot about it; it was found by someone else this year. Said Valkenborgh of the project:

“It was a stroke of luck that the picture was left untouched, to be saved by David after all these years. I had tried this technique a couple of times at the Observatory before, but the photographs were often ruined by moisture and the photographic paper curled up. I hadn’t intended to capture an exposure for this length of time and to my surprise, it had survived. It could be one of, if not the, longest exposures in existence.”

If you want to make your own solargraph (it doesn’t have to go for 8 years…), check out the instructions here.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

We have so many updates this year that I’m going to be posting six to seven times a day for the next several weeks — so keep checking back throughout the entire day.

Remember the letter-writer whose employee accidentally posted porn to the company group chat and wanted to resign in shame? Here’s the update.

My employee chose to resign after her PTO was up—mailed in her laptop and sent a short goodbye email to the team. I promised to give her a positive reference based on what I knew of her actual work (which was always, always excellent) and without mentioning this incident. She hasn’t taken me up on that, though, so I don’t know if she has secured a new job yet. I can’t imagine it’s been easy to search for jobs given the pandemic, but she has a LOT of hard skills/practical experience so I’m hopeful. As for my team, I used some of the script from you + the commenters (technology can get the best of any of us, this was a mistake and the offending content was removed immediately, it’s a shame that she’s leaving and all the best to her, let’s move on.) I was hopeful that everyone would latch onto the polite fiction that it was an innocent mistake and an unfortunate computer virus-y (ha!) mixup, and that everyone would at least pretend to forget.

Unfortunately, that isn’t what happened. I didn’t mention this in my original letter, but looking back this was extremely relevant. The video in question could be considered controversial. Not illegal, but…controversial. I don’t know a better way to put it without going into detail. It’s not offensive to me, so it didn’t even occur to me at the time to think of the specific content as a big deal (I just saw it as an embarrassing niche fetish, fetishes are weird, etc.), and HR didn’t give me the impression that they wanted to make a big deal out of it either, so I just thought that was that. I thought others would see it the same way.

Instead, I learned that was not the case since this whole topic came up again last week. We were sharing a deck that she created, and a person from another team asked, “Oooh, isn’t she the one who posted the porn video to the announcements room?” Immediately several people spoke up and started talking over each other. So it was only then I found out that while some of my employees felt the same way I did (i.e. sympathetic to her embarrassment and very defensive of her), others were extremely upset and disturbed. There was no middle ground. The ones who were upset told me that they would have felt uncomfortable working with her after seeing her post, and while apparently none of them wanted to say anything to me at the time, I gather that they’re relieved she quit of her own volition.

I knew it would be asking too much for everyone to completely erase this incident from their minds, but I wish I had realized at the time that some of my employees considered the content to be that disturbing. If I had realized that (stupidly obvious in retrospect), I could have perhaps adjusted my language to them after the obscene post/after she quit. I wonder if some people were upset at my relatively nonchalant reaction to the whole situation, though I’m not sure how/if I could have handled it better. I’m not going to reopen the topic now, though, since it’s been months at this point and it seems that everyone is eager to drop the subject and completely move on. At the very least, I finally understand why she felt she couldn’t face us again, to the point of quitting. Knowing all of this just makes me feel all the more awful for her.

I recall that some commenters were questioning whether or not this was actually unintentional. I do believe it was truly an accident—given what I knew of her, I don’t think she’d intentionally subject other people to this content/want to sexually harass anyone. She was always so kind. The way she apologized and resigned, to me, confirms all of this after the fact.

Anyways, this was a difficult situation all around. If it’s okay, I’d like to urge your readers to always, always, ALWAYS double-check when…well, when doing anything, but especially when sharing anything NSFW. Or to think twice about installing company apps on their phones if they don’t have to. Or to petition for these kinds of sites to remove the sharing option altogether, I suppose.

Thank you again for answering my question. Even though I couldn’t change the outcome, I hope I was able to show her some compassion in a humiliating situation.

update: my employee accidentally posted porn to the company group chat and now wants to resign in shame was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

In response to a backlash, Microsoft has agreed to remove the user names from its new “Productivity Score” function that we talked about earlier this week.

To recap, they’d unveiled a feature last month that would have let employers track how their employees use Microsoft’s tools across 73 different measures — including things like how frequently you send emails, how often you turn your camera on during virtual meetings, how often you contribute to shared documents and group chats, and the number of days you used Word, Excel, Skype, Outlook, and other Microsoft tools in the last month. The tool could then send your boss a breakdown for each employee every month.

After a ton of criticism, they’ve backed off and instead will only be reporting those numbers in the aggregate, not by individual user.

Read more at Mashable.

Microsoft is removing the user names from its creepy “productivity score” was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

This map of the lower 48 US states hand-drawn by XKCD’s Randall Munroe is super clever: 7 of the states are actually missing. Maybe the pandemic is starting continuing to rot my brain, but I stared at this for an embarrassingly long time before finding any of the absent states. Even now that I know which ones are gone, the map doesn’t look out of place at all. *claps*

It’s time to vote on the worst boss of the year — and we have so many terrible nominees that this year we’re voting in brackets. Today we’ll for the worst in each of four match-ups … tomorrow the winners from today will go head-to-head … on Wednesday we’ll vote on the final two … and we’ll crown the winner on Thursday.

Please vote below. (Voting in this round ends at 11:59 p.m. ET tonight.)

If the polls aren’t showing up above for you, here are direct links:

1. A Terrible Trio

2. The Treacherous Triplets

3. A Threatening Threesome

4. A Tawdry Triad

vote for the worst boss of 2020 was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

Every year around this time, Tom Whitwell shares a list of 52 things he’s learned over the course of the year, complete with references so you can drill down into each one. Here’s 2020’s version — fascinating as usual. A few favorites:

3. The hold music you hear when you phone Octopus Energy is personalised to your customer account: it’s a number one record from the year you were 14. [Clem Cowton]

18. 10% of the GDP of Nepal comes from people climbing Mount Everest. [Zachary Crockett]

30. In Warsaw’s Gruba Kaśka water plant there are eight clams with sensors attached to their shells. If the clams close because they don’t like the taste of the water, the city’s supply is automatically shut off. [Judita K]

44. A micromort is a one-in-a-million chance of death. Just being alive is about 24 micromorts per day, skydiving is 8 micromorts per jump. [Matt Webb]

52. British clowns register their unique makeup patterns by having them hand painted onto chicken eggs. The eggs are then stored either at the Holy Trinity Church in Dalston or at Wookey Hole caves in Somerset. [Dave Fagundes & Aaron Perzanowski]

You can check out the rest here.

Several years ago, a reader shared with us this epic email that was sent by their company’s boss after a holiday party gone terribly awry, and as we enter the holiday season we remember its glory.

“This happened about ten years ago, but the email I received from our boss was so epic I preserved it.

Context: The second year I worked at this company, our holiday party was held on a dinner cruise boat. Our boss footed the bill for dinner and an open bar, and a few other companies also hosted their own parties on the boat at the same time. Since I was underage at the time, I did not drink, and actually left early with my date. Everything was fine when I left. The Monday after, I rolled into the office– the first person there– and was greeted with this email from our boss [identifying details removed]:

‘Good morning to all. I hope all of you had time to recuperate and reflect about the unusual chain of events and circumstances at this year’s Christmas party. Some of you went home early and did not take in the full range of events.

Unfortunately, some of our staff got out of hand, including the spouses. Things were said, and things were done, that quite frankly were very inappropriate. Also, we had people from the adjoining group that decided to take advantage of our open bar and co-mingle with our group.

In regards to the inappropriate behavior, I am not going to go into all of the details, but let it be said that the root cause was probably due to the open bar. Some of our staff decided that the open bar meant that the drinking could be unlimited, not only in how much, but how they drank. As a result, some our staff and spouses decided that shots were OK. Shots were ordered for some who do not even drink. Shots are not OK at a company Christmas party. Other staff and spouses got multiple drinks at once for themselves and for people not even in our group. Others decided it was OK to get openly drunk and beligerent, to the point of making racial slurs. I, myself, am guilty of attacking someone from the other group after he decided to retaliate by groping my wife.

Having thought about the circumstances and the fact that we have to work together as a firm and team, some of you need to apologize for your behavior and/or for the behavior of your spouse. We specifically implemented a no fraternization policy and some of you could get fired on that alone, while other staff exercised no restraint over their spouse for their drunken condition. It is not OK for a spouse to misbehave, just because he or she is not an employee. Many careers have been destroyed, and people get fired, due to the conduct of their spouse. You are expected to exercise constraint over your spouse, or take them home. And if that cannot be done, then you should not bring your spouse.

In regards to the Firm’s policy on drinking, there will be no more open bars. Unfortunately, some of you and your spouses exercise extremely poor judgment. Because of this poor judgment, it puts the Firm at risk. Given the poor road conditions that night, some of you could have ended up dead. It is also unfortunate that a few have to ruin it for the whole group.

I would like to start the apologies by stating I am sorry for not handling the situation that I was confronted with in a different manner. I feel embarrassed, and it was not conduct befitting of the firm’s president. I also felt betrayed by some of you for patronizing the one individual from the adjoining group, who’s behavior was lewd and offensive, not to mention the outright theft by running up our bar tab.

I invite others to make some form of apology, either by email or in person for what they did or said, or what their spouse did or said. You can do this voluntarily, and you know who you are, or I will confront you by Wednesday of this week. I do not intend to ignore what happened. If I have to confront you, you could lose your job. I will be available Monday and Tuesday late afternoon, or you can email me and/or others. Let’s not let this one incidence stop us from being [#1 company in field]. We have a lot going for ourselves and let’s keep it going.’”

“I will confront you by Wednesday of this week” was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

This is one of the best optical illusions I’ve ever seen: aside from rotating, these circles don’t move.

The left/right/up/down arrows were freaky enough but the in & out arrows really blew a gasket in my brain. For proof that the circles don’t move, blink your eyes quickly as you watch or check out this gif. (via @jagarikin)