Kate

We’re all getting our money’s worth, at this point.

When Tiffany Haddish hosted the MTV Movie and TV Awards on June 18, one of her many costume changes looked particularly familiar to fans. Over the course of the night she wore an array of iconic outfits, including a Breakfast at Tiffany’s inspired look, an homage to J.Lo’s green dress, and a Meghan Markle-style wedding gown.

But it was her white Alexander McQueen that won the award for Funniest Genuinely Beautiful Gown. Since the dress’s debut, it’s shown up on SNL, at the Oscars, at the aforementioned MTV awards, and in the trailer for Haddish’s new movie, Nobody’s Fool.

Photo: Chris Polk/VMN18/Getty Images for MTV

Haddish originally bought the dress for the Girls Trip premiere in the summer of 2017, before the movie made her a huge star and back when she was practically a regular person. As someone who wasn’t yet wildly rich, she had the respect, fear, awe, and desire not to get hosed, feelings the McQueen’s reported $4,000 price tag would invoke in most — and she still does.

Part of the reason Haddish is such a delightful and well-liked famous person is because she remembers what money is; it’s the same endearing frugality that created the basis for her instant-classic Jada-and-Will-experience-Groupon story (if you don’t know, watch) and subsequent spokesperson gig with the brand.

She’s not joking around about this “investment piece” stuff, and it’s funnier and funnier each time she shows up looking amazing and amortized in the white halter (not to explain jokes to you, sorry).

The trailer for Nobody’s Fool also dropped on June 18, featuring Haddish, Tika Sumpter (Michelle from the Obama movie Southside with You), and EGOT winner Whoopi Goldberg. The dress is visible in the opening moments, this time under a cape. (It works; why not.)

Haddish first recycled the piece for her SNL monologue in November 2017, where she declared that she was going to get her money’s worth. “I feel like I should be able to wear what I want, when I want, however many times I want, as long as I Febreze it,” Haddish said.

And again during Weekend Update.

Photo: Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

A few months later, in March 2018, Haddish showed up on the Oscars red carpet in an African-inspired gold and black gown, which might have disappointed fans hoping to see the McQueen...

Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

But by the time she presented the Oscar for Best Short Film and Best Documentary Short Subject with Maya Rudolph, she changed into something everyone was happy to see.

Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Haddish is reclaiming wearing the same white gown over and over from the Miss Havisham stereotypes, but she wasn’t the only person who got her money’s worth that night at the Oscars: Rita Moreno was able to spread out the cost of her dress over 56 years.

You might not know his face, but you’ve seen his work. With over 150 movie and TV credits to his name, Doug Jones has been every creature, monster and villain known to Hollywood. From the Amphibian Man in “The Shape of Water,” the Silver Surfer in “Fantastic Four” to the Thin Clown in “Batman Returns,” Jones has been spicing up your movie-watching experience for the past three decades. From Great big story

If you’re like us, you’ve probably wondered what famous people add to their carts. Not the JAR brooch and Louis XV chair, but the hand sanitizer and the electric toothbrush. We asked actress and founder of nonprofit organization Cancer Schmancer Fran Drescher about the beauty oil, vegetarian protein, and essential oils she can’t live without.

The Strategist is designed to surface the most useful, expert recommendations for things to buy across the vast e-commerce landscape. Some of our latest conquests include the favorite shopping items of Lena Dunham, Olivia Wilde, Carole Radziwill, Courtney Love, John Cameron Mitchell, Whoopi Goldberg, and Linda Rodin. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change.

Every editorial product is independently selected. If you buy something through our links, New York may earn an affiliate commission.

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
– Max Planck

This made me look. And chuckle. Alma Haser, Within 15 Minutes, 2017

Above are some of the signs that stood out to me during the Women’s March here in NYC yesterday. I marched with the remarkable Vicki Saunders, wearing my big red heart from last year.

It felt powerful and so poignant to me that I marched with Vicki, founder of SheEO, as she is single handedly changing the landscape for women entrepreneurs, but much more than that, creating a global support and mentor eco-system built on radical generosity. I am hopeful for the future my daughter is growing into. A world where women support women and where women will eventually get equal rights and respect. We will get there!

Interested in Vicki’s work? Watch her CreativeMornings talk.

From Agatha Christie ‘Autobiography’. Click through to enlarge text.

I have been obsessed with the Argentinian chef Francis Mallman since I saw his of Chef’s Table episode in 2015. Sure, about the only thing we have in common is a desire to set food on fire, you know, artfully. He does so these days to great acclaim on his private Patagonian island (and 8 other restaurants around the world), accessible through two flights, a five-hour drive, and then 90-minute raft across a lake. I live on a busy block of a crowded city accessible by nearly every format of public transportation, and do so to moderate acclaim (relative mostly to how well the patrons slept that day) under a wispy-by-design gas broiler.

Read more »

(via philiplarkin)

When this Valentine’s Day rolls around, don’t forget that pets need some love too! I mean, who is always willing to stay in with you and watch a movie or snuggle on your bed while you read a book or “help you” clean out that cereal bowl you left on the counter? That’s right … it’s our pets! Whether you have a cat or dog, these conversation heart toys are the perfect present to show your fur baby how much you care!

Supplies:
–felt sheets in pastel colors (you’ll probably want a larger sheet for dog toys)
–heart toy template
–iron-on letters
–embroidery thread in colors to match the felt sheets
–embroidery thread needle
–poly-fil
–catnip (optional for the cat-sized toys)

Print out the heart template and use fabric scissors to cut two hearts and one long strip per toy.

Place the letters you want to use onto your heart to make sure they fit and arrange them to be centered and straight. Iron them onto your felt. I would suggest doing the lowest (synthetic) option on your iron for cheaper non-wool felt sheets and do a test letter on a scrap piece to see if you need to use a tea towel between the felt and the iron. I had two different blends of felt and one worked better with the towel and the other worked better without it!

Match up the end of your long strip with the bottom tip of your front heart and use your embroidery thread to do a loose whipstitch all the way around the heart …… until you get around to the other side. Once you get around to the front, sew your bottom seam together, add the back heart on, and continue to whipstich the side piece to the back heart as well.Leave a 2″ opening so you have some room to stuff your toy!Since my toys are for cats, I used some catnip bits in with the stuffing, but I’ve heard some dogs like it too!Once the stuffing is in place, continue the whipstitch to close up your heart and you’re ready to present it to your pet!So cute! Of course you can make your heart say whatever you want, but every time I see the dog toy “my tail wags for you,” I keep singing it in my head to the tune of Prince’s “I would die for you” line … it’s pretty catchy! Anyway, at first Mac was a little too distracted by the food props to notice the toys (I guess he even likes dog treats!), but once all the food was gone, he started to play with his new presents! He basically likes any felt toys that bounce a bit when you throw them and these totally fit the bill there. Hope you get the chance to make a cute gesture of love for your fur baby this Valentine’s Day! xo. Laura

Credits // Author and Photography: Laura Gummerman. Photos edited with A Color Story Desktop.

I’m looking for questions to feature on a new Ask a Manager podcast.

If you have a question that you’d like to discuss with me on the podcast — meaning we’d be able to have some back and forth as opposed to the straight Q&A of the format here — please send it to me at podcast@askamanager.org.

Some notes:

• I’m going to pick questions in the next few days, so please send your question in soon if you want it to be considered for the first batch of shows.
• If you submitted a question to me for the website in the past and I haven’t answered it, feel free to resubmit it for the podcast. (That includes even very recently-submitted questions.)
• If I don’t use your question on the podcast, I may use it for the blog — so if you’re only interested in being on the podcast, please note that in your email.

Thank you!

want to discuss your work question on an Ask a Manager podcast? was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

In the comments on last week’s post about working from home with pets, demands were made for a post with photos of pets taking over people’s workspaces. I sent out a call for them, and you delivered, with a ton of photos readers submitted of their pets in their workspaces — mostly home offices, but not entirely. (Click photos to enlarge. And if you’re reading this from the home page, you have to click through to see the photos.)

here are animals taking over home offices was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

Now this is one video that you’re going to want to turn the volume up for…because this den of purring kittens is the cutest thing you’re going to see all day!

Watch as these adorable little fluff balls cuddle and make the cutest PURRRING sounds. After watching and listening to these super cute nuggets, you’re going to want to jump right in their bed and start cuddling with them too!

It really doesn’t get much cuter than this (especially at the 1:10 minute mark when one of the kitties gives us a special greeting!). Watch the video below!

That was too much cuteness to handle! Be sure to share this video with your family and friends if you loved it!

The post Listen To The Adorable Sounds These Kittens Make When He Puts A Camera Into Their Bed… This Is The CUTEST Ever!! appeared first on The Meow Blog.

January raindrops in a quiet minute I took just for myself. And this:

“I feel a certain obligation to sort of stand up and be counted as a woman who has had kids and brought them up, and also done creative work, which — particularly in the arts — there does seem to be almost a sort of agreement that this can’t be done. …

“The fact is, creative work has replaced having a family for some women. That’s fine. Having a family has replaced creative work for other women. That’s fine. Then there are some of us who really need to do both and are perfectly capable of doing both…

“There is a time during one’s life when, if you are responsible for the care of your kids, it is very hard to do other creative work. You have to do it around the edges, in the middle of the night, or you never can get up before your kids, so it’s usually late at night. Or, if you have the money, you hire some kind of baby sitter or some kind of child care.

“It’s hard. Your energy, your creative energies are being spread thin and strained. On the other hand, you are living an extremely rich life at the same time. And this is going to enrich your work, inevitably, I think. It may not seem so at the time, but … babies don’t stay babies for very long, whereas writers live for decades. …”

– Ursula K. Le Guin, 1929-2018

//

From a 1989 interview with Terry Gross. You can listen to an excerpt from the original interview here. I couldn’t find the original NYT essay from the same year referenced by Le Guin in the interview above, but Anne Bernay’s response to it, and her 2017 essay felt worth sharing, too.

sanctuarytrin:

vixenofcourse:

coolcatgroup:

lord-kitschener:

smol cloud puff

Fuzzy potado

gray-tailed cotton ball

Flerb.

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

1. How can I get a coworker to take computer classes?

My company recently hired a new employee, “Jane.” She’s not my subordinate, but I’ve helped train her, which makes this whole situation awkward. Jane is basically computer illiterate. At first I just thought she wasn’t used to Microsoft Office products, but the more I work with her the more I’m certain Jane’s only used a computer for typing and maybe tallying a spreadsheet. I’ve had to teach her very basic functions like how to create a new tab in a spreadsheet, how to accept a meeting invitation in Outlook, or even CTRL+C. She doesn’t seem familiar with any computer program. For instance she doesn’t seem familiar with basic icons, like the Save button or even Close — she uses File->Close to exit most programs. This makes tutoring a bit of a challenge as I’m never sure what terminology I can use.

I will say she is trying really hard and learning. But the way Jane’s going about it is a problem: she’s just asking for help doing the task in front of her, instead of trying to learn how to work a whole system. There’s no way she can learn everything she needs to learn to keep up with her workload like that.

Virtually every time I walk by her desk she looks completely overwhelmed, and if I don’t stop to talk, she sighs and announces she’s totally lost or stuck or something. She dropping by my office multiple times a day to ask for help. I’m happy to help, but this is taking up way more time than it needs to. It seems whenever she has a questions she wants someone to walk her through it instead of first trying to find an answer herself.

Multiple times I’ve suggested she look up online tutorials and she says she doesn’t know how to dig through that stuff or doesn’t have the time. Or I’ve pointed her towards free computer courses, and again she cites not having time. I really think her taking a day or two to take the courses would solve a lot of problems.

How can I get Jane to take them without overstepping my bounds? She’s trying so hard and I want her to succeed and I’m worried going over her head will get her in trouble. And like I said, my suggestions are not being taken. I also know she’s really embarrassed about her struggle to get a grasp on things, and I’m worried if I tell her I can’t help her anymore she just won’t ask and things will pile up.

The good news here is that there’s someone whose job it is to deal with this and who can do it without having to worry about overstepping any bounds: her manager! I know you said that you don’t want to get her in trouble, but (a) she is far more likely to get in trouble if this continues because it’s going to impact her work, and (b) this isn’t really about being in trouble or not; it’s about flagging a serious skills deficit and letting her manager know that she needs training. As someone helping to train her, you very much have standing to say to her boss, “Hey, I’ve realized that Jane is lacking basic computer skills and that’s standing in the way of her being able to do her job efficiently. Can you work with her to get her some fundamental computer skills training?” In fact, you’d actually be being negligent if you didn’t share what you’ve observed with her boss — this is the kind of highly relevant info that needs to be shared when you’re training someone.

I think, too, you’re falling into a bit of mission drift on your work here. Your job isn’t to find a way to help Jane succeed at all costs, even when it takes you well beyond the scope of what you were asked to train her on. It’s to do the training you were asked to do, and to loop in her manager if there are obstacles to that.

All that said … you could certainly try a direct conversation with Jane too. You could say, “I think we’re at the point where you need to shore up your basic computing skills before we can go any further. Can you plan to take the courses I pointed you toward, and then we can reconvene after that? I’m going to talk to (manager) about working with you to find time to do that, since I think think it’s really essential.”

2. Our new desks don’t work if you’re wearing a skirt

We have just moved offices and got a set of new and unsuitable desks. The new desks do not have modesty boards underneath. We are a largely female office and many of the staff wear skirts. If you are using a floor plug, you can see straight under many desks and into the groin area of the staff, and you can also see under certain desks when walking normally through the office. Our dress code is smart/casual.

The manager is not taking this seriously as a genuine concern of his staff (we also receive a lot of visitors to the office). Apparently the only solution is to buy completely new desks (the cable tidies stop boards from being attached) to the existing desks. Do we have any grounds for complaint or is this just something we have to get used to?

Yes, you have grounds to complain! It’s absolutely reasonable for you all to say, “These desks aren’t suitable for us and we’re not comfortable using them. We need to switch them out for desks that don’t uncomfortably expose us.” Say it as a group — which will be harder to ignore — and take the approach of “of course it’s obvious that we can’t use these desks so what do we need to do to get new ones?”

3. Interviewer told me my interview was probably a waste of time

During my job hunt for the job I’m at now, I applied for a pretty wide range of positions within a pretty wide range of industries. The first interview I got was with an insurance company. Admittedly I was a bit under-qualified for the role, but I had decided to throw my hat in the ring anyway.

When I got to the office for the interview, I ended up having to wait probably around 45 minutes because the man interviewing me was running late. Once the interview started, he told me that when the interview was scheduled I had been the most qualified candidate, but since then more qualified candidates had come in so this interview was basically a waste of time and they almost certainly weren’t going to hire me (I’ve forgotten exactly how he phrased it, but it was something along those lines). He did the interview anyway, but this really threw me off. It was honestly kind of humiliating and demoralizing. I had a tough time answering questions and walking him through some examples of my work I had brought along because of how distracted and upset I was. I did my best not to let it show, but I’m almost positive it did. Once the interview was over and I got back to my car, I started crying. With this being my first “real person” job interview I had no idea what to expect, but I was pretty sure this was not what an interview was supposed to be like.

Is this a normal thing to happen in an interview, or is this just my naivete showing? I only had two more interviews before I got the job with the company I’m at and neither of these interviews were anything like this, but a sample size of three is not much to go on. In a way I’m thankful this interview experience was so terrible, because I wouldn’t have ended up where I am now, but I’m interested in your perspective on this one.

Nah, he was just a jerk. Sometimes when jerks get the very minor power afforded by being the interviewer, they sometimes become really flagrantly jerky, and it sounds like that’s what happened here.

The good thing about this type of interview is that you get to find out the person is a jerk early on enough that you can decide not to work for them. It’s much worse to find out after you’re working there.

4. I’m supposed to give input on a candidate — but now I think I might want to apply for the job too

I was asked to have lunch with the candidate for a job that I hadn’t considered applying for in my organization and to give my feedback on the candidate to the search committee. In the process of giving the feedback to a member of the committee, I realized what the search committee wanted in a candidate and that I was qualified. I have since decided that I want the job if the search fails. I subsequently verified my qualifications with a former supervisor who knows of the situation and she also thinks I am qualified. The search committee is undecided about the candidate; the head of the search committee wants to talk to me about my impressions. I want to a) be honest and give honest feedback but admit that I’m now biased and b) put myself forward as a candidate. Advice?

Be up-front! Before you give any input on the candidate, say something like this: “I want to be transparent that in the process of talking with the search committee about what to look for in a candidate, I’ve realized that I’m interested in the position myself. I’d be interested in throwing my own hat in the ring, either now or down the road if the process doesn’t produce a candidate from the current pool. I’m going to try to be as unbiased as possible in my feedback about Jane, but I want you to have that caveat in case my feedback shouldn’t be considered at all.”

And then, assuming they do still want your feedback about the candidate, make sure you’re being as objective as possible. Give the feedback you’d give about her if you weren’t interested in the job at all. That’s an ethical obligation, of course, but it’s also going to help your own credibility if it’s clear that you’re not letting your own potential interest in the job bias your feedback.

5. Passing on positive feedback to a customer service agent’s manager

Recently I have spent a lot of time on the phone talking with various customer service agents due to an upcoming relocation (cable, internet, moving companies, insurance, utilities, etc.). I have a lot of respect for customer service representatives because I know they must deal with a lot of frustrated customers all day long, and I try to always be friendly and patient.

During my past few calls, if I get a representative who really does a thorough job, is friendly and engaging, and makes my experience a great one, I have asked to speak with their manager so I could pass on my positive feedback about the interaction. I figure this is one little thing I can do to express appreciation for someone doing a really challenging job and helping me solve an issue with a great attitude. I’ve felt really good about passing on positive feedback and plan to continue this process in the future. (And for the record, I am not interested in speaking with a manager about a not-so-good interaction – this is all about paying some good vibes forward.)

However, I want to ask, is this feedback practice helpful for the employee and for the manager? The times I’ve done this, the reps have seemed pleased and happy to transfer me to their managers, so I assume that it is. But I want to be sure this isn’t a misguided attempt at doing a good thing and causes some unforeseen difficulty for the people on the other side (as I have no experience in how call centers work and how their employee evaluations are handled). For example, they have to put me on hold, summon the manager, and take extra time to deal with me. And, if this is a good practice to continue, do you have recommendations about what kind of specific feedback would be helpful for managers to hear about the employee’s work during my brief conversation with the manager? Or key phrases I could use that would really make a difference for them to hear? The first one, I kind of babbled about having a great interaction and the employee being helpful, but am not sure I provided anything concrete that would actually be useful.

Yes, please continue to do that! It’s a lovely thing to do for people in a job where they’re often on the receiving end of anger and frustration. In some jobs, it can make a real difference in the types of evaluations people get, and if nothing else, it can really brighten people’s day.

As for what to say, just explain what you appreciated about the rep you talked to — “she was so pleasant and efficient, and she made what could have been a frustrating transaction a pleasure to resolve,” or “I called in with a really thorny issue and she was incredibly patient and knowledgeable in helping me get it sorted out,” or “I was pretty frustrated when I called, and she was so kind and good at her job that I felt I need to tell you — you have a real treasure in her” or whatever else feels true to you. You don’t need to deliver a lengthy treatise — just a sentence or two is fine.

how can I get a coworker to take computer classes, new desks don’t work with skirts, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

barnesstony:

pr1nceshawn:

Dogs Living The Good Life.

I love all of this

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

1. My boss is using a terrible photo — should I say something?

I work remotely as a part-time assistant for a former professor of mine from college. We’ve known each other for a few years now and have a very positive relationship. I am a younger man in my mid-20s and she is an older woman in her mid-40s. I say that because it’s important context for my question.

I recently noticed on her website that she updated her home photo to one that I think is very unflattering. The lighting and angle to me aren’t great and I think it’s not an accurate representation of what she actually looks like, and I’m afraid it may turn clients off.

Do I say something? If so, how can I without sounding like a jerk young guy suggesting my older female boss use a more flattering picture?

Nope. Say nothing.

Even with gender and age differences aside, it takes a very specific type of relationship to tell your boss that her photo sucks and she should use a different one. Throw in the gender difference and it’s just not a thing you’re well positioned to do. If you were in charge of marketing for her, then maybe — but otherwise let her decide this one on her own.

2. My boss calls me a “baby”

I just started my first full-time position after college and I’ve run into a problem with my supervisor. She is about six years older than me and keeps referring to me as a “baby.” We work in a corporate setting mainly but occasionally meet with clients and she has told multiple clients that I’m a baby as well. I’m still in training but eventually I will be meeting with these clients on my own and need them to respect my opinion (many of them are much older than I am).

I’m not sure why she feels the need to call me this. We aren’t terribly far apart in age in my opinion and, even though she’s been in the workforce longer, we have almost the same amount of experience in our current field. How can I ask her to stop without causing tension or offending her?

I’m sure she means this as “Jane is brand new to the world work — she’s still learning!” and doesn’t mean “Jane is a helpless infant” — and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s especially focused on it because at only six years older than you, it wasn’t that long ago that she was in the same spot herself and she sounds quite conscious of that (or quite pleased with herself for no longer being there).

But regardless of her intent, it’s still really undermining to you. There’s an element of “look, how adorable!” and that’s incredibly unhelpful when you need people to take you seriously — let alone when it’s coming from your boss.

And yes, you can ask her to stop. I’d say it this way: “When you refer to me a baby, it makes it harder for people to take me seriously. I know you just mean that I’m new to the field, but can I ask you to stop calling me that?” If she’s resistant to that, try saying, “I know you don’t mean anything by it, but I think it’s undermining me with people who I’ll need to respect me — and it makes me pretty uncomfortable.”

3. Is it okay to use conference rooms for personal use?

Is it okay to use meeting conference rooms for personal use? I started learning a new language over the holidays using an app on my phone. Because of the app features — it speaks out a prompt and I respond — I’ve been booking empty conference rooms during my lunch hour to go through lessons and eat lunch. I work in an open bullpen, which doesn’t allow for audio privacy and can get loud even at lunchtime. I look for empty rooms before going to lunch, so I’m not reserving in advance, and try to leave early if I know there’s another meeting afterwards for any set-up prep. It’s a large building, and rooms are open to everyone. My worry is that if someone walks in on me accidentally, the visual from their perspective is a woman fiddling around on her phone while eating a salad. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m using these rooms as my private lunch suite. I just want somewhere that I can listen to the app and talk without interruption.

In a semi-related aside, we have a large copy room on our floor. For as long as I’ve been working here (5+ years), a group of men use it daily to play ping-pong. They close all the doors, set up screens to block off people trying to cut through the room and to corral loose balls, yell loudly and leave the room smelling of sweat. (The room has four entrances so it’s not inaccessible, but it can be annoying if you need something in their game area). In my mind, if they can take over a room like that to play ping-pong, then I can use a conference room to learn French. Thoughts?

This really comes down to your office culture and whether anyone else uses conference rooms for personal use — and in your case, it sounds like they definitely do. So as long as you have plentiful conference rooms and the one you’re using isn’t in high demand, I think you’re fine. (If people are walking in on you a lot, though, take that as a sign that the room might be more in need than you think, and it would be worth checking that with whoever manages the space.)

I wouldn’t be terribly worried that people will think you’re just looking for privacy while you eat and play on your phone — they’re at least as likely to assume that you’re eating while you take a work call. But if you’re in doubt, you can always check with your manager: “Hey, I’m using an empty conference room to eat lunch in because I’m learning French and using that time to practice without disturbing others. So far finding an empty conference room doesn’t seem to have caused any issues, but I wanted to mention it to you in case there’s something I’m not thinking of.”

4. Asking for time off to recover from jet lag after an international trip

I am traveling to India for a third time for my company. I will be gone two weeks this time. I will be crossing 10 time zones for my travel. The company provides me with 23 PTO days for the year. Having said that, i will be returning on a Sunday. Previously I was able to take Monday off without using PTO and was then able to work from home on Tuesday. This was not nearly enough time to get my body acclimated to the new time zone. Is it feasible to ask my employer for the entire week off without having to use my PTO days?

A week is a long time to ask for, especially if you didn’t negotiate it in advance when agreeing to do the travel. I think you could ask for two days, and possibly shortened hours for the remainder of the week, but I think asking for much more than that is going to raise eyebrows. I know this might sound unfair, especially since the standard advice for getting over jet lag is to assume it’ll take you one day for every time zone crossed (which would be 10 days in your case). That said, I’m interested to know what others who do a lot of international travel for work (especially across this many time zones) think.

5. I had five titles in one year at the same employer

I am updating my resume and I realize that I worked in five different titles last year. My employer was very gracious when I needed to make a career change and gave me lots of projects to explore new roles. Even before the career change, I was often taking short-term roles with increased responsibility. Does this look like I’ve been job-hopping even though I was with the same employer for almost nine years and I was hand-picked to fill most of these short-term assignments? I prefer to highlight those accomplishments since the permanent titles I held were not very prestigious. I’m trying to level up!

Nope, having lots of different assignments at the same employer doesn’t raise job hopping concerns the way it would if those were all at different organizations. This isn’t job hopping! It might be assignment hopping, but (a) that’s often at the behest of the employer and (b) it doesn’t raise the concerns about flightiness or inability to stay at a job that it would if those five titles were at five different companies. (And to be clear, if it were at five different companies but those assignments were designed from the start to be temporary/short-term, that would be fine too. Job hopping becomes a concern when you keep leaving organizations that intended for you to stay longer.)

And since we’re talking about five titles in a 12-month period, this is one of the rare occasions where it might make sense to skip all the titles and instead list your accomplishments during that period under one overall descriptive umbrellas (like Special Projects or whatever makes sense — just make sure your employer would consider it accurate).

should I tell my boss her photo is terrible, my boss calls me a “baby,” and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

archiemcphee:

For an awesomely hairy and dander-profuse series entitled Shake Cats, Portland-based photographer Carli Davidson (previously featured here) turned her attention from dogs to cats, capturing 61 one kitties mid-shake as they send their fur flying. Most of the Davidson’s feline subjects are rescue cats, photographed in part to help get them adopted, but she also photographed feline celebrities such as Lil Bub.

“The most frequent question Davidson gets about the series is how she coaxed the cats into shaking. The assumption is that she simply dumps water on them, but the answer is much more humane. After acclimating to the studio, some cats shake when simply pet by a human hand dipped in water. In other instances the cats were photographed during a standard ear cleaning using Epi-Otic ear cleaner applied by an animal care professional.”

Visit Carli Davidson’s website to check out more of the Shake Cats. There’s also a Shake Cats book, which is currently available via Amazon.

Follow Carli Davidson on Instagram to keep up with her latest animal portraits and other projects.

[via Colossal and Flavorwire]

Japanese culinary enthusiast Jun Yoshizuki from the popular YouTube cooking series, "Jun's Kitchen," demonstrates how he trains his adorable rescue cats, Nagi and Kohaku, and Poke, and engages them with his cooking.

Previously from Jun: How to Make Homemade Sushi for Your Cats

feynites:

runawaymarbles:

averagefairy:

old people really need to learn how to text accurately to the mood they’re trying to represent like my boss texted me wondering when my semester is over so she can start scheduling me more hours and i was like my finals are done the 15th! And she texts back “Yay for you….” how the fuck am i supposed to interpret that besides passive aggressive

Someone needs to do a linguistic study on people over 50 and how they use the ellipsis. It’s FASCINATING. I never know the mood they’re trying to convey.

I actually thought for a long time that texting just made my mother cranky. But then I watched my sister send her a funny text, and my mother was laughing her ass off. But her actual texted response?

“Ha… right.”

Like, she had actual goddamn tears in her eyes, and that was what she considered an appropriate reply to the joke.I just marvelled for a minute like ‘what the actual hell?’ and eventually asked my mom a few questions. I didn’t want to make her feel defensive or self-conscious or anything, it just kind of blew my mind, and I wanted to know what she was thinking.

Turns out that she’s using the ellipsis the same way I would use a dash, and also to create ‘more space between words’ because it ‘just looks better to her’. Also, that I tend to perceive an ellipsis as an innate ‘downswing’, sort of like the opposite of the upswing you get when you ask a question, but she doesn’t. And that she never uses exclamation marks, because all her teachers basically drilled it into her that exclamation marks were horrible things that made you sound stupid and/or aggressive.

So whereas I might sent a response that looked something like:

“Yay! That sounds great - where are we meeting?”

My mother, whilst meaning the exact same thing, would go:

‘Yay. That sounds great… where are we meeting?”

And when I look at both of those texts, mine reads like ‘happy/approval’ to my eye, whereas my mother’s looks flat. Positive phrasing delivered in a completely flat tone of voice is almost always sarcastic when spoken aloud, so written down, it looks sarcastic or passive-aggressive.

On the reverse, my mother thinks my texts look, in her words, ‘ditzy’ and ‘loud’. She actually expressed confusion, because she knows I write and she thinks that I write well when I’m constructing prose, and she, apparently, could never understand why I ‘wrote like an airhead who never learned proper English’ in all my texts. It led to an interesting discussion on conversational text. Texting and text-based chatting are, relatively, still pretty new, and my mother’s generation by and large didn’t grow up writing things down in real-time conversations. The closest equivalent would be passing notes in class, and that almost never went on for as long as a text conversation might. But letters had been largely supplanted by telephones at that point, so ‘conversational writing’ was not a thing she had to master. 

So whereas people around my age or younger tend to text like we’re scripting our own dialogue and need to convey the right intonations, my mom writes her texts like she’s expecting her Eighth grade English teacher to come and mark them in red pen. She has learned that proper punctuation and mistakes are more acceptable, but when she considers putting effort into how she’s writing, it’s always the lines of making it more formal or technically correct, and not along the lines of ‘how would this sound if you said it out loud?’

Reblogging for reference because I’m working on this exact question for the book right now. 

In the grand scheme of a holiday cookie mix, typically packed with chocolate and spice, a bright pop of citrus is a welcome addition. In the coming posts, I’ll hit all the citrus notes – orange, lime and today, lemon. Lemon Poppyseed in fact, one of the most classic of the citrus combinations.

This is pretty straight forward – fresh lemon zest and juice and poppyseeds are blended into the base dough. Today, I rolled them into balls but the dough can easily be formed into a log and sliced into coins too. Once cooled, they take a little dip in a bright and tangy lemon glaze to amp up the flavor just a bit more. Simple, easy and utterly delicious.

STRESS THERAPY BAKING FACTOR: EASY ON REPEAT. Take that base dough, add a few things and there you go. The bright freshness of the lemon is really welcome to cut through the richness of the typical holiday overindulgence.

2016 One Dough/12 Days of Cookies lineup: Butter Rum Bars, Candied Ginger Spice Buttons, Coconut Lime Sticks, Cranberry Pistacho Coins, Dark Chocolate Mocha Sandwich Cookies, Hazelnut Buttons, Jam Thumbprints, Mexican Chocolate Crinkles, Pecan Triangles, Peppermint Crisps, Rosemary Apricot Shortbread, Russian Tea Cakes

2017 One Dough/12 Days of Cookies lineup to date:
Basic Butter Cookie Dough + tips for planning
Day 1 – Cream Cheese Wreaths
Day 2 – Raspberry Linzer Bars

LEMON POPPYSEED BUTTONS

Basic Butter Cookie Dough – recipe here

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF and line 2-3 sheet pans with silicone baking mats or parchment paper.
2. For the cookies: In a standing mixture fitted with the paddle attachment, combine room temperatute butter cookie dough, lemon zest, lemon juice and poppyseeds on medium speed until thoroughly combined.
3. Roll 1 Tablespoon of the dough into small balls and space 1” apart on prepared baking sheets. (you can freeze the cookie balls at this point for up to 3 months. Bake directly from the freezer, adding a few minutes to the baking time.)
4. Bake 8-10 minutes until slightly firm to the touch and very lightly browned, rotating the sheet pans halfway through baking.
5. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before glazing.
6. For the glaze: whisk together the powdered sugar and poppyseeds with enough lemon juice to make a thick but pourable glaze.
7. Dip the cookies, round side down, in the glaze letting the excess drip off. Place back on the parchment lined sheet pan and let set – at least 30 minutes.

 

I’ve long been surprised by how many people don’t ask good questions when their interviewer gives them the opportunity. A surprising number of candidates don’t have many questions at all, or simply use the time to try to further pitch themselves for the job. To me, this is crazy – after all, this is a job that you’re considering spending 40 or more hours at a week, and which might have a huge impact on your career and your quality of life for years to come. You should have questions!

But people understandably worry about what to ask. They worry about looking demanding or nitpicky, or that they’ll otherwise be negatively judged for the things they want to know. They also worry that they don’t quite know how to suss out the information they really want about the job or the manager or the company.

So at New York Magazine today, I talk about five of the best things to ask your interviewer when it’s your turn to ask the questions – questions that will not only reflect well on you but will help you get useful insights into whether or not this is the job for you. You can read it here.

what are the best questions to ask in a job interview? was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

Horse trainer and filmmaker Emma Massingale shared this cute footage of her 5-year-old Connemara pony, Comet, and 6-year-old Siamese cat, Louis, going on treks together near their home in scenic Devon, England.

katswenski:

My website – My Facebook page – See me on Webtoon!

“HOOMAN SEND HELP”

This guy by Kamwei Fong made me laugh. There are more cat illustrations in this post.

Wow, I am really a cat person now, am I?

In “an open memo, to all marginally-smart people/consumers of internet ‘content’”, Foster Kamer has a small suggestion to those who care about the health and diversity of online media: stop reading what Facebook tells you to read and use your browser bar (or bookmarks) instead.

Literally, all you need to do: Type in web addresses. Use autofill! Or even: Google the website you want to go to, and go to it. Then bookmark it. Then go back every now and again.

Instead of reading stories that get to you because they’re popular, or just happen to be in your feed at that moment, you’ll read stories that get to you because you chose to go to them. Sounds simple, and insignificant, and almost too easy, right?

It’s only easy, and simple to do. As for why you should do it: It’s definitely not simple, nor insignificant. By choosing to be a reader of websites whose voices and ideas you’re fundamentally interested in and care about, you’re taking control.

And by doing that, you’ll chip away at the incentive publishers have to create headlines and stories weaponized for the purpose of sharing on social media. You’ll be stripping away at the motivation for websites everywhere (including this one) to make dumb hollow mindgarbage. At the same time, you’ll increase the incentive for these websites to be (if nothing else) more consistent and less desperate for your attention.

*head nodding vigorously* I mean, it’s a complicated situation. Facebook and Twitter are easily the best news/blog reading platforms ever invented, better than any RSS reader for most people. By putting most of the web’s information all in one place, they offer incredible speed and convenience, which is hard for people to ignore. I made this point in a footnote this morning: using Facebook instead of just bookmarks is compelling in the same way that shopping at Walmart instead of small-town shops was in the 80s. We blame Walmart for decimating small businesses, but ultimately, small town shoppers chose convenience and lower prices over the more local and diverse offerings from their neighbors. And for the past several years, readers have been doing the same thing in favoring Facebook. What Kamer is arguing is that readers who value good journalism, good writing, and diverse viewpoints need to push back against the likes of the increasingly powerful and monolithic Facebook…and visiting individual websites is one way to do that.

Tags: Facebook   Foster Kamer   WWW

Remember the letter-writer whose company wanted to sponsor her for a service dog but she wasn’t sure if it was okay to accept? I told her to go get her dog, and her first update was here. Here’s the latest one.

My life has been kind of a whirlwind for the last… wow, has it really been that long? My life has changed tremendously, mostly for the better, but sadly it is still lacking an awesome pupper partner.

A year was basically sucked away dealing with some really awful addiction problems in the family (I now understand how it tears families apart, and each person up, whoa) and moving into hospice care as it got too hard living alone, but since then my doctor has been using me as a guinea pig for a new pain protocol. I really wish I had good info to give you on it, but the short of it is: empirically, I feel NO PAIN when these discs are applied. They are really expensive and too new to be covered by any insurance, so both my doc and work have been subsidizing me, so I can afford as many as needed each week. It’s not just a maintenance thing either, it has been allowing things to heal that have been messed up for quite a while now) so overall I have been… well, able to walk and work and live without assistance.To the point of where I am actually moving out of hospice care to my own apartment in the new year! It’s two blocks from work and is beside the big park.

Dogs are allowed in the apartment. So I have some big, awesome decisions to make that I didn’t dream possible when I first wrote you!

In the meantime, as my energy and ability levels have rocketed up, I have been volunteering both with a therapy dog company (service dogs are absolutely not allowed to be therapy dogs, but I am learning so much and am just in awe of the difference therapy dogs bring wherever they go) as well as our national service dog program with everything from fundraising and such that I can do from bed, to helping train two year olds with crowd socialization in busy train stations and such. In another year they will meet their new matches! And we get a new batch for training. It has been an amazing experience working with this organization and has also built a relationship between my workplace and them! We get puppy pictures at the end of each monthly meeting and tend to get visitors to our free programming classes for kids – of the four-legged variety. Since we target underprivileged kids for the prime time slots and days, it’s a wombo combo of awesome.

Life is wild. I no longer qualify for a service dog! But I can train my own therapy dog with an emphasis on my needs and hopefully help people with my brand of problems. I love working with both organizations and am happy to fill my old softball and hockey slots with volunteering there.

I’m never going to be back to where I was before this, but I am very happy with where I am and where things are going. It has really changed office culture regarding disabilities and how we have very few people with visible ones but plenty of people with invisible ones, and our EAP has become way more comprehensive, as has normalizing asking for help and talking about them without stigmas. Heck, every single person at the office has a bad case of impostor syndrome, but this lets us tackle it together instead of fretting alone.

A super long response! I wish it was pat with dog pictures, but if anything it has shown me how to pull through and explore other abilities I have… and now am capable of sitting at a desk the full 10+ hours of OT (although I get shooed home still). I’ve been able to contribute to major projects, I spent a year babysitting toddlers while my family imploded and am now so close to them I can’t imagine life without them. They bring do much joy to the hospice, too, so we’ll keep visiting.

‘Go get your dog’ has also become a motto for my life – maybe not in the way originally planned, but it is still excellent advice. Take compliments graciously. Allow others to recognize you and recognize yourself for the stuff you are awesome at. Everyone deserves their dog.

update: my company wants to sponsor me for a service dog, but I’m not sure I should accept was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

cricketcat9:

napoleanbonafarte:

markv5:

Потому что в этом доме только одна звезда…

“Because in this house there’s only one star”

:-D