Cuellar had faced a dozen charges of bribery, money laundering and conspiracy. On Wednesday, he filed for reelection as a Democrat, quieting speculation that he migh switch parties.
First, Barbara is no longer with our organization. Due to some troubling behavior that was witnessed by multiple people (myself included), and given the nature of Barbara’s actions during her short time with us, we all felt this just wasn’t a good culture fit and parted ways.
Since then, we’ve brought in a new manager who has taken the team by storm in all the good ways! We did sit the team down after Barbara’s departure and talk through some of the issues we had noticed, and after digging deeper, it seems a lot of the pushback was due more in part to Barbara’s management style, which was such a radically different style than what the team needed. We even uncovered some additional troubling interactions between Barbara and some of our vendors and customers, which has really opened our eyes to the real problem actually being Barbara all along, unfortunately.
During that sit-down, however, we did still talk about things that the team needed to be open to with any manager that they get, and they all seemed very receptive to it. Quite frankly, the issues they’d brought up with both of their previous managers really just stemmed from inadequacies on the managers’ parts that we couldn’t see from the upper management point of view (and the team was unsure of how to voice it and/or too nervous to bring it up to upper management), and so we are making some changes on our end to make sure this doesn’t happen again!
All that said, the new manager we brought in is just as much of a go-getter, but more of a team player and collaborator than Barbara was, which is exactly what this team needed! Barbara was the “it’s my way or the highway” type with no input really being allowed from her staff, whereas the new manager (let’s call her Sara) has taken the time to see how things are done first before making recommendations for any changes, and bases a lot of her decisions on what the team feels would be beneficial (within reason). As far as the team wanting other departments to do things that are clearly in the title of their department goes? Seems to be a non-issue now! Sara has really lit the fire under everyone on the team and re-invigorated the necessity of them to provide these services, and leads with encouragement and collaboration instead of an iron fist masked by kind demeanor and surface-level gratitude for perception‘s sake.
All seems to be smooth sailing for now! We are so grateful to have found Sara after everything this team has been through over the last few years! There’s still been a few hiccups as there usually are, but everyone’s really finding their stride!
SPOKANE, WA—Lamenting that she still hadn’t found the bug-eyed man-child of her dreams, area bachelorette Louise Perkins confirmed Tuesday that she was growing tired of constantly looking for Mr. Bean. “It seems like all my friends are settling down with buffoonish, mishap-prone men, but no matter how many dates I go on, I just can’t seem to find a Mr. Bean of my own,” said Perkins, adding that she longed for the day when a goofy, tweed-jacketed man would get down on one knee and say “Bean?” to her in a bizarrely low-pitched voice. “I don’t think I’m being too picky. I just want a guy with a digital calculator watch, a teddy bear he treats as a sentient being, and a citron green and black British Leyland Mini he can drive from an armchair strapped to the roof. But every time a date is chock-full of quirky escapades and it seems I might have finally found my Mr. Bean, he’ll throw up a major red flag by turning a light off at the switch instead of shooting out the bulb with an air pistol. It’s exhausting. I know they say Mr. Bean finds you when you least expect it—deviously poking his head out from behind a postbox, perhaps, or dangling from a flagpole as a result of a childish misunderstanding of how to do laundry—but at this point, I’m starting to worry that I’ll never find the man who makes me feel like Irma Gobb.” At press time, Perkins had reportedly swiped left on a dating profile belonging to Rowan Atkinson.
SILVER SPRING, MD—Praising the drug’s ability to quickly and effectively increase fatalities amongst the nation’s opioid users, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new nasal spray Wednesday capable of reversing the effects of Narcan.
The compound, called noroxone, was reportedly approved by the FDA as part of a broader effort to combat a surge in Narcan usage by vulnerable individuals who would have otherwise died. According to the manufacturer, the powerful opioid anti-antagonist is extremely fast-acting, and can re-depress the central nervous system and restore an overdose in just two to three minutes.
“Narcan use in this country is a major public health concern for Americans, who are often left watching helplessly as friends and loved ones succumb to the resuscitating effects of emergency care,” said FDA Commissioner Martin A. Makary, who called the drug an essential intervention in the global fight against harm reduction. “Once sprayed into the nostril, noroxone works quickly to free up opioid receptors in the brain, allowing compounds like heroin, fentanyl, oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, and morphine to reattach and fatally interrupt respiration.”
Noroxone, soon to be available both over-the-counter and as a prescription, was developed in response to what is widely known as the “Narcan crisis,” a nationwide epidemic that began in 2016 and has tragically saved hundreds of thousands of lives each year. Health officials praised the FDA’s emergency authorization, which marks the first time an overdose reversal-reversal spray has been deemed effective and lethal enough to warrant widespread distribution.
Advocates who work in the healthcare field and have seen the new drug’s high mortality rates firsthand have said the emergency medicine inhibitor should be a standard item included in first-aid kits, as readily available as defibrillators and fire extinguishers in public spaces like hotels, libraries, and schools.
“Everyone should keep noroxone on hand in case they encounter someone at risk of being saved from a drug overdose or getting the help they need,” said Aaron Lorenz, a Narcan prevention specialist in New Hampshire who teaches community members how to confidently intervene when a drug user appears to be regaining consciousness. “Even if a person is sitting up straight, totally responsive to stimuli like shaking and shouting, or even breathing normally—it’s not too late.”
Added Lorenz, “With noroxone, anyone can end a life.”
The Department of Transportation is considering a new crash test dummy design based on female anatomy, claiming it would improve safety testing for women. What do you think?
“Make sure they get my uneven nipples.”
Fabrizia Pagano, Unemployed
“Hopefully this will lead to more women getting involved in actual car crashes as well.”
Norman Hassel, Napkin Collator
“I strap my wife to the top of the car like a mattress, so we’re all good.”
For weeks, we’ve been told the threat posed by the trafficking of illegal drugs is indistinguishable from an outright declaration of war on the United States by foreign drug cartels. Trump and his toadies insist traffickers are bringing drugs across the border to “kill” Americans, which would be an entirely self-defeating business plan no self-respecting cartel would ever engage in. Obviously, he’s lying, as are those who speak for him.
But those lies are being used to buttress something even more awful than our usual War on Drugs: the extrajudicial murders of people only suspected to be moving drugs from Venezuela to… well, anywhere else but Venezuela. There are plenty of people between the United States and Venezuela who might be interested in purchasing/trafficking drugs. To insist that these drugs (if they exist at all) are headed to the US border with the intent of “killing” cartels’ customer bases is a lie so stupid it shouldn’t be given the dignity of a one-sentence debunking.
Trump is playing hardball in international waters, straight up murdering people simply because their boats have departed from Venezuelan shores. And while he keeps constructing his “Savior of America” facade, he’s so self-interested he can’t stop himself from undercutting his own narratives.
The man is a blend of involuntary muscle movements and brain stem-level thinking. “DRUGS ARE KILLING US” he screams into the bullhorn he owns (TruthSocial). Meanwhile, back at the Oval Office, he’s letting the drug dealers he personally likes off the hook.
President Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he would grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who, as the center of a sweeping drug case, was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.
The news came as a shock not only to Hondurans, but also to the authorities in the United States who had built a major case and won a conviction against Mr. Hernández. They had accused him of taking bribes during his campaign from Joaquín Guzmán, the notorious former leader of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico known as “El Chapo,” and of running his Central American country like a narco state.
As several current and former government officials noted in that preliminary reporting, Trump’s actions were not only harmful to foreign relations and ongoing anti-drug trafficking efforts, but also made a mockery of Trump’s other statements about going hard on drugs.
A day later, nothing had changed but the status of Juan Orlando Hernandez’s pardon, which was now a fact, rather than a threat. And, of course, it was Classic Trump, all the way down to the New York Times’ coverage of it.
Mr. Trump signaled on Saturday that he was ratcheting up his campaign against drug cartels, saying in a social media post that airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered “CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”
Less than 24 hours earlier, Mr. Trump had announced on social media that he was granting a full pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras who had been convicted in the United States of drug trafficking charges in what was seen as a major victory for authorities in a case against a former head of state. That pardon has not yet been officially granted.
The two posts displayed a remarkable dissonance in the president’s strategy, as he moved to escalate a military campaign against drug trafficking while ordering the release of a man prosecutors said had taken “cocaine-fueled bribes” from cartels and “protected their drugs with the full power and strength of the state — military, police and justice system.” In fact, prosecutors said that Mr. Hernández, for years, allowed bricks of cocaine from Venezuela to flow through Honduras en route to the United States.
Oh NYT, that’s not “remarkable dissonance.” And it certainly isn’t the “display” of “contradictions” claimed in the headline.
The word the NYT is looking for (in both cases) is “hypocrisy.” These are hypocritical acts performed by a president who resolutely does not care that he’s the embodiment of hypocrisy. There’s no “contradiction” or “dissonance.” This is how Trump operates. His “shut down the borders” yelling obviously clashes horribly with his decision to pardon a foreign drug trafficker, but everything about it is entirely consistent with all known Trump actions/statements to date. It may look like dissonance to someone who just emerged from a 12-year coma today, but it looks exactly like Trump business as usual to everyone else.
This doesn’t mean this hypocrisy should be ignored. It absolutely shouldn’t. It just means we shouldn’t use nicer words that suggest an error of judgment might have taken place, because that just gives a deliberately hypocritical act (one of several!) by Trump a veneer of plausible deniability it certainly goddamn doesn’t deserve.
It’s unfortunately no longer enough to force websites to check your government-issued ID before you can access certain content, because politicians have now discovered that people are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to protect their privacy and bypass these invasive laws. Their solution? Entirely ban the use of VPNs.
Yes, really.
As of this writing, Wisconsin lawmakers are escalating their war on privacy by targeting VPNs in the name of “protecting children” in A.B. 105/S.B. 130. It’s an age verification bill that requires all websites distributing material that could conceivably be deemed “sexual content” to both implement an age verification system and also to block the access of users connected via VPN. The bill seeks to broadly expand the definition of materials that are “harmful to minors” beyond the type of speech that states can prohibit minors from accessing—potentially encompassing things like depictions and discussions of human anatomy, sexuality, and reproduction.
Wisconsin’s bill has already passed the State Assembly and is now moving through the Senate. If it becomes law, Wisconsin could become the first state where using a VPN to access certain content is banned. Michigan lawmakers have proposed similar legislation that did not move through its legislature, but among other things, would force internet providers to actively monitor and block VPN connections. And in the UK, officials are calling VPNs “a loophole that needs closing.”
This is actually happening. And it’s going to be a disaster for everyone.
Here’s Why This Is A Terrible Idea
VPNs mask your real location by routing your internet traffic through a server somewhere else. When you visit a website through a VPN, that website only sees the VPN server’s IP address, not your actual location. It’s like sending a letter through a P.O. box so the recipient doesn’t know where you really live.
So when Wisconsin demands that websites “block VPN users from Wisconsin,” they’re asking for something that’s technically impossible. Websites have no way to tell if a VPN connection is coming from Milwaukee, Michigan, or Mumbai. The technology just doesn’t work that way.
Websites subject to this proposed law are left with this choice: either cease operation in Wisconsin, or block all VPN users, everywhere, just to avoid legal liability in the state. One state’s terrible law is attempting to break VPN access for the entire internet, and the unintended consequences of this provision could far outweigh any theoretical benefit.
Almost Everyone Uses VPNs
Let’s talk about who lawmakers are hurting with these bills, because it sure isn’t just people trying to watch porn without handing over their driver’s license.
Businesses run on VPNs. Every company with remote employees uses VPNs. Every business traveler connecting through sketchy hotel Wi-Fi needs one. Companies use VPNs to protect client and employee data, secure internal communications, and prevent cyberattacks.
Students need VPNs for school. Universities require students to use VPNs to access research databases, course materials, and library resources. These aren’t optional, and many professors literally assign work that can only be accessed through the school VPN. The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s WiscVPN, for example, “allows UW–Madison faculty, staff and students to access University resources even when they are using a commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP).”
Vulnerable people rely on VPNs for safety.Domestic abuse survivors use VPNs to hide their location from their abusers. Journalists use them to protect their sources. Activists use them to organize without government surveillance. LGBTQ+ people in hostile environments—both in the US and around the world—use them to access health resources, support groups, and community. For people living under censorship regimes, VPNs are often their only connection to vital resources and information their governments have banned.
Regular people just want privacy. Maybe you don’t want every website you visit tracking your location and selling that data to advertisers. Maybe you don’t want your internet service provider (ISP) building a complete profile of your browsing history. Maybe you just think it’s creepy that corporations know everywhere you go online. VPNs can protect everyday users from everyday tracking and surveillance.
It’s A Privacy Nightmare
Here’s what happens if VPNs get blocked: everyone has to verify their age by submitting government IDs, biometric data, or credit card information directly to websites—without any encryption or privacy protection.
We already know how this story ends. Companies get hacked. Data gets breached. And suddenly your real name is attached to the websites you visited, stored in some poorly-secured database waiting for the inevitable leak. This has already happened, and is not a matter of if but when. And when it does, the repercussions will be huge.
Forcing people to give up their privacy to access legal content is the exact opposite of good policy. It’s surveillance dressed up as safety.
“Harmful to Minors” Is Not a Catch-All
Here’s another fun feature of these laws: they’re trying to broaden the definition of “harmful to minors” to sweep in a host of speech that is protected for both young people and adults.
Historically, states can prohibit people under 18 years old from accessing sexual materials that an adult can access under the First Amendment. But the definition of what constitutes “harmful to minors” is narrow — it generally requires that the materials have almost no social value to minors and that they, taken as a whole, appeal to a minors’ “prurient sexual interests.”
Wisconsin’s bill defines “harmful to minors” much more broadly. It applies to materials that merely describe sex or feature descriptions/depictions of human anatomy. This definition would likely encompass a wide range of literature, music, television, and films that are protected under the First Amendment for both adults and young people, not to mention basic scientific and medical content.
Additionally, the bill’s definition would apply to any websites where more than one third of the site’s material is “harmful to minors.” Given the breadth of the definition and its one-third trigger, we anticipate that Wisconsin could argue that the law applies to most social media websites. And it’s not hard to imagine, as these topics become politicised, Wisconsin claiming it applies to websites containing LGBTQ+ health resources, basic sexual education resources, and reproductive healthcare information.
This breadth of the bill’s definition isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. It gives the state a vast amount of discretion to decide which speech is “harmful” to young people, and the power to decide what’s “appropriate” and what isn’t. History shows us those decisions most often harmmarginalizedcommunities.
It Won’t Even Work
Let’s say Wisconsin somehow manages to pass this law. Here’s what will actually happen:
People who want to bypass it will use non-commercial VPNs, open proxies, or cheap virtual private servers that the law doesn’t cover. They’ll find workarounds within hours. The internet always routes around censorship.
Even in a fantasy world where every website successfully blocked all commercial VPNs, people would just make their own. You can route traffic through cloud services like AWS or DigitalOcean, tunnel through someone else’s home internet connection, use open proxies, or spin up a cheap server for less than a dollar.
Meanwhile, everyone else (businesses, students, journalists, abuse survivors, regular people who just want privacy) will have their VPN access impacted. The law will accomplish nothing except making the internet less safe and less private for users.
Nonetheless, as we’ve mentioned previously, while VPNs may be able to disguise the source of your internet activity, they are not foolproof—nor should they be necessary to access legally protected speech. Like the larger age verification legislation they are a part of, VPN-blocking provisions simply don’t work. They harm millions of people and they set a terrifying precedent for government control of the internet. More fundamentally, legislators need to recognize that age verification laws themselves are the problem. They don’t work, they violate privacy, they’re trivially easy to circumvent, and they create far more harm than they prevent.
A False Dilemma
People have (predictably) turned to VPNs to protect their privacy as they watched age verification mandates proliferate around the world. Instead of taking this as a sign that maybe mass surveillance isn’t popular, lawmakers have decided the real problem is that these privacy tools exist at all and are trying to ban the tools that let people maintain their privacy.
Let’s be clear: lawmakers need to abandon this entire approach.
The answer to “how do we keep kids safe online” isn’t “destroy everyone’s privacy.” It’s not “force people to hand over their IDs to access legal content.” And it’s certainly not “ban access to the tools that protect journalists, activists, and abuse survivors.”
If lawmakers genuinely care about young people’s well-being, they should invest in education, support parents with better tools, and address the actual root causes of harm online. What they shouldn’t do is wage war on privacy itself. Attacks on VPNs are attacks on digital privacy and digital freedom. And this battle is being fought by people who clearly have no idea how any of this technology actually works.
If you live in Wisconsin—reach out to your Senator and urge them to kill A.B. 105/S.B. 130. Our privacy matters. VPNs matter. And politicians who can’t tell the difference between a security tool and a “loophole” shouldn’t be writing laws about the internet.
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.]
By the end of this video, one of these buildings will be knocked down by the force of a simulated storm surge, because there’s a lot we still don’t understand about hurricanes and their effects on buildings.
In September 2022, Hurricane Ian tore across the Caribbean and southeastern U.S., leaving a trail of devastation from Cuba to the Carolinas. It was one of the strongest and deadliest storms in modern history. We often think of hurricanes in terms of wind and rain. But in coastal areas, it’s the surge of seawater driven inland by the storm that causes the most catastrophic damage. Homes and buildings didn’t just get wet. Many were obliterated, swept from their foundations entirely.
But unlike many storms of the past, Ian came with data, and lots of it. Today’s tools for collecting and analyzing information mean that even tragic disasters can lead to really important insights into how we can build safer and smarter in the future. After Hurricane Ian, FEMA analyzed more than a thousand flood claims, and what they found about building performance was remarkable.
To dig deeper, I’m here at O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Labratory at Oregon State University. A team of engineers is running a one-of-a-kind experiment to simulate storm surge and study how buildings actually respond. They invited me here to see it firsthand and share what they're learning with you. I’m Grady, and this is Practical Engineering.
Everyone knows hurricanes are destructive, but storm surge often gets underestimated, not just by the public, but policymakers and planners too. The damage from high winds is visually dramatic. We see footage of roofs ripped off and trees snapping like twigs. But just a few feet of storm surge can cause even greater damage. And waves amplify the destruction.
If you’ve spent time in coastal areas, you’ve probably seen homes raised on stilts. Since the early 2000s, this has become one of the most common construction types in flood-prone coastal zones. The concept is straightforward: move the living space above the reach of storm surge. If a hurricane hits, the lower area used for parking, storage, or access might flood, but the critical parts of the building stay dry. All the devastating power of the waves flows through and around the stilts instead of slamming into walls and destroying the structure. It turns out this idea is remarkably effective.
After Hurricane Ian, FEMA found that flood insurance claims for elevated structures in Fort Myers averaged about one-third the cost of claims for non-elevated buildings. That’s a staggering difference in performance. But zoom in, and things get more complicated. On one hand, this is pretty obvious stuff. You don’t need a massive wave laboratory to figure out that elevated structures survive storm surge much better than buildings at grade. But if you look at footage from Hurricane Ian, it paints a more nuanced picture, because some elevated buildings didn’t fare well at all. They weren’t all high enough to avoid the surge. And that gets to one of the most difficult questions in the entire field of hurricane engineering: how tall is tall enough?
Needless to say, it is expensive to lose your home in a storm. The conundrum is that it’s also expensive to build your home in such a way that it can withstand one. If it were easy, every building in Fort Myers would be a hundred feet above sea level. But the reality is that elevating a structure adds significant upfront cost, and the higher you go, the higher that expense climbs. It’s not just a cost for homeowners but also something that’s passed down to renters. Shifting the actual housing upwards shifts the affordability of housing downward for everyone. And because major hurricanes are relatively rare events, the return on that investment comes with a lot of uncertainty, with benefits that are invisible most of the time.
That’s one of the biggest challenges for engineers and officials. In theory, you can design a structure that withstands anything. But in practice, no one’s building hurricane bunkers as homes. Codes and policies have to balance safety with economic viability and long-term risks with the upfront cost of resilience. Local governments want robust, resilient development, but they also need development to happen in the first place. Overly strict codes can scare off builders or price out developers. And while the National Flood Insurance Program might prefer fewer claims, stricter floodplain regulations also come with tradeoffs: reduced property tax revenue, limited housing supply, and the burden of compliance placed on individuals.
These decisions might seem kind of trivial at the scale of a single structure, but when you multiply them out along developed coastlines, the implications of each extra foot of elevation are monumental. So what you end up with is a delicate balancing act, shaped by competing priorities, enormous uncertainty, and billions of dollars on the line. Changing building codes or policies requires buy-in from a broad array of stakeholders, and that kind of consensus demands reliable data.
But there’s one more thing that makes this even more complicated. Of course, “stuff getting wet” is a problem with storm surge, but it’s more than just typical flood damage you’re dealing with when it comes to hurricanes. In a sense, the surge is a rise in sea level itself, and once your home is essentially IN the ocean, that brings wave action into play. Forces intensify. Structural systems are tested in ways that ordinary flood damage doesn’t account for.
You can see why this idea of elevating structures is one of those engineering concepts that seems obvious on the surface, but gets way more complicated when you start looking into the details. And that’s why we’re here. Computer models are limited in their capabilities. And you can’t just call up an actual hurricane to knock over a test structure (and even if you could, it would probably violate the ethics rules). So we go to the next best thing: the wave lab.
The OH Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory is one of the largest facilities of its kind in the world. Since the 1970s, this lab has supported cutting-edge research into coastal engineering challenges like sediment movement, tsunami behavior, and wave-structure interactions. It actually has two major test beds. This is the Large Wave Flume. It’s used for all kinds of hydraulic experiments related to waves, coastal structures, and erosion. It’s basically a super-sized version of the flume I use in a lot of my garage demos. It can do a lot, but it has a limitation in that it’s inherently two-dimensional. Flow can really only move in the direction of the flume. That’s why the lab also has this: the Directional Wave Basin.
Think of it as a wave pool turned up to eleven. This enormous tank uses dozens of piston-driven paddles, each with independent control, to generate complex, multi-directional waves. You can create a single tsunami-like pulse or dial in irregular wave trains to match the chaotic sea states found in real hurricanes. This facility is utilized in large-scale research projects on wave hydrodynamics, floating structures, and devices that harness wave energy to generate electricity. But, of course, it can also test coastal structures, like these houses.
Dr. Dan Cox is a Coastal Engineer and Civil Engineering Professor at Oregon State. He explained to me why they chose the basin for this experiment.
“The nice thing about the basin is that you can look at kind of a full 3-D picture, rather than just a slice. And I think for this set of tests, we really wanted to do an entire house, not just a wall, you know, a bit of the foundation. And that’s why we chose the basin for this one.”
The research team has spent months building two incredibly detailed model homes, each one a near-perfect one-third scale replica of a real coastal house. Each foot is equivalent to three feet in real life. And the only difference (besides color) between them is elevation. The green model is a foot or 30 centimeters higher up than the orange one. That corresponds to 3 feet in the real world or roughly one meter. In every other way, both structures are identical. They’ve got interior walls, windows, framing details, everything. At this scale, that means I’m about the size of an 18-foot-tall civil engineer… which is actually something I’ve had dreams about.
One-third scale is still just a model. But this is not a toy experiment. The researchers have carefully accounted for all the physics involved. The wave periods and velocities have been adjusted to simulate full-scale conditions, and the structures have reduced stiffness to reflect the relative rigidity of real-world buildings. It’s all about maintaining dynamic similarity, a fancy term for making sure the test results actually mean something when translated back to full size. And that’s a tough thing to do:
“On the structure side, it’s a lot more difficult to scale the structural behavior. So, for example, when we’re doing computer simulations, the simulations are primarily at scale - trying to get that difference in shaking. The forces can generally be scaled up as well, so we kind of know what the forces are. But I think the mode of failure - like how this structure failed - I’m not sure so much as like a quantitative scaling. It’s a little bit more like qualitatively, this is what we would expect to happen under these conditions.”
The experimental design has the waves start small and build gradually, both in height and frequency, simulating the approach of a storm. The goal is to observe how both buildings respond as conditions get worse and worse.
It’s mesmerizing to watch: the wave generators churn, sending pulse after pulse across the basin. Within seconds, the models are surrounded by rolling water, with each wave slapping against walls, flowing around supports, and rebounding off the basin walls and shoreline.
Even now, researchers at the lab are measuring the behavior of the structures. If you look carefully, you’ll notice targets for highly specialized cameras and lidar to carefully monitor the behavior of each structure. Sensors placed throughout the experiment are recording everything—wave height, velocity, pressure on the structure, accelerations, and even internal motion. The goal is to build a detailed, physics-based understanding of how each building absorbs and transfers energy from the storm surge. And that data is incredibly valuable.
For one, this expensive and elaborate test is just two buildings. And there are a lot more types of houses in the world than that. So this data can be used to calibrate and validate computer models, making it easier for engineers to get reliable answers to questions without having to build scale buildings and put them through huge model tests like this.
And some of those questions are big ones. When you’re looking at options for large-scale flood infrastructure, a major part of the process is estimating the differences in damage and loss of life between alternatives. Again, we can’t build infrastructure, call down a hurricane, and test it out in real life, then revise accordingly. Even engineers shouldn’t have THAT kind of power. So we have to be able to make predictions about how any proposal will work out. It’s educated guessing, essentially. But the better we understand the connections between all the variables (wave height, surge level, building elevation, movement, and damage), the more educated those guesses become.
“I would say the physical model is closer to the real world. Numerical simulation is kind of the best we think we can do. But - And it always looks pretty, always looks really cool. But there’s really - you have to verify it. You really have to show that it’s correct, not just looks cool. And I think when we get to the laboratory, like we’re seeing during this test, like okay, it’s not as simple as we think. So there’s a lot more complexity, I think, inherent in a physical model.”
That’s why even though these tests seem pretty straightforward at first, they can have a profound impact on how we allocate public funds, regulate floodplains, and ultimately, keep people safe. You probably wouldn’t buy a car without giving it a test drive first; it’s too big a financial decision to take a risk. Imagine changing the building code or floodplain regulations without good data to back it up. We necessarily make high-stakes decisions about how to manage flooding in the face of equally enormous uncertainties. So, you can see why information like this would give more confidence to engineers and regulators to write building codes and improve floodplain regulations, knowing those decisions are grounded in truth.
But it’s not just about the data. You might have noticed that these houses aren’t just bare minimum structures. The team has added details like roofing, window frames, and colorful paint jobs to make them look like real buildings, even though they don’t really affect the final results. That’s because this test is also a communication tool. Most people aren’t going to read the academic papers that get published as a result of this study, but this footage tells a story.
You don’t need data to understand which of these two structures you’d want to live in when a hurricane comes. And the more people who take storm surge seriously, the better the outcomes we can expect when a big storm arrives.
Each set of waves is programmed into the machine to simulate the variability of a storm, with the upper limit of wave amplitude increasing from one set to the next. After four sets of waves (delivered in about an hour), they raise the level in the basin using this massive bathtub faucet and repeat the process. It was actually pretty surprising how well both models were holding up for a while there.
It’s hard to communicate in a video just how awe-inspiring it is when the directional wave basin starts really churning. And eventually, a particularly violent wave comes crashing into the lower house, and we see our first damage. You can see the wall underneath the window give way, and now waves start penetrating into the interior of the structure. In a real house, this would already be catastrophic damage.
But of course, they don’t stop at the first sign of damage, and the team keeps hammering the models with more intense waves. Over the course of the experiment, the sea conditions just keep getting worse and worse, and the damage to the orange house does too. More and more of the first story of the lower house is swept away. Waves flow through the structure and knock out portions of the wall on the beach side, and everybody in the room fills with eager anticipation of a total failure.
And then, something I didn’t quite expect happened. The model seemed to almost stabilize. The walls of the front and back of the structure were so totally obliterated that the first floor almost began to act like another level of stilts! Despite the first floor being utterly wrecked, the second story remained more or less fine for quite a while, even as the waves got stronger.
Dan told us about a test at half this scale (one sixth of real life scale) that had shown similar progressive damage, but that led to collapse much earlier on:
“In the previous study, we started to see the deterioration and then very quickly, rapidly, the entire building destroyed and I thought, okay, well we'll see that again at larger scale, but we didn't.”
That’s one of the cool things about moving up in scale and realism: you learn things that aren’t always expected. If we had cameras on every structure during Hurricane Ian, we likely would have seen similar results - damages from storms rarely follow a linear, progressive trend. It comes in fits and starts. For a while, it seemed like it might be the end of the experiment, since the stronger waves weren’t causing more damage.
“…It was a tough problem, and I thought I knew the answer, and it turns out I didn’t. Little bit tough to swallow, but it also kind of highlights to me, like, okay this is a challenge. This is a hard problem. So for me, you know, I’m trying to put a positive spin on it, but I feel like that’s a success right there. To say hey, this is more complicated than we thought.”
Of course, everyone watching (including me) and those participating in the experiment were hoping for that final blow that would knock the whole thing over so they could get the full range of data needed from safe to damaged to destroyed. And eventually the moment came. The waves finally won, and the lower house collapsed.
What’s probably more interesting than that is the condition of the other house. Take a look at that. Almost no damage whatsoever. This building sat in the exact same conditions as the other house and took almost no damage. And in a way, that’s kind of remarkable. Because there really wasn’t that big of a difference between the two. I said it’s expensive to elevate a structure, but the marginal cost between the green and orange models is almost negligible compared to the overall value of the structure.
“In talking to people about flood risk, you know, we talk about the 100-year, 500-year. And I think there’s a misperception that the 500-year is like 5 times bigger, 5 times worse, I have to elevate 5 times greater. And I think just trying to show people it doesn’t take much. Like, there was not much of a difference in elevation between those two buildings. The one on the right is toast. The one on the left had a little bit of damage, but hardly any, and that was only after we really tried to take the other one out.”
Researchers will be studying the data from this experiment for years to come. But the story's pretty clear. Same surge, same waves. A little difference in elevation can make a huge difference to a structure when it comes to surviving a hurricane.
You might be watching these buildings get knocked about and thinking: “We don’t need more resilient structures in the floodplain; we just need them to not be there in the first place.” And in many ways, you’d be totally right. Often, the most economical way to reduce flood damage is to avoid building in flood prone areas, or if development has already happened, simply to buy out property, tear it down, and leave the land empty as a buffer. But where’s the line between flood-prone and not, especially when it comes to rare events like hurricanes, where the probabilities of occurring in a year are in the range of 1-in-100 or 1-in-500? And if there’s not a bright line between at-risk of flooding and not, what’s appropriate for the fringe?
The truth is that there is no catch-all solution to flooding. We need options to accommodate the vast array of situations where development occurs, whether those areas are flood-prone, flood-free, or, most importantly, somewhere in the middle. And not just options, but also the data to determine which of them is truly the best path forward. Engineering is a balancing act; we need structures that are both strong and safe, but also affordable, easy to occupy, and maybe even architecturally pleasing. Using knowledge gained from tests like this helps us get a clearer definition of the edges of the problem we’re solving.
Huge thanks to Dr. Dan Cox and his team of researchers for inviting us to see this happen.
Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe arrives to Houston in monumental style, spending ten months on the main floor of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. The timeframe seems to nod to Jackson’s early career in the San Francisco muralist community, offering her studio works a length of time closer to what is afforded to public art installations and murals. The exhibition’s length acts as an invitation for audiences to return again and again, for reflection on the heavy histories on color and democracy that Jackson examines through her paintings. It also provides time for the city to have a proper reunion with the artist, who is Houston-born and a former artist resident at Project Row Houses.
An installation view of “Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe” on view at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
Large-scale paintings, sculptural works, and approximately 55 minutes of music videos and video art fill the galleries. The arrangement is colorful, lively, and reverberating, while giving viewers space to wander and contemplate the rigorously researched content by the Yale, MIT, and Cooper Union graduate. While music, history, and literal soil are the contents and materials calling for attention, constructed surfaces, halftone lines, and studies of color provide physical and metaphorical layers for audiences to traverse.
“Look again, take a peek into the abstraction,” the works seem to announce.
With significant observation of community activism and American governance, Across the Universe is a timely dialogue for the work it takes to see people and their histories honestly — to shift narratives or even save lives by showing up with love. Considering the needs of each work she creates, Jackson allows a system to develop. A type of visual system that listens to Black voices and where Black histories are taken seriously.
Tomashi Jackson, “Still Remains” (left) on view in “Across the Universe” at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
One such distinctive visual system can be studied in the work Still Remains (2018). Jackson constructs a surface with brown paper bags and postal campaign flyers from the 2017 Georgia congressional election between Jon Ossoff and Karen Handel. Red paint, Georgia red clay, silkscreen prints on vinyl, image transfers, and various slogans build the composition. Starting at the edge of the surface, or perhaps the center, a meandering line invites the viewer to trail along its right-angled turns, as it makes a complex labyrinth. A map-like configuration, the viewer is confronted with a border formed around the center. Reprinted images from the Georgia State University archive can be found there, showing Black passengers waiting in line for their bus, White protestors opposing expanded public transit, and train lines of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA). Questions about Black communities navigating the transitory routes of democracy across boundaries and land come to my mind.
Tomashi Jackson, “Blessed Be the Rock (1920s Dearfield Group, 1970s Ruth Flowers in The Little Rectangle, & the 1972 Second Baptist Church Choir),” 2023, acrylic, Yule Mountain Quarry marble dust, and Red Rocks soil on paper bags, canvas, and textile with PVC marine vinyl, brass hooks and grommets on a handcrafted wood awning structure, 86 x 84 x 8 inches
Keep this reference and fast forward to a recent work, Blessed Be the Rock (1920s Dearfield Group, 1970s Ruth Flowers in The Little Rectangle, & the 1972 Second Baptist Church Choir) (2023). The constructed surface of canvas, wood, and blue textile is embedded with marble dust from Colorado’s Yule Quarry, while black, white, and blue painted halftone lines build the composition. Layered on top are two pink vinyl strips with printed halftone lines. Within the layers of color and material is the image of one of the first African American female graduates of the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Ruth Cave Flowers stands in front of the home she and her mother built in the historic Boulder neighborhood, Little Rectangle. A second image is parallel, revealing residents of the Black colony of Dearfield, Colorado, standing in front of one of their homes. Finally, in the vinyl layer is a third image of the Second Baptist Church of Boulder’s choir, standing as they perform. The three images captured across decades (1920, 1970, and 1972), exemplify Jackson’s exercise in “zooming in and out time” and creating “a single field of vision.” She unfolds under-publicized geographic histories before our eyes, through these Black communities standing firm.
“Look at the past, read it, keep it, use it to look forward, make new visions, build new communities, it has been done before,” Jackson’s paintings say with persistence!
D’TALENTZ (Big Keto, A-Dogg, King, & Tommy Tonight), 2020, single-channel video with sound, 8:55 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and Tilton Gallery
Completely romanced by the seriousness of Jackson’s research-based approach, revealed through vivid color, I too want to sing about love and heartbreak, as her alter ego Tommy Tonight does. Audiences can meet Mr. Tonight with his collaborators D’TALENTZ in the music video, The End of the Road (2019), among others, or see the deep connection between Mr. Tonight and Jackson as herself, in the duet On My Own (Devotions in the BMA & at Lisa’s House in Roxbury) (2023). The performance of ‘90s R&B lip-synching presents a portal for us to join Jackson in singing our hearts out for a needed release of emotions.
A still from Tomashi Jackson’s video “Vibrating Boundaries (Law of the Land) (Self Portrait as Tatyana, Dajerria & Sandra), 1963–2015.” Photo courtesy of Tilton Gallery
Nevertheless, releasing our emotions is only part of the journey in Across the Universe. While we release we must also hear the call resonating throughout the entire exhibition. I believe it is most booming in situating the honest pain in the video Vibrating Boundaries (Law of the Land) (2016) with the architectural strength of the bodega awning in Interstate Love Song (2018). Comparing these two works reveals a type of labor Jackson implores in which very difficult and disturbing histories in the United States are revealed with care, support, and love. In Vibrating Boundaries, Jackson performs a color study using a knitted fiber work that partially covers two bodies reenacting the violent poses encountered by Tatyana Rhodes, Dajerria Becton, and Sandra Bland in Texas. In Interstate Love Song a bodega awning physically holds up the images of a Black community in Georgia, long suffering from transportation defunding.
Tomashi Jackson, “Interstate Love Song (Friends of Clayton County Transit)(Pitts Road Station Opposition),” 2018, mixed media, 40 1/4 x 111 1/2 x 42 1/4 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Tilton Gallery
With these examples and throughout the exhibition, the use of large-scale structural pieces and bright color hues that are painted, printed, and knitted, deliver a visual reminder we must heed: to repair past wrongs takes a work of love, a work that is heavy and imposing. But, “this, is love.”
Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe is on view at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston through March 29, 2026. Read an interview with the artist 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. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.
There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.
I wrote about six months ago about loneliness at work after being promoted to location manager. On the whole, I’m feeling a great deal more comfortable! Some of my staff were promoted or otherwise moved to different jobs, so the current mix of people has known me mostly as Boss. I’ve been very intentional about being friendly with staff, and the new faces who weren’t my coworkers before have made it much easier to be Friendly Boss to everyone equally. I’ve also been able to start cultivating more communication with managers at other locations, which has helped. My most senior report is doing great at taking on leadership and being in charge when I am gone, which I think has mitigated a lot of stress that I didn’t realize I was feeling as well.
As for making other adult friends with little kids, thanks to everyone for your advice! Some of it I’ve tried out (with limited success; terminal introvert, here), some of it will probably come in handy in the future. My spouse stays home with the kids, so we don’t have daycare friends to get together with. I know I didn’t make it clear in my original letter, but I do have a long-standing hobby group once a week. I was having some trouble getting close to people there but didn’t have the bandwidth to join anything else. Since then, I’ve been more strategic in how I try to connect with the others in that group and in my religious gathering, and it’s becoming easier to connect in both places.
So I might have to be resigned to a new type of relationship with people at work, but I don’t need to be resigned to loneliness!
Well, the big project we were kicking off at the time is nearing its end, so still TBD on whether or not we survive. :) But as you recommended, I discussed it with upper management and our two highest executives/owners shared how they are both personally active in helping immigrants, which was good for boosting morale among my team.
The client’s social media related to that has quieted down, thank goodness, and they didn’t try to discuss any of that side of their organization within the scope of our project with them. We worked through some minor annoying requests like the usage of “Gulf of America,” but I am hopeful that the tide is starting to turn within our industry against the administration.
None of our other clients have had any sort of requests along these lines, so that’s good! Our biggest problem is mass turnover among clients because their government jobs are so volatile right now that many are leaving for private sector work.
Update to the update:
I spoke too soon. After the final proofing stage, they are now requesting we swap out photos to include some of an elected official with members of ICE. I feel physically sick, and my team wants to push back. Again, it’s a huge project for us with a big financial impact, not to mention the time and resources we’ve put into it, considering I first wrote to you in February.
In accord with your advice, our church board all agreed that we didn’t want to hire the minister’s partner as music director, but somehow the HR committee wound up letting her interview anyway. The minister had been so careful to stay out of it that she never even told her partner of the depth of concerns, so it all came as a surprise to the partner in the interview. Fortunately, the partner wound up getting a better offer and withdrew her application before we had to tell her we wouldn’t hire her.
Unfortunately, the other best candidate also withdrew, so we had to start the search all over. Fortunately we did find and hire a wonderful candidate who had not applied in the first round. Unfortunately, the partner/applicant issue inflamed feelings among the choir, who were convinced that the minister had driven out the previous music director. (Not true, but it was a confidential HR issue so no one got the full picture.)
Subsequent work with conflict consultants leads me to believe that music directors are often the focal point of bad blood in congregations. It’s a tricky in-between position, involving deep commitment and loyalty within the music program, and a leader whose skill and training is in music, not religion or management or ministerial presence.
I wrote in after being inundated with requests for practice exchange visits. I took both your and the commenters‘ advice to heart and shared it with my team.
A) I decided to point requesters to our university’s week for guests, where people can visit all the units at once. The next one is in 1.5 years‘ time, but it’s something to offer at least. I also send the recordings we already have.
B) I suggested, like someone did in the comments, that my team prep a schedule and short talks we might trot out for every visitor. They thought it’s a good idea.
C) I also took the advice to select with our own benefit in mind, so I’ve just been saying no.
D) I also have been saying no a lot to zoom networking, and to some invites to give talks/workshops, unless it’s really high-profile or from universities we have pre-existing “diplomatic” relationships with, or I just really like the people. I manage a team of six now and serve a target population of 2000, so I feel they need to be my priority.
The stuff I said yes to this year all had a big impact, so I’m very happy. Thanks to all who gave advice!
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. Here are three updates from past letter-writers.
So as it happened, by the time the post went up I’d left the job and the region. But not long after I sent in the letter, I sat down and laid this out to my boss pretty much exactly as I wrote in. He wasn’t blind so while he wasn’t exactly thrilled, he did get it. I was a receptionist/admin in a small public office with regular customer service and sales tasks in addition to EA and admin work, my desk was the entryway hub, and it was a notoriously “interrupty” environment. I had no real problem with any of that — it was just the coworker I wrote about. She used us all like free dating coaches, therapists, and dumping grounds for everything in her head from House Key Movement Monologues up to and including graphic sex and undiluted trauma in the aftermath of a horrible gruesome local accident. I was the only one tied to a central desk and providing the anchor work keeping the office open to the public so I just bore the brunt.
In the talk, my boss told me that both his predecessor and he had the option of installing a door in the wall between his desks and the coworker’s desk area and that having that door installed and left open was likely what was needed to start keeping them on task and start him providing the constant ongoing “knock it off, get to work” feedback to correct her performance issues, which were significant. Only both of them also thought she was a nightmare and couldn’t face taking this on. To be fair, it would have taken 80% of his time and attention, invariably led to a PIP, insubordination, and various other write-ups and likely her quitting or being fired, whereupon a 30-year veteran of the department (her) would start slandering the office to our entire small town, and we had a significant and important role in the community. I did understand their reluctance to table the entirety of their actual work load to remedial train a 55- year-old Piece of Work in order to maneuver her out the door in the midst of an inevitable shit storm. It’s bad management but it’s pretty human, and I wanted to move anyway. So I preserved my reputation with my boss and got out from under the waterfall, which were my main goals.
If I’d wanted to stay in the community, I would have been a lot more frustrated, as it was a good job with a great wage and there was no need for it to be literally terrible. And yeah, it pushed me out into the worst job market in like a century so had I not had support and savings and been so ready to move on, I would probably be a lot saltier about it all.
I work a well-paying solitary labor job now, my rent is cheaper, the stores sell fresh fruit, and nobody’s pouring poison in my ears all day, so personally I feel this was a grand success. And the last I heard of her, she was trying to hold a conversation with a public works employee who was actively jackhammering a road so … yeah.
Fergus toned down the positivity once we were back in the office, so the issue mostly worked itself out on its own. He is still sometimes too rah rah, but it’s not as bad as it was.
Unfortunately, the deputy has only ratcheted up the positivity. Every meeting, no matter how unpleasant or difficult the topic, has to end with a statement of how well things are going or how we’re doing amazing work, and everything we do is just the best. It’s exhausting.
A few weeks before the shutdown, the deputy dropped a bomb on us in a meeting. Something new is coming, and it has the opportunity to be very good for our office, or it has the possibility of being a giant clusterbleep. It’s the kind of situation that needs a lot of thought and careful planning. I’ve been in my office for over 10 years, and this represents, most likely, a radical change to the office and office culture. So, naturally, I was apprehensive and asked a million questions in the meeting about it, most of which management had no answers for. All of my questions were about logistics and planning, but, admittedly, my tone may have been too incredulous because the news was so surprising. Other folks told my manager that they had the exact same questions that I had.
Two days later, the deputy asked me to meet with her, without informing my manager. (This has happened before when she wants to reprimand someone but not discuss it with their manager.) In the meeting, she implicitly threatened my promotion potential for being too negative. I was also told that I could ask questions of the managers, strongly implying that I was not to ask questions in meetings because people “look up to” me as a senior staffer. Again, all I did was ask questions. I made no pronouncements that I thought this would fail or be bad for the office. I just wanted to understand and try to play my part in making it succeed. I have to work closely with the deputy on a project that I loathe, and this conversation has only made that more difficult. I’m a realist by nature, so gushing over how good everything is just isn’t how I operate. I guess I’ve got to learn to fake it.
In the end, I didn’t get in to Taco Night School A (day school, actually) here in my city, nor Taco Day School B in neighbor city. I ended up opting for Taco Day School C, which is an hour and a half one-way commute. After working mostly afternoons and evenings for years, waking up at 6:00 every day has been a huge adjustment, but I’m very happy with the program I’m in and the choice to go back to school more generally.
However, I didn’t find any of that out til August, so I proceeded with closing my business following your advice to just tell them in general terms that I was shutting down. Most of them did ask what I would be doing, which I replied to as if I had a solid plan. Despite being sad to lose me, the families generally realize that tutoring is a tough business with low profits and an unforgiving schedule, and were genuinely happy for me pursuing other opportunities.
I made recommendations for replacement tutors when possible, but that wasn’t the case for all families (for example, I couldn’t recommend anyone who works with young kids, or kids with dyslexia). Some families apparently had a very hard time finding new tutors and continued to write me even in mid-October to help them find someone and/or pretty please make an exception just for them. In the end, everyone either found a replacement or gave up on bothering me about it, and I only got guilt-tripped into staying on with one student (who, admittedly, has very specific learning needs that not many people are able to accommodate). I’m not entirely thrilled — it’s a lot combined with my own studies — but all in all I think the closing was handled smoothly, thanks in part to your advice!
I’m on vacation. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives.
1. My employee warned me he has a problem with authority
Six years ago, I took a job in a new department. At the time, I only had two years of managing experience and I was eager to not step on the toes of my new four-person team, who had a combined total of 85 years of experience. On my first day and in my first meeting with my employee Fergus, he smirked and opened with, “You should know I have a problem with authority.” To his credit, he was not lying. It’s a nightmare to deal with him but he does just enough to not be let go (we work for the government, it’s harder to get fired).
At the time he told me this, I was so concerned with being liked and learning the ropes in the new department that I tried to approach all interactions with Fergus with that in mind instead of just asking for what I needed. But now I wonder, what would have been a good response? Am I wrong in thinking that the response should have been something that let Fergus know that it indeed was *his* problem and not mine? Or is that just my dislike for my current situation bubbling up?
Ideally, when he told you he had a problem with authority, you would have asked, “Can you be more specific about what you mean?” Let’s pin him down on exactly what he’s talking about here, and then respond to that. If he replied with something like “I don’t like being told what to do” or “I prefer to work independently without a manager,” then you could say, “Well, I certainly appreciate knowing about people’s preferences and I respect the expertise you have, but part of my role here is to oversee that work. You can see how that goes and decide whether it’s for you or not. If you decide it’s not, I’ll certainly understand.”
It sounds like you know this now, but you can’t let an employee dictate how you’ll do your own job (which includes managing them) or value being liked over being effective.
2. How do I tell friends and family I can’t keep helping with their writing?
I’m an English teacher and over the years many of my friends and family have asked me for feedback on their writing. Now that I have a family, the demands on my time are greater and frankly, I am less interested in helping like this. How do I transition my friends out of this? I would feel weird charging them but I guess I should? I really don’t know how to broach this with people without sounding awkward and weird; I think I am too emotionally invested.
Would you want to do if they were paying? If not, don’t offer that as an option just to decrease the requests because some people may take you up on it! If you just don’t want to do it regardless of pay, it’s totally okay to just explain your schedule doesn’t allow it anymore. Anything like this works, depending on the tone you want with the particular asker:
* “My schedule is so swamped these days that I wouldn’t be able to do it justice.”
* “Ah, I’m sorry. I don’t have enough free time these days to be able to say yes.”
* “I wish I could help! My schedule is crazed right now though. Sorry I can’t look at it!”
* “If I say yes, it will sit for weeks while I feel guilty for not having enough time to look at it, so I’m going to preempt that by doing the right thing and telling you now I can’t.”
* “I’m trying not to say yes to that anymore, since my schedule has gotten so packed.”
If you make it a big thing where you feel terrible and like you’re letting them down, it’s likely to be weird on their side too. If you’re matter-of-fact about it and then change the subject to something else, it’ll go fine with reasonable people. (And if they’re unreasonable, there’s nothing to feel bad about anyway.)
But if you’d do a few of these requests for the right price, you can say: “I’ve gotten so many of these requests from family and friends, and my schedule is so busy now, that I’ve actually started charging a fee for it. I totally understand if that’s not what you’re interested in, but if you are, the fee people are paying is $X.” (I like “the fee people are paying” rather than “the fee I’m charging,” because it emphasizes that other people find this worth money, which makes it harder for them to complain they shouldn’t have to pay.)
3. Employee is monopolizing the conference room to get quiet work space
My office is open, but it’s not a new, innovative concept. It’s an old building and this has happened out of necessity. We’re the support team for several businesses downstairs, so it’s never going to happen that we move into a new, more workable space. We all work pretty silently, and keep distractions to a minimum. We also have a large, open event space where we’re all accustomed to taking phone calls and having meetings.
Recently, we’ve added a few employees and the volume level in the office has increased. Most of us have just deployed headphones, until the newbies catch on. (One is our new boss, so it’s not as easy as telling them all to keep it down.) The problem is with one employee, who has taken it upon herself to consistently go work in the event space. She also happens to be the only employee with a laptop she can work off of. But now, that room is never available for anyone else. Unless we ask her to leave, which she always is willing to do — it’s just awkward. I don’t know how to communicate to her that what she’s doing is inconsiderate. It also seems like she should be able to work in there if she wants to, and it seems petty of me considering the majority of the time that space is vacant. Am I being unreasonable?
If she’s always willing to leave when the space is needed for something else, it doesn’t sound like this is really a problem. Open offices can be incredibly difficult for people to work in, and if there’s a mostly unused conference room sitting vacant, there’s no logical reason why she shouldn’t use it, as long as she’s willing to move when needed, which she is. Working in there could be making a major difference in her concentration or her productivity, as well as to her morale.
I know it might seem unfair since other people without laptops can’t do it — but then the solution is for them to ask for laptops so multiple people could use the conference room as a quiet room at the same time, not to stop her from doing it just because others can’t.
If the issue is that you feel awkward or rude asking her to vacate the room, I’d say the solution is for you realize it’s perfectly okay to do that (and she seems to think so too, based on her cheerfully leaving when asked to).
4. Should I tell a blogger I follow that I work with her boyfriend?
This question is kind of silly but I am the kind of person that would make this situation weird. I was scrolling through Instagram and just discovered a local blogger whose style I really like. Turns out her S.O. is one of my coworkers! I only know him in passing (and honestly, I doubt he knows my name), but he’s a really nice guy from what I’ve encountered.
My first thought was to DM her and say something like “hey, I love your blog and I’m so thrilled to see you live in [same city!] I actually know [your S.O.] from work and he’s a really nice guy” but I am afraid that would come across as awkward.
Should I say anything to him? We don’t work together, and I tend to be very shy and reserved at work.
I’d leave it alone. Not because it would be horribly awkward if you did message her, but because the question I’d have about doing that is “toward what end?” You’ll tell her you know her S.O, she’ll say something kind in response, and then that will probably be that. It’s not really conveying information with much significance. (There are people who respond enthusiastically to connections of any kind, but there are more people who will just think, “Okay … and?” Plus, if she asks her S.O. about you and he doesn’t know who you are, that’s really upping the chances of “Okay … and?”)
That said, there’s nothing wrong with sending her a note letting her know how much you like her work! That’s always lovely to get, and you don’t even need to mention the S.O. connection.
Maurice returns, and his offer now seems more appealing. Though with such a parade of tins, I’m surprised that Esther can ever be prised out of the house.
CHARLOTTETOWN – The Premier of Prince Edward Island, apparently someone named Rob Lantz, released a statement demanding a response from Ottawa on the 2019 separation referendum that resulted in the province declaring independence from Canada. According to most residents of PEI, this triggered a Canadian constitutional crisis, despite no one outside the province having heard […]
WASHINGTON D.C. – Officials inside the Trump White House are beaming with pride after US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was able to complete the classic Canadian children’s book Franklin Fibs without any help from aides or outside consultants. “Come here, look,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as he ushered reporters into a room […]
A judge in Missouri resigned after wearing an Elvis Presley wig in court, coming after a disciplinary commission determined he failed to maintain order and decorum. What do you think?
“Either wear a full Elvis costume or don’t even bother showing up to work.”
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.
There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.
Remember the letter-writer whose office had been sent someone who couldn’t do the work by a job placement firm that said they’d lose their funding if the letter-writer’s office didn’t keep her? The hire, Carol, not only couldn’t do the work, but was disruptive — and her wealthy parents were being disruptive too. Here’s the update.
I found some menial tasks from the lists given and put Carol on them. She really liked making paper chains, cutting out paper decorations for her desk, and coloring them. I spoke with my boss and Alice (the placement firm contact) about getting a job coach for Carol. I told my boss I needed to hire a second person to do the work Carol wasn’t able to do — which was just about everything on her job description. Alice agreed to “look into” getting a job coach. Carol made lots of paper decorations for her 10 hours a week when we were babysitting. My boss said I could hire someone else to do Carol’s job as a part-timer but to interview candidates in September, when I returned from my long-planned vacation.
Two weeks after I asked Alice for a job coach, she was no longer with the job placement firm. We were back at square one. Then, I went on my vacation for two weeks. In those two weeks, my boss covered for me and got to see just what a problem Carol was firsthand. Highlights of those weeks include:
Carol’s dad dropped her off extra early one day. She came into the building and took the receptionist’s chair, replacing it with the one at her desk. The receptionist is an older lady with mobility issues and has a large, high backed chair. Carol’s is a simple office chair like the rest of us. Carol refused to give the chair back even saying “I deserve it!” multiple times while waving her arms threateningly at the receptionist. My boss called her dad to pick her up. The next day, he delivered a pricey office chair for her.
Carol’s mother decided to try coming to speak to my boss without me there. She arrived during the day, after Carol had been picked up. My boss told her to leave. She yelled across the office at how much better Carol was doing without me around. My boss told her to leave before he called the cops. She left.
One of my coworkers was tasked with giving Carol work. Carol yelled at her and told her, “You don’t tell me what to do!” She did this every day I was gone, despite being told I was going on vacation and “Lauren” would be in charge in my absence.
One day, Carol’s external conversations with herself were so loud and out of control my boss called her dad to get her. He was honestly afraid she was going to hurt someone or herself.
Carol was asked to wipe down the microwave and sink after she used them during lunch and left a mess. She told my boss, “I’m not a maid. You get a maid to do it!”
Carol had another run-in with one of the delivery guys. He asked her to hold the door to the package room since she was coming out and he was going in with a large load. She yelled at him to “do his job” and called him fat. Again.
After all of this, my boss called the organization and said Carol could not come back until they sent a job coach. In the meantime, I hired a high school kid to work part-time after school. Best decision ever.
Three weeks later, Carol came back with a job coach in tow. The coach, Fred, wasn’t great and I don’t even think he was trained as a job coach. He seemed very young and inexperienced and spent a lot of time on his phone. I called the agency and asked about Fred. The director there spoke as if this guy walked on water but I wasn’t seeing it. I asked Fred what his last job was, and he said a front desk clerk at a lower tier hotel chain. He said he took this job because the hours were better. I told him I needed a lot more coaching because paying Carol to cut paper decorations all day was ridiculous. He agreed, but didn’t care enough to actually do something. I called the agency again and was told that he was all they had.
So that brings us up to mid-October. Mid-October is our company’s big fall festival for the employees and our families. Carol showed up with both parents in tow. My boss allowed the mom to be there since we weren’t in the office but in a rented space. The parents spent a lot of time socializing with people, including my boss, but the mother made a clear effort to avoid me.
While this was going on, Carol was wandering around trying to play games that were meant for kids. She was told she couldn’t be in the bounce house, since kids were in there. She wanted a pony ride but was told she was too big. Stuff like that. Then she happened upon the cornhole game. A bunch of kids, probably ages 8 – 12, were playing cornhole while “Danny,” one of our long-time employees, was watching and filming his kids. Carol walked up and grabbed the bags off the board and said it was her turn. Danny told her she could play when they were done. Carol kept yelling that it was her turn. Danny told her to go find her dad. Carol then picked up a cornhole board and threw it across the grass. It struck another employee in the legs. Carol then threw the bags at one of the boys, hitting him in the back.
And that’s when my boss fired her right on the spot and told the dad he could come get the chair and any of her belongings on Monday but they had to leave immediately. The mother threatened discrimination lawsuits and kept yelling and ranting about how she’s never been treated so poorly in her life and how awful we all are — that we needed “more compassion” for Carol.
My boss said get out or he’d call the cops because Carol had just assaulted two people.
The dad at least had the good sense to pull the mom towards the car and then went back to get Carol who was still in mid-tantrum.
They never came back for the chair, so I claimed it as my reward for dealing with this ridiculous family.
The other good news is my new part-timer is a great kid. He’s going to welding school next year and I told him if he ever wants a welding job, he’s got one with us.
![[img]:aoeuse](https://analognowhere.com/_/aoeuse/aoeuse.png)
![[img]:shcgct](https://analognowhere.com/_/shcgct/shcgct.png)
ALT
, all the way down to the New York Times’ coverage of it. 
