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my manager set up a secret email address using my name, asking a coworker to swap pants, and more
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 manager set up a secret email address using my name
I work at a community college. All regular employees at the college are assigned email addresses that begin with our last name. My email, for example, is LastName_FirstName_MiddleInitial@collegename.edu.
In Outlook, if someone sends an email to a non-existent address, they will receive an “undeliverable” auto-reply. Several people have tried to email me using an incorrect email format (FirstNameLastName@collegename.edu). The incorrect email format doesn’t conform with the college email, so I assumed it had to be nonexistent. I emailed IT to ask them to set up that undeliverable message. They looked into my request and then discovered that the email address did exist and that the owner was my supervisor!
IT revealed that my supervisor had set up a private Teams group with her as the sole member, and the group email was my FirstNameLastName@collegename.edu. Any emails going to that email were being forwarded to her work email address.
It alarms me that she set up this email using my name — an email that I was not aware of and that only she had access to. I don’t know how to find out what she has been using that email for. She’s extremely passive-aggressive and acts like Kevin Spacey’s character in “The Usual Suspects” as she always plays dumb. She is also constantly gaslighting us. I can’t outright ask her why she created that email, because she’ll either lie to me or play the innocent and act confused, which are her two go-to moves. Is this something I can approach HR with? How should I proceed?
I’m trying to think of an innocent explanation for this and I’m pretty sure there isn’t one. It just sounds extremely nefarious.
And also extremely weird. She wants to be the one who receives any misdirected emails intended for you and doesn’t want you to know about it? Why? There can’t be that many, and they can’t be that interesting. It’s not even like she’s monitoring all your email — just the occasional misaddressed message. What could the motivation possibly be?
It sounds like we’ll never know, unfortunately, because it doesn’t sound like she’ll tell you. You could talk to HR about it, but I don’t know that they’ll do anything about it; it’s troubling but doesn’t fall in any obvious category of things they typically take on, like harassment or discrimination. You could try! But I wouldn’t count on much coming from it.
It sounds like this is just one of many problems with your boss. I’d add it to the list but I’m not sure you’ll get much benefit from putting a ton of energy into trying to unravel it.
– 2021
Read an update to this letter here.
2. Is it OK to ask a coworker to swap pants with me?
During college I enrolled in a program that we call Junior Enterprise, where the students have to, on their own, maintain a company. It is an awesome experience because we have the daily problems of a small company. We need to look for projects in the area that we are graduating in to pay for the expenses of the company.
When I was a senior member of our Junior Enterprise, I had an appointment with a teacher who we wanted to sponsor one of our projects. Around 30 minutes before the meeting, my pants ripped in the knee, very visibly. I asked an “intern” of the company who was my size to change pants with me, and she did it willingly. (We were both students in the same course, although not close friends.)
Would it be okay to ask a colleague at work if I were in the same situation with an important client coming in? I have never made up my mind if it was the correct choice or not.
I think you could mayyyybe ask a peer-level colleague if you had a pretty good friendship — but I would not ask an intern, because interns will feel obligated to say yes … and no one should feel compelled to literally give you the clothes off their back (well, legs).
The key with a request like this is you should only ask if you know the person would be comfortable saying no. By definition, that rules out interns for a lot of personal favors because of the power dynamic. There’s too much chance they wouldn’t really want to do it but would feel obligated to say yes anyway.
(That said, this might not have applied to your “intern” in the school program if you basically felt like peers.)
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write one of my favorite headlines ever.
– 2020
3. My coworker told her manager that I called her a rude name
I had a conversation with a peer, Ann, who works for another manager, during which time I called Ann’s manager an inappropriate name and showed her why that name was justified. At the end of the conversation, I recanted and told Ann that this conversation stays just between us and she agreed.
However, I was called into a conference room by Ann’s manager the next day and she asked me about the conversation (quite politely). I refused to answer, as I assumed it was a mutually agreed private conversation between Ann and me. Now I have a meeting with HR on Wednesday. What is my best course of action here?
Probably to apologize and say you realize that calling her a name was unprofessional and that you won’t do it again.
Don’t lean too hard on the “it was a private conversation” angle, because you’re unlikely to win that one. Conversations with coworkers — especially conversation with coworkers about work/other coworkers — don’t have any special right of privacy attached to them. They may get repeated, and they may get repeated in ways that cause problems for you (as happened here). And your employer is less likely to care that your coworker broke a confidence with you than that you’re calling a colleague a (presumably rude?) name.
The fastest way to make this go away is to say that you understand that it was poor judgment and that you’ll be more thoughtful about what you say at work in the future.
– 2015
4. Employee says she got “yelled at” when she gets feedback
I have an employee who uses words like “big trouble,” “I got smacked,” and “yelled at” when describing incidences when she is informed she is not following directions. When I hear her say those things, I cringe. I have never touched her, let alone smacked her! Please help!
“Jane, I understand you’re using hyperbole, but when you tell people you got ’smacked’ or ‘yelled’ at or ‘in trouble,’ you’re conveying something very different than what actually happened — and you’re putting me at risk if anyone takes you literally. I need to be able to give you feedback about your work without having it characterized so hyperbolically.” You could add, “Adults don’t get in trouble. They get feedback on their work, and that’s how we should refer to it.”
– 2019
5. My clients can’t make up their minds
I work as a freelance designer and recently have had clients who cannot make up their minds. I end up going in circles with designs. It feels like an endless game of whack-a-mole, they ask for X, I give them X, but now they really want Y, so I give them Y, but actually let’s go back to X, no never mind, let’s do Z, so I give them Z. At what point do I say: I’ve given you multiple options and you’re still not satisfied … really don’t know how to even finish that sentence. I read your pieces about breaking up with clients, but I really want these gigs. How do I tell them enough is enough with the redesigns? I feel like they’re violating boundaries. How can I nicely be stern about this? I find when I work with clients, I have been more compliant because I want the job and when I speak up it’s not always received well — perhaps I’m usually frustrated at that point. How can I be nice and assertive?
The easiest way to handle this going forward is to clearly lay out in your contract how many rounds of revisions are included in the scope of the work (for example, three). Then, when you send the first design, you remind them by saying, “Our contract gives us up to three rounds of revisions at this stage.” And then if they get to three rounds and they’re still revising, you let them know how much additional revisions will cost (even better if you laid that out in the contract too). Or if you want to be especially nice, you can say, “I can give you an extra round of revisions for free, but beyond that I’d need to charge you for the additional work.”
It sounds like you don’t have that kind of contract in place now, but you can still set limits — “I can do one more round of revisions after this, but then we’d be outside the scope of the project and I’d need to charge an additional ($X) for further rounds.”
– 2018
The post my manager set up a secret email address using my name, asking a coworker to swap pants, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.
I’m sorry, you were mauled by a tiger.
I’m sorry, you were mauled by a tiger.
Anybody wanna go uptown? I’m goin’ that way.
Anybody wanna go uptown? I’m goin’ that way.
It would have taken a lot longer
WHERE IS CILLA (BAND)? Alas, we may never find out. The mercurial berater of airline stewardesses and shop assistants has vanished like Scotch tape. Scotch tape? Scotch mist. Something the 3M corporation makes. I don’t know what.
The post It would have taken a lot longer appeared first on Bad Machinery.
Carney urges Canadians to make holiday donations to struggling shareholders
OTTAWA – In light of economic difficulties facing the nation, Prime Minister Mark Carney reminded Canadians to pause their own holiday celebrations and give generously to billionaire shareholders whose year-end dividends may be slightly lower this year. Speaking to Canadians in a televised holiday address, Carney reminded Canadians that “while we are all facing challenging […]
The post Carney urges Canadians to make holiday donations to struggling shareholders appeared first on The Beaverton.
updates: the suspicious text, the person who won’t retire, and more
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.
It was reassuring to hear from you and the readers that I wasn’t being paranoid about the text. Unfortunately, the truth behind the mystery text remains unknown, though the official story is that it was “legit.”
Shortly after your response, my manager ended up addressing the team, saying that she too got the weird text and spoke with her own boss about it. She said she was told it was valid and an additional way the company was trying to get feedback. It was, however, not guaranteed to be anonymous (which considering how we all received it, we figured it wasn’t) and that we didn’t need to respond to it. Whether this was the truth or her catching wind of our suspicion and altering the story, I don’t know. I believe someone in the comments had mentioned some companies will sometimes acquire old phone numbers to use, but the entire thing was still weird.
I did not take things to HR at that point because I shortly after found a new job (whether to a better place is still up for debate and a topic for another letter), but I have been in touch with former coworkers and found out that the shady stuff has continued in my absence. The place is still barely functioning on a skeleton crew as the manager still can’t seem to find employees and continues to do manipulative things such as trying to guilt trip people out of their approved vacation so she can take time off instead. When I left, she asked me to rewrite my resignation letter to put in a good word for her and talk her up (to be clear, it’s not like I wrote anything bad; I kept my letter positive and professional). I was blown away that she had the nerve to ask me this and told her I wasn’t rewriting it. The staff has tried to talk with her directly about the growing problems within the office, per her request, and she became upset and offended. When she didn’t follow through, they finally went over her head to her boss and HR but again received little to no response. I question whether going over her head regarding the text would have amounted to much either.
The entire place has been slowly falling apart, hence why I left. I honestly won’t be surprised if I eventually hear the office has closed down. It’s a shame because I think I jumped ship prematurely because of it, but here we are.
2. I was hired to replace someone who won’t retire
Thank you for sharing my letter a few months ago.
Your readers expressed alarm at the poor leadership of the president, the CFO never retiring, and the lack of accounting checks and balances. Reading the comments validated my feelings and gave me a big push to stop dawdling and get out of there.
When I quit the family foundation, I didn’t call out the president on the many things I disagreed with. He hadn’t listened to me before, and it was no longer my problem! But I did make it clear that I was frustrated to have such limited challenge, influence, and impact. He was taken totally by surprise and despite me giving four weeks’ notice, said he wished I’d told him I wanted to leave sooner. (I think because it’s his family’s foundation he expects everyone to think of it as their family, stay forever, tell him everything, etc. … which is another red flag and a topic I didn’t even get into!)
Your feedback and the readers’ comments were validating and encouraging. Only a few days after my letter was published, I came across a job posting I might have missed, and I’m now the director of finance for a statewide animal shelter. For context, a year and half ago I went back to grad school and pivoted to nonprofit work, hoping that I could someday work in animal welfare … so this is truly a dream come true. I’m so glad I didn’t wait any longer and risk missing this opportunity! My old job is so very far in the past, and I’m now busy and valued, and focused on a mission I care about deeply.
3. My manager disclosed medical information about my child to my coworker
I ended up talking to my manager directly, about a week before I saw your answer posted on the site. I used lots of “I” statements, explained how I felt, and explained how frustrated I was. She was properly contrite, apologized profusely, and cried. I decided that I felt comfortable working on repairing the relationship and moving on.
We didn’t meet again for about a month, and at our next meeting, I was informed that I would be switching supervisor. The explanation I was given was unrelated to her disclosure, and overall, it’s been a positive change. I feel a little frustrated that I went through the mental gymnastics of forgiveness, only to transition to working with her less, but we still do need to work together, so it’s not as though there isn’t an opportunity to continue to heal. I am keeping my eye on other opportunities at different organizations, and trying to focus on my own professional growth. Thanks for your great advice!
4. A colleague’s name and mine are so similar that clients mix us up (#3 at the link)
My tiny update on the same-name-as-my-boss conundrum. I haven’t quite leaned in fully to going by “Dr. Jane,” but I have been introducing myself as “Dr. Jane Thomas” and I’ve let a few Dr. Janes slip out. I haven’t had anyone confuse us yet when I do this.
The post updates: the suspicious text, the person who won’t retire, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.
The North Pole Has Suffered a Data Breach
Dear Valued Child,
This letter was slipped into your stocking to inform you that we recently identified a breach of our North Pole Magic Systems (NPMS) that may have compromised your personal data—namely, the thousands of hours of footage we have of when you are sleeping, as well as when you are awake.
How did the breach occur?
Shortly after Thanksgiving, we detected that a person within the NPMS organization (identity redacted for anonymity) clicked on a link entitled, “Winner!!! Claim FREE 6XL Red Coat With Fur Trim Now!” Regrettably, this turned out to be a phishing scheme that exploited a vulnerability in our system. We now understand that the innocent enchantment of believing hearts is not a reliable form of cybersecurity.
While we have yet to pinpoint the attacker’s identity, we have narrowed the suspects down to three previous perpetrators of crimes against the season: E. Scrooge, Mr. Grinch, and Big City Lady-Lawyer With Christmas Eve Deadline.
What information was involved?
When you opted in to NPMS (by requesting an item from St. Nick or his mall representative), you granted us express permission to access your biodata in order to make a list, check it twice, and upload it to a third-party cloud service.
This information includes, but is not limited to, your:
- Favorite sports team
- Mom’s cookie-baking prowess
- Percentage of nightly REM resulting in sugar plum visions
- Ability to hear ethereal ring of a magic sleighbell
- Home blueprints with detailed notes on how to bypass the security system to both enter and leave undetected by all humans and pets in the vicinity
What you can do
Please take precautions to monitor your Naughty Indicator of Coal Offering (NICO) Score, the number used to predict your likelihood of receiving coal for bad behavior. Your NICO Score appears in your annual Naughty or Nice Report, which you can request for free from SantasBigBookOfKids@me.com. You should review all indiscretions for accuracy and let us know immediately if you see a tantrum you didn’t throw or a pigtail you didn’t yank. All legitimate disputes will be brought to binding arbitration before a retired Elf on the Shelf.
Additionally, take stock of your and your peers’ presents for signs of fraudulent activity. For instance, did it seem suspicious that your “big gift” was a set of sight word flashcards despite you being very cool about never telling anyone that Lucas M. peed his pants on the field trip to the arboretum? Or maybe your three-year-old cousin received a limited edition Labubu even though last month she bit your arm so hard it left teeth marks through your corduroy jacket. Report all these and similar incongruous giftings to NPMS. We can’t issue adjustments now that the big guy has flown, but we can utilize our cross-departmental collaboration with the Tooth Fairy to advocate for suitable molar remuneration.
What you shouldn’t do
To maintain your confidence in NPMS, please don’t discuss the contents of this letter with any kind of mean older siblings. Note that showing up to a police department will result only in hair tousling and lighthearted chuckles.
There is also no need to share these materials with the Goldstein twins next door; we can assure you their data was not affected.
What we are doing
We sincerely regret any inconvenience caused by this incident, and in acknowledgement of our missteps, are offering compensation in the form of you getting the top ask on your wish list next year, with the following caveats:
- Must be suitably in line with your household income
- Tangible items only (i.e., not the gift of your divorced parents getting back together—we cannot make that happen. They seem much happier now, anyway)
- It will arrive in wrapping paper you’ve definitely seen in the garage before.
And if you’re wondering if Santa is now being mandated to add two-factor authentication to his iPad—yes, Virginia, he is.
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night,
Chief Elf Officer, NPMS
Stupidity and the Progress of Human Civilization
Rx Inspector: ProPublica’s New Tool Provides Drug Info the FDA Won’t
With every bottle of prescription medication comes an implied promise: The drugs are safe and effective and meet strict standards set by the Food and Drug Administration.
But the agency known as one of the world’s toughest regulators provides only intermittent oversight of the foreign factories where generic drugs are made. And when investigators turn up mold, filthy equipment and contaminants in those facilities, the FDA keeps the names of the drugs they make secret.
Consumers often have no way of knowing if the medications they are taking came from factories that used dirty water, were infested by insects or birds, or were outright banned from shipping drugs to the U.S., but then granted special exemptions to do so anyway.
Today, ProPublica is launching Rx Inspector, a first-of-its-kind database that provides answers to what the FDA won’t tell us: where our generics are coming from and the track records of the factories that made them. The information is harder to find than you may think.
Labels on pill bottles often list a distributor or repackager rather than the actual manufacturer — and some have no information at all. When ProPublica asked our readers to send in photos of their pill bottles, they flooded our inbox with pictures proving just how difficult that information is to come by.
Even though generic drugs make up 90% of prescriptions dispensed in the U.S., the FDA only provides piecemeal information about them. It’s scattered across different websites with no easy way to link drugs to their manufacturers, factory locations and regulatory track records. Over many months, our journalists connected that data. In one case, ProPublica had to sue the FDA in federal court and received a partial list of factory locations.
You can use this app to connect your own medication to the manufacturer that made it, to the specific factory where it was made and to any FDA inspection reports and serious compliance violations linked to that facility that ProPublica has obtained.
For example, you can enter your drug name and any information on the label of your pill bottle about the company that may have made it. If you don’t have a company name, you can enter the color of your pills, or any markings on them, details that can lead you to information for your specific drug. From there, you can learn the name of the actual manufacturer (not the company that simply repackaged or distributed it). And you can also see the address for the factory that produced it.
If the factory has been inspected by the FDA, we’ll show you the inspection reports and any subsequent warning letters. We didn’t have access to every inspection report, so you may only see summary information that includes the dates of the inspections and any findings.
For pharmacists and others particularly knowledgeable about drugs, we’ve added an advanced search option so that you can enter key information, such as the National Drug Code, and quickly pull up manufacturing and regulatory details.
Finally, this app will allow you to learn more about individual drugmakers overall by providing a way to search for their factories. By entering a company name, you can see when those factories were last inspected and whether the FDA took any action in recent years.
Keep in mind that if you turn up a troubling inspection report, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your drug is compromised. Doctors and pharmacists advise that you not stop taking your medications. Instead, you should talk to your health care provider about any concerns.
ProPublica described the app and the methodology used to build it to the FDA, which did not comment. The agency previously told ProPublica that it doesn’t reveal where drugs are made on inspection reports to protect what it deemed confidential commercial information.
Our data is incomplete in places. The FDA, for example, hasn’t released all of its inspection reports. And though the agency provided ProPublica with a list of medications and the factories that made them, some locations were missing. We’ll add more details as they become available.
But this app provides the most detailed look yet at the makers of America’s generic drugs and whether they’ve met manufacturing standards meant to keep us safe.
The post Rx Inspector: ProPublica’s New Tool Provides Drug Info the FDA Won’t appeared first on ProPublica.
Creatures in Higher Dimensions
I take my time to build up the mathematical intuitions behind visualizing functions, starting with 1-in-1-out functions, and pushing it up to 7-in-7-out functions, and beyond.
Enter Hyperspace: https://evolvecode.io/hyperspace/index.html
Source Code: https://github.com/MaxRobinsonTheGreat/hyperdimensions
Discord: https://discord.gg/tnjmrmprQs
~SUPPORT ME~
Scrimba: https://scrimba.com/?via=EmergentGarden
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/emergentgarden
Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/emergentgarden
Twitter: https://twitter.com/max_romana
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/emergentgarden.bsky.social
~SOURCES~
Functions Describe the World: https://youtu.be/zHU1xH6Ogs4?t=61
Hyperspace animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ga4IICXyCE
Shell Surfaces: https://www.geogebra.org/m/twfwsxb9
Music: https://www.youtube.com/@acolyte-compositions
Most come from this new album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx5DtYiJ2DI
AI Disclaimer:
I used AI code tools for the website and animations.
No AI video, images, script, voice, or music were used.
~TIMESTAMPS~
(0:00) Functions in Hyperspace
(2:47) Visualizing Functions
(5:37) Parametric Surfaces
(10:01) Slices of Slices
(14:55) More Parameters
(18:28) Exploring the Zoo
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Mad
Click here to go see the bonus panel!
Hovertext:
I push this joke out into the Internet knowing full well that SOMEONE has surely beat me to it.
Today's News:
ALTHo, Ho, Ho! I’m Regrowing My Foreskin!
Seasons greetings from your old friend Santa! With Christmas just a few short days away, Santa is hard at work at the North Pole, making presents for all you good boys and girls. But this year, Santa will come down the chimney a little gingerly, because Santa is very sore from attempting to regrow his foreskin!
You see, boys and girls, Santa might look merry while he smiles and eats cookies and milk in his big red suit, but beneath it all, I’m sad. I’m sad because my peppermint stick no longer has any of its special candy coating on the end that makes Santa feel extra good during sexual intercourse.
Many, many years ago, something terrible happened to your old friend Santa. Like so many beautiful babies, I was born with a gift between my legs that was wrapped in very sensitive paper called the frenulum. But soon after, some naughty doctors tore it off, exposed my glans, and hurt my penis very badly!
That terrible Christmas morning, Old St. Nick lost 70% of the feeling in his genitals. So for Santa, sex and masturbation haven’t been so holly or jolly!
Ho, ho, ho! That’s why I’m trying to manually stimulate regrowth by strapping a weighted ornament to the end of my Christmas tree for at least 15 minutes, three times a day!
Santa has made his list and checked it twice, and the arguments against male circumcision just keep on growing. These sick, twisted parents claim they mutilate their baby’s genitals for health—to prevent smegma and to protect against STIs. But we know the truth, boys and girls. There’s no AIDS or cancer on the North Pole!
Why do so many people consider the cut penis to be “nice” and the uncut penis to be “naughty”? If anything, it’s the other way around!
My dear sweet little sugar plums, there is no world in which a baby can consent to a painful medical procedure like circumcision. Santa wishes he could go back in time and give whatever sick fuck chopped off the tens of thousands of nerve endings in his foreskin a huge lump of coal.
But instead, Old Kris Kringle will spend the holiday season building a dual-tension tugging device in order to elongate his penile skin while it is both flaccid and erect. And gosh, if that doesn’t work, the elves will have to give his Yule log painful reconstructive surgery!
Beneath the Christmas lights, you can still see tiny marks where the doctor stitched up poor Santa’s surgical incisions all those years ago. The only Christmas “miracle” is that Santa can still manage to orgasm at all!
As hard as she tries, Mrs. Claus simply doesn’t understand. Underneath the mistletoe, she’s told Santa that she actually prefers the look of his circumcised penis. But when Old Mrs. Claus was born, she wasn’t taken from her crib and immediately forced to have her Christmas ham spiralized and honey-roasted!
No, she can still feel everything!
Just once I’d like to go down the chimney and feel every brick, every crack, and every groove. Why, Santa having sex without his foreskin is like Rudolph trying to lead Santa’s sleigh without his big red nose!
Believe me, boys and girls, there’s nothing that Santa hasn’t tried to regrow his Christmas tree. He’s tried manually pulling. He’s tried foreskin tape. Why, he’s even tried tying his penile skin to a special device called a Foreballs, which he then attached to the back of his sleigh!
On Dancer, on Prancer, on Donner, on Vixen—make Santa’s old penis be covered in thick skin!
So this year, instead of leaving out cookies, Santa would appreciate it if you instead took the time to educate yourself. Because sometimes the best gift isn’t a train set or roller skates or a dolly. It’s the freedom to un-mutilate your genitals with Santa’s Ultraskin ManHood Restorer, a gadget made right here in my workshop!
Ho, ho, ho-owwwwww! The weight is snagged on Santa’s pants. Hold on. Elves, stop loading up the sleigh and come and release the clamps.
Now, go boys and girls! Tell everyone what Santa taught you today! Because having an uncircumcised candy cane isn’t weird. But mutilating your son’s is.
Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!
The post Ho, Ho, Ho! I’m Regrowing My Foreskin! appeared first on The Onion.
That’s her gift
Shelley and Esther don’t often get to share time on the page, so when it happens, I consider it a treat for you and a treat for me. But not, perhaps, a treat for Cilla.
Note ye: comics update Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week before a week-long holiday break.
The post That’s her gift appeared first on Bad Machinery.
Experts anticipate a bad flu season but say it’s not too late to get vaccinated
Cowboy Who?Circle Circle
Dot Dot
Go Get Your Coodies Shot!
Trudeau unsure how many autographed headshots Katy Perry will want for Christmas
OTTAWA – Finishing out the last of his holiday shopping, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has reportedly asked aides how many autographed 8×10 photographs of himself to gift to his new girlfriend, Katy Perry. “Hmm… they are collectors items, but I also don’t want to be stingy since I have this whole stack of them […]
The post Trudeau unsure how many autographed headshots Katy Perry will want for Christmas appeared first on The Beaverton.
Well ... we've had an awful lot to think about ...
Well ... we've had an awful lot to think about today, and 'fraid the times up. So, until next time, think about it! #CowboyWho
From the people that brought you EAT.
From the people that brought you EAT.
Is He the Grinch or Just a Gen-X Man at Christmas?
“Why, for fifty-three years, I’ve put up with it now! I MUST stop this Christmas from coming! But HOW?” — Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas
1. He’s roughly fifty-three years old, give or take.
2. Unlike the music from his day, he thinks everything the youth are listening to is just a bunch of noise, noise, noise, NOISE.
3. Anticommercialist. Every year, he makes the same cynical comments about Christmas.
4. He’s used to being culturally excluded, forgotten, and ignored. But he doesn’t care.
5. Deep contempt for groupthink and is suspicious of the motivations of people, corporations, and the government.
6. He was a latch-key kid and still thrives with lots of alone time.
7. Definitely got some sort of heart trouble. You can tell by looking at him.
8. He wears his apathy as armor because he’s emotionally ill-equipped to handle the earnest sentimentality that comes with the holiday season.
9. His awkward presence could be described as “lurking.”
10. Even if he’s happily married, he’s got that divorced-guy energy.
11. He’s shabbily attired and will be inappropriately underdressed at every holiday function.
12. He responds to holiday merriment and well-wishes with a sneer.
13. He’s known for being a slacker, but will surprise you with one area of extreme competency. Like maybe he’s really good at guitar, knows an unsettling amount about municipal zoning laws, or can build a last-minute sleigh out of whatever’s in the garage.
14. His dog is his only friend.
15. He’ll get through Christmas the same way he gets through anything: gallows humor.
16. Despite his scrawny arms, you’re going to let him carve the holiday roast. Because even though he’s a sloppy asshole, you love him and want him to feel important and useful.
17. He’s literally green.
18. He won’t shut up about the band Pavement.
1–17: This is the Grinch. If he seems sad, it’s because he hasn’t learned the true meaning of Christmas. Help him get through the holidays by allowing him to commit a B and E on your house, supporting him through his subsequent breakdown, and taking him to the hospital if his heart becomes enlarged.
1–16 + 18: This is a Gen-X man at Christmas. If he seems sad, it’s because he’s nostalgic for pre-digital life. Help him get through the holidays by supplying coffee, sensible sneakers, access to a dark, quiet room, and taking him to the hospital if his heart becomes enlarged.
