This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…
1. How to tell an employee his pants are too revealing
I need some guidance! We have a new high school teacher who wears pants that show the imprint of his penis. Several students have gone to the principal to share this information. We recently had to remove a picture from our school’s Instagram page because after someone pointed it out, it was obviously very visible.
We’re planning to have a conversation with him to tell him that he hasn’t violated the dress code policy but we do need to bring it to his attention and suggest that he wear a different fit (loose), pants made with a heavier fabric and less stretch or maybe darker colored pants.
It’s refreshing to get a letter where this issue is about a man’s body rather than a woman’s! I don’t know that you’d need to address this in most workplaces, but in a high school? Yeah.
I’ve never contemplated what I’d say in this situation before! My best stab at it is: “I’m sure you don’t realize this is the case, but a lot of your pants are too revealing for our environment and a couple of students have mentioned it. I think you can solve it with looser clothing, or at the very least heavier fabrics or darker colors.”
I’ve gone back and forth on whether you should include that some students mentioned it. On one hand, how mortifying! On the other hand, if you don’t mention that, you risk him thinking you’re making a big deal out of nothing.
2. Do I have to answer unannounced video calls?
I am an in-house database developer. My company handles a lot of communication via Microsoft Teams. I’ve noticed it’s extremely common for most people, including executives, to shoot a message of “got time for a call?” before initiating a call, which is awesome!
My tasks in a day run pretty much the gamut — primarily development projects, but also documentation, support, querying data, data migrations, collaborating with users, etc. I pride myself on being very responsive. That being said, there are a handful of coworkers who will randomly initiate video calls, and I find it really frustrating when I’m trying to troubleshoot a tricky issue, on a roll with a development project, or working on a time-sensitive report for management. I’ve found that sometimes is takes a couple minutes to effectively transition between tasks, like to save what I was working on or find a good breaking point if I am working on a migration. Also, most questions I receive are easier to answer if I have a little context ahead of time and do a little research if necessary.
If I’m not at an ideal spot to take an impromptu Teams call, I don’t take it, but I do follow up quickly. I will take it if it’s management, but seriously management always reaches out before calling. I would say 9/10 users will reach out first, so it feels like very much “company culture” to do so.
Part of me feels like my aversion to unannounced video calls is an irrational pet peeve. The other part of me, though, feels like my time is most effectively managed when I’m not dropping everything at the drop of a hat with zero information. Is there an appropriate, more direct way to deal with the issue? Or should I just keep doing what I’m doing — that is, ignore it and follow up within 10 minutes after I’ve hit an appropriate break point? Or am I being a little petty?
These are never critical issues, and are often random data requests. I have also noticed a very high correlation between unannounced-video-call-initiaters and misusers-of-high-importance-email-and-read-receipt-settings.
What you’re doing is perfect. It wouldn’t be if you were in a job that required a different kind of availability, but for many/most office jobs it makes sense and is what most efficient people do.
You need to manage your time in a way that makes sense for the work, which in many jobs means focusing rather than stopping whatever you’re doing every time your phone rings (or someone stops by or an IM pops up or so forth). In fact, if I managed someone who stopped deep-focus work every time a new message popped up on their screen, I’d talk to them about ways to focus better (assuming I saw it reflected in their work or stress level, which is likely). This isn’t that different.
Also, this is true of all calls, not just videos calls. The unannounced video makes it worse because you might not be in a place or condition to spontaneously appear on video, but my advice would be the same if they were non-video calls too.
3. Senior managers who try to commiserate over current events
My great-grandboss wandered around our academic (major research institution) workplace looking to commiserate and, presumably, console staff (whom they barely know) after the election. Pretty much the same thing happened after the October 7, 2023 attack. What the hell is this?
They didn’t send out a carefully worded message that said, “We know that nerves are raw and emotions may be high due to current events. Please remember to be patient with your coworkers and seek out help if you need it (link to EAP).”
No.
They seemed to be looking for co-mourners or something. I’m of the opinion that they aren’t my parent, friend, or therapist and they should not be doing this. What are your thoughts?
My thoughts are the same as yours. It’s inappropriate and likely unwelcome to many people. Managers are uniquely positioned to help people during stressful outside events — by sending out the sort of message you described, adjusting workloads, or encouraging people to take time off if needed — and they should stick to those things, rather than (a) attempting to fulfill their own emotional needs through employees or (b) assuming some sort of pastoral role that isn’t appropriate and which no one wants them to take (not to mention the assumption that everyone they encounter shares their political views).
4. Former employee’s new company is still using his old email address — should I tell them?
We had a long-standing employee resign to work for a competitor. He left his replacement a mess to fix and we spent weeks fixing his mistakes. Upon his leaving, I notified our vendors that he’d left and changed all passwords to ensure he didn’t try to keep using our systems. The new company he went to placed orders with us and he was their old rep.
I gave his replacement access to his old email, as per company policy. We wait to delete the old email for about a month or two.
His replacement informed me that his new company is still sending messages to him at his old employee email, so we are getting included in all of their emails about projects and clients. I am unsure if this is because they have yet to issue him a new email or if it’s because they are so used to autofilling his old email. Should I tell the new company he’s working with that they are sending emails to wrong place or let them reap the consequences of not issuing their new employee a new email address?
You’d think someone over there would figure it out when their new hire isn’t receiving/responding to any of their messages!
I don’t think you have any absolute obligation to inform them, but it would be a professional courtesy to do it — and doubly so since it sounds like this new company is a client of yours (although also a competitor?). You’re understandably annoyed that your old employee left a mess you had to clean up, but it would be fairly petty to let that be the reason you stay quiet. I’m feeling a bit scorched earth myself lately so I understand the impulse, but you’re nearly always better off taking the high road.
The Republican who is likely to lead the Federal Communications Commission under President-elect Donald Trump detailed how he would run the agency when he wrote a chapter for the conservative Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. Carr, a longtime opponent of net neutrality rules and other broadband regulations, has also made his views clear numerous times when opposing rulemakings initiated by the current Democratic majority.
If Trump makes Carr the next FCC chairman after his inauguration, the FCC is likely to ditch consumer protection initiatives, like a recently announced inquiry into data caps, and attempt to regulate Big Tech companies while reducing regulation of Internet service providers. That could include forcing Big Tech companies to pay into a fund that subsidizes ISPs' broadband network construction.
A Carr-led FCC could also try to punish news organizations that are perceived to be anti-Trump. Just before the election, Carr alleged that NBC putting Kamala Harris on Saturday Night Live was "a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC's Equal Time rule," and that the FCC should consider issuing penalties. Despite Carr's claim, NBC did provide equal time to the Trump campaign.
This suggests that microplastics in the air may affect weather and climate by producing clouds in conditions where they would not form otherwise.
We are atmosphericchemists who study how different types of particles form ice when they come into contact with liquid water. This process, which occurs constantly in the atmosphere, is called nucleation.
Clouds in the atmosphere can be made up of liquid water droplets, ice particles, or a mixture of the two. In clouds in the mid- to upper atmosphere where temperatures are between 32° and minus 36° F (0° to minus 38° C), ice crystals normally form around mineral dust particles from dry soils or biological particles, such as pollen or bacteria.
Ice in clouds has important effects on weather and climate because most precipitation typically starts as ice particles.
Many cloud tops in nontropical zones around the world extend high enough into the atmosphere that cold air causes some of their moisture to freeze. Then, once ice forms, it draws water vapor from the liquid droplets around it, and the crystals grow heavy enough to fall. If ice doesn’t develop, clouds tend to evaporate rather than causing rain or snowfall.
While children learn in grade school that water freezes at 32° F (0° C), that’s not always true. Without something to nucleate onto, such as dust particles, water can be supercooled to temperatures as low as minus 36° F (minus 38° C) before it freezes.
For freezing to occur at warmer temperatures, some kind of material that won’t dissolve in water needs to be present in the droplet. This particle provides a surface where the first ice crystal can form. If microplastics are present, they could cause ice crystals to form, potentially increasing rain or snowfall.
Clouds also affect weather and climate in several ways. They reflect incoming sunlight away from Earth’s surface, which has a cooling effect, and absorb some radiation that is emitted from Earth’s surface, which has a warming effect.
The amount of sunlight reflected depends on how much liquid water vs. ice a cloud contains. If microplastics increase the presence of ice particles in clouds compared with liquid water droplets, this shifting ratio could change clouds’ effect on Earth’s energy balance.
The Earth constantly receives energy from the Sun and reflects it back into space. Clouds have both warming and cooling effects in this process.
Credit:
NOAA
How we did our work
To see whether microplastic fragments could serve as nuclei for water droplets, we used four of the most prevalent types of plastics in the atmosphere: low-density polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, and polyethylene terephthalate. Each was tested both in a pristine state and after exposure to ultraviolet light, ozone, and acids. All of these are present in the atmosphere and could affect the composition of the microplastics.
We suspended the microplastics in small water droplets and slowly cooled the droplets to observe when they froze. We also analyzed the plastic fragments’ surfaces to determine their molecular structure, since ice nucleation could depend on the microplastics’ surface chemistry.
For most of the plastics we studied, 50 percent of the droplets were frozen by the time they cooled to minus 8° F (minus 22° C). These results parallel those from another recent study by Canadian scientists, who also found that some types of microplastics nucleate ice at warmer temperatures than droplets without microplastics.
Exposure to ultraviolet radiation, ozone, and acids tended to decrease ice nucleation activity on the particles. This suggests that ice nucleation is sensitive to small chemical changes on the surface of microplastic particles. However, these plastics still nucleated ice, so they could still affect the amount of ice in clouds.
What still isn’t known
To understand how microplastics affect weather and climate, we need to know their concentrations at the altitudes where clouds form. We also need to understand the concentration of microplastics compared with other particles that could nucleate ice, such as mineral dust and biological particles, to see whether microplastics are present at comparable levels. These measurements would allow us to model the impact of microplastics on cloud formation.
Plastic fragments come in many sizes and compositions. In future research, we plan to work with plastics that contain additives, such as plasticizers and colorants, as well as with smaller plastic particles.
Anyone who says that rape and sexual assault allegations don’t have any impact on men’s lives needs to look at the facts. Our nation has condemned a serial sexual abuser who has long been plagued by assault and rape allegations to run the entire country. So the next time you think that sexually assaulting women doesn’t ruin men’s lives, reach out to the rapist in your life and see how he’s doing. Gainfully employed lawyer, doctor, corporate executive, father, president of the United States? Think of what they’re going through.
Obviously, rape allegations do ruin men’s lives, because now one particular rapist has to bear the ultimate burden: listening to JD Vance speak for the next four years.
But more so than that, we need to have empathy for the great responsibility that this sexual assaulter now bears. Imagine how much stress he must be under, not from the guilt or shame of mistreating countless women, but the weight of having to sign legal documents with his full name using an actual pen? Ugh.
Furthermore, some point to the president-elect and unjustly claim that being a convicted felon doesn’t ruin men’s lives. Well, clearly, being a convicted felon has ruined this man’s life. Have you seen the house he has to spend another four years in? His seventy-eight-year-old knees will hardly be able to take the pressure of constantly getting up to find the remote. Even worse, have you seen how many doors there are in the White House?
It’s tragic, really.
Some would say powerful men bounce back from bankruptcy without any long-term implications. Well, I encourage you to look to the new president for proof that is not the case. Despite filing for multiple bankruptcies, he is now burdened with the sheer weight of a $400,000-a-year salary. When you think about how bad of an investor businessman he is, you begin to realize how cruel this country is to men who are bad with money, rape women, and are convicted of multiple felonies
To those who say being a compulsive and pathological liar doesn’t ruin men’s lives, have you ever lied so much that you ended up running a country? Now, he has to keep lying for another four years. Do you understand how difficult it is for this man to pretend he cares about the people who voted for him? I cannot fathom the stress of having to put your own needs first when millions of people think they can count on you to save them. It’s a fate worse than being banished to Trump Tower.
Not only do the men who surround themselves with liars, grifters, racists, and misogynists face dire consequences, but the liars, grifters, racists, and misogynists suffer just as much. They all have jobs now. They have to spend the next four years making big, important decisions for all the educated, honest, discerning women who are too stupid to make any choices about their own bodies. Imagine how these men must feel. I, for one, am glad not to be in their position.
And the rapist’s opponent, a highly educated woman who has worked in multiple branches of government for decades, who has devoted her life to doing her best to fight for Americans everywhere, who surrounds herself with eloquent, honest, non-felon-convicted civil servants, now snagged herself a four-year vacation. She won’t even have to make decisions about her own body anymore. She can rest easy at night knowing that Supreme Court–installed zealots will make the important choices for her.
Women got off easy this time around. Men who have made grave mistakes in their life, lied, cheated, stolen, obstructed democracy, and raped are punished with the weight of having to try and figure out which hole a tampon goes in. We should all be so grateful.
The only thing that ruins women’s lives? Being born.
Not only is ABC13 Houston KTRK turning 70, but some of its longtime anchors are also celebrating milestones. Evening anchor Gina Gaston is celebrating 30 years with the station, while weekend anchor Tom Abrahams is marking 25 years!
There is a room with three doors. Each bears a label: “Latino Vote,” “Purpling Suburbs,” and “Big City Turnout.” This November, Texas Democrats opened these three doors, and behind all they discovered a Cerberus from Greek mythology with the heads of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Greg Abbott. Then the monster ate them.
That pretty much sums it up, so feel free to stop reading now. But, if you insist, I’ll elaborate.
On November 5, past and future President Trump carried Texas by 14 percentage points. That is the best Republican performance in the state’s top-vote-getting race since 2014, the rout that brought Governor Abbott into power. Put another way, Kamala Harris’ performance was the worst for a Democratic presidential hopeful in the state since Barack Obama’s in 2012, and she even fell short of Obama’s ’08 margin. Put a third way, Texas Democrats have been set back a decade.
Yes, failed U.S. Senate candidate Colin Allred did outperform Harris in his bid to unseat Republican Ted Cruz, but a nine-point margin is not anything to build on, especially when Democrat Beto O’Rourke had come within three of unseating Cruz six years prior.
Things weren’t supposed to go like this. As the moon pulls the tides, demographic change was going to steadily lead Texas into the Democratic column, creating an existential crisis for Republicans at the state and national levels. Just ask former presidential frontrunner Jeb Bush: “Four years from now, Texas is going to be a so-called blue state,” foretold the junior Bush brother—in 2012.
Sometime in 2004, a year after Republicans completed their takeover of the state government, Texas became a so-called majority-minority state, as Anglos lost the majority status they’d held for the prior century and a half. Eighteen years later, in 2022, Hispanics edged out Anglos to become the plurality of Texans, en route to a likely majority in the coming decades. You didn’t need to be Nostradamus to see that, since Latinos vote Democratic, Team Blue was on the ascent.
Meanwhile, the state shook off some of its lower-case democratic apathy (the result, in no small part, of a long history of voter suppression). From the 1970s through the ’90s, Texas’ voter registration rates were abysmal, hovering around only 60-some percent of the voting-age population. Since about the turn of this century, these numbers have improved significantly, with this year’s rate at 85 percent. Similarly, the state’s shameful turnout rates have climbed. In 2020, a higher share of Texas’ voting-age population cast ballots than in any other year in the five decades of data made available by the Secretary of State. That year also saw the highest turnout of registered voters since 1992.
Increased registration and turnout, naturally, was going to unleash the electoral power of the state’s changing demographics—awakening what we used to call “the sleeping giant.”
But, friends, something has happened on the way to heaven.
Early 2024 exit polling (grab whatever size grain of salt you feel is appropriate), shows Trump winning the Latino vote in Texas by 11 points—a 28-point swing from exit polling in 2020 and a 44-point swing from 2016. In the Rio Grande Valley, the 4-county region of 1.4 million overwhelmingly Latino residents at Texas’ southern tip, Trump beat Harris by about 5 points. Just four years ago, Joe Biden carried the region by 15, about half the margin by which Hillary Clinton won it in 2016. In Bexar County, home to San Antonio—the state’s largest majority-Latino city—the top-ballot Dem advantage fell from 18 points in 2020 to 10 this year. Further analysis will clarify this picture, but the upshot is clear: Trump made historic gains among Hispanic Texans.
The reasons for this sea change will require untangling in the months and years to come. For example, while the complex racial identity of Tejanos may play a crucial role, it could also be that Trump’s cross-racial appeal to men, the non-college educated, and (apparently) the young, holds the greater explanatory power. (The Latino shift was not isolated to Texas but nationwide.)
What’s clear, though, is that this change constitutes a three-alarm fire for Texas Democrats—unless they can compensate through one of their other strategies, which this November’s outcome suggests they cannot.
In the Trump era, Lone Star Dems began placing more of their hopes in suburbs that were suddenly shifting from red to purple. This is most often glossed as white suburban women recoiling from Trump himself. In 2020, Biden narrowed the margin in Collin County—the state’s most populous suburban county and part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro—down to four points, a bright spot in a rough year for Texas Dems. This year, Trump carried Collin by 11. In Fort Bend County, outside Houston, the Democratic edge shrank from 11 to one over the same time period. In Austin-area Williamson County, a narrow Biden win in 2020 has yielded to a 3-point Trump victory now. (For good measure, Trump erased Democratic gains in Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth, too.)
The early exit polls show Texas women splitting down the middle between Harris and Trump, both an improvement for Republicans and a sign that the post-Roe strategy deployed by Harris (and Allred) was apparently drowned out.
That leaves just one of the Democrats’ hypothetical paths to progress: growing turnout in the state’s swelling and increasingly blue cities. Or, in a word: Houston.
Between 2016 and 2018, Dems seemed to seize firm control of Harris County (i.e. Houston), the nation’s third-most populous county at 5 million residents, as their top margins grew and they largely swept local Republicans from office. This was a step long understood as essential to flipping the state. “As Houston goes, so goes Texas,” wrote my old boss for the Texas Observer in 2013. That statement may indeed hold, but Houston is going backward. This year, Kamala Harris carried Harris County by five points, less than half of Biden’s 2020 margin. And, down-ballot, the GOP snagged an astonishing 10 judgeships and nearly seized the district and county attorney seats. Turnout among registered voters in the county was nine points lower than in 2020. Statewide, that decline was around six.
Meanwhile, in a final demographic curveball, exit polls show Harris and Trump dead-even among Texans aged 18-29, a sickening surprise for Dems if borne out.
In legislative races, the trend of marginal gains by the GOP, backed by long-term strategic planning and the governor’s warchest, paired with underperformance by Democrats continued—as Team Blue fumbled away a state Senate seat and two state House seats, a marginal decline that will grease the wheels for reactionary policy next year.
In 2020 and 2022, despite Democrats falling short of predictions, one could find silver linings: Biden’s margin was a step forward, and the following midterm didn’t go as badly in South Texas as feared. This time around, there is no bright spot and nothing clearly pointing the party in any particular direction.
I won’t suggest a solution in this piece. After all, I’d thought Harris would be our next president, so you shouldn’t listen to me even if I did. But I’ll offer two thoughts.
At the Senate level, it’s possible that no candidate could have fared much better than Allred in an election where the entire country moved toward Trump. On the other hand, it’s a bit hard to imagine a candidate with $80 million dollars, and no disastrous scandals, doing any worse than Allred did. What Beto O’Rourke had in spades in 2018, and Allred lacked entirely, was genuine grassroots enthusiasm. O’Rourke cultivated this through his personal charm and his relentlessly energetic campaigning. He convinced people to support him, not Democrats in a generic sense, and it never felt like he was birthed in a campaign consultant’s lab. Maybe the Monday morning naysayers were wrong, and O’Rourke was onto something after all.
And at the presidential level, there was, four very long years ago, a candidate who demonstrated an outsized appeal to young and Latino voters in particular. He actually won every populous Texas border county in the 2020 Democratic primary, and he damn near won the state despite a full-court press from party apparatchiks to stop him. His name, of course, was Bernie Sanders.
Maybe, one day, Texans will get to vote on a candidate—perhaps a Latino/a—who can campaign something like O’Rourke on economic and healthcare policies resembling Sanders’. Maybe we’d all find ourselves, again, surprised.
But, here I am, spilling ink. It’s dark times ahead, y’all—and I can hear Cerberus growling.
After conservative criticism over the LGBTQ+ minor, university officials started looking at all its programs. Faculty say they were excluded from the process.
If you've been wanting an electric car but everything seems too expensive, there's some good news on the horizon. A whole lot of EV leases are due to expire in 2026, which should lead to something of a glut, according to data analyzed by JD Power.
We have the revised IRS clean vehicle tax credit to thank. This was revamped under the Inflation Reduction Act, and while tough new battery sourcing rules and a requirement for final assembly in North America have meant many fewer EVs are eligible for the tax credit when bought new, a loophole that considers a leased vehicle to be a commercial sale means any leased EV is eligible for the $7,500 incentive, which can now be subtracted from the price of the EV at the time of sale or leasing.
Since there's also no price cap on the EV or income cap on the buyer, leasing is often a better idea than purchasing outright when it comes to new EVs, particularly for people who are worried about long-term battery degradation. (In fact, this is an overblown fear that is not backed up by data from older EVs, other than the early Nissan Leaf, which does not have active battery cooling.)
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
The clinic I work for filled a medical receptionist position. The new hire had worked as a receptionist for other offices for over 18 years. Sure, they had to learn the ropes of a new EHR (electronic health record) program, but they should already know enough to not be so overwhelmed that they had to call in, right?
On the third day of employment the new hire called in, stating that they “were too overwhelmed and needed to regroup.” They were going to take the day to get their notes together and would come in the next day. I, as the training manager, asked that they come in and offered to help them organize their notes and answer any questions. They refused. There was not any sign of remorse or promises to be more dependable.
For only two days in, the new hire had been doing well. But training was just the basics at that point. We had not even gotten to the vast amount of information required to fully do the job. And training for any job is a bit overwhelming, but that is part of the training process, right? If the employee was too overwhelmed to even come into work, it would no doubt be far worse down the line.
Yes, there was a chance that they would work out and be the ideal employee. But after having been burned one too many times wasting time and resources and wary of any red flag, our administration team decided it was best to terminate them instead of waiting for what seemed like the inevitable – having an unreliable or easily overwhelmed employee.
Is this a reasonable response? The individual had quit their job to start the new position at our clinic. But they were the one to call in for their shift. Is it reasonable to terminate such an employee within their first week because you are not “sure”?
It’s not unreasonable to be very alarmed that a new hire called out on day three because two days of training had been too much and they needed to “regroup.”
I’d be alarmed by that too.
I think ideally you would have talked with them in person the next day (assuming they did come in the next day) and tried to get a better understanding of what was going on. Who knows, maybe it wasn’t just about the job but also outside stuff as well … but absent any additional details like that, it’s a pretty major red flag and I don’t think it was unwarranted to just decide to cut your losses at that point.
I am curious about what the rest of the picture looked like: was this someone with strong references and a history of solid stays at previous jobs? If so, I’d be a lot more inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, at least as far as having a conversation with them before deciding anything (as well as to wonder if something had happened during those two days that you didn’t know about yet).
But with the person not offering up any additional info about what was going on, even after you asked that they come in and said you’d sit and help them, I can’t deem your management team’s response unreasonable.
Mike Tyson and Jake Paul will face off Nov. 15 in a heavyweight boxing match streamed exclusively on Netflix. Here are the rules the boxers will be required to follow:
Tyson and Paul must spend the first 20 minutes explaining who they are to Gen Z and Gen X, respectively.
Boxers are each limited to three ad reads per round.
A boxer automatically loses the fight if he is knocked down and cannot get an energy drink company to sponsor him within 10 seconds.
The fight will be eight rounds, released weekly by Netflix.
Steroids encouraged.
Walkout robes must have cool flames on sleeves.
Each fighter must organically mention Bridgerton at least one time.
Biting, slapping, and hair pulling are expected.
Pep talks between rounds are limited in subject to a beautiful dame in the crowd who’s worth winning it all for.
No flip flops.
The fight doesn’t end until Netflix doubles its subscriber numbers.
Since the Kingdom of Life Academy moved from its location at the Colonial Hills Baptist Church in Tyler to its own 23-acre space in town, they’ve struggled to get enough students to keep afloat, going from 10 students at the end of 2019 to 20 students this year.
Its website states the campus offers a “Christ-centered education” to grades six through 10. “All education is inescapably Christian in that all truth is God’s truth. The Bible, as the infallible, inerrant and inspired Word of God, is the foundation and guide for all knowledge and is basic to all elements of education.”
Struggling private religious schools like Kingdom of Life, as well as Catholic parochial schools facing widespread declining enrollment, have been looking to the state to throw them a lifeline through a school voucher program that would pay for the tuition of private school students at large. For nearly 30 years, a bipartisan coalition in the Texas House has staved off efforts to siphon public dollars to private schools. But after Tuesday’s election results, Governor Greg Abbott and the school voucher movement are inching closer to getting what they want.
“We have more than enough members of the Texas House of Representatives elected last night to make sure that school choice is going to pass,” Abbott said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon in front of the Kingdom of Life Academy campus.
Public education advocates say that while defeating school vouchers next legislative session will be an uphill battle, the fight isn’t over.
“There’s more than one way to get the voice of the people amplified. It’s not always at the ballot box. If we get such an overwhelming cry against this policy, I think you’re going to see House members tell the speaker not to let the policy come to the [House] floor,” said Charles Johnson, executive director of the public education advocacy group Pastors for Texas Children, which has long organized faith-based leaders to fight against vouchers and for religious liberty.
In the last legislative session, Abbott tied a $7.6 billion public school funding package to a universal private school voucher program. Even after four special sessions, House legislators voted 84-63 to strip the voucher proposal from the bill; 21 Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the bill. Abbott poured $8.8 million into House primary campaigns and ousted nine incumbent Republicans who voted against vouchers. Much of this was bankrolled by Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass, who contributed an astounding $6.3 million to Abbott’s warchest. Yass also gave $8.7 million to AFC Victory Fund, an affiliate of the Besty Devos-backed American Federation for Children, which in turn poured nearly $5 million into the Texas primaries. An affiliated PAC of the right-wing Club for Growth also spent over $8 million, according to state campaign finance records.
To counter Abbott’s gains in the primaries, House Democrats targeted several key races with the goal of flipping two or three GOP-held districts. They fell far short of their goal and even lost two open seats held by retiring Democrats. The GOP will now control 87 of the 150 seats in the lower chamber.
Abbott declared that there are now 79 “hardcore school choice proponents” in the state House, enough to meet the simple 76-vote majority needed to pass a voucher bill.
Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at the Michigan State University, told the Texas Observer that Abbott is following the same playbook as in 30-some states where vouchers were passed. “A lot of outside dollars are spent on the Republican primary processes. The only difference with Texas is that you do have this longer bipartisan tradition of opposition, but it’s also a lot bigger and a lot more expensive to play in the primary game [in the Texas Lege].”
But there’s no shortage of big money in Texas GOP politics. As Johnson told the Observer, “If you’ve got billions of dollars at your disposal, you can buy a legislature. And that’s what Tim Dunn, Farris Wilks, and Jeff Yass, Betsy DeVos, and others in their network have done. They bought a legislature.”
Despite Abbott’s declaration of victory, there are still a number of factors that may upset his voucher agenda.
“We have one more election before the session starts that may be the most important, and that is the election of a speaker,” said Democratic state Representative James Talarico, who serves on the House public education committee. Speaker Dade Phelan is currently facing a mutiny from a significant bloc of the Republican caucus who want him gone. GOP House members will hold a caucus meeting in early December to cast their (non-binding) votes for speaker.
“A lot is going to change over the next few months,” Talarico said.
After Donald Trump announced Abbott was on his vice presidential shortlist back in February, Abbott told reporters he planned to run for governor again in 2026. But Trump’s election has prompted another round of speculation that he might end up in other positions in Trump’s new administration next year.
Johnson said he believes that without Abbott’s pressure campaign, many other House Republicans would vote against vouchers: “Some more traditional Republicans who believe that vouchers are bad, voted for them anyway to keep Greg Abbott off their back.”
It may be wishful thinking to pin hopes of a voucher downfall on an off-chance cabinet appointment, but it is true that the policy’s passage is not set in stone.
“The results last night should not be mistaken for a mandate on private school vouchers,” Talarico said.
He believes that the presidential election affected the state House races down ballot but said that across Texas and the nation, even where there was a red wave, school vouchers or sending taxpayer money to private schools is still deeply unpopular with voters.
In the deep-red states of Nebraska and Kentucky where Trump won with commanding leads, voters also struck down ballot measures for school vouchers by strong margins. Colorado, where Harris won, rejected a measure that would have enshrined the right to “school choice” in the state’s constitution.
Cowen said that voucher programs across the country have mostly led to declining student achievement. During the last legislative session, attempts by Democrats to add financial and academic accountability measures to the voucher bill were rejected by Senate Republicans and Abbott.
And across the 30-some states that have a school voucher program, Cowen notes that 70 percent of voucher users were already attending private school.
At the news conference, Abbott asserted that school vouchers would not take away money from public schools, saying that money from vouchers would come from the general fund and not the permanent school fund. “[Voucher opponents] make it sound like you can’t have both school choice and robust public schools,” Abbott said. “That’s completely false. The reality is we can have the best public schools in America and also have school choice at the very same time. It does not have to be one or the other, and it’s wrong to pit one against the other.”
Public education advocates disagree. “If you commit yourselves to paying tuition for students who are already in private school, costs borne by the private sector just last year or this year, it gets really hard, really quickly to pay what you need on the public school side,” Cowen said.
Arizona, which has a universal voucher program, is staring down a $1.4 billion budget shortfall this year and had to make significant cuts to other state programs.
“We are focused on what this state’s educators care about: fully funding the public schools that 90 percent of Texas students attend. We would hope the governor and the legislature are also focused on that outcome,” said Patty Quinzi, director of public affairs and legislative counsel at the Texas American Federation of Teachers.
The coming legislative session in 2025 could have an immense effect on the future of public education in Texas. Public ed backers hope the desire to protect public schools will help once again sway Texans to act and put pressure on their elected representatives.
“The very existence of public schools is at stake. I think if we pass a voucher scam in the state, it’ll be the beginning of the end for public education as we know it,” Talarico said.
Rafael will continue west and eventually turn southwest, steered by high pressure over Florida and the northeast Gulf.
Rafael unlikely to cause serious land problems at this point for Mexico or the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Higher tides are likely for Texas and perhaps Louisiana, but as we explain below, they will fall well short of levels seen during Alberto earlier this season.
WYD, Rafael? (NOAA/NHC)
Hurricane Rafael doing some unique things for November
Hurricane Rafael is motoring along this morning in the Gulf of Mexico off to the west and west northwest.
Hurricane Rafael is heading west and slowly beginning to feel dry air and some wind shear. (Weathernerds.org)
Rafael is a category 2 hurricane with 100 mph winds, down a bit from its peak on approach to Cuba yesterday. It will likely hold steady or gradually weaken in the next couple days as it tracks west.
A storm tracking west in the Gulf is not uncommon. However it is virtually unheard of in November.
November hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. (NOAA)
Only Hurricane Jeanne in 1980 tracked west in the Gulf in November, and interestingly, it followed a very similar path to Rafael, just farther west of Cuba and then died off before getting to Texas or Mexico. Hurricane Juan in 1985 also had a noteworthy track in that it did several loops over the northern Gulf before eventually making a final landfall near Pensacola. But most Gulf storms in November come due north or track northeast out of Central America as weakened systems. Rafael will definitely be a historically noteworthy system.
While a handful of outlier models still linger a weak Rafael in the northern Gulf, our best guidance generally takes Rafael southward into the Bay of Campeche as a slowly weakening system, much like the NHC track at the top of this post. (Tropical Tidbits)
Model guidance is actually in decent agreement today that Rafael will track due west and then inexplicably southwest into the Bay of Campeche. I want to tackle two questions here. First, what in the <redacted> is happening here? Second, someone asked why this storm is not as concerning as Tropical Storm Alberto, which did something kinda sorta similar back in June and caused some considerable coastal flooding on the Texas coast. The two questions are somewhat related.
So, the what is fairly simple to explain. If we look at a map of the upper air pattern, or what will steer Rafael at 48 hours when that turn to the southwest begins, we see high pressure over Florida and the Southeast pushing Rafael to the west.
The upper air map on Saturday morning shows high pressure directing Rafael off to the west. (Tropical Tidbits)
By Monday morning, the high pressure center has moved east of Florida, but it has also kind of strung itself out more. This imparts more of a northeast to southwest type of motion on Rafael. Keep in mind that during this time, Rafael will continue to slowly weaken, so it will also become more susceptible to these steering currents as well, making it easier to sort of “bully” the system into the Bay of Campeche.
High pressure will be directing more of a northeast to southwest steering current on Sunday night and Monday which, when combined with a weakening Rafael should allow it to get shoved into the Bay of Campeche. (Tropical Tidbits)
Is this a threat to Mexico? It seems like it won’t be a real serious threat, but it at least bears some watching to make sure everything behaves as expected.
So this leads us to the second question: Why is this storm not really a major flooding concern for Texas, whereas Alberto was back in June. Here’s what the upper air pattern looked like for that event.
THIS MAP IS NOT CURRENT! A map from Tropical Storm Alberto shows a tighter pressure gradient establishing over the entirety of the Gulf due to both the storm in the Bay of Campeche and high pressure to the north. (Tropical Tidbits)
During Alberto, high pressure to the northeast of the Gulf, combined with low pressure in the southwest Gulf led to a broad, strong pressure gradient flow across the entirety of the Gulf. That is what we call a long “fetch,” meaning moisture and waves had an opportunity to pile up in the western Gulf eventually. That led to coastal flooding in Texas and Louisiana. In Rafael’s case, we have the system in the southwest Gulf, but it’s a bit smaller. We also lack high pressure to the north that would enhance Gulf moisture and fetch. Will tides increase on the Gulf Coast? Probably. Will they reach Alberto levels? Almost certainly not. So this is why we aren’t especially concerned about coastal flooding.
Rafael will hopefully be a meaningless blurb by Monday, but we’ll see. Meanwhile. another weak system has a slight chance to develop north of the islands heading into next week. At this point, we don’t view that as a particularly serious concern.
CHAPPAQUA, NY—Pressing her finger to the recently defeated candidate’s lips and urging her not to be afraid, a cloaked Hillary Clinton reportedly beckoned Kamala Harris to follow her into the woods Thursday morning. “Come, it’s time for you to join me beyond the pines—surrender yourself to the embrace of nature,” said the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, pulling back her hood, smiling gently, and offering a hand to Harris as John Kerry emerged from a distant spruce wearing a flowing linen shawl to assure the vice president that it would all be okay. “There are wonders here, where the sunshine breaks through the canopy and the cryptids nurse from the stream. Each hour is a year, and each breath is a blessing. Now listen to the leaves and let them guide every step you take. Here you are safe. Here you are free. Here you are with her.” At press time, reports confirmed Harris’ eyes had dilated as she gazed into the abyss and waited for acceptance by the forest spirits.
Donald Trump overcame four indictments, a criminal conviction, a finding that he was liable for sexual abuse, accusations of inciting an insurrection, and the bullet of a would-be assassin to be declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election, a shocking political comeback with massive consequences for the future of America. What do you think?
“What can I say, I’m a sucker for second chances.”
Juan Campos, Xylophone Marketer
“I’m sure the adversity has helped him grow.”
Zach Cox, Skirt Hemmer
“It just goes to show that in America, any bad thing is possible.”
Once, there was a deceitful, misogynistic shepherd boy. He spent his days spewing racist lies, showing off the large flock his father had handed to him, and fondling sheep. Then, one day, he took a great breath and sang out, “Wolf! Wolf! A wolf is coming!”
The villagers came running up the hill to drive the wolf away. But when they arrived, they found no wolf. The boy laughed at the look on their faces.
“Holy crap, this guy is full of good ideas,” said the villagers. “Get a load of this great, great guy and his fantastic ideas about wolves.”
“What wolves? There’s no wolf,” said the one villager who used the village library.
“Shut up, you fucking elitist prick,” said the villagers. “Everybody knows there are wolves.”
“Hell yeah, there are wolves,” laughed the shepherd boy. “Give me money. I am your president now.”
And the villagers declared the shepherd boy president.
Over the next few years, the shepherd boy threw garbage around the village, siphoned money from the villagers, and blamed everything on wolves. Then came a plague. The shepherd boy had been warned about this plague, but he was far too busy building tacky golden statues of himself to do anything about it. So, finally, after a lot of death and a VERY long town meeting, the majority of the villagers kicked the shepherd boy to the curb.
“Voter fraud!” cried the seventy-four-year-old shepherd boy in the greasiest, most annoying voice imaginable. “I’m being cheated by dead people and illegals!”
“Go away,” said the exhausted majority.
But the shepherd boy sang out again, “Wolf! Wolf! The whole system is A WOLF.” To his delight, a few villagers ran into the town square to drive the wolf away.
“WOLVES!” screamed the small group of villagers at nothing. They hit each other with sticks and attempted to burn the town down.
“What the fuck was that?” said the rest of the villagers, who weren’t insane.
“That’s a bad sign for democracy,” said the one villager who used the library, even though everyone had access to it.
“SHUT UP, you virtue-signaling globalist libtard! Feeling triggered, snowflake? This is about WOLVES!” yelled the villagers. “Besides,” they said. “He’s just kidding. Once things calm down a bit, the shepherd boy will stop crying wolf, even though he straight-up says he’ll never stop crying wolf. That guy is hilarious.”
Soon, most of the villagers were struggling. Plague recovery was slow, the shepherd had ruined much of the town’s infrastructure, and the cost of living was unbearably high. Many villagers were looking for something to blame. “We’d have more money if it weren’t for all these goddamn wolves,” grumbled one villager to another.
Then the shepherd boy sneered, “Wolf! Wolf! Millions of the biggest wolves you’ve ever seen in your lives! And I should know, I’ve seen the biggest wolves around, believe me! They’re eating the cats! They’re eating the dogs! They’re stealing OUR money for transgender wolf surgeries!”
“WOLF!” yelled way too many of the villagers. “We don’t want any transgender wolves around here! They might read stories to our children at the library!”
“What’s wrong with that?” said the library-frequenting villager.
“Shut the fuck UP, you blue-balls blue-state beta-cuck!” screamed the villagers. “There are wolves everywhere! You’re too busy guzzling Hillary Clinton’s wolf COCK to see the truth!”
“What… are you talking about?” asked the villager, confused by this misdirect.
“WOLVES!” screamed the villagers, frothing at the mouth for a paternalistic authority figure to tell them what to do. “THE WOLVES ARE COMING!”
“THE WOLVES ARE COMING!” repeated the villagers’ wives. The villagers’ wives used to be villagers, too, but with all the hubbub about wolves, the women lost many of their rights. But they didn’t care. As long as they were comfortable and didn’t have to have difficult conversations with their husbands, they were happy to let the elderly shepherd boy with visibly diminishing mental facilities burn their rights into the goddamn ground.
Then, the big stupid shepherd boy rolled up in a big stupid truck with his big stupid face on it. “WOLF!” screamed the ugly, evil shepherd boy (who no one could quite believe wasn’t dead yet, even though two villagers had already tried to assassinate him). “WOLF TRUCK WOLF TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK WOLF WOLF WOLF.”
“WOOOOOOOOOOLLLFFFFF,” roared the majority of the villagers.
“He’s lying,” cried many villagers, who were becoming genuinely terrified of their neighbors.
“Why would he lie?” shouted the majority.
“I’M NOT LYING!” screamed the shepherd boy.
“We believe you!” cheered the majority.
“I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!!” screamed the criminally convicted shepherd boy.
“He’s just joking,” laughed the majority.
Just then, when things couldn’t get any worse, some wolves arrived in town.
“WOLVES!!!!” howled the shepherd boy.
“WOLVES!!!!” howled the majority.
But these wolves weren’t actually wolves at all. They were just new villagers. New villagers from other villages.
At the edge of town, one young villager, who wasn’t old enough to have a say, watched the shepherd boy as he called for destruction. She watched as the shepherd boy licked his wolf-like chops, his thick wolf fur barely hidden under his inhuman orange skin. She watched how his wolf eyes gleamed. She watched as the shepherd boy began ransacking the village as the majority threw themselves into violence.
“What do we do now?” she asked, looking up at the villagers who had hung back to stand with her.
“Protect whoever you can. And the library,” said the villagers, searching for a safe spot to set up camp. “We’re going to need that library again someday.”
In brief: Today’s post discusses the ‘why’ of yet another weak front on the way for Houston this weekend, and the potential for some healthy rain chances on Friday night and Saturday morning as it pushes into the region. Sunday and the first half of next week should bring fair weather before another, stronger front likely arrives about a week from now.
Why have we been getting weak fronts?
So far this fall we’ve yet to really get a strong cold front, which brings in a concerted push of colder and drier air down from the north and northwest. I call these “in-your-face” fronts, which you can literally stand outside and feel as they move in. One of the reasons for the lack of these fronts is that the overall pattern has favored glancing blows, which bring in more Pacific air rather than dragging colder Canadian air down into the region.
The GIF image below showcases what will happen this weekend, when a very weak front arrives. The dark blue area over New Mexico is the low-pressure system in the upper level of the atmosphere what will drive the front. Instead of moving due west, it instead goes across the Midwest of the United States and ends up in Michigan by Sunday. This we are getting the tail end of the front’s energy, rather than its full impact. And this translates into a weak push of cooler and drier air.
Thursday
“Low” temperatures this morning across the Houston area are generally in the mid- to upper-70s, which are running nearly 20 degrees above normal. This is because the earlier week front that moved offshore has moved back onshore as a warm front, so we’re feeling the influence of the Gulf of Mexico. We saw some light, patchy showers overnight, but most of today should be rain-free, with partly sunny skies. Expect high temperatures in the low- to mid-80s. Winds will be light, generally from the east, at 5 to 10 mph. Lows tonight will drop into the mid-70s.
Friday
This will be another warm, and humid day. However, skies will be mostly cloudy, and we’ll see increasing rain chances during the afternoon hours. As a front approaches, and meshes with ample moisture in the atmosphere, we’ll see very healthy rain chances on Friday night into Saturday. We don’t anticipate any flooding, but if you have plans to be out and about on Friday evening or night, be prepared for the possibility of getting splashed on. Friday night will be warm and humid as well.
Saturday
As a weak front moves into the region, we’ll continue to see fairly decent rain chances on Saturday morning, probably about 50 percent area wide. With mostly cloudy skies, we can probably expect to see high temperatures in the upper 70s, with shower activity waning during the afternoon and evening hours—but we cannot rule out some isolated showers during this time period. Lows on Saturday night should get down to about 70 degrees.
NOAA rain accumulation forecast for now through Saturday night. (Weather Bell)
Sunday
We should finally see a little (emphasis on little) bit of drier air on Sunday, but there’s still the potential for some isolated showers during the morning hours at least. Expect partly sunny skies during the afternoon hours, with high temperatures in the vicinity of 80 degrees. Lows on Sunday night should get into the 60s for most of Houston, which is probably about as best we can do with a dying front like this.
Next week
The first half of next week should see mostly sunny skies, with days in the mid-80s and nights in the upper-60s for the most part. Humidity will be present, but not excessive with slightly lower dewpoints. A stronger front looks likely to move in by Wednesday or so, but we’ll have to wait for the finer details with how cool things get. I’m hoping for some nights in the 50s, which is normal for this time of year.
Thursday morning track forecast for Hurricane Rafael. (National Hurricane Center)
Tropics
Hurricane Rafael crossed Cuba into the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, and it is now moving toward the central Gulf of Mexico. Eventually it is likely to be rebuffed by high pressure and steered southward toward Mexico. As we’ve been saying for some time, this system is of no real concern to Texas.
Once again, Donald Trump has won the American presidency. In the autopsy, pundits will cite broad factors of the electoral environment like inflation, immigration, distrust of liberal institutions, the right-wing echo chamber of alternative media, and backlash to the Biden foreign policy doctrine to explain the victory.
However, this discounts a simpler explanation: Donald Trump is a generationally savvy electoral juggernaut who made every possible correct decision in his campaign, earning his win by perfectly calibrating his strategy and demonstrating exemplary policy acumen.
An all-seeing strategist and leader on the order of Sun Tzu or Caesar, Trump has left his opponents only to cower at his towering intellect—and, perhaps, if they are lucky, attempt to divine a lesson or two from his glorious example. They include:
Bring up Hannibal Lecter as much as possible. Dude, that movie is awesome.
Make shit up. Did you see that they’re eating dogs and assassinating squirrels?
Rack up as many crimes as you can. Then, when they try to arrest you, you can be like, “See, these guys hate me!!! What the hell!!!”
Do NOT know what you are going to say before you say it. You want to read a speech? What are you, gay?
Actually, you can always just vibe on stage to chill ass music if you feel like it. Working-class swing voters LOVE Pavarotti.
Appear for interviews exclusively on podcasts sponsored by erectile dysfunction pills and brain supplements. Ideally, they’ve named their recording studio something like “The Dawg House,” and most of their questions are about how it feels to be in The Dawg House.
Really emphasize the “Lah” in “Lah-teen-os.” That’s good for about 45 percent.
Allow your opponent to trot out countless former administration officials of yours who believe you are a fascist. Nothing is more relatable than having a bunch of annoying coworkers who hate your vibe because they’re jealous.
Blast “YMCA” every time you get the aux. This will help underscore the key themes of your campaign, like whether it’s fun to stay at the YMCA and mentioning all the fun things you can do there.
Promise that things can once again be as they were. Time and tide wait for no man? That’s because you never had a president who could get in there and make a really, really good and, quite frankly, beautiful deal with time.
Threaten political violence if you lose. People will decide that would be exhausting and just vote for you to win legit-style so as to avoid the rigmarole.
Hold a high-profile rally in an uncompetitive state with a cabal of the most viscerally repugnant people on Earth. This will profoundly and uniformly resonate with all demographic groups.
Double down on a vision of America as a wretched, fearful place where anyone who differs even slightly from you is out to destroy you. This will profoundly and uniformly resonate with all demographic groups.
Center your entire closing argument about how your opponent only cares about nonbinary people. This will profoundly and uniformly resonate with all demographic groups.
Have a surrogate call an entire ethnic group garbage, act like it’s not a big deal, become ceaselessly aggrieved when you are called garbage, cosplay as a garbage man, and drive around in a stupid fucking garbage truck. Honk! Honk!
Do not be a woman. You’d be surprised how often people make this mistake.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My boss wants to ask interviewees how to transport an elephant
I have recently moved teams into a slightly more senior management role. We have just received approval to recruit two new staff and I am responsible for all leading the recruitment process. This is an area I have plenty of experience in and I feel confident in my skills.
My manager asked to review my interview questions. I was fine with this as it’s my first time interviewing on behalf of this team. He asked me to include his favorite interview question: “If I asked you to transport an elephant from Edinburgh to Bristol, how would you do it?” I laughed as I thought he was joking. He was not.
I am recruiting medical administrators. I explained this question has nothing to do with the role or the job description and is not competency based. I asked what answer he would be looking for and he just said he’s interested in how their brain works. Help me explain to him why this question sucks.
Questions like these — often called brain teasers — used to be popular among some interviewers. The idea was supposed to be for candidates to talk you through how they’d approach solving the problem, thus giving you a better sense of how their brains worked (just as your boss said). It was supposed to be less about the final answer and more about how the person worked through the problem.
Brain teasers have largely fallen out of fashion ever since Google famously stopped using them; they had used them for years but stopped when their own data showed that candidates’ answers weren’t at all predictive of how successful they’d be as an employee. Their head of HR told the New York Times, “We found that brain teasers are a complete waste of time … They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.”
You might show your boss that article, as well as this one going into more detail about Google’s findings.
2. There’s been a leak at my desk for 10 years
It’s a rainy Monday morning, and there’s currently a trash can directly behind my chair, collecting a steady drip of water from the ceiling.
I work on the second floor of a 15-ish story building, and this happens every time it rains. Don’t ask me why this is the floor that leaks, either. It’s just a weird office enigma.
This has been going on since I started here, nearly 10 years ago. They tried to fix it way back then (someone else was actually sitting in this spot in those days). They’ve patched the ceiling various times in subsequent years. They’ve stood behind me and stared at it for a while. But literally nothing has stopped it, or even slightly altered the pattern.
I don’t know the specifics of what they have actually done to try and mitigate the issue, if I’m honest. I just send an email to say it’s leaking agin, and sometimes someone will come look at it. Or not. Sometimes I’ll just have an extra trash can at my desk after a particularly rainy weekend. It’s a big campus. I’m guessing it’s not a priority, or maybe not the only leak.
It’s far enough away from me that it’s not actually dripping on me, or my desk, and we’ve moved necessary office equipment away from that spot. It isn’t actively preventing me from doing my work and I could probably move my desk if I really needed to, though I like sitting next to the window.
Aside from being mildly annoying, it’s not something I can’t handle (I might start collecting the rain to water my plants). But I have reached a curiosity tipping point. So I’m wondering … does my company have an obligation to fix this? What are the rules around stuff like that?
I’m not an OSHA expert, but from what I can tell, this would potentially be an OSHA violation if it leads to water on the floor (a slipping hazard), mold or mildew, or damage to the ceiling support grid. If you want to find out for sure, you can file an anonymous report with OSHA. Be sure to specifically say you’re concerned about employees’ safety.
3. How do I handle a constantly negative coworker?
I work at a small company across from a coworker who I usually get along with. However, she’s often negative, almost like a human Eeyore. She works in a position where she sees the numbers, and sometimes during the slower season she’ll make a comment like, “Whoa, it’s really slow, they’re going to have to lay people off soon” or “I’ve never seen it this low, I’m not billing much at all, how are we going to keep the doors open?”
I’m not naive, I am aware of these factors (and have started low key looking as a result,) but the constant harping on this and griping about other matters is exhausting. What does she expect me to do about it? I really would rather not dwell on it. We are all doing what we can to keep things going. It’s a small office so I don’t want to alienate her, but I also can’t handle the constant negativity.
I’ve tried to say “I can’t focus on that” or something of that nature but she continues. Is there a kind yet clear way I can redirect, or do I just need to try to tune her out?
Sometimes a complete lack of engagement with the gloom will work — meaning that she says something gloomy and you say, “Ah, well. I better get back to work.” Or, “Ah, well. Oh, I wanted to ask you about ____ (insert topic change).”
If that doesn’t work, you can try being more direct. For example: “I find it hard to focus on work after you say things like that. I’d be grateful if you didn’t speculate on stuff like that to me; it really throws me.”
4. Writing a novel about my industry
I have written a novel. It’s completely fictional but it is set in the industry that I work in, and I draw a lot on my industry knowledge to make the scenarios realistic. There’s also some exploration of the challenges of working in that industry, although I’d say overall the tone is positive.
I’d really like to try and publish it but I’m wondering if this could jeopardize my day job. I work for a company that provides professional services — I wouldn’t say it’s a tiny community, but there are a lot of people who recognize my name and know what I do. I’d publish under a pseudonym but I’m not sure if it could still become known. My concern is whether clients would think it’s about them (it’s not) or whether my employer would just see it as a conflict.
I’m considering going to HR, but wondering if I’m overthinking this. Surely people write novels relating to their field of work all the time? If I brought it to HR they would probably want some higher-ups to read it and it’s sort of in the “spicy romance” category and that’s just not how I want to be seen professionally at my day job. Any insight?
Are you revealing proprietary company information, badmouthing clients (even in the abstract), making the field as a whole look bad, or making yourself appear like someone clients wouldn’t want to work with? If the answer to any of these is yes, there’s a high risk of this being a problem (understandably so). Otherwise, though, in a lot of fields this would be a complete non-issue.
To be entirely safe, though, you’d need to run it by your company … but then of course you risk them telling you no. The counter-argument to that is that if you’re publishing under a pseudonym, there’s a decent chance they’ll never hear about it (especially if you consider the fate of most published books, which do not circulate widely). But it’s still smart to plan for the possibility that they will, and at that point the question might be whether you’re better off asking for forgiveness rather than permission. I don’t know without more info, but if you pressed me for an answer, I’d say that given that there’s a non-zero chance they’ll learn about it, life will be easier for you if you get their okay ahead of time, or wait to seek publication until after you’ve left.
Also, how spicy are we talking about? If it’s your typical romance level of spice, I’m not super concerned about that; people are aware romance novels with adult scenes exist. But if sex is the central focus, I’d be more hesitant.
5. Is it OK to disclose a disability during a hiring process to make sure I can actually do the job?
Recently I interviewed for a technical administrator position that would have been 100% office work. I was one of three finalists, but they decided to go with someone else. However, the same company has reached out saying I would be a great fit for a full technical position and I am very interested.
However, the technical position would require a good bit of field work, which can be hard on me as I have a disability. From what I have been told so far about it, I should be able to handle the field work (though I might need a cane or walking stick for support) but I’m nervous about whether there might be aspects to it no one thought to mention, since they don’t know about my limitations.
Normally, it isn’t something I would disclose until hired, but would it be appropriate to say, “I have a disability, what has been described to me so far is all doable but I want to make sure we are on the same page so I won’t be a few days in and realize I physically cannot do the job”?
Wait until you have the offer so that there’s much less risk of discrimination, unconscious or otherwise. At that point, it’s fine to use the language you proposed (although I’d leave off everything after “on the same page” and then describe the limitations you think could end up being relevant). Good luck!
“Mr. Trump’s first term was better than expected… the authoritarian rule that Democrats and the press predicted never appeared. Mr. Trump was too undisciplined, and his attention span too short, to stay on one message much less stage a coup. America’s checks and balances held… We don’t buy the fascism fears, and we doubt Democrats really do either.” — Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, 10/31/24
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Well, it looks as if the Empire has struck back, destroying the rebel base on Hoth and regaining dominance of the galaxy just a few years after the Death Star was destroyed. With many anxious about Palpatine’s resurgence, I, a columnist for the Trade Federation Gazette, am here to tell you that a second Death Star won’t be as bad as some are making it out to be.
It might seem completely delusional to be optimistic about the Empire retaking control of the galaxy, given that Palpatine’s mind has become so ravaged by the power of the Sith that he spends most of his day stumbling around screaming, “They’re eating the Ewoks!” and pretending to fellate Darth Vader’s lightsaber. But as far as we’re concerned, having a madman so consumed by revenge that it has literally scrambled his brain can only be a good thing. It’s fine to have a decaying lunatic in charge of planet-destroying weapons as long as he wields them willy-nilly rather than with a disciplined agenda.
I understand why people are worried, considering Palpatine has vowed retribution against Luke Skywalker, called the rebel alliance “the enemy within,” and vowed to banish millions of galactic migrants to the outer rim. But I believe that, deep down, below his contorted face, badly disfigured by the corrupting dark force surging through his veins, all Palpatine really wants to do is improve the economy. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if he pardoned Luke Skywalker and put this entire war behind him. Just because he’s never given the slightest indication that those are his true intentions doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
The rebel alliance may be shocked at this sudden reversal of fortune, but the truth of the matter is that the Empire has always been popular. Ever since the Death Star was destroyed, credits haven’t stretched as far as they used to, and the average Jawa trader and moisture farmer is still living paycheck to paycheck. A second Death Star won’t fix that, just like blowing up Alderaan didn’t fix any of the galaxy’s economic problems. Even so, many people want to return to a time when galactic governments used cutting-edge super weapons to brutally suppress dissidents. I guess some folks don’t care about millions of voices crying out in terror and suddenly being silenced as long as the interstellar transports run on time.
Some critics will argue that much of the Empire’s popularity stems from the fact that, for years, we’ve given Palpatine virtually nonstop air time across galactic communication channels, which he’s used to brainwash millions of beings using Jedi mind control. Also, that the galactic media has treated the battle between the light and dark sides of the force like an entertaining spectacle rather than an existential battle for the fate of the galaxy. But we stand firmly by our belief that it’s more important for the press to maintain a hollow facade of impartiality than to risk seeming too biased against planet annihilation.
As for the allegation that we at the Trade Federation Gazette chose not to endorse the Rebel Alliance out of fear of retaliation from the Empire, that could not be further from the truth. Despite his repeated threats to abolish the galactic media, I never feared for my job, and I, for one, welcome our new galactic overlords.
So, relax. This resurgence of the Empire will likely be a temporary blip in the course of the galaxy, much like the last time the Empire was in control.
Unless, of course, you’re on one of the planets that gets blown to pieces.
OTTAWA – A smug man from Canada wasted no time this morning chastising Americans for re-electing terrifying liar and felon Donald Trump, despite the fact that he plans to vote for terrifying liar and asshole Pierre Poilievre in the next Canadian election. Matt Hunter, a 36-year-old barista, took time away from attending a Poilievre rally […]
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