Cowboy Who?

Sarah Sze, “Slow Dance,” installation detail, 2024, paper, string, aluminum, mixed media, video projection, and sound, dimensions variable, courtesy of the artist, © Sarah Sze. Photo: Kevin Todora

I encountered Sarah Sze for the first time last year through a computer screen. The images of her solo exhibition, Timelapse, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim, transfixed my gaze. Sze’s fresh installations utilize everyday items like plants, studio objects, string, and more to build visual environments that respond to the surrounding architecture. Each installation has an enigmatic nature, encouraging its audience to discover the work through prolonged observation. I still am captivated by the images of Sze’s carefully placed installations and unexpected but serendipitous projections that danced across the museum’s iconic spiraling rotunda. 

The second time I encountered and met Sze was earlier this year at the opening of her solo exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas. I met her in the bathroom, of all places, and she complimented my silver spiral earrings. Sze is a gripping individual and a celebrity in the art world, so I was quite starstruck by our interaction. Immediately following our charming meet-cute, I entered Nasher Hall for Sze’s artist talk with the museum’s Chief Curator, Jed Morse. 

The auditorium seats two hundred, but guests lined the walls pouring out of the room and into the hallways. Sze spoke at the Nasher in 2016 in a lecture series with the University of North Texas. After feverishly taking notes at the talk and studying the previous lecture, I realized the admirable consistency of Sze’s philosophy and methodology surrounding her studio practice. Crucial to Sze’s method is her attention to space, time, and audience. For the Nasher, Sze created three works that respond to the institution’s architecture, spatial surroundings, and visitor attendance.

Sarah Sze, “Cave Painting,” 2024, inkjet prints on paper mounted on Tyvek, string, clamps, aluminum, and mixed media, dimensions variable, courtesy of the artist © Sarah Sze. Photo: Kevin Todora

Cave Painting reveals physical and metaphorical layers through its materials and imagery. Hand-torn papers strung delicately from the ceiling attached by green tape and alligator clips reveal images of ocean horizons, recurring avian friends, and hands playing with clear slime. Upon Sze’s request, Morse sent an image of the museum’s lustrous garden hidden amongst silvery skyscrapers; the curator did not know at the time that those simple iPhone photos of the garden would make their way into Cave Painting. 

Metaphorically, Cave Painting shows its audience the layers of space that it situates itself within; first, you encounter Flora Street and its surrounding buildings, you enter the grand architecture of the Nasher institution, then you see Cave Painting, and finally, the garden. Through Cave Painting, Sze shows us the journey from the oasis to the garden. She brings the horse to water and lets our eyes drink in the view.

Sarah Sze, “Cave Painting,” detail, 2024, inkjet prints on paper mounted on Tyvek, string, clamps, aluminum, and mixed media, dimensions variable, courtesy of the artist. © Sarah Sze. Photo: Kevin Todora

Physically, Cave Painting is grounded by the materials that aid in its creation. Paintbrushes, tape dispensers, wood clamps, string, metal washers, and paint palettes are below the torn papers and ground the work to the white oak floor. They reflect the process of creating Cave Painting, while small black stones mirror the natural environment; a strewn box of matches considers the ephemeral quality of Sze’s work and its death when it inevitably leaves the Nasher.

Sarah Sze, “Love Song,” installation detail, 2024, mixed media, tripod, paper, ink, aluminum, clamps, plywood, video projectors. © Sarah Sze. Photo: Kevin Todora

Upon descending the staircase to the lower level of the Nasher, visitors happen upon Love Song, an installation with a complex infrastructure. Swirling projectors affixed to a tripod cast oval-formed scenes and images onto the walls that waltz with delightful movement. Stemming out from the turntable of projectors are tree-like limbs with hand-torn paper leaves, instilling the installation with an arborescence. Below the branches are remnants of paint splatter that mimic leaves and reflect the seasons; the sculpture is in the moments of growth and decay, life and death.

Sarah Sze, “Love Song,” 2024, inkjet prints on paper, steel & aluminum wire, clamps, plywood, turntable, tripod, mixed media, and a video projection, dimensions variable, courtesy of the artist, © Sarah Sze. Photo: Kevin Todora

Love Song is an image generator churning out a multitude of scenic imagery from frost-kissed, blue, rocky mountains to green fields and orange skies. As a visitor, you become part of the work and as the projector passes your physical perimeter it casts your shadowed form onto the wall. It is only for a mere moment, though, as the projector continues its lassoing journey to imprint other figures, leaves, and branches onto its surrounding barrier. The room encapsulating Love Song is made up of three travertine stone walls and a fourth wall of windows, making the exterior of the room appear as a terrarium. As visitors enter the space they further activate the work imbuing it with their valuable presence.

Sarah Sze, “Slow Dance,” 2024, paper, string, aluminum, mixed media, video projection, and sound, dimensions variable, courtesy of the artist. © Sarah Sze. Photo: Kevin Todora

The largest of Sze’s three installations at the Nasher is Slow Dance, a sculptural diptych featuring a series of precariously hung strings floating over seven hundred pieces of hand-torn paper. Each string strung from the sixteen-foot ceiling kisses the ground similarly to Cave Painting in that it is held still by common items and objects from Sze’s studio. The harp-like sculptural forms mirror one another and act as a physical conduit upon which meticulously mapped projections shine.

Sarah Sze, “Slow Dance,” installation detail, 2024, paper, string, aluminum, mixed media, video projection, and sound, dimensions variable, courtesy of the artist. © Sarah Sze. Photo: Kevin Todora

During a visit to the Nasher, I studied Slow Dance, attempting to learn its behaviors, document its movements, and record every detail I could. Each individual paper is accounted for and displays an array of images. It would take hours if not days of looking to account for the thousands of images Sze visually compiles into the sculpture. The overall visual sequence of Slow Dance is around fourteen minutes long and includes various audio samples like the fluttering noise of cards shuffling, the calming drone of a mother’s hum, and a faint ghost-like voice swiftly muttering numbers from one to seven hundred and twenty-five.

Sarah Sze, “Slow Dance,” installation detail, 2024, paper, string, aluminum, mixed media, video projection, and sound, dimensions variable, courtesy of the artist. © Sarah Sze. Photo: Kevin Todora

The sequence begins with numbers and progresses to flames emitting a crackling sound. A hand comes into frame, playing with an elastic red hair tie. Fast forward, and you’re watching the entire animal kingdom in greyscale, seeing a sunset peer through a moving car, and noticing a familiar hand, but this time drawing henna. Again comes a flurry of numbers, moonlit water, people sleeping, a red pen drawing lines, sand falling, and then more numbers. Next, the hand caressing translucent slime, a satellite view of a hurricane, roads, and more roads, a pot of red pigment, the final round of numbers, seagulls, fingers playing all sorts of instruments, dominoes falling, a static screen, fire, fire, fire, and imploding infrastructures. To poetically end it all, a wick burns at both ends until it the gallery is returned to complete darkness, and the cycle begins again. 

Sarah Sze is curated by Jed Morse and is on view at the Nasher Sculpture Center until August 18, 2024.

The post Review: Sarah Sze at the Nasher Sculpture Center appeared first on Glasstire.

Meow Wolf Houston, due to open later this year, has announced that its anchor space will be Cowboix Hevvven, a bar and restaurant combining cowboy culture with Meow Wolf’s iconic surreal style.

Cowboix Hevvven at Meow Wolf Houston. Photo by Kate Russell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.

Cole Bee Wilson, a longtime Meow Wolf artist and fifth-generation Texan is the Lead Artist and Creative Director overseeing the production of Cowboix Hevvven. In a press release, Mr. Wilson remarked, “Cowboix Hevvven is a love letter from a Texan dreamer. It’s a psychedelic space that puts the ‘all’ in y’all and serves as a self-referential, autobiographical take on my Texan imagination. There’s a seat at the bar for all y’all here in Cowboix Hevvven.”

The space will be filled with immersive art, including a tribute to Matt King, one of Meow Wolf’s founders who died in 2022. Among other things, Cowboix Hevvven will include an interactive jukebox featuring 30 songs recorded by Texas musicians. The tracks span various times and genres including classic country, Americana, Ranchero, Tejano, and more.

Mr. Wilson explained, “Growing up between San Antonio and Bandera, and spending weekends on my grandparents’ Bandera ranch, I wanted to blend that rich, familiar backdrop with a twist of the unexpected. My hope is that visitors will dive into Cowboix Hevvven with the same curiosity that fueled its creation. I hope they leave with a renewed sense of wonder and an appreciation for how blending the familiar with the unexpected can create something truly weird and wonderful.”

Cowboix Hevvven at Meow Wolf Houston. Photo by Kate Russell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.

Cowboix Hevvven features the work of a number of artists, including Jayla Kuemichel, Max Cohn, Chris Hilson, Sofia Howard, Caity Kennedy, Karen Lembke, Enoch McPherson, Cat Mills-Flegal, Emilio Pincheira, Elana Schwartz, Wylla Skye, Zach Sawan, Charlotte Thurman, Jess Webb, and others. In addition to the artists, Meow Wolf fabrication, programming, and design staff played a key role in bringing the space to fruition. 

Learn more about Meow Wolf Houston via the organization’s website. 

The post Meow Wolf Houston to Feature a Cowboy-Themed Dive Bar appeared first on Glasstire.

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I work for an organization that prides itself on being generous and flexible to parents. I fully support that, despite the usual gripes among the childless employees you might imagine (e.g., we are asked to work more weekends and nights). A colleague of mine, a parent, is leaving the org and invited me to coffee. I thought it was just to have a farewell chat, but it turns out they feel that the difference in parent vs. non-parent benefits is so drastic they “don’t feel right” leaving without telling someone. They let me know how stark the difference is and … it’s way beyond anything I’ve seen before.

It turns out parents in my org are offered, when they are hired or become parents, are offered a special benefits package called “Family Benefits.” This is not in any paperwork I have access to (including my onboarding work and employee handbook) and those who partake are asked to not share information about it with non-parents, ostensibly to “avoid any tension” with childless employees. But the real reason is far more clear: it’s because they don’t want us to know how bad the difference is:

* The Family Package includes 10 extra days of PTO (three sick, two personal, five vacation).
* We have access to specific facilities (gym, pool, etc.) and the Family Benefits package gives free gym membership and swim lessons to you, your spouse, and your children; I can only get those at a 50% discount, and my spouse gets no discount at all.
* Officially, we’re a “one remote day a week” organization; those with children are allowed to be remote any time schools are out (this includes staff members whose kids aren’t school-age yet, and the entire summer).
* We have several weekend/evening events we volunteer for, where volunteering gives you comp time; if you’re a parent who volunteers and calls out day-of due to childcare, you still get your comp day (as you might imagine, every event usually has about 25-30 people call out due to childcare). If the special event is child-focused, parents are exempt from volunteering and can attend with their family as guests, and they still get comp time.
* There’s an affiliate discount program that includes discounts to major businesses not offered to child-free employees — not just child-specific businesses, but movie theaters, ride-sharing apps, and chain stores.
* We get a card we can add pre-tax commuting funds to, but parents in this program get a bonus $100 a month.
* We get retirement matching up to 2.5%, but parents get up to 5%.
* If you need to leave to pick up kids from school, you don’t have to work once you get home; as you might imagine, when given written permission to pass tasks off to others and log off at 2:30 pm, almost everyone does.

All told, my colleague estimates that as a parent of two children, they saved upwards of $18,000 worth a year in benefits that are not available to me, in addition to the non-monetary benefits (like time saved not having to commute any time schools are out, basically free comp time).

I’m all for flexibility for parents but knowing that my organization is secretly (SECRETLY) giving parents this volume of bonus benefits has me feeling disgusted at my org and disappointed in my colleagues who have kept it quiet. How do I approach this? Do I reach out to HR? Do I pretend it never happened and move forward? Is this even legal? I’m already planning to leave, and was considering telling my fellow child-free colleagues before I left, but right now I’m just feeling so lost.

Tell all your coworkers.

If your organization considers this defensible, they should have no problem with everyone knowing about it.

The reason they’ve tried to keep it secret is, of course, because they know people will have a problem with it.

So share the information.

It’s not uncommon to see parents granted some extra flexibility that non-parents don’t get,  even if they have a similar need for it. That’s a problem itself; when employers can offer flexibility, they should offer it across the board, not only to one class of people.

But this goes way beyond what’s typical. Higher retirement matching? Extra vacation days? Policies that formally transfer the burden of working at weekend and evening events to people without kids? Charging you for a gym membership while your coworker pays nothing simply because they have a child?  It’s pretty wild.

To be clear, there are ways to do some of this that wouldn’t grate. For example, if they offered extra “dependent care” days, they’d probably be used primarily by parents staying home with sick kids, but it would be great for morale that they’d also be available to someone who needed to, say, take care of an elderly relative.

Also, if you’re wondering about the law: In most states, discriminating on the basis of family status is not illegal. But a small number of jurisdictions do prohibit family status discrimination, so it’s worth checking to see if yours is one of them. Typically those laws are framed to prevent discrimination against employees with kids and I’m not sure that any have been tested in the other direction, but it would depend on the exact wording of the law.

Anyway. Share what you know, and then consider organizing with your coworkers to advocate for a broader array of benefits being available to all employees.

Since you mentioned you were already considering leaving, you might not want to take this on more directly, but if that’s the case you should still definitely share the info with your non-parent colleagues before you depart.

And kudos to the coworker who told you, and boo to all the rest of them who chose to stay quiet.

WASHINGTON—Lambasting the Democratic vice presidential candidate across social media platforms, J.D. Vance reportedly accused Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz Tuesday of stolen valor for wearing an apron that said “Grill Master.” “Tim Walz is a liar—he has never attained the rank of grill master,” said Vance, attacking Walz…

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PARIS – In a curious display of activist incompetence, a protestor intent on gluing himself to a famous painting has instead found himself accidentally glued to another, unrelated protestor present for the same reason. The mistaken mucilage occurred as Lars Olsen, a member of the Society Against Oceanic Pollutants, reached to grasp the frame of […]

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NEWPORT BEACH, CA—Refuting accusations of stolen valor by claiming his hands were permanently stained with the blood of his enemies, Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz told reporters Monday that he had killed before and would kill again. “To those who have attempted to discredit my military record, let me…

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CAMBRIDGE, MA—Lending credence to the already widespread theory about the young man you fancy, an imaginary study published Tuesday by Harvard University found that your crush wasn’t texting you back because his feelings were so powerful that they frightened him. “Our research strongly indicates that the guy who gives…

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THE HEAVENS—Sipping on a Diet Coke as He described the mix of alcohol and pills He had lived off of for years, a newly sober God admitted Tuesday that He had no recollection of creating the universe. “Everyone tells Me I made light and darkness, sea and sky, but to be honest, I was blacked out for most of that…

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Create a colourful centrepiece by retaining the depressing aftermath of a children’s party.

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 team has an all-male soccer betting pool

My team includes two women (including me) and five men, three of whom are huge soccer fans. A few months ago, the three of them decided to form a betting pool on a large soccer event. They invited the other two men on the team (who are not huge soccer fans) to join the pool, but did not invite the two women.

The first pool was a success, so the five of them did another betting pool for a subsequent soccer event, and then another one for the Olympics. It has become quite a public office event that is widely discussed throughout the day, and it often culminates in outings where the five of them go to watch the games they’ve bet on together after work.

It seems likely to me and the other woman on the team that the men did not intentionally mean to exclude the women from this pool, as they are all quite nice guys with whom we get along well with. However, we could not help but notice the optics of the decision not to ask us. It seems blatantly sexist and we feel like, principally, it is bad for the office to have so much of work chat centered around an activity that only the men were invited to join.

We have been going back and forth, however, about whether we should do something to address this. I imagine that if we spoke up and outright asked to join the betting pool, they would allow us in. The thing is that neither of us are particularly interested in soccer, so we don’t actually have a strong desire to participate in this betting pool. Is it worth bringing to the rest of our team’s attention that there’s a very visible gendered dynamic to this group they’ve formed, or should we let it go since, in this case, the organizers happen to have correctly guessed that the two women wouldn’t be interested?

I’d leave it alone. Could it have been handled better, by originally inviting everyone to participate even if you declined? Sure. Is it outrageous that they didn’t think to do that initially? Not really if they correctly knew you wouldn’t be interested, and especially because it sounds like originally it was just going to be for a single event. Now that it’s turned into something more long-running, you’re not wrong that it’s not great to have so much work socialization be single-gender … but from a practical perspective, I don’t think there’s a lot to gain by addressing it when you don’t actually want to participate (and when the Olympics just ended anyway, and perhaps this activity with it).

That said, I’m curious about the gender dynamics in your office. If you’re already dealing with sexist dynamics on your team, I can see why this would especially grate. If it’s not something that normally rears its head as a problem, I’d be extra inclined to leave this alone.

To be clear, the circumstances matter here. This is different from, for example, this company that sponsored annual golf trips that women never participated in (in that it’s not company-sponsored and is smaller, less formal, and likely shorter-running). It would also be different if any of the woman asked to participate and were rebuffed.

2. Employer asks new hires to list all their prescription medications

This is a question about an organization that I left, but still bothers me. After some turnover at my last job in a mid-sized nonprofit, new employees were being asked to list the prescriptions they used on their new hire paperwork. Some of the new employees refused to list this information, and our director of facilities — who did not process our new hire paperwork but did perform required background checks on new staff — would inform the new employee’s manager and the two would pressure the new hire to list what prescriptions they used.

I found this to be deeply upsetting since some prescriptions can identify key aspects of one’s identity, including some protected classes of individuals. Some prescriptions have stigmas attached to them, and some might be banned in the future (for example, birth control). Can employers require staff to declare any and all prescriptions they use? Can staff simply lie about these prescriptions if they do not want to out themselves?

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits employers from asking employees medical questions (including about medications) unless it’s job-related and consistent with business necessity. For an employer to legally ask about prescriptions, the employee must be in a safety-sensitive position (like if you were a bus driver using a medication that could cause drowsiness). For the vast majority of jobs, this inquiry would be illegal — but whether it was illegal in your organization depends on the nature of the jobs.

Related:
my office is requiring us to disclose all medications we take

3. Is my employer gaslighting me?

I’ve been working in the nonprofit sector for the last ten years. It’s a small organization, less than 20, and I’m on an even smaller team and we are fully distributed. My question is about feeling gaslighted (gaslit?) and what, if anything, can be done.

Over the years, many micro-instances of this have occurred; I’m only flagging the most consequential ones. I’ve watched new hires come (and go) at much higher pay or with less experience and immediately move up the ranks. Others have been given training opportunities to advance or been given a voice in their career trajectory. There is a long history of nepotism at this org too. Below are two instances that bother me the most and enforce the narrative in my head that I don’t deserve better.

My manager is retiring, and at one point, I was to inherit that role as the two of us have worked together closely the entire time. A few years ago, they decided I was not the one for that role, and a good friend of management was hired to inherit that position. I was talked at when they made this decision and asked if I was okay with it (as if I had a choice or a say) and told it’s because I’m so good at bringing in the money, they don’t want me doing anything else. (It’s true that the millions in revenue I’ve brought into the org have directly contributed to making it through the pandemic.) It still felt crummy. I took it like a champ, but it stung.

More recently, we hired another person who will be on the same team as me and who, once again, is being elevated and given the opportunity, agency, and voice. At least they are not related to anyone on staff, but they look and sound a lot like my soon-to-be-retired manager, so perhaps nepo-by-osmosis is happening.

Just last week, our executive director said in a team meeting that this new person would get to do X, Y, and Z and that I would feel left out, and they asked me if that was okay. I was flabbergasted but said, “I don’t have any say in this, so yes.” But I am crushed, burned out, and tired of feeling worthless. I am the lowest-paid teammate (and have the heavy/heaviest workload) and am soon to be the longest tenured on this team.

When you add these instances up over the course of many years, I feel like I’ve lost my compass, so I’m reaching out to an outside voice. Am I being gaslit, or is this normal for an organization? I would like to have more agency and opportunity and to be seen and treated like a valuable colleague. And of course, I want to be paid what I’m worth. But each time that opportunity presents itself, the gaslighting happens.

I don’t know if you’re being gaslit or not (that would involve a deliberate intent to mess with your head, so it’s unlikely but who knows), but it doesn’t really matter. What we know for sure is that you’re not getting the advancement or recognition that you want in this job, and that’s been the pattern over a number of years. That on its own is reason to look outside the organization for a different job.

You don’t need to sort out whether this is gaslighting or normal or anything else. You’re unhappy and burned out and there is a pattern of not getting what you want in this org, even as others do. Their reasons for that could be entirely understandable each time it’s happened, but it doesn’t matter because this job isn’t meeting your needs, and hasn’t been for a long time. You get to leave for that reason alone!

4. Company wants a verbal acceptance before sending an offer letter

My husband just received a verbal job offer for a higher-seniority position from a small company in the private sector. He requested a written offer with details of the compensation, and HR sent an email with only a salary, annual bonus percentage, and “total compensation” value, with an attached booklet on medical and retirement plans available.

The thing that really got me about this was the following line: “If this fits within your scope, we’ll draft up an offer letter. We can discuss the start date after a verbal offer acceptance.”

Am I misunderstanding this, or does it seem like they want him to verbally (or by email) accept their offer before giving him an actual offer letter? That sounds bananapants to me! The process up until now makes it seem like a very inexperienced HR person. The legal mind in me says this is not a great procedure, but a verbal agreement is not necessarily binding. What say you?

This isn’t uncommon. They’ve sent him the details of the offer and they’ll formalize it once he decided if he wants to accept (and presumably after any negotiation has occurred so the details are finalized). The only part that’s weird is that they don’t want to discuss start date yet, but he could just introduce that into whatever negotiation or discussion of the offer he’s going to have — for example, if it’s important to him to have a start date that’s between X and Y weeks out, he can say that now. If there’s any other info he needs before making a decision, he can ask for that now too. Basically, this company is opening negotiations and sees the offer letter as simply memorializing whatever details are hammered out by the end of that process.

I think you’re balking because it feels weird that they’re not making it formal now. But he has an offer. If it changes when the formal letter shows up, he’s not obligated to stick to an earlier yes.

5. I announced a new job — how do I now share that I’m taking a different one instead?

In May, I accepted a job offer that I was reasonably excited about, so I announced the new job on both LinkedIn and my personal social media. I am taking the bar exam this summer, so I was not scheduled to start this new job until September.

However, a few weeks after I accepted the job, I was offered another position that was better for me in pretty much every way — better salary, much more in line with my career goals, easier commute, the works. I accepted that position and gracefully extricated myself from the first job and am on good terms with them (and I even referred someone to them that they ended up hiring in my place).

However, how do I handle publicizing that change to my personal and professional network? At the time, I quietly took down the posts announcing my acceptance of the first position and did not say anything about the second position, particularly since I won’t start there until September either. Do I acknowledge that I had previously announced that I would be working one place but have since accepted another position — and if so, how do I explain that change without denigrating the first job or making it seem like they let me go? Do I just quietly update my LinkedIn status with my new job when I start it in September and just explain what happened if anyone asks? To what extent do I need to explain the change?

Nah, just go ahead and announce the new job when you start it or just before, if that’s something you want to do. You don’t need to acknowledge that this is a change. Lots of people won’t even remember, so there’s no need to draw attention to it. If anyone asks, you can simply say, “I ended up being offered a different role that was an even better fit.” But you don’t need to get into the details; most people won’t care that much (unless they’re close to you, in which case they’re likely to already know anyway).

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

A few days ago, I discovered that at least seven people on my team have been stealing cash across different sites for months. It was deliberate and carefully coordinated and occurred almost daily. They took an average of $30-40 a day so I can’t see how the risk worked out financially after splitting between all of them.

Lost money aside, I am extremely upset. I see these people every day and work closely with them. I have given them emotional support over personal problems and protected jobs during potential layoffs. We regularly socialized outside of work. One of the ringleaders has a son with the same medical condition as my child’s. I went out of my way to get the family in touch with support organizations and get them free legal advice through personal contacts. I’ve advocated for (and received) better remuneration for many of them, even during tough times last year.

There are others who assisted with covering up even if they didn’t financially benefit from the theft, and others who knew but didn’t say anything because they didn’t want to get involved or get their coworkers in trouble.

I’m frantically trying to recruit new staff so we can dismiss the seven (or potentially more) who were involved.

I’ve lost sleep over the sense of betrayal. I feel stupid and gullible. It feels personal.

Given this involves so many people, how do I go about firing them? Do I need to do this all on the same day?

I’m certain there are others directly involved, but we just haven’t got the evidence. I’m not sure what to do about this.

I now feel extremely cynical about trusting or helping people at work. Do I just … not trust or help people now?

Oh no. I’m sorry. That has to feel like a gut punch.

A few things, in no particular order:

* While this feels like a personal betrayal, there’s a decent chance that they didn’t look at it that way. People who steal from employers generally see it as a relatively impersonal crime; they figure they’re stealing from a faceless corporation and it feels entirely different to them than, I don’t know, swiping your wallet or scamming a relative. Obviously this is wrong-headed thinking — they are betraying the trust of a person they work with every day and who has invested in them and worked to ensure they’re treated well. But they might not have looked at it as involving you much at all.

* When someone betrays your trust like this, it’s natural to wonder what you missed and whether you were, as you put it, “stupid and gullible.” But assuming they weren’t leaving obvious clues all over the place, you’re not stupid and gullible to have trusted people who it sounds like you were relatively close to. They’re the ones who broke the social contract, not you.

People who steal money set out to engage in deception; their whole point is make sure you don’t see what they’re doing. Should you have seen something wrong in their characters earlier? Possibly. But prisons are full of people whose friends and family members thought they seemed like lovely people. People are really good at compartmentalizing their behavior.

That said, do you need more checks and balances in place to catch theft? Very possibly! It’s something you should look at rigorously now.

* The logistics of the firings depend on details I don’t have. Ideally you should fire all the people involved ASAP and all at once, as soon as you’re able to, even if it means the rest of the team stretching for a bit to cover the gaps. Even if it’s not large enough to do that, you should look at emergency measures you could take that would allow you to fire them ASAP anyway: can you bring in temps, cut back on non-essential projects, borrow people from other teams in the interim, etc.?

* Related to that, assuming you have HR and/or legal counsel, you should seek and follow their guidance — but you can also make your preferences known. Sometimes HR and lawyers will advise the most conservative course of action but will give you different, better tailored advice if you say, “Actually the outcome I’d prefer is X — is there a way to do that instead, legally and ethically?”

* You didn’t mention pressing charges, but that’s something you should be thinking about as well.

* It’s natural to feel cynical about trusting people now. People intentionally deceived you, and this was a betrayal. It’s okay if you keep yourself at more of a remove as you process this. But the goal should be, in time, to get yourself to a point where you don’t look at everyone you work with as a potential criminal. Your response to this should be about you, not them: be a manager who supports and advocates for employees because that’s who you want to be. But it’s also natural and okay if it takes some processing time to get there.

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BLOOMINGTON, IN—Reporting a steady decline in the amorous endeavors of young adults, a new study released Monday by the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University found that members of Generation Z are having less sex than previous generations due to the allure of leftovers at home. “We found that a large segment of…

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Kamala Harris’ decision to select Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate has galvanized Democratic voters. The Onion takes a look at Walz’s rise from Army National Guard member to potential vice president of the United States.

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Three people have now died in a listeria food-poisoning outbreak linked to Boar’s Head deli meats, bringing the overall number of people sickened to 43. What do you think?

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OTTAWA – It was with a mix of embarrassment and concern that economists announced yesterday that almost the entire North American GDP, long thought to be a mature economy, is actually just 26,000 Slack messages in a trench coat. “Upon initial analysis, the North American GDP appeared like it was grown, however when given a […]

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Last week, Bethesda released a remastered edition of Doom and Doom II on Steam, with lots of extra episodes and improvements. One of these new features is a built-in browser for mods, and support for many existing mods that previously required a different version of the game. Basically, lots of good fan-made mods are now playable on the Steam version of ye olde Doom. That's neat! Ah, but there is some demon excrement on the health pack, so to speak. The mod browser lacks moderation and lets people upload the work of others with their own name pinned as the author. That's prompted one level designer to call it "a massive breach of trust and violation of norms the Doom community has done its best to hold to for those 30 years."

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