NEW YORK CITY – Yesterday the NHL reinstated former Blackhawks staff Joel Quenneville, Stan Bowman and Al MacIsaac, confirming that 2 years is the maximum someone who covered up one sexual abuse incident and abetted another should be forced to not make millions for coaching or managing a hockey team. “Sure all three covered up […]
The post Report: going 2 years without getting paid millions to manage a hockey team sufficient punishment for abetting sexual abuse appeared first on The Beaverton.
Hovertext:
You're in pillar of salt territory here, bro.
In a regular update on Tuesday morning, Mayor Jyoti Gondek said this marks the first step toward completely restoring the water supply and lifting remaining restrictions.
(5:30 PM CT update): Beryl is beginning to feel the shear as laid out in our post below, and it is now a category 4 storm with 155 mph winds. For folks in Jamaica, this offers modest comfort, as a major hurricane is going to make landfall (or come close) there tomorrow. Little has changed with respect to Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, so reference the post below on that.
I need to say some words to people in Houston. We are getting blasted by a few of you for apparently underselling the real threat from Beryl. If you read the post below, we’ve taken a very down the middle, neutral stance on the storm, explaining how it is still likely to pass to the south, though if it were to not weaken as much as forecast over the next 36 hours, it could come a bit farther to the north. We even went so far as to show the European ensemble models with the distribution of some closer to southeast Texas and others in Mexico, and we explained how this could be and what to watch for. I’m not quite sure what isn’t resonating with some people, but those are the facts. Here is a look at today’s most recent European ensemble members, 51 of them:
Of the 51 members, 5 of them or 9.8 percent bring Beryl into the Houston area or Louisiana. This is down from 8 earlier this morning. If you would rather the GFS Ensemble, 4 of the ensemble members, or about 13 percent bring it to Texas or Louisiana, the same as earlier. Roughly one tropical model (the HWRF) brings Beryl to Houston. The HWRF historically would handle a weakening tropical system poorly, so I would be apt to discount it in my weighting as a meteorologist with a number of years of experience tracking and forecasting these things.
I write all this to say: No one is saying to ignore Beryl. But, look, those statistics of objective model data imply that the risk to Houston remains…pretty low! Should we continue to watch this? Absolutely! And I laid out the case of how this could become more problematic in Texas below. So, let’s just take a breath and watch what happens over the next 24 to 36 hours.
Hurricane Beryl somehow managed to continue strengthening last night and achieved category 5 status late in the evening over the eastern Caribbean. It has maintained that status today and has 160 mph maximum sustained winds as it races west northwest across the Caribbean.
Over the next 36 hours, Beryl will remain on a course that should bring it very, very close to a direct hit on Jamaica. At the least, it will be a close pass, and hurricane conditions are expected there beginning late tonight or tomorrow morning. Preparations for a major hurricane impact should be rushed to completion in Jamaica. Folks in the Cayman Islands will need to watch Beryl closely as well as it passes near or just south of there tomorrow night.
On satellite, Beryl looked great this morning, and while it still looks great, there are at least some signs that shear is beginning to impact Beryl a bit on the west side.
You can see a more ragged appearance to the eye and eyewall, and even what looks to be a little dry air just outside the core in the western semicircle of Beryl. Whatever the case, the thought is that Beryl’s intensity has peaked, and it should now begin to undergo a steady decline. Beryl is about to plow into 20 or more knots of wind shear.
Wind shear is complicated with storms of this intensity. Theoretically, it should just start to feel the shear and begin a steady, if not rapid weakening. Modeling says this will be the case. The majority of modeling weakens Beryl to a category 2 or weaker storm by Thursday morning. But in storms of this intensity, shear can be a little funky and find ways to help the storm “ventilate” somewhat. In my opinion, this is not going to be the case with Beryl; it should weaken as forecast, perhaps at a slower rate than what models suggest. However, there is inherent uncertainty here, and that’s why we would tell folks in Jamaica to prepare for a serious, major hurricane.
In addition to the wind and surge impacts of a major hurricane, flooding from rainfall is a possibility, if not likelihood as Beryl passes southern Hispaniola and Jamaica.
According to Sam Lillo of DTN weather, who has been posting frequent statistical nuggets on Twitter/X regarding Beryl’s unprecedented nature about Beryl’s forward speed. Over a 6 hour period, Beryl is the fastest known moving category 5 storm on record. As noted by him and some others, Hurricane Allen in 1980 and Janet in 1955 also had some extreme forward speeds for category 5 storms. Either way, Beryl will end up atop or near the top of many charts once all is said and done for earliest and easternmost and fastest for storms of this intensity.
What comes after Jamaica for Beryl?
The main near term concern is for the folks in Jamaica and the Caymans. Beyond that, the forecast is contingent on a number of factors. Over the last 48 hours, we’ve seen a slight northward shift in Beryl’s forecast track as it comes west.
This has implications for the Yucatan and perhaps the Gulf as well. Why is Beryl trending more north? For one, exploding into a category 5 storm allows it to gain some added latitude. But secondly, the U.S. pattern has changed somewhat. If you look at how the European ensemble’s 6 to 10 day forecast has changed in the last 48 hours, the tendency has been for the trough over the Central U.S. to strengthen, thus weakening the ridge of high pressure in the South.
But there’s a lot of nuance to this. For one, if Beryl does weaken as expected, this would have only a modest impact on the final track, keeping it south across the Yucatan and into Mexico. If Beryl does stay stronger than forecast or somehow intensifies as it comes west into the Gulf, it would be more apt to “feel” the stronger trough and come north. You can see this on the Euro ensemble where stronger outcomes are mostly skewed north and weaker outcomes are mostly skewed south.
There’s a reason we have been apt to not speculate on what would happen to Beryl as it came west, rather trying to focus on what would impact Beryl. These changes offer a wrinkle. Should you worry on the Texas or Louisiana coasts? No, but you’ll want to keep an eye on this. For one, there seems to be a fair bit of support for somewhat hostile upper air conditions in the Gulf when Beryl arrives, so there’s no guarantee this will just explode when it gets there.
That said, we’re operating in a very odd world right now. Gulf of Mexico water temps have drifted under record levels thankfully, but it’s still warmer than normal overall. So I don’t want to overpromise anything at this point. The best we can tell people to do is continue watching. If Beryl makes it to the northern Mexico, Texas, or Louisiana coasts, the impacts would probably begin late Saturday night or Sunday.
One other quick word: A lot of people will be traveling this weekend to beaches and such. Rip current risk in the Gulf is going to increase later in the weekend as some of the swells from Beryl reach the coast.
Please use caution if you’ll be on the beach this weekend. Even the best and most experienced swimmers can struggle with rip currents, so it’s advised to swim near a lifeguard and follow any warnings or caution notices.
WASHINGTON—In a partial victory for the former president, the Supreme Court ruled this week that Donald Trump has immunity for any crime committed between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. during his time in the White House. “Whether it be bribery, fraud, assassination, or a coup, the president is entitled to immunity…
Montreal has released its new 2050 Urban Planning and Mobility plan (only available in French), and I haven’t seen nearly enough talk about it (there has only been a little chatter on Twitter and Mastodon). And so I thought it would be nice to write an article on my thoughts on the plan — where it makes sense, and where it does not.
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On the non-transportation front, there is obviously lots to like.
The plan talks about a lot of the same themes we’ve been hearing across the country — more housing near transit, intensification, and amenities within walkable distance. At the same time, I appreciate that the plan makes clear that more substantial intensification makes sense near higher capacity transit modes — something that is far too often not acknowledged.
What’s silly though is that higher amounts of density are suggested near trams than BRT, despite the difference in capacity being small if it exists at all. What is nice is that as part of the plan parking minimums are set to be dropped, which will help with housing costs as well as building the number of people who do not have cars and thus need to walk, cycle, and use public transport.
The first really interesting diagrams, which can be found here on page 11, show the proposed or “visionary” transit network for 2040 — 16 years from now.
On this map you can see a few things: The Blue Line extension and the REM are totally completed, and the Orange Line’s west leg is extended, not just to Bois France — a very good project which will effectively increase capacity and connectivity for the REM network with only a few hundred meters of new tunnel and a station — but beyond to Laval.
You can also see a very substantial increase in the number of “SRB” or BRT routes, which interconnect quite heavily with one another. This is good of course, but I think not nearly enough attention is given to the fact that if the same approach that was taken for the Pie-IX BRT is taken with these projects, there is simply no way they will be done by 2040. The Pie-IX BRT took years to plan and at least five years to build (some elements are still not done) and is just 13 kilometres long. The amount of new BRT that appears to be planned here is several times that, and I don’t think there is any attempt to grapple with the extremely long timeline and unnecessarily onerous works that happened as part of the city’s first “modern” BRT.
What’s worse than the plans for BRT though are the tramway routes, which appear to total at least 50 – 80 kilometres in length of something Montreal has never built in the modern era.
Included in the planned tramways is the ARTM’s inferior REM de l’Est alternative (that would apparently link to a tramway going downtown — which was disallowed for the REM because of a belief it would cannibalize Green Line ridership). The tram plans (besides the extremely long ones towards the airport and the ARTM line in the east) are not horrible and are similar to other previously proposed routes, replacing busy urban buses with trams. There is also no prioritization showing how the rather large network of lines (including an odd amount on the southwest) would be staged, and not many lines through the fast developing areas around Griffintown and the Peel Basin, which feels like an odd choice.
Fundamentally however, the big problem is that there is no recognition of the reality of the cost (at least in Quebec at present), timelines, and planning problems with the trams. If Quebec City after all of its struggle is barely able to get a neutered tram project for less than several billion dollars, how will Montreal ever be able to build one, much less all of these lines?
The second outlined plan is for 2050 (page 12), and this highlights what Montreal’s transit network is envisioned to look like in 25 years.
I’d like to remind people that very little has been achieved in terms of Metro or STM driven transit expansion in the last 25 years (since 1999 we’ve only got the 3 stop Laval Orange Line extension). It just feels wrong to even imagine that within 25 years, three metro extensions, a new metro line, and a ton of tram and BRT lines will all be done — far more than in the last 25 years, even with skyrocketing costs. And there appears to be almost no interest on reflecting on this, or expanding on the methods that enabled the low-cost REM project. Instead, all sights and hopes are set on the perennially almost-here tramway, which will surely save the city.
To be more specific, versus 2040, it is assumed that by 2050 there will be yet another big addition to the tram network, with new lines to the north, west, and east of the island, and a few more in the core as well. These lines are probably mostly fine, but they seem needlessly road-oriented, which leads to weird places where you have two lines closely paralleling one another in order to maintain alignment to roadways, while also oddly avoiding connections to say… new REM stations.
At the same time (I could be missing something), it appears that the 2040s are meant to net the city essentially no new BRT, which is odd — if the city is meant to get good at cost-effectively building anything, this is not the way to do it. There are also some obvious gaps that still aren’t plugged (again see above), where there are lots of lines but few connections. It sort of feels like someone wanted to slap lots of lines down, but didn’t go beyond that to ask how they might be used, how the network design would influence the formation… of a network, and how things could be built out in an effective way. It feels unsophisticated.
On the metro side, 2050 is meant to come along with a very useful extension of the Blue Line to Montreal West, which would be a nice follow up to the current Blue Line extension, but which seems unlikely to be built at current prices. Meanwhile, the Pink Line rears its head, but it doesn’t really seem to be adjusted at all from previous plans, even if the enormous number of trams as well as the REM clearly will have an impact as well as open new opportunities.
On the whole, I am disappointed. Montreal has pretty good transit today, but its plans seem to mostly not revolve around the things it does well (metro/REM) and the problems with them (construction cost), and instead focuses on BRT (in a slow and expensive Pie-IX-type orientation instead of a logical Vancouver RapidBus approach), which Montreal has struggled a ton to get built and trams which the city does not have. It doesn’t feel like vision so much as a poorly-informed dream.
CLEVELAND—Lacking a North Star to guide him through his workday, local office worker Evan Pullman was reportedly lost like a sailor in a maelstrom Tuesday after the human resources department at Edgemere Industries failed to send out the company’s quarterly update. “Dear God! Without an email newsletter recapping our…
NEW YORK—In a report released Tuesday that has been hailed as equal parts fascinating and perplexing, researchers at Columbia University found that requests to prove one is not a robot have gone up 400,000% over the past 500 years. “During the Elizabethan era, for example, people were rarely asked to prove they were…
In brief: In the main, our hot and sunny weather will continue through the rest of the work week. We have no weather concerns for the Fourth of July, aside from heat. Our overall pattern may change this weekend, with slightly cooler temperatures and increasing rain chances due to moisture from Hurricane Beryl.
The forecast for the forthcoming holiday, on Thursday, is straightforward. High pressure should be firmly in control of our weather, and this will lead to a hot and sunny day. High temperatures on Thursday will hit the upper 90s for much of the city, with coastal areas remaining in the lower 90s. Winds will be light, from the south, at 5 to 10 mph.
Temperatures at the time of fireworks, about 9 pm for most locations, will be in the upper 80s, with partly to mostly clear skies. There is only about a 10 percent chance of rainfall during the daytime, so there should be no concerns on that score. However, our ‘excitable dogs’ scale will be a 10 out of 10 given that most of our canine friends do not enjoy fireworks. Enjoy the holiday, everyone!
Today, like much of our recent weather, will be mostly sunny and hot. Most of the city will reach the upper 90s, with light winds. There remains plenty of moisture in the atmosphere, but high pressure (which promotes sinking air, rather than the rising air conducive to showers) will keep a lid on activity for the most part. Expect only perhaps a 10 percent chance of rain this afternoon and evening. Lows tonight will only drop to around 80 degrees for most locations.
Temperatures will be warm again on Wednesday, although we might be a few degrees cooler. In addition, we may see a few showers streaming in from the coast, so I’m going to bump rain chances up to about 20 percent. As for humidity, well, do you have to ask about humidity in Houston in July?
The end of the week will see more hot and sunny weather. We’re taking temperatures in the mid- to upper 90s, with lots of sunshine and only low-end rain chances.
Our overall pattern may begin to change on Saturday as high pressure begins to back off a little bit. Our temperatures should come down a few degrees, and rain chances increase. The changes will be modest, but by later this weekend our high temperatures should drop into the lower 90s, with daily rain chances increasing to perhaps 40 or 50 percent. This may persist into next week, depending on what happens with Hurricane Beryl and its moisture.
As it moved into the Caribbean Sea on Monday, Beryl had an astonishing burst of intensity for early July, reaching Category 5 status. There is fairly high confidence in the forecast between now and Friday, when the storm will likely move into the Yucatan Peninsula. A weakened Beryl will then move into the southern Gulf of Mexico.
After that time the system will most likely remain bottled up in the southern Gulf of Mexico. However, given the trend toward weakening high pressure over Texas, some of the the moisture from Beryl could work its way north. This will influence the extent to which Houston sees increased rainfall chances late in the weekend and next week. Is there a scenario in which Beryl becomes a bit more organized and its center tracks toward Texas? Yes. But for now this seems less likely an outcome than just increased rainfall chances for the greater Houston area. We’ll keep a close eye on it all.
For more on Beryl, be sure and check out our detailed forecasts on The Eyewall.
Thanks to Eric and Matt for the hot and sunny July 4th forecast!
Throughout the peak summer travel season, many people often wonder what is best practice for cooling
an empty house – and if it’s even worth it. And for those staying home, staying comfortable while
hanging out around the house doesn’t have to run up the electric bill. Check out these energy efficiency
tips from Reliant to stay cool and save money, regardless of your plans for the holiday weekend!
Traveling for the 4th:
Enjoying the holiday from home (in addition to the above):
WASHINGTON—Revealing they had holed up in Camp David beforehand and grilled him nonstop for a week straight, President Joe Biden’s team confirmed Tuesday they were proud their hours of grueling prep had successfully gotten him through a meeting with his family about continuing to seek reelection. “It was admittedly…
THE HEAVENS—Groaning as He surveyed the massive piles of souls, a stressed-out God confirmed Tuesday that He had not realized He was supposed to reincarnate all those dead people. “Oh, shit, that was my job?” said the Lord God Almighty, who shook His head and muttered, “There’s, like, 117 billion of these things,” as…
In brief: As a boundary pushes in from East Texas, the potential for storms is a little bit higher today than expected. However, while the line of storms currently on the radar is impressive, it’s not clear whether this system will hold together all the way into Houston.
In this morning’s post I mentioned there was “a bit of intrigue” regarding storm chances on Monday afternoon as a boundary pressed into the area from the east. As of 4 pm CT this boundary is clearly visible on radar, having moved from Louisiana into East Texas, and now slowly creeping toward the Houston metro area.
To be frank, our high-resolution modeling guidance has completely missed the boat on this storm development today, and I don’t have a great answer as to what happens later this afternoon and evening. My best guess is that this boundary will continue to slide west, but as the storms approach and move into the Houston area they will weaken. But given the ample daytime heating over the next couple of hours, it is also possible the storms hold together and some sort of line pushes through between now and 9 pm CT.
With this post I simply wanted to call attention to the possibility that showers and thunderstorms may be a little bit more widespread this evening than previously expected. (We have no flooding concerns, regardless). Or, maybe the storms will fizzle out as they move into a slightly less favorable environment. In any case, expect the unexpected this evening.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
Six months ago, I was promoted to lead a group of three managers who each lead around 20 people. “Howard,” one of the managers, had been hired two months before by my predecessor, but it was immediately obvious to me that his work was not up to par. I did my best to give Howard clear feedback about what he needed to improve, provided retraining, and was explicit that if he did not improve X by Y date, it would lead to first a performance improvement plan and ultimately termination. Unfortunately Howard did not improve so I fired him a month ago.
During this process, several of Howard’s direct reports came to me about their problems with his poor performance. I tried to acknowledge their concerns and assure them I was addressing the issues with Howard, but I didn’t think it was fair to tell anyone on his team that I had him on a PIP already.
After firing Howard, I had 1:1s with each of his direct reports, and three of them told me they had felt frustrated that I wasn’t taking any action to address Howard’s performance. I feel bad that I gave them this impression, but I don’t want to be the kind of boss who undermines my managers by telling their direct reports when they’re getting written up, put on a PIP, or fired. How do I reassure a team that I am addressing their boss’ poor performance while not spelling out the gory details?
I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
Last week we talked about summer interns, and these are 12 of my favorite stories you shared.
1. The bookshelves
Best ever intern was at a publishing company. She re-alphabetized multiple bookshelves (hundreds of books) by AUTHOR FIRST NAME. Every time I looked at it I started laughing.
2. The identical twins
Years ago, I worked in a department store as a part-time job. The store decided to partner with local high schools to provide work experience for high school students, and they brought in about 10 students to work on Saturdays only, helping the sales associates on the busiest day of the week. On the second floor, which was women’s clothing, they brought in four teenagers, two of whom were sisters, and identical twins to boot!
One sister was assigned to my department (Special Sizes, which was plus and petite) and the other was assigned across the floor to Misses Sportswear. From the start, it seemed like we’d always have to go over to Misses Sportswear, find our intern, and send her back. Misses Sportswear would come over to our area to find their intern and send her back. We just thought it was the two sisters wanting to chat with each other. It took us over a month to figure out that only one sister was showing up on any given Saturday, signing in for both of them, and floating back and forth between the two departments.
3. The naps
We had an intern who would vanish every day for pronged periods of time. The intern’s manager and I kept noticing the disappearances and started looking around for him. We were in a small mixed office/warehouse space. At one point we found a desk chair in a corner of the warehouse where clearly he had been napping. He must have figured out we found it, and so found a new nesting spot.
We looked and looked and finally realized he had taken several throw pillows from the informal lounge/meeting area and put them under the stairwell outside our interior backdoor. One of the guys in my department put A MINT ON A PILLOW. The kid actually put a sticky note on it saying “touche.”
4. The hole
I worked at a national park, as a natural resources intern, for $15 a day and housing. Being a natural resources intern meant a lot of manual labor. All of us had second jobs or were on food assistance to make ends meet (I folded jeans overnight at the Gap, but that’s a different story). We were all exhausted all the time, and hungry.
The park was divided into cultural zones and natural resource zones. Silt and debris washed down a steep hill from a cultural zone into a natural resource zone. On a hot summer day, we were instructed to shovel the soil into wheelbarrows and push it up the hill back to where it came from. After dutifully following instructions for several loads, we decided to dig a big hole in the natural resource zone, dump the soil there and cover it back up. Then we sat in the shade for a while. Whelp, a couple weeks later there were a bunch of wildflowers that had sprouted where we had dug the hole. Flowers that hadn’t been seen in that national park in decades. We had inadvertently exposed the dormant seed bank! We were praised for our hard work, and I later learned that this was actually good ecological practice. Smarter, not harder!
5. The black mold
We had a year-long intern through a program that placed interns from a particular European country in U.S. nonprofits that did work related to that country’s history. One of said interns showed up for weekend shifts (9-5, a regular workday that rotated among all staff and full-time interns, in a public-facing role) drunk and would sleep it off in a closet. Intern lived in an apartment provided by the org. Over the course of about eight months, he destroyed a brand new sofa (not sure what he did, exactly, but it was covered in black mold) and did … something that resulted in the bathroom also being so covered in black mold that it had to be gutted. (The European-style stovetop espresso maker — you know the kind — was also packed to the brim with cigarette ashes. Intern claimed not to have known it wasn’t an ashtray.) Intern was removed from both internship and apartment, and org now provides a rent stipend for interns to secure their own housing — including signing their own lease.
6. The non-competition
In this instance, I was the intern, and the weirdness came from someone who was working in the office where I was interning. It was with a political campaign in 2012 or so, and I was recruited to the internship after volunteering by one of the organizers. After about a month of being there, the other organizer (a man in his 30s) who did not recruit me got really paranoid that I was going to take his job. I was a 19-year-old college student who was only home for the summer and was not interested in a full-time position, but the guy got super combative — he’d challenge me with pop quiz type questions about how to do something, then get weirdly pissed off if I knew the answers. He’d pile work on me one day, then ignore me for two or three, then get mad at me for not doing anything even though I had finished everything I was assigned. The office supervisor was rarely on-site and I didn’t really know how to deal with it.
In my last week, Paranoid Guy was shocked that I was actually going back to school (even though I’d told him that practically weekly) and suddenly started acting like we were best friends and complimenting my work and telling me he’d miss having me around. It was definitely a whirlwind lesson in office politics, which was not the political educational opportunity I was expecting!
7. The wrong job
My old job had two buildings, spread out but you couldn’t get to one without going past the second. The day the intern was supposed to start, he drove past the first building (where he was supposed to work) to the second. Boss at second building says, “Ah, you must be our intern!” and puts him to work. We spent two weeks wondering where the intern was, and the intern spent two weeks working at the second building. It wasn’t until he repeatedly fell asleep on the job that boss started asking around, realized the mistake, and sent him to us. He was similarly unproductive in our building.
How did it take so long to correct the mistake? How was the intern reporting time with no one noticing he hadn’t shown up? Why wasn’t this fixed by calling the intern on the first day? All questions I will wonder about for the rest of my life.
8. The parties
I worked for a large company, close to 5,000 people at that location. This was in the 90’s and this company was really good about celebrating the employees.
Our summer interns kept disappearing for hours at a time. We finally figured out that they were attending every celebration in the complex. Years of service parties, retirement parties, promotion parties, achievement celebrations. You name it, they went. The announcements were always sent building-wide because there were so many intersecting teams and many people had worked there for decades. A higher than average number of parties were in the summer because of common hiring/retirement months. It was not uncommon for there to be 10-15 gatherings a week.
They were mostly going to score the free food. We were sympathetic to them being poor college students so we finally said they could go for 15 minutes near the end of the scheduled parties, and no more than one party per day.
9. The assignment
As an intern at a very large energy company in the mid 90s, I was introduced to my manager, who was a large, sweaty, angry man who informed me (through clenched teeth the entire time) that his wife was having an affair and had given him hepatitis, and that his plan for the next several weeks was to arrange divorcing and suing her, suing her affair partner, and suing the company we were working for (I don’t think the company had anything to do with the affair – he was just furious at them separately). He handed me a single printed 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper and told me to accomplish the project on it, and as long as we never said another word until the last day of my internship he would sign whatever paperwork needed. In stunned silence, I went and read the project, which was to program an automated security system to monitor whether or not a critical piece of nationwide energy infrastructure was on fire (at the time, the company was paying dozens of people across the country to visually inspect it several times a day to make sure it was not, in fact, on fire).
The hitch with this assignment is that I was not a computer science major (nor did I have any formal science, programming, or engineering training). I was a high school graduate who was starting a Fine Arts degree the next fall. Long story short, I wandered around the dozens of floors of the corporate skyscraper for days (probably looking like a lost toddler) until I found a floor that looked like they might have the foggiest clue how to do what I had been tasked (they had lab coats, and better computers, and science looking equipment) – and managed to get directed to someone who gave me some how-to software manuals and technical documents, and would answer questions if I got stuck – and, against all odds, I did in fact come up with a very duct-taped computer program which would use a scratchy old-school modem to dial into various computerized monitoring stations connected to the thing and use some very rudimentary diagnostic information to determine if the thing was (probably) on fire. It made a wonderful screechy alarm noise if it thought the thing was on fire, and otherwise just dutifully wrote a little “probably not on fire” log, that anyone could check from the computer running the checks every couple of minutes.
There was an end-of-summer intern project demonstration – and I was incredibly frustrated to learn that there was actually more than *two dozen* interns working at that company that summer (no one told me, and apparently they didn’t know I was there, so I didn’t get invited to orientation, or group events, or check-ins to see how I was doing). Also, all the other interns had group projects like “learn how to use the internet, and come up with 10 ideas how the company could use it” or “look up info from old printed records and enter them into a spreadsheet.”
Everyone was astounded to see my software demo, and I heard at least one senior executive ask, “Who approved that as a project, we were told that wasn’t possible?” True to his word, my “manager” never said one more word to me and spent the entire summer yelling at a series of lawyers on his phone. But did write me a nice signed letter that I’d completed my internship to his satisfaction a couple of hours before he resigned in spectacular fashion, yelling profanities at everyone as he stomped off to the elevator and telling them they’d be hearing from his lawyer.
10. More napping
Not my intern, but a neighboring department. The intern would park the truck in the woods and nap underneath it. He would tie his hands to the undercarriage of the truck so it looked like he was working on it. He was busted when someone called it in for a possible tow.
11. The Spiderman
At a former job, people would always tell stories of a long-ago summer intern known only by the nickname “Spiderman.” In an effort to be deferential to his superiors, he would dramatically leap out of the way of anyone walking by in the office and press himself up against the wall, invoking the image of Spiderman sticking to walls with his superpowers.
12. The successful coaching
We had an intern a few years ago who was smart and hardworking but had no concept of work place norms. He thought that work email was optional – he said he didn’t want to use it so could we just tell him or text him what he needed to know? So we explained to him that unfortunately, he had to use email. He also had a terrible handshake (wet fish fingertips) and didn’t know how to tie his tie. One of the guys set up some coaching sessions with him to work on these things including introducing himself and shaking hands with everyone in the department. He is now working full time and is successful.
Hovertext:
We need an arc of History that smashes BOOM right into Justice.
WASHINGTON—With the party’s candidate facing increased pressure to step down after a disastrous debate performance, the Democratic National Committee released a commercial Monday that claims a doddering, out-of-it President Joe Biden will let the nation get away with whatever crazy shit it wants. “This guy is out…
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
I work in the marketing department of a fairly large healthcare company. I’ve been with the company for 15 years and with the marketing team for 12, and my coworkers are one of my favorite things about my job. We all get along really well, my boss and grandbosses are extremely supportive, and there is literally no drama in our department ever (there has been in the past, but the people who bring the drama always end up leaving or getting let go).
I say all that to say that what I’m writing about today is definitely an anomaly in an otherwise extremely positive work experience.
We all work remotely, but we get together in person twice a year for a couple of days and we recently had one of those meetings. We usually have one or two optional social outings, which I always attend because I enjoy hanging out with my coworkers. We’ve done things like going on a dolphin cruise, doing an escape room, happy hours, that kind of thing.
Well, this time, our administrative assistant, “Gina.” scheduled us for a Redneck Comedy bus tour. And yes, it was just EXACTLY how you would imagine it to be based on the name. I decided to give it a chance, because maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as I was expecting and plus, like I said, I enjoy hanging with my coworkers so I didn’t want to miss out on the chance to do that.
But it was definitely as bad as I expected. I don’t think this guy told a single joke that wasn’t racist, sexual, or misogynistic, if not all three. And the crazy thing to me is that Gina mentioned that she had warned the guy that we were a corporate group so he should keep everything HR-appropriate. I shudder to think what his non-HR-appropriate schtick was.
So I guess my question is: am I crazy or is that type of thing wildly inappropriate for a work-sponsored outing? Everyone else (there were 10 of us altogether) seemed to think it was hilarious, although I did see a few of them occasionally groaning at some of the worst jokes. And I feel like it’s important to note that the single black person on our team chose not to attend, which I can’t imagine is a coincidence since she’s participated in all the other activities we’ve done on past trips.
I’m going back and forth on whether I should speak up and say something. I didn’t say anything at the time because I didn’t want to ruin everyone else’s fun, but I kind of regret that now, since it probably seemed like I was perfectly fine with it. But now Gina sent us a survey to fill out and one of the questions has to do with feedback on the social portion of the week. I feel pretty confident that my boss and grandbosses would hear me out and there would be zero retaliation or bad reactions or anything from them. I guess I just need a little confirmation that my gut feeling about the whole thing isn’t off-base.
You are not off-base. Speak up!
This is egregious enough that you should speak up even if you weren’t being asked for feedback, but your opinion is being actively solicited! There is zero reason to keep your concerns to yourself, and tons of reasons to speak up.
Nearly every joke being racist, sexual, or misogynistic puts this so over the line that I’m baffled that Gina didn’t say something in the moment or immediately afterwards, given that earlier she’d thought about it enough to warn the comic to keep it work-appropriate. At a minimum she should have acknowledged it afterwards — but it would have been better to short-circuit the show once it was clear bigotry and sexism would be the theme. To be fair to Gina, that’s hard to do mid-show if you’re not in a senior role. But someone else there in a position of leadership should have.
Broadly speaking, stand-up comedy can be tricky for workplace events, since so much humor relies on being edgy and one person’s “edginess” is another person’s offensiveness. So any work group hiring a comedian needs to be clear ahead of time about what’s off-limits and make sure the comedian will adhere to that — and they also need to be willing to step in if things go off the rails.
And ugh, my heart hurts for your coworker, who sounds like she had a pretty good idea ahead of time of what this was likely to be and now has to grapple with the fact that her coworkers happily went and seemed to enjoy it.
Please speak up, and don’t sugarcoat it.
The state of Vermont agreed to pay $175,000 in damages to a man who was pulled over for giving an officer the middle finger in 2018 and arrested for disorderly conduct, with the ACLU saying that “Police need to respect everyone’s First Amendment rights—even for things they consider offensive or insulting.” What do you…
What's he going to do, say no to the Divine Dragon?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a dogsled team to train.
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