Cowboy Who?

A few months ago, the OS/2 Museum obtained a seemingly complete and error-free set of floppies with SFT NetWare 286 Level II version 2.0a. And just recently, a disk set of Advanced NetWare 86 2.0a turned up, though sadly incomplete.

Both releases are from 1986 and share one rather unpleasant feature: The NetWare OS won’t run without a hardware key card:

All or most old NetWare versions sold before circa 1988 needed a custom hardware key which had to match the serial number that was burned into the NetWare disks. I’m not sure what the exact history was, but it is known that the NetWare serial number could be provided by Novell’s DCB, or Disk Coprocessor Board:

I don’t quite understand what was the point of selling a custom disk controller and requiring a serial number match. But NetWare 2.0a could also run on off the shelf hardware using standard AT disk controllers and drives. For those machines, Novell provided a simple key card:

I’m not entirely sure if Novell was more worried about piracy by end users or by unscrupulous resellers. In any case, in 1986, during the era of NetWare 2.0a, a hardware key was required by NetWare.

Needless to say, if you are incredibly lucky and find a complete NetWare 2.0a disk set, and the disks are actually readable, the chances of also having the matching hardware key are close to nil. And even if you did have one, that does not at all help when trying to run NetWare 2.0a in an emulator. So, what do we do?

There are two obvious approaches. Either emulating the key card hardware, or patching the software to not need a key card.

Emulating a NetWare Key Card

First let’s examine the overall logic. NetWare 2.0a uses a 6-byte serial number which is different on every disk. It’s written into an object file NET$OS.OBJ, from where it propagates into the final NetWare executable, NET$OS.EXE.

The first four bytes are the serial number proper, stored in BCD format (eight digits). The first two digits tend to be zeros and may be left out on serial number stickers and such. The last two bytes are an “Application Number” which possibly controls NetWare capabilities such as the number of users supported.

When NetWare starts up, it reads six bytes of data from the key card. These six bytes have to match the serial and application number stored in NET$OS.OBJ.

The key card hardware is quite simple. It responds to I/O port reads in a fixed range from 23Ah to 23Fh. For reasons that may be lost to history, the serial number is stored in a strange format–possibly obfuscated, possibly somewhat scrambled for technical reasons.

Ports 23Ch to 23Fh return the serial number proper, while ports 23Ah and 23Bh provide the application number. Looking at the key card photo, it is possible that Novell had prototype boards where part of the serial number and/or application number could be set using jumpers.

This is how the serial number nibbles are returned by the key card. Note that all values must be bit-flipped after they are read from the card:

port 23Ch: [ S2L : S1L ]
port 23Dh: [ S0H : S3L ]
port 23Eh: [ S0L : S3H ]
port 23Fh: [ S1H : S2H ]

port 23Ah: [ S5H : S4H ]
port 23Bh: [ S5L : S4L ]

S0 to S5: Six bytes of serial number
H = high nibble, L = low nibble
All values bitwise complemented

There is really not much to it, and emulating such hardware is trivial. But it is still almost as annoying as the real key card: You must actually have the emulation, and it can unlock only a single copy of NetWare. That is quite annoying when experimenting, such as trying to figure out whether NetWare 86 2.0a 86 and NetWare 286 2.0a SFT II understand the same on-disk format (they don’t).

The only real advantage an emulated key card has is that it can run unmodified NetWare.

Fixing the Software

The other approach is to forget about the key card hardware entirely and patching out the hardware key checks instead.

I decided to go with a somewhat complicated but safe approach. Rather than patching out the serial number checks, I replaced the routine which reads the serial number from the key card. The replacement copies the serial number to the same location where the original routine placed it. That way, if NetWare in any way depended on the contents of the bytes holding the hardware serial number, it would still work fine (though I suspect it doesn’t care).

As it turns out, it’s not hard to find the serial number burned into NET$OS.OBJ / NET$OS.EXE, because it’s prefixed by a convenient ‘S/N=’ string. The existing serial number is read and copied to the end of the replacement routine, which moves it exactly where the routine reading the key card is expected to place it. Fortunately the replacement code is much smaller than the original, because it doesn’t have to bother bit-flipping and swapping all the nibbles around.

The patching logic is implemented in a Python script. This script requires Python 3. Everything is in there, including comments.

The patcher can be run against the NET$OS.EXE file. But not only that. There is a high likelihood that it can patch NET$OS.OBJ as well—as long as the original serial number and key card reading routines are each stored in a single LEDATA record, which is somewhere between highly likely and guaranteed.

Obviously if NET$OS.OBJ is patched, then a newly generated NET$OS.EXE won’t need any further treatment. The patching logic even makes sure that the checksum of the modified LEDATA record still matches, although the Novell linker does not appear to be at all concerned if it does not.

Rather conveniently, the patcher can also be used directly on raw floppy images containing NET$OS.OBJ or NET$OS.EXE. There is a slight chance that the patching might fail if the files were fragmented (i.e. if the crucial byte sequences were stored in non-consecutive sectors). This is extremely unlikely to happen with the original NetWare disks.

Applying the patch to the GENOS-3 disk of SFT NetWare 286 II 2.0a, which holds the generated NET$OS.EXE, we end up with the following:

From 1986 to 2024, NetWare 2.0a lives!

The patching script has obviously not received a lot of testing because there just aren’t that many copies of NetWare 2.0a available.

For reference, the above screenshot shows the System Configuration (SYSCON) utility running on a client system. It is a convenient method of displaying the server’s serial number as well as the application number.

Reinventing the Wheel

Needless to say, this has been done before. And not only has it been done—in the mid-1980s, a company called NetWork Business Systems out of Houston, Texas was proudly selling a tool called KeyCard Eliminator for $99. That was not cheap, but it was a lot cheaper than NetWare licenses, which cost more than a thousand dollars.

But finding these old cracking tools isn’t any easier than finding NetWare 2.0a… so I wrote my own. Problem solved.

When I heard that these clients were a lesbian couple, I was like, Great, I’m a shoo-in. They wanted to meet informally before they hired me, so I donned my best muscle tee, which had gaping arm holes down to the waist, a backwards baseball cap, and my usual sandals that put me a comfortable two inches above the city sidewalk. This was in my baby trans era, when I had just shaved my head and was still taking fashion cues from white lesbians (never again, folks).

I made my way to the Upper East Side, a place I only went to for the museums or when I needed to get to Central Park. The building’s exterior looked nondescript from Google Maps, so I didn’t think much about where I was going until I arrived and realized I was severely underdressed. I was greeted by a uniformed doorman who also operated the old-timey elevators. Everyone I passed in the hall was white, elderly, and wore business casual in the summer, as if it was their casual casual wear.

Upstairs, I sat on the edge of the couple’s couch so I wouldn’t get my sun-screened skin all over their upholstery. This was a place where I’d be intimidated into using a coaster. They carried their cats to me one by one and watched as we interacted. I always let cats sniff my hand first, then I go for the head, then chin scratches if they find that acceptable—none of that nervous, flat-handed, I-didn’t-grow-up-with-animals bullshit. I think the couple was pleased, because they asked what I did and what my rates were. When I gave them a lowball number because they were my first real clients, outside of my friends whose cats I watched for free, they exchanged glances and later emailed me with a rate three times as high, saying writers have to eat, too. They would also connect me to two of their friends, one of whom became a recurring client, and I learned how to offer an appropriate sliding scale, although no one ever paid me as much again.

There were also few cats who required as much care. Charlie was seventeen years old, and Daisy was eighteen or nineteen. Daisy had arthritis and often didn’t make it to the litter box in time. The couple told me this in advance, but it didn’t register until ten seconds into my first day of work when I accidentally stepped on a stray piece of poop and had to hop-step it to the shower to scrub the bottom of my heel with soap. I became accustomed to wiping up puddles and removing dry poop from the floor and from the main bed where they slept. The bed had a ramp alongside it, but in the early mornings Daisy yowled for me, and I dragged myself out of the spare room to manually pick her up and put her on the ground. She was a splasher and couldn’t groom herself, and therefore always smelled vaguely like pee. Every day I wiped her down with pet wipes and tried to get her to purr. When she wanted to nestle against my leg, I dissociated from my sense of smell and changed clothes before I left the apartment. Do I smell weird? I kept checking with friends.

The first time I commuted out of the neighborhood, I was in a rush and couldn’t find the subway entrance for the life of me, despite my using technology and spinning in circles. I approached the nearest group of people and asked them to point me in the right direction. One of the men laughed toward his friends and said, I don’t know. I don’t take the train. Some of them vaguely gestured around and tried to make helpful noises—obviously, I made it on my own.

When I returned from that excursion, I met C., a doorman who had been working in the building for years, lived a few blocks away, and looked like he was straight out of a Hallmark movie. He asked what I was reading whenever I carried books in from the library and randomly brought up going to the Wigstock drag festival in the ’90s, probably to let me know that he ran an allied building. C. was nice to talk to, but the concept of doormen annoys me in general, mostly when they act more like security guards and are hostile before they find out I am supposed to be there. They know my every movement in and out of the building, would receive my mail if I sent any there, and make me hesitant to bring friends over, in case they gave my friends a hard time. Most media portray doormen as cute therapists, though, which could be a way to view anyone, I guess, if they worked for you.

In the evenings, I rubbed a cream into Charlie’s ear to stimulate his appetite, and twice a day Daisy needed to be pilled. I rolled her meds into a rubbery treat and pushed it around her bowl, wherever it looked like her mouth would land next. When she was savvy to the pill texture and spat it out, I picked up the moist tablet and rerolled it into another treat, squatting in front of her and praying she would swallow. Charlie had IBS and couldn’t eat certain ingredients, so I monitored every feeding to make sure the cats’ food didn’t cross-contaminate. The couple used to have a third cat around the same age, who had passed away recently. I was worried these cats would die on me, too. If I needed to deliver the news, my plan was to text and ask if I could call them, then FaceTime if they wanted to. I texted photos of Daisy to my then-roommate, who couldn’t even hear mentions of cat death without thinking about their own cat dying and tearing up. Another cat-loving friend suggested there were only two options for grieving them: to adopt another one right away, or to be alone and wallow forever.

About a year after the first visit, the couple let me know that Daisy had passed. It was her time, as they say, and she had looked increasingly uncomfortable every time I saw her. I was invited back to watch Charlie, who was also becoming frailer and less amenable to people. He now rarely strayed from the bed except to eat and use the litter box. I sat a respectable distance away in the corner of the room to keep him company without petting him or disturbing his general atmosphere.

During my stay, the couple informed me that someone from the vet’s office would be stopping by to give Charlie medicine. I had to be home to let him in. Easy enough, I thought. When the vet assistant arrived, he told me to get a towel and throw it over Charlie, who had fled into the hallway at the first sight of the man. While I ran after him, the assistant rolled out an IV stand and started hooking up bags and syringes. I scooped up a yowling Charlie and carried him back to the bed, gently pressing him down with both hands. I could feel his vertebrae between my fingers. The assistant injected Charlie’s hind leg with two different fluids, and we made small talk while we waited for the bags to empty. I hesitantly asked how long he thought Charlie had left, since this kind of care seemed extreme, and I was also low-key trying to estimate the end of my revenue source. Honestly, I’m surprised he hasn’t gone already, he said.

The assistant had a Jersey accent and was pretty nonchalant about the whole cat-having-better-healthcare-than-people thing. I wondered if he did home visits often. I recently contributed to a friend of a friend’s GoFundMe when they were charged something like $10,000 because their cat needed lifesaving treatment that included an extended, overnight stay at the animal hospital. The cat didn’t have insurance, because why would a cat participate in human bureaucracy? Cats could hardly be trained, they didn’t pay rent, they didn’t work for cops, etc. Even though the GoFundMe was titled “Save Tuna,” I’m sure we were all thinking as much about the lovely friend, her well-being an extension of the cat, the cat an extension of her.

The assistant vacated as soon as his job was done, leaving me to dispose of the syringes and pack the meds back into the fridge. Charlie’s leg had formed a small hump of fluids where he was injected, which I was told would deflate over the course of the day. When I returned to the bedroom, he had already disappeared under the bed, sullen, so I assumed my usual spot in the corner to wait for him.

PARIS—With a minaret protruding from atop the former Catholic cathedral as the repairs that followed a 2019 fire neared an end, the removal of scaffolding around Notre Dame revealed Friday that it had accidentally been rebuilt as a mosque. “Well, shit,” contractor Mathieu Renaud told reporters, explaining that he had…

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MESA, AZ—Noting how fun it was to push his creativity to the next level, local man James Shafley told reporters Friday that trying to make a meal from a bag of groceries he had recently stolen was like a real-life version of the television show Chopped. “It’s amazing—I’ve got all these completely random ingredients I…

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SAN ANTONIO—As they took turns trying to jump up and tap it out, the San Antonio Spurs confirmed Friday that Victor Wembanyama’s head had gotten lodged between the rim and backboard again. “It’s really wedged in there good—hey, can I borrow that?” Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich said to a nearby custodian, before…

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COLUMBIA, SC—Claiming she still had a quarter tank and was ready to fight, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley vowed Friday to remain in the race until her campaign bus ran out of gas. “To the critics who say I should drop out, let me be clear: I am in this race for as long as it takes for my campaign bus’s…

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MONTGOMERY, AL—Sparking a national debate about the separation of church and state, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker came under fire this week for blatantly invoking VeggieTales in an official ruling. “Somebody up there is really upset with somebody down here,” the decision read in part, attributing the…

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Esther Addley, “‘This is political expediency’: how the Tories turned on 15-minute cities,” in The Guardian
Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion
Bernadette Atuahene, “Predatory Cities,” in California Law Review
Bernadette Atuahene, “The Scandal of the Predatory City,” in The Washington Post
David Banks, The City Authentic
Adam Barnett, Michaele Herrmann, and Christopher Deane, “Revealed: the Science Denial Network Behind Oxford’s ‘Climate Lockdown’ Backlash,” in DeSmog
BBC News, ‘How 15 Minutes Cities Became a Lockdown Conspiracy’
Judith Butler, Who’s Afraid of Gender?
Alice Capelle, “The Anti 15 Minute City Conspiracy is Ridiculous”
Alice Capelle, “The manosphere meets the climate movement”
Lisa Chamberlain, “The Surprising Stickiness of the “15 Minute City”,” in World Economic Forum
Steven Conn, The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is (And Isn’t)
Samuel R. Delaney, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
Gareth Fearn et al., “Planning For the Public: Why Labour Should Support A Public Planning System”
Hannah Fry, “A ‘failure to launch’: Why young people are having less sex,” in Los Angeles Times
Edward Glaeser, “The 15-minute city is a dead end - cities must be places of opportunity for everyone”
David Harvey, “The Art of Rent”
David Harvey, “The Political Economy of Public Spaces”
David Harvey, “The Right to the City”
Tiffany Hsu, “He Wanted to Unclog Cities. Now He’s ‘Public Enemy No. 1.’,” in The New York Times
Frank Laundry, “The USA Will Never Build Walkable Cities”
David Lawler, “A World of Boomtowns,” in Axios
Eisha Maharasingham-Shah and Pierre Vaux, “‘Climate Lockdown’ and the Culture Wars: How COVID-19 Sparked A New Narrative Against Climate Action,” in Institute for Strategic Dialogue
Michael Naas, “Comme si, comme ca” in Derrida From Now On
NotJustBikes, Designing Urban Places that Don’t Suck (A Sense of Place)
NotJustBikes, How Suburban Development Makes American Cities Poorer
NotJustBikes, Suburbia is Subsidized: Here’s the Math
NotJustBikes, The Great Places Erased by Suburbia (the Third Place)
Oh the Urbanity! “15-Minute City Conspiracies Have It Backwards”
Feargus O’Sullivan, “Where the ‘15-Minute City’ Falls Short,” in Bloomberg
Feargus O’Sullivan and Daniel Zuidijk, “The 15 Minute City Freakout is A Case Study in Conspiracy Paranoia,” in Bloomberg
QAnon Anonymous, “Attending the 15 Minute Cities Oxford Protest with Annie Kelly”
Elliot Sang, “Nowhere To Go: the Loss of the Third Place”
Chris Stanford, “The 15-Minute City: Where Urban Planning Meets Conspiracy Theories,” in The New York Times
Darin Tenev, “La Déconstruction en enfant: the Concept of Phantasm in the Work of Derrida”
Trashfuture, “Cell Block IPA”
Trashfuture, Honk if You’re Honu ft. Dr Gareth Fearn
Joy White, Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City
Kim Willsher, “Paris Mayor Unveils ‘15-minute city’ plan in re-election campaign,” in The Guardian

#philosophy #education

PARK CITY, UT—Noting that she did not want her parents’ fame to distract from her Sundance premiere, industry sources confirmed Thursday that emerging filmmaker Malia Obama had changed her surname to ‘Scorsese.’ “Although her legal name is still Obama, Malia is officially promoting her short film The Heart under the…

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Debate among scientists has risen in recent years about whether we live in a simulation, but what does that even mean, and what would be the consequences if we did? The Onion answers common questions about whether we live in a simulation.

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The Supreme Court of Alabama, a state which already does not allow for abortion under any circumstances, recently ruled that frozen embryos in test tubes are considered children, a decision that has made the process of in vitro fertilization possibly illegal in the state and has caused some practices to stop offering…

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WASHINGTON—As part of an effort to ensure the benefits were only allocated to those in “true need,” a new federal law went into effect Thursday requiring all Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients to balance food on their nose until they receive the command to eat it. “There’s no reason why working-age,…

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Capital One Financial Corporation plans to acquire Discover Financial Services in a $35 billion deal that would combine two of the largest U.S. credit card companies. Today on the show, five big questions about the deal, and the opaque system behind every swipe, tap or insertion of your credit card.

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Today's News:

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

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. I was fired during my probationary period

If you are fired during your probationary period, should you expect it to be without warning? This just happened to me, where I was let go of at the 60-day mark. I had a 30-day check-in, where the only feedback given was that my boss appreciated that I was at work every day, that she was “frustrated” with something I had done on my second day (when she was gone, as she worked part-time), and that I needed to do more things independently. None of this was put in writing. It’s unclear to me if my firing was budget-related, as the grant funding for my program ran out a few months prior to my hiring, and I was hired at a significantly higher wage than the position had initially been listed at.

My termination letter only says that they could let go of me at any time if I was deemed to be the wrong fit. Obviously, I’m terrified of this happening again and I’m wondering how common it is.

Yeah, it can happen. The purpose of probationary periods is to allow companies to let an employee go without doing a ton of coaching, warnings, etc. (It’s not that firing someone without doing those things first would be illegal, but many companies have their own internal policies that commit them to specific cycles of coaching and warnings after probationary periods are over.) Whether or not that’s reasonable in any given case depends on what the issues are; if something can be corrected with clear feedback or a little coaching, generally that makes more sense to do. In other cases, it’s clear there’s a fundamental mismatch with the role, or the amount of coaching required to get the person where they’d need to be isn’t practical. In others, you get a manager who just doesn’t know how to manage effectively or overreacts to minor things and ends up making the wrong call. Regardless of which category it falls in, though, ideally managers wouldn’t blindside employees with it — ideally they’d be giving feedback along the way, not just letting you know one day that it didn’t work out. But some don’t operate that way.

None of which really answers your question about how common it is. I’d say you don’t need to go into every job terrified that you’ll be fired out of the blue during your probationary period, assuming you know yourself to be reasonably capable … but it’s useful to be aware it can be a thing that happens.

2. I’m in charge of DEI because I’m a woman

My manager has suddenly decided that, because I’m one of the only women on our team of 20 or so men, it’s my responsibility to become an expert in accessibility and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). I don’t necessarily mind leading this initiative (well, a little — I’m irritated as it’s increased my workload and this feels like exactly the thing DEI efforts are supposed to mitigate), but the problem now is I’m being given very vague tasks with zero direction to “make everything we do accessible and DEI-friendly” — by people who can’t be bothered to learn about accessibility/DEI themselves. And I’m getting in trouble now because I’m not implementing it exactly to their vision. What exactly is their vision, I’m not sure, but some of the ideas they have either don’t match the reality of how it works, or require resources I don’t have, or simply don’t make sense to me.

Now my whole team is looking to me for guidance on this very vague, nebulous thing that I’ve been trying to grasp with no help. I’ve tried to explain my situation, and offered up some basic frameworks and processes to follow, as well as links to documentation, but apparently that’s not enough — they want every last thing spelled out for them. They appear blind to the irony of the whole situation. I’ve been considering leaving this job for some time, and this may be the final straw. What can I do?

DEI is an incredibly challenging job under the best of circumstances — and that’s when you have a receptive team, committed leadership, and someone leading the work with expertise in the field. Expecting you to do it without any of those things is a recipe for failure and frustration. Honestly, I’d wash your hands of it entirely — tell them it’s work that needs to be led by an expert, that expecting the women on the team to do it is itself a DEI problem, and that you’re not equipped with the expertise, resources, or team buy-in to do what they need. Hold firm on the “I’m not doing this simply because I’m one of the few women” point in particular, and consider pointing out it’s illegal to assign work based on gender.

And yes, let it be the final straw and get out.

3. How to explain a family crisis to very demanding clients

I work directly with clients in a niche of a touchy-feely-warm-fuzzies industry. I’ve been lucky to have really warm, friendly relationships with most of these clients for years — we trade book recommendations, I get to hear about babies in their families, they sent well-wishes ahead of my first triathlon last year, etc. The downside is that they tend to take things very personally. If I don’t respond to an email as quickly as usual (we’re talking within a few hours) I’m liable to get a message asking if I’m too busy for their projects, or even occasionally asking if I’m annoyed or ignoring them. I try to shut this down when it happens, but I mostly just avoid it by being very responsive and always giving them a timeline of when they can expect progress, so they never have to worry in the first place.

Unfortunately, I’ve been in and out of the office lately dealing with a family member’s unexpected and severe health issue. They’re stable and responding well to treatment so far, but I’m understandably behind on work, and I’ll likely be slower to respond and finish projects as this situation shakes out and settles down. Based on the follow-up emails currently in my inbox, my feelings-first clients are already upset. I know that if I say I’ve been out with a family emergency, they’ll want to know what happened. I wouldn’t mind telling them and, honestly, it would be a relief for me if they knew, as they’ll be less likely to send me “r u mad at me pls respond” notes if they have a better explanation on hand. But I don’t want to overshare, or start a cycle of having to talk about all this on a regular basis at work. Any wisdom for approaching these conversations with the right balance of transparency and boundaries?

How about this: “I’ve had a family health emergency — nothing you should worry about, and honestly it’s easier for me to not think about it when I’m at work, but if my responses are slightly delayed for a little while as this settles down, that’s why.” If you’re pushed for details: “It really is easier for me not to think about it too much at work, thanks for understanding!”

For what it’s worth, it’s possible to have warm relationships where you trade book recommendations and hear about new babies without people taking a few-hour delay so personally that they start asking if you’re too busy for their projects! This is weird and over-the-top! Do you know if others who do similar work all get this same treatment from clients? If they don’t, it could be interesting to compare notes and see if you can figure out what’s bringing it out in yours. (Also, what industry is this?! I’m dying to know.)

4. Mentioning (relevant) children in a cover letter

I am job hunting and looking at applying to jobs that are parent-oriented (the “Parenting” or “Family” brand/section of a media company, etc.) Is it okay to mention that I’m a mom in my cover letter? It’s definitely part of why I’m interested in the job, but it’s been pretty drilled into me not to mention my personal life in an application! If I do mention it, is it best just to keep it brief/vague (“as a mom…”) or more specific (“as a mom to a toddler and an infant…”)? Is it something I should just keep for a potential interview? Or never mention it at all?

I wouldn’t, partly because of unconscious bias (especially if you mention they’re young kids) but more because having kids is common enough that it doesn’t do a lot to make you stand out from other applicants. But what you could do is cite something more specific that could differentiate you in a relevant way — like mentioning that you’ve have a long-running interest in childhood development or experience volunteering with kids or so forth. Those are more application-appropriate and they’ll connect to the job in a more targeted way.

5. Turning down an offer

I’m in a field full of blunt crusty Massholes. I’m also a blunt crusty Masshole, so this isn’t generally a problem. But I’m currently job hunting, and I’m at a loss for interview advice because white-collar officespeak advice involves unspoken mind games and social scripts that tradespeople don’t use. (For example, I’ve found they like you better as both a candidate and employee if you’re honest to the point of being self-effacing about your skillset, rather than hyping yourself up like most people say.)

I have three serious offers right now. One is easily my first choice; it has better pay, benefits, schedule, and location, but the real deciding factor against the other two is the poor management I saw during my trial days with each, and I’m concerned about how to turn them both down. Telling the truth would be a personal insult. If I cite pay, I’m pretty sure both will offer me a competitive counteroffer. If I cite location, I think it’d be fair if they pointed out that I knew the locations when I applied. As for being vague about my reason, I was enthusiastic about all three in interviews (as you do), and since people in my field are very straightforward, I think they took that at full face value and would feel snubbed if I didn’t give a reason for rejecting them.

So, what do I say? This isn’t about abstract professionalism; the field is small and tight-knit (all three options know each other and one of my previous bosses personally), and I didn’t leave my last place on great terms, so I’m concerned about my reputation. I definitely shouldn’t be honest; what do I say instead that won’t sound flimsy or vague? I’ll probably work with these people in the future; what rationale can I give that would help me maintain connections?

My family heritage is Masshole, and you’re overthinking it! You have three offers; you’re taking one and thus necessarily have to turn down the other two. So with the two you’re turning down, just cite those multiple offers: “I had several offers and ultimately decided one of the others was the stronger fit for me.” You really don’t have to say any more than that! If they push you anyway, it’s fine to be vague — for example, “It’s a combination of a lot of factors, but I enjoyed getting to talk with you and learning more about your work.” Truly, there’s no obligation to open your heart to them (just as they don’t need to be candid with applicants they turn down either).

ANAHEIM, CA—Hearing a sigh as the car turned into the crowded parking lot of the Australian-themed chain restaurant, sources confirmed Thursday that local mom Dana Oliver only liked the other Outback Steakhouse, the one over by the Starbucks. “I just don’t see why we can’t drive the extra 10 minutes to the one in…

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CHICAGO—In what many described as the ghostly remnants of an internet that died long ago, a tattered banner ad was reportedly all that remained Thursday hanging over long-abandoned website MovieFacts.com. “It’s just so sad, in its heyday, this website used to be a bustling e-commerce hub that people would visit from…

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A man in Deschutes County, OR is being treated for a strain of the bubonic plague that he contracted from his pet cat, which succumbed to the disease after hunting rats in an area where the ailment is endemic to the rodent population. What do you think?

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KENT, WA—After seven years of what it described as painstaking research and development, Blue Origin unveiled Thursday an $8 billion barrel it had built for Jeff Bezos to ride over Niagara Falls. “Ever since Mr. Bezos was a boy, he has dreamt about soaring 188 feet down through the air in a barrel, and we’re proud to…

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You step inside the bathroom and shut the door.

You lock the door.

Get a good look at yourself in the dim lighting. You look great. Remember this because you’re about to look more vulnerable than a baby antelope at the watering hole during lion lunch hour.

Unsnap (they’re always snaps) the top two snaps. Then, resnap them.

You go back to the door. Double-check to make sure that it is locked. Jiggle the handle. Shake it.

Once you’re sure it’s locked, unsnap all the snaps and zipper (there’s always a zipper too), and slide your arms out of the sleeves. Unpeel yourself, you big, stupid banana.

Look down at your chest: you’re either wearing the bra you’ve had for too long and that you tell people you wash, but you’ve never washed it, because you’re worried it’ll lose some of the comfort it brings you. Or you’re completely naked. There is no in between.

Hold the top of the jumpsuit under the back of your thighs so that it’s not touching the floor (gross) and also not touching the toilet (gross). This will be difficult but necessary.

Bend your legs and assume a sitting position. You are ready.

As you are peeing, cold and alone, you consider the history of your choice: you’re wearing a garment originally designed to be worn in factories around dangerous machinery or by fighter pilots or people jumping out of planes. You have a Substack that you send out sometimes and pile everything on the floor so you don’t have to build shelves. The jumpsuit you’re wearing tonight was purchased at Madewell with a gift card your grandmother gave you.

The door handle jiggles. You’ve never known fear until then.

You say some combination of words to let the potential intruder know that the bathroom is occupied. Your voice is at a higher pitch than you’ve ever reached before.

You pee faster.

You reach for toilet paper while still managing not to let the jumpsuit fall to the ground. You are so brave.

Somehow, the door opens, and someone walks in. They back out with apologies, but not before you make full eye contact. They have seen you. There’s nothing you can do or say. Everything will be different from now on.

You finish, suit yourself back up, wash your hands, and get back out there. You see the person that saw you. They are sitting at the bar with friends. You are both telling the story of what just happened, and, for a moment, there is a sense of unity. The jumpsuit has made you one.

You keep drinking until, once again, it’s time.

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WASHINGTON—Clapping with delight while attempting to catch the thin, floating film of cleaning liquid, President Joe Biden chased a soap bubble across the nation Thursday, Beltway sources confirmed. “Come back, Mr. Bubble!” said the commander in chief, who reportedly gave chase to the bubble after spotting it…

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Fertility clinics in Alabama are contemplating next steps after the state Supreme Court ruled that frozen fertilized eggs are children — and discarding them would be a crime.

(Image credit: Lynne Sladky)

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

A reader writes:

I’ve been at my new job for just over a month and have very grave doubts about whether it’s going to work out. I’m finding it impossible to make my supervisor, Martha, happy. Her criticism is frequent, harsh, and, in my opinion, often very unreasonable. The incident that has me writing to you happened today, when she reprimanded me in writing for failing to answer an email in four minutes.

To set the scene: Earlier this week, Martha and my other boss (I support two teams but it’s an uneven split; unfortunately my primary boss is the awful one) had a meeting with me in which Martha told me all the things I was doing wrong and what needed to change. I’m trying to understand where she’s coming from, but I’m just not used to a work situation like this. She proudly describes herself as a micromanager (she doesn’t appear to know the word has a negative connotation) and is looking for constant, immediate responsiveness, “overcommunication” (her words), and accountability. I understand she’s the boss and it’s her call, but it’s a hard adjustment. I’m not used to being watched so closely. Every job I’ve had, the boss has been concerned with results, not with knowing exactly where I am every minute, hearing back from me instantly, etc.

All week, I’ve worked so hard to keep her happy and show her that I took the conversation to heart. Then today, I received an email, on which Martha was CCd, from a senior partner asking for contact info for one of our clients. I saw the email come in while I was working on a project for the other boss. I made the apparently grave error of not stopping instantly, but instead finished up the line in the Excel sheet I was working on, then opened the email and began gathering the requested info. Before I had finished, Martha replied to both of us, sending the partner the requested information (the wrong information, for the record, but I’ll get to that later.) I saw her email, which arrived in my inbox a whopping four minutes after the email from the partner, stopped working on my response since it was no longer necessary, and went back to the project I’d been working on. Then I get an email from Martha: “Jane, this would have been a great opportunity to build a relationship with the partner. Why didn’t you dive in and assist?”

Four minutes, Alison. Four minutes. A bathroom break can take four minutes!

I just feel like she’s determined to hate me. I tried so hard all week to do everything exactly the way she likes, and she still found something to criticize. If she wanted me to answer the email, why didn’t she give me a grace period of, you know, maybe five minutes before answering it herself? Also, as I said earlier, she gave him the wrong information. He asked for the email address and she gave the physical address — which, to me seems like she was so eager to answer the email, so that she could blame me for not answering it, that she rushed and sent the wrong info. (By the way, if I sent incorrect information to a partner, she would act like it was the end of the world. But it’s no big deal when she does it.) Also, for the record, I understand some things are very time-sensitive. I still think four minutes is kind of a stretch, for almost any situation, but I also want to make it clear — this was not an urgent request, it could have waited five, maybe even, gasp, 10 minutes!

I’m not asking whether my boss is being reasonable here. I’m very confident that she isn’t. My question to you is: do you think I should start looking for a new job? I just feel like this is such an unreasonable criticism that there’s no way I’m ever going to make this person happy. She either has no idea how to manage people or has developed an instantaneous hatred for me and will continue to find things to criticize no matter how hard I try. I’ve been so stressed out since I started this job, worrying about messing up — which, not surprisingly, is probably leading me to mess up more. Is this salvageable or should I start looking for an escape plan?

Start looking for a new job.

Some years back, I would have recommended you try to address the problem head-on with Martha: give specific examples of projects where you could have worked more effectively if you weren’t on such a short leash, ask if there’s anything you’re doing that makes her feel she can’t trust you and how you can work more autonomously, and suggest experimenting with giving you more autonomy on one specific project to see how it goes.

But I’m increasingly convinced that while that approach may result in small improvements around the edges, you’ll still be left working for a manager who fundamentally doesn’t know how to manage, who doesn’t trust you, and whose instincts are punitive where they should be supportive.

This is someone who proudly describes herself as a micromanager. I just don’t think direct conversation is going to solve it to the extent you need.

Maybe I’m wrong. You could try that conversation and see how it goes! (There’s advice here on doing it. I also did a podcast episode on micromanagers that could help.) But I’m skeptical.

There is potentially another avenue for redress here: the other boss. What’s your dynamic with her, and what’s your impression of her management style? If you sense she doesn’t agree with Martha’s assessment and she looks like someone more reasonable to work for, is it possible to talk discreetly with her about what’s going on and reshuffle the balance of your work so that you’re mostly or exclusively working for her? (In particular, I’m curious about her input during the meeting Martha held with the two of you and whether she agreed with Martha’s criticism.)

Otherwise, though, I’d rather you get out quickly before Martha has affected your confidence and your sense of yourself as a competent, autonomous person, and while this is still a relative blip on your resume.

The global sneaker market has exploded in the past several years to about $70 billion annually, but it can be hard for those looking to develop a sneaker collection of their own to know where to start. The Onion offers tips for starting a sneaker collection.

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