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

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

1. Should you call to “confirm” an interview when you don’t really have one?

I’ve been seeing a trend lately of job hunters claiming an extremely effective strategy is to call companies to confirm an interview claiming you already have one scheduled with them (when you don’t). Most times, they won’t question it or don’t want to admit to someone farther up the chain they may have missed or lost an application, so they schedule the interview. I would personally never use this strategy myself as using any degree of dishonesty in the job application process makes me very uncomfortable, but I can see why it could be effective and may appeal to desperate job hunters. I’m curious what your thoughts are on this trend? Is it a good or bad idea?

This is a horrible idea and won’t work at any competently-run organization. If you call to confirm an interview and they don’t see one scheduled, they’re not going to just say “oh yes, let me confirm that,” especially if that time is already booked for something else or if they haven’t even started booking interviews yet. They’re going to investigate in some way, and that’s probably going to involve looking up your application, at which point they’ll find no indication you’re supposed to be interviewing. And then they’re going to say, “It looks like there was some kind of mix-up, and we don’t have any indication we invited you to interview.”

At best they’ll assume you mixed them up with some other employer, which makes you look disorganized (and they’re going to wonder if you’ll mix up important appointments if they hired you).  At worst, they’ll know exactly what you’re doing — it’s not like “call to schedule an interview” hasn’t been a tactic pitched to desperate job hunters for years.

I suppose this could work somewhere really chaotic (or possibly at, like, the frozen yogurt shop I worked at as a teenager), but it’s not going to get you an interview anywhere you’d want to work, and it’s highly likely to get you blackballed from the places you do.

2. My coworker has imaginary cats

I work in a cat-loving office. My coworkers and I regularly share stories about our cats and talk about their various adventures, likes, dislikes, etc. No one is more affectionate and excited to talk about her cats than my coworker JJ, and she gives us daily accounts of what her two cats have been up to and what toys or treats she has picked out for them.

The problem is, and I just discovered this through a mutual friend of JJ’s sister, is that her cats passed away years ago. All this time she is speaking in present tense about them. This reminds me of the move Psycho, in which Norman Bates has such an attachment to his mother that he convinces himself she is still alive and with him after her death.

I am not sure if she this is just something harmless she knowingly does to allow her to join in on the conversation more easily, or if she actually sees her cats there with her each day and needs some mental health support. Should I bring this up with anyone or change how I interact with her, or just go along with it?

Oh, this is so sad if it’s true! But I don’t think you should assume it is. JJ’s sister’s friend might have her information wrong, and it’s also easy to imagine a letter saying, “It was too hard for me to tell my coworkers when my cats died and so I just didn’t mention it, and now it’s been several years that I’ve let them believe they’re alive. How do I get out of this when it’s gone on so long?”

As long as you’re not seeing any other signs of delusions, this isn’t something you need to act on. The kindest thing you can do is to just leave it alone and pretend you never heard it.

3. Coworker baby-talks to my pregnant belly

I’m pregnant with my husband and my first baby (yay! we are so excited and this baby was very much planned and wanted!) and I’m continuing to work through my pregnancy. Most everyone in my office has been supportive, thoughtful, and not awkward, but I have someone in my office making me incredibly uncomfortable. She is an older woman with grandchildren and I am starting to show pretty obviously. When I get up from my office to go to the restroom or grab papers off of the printer, I try to hide my belly from her because she keeps making baby voices directed at my belly and telling me how things were when she was pregnant.

I am pretty professional and more friendly with a few people in the office and don’t mind the “how are you feeling?” or “oh we’ve moved to maternity clothes?” which I can handle pretty well, but baby talking to my belly is aggravating. I am pregnant, but I’m still the same person I was before I told the office about my pregnancy and before I was pregnant.

How can I tell them that this is making me uncomfortable? To further complicate things, this other person reports to a completely different department, so I can’t go up my chain of command either.

People are so weird about pregnancy. Let’s be glad she’s not trying to stroke your belly.

Try saying this: “I’m trying not to talk about the pregnancy at work since it can be so distracting, thanks for understanding.” And then if she continues after that: “Like I mentioned, I really don’t want to discuss my pregnancy at work.” And if necessary, “I know you mean well, but baby talk directed at my belly is really distracting — please don’t do that.” (Or if it’s more your style, there’s also, “I really don’t like when you do that and would appreciate if you’d stop” or “it weirds me out when you talk to my belly, please don’t.”)

4. My boss runs a side business with my coworker

If my immediate supervisor has a business with one of my coworkers (she is their supervisor too), is it a conflict of interest? I am treated unfairly while this employee, Katelyn, does what she wants.

Yes, it’s a huge conflict of interest. If she runs a business with your coworker, she has a separate financial interest in that relationship — which calls into question her ability to fairly and impartially manage her. For example, how willing is she going to be to have uncomfortable performance management conversations with Katelyn about Company A when there’s inherent pressure to keep their relationship harmonious for Company B? What if she needed to lay off someone on her team at Company A — is she really going to pick her business partner from Company B? What if someone brings her a complaint about Katelyn — will they be able to trust that she’ll handle it impartially when it’s about her business partner somewhere else? (Answer: almost certainly not. Even if she’s scrupulously impartial in practice, the relationship will make people worry that she’s not.)

Does your employer have a conflict of interest policy? If so, this is almost certainly a violation of that. Even if they don’t, it’s still something you could bring to someone’s attention, because it’s shady as hell.

5. Can I ask to switch jobs internally after moving internally seven months ago?

I work at a small company in a niche field — for privacy, let’s say I work at a regional theater. I was hired in 2018 to work on our youth theater program; last year, due to changes in the program, my role was phased out. My then-manager (Arya, the owner) offered to transfer me to another role rather than let me go entirely. I was offered my choice of two positions: I could work with Brienne, our managing director, in a support role similar to an executive assistant, or I could work with Jaime, our design director, and take a bunch of lower-level design tasks off his plate so he could focus on bigger projects.

Design is a big passion of mine, and a field I’ve freelanced in for several years, so I thought working with Jaime would be a great fit. It looked like the majority of my work tasks would be things I really enjoyed and had experience in, and maybe 20% would be social media and marketing. That wasn’t something I had much experience in, but it seemed like a fairly small part of the job and something I’d enjoy well enough, so I agreed and started this role last June.

Well, in the months since then, I’ve learned two things: 1) I absolutely hate social media and marketing, and 2) social media and marketing accounts for at least 80% of my role. There are many weeks I don’t work on the tasks I enjoy at all and my entire week is just dedicated to marketing. I’m miserable. I’m constantly struggling and frustrated with myself; I hate more than 80% of the tasks on my to-do list each week, so I dread going into work. On top of that, having to spend my days doing design work I hate has killed my passion for design. It used to be my go-to way to relax, but I haven’t done any personal projects in months.

I’m willing to leave over this, and I think I’ll probably start job searching soon. However, the position supporting Brienne is still unfilled. Would it be possible for me to just … ask to move to that position? If I can, do you have any tips for how to frame that, and if I should speak to Jaime, Brienne, or Arya about it first? Or do I need to just accept that I agreed to work this position, so I’m stuck working it until I can find a job at a new company? I don’t think it would be possible to just ask for my current role to involve less marketing. The only other person those tasks could go to is Jaime, and his plate is now so full of high-level tasks that he doesn’t have the time to take this work back on. I haven’t talked to him about it yet because I don’t know if there’s anything he could do and I’m worried about jeopardizing my job if I talk to him about it too soon.

Do you want the support job with Brienne, or does it just look better than what you’re doing now? If you don’t really want that job, it might make more sense to just job search and leave when you find something else.

But if you genuinely think you’d enjoy and be good at the work for Brienne, then talk to Arya. She floated the option of that job originally, it’s still unfilled, and it’s okay to go back to her and say, “This role ended up being different than what we’d anticipated. I’m trying my best at it, but I see that the admin job hasn’t been filled and I’m wondering if that’s still an option for me, if you still think it would be a good fit.”

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

A reader writes:

I work in an office with six other employees. There are two separate teams, one made up of me and a coworker, the other made up of five people. There isn’t much overlap in what we do, but we do work for the same boss and share the space.

Anyway, one day I noticed an employee on the other team, who overall does a good job, with a few personal mail items on their desk. It was apparent to me and later confirmed that they were using our office’s mailing service to send personal mail.

I told the boss who oversees all seven employees about this and they formally disciplined the employee. In the meeting, they told them that I had been the one to bring the issue up with them.

The employee is now angry at me, and keeps bringing up that I am out to get others and can’t be trusted. They are mad that I didn’t talk to them directly first and claim they had been under the belief that we could send personal mail occasionally, since we are also allowed to use the printer for personal items.

Are they justified in being mad at me? What should I have done if not this?

Well … yes and no.

It’s reasonable for your coworker to wonder why you didn’t talk to them directly first. If they really didn’t realize that they were violating a company policy, you could have simply let them know and (ideally) that would have been that. If that didn’t work and you felt strongly about it, at that point you could have let your manager know. But most people appreciate being approached directly before you take something to their boss, so they have a chance to fix the problem before the person in charge of their paychecks is brought into it.

There are some situations where it makes more sense to go straight to the person’s boss. Sometimes something is so serious that a manager needs to be brought in right away, or it needs to be dealt with immediately and the person isn’t around to handle it themselves. Or if the behavior is part of a pattern, you might not have the standing to address the pattern with a peer in an effective way, but their boss can. Or if the person is known to be hostile or defensive, it’s understandable to ask their boss to handle it instead; if someone is a jerk to their colleagues, they forfeit the right to expect peers will talk to them first.

But if none of that was the case here, ideally you would have just made sure your coworker knew about the policy by talking to them directly.

However, it’s definitely not okay for your coworker to be making such an issue out of it. Continually saying that you’re “out to get” others and can’t be trusted is over the top and disruptive. They can certainly quietly conclude that if they want to, but being openly hostile has to be messing with the work environment for you and others, and that’s not okay.

It’s also likely to make them look a whole lot worse to your manager than the original offense did, if your manager becomes aware of what’s happening now.

Out of curiosity, have there been other things making the coworker feel you’re out to get people? Like do you have a history of taking minor things over people’s heads, or of not cutting people slack on minor things or on things that your team norms are actually okay with? Alternately, does your team have an us vs. them culture where any actions that align you with management will get you perceived as an enemy? That last one is a big culture problem if it exists — and not a job I’d recommend staying in long — but it would put your coworker’s reaction in context.

Speaking of an us vs. them culture: formal discipline was a pretty harsh reaction from your manager, unless your coworker was sending out hundreds of dollars worth of personal mail or unless they have a pattern of “not knowing” policies they should have known. Your manager also shouldn’t have named you as the person who told them about it; there was no need to do that, and it was pretty much guaranteed to cause tension between you and your coworker (although your coworker’s reaction isn’t okay regardless).

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

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

1. Employee is demanding Diet Coke as a religious accommodation

My friend is a manager at a public health-focused nonprofit whose mission is focused on building healthier communities by improving access to healthier choices, like walking trails and fresh produce (among other things). They offer some health-related perks to employees — think, subsidized public transit and gym memberships, bike storage at the office, fresh fruit at the office — and also have some policies banning things that are known to lead to poor health outcomes, like smoking. One of the things they have banned is soda, which is not allowed at company events and which the company will not pay for.

They are having a fundraiser in a few weeks where there will be a bar serving beer, wine, several healthy mocktails, and sparkling water. Guests will receive two drink tickets as part of their admission that they can use for whatever they’d like, whether alcoholic or not. It is definitely not an alcohol focused event at all — I have attended their fundraises in the past, and the health focus of the nonprofit’s mission means the majority of the people attending are not big drinkers.

My friend supervises an employee, “Jane,” who does not drink for religious reasons, but who drinks a lot of Diet Coke (she brings several bottles to the office daily). Jane is insisting she should be able to order Diet Coke at the event since she does not drink, and thinks the company should make an exception to their policy to accommodate her religion. As far as my friend is aware, there is not a religious reason why Jane can’t drink any of the other non-alcoholic beverages that will be offered. He does not want to make this kind of exception because of the impression it might give to their potential donors, but is concerned there might be legal repercussions if he says no. What is the best way for him to handle this situation?

There’s no legal requirement to provide Diet Coke as a religious accommodation. They definitely should ensure there are non-alcoholic options there, but they’re already doing that.

If they weren’t a health-focused nonprofit with a policy of not providing soda at their events because of their mission and an employee were asking for it, I’d say to spend the few bucks it would take to make an employee feel taken care of at an event, even if it’s a bit of a silly request. It’s not often you can make someone happy for a couple of dollars, and when you can, you should. But this is a health-oriented organization that explicitly doesn’t serve sodas and has legitimate reason to be concerned about sending mixed messages to donors. Your friend should reiterate the organization’s policy and tell her there will be a variety of non-alcoholic options to choose from.

2. Coworker’s desk is covered with photos of feet

Joan works with me in an office of about 25 people. It is a laid-back advertising and graphic design office, and most people freely talk about non-work related things throughout the day.

When it comes to Joan, aside from her job here, she is also a foot model for advertisements (not fetish stuff). This would be of little concern to me normally, but her work station is plastered in photos of her feet from various publications. She has also occasionally given demonstrations of what are apparently the best ways to pose one’s feet for photographs, and sometimes comments (always positively) about colleagues feet and how they should get into foot modelling too.

We have clients and various external persons come in and out through the office during the day, and they have to pass Joan’s feet-filled work station. Although her coworkers have context on her foot obsession and most don’t seem to mind it, these external parties do not, and I’m worried it could deter them from engaging with us. Am I right to be worried about this?

I don’t think you’re wrong to worry. If I were a client coming into your office and passed a work area plastered in photos of feet … well, I might think “I guess that person works on some sort of foot-related campaign” … but I’d probably be as likely to think “that feels weird and fetishy.” I would definitely not think “oh, the desk of a foot model!”

If you’re Joan’s manager or otherwise have some authority in this situation, you wouldn’t be wrong to explain it looks odd to people without context and ask her to tone down the foot decor.

However, I’m now very interested in knowing the best ways to pose one’s feet for photographs.

3. My remote employee didn’t bother to meet with me when they were in town

I have a remote employee who travels to the city where our company headquarters is and where I am based once a quarter. Occasionally, they come to the city for work-related reasons that are not directly connected to our department. I found out today that this person had been in town for the entire week when they previously told me they had planned to be in the city for two days. They’re supposed to notify me when they are traveling and working outside of their regular work location, so I need to address that from an administrative standpoint.

What I don’t get and what I am really confused about is why this employee doesn’t proactively set up time to meet with me when they are in town?

If I only got to see the person making decisions about my promotions and salary increases four times a year in-person, I would want to take advantage of any opportunity I had to interact with them. I’m not sure if it’s lack of awareness of business norms or disengagement. This person has previously asked me about the path to promotion, so it’s hard for me to imagine they’ve totally checked out. It just seems rude to come to the city and not ask your boss if they have time to meet for coffee. Do you have any advice for me?

Ask them to start setting up time to meet with you when they’re in town.

I see where you’re coming from with being surprised that they’re not doing this on their own, but a lot of people wouldn’t think to do it. They figure you’re busy, or they figure they talk to you all the time anyway, or they just haven’t been exposed to the stuff that says “take opportunities to form a face-to-face relationship with your boss.” It’s so common that you shouldn’t read much into it or consider it rude. Just let them know that you’d like them to do it going forward, if in fact you would.

It’s also useful to keep in mind that there’s a difference between “X is smart to do for your career” and “it’s a problem if someone doesn’t do X.”

4. When your boss asks if you’re looking for another job

A while back, some of my coworkers gave notice within a week of each other (totally unplanned on their part), which prompted my manager to ask some of the remaining team members, “Are you looking for another job, too?”

I’m assuming the answer to that question is almost always “no, I’m not,” but is there ever a situation where you could say, “Well, yes, because XYZ”?

It’s almost never in your interest to give your manager a heads-up that you’re job searching before you’re ready to give notice. You could end up pushed out before you’re ready to leave, on a list for layoffs “because you’re on your way out anyway,” or sidelined from projects that could help your career because your manager figures you could be gone any day.

And you’re certainly not obligated to disclose that you’re job searching just because your manager asks. That’s not a question they’re entitled to an honest answer to, given the power dynamics and the fact that your ability to pay for food and housing probably depends on keeping your job until you’re ready to leave it.

5. Applying to a company where I previously withdrew from a hiring process

I applied for a job in an adjacent industry (think the vendors that service my current industry) last year when I was feeling unfulfilled. I didn’t hear back right away and kept job searching. I was eventually offered a position somewhere else. I rejected it because we couldn’t come to terms on salary and remote work, and my company ultimately offered me more money with a verbal promise of a title bump at the end of the fiscal year.

While this was all happening, I got and accepted a first interview with the vendor company. I was invited to the second round, but I withdrew upon getting the counteroffer from my current job. I felt like I’d burn way too many bridges to leave (and I’d have to give up a volunteer role in my industry). When I withdrew, I apologized and cited seeing my commitments through the fiscal year (a teammate had also left and so my area would’ve been short-staffed). The hiring manager expressed her understanding.

It’s been over a year and I’m honestly still a bit unsatisfied — I know that’s the danger of counter offers! My company never gave me a title bump even though I took on more work. I saw peers get promoted as well. I’m still well connected with folks at the vendor company and a friend there nudged me that they’re hiring again. I’m still interested and want to apply.

But how do I professionally mention why I withdrew? And when do I mention it? It’s the elephant in the room, and I’d ask if I were the hiring manager. Is it worth spending a few sentences in my cover letter talking about it? Do I wait for the first interview (if I get one?)

It’s not a big deal to have withdrawn from their hiring process last year, especially since you explained why and especially after only one interview. (If you had gone through multiple interviews, received an offer, and then spent a week agonizing before giving them an answer … well, you could still reapply now, but you’d need to be more prepared to speak to what had changed.)

Just mention it right up-front in your cover letter: “I had an initial interview with you about a similar role last year, but ended up withdrawing from your hiring process when I realized I wanted to see out some commitments here. I’m still very interested, and the timing is much better for me to make a move. I liked what I learned last time about your work with X and Y, and I’d love to talk about your ___ opening.”

You should also send a note to the hiring manager since you’d talked with her directly before, refreshing her memory about your previous conversation(s) and mentioning that you’re applying again now.

“Almost done, then I’ll show you where I buried the remote”

Today's links

• How I got scammed: And why AI will make it worse.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023
• Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

How I got scammed (permalink)

I wuz robbed.

More specifically, I was tricked by a phone-phisher pretending to be from my bank, and he convinced me to hand over my credit-card number, then did $8,000+ worth of fraud with it before I figured out what happened. And then he tried to do it again, a week later!

Here's what happened. Over the Christmas holiday, I traveled to New Orleans. The day we landed, I hit a Chase ATM in the French Quarter for some cash, but the machine declined the transaction. Later in the day, we passed a little credit-union's ATM and I used that one instead (I bank with a one-branch credit union and generally there's no fee to use another CU's ATM).

A couple days later, I got a call from my credit union. It was a weekend, during the holiday, and the guy who called was obviously working for my little CU's after-hours fraud contractor. I'd dealt with these folks before – they service a ton of little credit unions, and generally the call quality isn't great and the staff will often make mistakes like mispronouncing my credit union's name.

That's what happened here – the guy was on a terrible VOIP line and I had to ask him to readjust his mic before I could even understand him. He mispronounced my bank's name and then asked if I'd attempted to spend $1,000 at an Apple Store in NYC that day. No, I said, and groaned inwardly. What a pain in the ass. Obviously, I'd had my ATM card skimmed – either at the Chase ATM (maybe that was why the transaction failed), or at the other credit union's ATM (it had been a very cheap looking system).

I told the guy to block my card and we started going through the tedious business of running through recent transactions, verifying my identity, and so on. It dragged on and on. These were my last hours in New Orleans, and I'd left my family at home and gone out to see some of the pre-Mardi Gras krewe celebrations and get a muffalata, and I could tell that I was going to run out of time before I finished talking to this guy.

"Look," I said, "you've got all my details, you've frozen the card. I gotta go home and meet my family and head to the airport. I'll call you back on the after-hours number once I'm through security, all right?"

He was frustrated, but that was his problem. I hung up, got my sandwich, went to the airport, and we checked in. It was total chaos: an Alaska Air 737 Max had just lost its door-plug in mid-air and every Max in every airline's fleet had been grounded, so the check in was crammed with people trying to rebook. We got through to the gate and I sat down to call the CU's after-hours line. The person on the other end told me that she could only handle lost and stolen cards, not fraud, and given that I'd already frozen the card, I should just drop by the branch on Monday to get a new card.

We flew home, and later the next day, I logged into my account and made a list of all the fraudulent transactions and printed them out, and on Monday morning, I drove to the bank to deal with all the paperwork. The folks at the CU were even more pissed than I was. The fraud that run up to more than $8,000, and if Visa refused to take out it of the merchants where the card had been used, my little credit union would have to eat the loss.

I agreed and commiserated. I also pointed out that their outsource, after-hours fraud center bore some blame here: I'd canceled the card on Saturday but most of the fraud had taken place on Sunday. Something had gone wrong.

One cool thing about banking at a tiny credit-union is that you end up talking to people who have actual authority, responsibility and agency. It turned out the the woman who was processing my fraud paperwork was a VP, and she decided to look into it. A few minutes later she came back and told me that the fraud center had no record of having called me on Saturday.

"That was the fraudster," she said.

Oh, shit. I frantically rewound my conversation, trying to figure out if this could possibly be true. I hadn't given him anything apart from some very anodyne info, like what city I live in (which is in my Wikipedia entry), my date of birth (ditto), and the last four digits of my card.

Wait a sec.

He hadn't asked for the last four digits. He'd asked for the last seven digits. At the time, I'd found that very frustrating, but now – "The first nine digits are the same for every card you issue, right?" I asked the VP.

I'd given him my entire card number.

Goddammit.

The thing is, I know a lot about fraud. I'm writing an entire series of novels about this kind of scam:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

And most summers, I go to Defcon, and I always go to the "social engineering" competitions where an audience listens as a hacker in a soundproof booth cold-calls merchants (with the owner's permission) and tries to con whoever answers the phone into giving up important information.

But I'd been conned.

Now look, I knew I could be conned. I'd been conned before, 13 years ago, by a Twitter worm that successfully phished out of my password via DM:

https://locusmag.com/2010/05/cory-doctorow-persistence-pays-parasites/

That scam had required a miracle of timing. It started the day before, when I'd reset my phone to factory defaults and reinstalled all my apps. That same day, I'd published two big online features that a lot of people were talking about. The next morning, we were late getting out of the house, so by the time my wife and I dropped the kid at daycare and went to the coffee shop, it had a long line. Rather than wait in line with me, my wife sat down to read a newspaper, and so I pulled out my phone and found a Twitter DM from a friend asking "is this you?" with a URL.

Assuming this was something to do with those articles I'd published the day before, I clicked the link and got prompted for my Twitter login again. This had been happening all day because I'd done that mobile reinstall the day before and all my stored passwords had been wiped. I entered it but the page timed out. By that time, the coffees were ready. We sat and chatted for a bit, then went our own ways.

I was on my way to the office when I checked my phone again. I had a whole string of DMs from other friends. Each one read "is this you?" and had a URL.

Oh, shit, I'd been phished.

If I hadn't reinstalled my mobile OS the day before. If I hadn't published a pair of big articles the day before. If we hadn't been late getting out the door. If we had been a little more late getting out the door (so that I'd have seen the multiple DMs, which would have tipped me off).

There's a name for this in security circles: "Swiss-cheese security." Imagine multiple slices of Swiss cheese all stacked up, the holes in one slice blocked by the slice below it. All the slices move around and every now and again, a hole opens up that goes all the way through the stack. Zap!

The fraudster who tricked me out of my credit card number had Swiss cheese security on his side. Yes, he spoofed my bank's caller ID, but that wouldn't have been enough to fool me if I hadn't been on vacation, having just used a pair of dodgy ATMs, in a hurry and distracted. If the 737 Max disaster hadn't happened that day and I'd had more time at the gate, I'd have called my bank back. If my bank didn't use a slightly crappy outsource/out-of-hours fraud center that I'd already had sub-par experiences with. If, if, if.

The next Friday night, at 5:30PM, the fraudster called me back, pretending to be the bank's after-hours center. He told me my card had been compromised again. But: I hadn't removed my card from my wallet since I'd had it replaced. Also, it was half an hour after the bank closed for the long weekend, a very fraud-friendly time. And when I told him I'd call him back and asked for the after-hours fraud number, he got very threatening and warned me that because I'd now been notified about the fraud that any losses the bank suffered after I hung up the phone without completing the fraud protocol would be billed to me. I hung up on him. He called me back immediately. I hung up on him again and put my phone into do-not-disturb.

The following Tuesday, I called my bank and spoke to their head of risk-management. I went through everything I'd figured out about the fraudsters, and she told me that credit unions across America were being hit by this scam, by fraudsters who somehow knew CU customers' phone numbers and names, and which CU they banked at. This was key: my phone number is a reasonably well-kept secret. You can get it by spending money with Equifax or another nonconsensual doxing giant, but you can't just google it or get it at any of the free services. The fact that the fraudsters knew where I banked, knew my name, and had my phone number had really caused me to let down my guard.

The risk management person and I talked about how the credit union could mitigate this attack: for example, by better-training the after-hours card-loss staff to be on the alert for calls from people who had been contacted about supposed card fraud. We also went through the confusing phone-menu that had funneled me to the wrong department when I called in, and worked through alternate wording for the menu system that would be clearer (this is the best part about banking with a small CU – you can talk directly to the responsible person and have a productive discussion!). I even convinced her to buy a ticket to next summer's Defcon to attend the social engineering competitions.

There's a leak somewhere in the CU systems' supply chain. Maybe it's Zelle, or the small number of corresponding banks that CUs rely on for SWIFT transaction forwarding. Maybe it's even those after-hours fraud/card-loss centers. But all across the USA, CU customers are getting calls with spoofed caller IDs from fraudsters who know their registered phone numbers and where they bank.

I've been mulling this over for most of a month now, and one thing has really been eating at me: the way that AI is going to make this kind of problem much worse.

Not because AI is going to commit fraud, though.

One of the truest things I know about AI is: "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

I trusted this fraudster specifically because I knew that the outsource, out-of-hours contractors my bank uses have crummy headsets, don't know how to pronounce my bank's name, and have long-ass, tedious, and pointless standardized questionnaires they run through when taking fraud reports. All of this created cover for the fraudster, whose plausibility was enhanced by the rough edges in his pitch – they didn't raise red flags.

As this kind of fraud reporting and fraud contacting is increasingly outsourced to AI, bank customers will be conditioned to dealing with semi-automated systems that make stupid mistakes, force you to repeat yourself, ask you questions they should already know the answers to, and so on. In other words, AI will groom bank customers to be phishing victims.

This is a mistake the finance sector keeps making. 15 years ago, Ben Laurie excoriated the UK banks for their "Verified By Visa" system, which validated credit card transactions by taking users to a third party site and requiring them to re-enter parts of their password there:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090331094020/http://www.links.org/?p=591

This is exactly how a phishing attack works. As Laurie pointed out, this was the banks training their customers to be phished.

I came close to getting phished again today, as it happens. I got back from Berlin on Friday and my suitcase was damaged in transit. I've been dealing with the airline, which means I've really been dealing with their third-party, outsource luggage-damage service. They have a terrible website, their emails are incoherent, and they officiously demand the same information over and over again.

This morning, I got a scam email asking me for more information to complete my damaged luggage claim. It was a terrible email, from a noreply@ email address, and it was vague, officious, and dishearteningly bureaucratic. For just a moment, my finger hovered over the phishing link, and then I looked a little closer.

On any other day, it wouldn't have had a chance. Today – right after I had my luggage wrecked, while I'm still jetlagged, and after days of dealing with my airline's terrible outsource partner – it almost worked.

So much fraud is a Swiss-cheese attack, and while companies can't close all the holes, they can stop creating new ones.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to post about it whenever I get scammed. I find the inner workings of scams to be fascinating, and it's also important to remind people that everyone is vulnerable sometimes, and scammers are willing to try endless variations until an attack lands at just the right place, at just the right time, in just the right way. If you think you can't get scammed, that makes you especially vulnerable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Online anonymity: study found ‘stable pseudonyms’ created a more civil environment than real user names https://theconversation.com/online-anonymity-study-found-stable-pseudonyms-created-a-more-civil-environment-than-real-user-names-171374 (h/t Kottke)

• How to Take Back the Internet https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/cory-doctorow-how-to-take-back-the-internet/

• we’ve found it folks: mcmansion heaven https://mcmansionhell.com/post/741171396971053056/weve-found-it-folks-mcmansion-heaven

This day in history (permalink)

#20yrsago Itunes blocks you from sharing music with YOURSELF, on your own computer https://web.archive.org/web/20041009202513/http://www.raelity.org/computers/operating_systems/apple/mac_os_x/apps/itunes_single_instance.html

#20yrsago How fanfic makes kids into better writers (and copyright victims) https://www.technologyreview.com/2004/02/06/40304/why-heather-can-write/

#20yrsago Apple selling DRM’ed silence at $0.99 a pop http://www.appleturns.com/scene/?id=4490

#20yrsago RIP Disney World’s designer, John Hench https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/feb/13/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries1

#20yrsago Worst ToS on the entire Internet https://web.archive.org/web/20040304015054/https://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1319

#20yrsago Steve Jobs for Disney CEO? https://web.archive.org/web/20040430133708/http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_news.cfm?NewsID=7861

#15yrsago House of Lords damns British surveillance society https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/feb/06/surveillance-freedom-peers

#15yrsago Scientist who criticised DJ for vaccination scare talk gets copyright threat https://www.badscience.net/2009/02/legal-chill-from-lbc-973-over-jeni-barnetts-mmr-scaremongering/

#15yrsago Ooh-De-Lally song from Disney’s Robin Hood goes to the Tower of Babel https://waxy.org/2009/02/robin_hoods_oo_de_lally_translated/

#15yrsago Mystery maple syrup stink of New York revealed https://archive.nytimes.com/cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/uncovering-the-source-of-the-mysterious-syrup-odor/

#15yrsago UK copyright law in verse https://jergames.blogspot.com/2009/02/uk-copyright-law-in-verse.html

#15yrsago A moving eulogy for a father https://scottedelman.livejournal.com/116341.html

#15yrsago Flashmob of ATM crooks scores $9 million in 49 cities https://web.archive.org/web/20090205214559/http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/090202_FBI_Investigates_9_Million_ATM_Scam

#15yrsago Internet not full of pedos, the statistical edition https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/02/06/doing_the_math.html

#10yrsago Turks bid farewell to the Internet in the face of brutal censorship/surveillance law https://medium.com/@ahmetasabanci/saying-goodbye-to-internet-in-turkey-33d805b98f6c

#10yrsago Middle class brands collapse, 1% brands thrive https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/business/the-middle-class-is-steadily-eroding-just-ask-the-business-world.html

#10yrsago How UK spies committed illegal DoS attacks against Anonymous https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/war-anonymous-british-spies-attacked-hackers-snowden-docs-show-n21361

#10yrsago Toronto’s reference library gets a makerspace https://web.archive.org/web/20140209061223/http://torontoist.com/2014/02/reference-library-unveils-3d-printers-is-cooler-than-indigo/

#10yrsago Toxic Avenger’s brilliant rant about the importance of Net Neutrality https://www.techdirt.com/2014/02/05/innovation-our-better-future-depend-preserving-net-neutrality/

#10yrsago Kim Stanley Robinson on science fiction and California: “California is a terraformed space” https://boomcalifornia.org/2014/01/27/kim-stanley-robinson/

#10yrsago Bruce Sterling on making the Internet safe for freedom and art https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dacKWLGZklM

#10yrsago DEA reveals “parallel construction” techniques the “taint team” uses to disguise its reliance on NSA surveillance data https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2014/feb/03/dea-parallel-construction-guides/

#10yrsago Documenting the NYC snowpocalypse’s neckdowns: latent traffic calming revealed by climate and crowds https://vimeo.com/12796677

#10yrsago Reporters document Sochi’s Potemkin hotels https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/02/04/journalists-at-sochi-are-live-tweeting-their-hilarious-and-gross-hotel-experiences/

#10yrsago The Haunted Mansion, the Haunting, and “Boo” vs “Brr” in spook-house design https://longforgottenhauntedmansion.blogspot.com/2014/01/unseen-twists-and-turns-in-corridor-of.html

#5yrsago Houseplant patent EULA: “Asexual reproduction using scions, buds or cutting is strictly prohibited” https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/an923y/houseplant_drm/

#5yrsago As the German Government Abandons Small Businesses, the Worst Parts of the EU Copyright Directive Come Roaring Back, Made Even Worse https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/german-government-abandons-small-businesses-worst-parts-eu-copyright-directive

#5yrsago Toronto cops can frequently get your public transit history without a warrant https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/metrolinx-continues-to-share-presto-users-data-without-requiring-warrants/article_b18dbac7-67ba-565b-805d-59dcd65dc103.html

#5yrsago Any sincere theory of property rights would bankrupt the energy sector https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/02/if-property-rights-were-real-climate-destroying-companies-would-be-sued-out-of-existence

#5yrsago During a secret meeting, a top Pelosi health aide told medical insurers that there was no need to worry about Medicare for All passing https://theintercept.com/2019/02/05/nancy-pelosi-medicare-for-all/

#5yrsago If you work for a living, America taxes you at double the rate of wealthy investors with “unearned income” https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/features/2017-09-12/why-american-workers-pay-twice-as-much-in-taxes-as-wealthy-investors

#5yrsago Father of Parkland victim responds to Louis CK’s jokes with a “standup set” of his own https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TERPmtOw1e0

#5yrsago Appeals court to Donald Trump’s FCC: “Drop dead.” https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/02/ajit-pai-loses-in-court-judges-overturn-gutting-of-tribal-broadband-program/

#5yrsago Consultants will train the crew of your super-yacht to take care of your fine art collection https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/02/cornflakes-on-the-basquiat-perils-of-superyacht-art

#5yrsago One of pharma’s most notorious gougers is going bankrupt, but 2019 is a banner year for shkreli-grade pharmaceutical price-hikes https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/02/infamous-pharma-company-declares-bankruptcy-after-3900-price-hike/

#5yrsago Chasing down that list of potential Predpol customers reveals dozens of cities that have secretly experimented with “predictive policing” https://www.vice.com/en/article/d3m7jq/dozens-of-cities-have-secretly-experimented-with-predictive-policing-software

#5yrsago Amazon is using purchase data to sell targeted ads, which is creepy, but not because they’ve invented a mind-control ray https://memex.craphound.com/2019/02/06/amazon-is-using-purchase-data-to-sell-targeted-ads-which-is-creepy-but-not-because-theyve-invented-a-mind-control-ray/

#5yrsago The next Firefox will block all autoplayed audio, video https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/02/firefox-66-to-block-automatically-playing-audible-video-and-audio/

#5yrsago RIP, author Carol Emshwiller https://locusmag.com/2019/02/carol-emshwiller-1921-2019/

#5yrsago Washington State sheriff used courtroom camera to zoom in on defense attorney and juror’s private notes https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/san-juan-sheriffs-use-of-courtroom-camera-to-view-jurors-notebook-lawyers-notes-sparks-outrage-and-dismissal-of-criminal-case/

#5yrsago Lawsuit says that America’s “break even” court records website shouldn’t be making 98%+ profits https://www.techdirt.com/2019/02/06/multiple-parties-including-author-law-governing-pacer-ask-court-to-stop-pacers-screwing-taxpayers/

#5yrsago Fox News blames schools teaching “fairness” for support for a tax on the super-rich https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/annfs6/fox_news_blames_public_support_of_wealth_tax/

#1yrago Bruce Schneier's "A Hacker's Mind" https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/06/trickster-makes-the-world/#power-play

#1yrago Higher interest rates increase both the monetary supply and inflation https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/04/if-i-was-a-horse/#friedman-was-a-dolt

#1yrago Small Government https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/small-government/

#1yrago When Facebook came for your battery, feudal security failed https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025

* The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024

* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

Latest podcast: My Marshall McLuhan Lecture on enshittification from Berlin's transmediale conference https://craphound.com/news/2024/02/05/my-marshall-mcluhan-lecture-on-enshittification-from-berlins-transmediale-conference/

Upcoming appearances:

* The Bezzle at Weller Book Works (Salt Lake City), Feb 21
https://www.wellerbookworks.com/event/store-cory-doctorow-feb-21-630-pm

* The Bezzle at Third Place Books (Seattle), Feb 26
https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/event/cory-doctorow

* Tuscon Festival of Books, Mar 9/10
https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/?id=676

* Media Ecology Association keynote, Jun 6-9 (Amherst, NY)
https://media-ecology.org/convention
Recent appearances:

* Enshittification: The Rise and Fall of Big Tech (Crash Course Economics)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7AxrFQ7jIM

* Generation of Lost Causes with Vass Bednar (Toronto Public Library)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rGj5VaJSDQ

* Low-Key Clippy (This Week In Tech)
https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/963

Latest books:

* "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

* "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

* "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

* The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books, February 2024

* Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025

* Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

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

Remember the letter-writer whose scheduling bot was getting hit on because it has a woman’s name? Here’s the (truly excellent) update.

I really enjoyed your response and reading the comment section; I wasn’t able to participate because I was particularly slammed at work that day, but it was a great read later in the evening. I wholeheartedly endorse one commenter’s suggestion of a bot-on-bot romcom titled “CAPTCHA My Heart,” and would like to add that there should be a sequel, “ReCAPTCHA My Heart: A Bot Christmas,” starring Vanessa Hudgens as the personification of at least two bots.

I was disappointed that even in the AAM comments section, there was a small contingent of (mostly male-presenting) commenters who dismissed this as difficult to believe, or tried to excuse the behavior as people innocently “messing with a bot,” even in the face of HUNDREDS of comments from women all essentially saying, “yup, this tracks.” Then I saw that the article had been shared on some other websites and those comment sections were significantly worse.

Alison, I was upset.

I decided to take your advice (admittedly, a slightly less polite version of your advice) both to reply the original sender of the most recent email, and to notify their boss. The other emails were no longer recent enough for me to still be working with those clients, but if they come to me again I’ll be sure to bring it up before we schedule anything new. I attached the offending email and wrote:

“I noticed the included interaction while conducting a routine review of recent scheduling emails between my automated scheduling assistant and my clients. While you were not actually interacting with a real person, you should know that asking people out on a date after only a very basic professional interaction with no personal details is inappropriate workplace behavior. If this is not, as I hope, a one time lapse in judgment on your part, please consider the impact this has on women who are simply trying to do their jobs and are required by their duties to be polite and pleasant. I would want to know if one of my employees was conducting themselves in this way while representing my business, so I have included (name) on this email.”

And I CC’d their boss.

Then I sat on it for a day to think about if it was too rude. I decided it was significantly more appropriate than asking out an assistant after a basic scheduling email, that if nobody ever calls this stuff out very directly it’s not going to get better, and that if it somehow cost me a client, I could afford to lose this one. So I sent it.

About an hour later, I got a very brief reply from the business owner: “Thank you for the heads-up. I’ll address this. Looking forward to our meeting next week.” So the next week I went to our meeting, he brought up on his own that he had dealt with the issue (he didn’t give specifics and I didn’t ask), and we had a perfectly nice and professional meeting. So that worked out well!

If my scheduling bot ever ends up in a romance with a client’s scheduling bot, I’ll be sure to send in another update. But for now, thank you and the commentariat for the advice and humor.

WASHINGTON—In an effort to stymie record-high crossings at the nation’s southern border, the U.S. Senate put forward a new bipartisan immigration bill Monday that would only let in migrants who were accompanied by a group of hot girls. “This bill will establish a strict 3-to-1 ratio requiring all migrants wishing to…

Read more...

KANSAS CITY, MO—Amid widespread speculation over whether his girlfriend Taylor Swift could attend the Super Bowl due to a performance in the East Asian country, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has been quietly avoiding the fact that he has no idea what Japan is, sources confirmed Monday. “Oh, yeah, I’ve been…

Read more...

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Just because Scandinavians do it doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

COLUMBUS, OH—In an effort to make the streets safer through arbitrary killings, the State of Ohio began executing random people Monday in the hopes they were criminals. “You have to assume at least some of the residents we are hanging and beheading are guilty of something terrible, right?” said Gov. Mike DeWine, who…

Read more...

GALLATIN, TN—Touting its access to Cocomelon, Noggin, Disney+, and other popular video services, local daycare Little Angels Learning Center boasted Monday that it maintained a great screen-to-toddler ratio across all its programs. “We’re proud to say that every child enrolled in our daycare receives individual…

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WAITSFIELD, VT—Feeling like a failure upon realizing that he had never even been to space, local 38-year-old Mike Arroyo told reporters Monday that he assumed he would have settled down on a distant monster-filled planet by now. “I dunno, I just figured at this point in my life I’d be fighting off grotesque,…

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WASHINGTON—In an address from the White House carried live on television, President Joe Biden gave the nation the nuclear launch codes Monday in case anything were ever to happen to him. “Folks, I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon, but the fact is, I’m not always going to be around, and you need to be prepared…

Read more...

Social media users recently raised the alarm about the presence of lead in virally popular Stanley cups, which the company admits to using in the vacuum-sealed lining that keeps drinks’ temperature stable; however, experts say there is no real risk to user safety as the small amount of lead is covered in stainless…

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Discord, Ontario – Your totally normal co-worker has once again recommended an animated series you’ve never heard of, this time it’s one called, “My step-sister is a mail-order bride.” “It’s a lot deeper than it sounds,” explained Tom Riddick, a local barista who is no longer allowed to speak with customers. “It starts off a […]

The post Totally normal guy recommends you watch new anime, “My step-sister is a mail-order bride” appeared first on The Beaverton.

WINNIPEG – A shorts-clad jogger has been spotted running in the River Heights neighbourhood, a sight that all metropolitan Canadians know heralds the true beginning of winter. “He was so majestic, dashing through the puddles on the sidewalk, his leg hairs bristling in the breeze,” recounted resident Lisa Valentino, who watched the sprinter from her […]

The post First shorts-wearing jogger of winter spotted appeared first on The Beaverton.

Mai Tran began catsitting in 2021 while Tran was on pandemic unemployment, often staying overnight in people’s homes. Tran has now cared for twenty-two cats and traveled to ten apartments all over New York City, observing the interior lives of cat owners and appeasing their neuroses. From home vet visits to black eyes to refugee cats, Chronicles of a Catsitter documents the most memorable days on the job.

Roosevelt Island is the kind of place a man would take you on a Hinge date. Sandwiched between Queens and Manhattan in the East River, it is a little inconvenient to get to, a little bald-faced in its efforts to be distinctive, and, dare I say, a little bland. A poll of my born-and-raised New York friends reveals that most have never set foot on the island, and if they have, it was only once.

My first foray there is for a catsitting gig. I get it the way I get almost all of my gigs: through a cat rescue my roommate and I used to foster with. In the rescue’s Facebook group, I respond quickly and aggressively to every post looking for an overnight catsitter. Overnights paid more than drop-in visits, and in those years, I equally craved time away from my roommate and the tiny, sunless room I rented in our shared apartment.

Day One

After an initial visit to “meet the cats,” I return for a week in September. The couple I’m working for live in a luxury high-rise, which, on arrival, feels more like a hotel than a home. I pick up the keys from the doorman and head up. The cats are nowhere in sight, so I drop my bags and start poking around. The couple had given me directions for the cats and said I was free to eat anything in the fridge, but not much beyond that.

There is a neat stack of blankets and pillows on the couch. I had assumed I would be sleeping on their bed and changing the sheets before I left, as I usually did when other people were away, but I take this as a signal that they want me in the living room. To the left is the kitchen, where I see a small plastic camera sitting on the counter. I don’t know anything about surveillance brands, or if the thing is even on. When my friend calls me later, I whisper into the phone, afraid to talk shit out loud.

I find another camera in the bedroom, and yet another in the office. My restaurant/retail training comes back to me, and I clock all the cameras’ blind spots for places where I might undress or relax into a more disgusting self.

I go to use the bathroom and discover that it is the designated room for smoking. The cabinets are empty, and the walls are yellowed from the cigarette butts lining the trash can. There is a pile of paper towels soaking up an odorless, brown liquid at the base of the toilet. I retreat to the other bathroom, which is dry and functioning. Where one might find toilet paper, however, there is only a full-sized roll of paper towels. I scramble under the sink and check their closets, coming up with nothing. I can’t tell if they always use towels, which seems not only expensive but also rough on the body, or if they ran out of toilet paper and didn’t have time to replace it before I arrived.

Day Two

The two cats are extremely shy but have been slowly coming out to investigate, aided by a trail of treats I left on the ground, leading from their sleeping spot to mine. The cameras have lit up with a red circle around the lens, and some have swiveled on their axes, so at least now I know how they work. I send the couple photos of their cats almost hourly, and they respond with enthusiasm. Some senior cats require a lot of monitoring and care, but these ones are young, healthy, and clearly don’t need me, so I figure constant communication and fun commentary are what I’m there for. The couple finally addresses the cameras, texting that they want to be able to see the cats at will. I accept it, since we’re already this far in, and ultimately, I’ve been seen by worse.

A friend I hook up with works in a building across the river. From photos he’s sent me, I know there is a window where he can see a brief strip of the island. When he’s on break, I text him that I’m going to flash him, and walk the half mile up to be parallel to his building. We coordinate until he sees me, but then there are people around, and I get too shy to do anything other than jump and wave my arms. I’m not as brave as I once was in my youth (exactly four years ago, when I was willing to get on a motorcycle and didn’t need to eat a weekly salad).

Walking around, the island feels deserted and suburban, eerily quiet compared to the rest of the city. There is one main street with two bus lines running up and down, a post office, library, school, and in the center of everything, Roosevelt Island’s own police station. The island is primarily residential and full of glass towers, structured so no one is ever just “passing through.” I feel conspicuous against the scrubbed exteriors, my reflection constantly bouncing back at me. When I reenter the couple’s building, I say hi to the doorman, and he stops me because he does not yet know me. In the elevator, my reflection again. I think I should’ve packed nicer clothes than I did, an array of crop tops I blunted with kitchen scissors.

Day Three

Seven a.m. I’m asleep on the couch when I hear someone in the apartment. I freeze. KITTTYYY, a woman says. KITTY KITTY KITTY. The voice is crackly, a little screechy, and I hear a man in the background. The voices bounce between the bedroom and the office. I roll over onto my side, too early to be anything other than deeply annoyed. I’d seen horror videos of voices suddenly speaking through indoor cameras, but I didn’t know the couple had that function. While I decide whether to text them to stop or get up and talk to them through the lens, the voices cut out, and then they’re gone.

I have to work in the city today, and on my way back I embark on one of Roosevelt Island’s biggest draws when it comes to the Hinge date: the sky tram. For the same price as a subway fare, you can take a bright red gondola across the river to the island and back, with views of the city and Queensboro Bridge. The Manhattan tram station is also one of the few stations left that requires a Metro Card instead of tapping your phone. The nostalgia! The freedom from surveillance! I feel downright whimsical, using the tram as an everyday means of transportation. The ride is quick and operates more reliably than the island’s single, local train stop, which I’ve seen come every twenty minutes on the weekend. I can clock the regular commuters, because they are blasé about the view, while everyone else takes photos and crowds against the windows.

Day Four

In the evening, I open Grindr to see what kind of gays live on the island. I find a “very discreet” man who seems nice enough and is available right now, so I walk ten minutes to his apartment, in a building where the neighbors are friendly and say hi to me. After a minute of kissing, I have a feeling I will not be having a great time, in that gray area where I have no problem getting up and leaving, yet I did all this work (brushed my teeth) and came all this way (2,348 feet), so I might as well see it through. It’s a little fumbling, and everyone is polite. One of us cums. Neither of us follows up immediately after.

Day Five

The cats are comfortable enough now that I can pet and play with them. I’m throwing a mouse toy around when one bats it into the smoking bathroom, and I follow him in. The paper towels that were soaking up the mysterious liquid are now covered in a light swathe of microscopic bugs. I decide the situation is above my pay grade and close the door on that. I’m unsure if the liquid was a last-minute occurrence, or if the couple thought I could avoid it, or if they hire someone to clean and therefore don’t do any cleaning themselves. I remind myself that I, too, am someone they hire, despite the casualness of catsitting, and not necessarily a guest that requires hospitality or a person to impress. And lots of people have bug issues and don’t have time or energy for cleaning, I reason. People can do whatever they want in their own homes. Who am I to judge, especially when a cat turned up with a dead mouse in my apartment just last month? All that to say, I feel affronted by the apartment’s excess of rooms and amenities, the ability to have nice things and still treat them poorly.

Day Six

It’s the weekend, and I go out to run the island’s perimeter, about four miles around. I feel the great privilege of being able to walk outside and immediately touch grass, like living in a giant park. The sun is glorious, the river is glorious, and the island is much livelier today, people having traveled in from other neighborhoods to mosey about and picnic. The residents are out too. So many families concentrate here that I run past multiple children’s birthday parties. Twice I spot a runaway balloon, one bobbing in the water, another blighting the sky.

I take a quick break to check out the ruins of a smallpox hospital, another popular tourist destination, and a longer detour to look for a group of stray cats the couple had mentioned. I find them atop a small hill, ten or so lounging around a two-story structure shaped like a house, complete with a shingled roof, porch, and multiple cat doors. The shelter is run by a nonprofit that a local resident established, made up of mostly white women volunteers, like the 501(c)(3) I used to receive foster cats from. I loved the fosters but never got attached to them, didn’t have a hard time saying goodbye at all. For a while, I wondered if something was wrong with my psyche or if I had secondhandedly absorbed my parents’ attitude that animals belonged outside, to be respected but not coddled, the way they said Americans coddled everything. Eventually, though, or perhaps inevitably, the childhood cat my father reluctantly allowed into his home is now being picked up and cradled like a baby, and every time I meet a deli cat, I secretly hope it will follow me out.

Day Seven

My last day on the island. I plan to see a friend in Brooklyn, and I take the ferry to use every unconventional mode of transportation available. Very few things give me more serotonin than sitting on the top deck, feeling the breeze on my face, and toasting in the sun. A ferry ride used to cost the same as a subway fare until Mayor Adams increased the price to “fund the transit system,” meanwhile giving the New York Police Department $11.1 billion (the largest police budget in the US), limiting migrants’ access to shelter, cutting hundreds of millions from schools, ending Sunday service at libraries, eradicating composting programs, and ruining everything else good in the city.

Adams is just one in a long line of many. Roosevelt Island was originally called Minnehanonck by the native Lenape people, before the Dutch colonized it in the seventeenth century, then sold to the British, and then the city of New York in 1828. The city incarcerated and isolated the mad, sick, and poor there, in prisons and asylums and hospitals. The institutions were never really “abandoned” or closed, despite what the island looks like now. In 1932, the Rikers Island jail opened, and a few years later, everyone incarcerated on Roosevelt Island was transferred to it.

While looking into the island’s history, people refer me to books and movies that take place there, many of them horror. I feel it, too, not the haunting so much as the burying. Everything is slick with gloss. When I walk on the grass, it doesn’t feel like grass; it feels like a lawn—and the home, not a home but a hotel, the people living there all visiting from somewhere else.

The couple is returning in the evening, so after I visit my friend and take care of my real and made-up errands, I rush back to do a final clean-up and gather my belongings. I stuff a few carbonated drinks in my bag, as an extra tip to myself, leave the keys on the table, and say goodbye to the cats.

Epilogue

I return to catsit a few more times, and find out the couple does use toilet paper. There have been no more bugs or spectral voices. On my most recent visit, I notice the tabletop cameras are gone, and think, Oh, no more surveillance! I spread my belongings on the floor and change clothes out in the open. I spend my days shirtless, as people with top surgery are known to do (and as an aspiring jock), only to one day turn and see the cameras were just mounted into the walls instead, high up near the ceiling. A free show for everyone!

On another visit, I take the sky tram back to the island when I run into the discreet man I hooked up with. It’s a dark winter night, and everyone has coats on. I barely remember his face from the thrilling twenty minutes we spent together, but by the way we make hard eye contact and quickly shuffle to different parts of the gondola, I am quite sure it is him. He is with a woman now. I can’t tell what their relationship is, but he will hit me up once more before we lose contact altogether.

I still don’t go to the island in my free time. The closest I get is when I run on the Queensboro Bridge and physically pass over it, first catching sight of the ferry dock, then the baseball field, then the tram station, and finally, the rocky shore. If the couple looked out their window, they might be able to see me, but as always, I don’t know if they ever do.

armengoldira:

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maya angelou saying the funniest thing anyone has ever said about editing, which i can never let myself forget EVER AGAIN [x]

KANSAS CITY, KS – Across the United States conservative commentators have uncovered a plot by pop megastar Taylor Swift, along with her current boyfriend, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, to trick unwitting American citizens into watching football games. “This conspiracy goes all the way to the top,” insisted arch-conservative pundit Tucker Carlson. “Taylor Swift, in […]

The post Republicans claim Taylor Swift part of vast liberal conspiracy to make Americans watch football appeared first on The Beaverton.

NEW YORK—Buffalo sauce dripping from its beak like blood from a baron’s walrus mustache, a local pigeon reportedly delighted in eating a chicken wing Friday as if it were a sophisticated German cannibal enjoying his forbidden delicacy. According to sources, the pigeon’s eyes took on a crazed glint, and it savored the…

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"Swift’s popularity is being twisted into a threat by a contingent of far-right, Donald Trump-supporting conservatives who have started circulating conspiracy theories about the singer, the Super Bowl, and the 2024 election. — NPR

Taylor Swift wakes up, stretches, and thinks, “How can I destroy America today?” It’s so important to set intentions.

She reaches for her guitar but quickly decides against it. “Not now,” she tells herself. “There are still men out there enjoying their lives because they are not thinking about me. They believe they have found a place on this planet where they are safe from my celebrity. I will find my way into their inner sanctuary. And I will fill that sanctuary with glitter. Everyone knows you can’t get rid of glitter. American men will never know peace.”

Taylor’s reverie is interrupted by a phone call. It’s Roger Goodell, commissioner of the NFL and, as of five months ago, Taylor’s indentured servant. She answers on the last ring. “You don’t call me,” she says. “I call you.”

She spends the next half-hour on her computer registering dead people to vote.

A little later, she calls Goodell back and reminds him that the Kansas City Chiefs will be winning the Super Bowl by thirteen points. Then she calls CBS to confirm how frequently she will be featured during the Super Bowl broadcast. “Remember, if I’m flying all the way back from Tokyo for this, it’s going to be the TAYLOR show,” she says, “with some sports in the background.”

She hangs up and cradles her youngest cat, Benjamin Button. “Wasn’t it so amazing of me to invent football?” she coos to him. “I can’t believe no one had even heard of it until I made it up last fall. I’m a creative genius.”

In the afternoon, she takes her private jet to the Pentagon to discuss her psyop duties. Afterward, she ducks into the White House to talk over campaign strategy with President Biden. She has given him a list of perfect policy ideas, like state-sponsored abortions for hot women with ugly boyfriends and replacing churches with “wokeness centers” that teach kids how to use TikTok and be gay, but he has struggled to implement them.

“He’s not very good at this,” she thinks. “Maybe I should run for president.”

She flies back to Kansas City to scoop up her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, who was way more famous than she was before she brainwashed him into dating her. Then they fly to New York and go to a fancy restaurant with lesbians and MSNBC anchors, where they all wash down a dinner of kale and tofu with Bud Lights.

Back at her apartment, Travis and Taylor have sex four times because she wants empowered unmarried women everywhere to know that they should be having tons of tons of sex with as many people as possible. Through rampant promiscuity, Taylor believes they can finally destroy the institution of marriage.

“I’m so glad the Deep State brought us together,” she says.

“Wait, what?” he asks.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “Tell me how much you love me.”

“I love you more than football,” Travis murmurs in her ear.

“And?” Taylor prompts.

“And America and God.”

Taylor nods. All is going according to her evil feminist and DEI plan. “Soon, everyone else will, too.”

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Really, if you go to a temple with excellent customer service, you should wonder which branch of the afterlife is in charge.