SACRAMENTO, CA—Expressing concern that time was running out and she would soon be past her prime, local aging teenager Miranda Ganford told reporters Wednesday that she was beginning to worry she’d never find her Prince Andrew. “Every little girl imagines that someday her Prince Andrew will come, and she’ll be coerced…
Since mid-March this year, when the Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced it would be taking over the Houston Independent School District, the state agency has demurred when asked about the district’s future, saying decisions will be made by a 9-member board of managers to be selected from the local community by TEA Commissioner Mike Morath.
But interviews with and contemporaneous notes from participants in TEA’s April 22-23 board of managers applicants training, as well as an audio recording of the sessions obtained by the Texas Observer, reveal the state plans to limit the board’s role to enforcing high-stakes testing in schools and rubber-stamping financial and operational decisions made by the new superintendent, also to be selected by Morath.
In what seemed like a 16-hour indoctrination session, TEA’s “Lone Star Governance” program trainers had the 230 applicants who attended repeat self-flagellating mantras about their lack of integrity and lack of concern for student success to get them ready for what they called the “Lone Star Governance mindset.”
Lindsey Pollock, a former Houston ISD elementary school principal of 13 years and a current professor teaching in Sarasota University’s educational leadership graduate program, who participated in the training sessions, told the Observer: “I spent two days being demeaned by a presenter who had purposeful intentions to mislead and misrepresent the reasons we were all there. … They were only looking for people who were going to be agreeable.”
“I spent two days being demeaned by a presenter who had purposeful intentions to mislead and misrepresent the reasons we were all there. … They were only looking for people who were going to be agreeable.”
According to the Texas Association of School Boards’ website, “The main function of the school board is to provide local citizen governance and oversight of education.” A local school board typically has the responsibility to adopt the mission and goals of the district, to monitor its progress towards its goals, to write and review local policies, to hire and oversee the superintendent, to engage with the community, and to adopt a budget and monitor the district’s fiscal activity by hiring an independent auditor. Houston ISD’s annual budget is $2.2 billion.
“It’s very important that a school board has checks and balances to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent responsibly,” said Anne Sung, former Houston ISD school board member. “If there are allegations around financial malfeasance or misuse of grant funding, as we’ve seen in some school districts in the state of Texas, those things need to be identified.”
But in an apparent dissolution of local oversight, the “Lone Star Governance” creator and trainer A.J. Crabill told potential board members at the training, “The vast majority of the financial decisions, once the board adopts the budget, have already been made by the administration. … Once the board delegates, it’s done.”
In 2021, Texas legislators helped expand the state’s power over local school districts in a trade-off to prevent school districts from being potentially sanctioned for low test scores during the pandemic. Senate Bill 1365 gave the TEA broad disciplinary power to initiate a “special investigation” into school districts for just about anything. After the investigation finds violations were made, the state can place a state conservator over a school district, as it recently did with the Austin Independent School District. After a two-year conservatorship, the state can choose to replace the locally elected school board with a state-appointed board of managers, as happened in Houston. The law also made it easier for the state to take over school districts if a district contains any single school receiving a “D” accountability rating, not only an “F” rating, for consecutive years.
TEA has stated that the Houston takeover will last a minimum of two years, during which time the school district needs to meet exit criteria whereby no single campus may receive a D or F rating for “multiple years” (TEA has not specified what “multiple” means), there are no special education law violations, and there is “a school board that is highly focused on student outcomes.” Forty-four percent of Texas school districts had at least one school that received a D or F from TEA in 2019, according to an Observer analysis of TEA’s school accountability data.
Even after the Houston board of managers is selected, Morath will have the power to get rid of any manager at his own discretion.
During the sessions, TEA trainers also told applicants that the board’s sole focus was to set the “student outcome” goals and the “goals and values of the community.” But when Pollock, the ex-principal, said community members value other measures of learning apart from the state’s standardized test, called STAAR, TEA’s training facilitator Ashley Paz backtracked and said student outcome goals have to start with standardized test scores.
Another participant raised concerns that other subjects would be overlooked with the state’s emphasis on standardized testing, to which Paz replied, “You don’t think reading and math are important?”
When participant Pamela Boveland, a retired director of research and technology at the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department, asked Crabill, one of the trainers, if students in vulnerable communities would be provided with more resources to succeed, Crabill seemed to dismiss her question by citing his own upbringing: “As a child who … was in foster care and aged out, I have absolutely no sympathy for the idea that I could not be taught.”
Crabill also suggested that teachers are only as good as their students’ standardized test scores: “We might choose to increase teacher retention if we feel like that’s going to help us improve student outcomes. But if we do that and those outcomes don’t improve, we need to figure something else out. The only reason the whole system exists is to improve student outcomes.”
As a parent with a child in the school district, Sung, the ex-board member, expressed concern that if the new board’s primary focus is standardized test scores, it would disempower the board to address the community’s diverse concerns.
“If they’re being told that the only thing that matters is STAAR scores, then you can’t weigh in when the community is concerned about other matters. I want my child to learn. But I also want my child to be happy at school,” Sung said. “It seems like we’ll be too busy staring at student outcomes or test scores to wonder why can’t we teach our kids about the real history of America, or why we are not allowed to vote for our own leaders here, or run our own elections? All of those things are connected.”
“It seems like we’ll be too busy staring at student outcomes or test scores to wonder why can’t we teach our kids about the real history of America, or why we are not allowed to vote for our own leaders here, or run our own elections?”
During the training sessions, Pollock asked Paz if a locally elected board could resume leadership of the district if the state failed to improve “student outcomes” and standardized test scores declined. Paz replied, “That’s up to Mike Morath.”
In response to an Observer request for comment, TEA spokesperson Jake Kobersky sent the following statement, which is also found on the TEA website: “Appointed board of managers in Houston ISD will have the same roles, responsibilities, and authority as the elected board of trustees. This includes working collaboratively with the superintendent, holding all meetings in public, allowing for public comment, holding public hearings, and posting all required budget and tax information for public review and discussion.”
Some participants at the April training, like Pollock and Boveland, fear the sessions will reflect how the state will relate to students, parents, and school employees in Houston’s public schools. “There was a fear-based system of control in the room. In other words, don’t step out of line or you will be marginalized, shamed, and embarrassed. Any sort of independent thought will not be tolerated,” Pollock said.
Other participants, who Boveland said “drank the TEA kool-aid,” started echoing the idea that any failure to improve high-stakes test scores is a personal failing of officials and educators. By the end of the training, several participants were parroting the trainers’ mantras, repeated throughout the sessions: “Adult behavior has to change for student outcomes to change” and “I am the genesis of transformation.”
The post In Houston Schools, It’s the Mike Morath Show appeared first on The Texas Observer.
The IRS is working to develop its own free electronic tax-filing system in a potential challenge to commercial products such as TurboTax. The agency plans a pilot test of the program next year.
(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
SARASOTA, FL—Gasping with joy as his father revealed the graduation gift, local wealthy child Scott Hoffman thanked his parents Tuesday after they surprised him with a judge who would let him off the hook for future rape accusations. “Oh man, this is the best present ever—thank you, thank you, thank you Mom and Dad!”…
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
I’ve been working for a consulting company for three years. I am the most senior person on my team after my boss, who founded the company. Over the last three years, I have lost count of the number of people who have been hired and left in less than a year. Expectations are high and the deadlines are nigh impossible — which leads to most people working lots of (unpaid) overtime on nights and weekends and high degrees of burnout. Last year, one person who quit sent an email to the entire company (60+ people) airing her grievances about lower salaries and internal ethics. Two months ago, two people quit on the same day. This is only a small fraction of the drama — which comes primarily from the directors — that we experience on a daily basis. Needless to say, it’s been a very draining atmosphere to work in and it has significantly impacted my mental and physical health. I was trying to make it through the end of my current contract, but after I was not paid by my company for over three months and witnessed a new coworker be bullied to the point of quitting, I decided that I needed to seriously look for new work.
After a few months of searching, I landed a new job and am very excited! I gave my notice two weeks ago. We have a very long notice period (two months) so I gave my boss — let’s call her Sally — nine weeks of notice. She has had a rocky relationship with most other staff members, but for some reason we have cultivated a good working relationship (although I would say she is still abusive). I was honestly expecting the worst when I quit, as I know she has tried to refuse other colleagues’ resignations, but my resignation was received well. We have already hired my replacement and I’ve been working on training her, wrapping things up, and continuing to manage certain projects until my departure.
However, this week, there has been a noticeable shift in Sally’s behavior towards me. She has started piling additional work onto my plate, outside of what we agreed upon in my handover note (in which I outlined key tasks I would complete). Today, she admonished me for the quality of my work, saying that she had felt a dip in recent months and now understood why (i.e., because I was job hunting / wanted to leave) and that she expected I would continue to give 100% and think about my legacy at the company. I will admit that I have started to withdraw from internal conversations on team-building and morale, so perhaps that is where this comment came from. However, I also think my priority should be training my replacement and wrapping things up as much as possible in the next few weeks.
I did not engage with her comment. Later she sent another very long message about how she understands it’s normal to switch off to some extent once you land a new job, but my attitude was impacting team spirit and her own workload (I guess it’s not her recent demands that all staff work unpaid overtime or witch hunts punishing staff members for not doing a task correctly). She then went on a lengthy rant calling me and other coworkers robots. I did not engage and answered very noncommittally that we would finish our collaboration “strong.” But if these sorts of comments continue, I am unsure about how to respond to them, as they are quite emotional and very draining to receive. I would like to finish up my time at my current position well and on a positive note, but how do I navigate my last few weeks (if this is even possible) with these sort of comments?
You can read my answer to this letter at New York Magazine today. Head over there to read it.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
I work as a manager in specialized retail establishment and had a client come in today to review and complete her order. We were chatting while I finalized her paperwork, and she mentioned her children. I said something to the effect of, “Oh, I love teenagers — I used to teach high school” and that was when the floodgates OPENED. Apparently, there is a scandal at the private religious school her children attend and they fired almost an entire department due to their stance on LGBTQ issues, and I was subjected to a long rant about trans people and how offensive they are.
My spouse is trans.
I did not know what to say or how to respond. I have the opposite of a poker face (my partner and I call it “the everything face”) so I feel pretty confident that she knew I was horrified but she just. Kept. Talking … until I was finally able to say “HERE’S YOUR PAPERWORK BYE NOW” and yeet her out the door.
Do you — or your readers — have any ideas or suggestions regarding what to do in this kind of situation? Where we are sales based, I felt powerless in this situation — but now I feel terrible because I feel like I should have said something and didn’t.
Sometimes open bigotry can be so shocking that you’re just sitting there stunned, and by the time you regain your power of speech the person is gone. In my experience, the absolute best way to combat that is to prepare ahead of time — to come up with lines that you’ll be able to say, and even to practice saying them out loud so they’re readily accessible when you need them. Unfortunately, it’s a safe assumption that you will need them at some point, and this way your brain won’t be scrambling to come up with something on the spot.
Realistically, it definitely can feel harder when the bigot is a client, but you can still speak up. There’s a spectrum of exactly how blunt you can be with a client — some employers would be totally fine with you being extremely blunt even if that means losing the person’s business over it, and others would want you to be somewhat more diplomatic, but no decent employer would insist you to listen smilingly to hate speech.
Exactly what to say depends on you and the dynamic you have with the person, but some options you could use with clients include:
* “I really disagree.”
* “You must be assuming I agree with you. I don’t.”
* “You probably don’t realize how many people you meet have loved ones who are trans.”
* “My spouse is trans.” (Then stop talking and just look at her.)
Somewhat softer options:
* “That’s something you and I disagree on.”
* “I don’t think you can mean that how it sounds.”
* “I don’t agree at all, but this isn’t something we need to talk about.”
* “This sounds like a conversation you and I shouldn’t have.”
I don’t love the idea of softer options at all — as a Jew, I wouldn’t be thrilled to hear a “soft” response to anti-semitism, and this is no different — but if you’re in a work situation where you really need to avoid alienating the person, they’re better than saying nothing! Really, though, I think you can use the other options in a lot of work situations even if they feel blunt — the person you’re talking to clearly hasn’t worried too much about whether they might be alienating you.
If you want, you could also talk with your employer about what happened — because maybe you’ll find out that you can be even blunter than what’s above. Who knows, maybe your manager would be fine with losing the business of someone who’s going to spew bigotry all over your workplace, and you could just directly say “that’s really offensive” or tell the client the business strongly supports trans rights or otherwise make it clear that her comments aren’t welcome there.
But otherwise the options above are reasonable ways to speak up, even with a customer.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
On a video meeting yesterday, my coworker (Orion) yelled at me. Orion was acting as our coach in this meeting — he’s not a member of our team. For the sake of anonymity, let’s say we’re llama groomers (we’re not). We were discussing how difficult it was that our llamas weren’t fully groomed this week, and he said that it’s impossible to fully groom them. We are quite familiar with the issue, but need to work with the groomers on a procedure to catch the missed spots and fix them. The groomers have all the brushes, so anytime we found a missed spot we’d have to message them to fix it — not ideal.
Orion was warming up to give us another lecture on how it’s impossible to have the full grooming we need, and I tried to cut in and table the discussion. He raised his voice, angrily insisted on talking first, and continued to llamasplain. Ten minutes later, I could get a word in and said, “Orion, please don’t raise your voice with me again.” He apologized. My team lead, Andromeda, immediately sent me a chat message with her support. An hour later, Orion sent me an apology on chat too.
I’m quite sensitive to yelling. The interaction barely qualified as yelling, but I was shaking during the rest of that meeting. As soon as it was over, I stress-cried for several minutes, then took a long walk to calm down. Processing that interaction and my feelings around it also triggered my insomnia. My strong sensitivity here may be linked to my autism, I’m not sure. I don’t think it’s something that’s likely to change, and I typically avoid people who need to yell.
I was in the office today (Orion was not) and a few people who heard what happened said, “That is so awesome that you stood up to him! We support you! He’s always been like this and we’ve just gotten used to it but it’s definitely not okay.” Andromeda said she’s had to hang up on him and wait for him to calm down, and Cassiopeia (from a different team entirely) has refused to work with Orion.
So now I’m worried. I don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with that often. I’ve been at this company for three months and this is the first incident, but he frequently derails meetings by re-explaining things we understand and telling us we’re wrong, so I can’t imagine a productive relationship without being able to set boundaries.
This is a 25-person startup, and the CEO is HR. I will mention it to him (we have a feedback-type meeting in a few days anyway), but I’m at a loss for what I can expect in the future. Will I be enforcing my own boundaries, or can the CEO do something? Is there some amount of yelling I need to tolerate in a neurotypical workplace? Is there something explicit I should be asking from all these people who support me and are a bit tired of this side of Orion? I don’t want to fight, but work is draining enough without getting yelled at or mansplained to.
And I’ve just gotten through this email and realized that if they’re the llama groomer team, our job would be to dress the llamas in little outfits. That thought has cheered me immensely, and is also a reasonable metaphor for how much I like the work I’m doing.
Whether you answer this or not, thanks for all the advice! As an autistic ex-academic, your archives read like a crash course in how to human in the workplace, which is immensely helpful.
There’s no amount of yelling you should be expected to tolerate in a workplace, unless someone is yelling to alert you that your shirt is on fire.
That’s not a guarantee that you’ll never encounter yelling in a workplace, because it does happen. It’s abusive and it shouldn’t happen, but there are offices where it does. There are far more where it doesn’t — and where it would be considered a shocking event if it did — but there indeed some companies that tolerate it.
But it’s completely reasonable to decide that you’re not willing to be yelled at (I’m not either), and that you won’t work somewhere that accepts it as a normal thing.
The good news here is that you’ve already done an awesome job of setting that boundary (telling Orion not to raise his voice to you, and getting two apologies from him). And it’s possible that now that you’ve stood up to him, Orion won’t raise his voice around you again — he’s seen you won’t stand for it, his apologies indicate he probably feels sheepish about it, and he might feel ridiculous putting himself in that situation again. Sometimes — even often — with office yellers, calmly and firmly saying the behavior needs to stop really does get them to stop doing it around you. (I suspect that’s because it highlights how out-of-control and foolish they seem, and that makes them look weak … which they don’t like.)
It’s also a good sign that your colleagues have been so supportive — as opposed to a reaction more like, “Yeah, that’s just how he is and you have to deal with it.” And Cassiopeia has gotten away with refusing to work with Orion altogether, so I think there’s a lot of room for you to be assertive about setting boundaries again if you need to.
You don’t need to just wait and see what happens though. You could talk to Andromeda (or your manager, or the CEO in that upcoming feedback meeting) about it now and say, “I’m not willing to be yelled at, and I want to make sure that I have your support in refusing to let Orion do it if that happens again.” Hell, for that matter, you could say, “It sounds like this is a systemic issue with Orion and people have been putting up with it but are really unhappy about it. Can this be addressed with him so no one has to worry it will happen again?”
As for what could or should be happening: someone with authority over Orion should have shut this down the first time they became aware of it. Orion’s manager should have told him extremely clearly that he can’t yell at colleagues, period. And it sounds like there’s more problematic behavior from him they need to be addressing too. But instead, he’s become your office’s missing stair — everyone is working around him, knowing what he’s doing isn’t acceptable but putting up with it anyway. At a minimum that indicates Orion has an overly passive manager … but sometimes passive managers, while not spurred to action on their own, will act if they get enough pushing from others to.
Obviously it’s not a great sign that this has been allowed to continue up until now. But sometimes a new person coming in and saying, “Whoa, this isn’t okay” instead of just reluctantly accepting it does get offices to finally address situations like this. Not always, but sometimes.
So from here, I think you’ll need to watch and see what happens. If nothing else, there’s a decent chance that Orion will treat you more respectfully in the future, just because you called him on the behavior and said you wouldn’t tolerate it.
In general, though, you absolutely can decline to accept being yelled at — and to explicitly say, “I’m not willing to be yelled at” — and if a job doesn’t support you in that, it’s a reasonable thing to leave over.
The juvenile suspect allegedly fled the scene with Angel Gomez, 20, who had gotten into a physical altercation with the employee before the shooting occurred, police said.
(Image credit: Matt Rourke/AP)
Instructions: Pay seventy dollars a month to count calories in an app and receive daily reminders that celery is less calorie dense than cake frosting.
Pros: Fleeting sense of accomplishment from signing up and paying for a service.
Cons: Ruin brunch by assessing the calorie density of your friends’ meals; targeted ads for Noom for the rest of your life.
Instructions: Eat minuscule portions of your favorite foods with a vintage seafood fork. Serve poached pears at dinner parties. Start wearing scarves and smoking a pack of cigarettes a day; hiss at fat people.
Pros: A single tarte tatin from the farmers’ market can last up to five days.
Cons: Clarins anti-aging serum is no match for cigarettes. Also, you’re starving.
Instructions: Incorporate large intervals of not eating into your day and/or week (e.g., eat all meals within a window of six to eight hours).
Cons: Ruin brunch by skipping it in favor of a twenty-ounce buttered coffee and telling everyone about your new podcast. Hangry mood swings.
Pros: Unlike with other diets, hangry mood swings happen at predictable times.
Instructions: Eat 70 percent fat by combining eggs, bacon, nut butters, and artificial sweeteners into uncanny valley analogs of real foods. Say, “I’m in ketosis,” to excuse a host of unpleasant interpersonal behaviors.
Pros: Finally put all those leftover mayonnaise packets to use; weekly grocery shopping can eventually be replaced by a single Arby’s party platter and a bag of almonds.
Cons: Excruciating bowel movements once every six days; scurvy.
Instructions: Add half a grapefruit to every low-fat, low-calorie meal. Add whole grapefruits in between meals to maintain homeostasis.
Pros: Generous bulk discount from Sunkist; no more scurvy.
Cons: Ruin brunch by explaining how grapefruit’s interaction with Zoloft has sent you to the ER multiple times; soft teeth; diarrhea.
Instructions: Practice portion control by eating only free samples. Get upward of 15,000 steps per day by walking laps through a cavernous warehouse.
Pros: Discovery of Kirkland Signature Cashew Clusters.
Cons: High risk of derailing diet and over-drafting checking account from regularly purchasing Kirkland Signature Cashew Clusters; Wednesday samples are mostly Tide Pods and flavored seltzers.
Instructions: Consume only uncooked, plant-based foods (e.g., fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds soaked in water). Maintain unblinking eye contact with anyone eating bacon.
Pros: God-like sense of superiority.
Cons: Impossible to talk about “eating nut cheese” with a straight face; blood transfusion for iron deficiency not covered by insurance; targeted ads for the ASPCA; ruin brunch with horror stories about concentrated animal feeding operations.
Instructions: Before your Costco membership expires, order a fifty-pound bag of Purina Complete Rabbit Pellets. Eat them like popcorn. Drink a gallon of water a day from a bottle with a ball bearing at the end of an angled metal spout.
Pros: Simplest meal planning of any diet; siblings estranged during raw vegan phase may reconcile during rabbit pellet intervention.
Cons: The level of vitamin A in rabbit pellets causes blurred vision and hair loss in humans in an order of magnitude worse than from a weekly Tide Pod washed down with mango-lime seltzer.
Instructions: Eat only prime, organic, grass-fed beef and drink only water. Hiss at French women.
Pros: Diseases you were never diagnosed with have magically disappeared.
Cons: Excruciating bowel movements once every ten days; meat sweats; ruin brunch by talking about Jordan Peterson.
Instructions: Emulate our paleolithic ancestors by eating only foods that could be obtained by hunting and gathering.
Pros: Local cave system maintains baseline temperature of 50F year round (expedient housing option after going bankrupt from all that Jordan Peterson beef); new bow-hunting skills useful in the event of societal collapse.
Cons: Local cave system inhabited by Burning Man enthusiasts; no electrical outlets for your podcasting equipment; ruin brunch by trying to take a sponge bath in the First Watch bathroom.
Instructions: Once a week, inject your abdomen, upper arm, or thigh with the contents of an unlabeled syringe delivered by mail.
Pros: No targeted ads on the dark web.
Cons: Semaglutide takes twenty years off your body and adds them straight to your face; DEA watchlist; pancreatitis; you are no longer invited to brunch.
Instructions: Eat what appeals to you when you are hungry. Stop when satisfied (or not).
Pros: Regained hours of time and attention.
Cons:
Good morning. After a week or so of wetter and cooler weather, Houston’s pattern will transition to drier and mostly sunny conditions for awhile. We’re also going to see a couple of weak fronts that will bring us slightly less humid conditions for awhile. That is about all you can ask for during the second half of May.
There will be one last chance of showers and thunderstorms this afternoon and early evening, as our atmosphere remains moist, and somewhat fertile for storm activity. The favored area today will be south of Interstate 10, from Galveston Bay to Matagorda Bay. Isolated areas may say 0.5 to 1.5 inch of rain. Rain chances will be lesser, perhaps 30 percent, for areas north of Interstate 10. Skies will be partly to mostly cloudy, with highs in the mid-80s for most. Storms should end this evening, with the loss of daytime heating. Lows tonight will drop to around 70 degrees.
A weak front arrives on Tuesday night, and this should usher in slightly drier air at the surface, and knock a lot of the moisture out of the atmosphere above. Put another way, we’re going to shift from a rainy pattern to a dry one rather abruptly in terms of precipitation. Look for partly sunny skies and highs in the mid-80s. Winds will be out of the northwest at 5 to 10 mph. Lows on Wednesday night will drop into the mid- to upper 60s for much of the region, which is rather pleasant for the second half of May.
These will be a pair of warm days, with highs of around 90 degrees, and sunny skies. Nighttime lows will drop to around 70 degrees.
My confidence is increasing that a second front will, in fact, push all the way off the coast. Saturday is likely to be warm and sunny ahead of the front, with highs near 90 degrees. There will be a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms during the afternoon and evening, along with the front’s passage, with clouds building overnight. Lows likely drop to around 70 degrees. On Sunday we’ll probably see mostly cloudy skies, with highs in the mid-80s.
The first half of next week should see a mix of sunshine and clouds, with daytime highs in the mid-80s. Dewpoints will drop into the mid-60s, which is going to feel slightly more comfortable than typical dewpoints in Houston. The bottom line is that this is probably spring’s last gasp. It’s not going to be much, but it’s also a world of difference from highs in the 90s and sultry, summertime humidity.
TULSA, OK—Describing them as a consistent and disturbing presence in his daily life, local man Clinton Morris reported being plagued Tuesday by intrusive thoughts of wanting to help others. “I just keep hearing these voices in my head incessantly telling me that I need to donate to charity,” said Morris, holding his…
STOCKTON, CA—Cackling as the steps of the dastardly plan crystallized in her mind, local trans teen Brie Chandler told reporters Tuesday that she had hatched a nefarious plot to undergo years of medical treatments and counseling to win at swimming. “It’s oh, so simple: several years of sweet-talking medical…
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration paved the way for more gay and bisexual men to donate blood by finalizing new risk-based recommendations for blood donation, with prospective donors being asked the same set of questions regardless of their sex or sexual orientation. What do you think?
Children who need growth hormone to achieve their full stature are having trouble getting the medicine. A shortage has stretched months longer than expected and could last the rest of the year.
(Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images)
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
Six months ago, my coworker Jane collapsed at her desk. She was unresponsive and had no pulse. I started performing CPR while a colleague called 911. Someone else brought the office defibrillator, and I used it to revive Jane. By the time the EMTs got there, Jane’s heart was beating and she was breathing again. She was in the hospital for a few days.
The experience was very emotional for me. There’s a huge difference between taking CPR classes and performing it in an emergency situation. It being a Friday, I took the rest of the day off.
When I returned Monday, my coworkers applauded when I entered the office. I’m uncomfortable being the center of attention so I kept my head down and stuck to business as usual, and eventually they took my cue and things went back to normal.
Jane and her husband sent me a gift basket at work. A *huge* gift basket. Embarrassingly big, with a handwritten thank-you card signed by her whole family. Coworkers saw it and started remarking on the episode again. I smiled and nodded but didn’t engage further. It felt weird, but they were entitled to their feelings.
Jane called to thank me. I asked how she was feeling and said I was glad she made it, that she was strong. She put her husband on the phone, and he thanked me. Then both her kids. I almost expected to hear from her dog, too.
When Jane returned to work, she brought me another gift. Now she seems to think we have a special bond and we’re supposed to be best friends. She jokes to colleagues that since I saved her life, she’s indebted to me forever!” Ha. I’m embarrassed when she calls attention to it. New hires hear about it and want to know the whole story. It’s been six months and people are still talking about it.
The kicker? I can’t stand Jane. I’ve never liked her. I’m happy I was able to help her through her medical crisis, and if it happened again, I wouldn’t hesitate to do the same thing. But Jane has always driven me up the wall with attention-seeking and over-chumminess, and now it’s So. Much. Worse.
Do you have any suggestions for what to say?
I think the first part of the response was unavoidable — if you save someone’s life with CPR, they’re going to be really grateful! And I’m not surprised your office applauded you because you did do something heroic in a really dire situation.
But it’s been six months, and it’s understandable that the “special bond” stuff is grating, especially since it’s coming from someone you can’t really stand. You’re entitled to want to save lives without having to perform an emotional bond with that person forever afterwards. (To be clear, Jane might feel an ongoing bond with you forever, and that’s okay! But you also need to be able to work in peace without being called upon to receive her gratitude over and over.)
Since Jane feels indebted to you, I wonder if you can enlist her in “helping” you with this. For example, could you say to her, “Just between you and me, I hate being the center of attention and I feel really awkward when people keep bringing it up. It would be such a favor to me if would you downplay it at work so it doesn’t keep getting discussed.” If she seems resistant to that, you could add, “Truly, if you do feel indebted at all, the kindest thing you could do is to help me tamp the attention down without making a big deal of it.”
That might tap into Jane’s desire to repay you and by framing it as needing her help, you might also tap into her desire to feel that bond.
That said, it sounds like what’s bugging you about Jane’s response is really just more of the same thing that’s always bugged you about Jane — she’s overly chummy, and this experience gave her a new pin to hang some of that on. So some of this is probably just the price of working with Jane. But I bet framing it as enlisting her help has a decent chance of cutting back on the worst of it.
IF YOU HATE BILLIONAIRES, WHY ARE YOU ALL SO OBSESSED WITH SUCCESSION?
WRITERS ARE GREEDY (<— THIS SIGN WRITTEN BY CHATGPT)
TV DOESN’T EXIST WITHOUT SEVEN OLD WHITE GUYS TO SUGGEST WE LOOK FOR A BIGGER NAME TO STAR IN THE PROJECT!
DO YOU WANT NOTES ON YOUR PICKET SIGNS?
REALLY? AFTER ALL THE MINI WATER BOTTLES OUR ASSISTANTS GAVE YOU?
I DON’T KNOW, SOMETHING IN THE SHAPE OF “PLEASE DON’T DO THIS, WORDS WORDS WORDS.”
COULD WE PUSH THIS STRIKE? I HAVE A CALL.
COULD THIS MAYBE BE A ZOOM? I’M GOING ON VACATION FOR 3-5 WEEKS.
THIS IS YOUR FAULT FOR SHARING NETFLIX PASSWORDS.
ONE OF OUR EXECS HAS ONLY ONE HOUSE. MORE HOUSES FOR EXECS NOW!
WHATEVER, WE’LL REPLACE YOU WITH ALL OF ALEC BALDWIN’S CHILDREN.
MINI ROOMS SOUND CUTE.
CAN’T WE SETTLE THIS ON THE GOLF COURSE LIKE CIVILIZED PEOPLE?
WHAT’S A STRIKE? IS IT LIKE WHEN WE GO ON VACATION FROM NOVEMBER THROUGH FEBRUARY?
DON’T MAKE US SICK THE MGM LION ON YOU!
WE’LL JUST MAKE A REALITY SHOW ABOUT PICKETING.
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO? GO WRITE COPY FOR AN OAT MILK BRAND?
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO? GHOSTWRITE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS ESSAYS FOR RICH TEENS?
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO? WRITE THE SASSY SIGNS OUTSIDE OF CHURCHES?
IN OUR DEFENSE, WE THOUGHT “STRIKE” WAS A NEW RESTAURANT IN MALIBU.
“This and That” is an occasional series of paired observations. See past “This and That” posts here. – Ed.
Today: RVs
Heather Sundquist Hall, “Giddy Up”, 2023, gouache and ink on paper, 20 x 14 inches. Included in “SPARKLE TOWN” at Webb’s Fair & Square in Fort Davis
Camp Bosworth, “RV #1 Pulling Bikes”, 2022-23, graphite on cut wood, 8 x 17.5 inches. Included in “RV LIVIN'” at Webb Gallery in Waxahachie
Heather Sundquist Hall, “Sparkling Spot”, 2022, gouache and ink on paper, 10 x 10 inches. Included in “SPARKLE TOWN” at Webb’s Fair & Square in Fort Davis
Camp Bosworth, “RV #14 Pulling Mucho Bikes”, 2022-23, graphite on cut wood, 10 x 13 inches. Included in “RV LIVIN'” at Webb Gallery in Waxahachie
The post This and That: Heather Sundquist Hall and Camp Bosworth appeared first on Glasstire.
CHARLOTTE, NC—Letting out a deep sigh and saying he guessed he’d just have to wait a little bit longer before he got to shoot someone, local gun owner Chris Quaid told reporters Monday morning that he’d spent another disappointing night without a home invasion. “Aw, man, I can’t believe nobody tried to forcibly enter…
A metallic object believed to be a meteorite punched a hole in the roof of a central New Jersey home, the black, potato-sized rock still warm when the family who owned the home discovered it. What do you think?
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