Zoos follow a fundamental principle: You can't sell or buy the animals. It's unethical and illegal to put a price tag on an elephant's head. But money is really useful — it lets you know who wants something and how much they want it. It lets you get rid of things you don't need and acquire things that you do need. It helps allocate assets where they are most valued. In this case, those assets are alive, and they need a safe home in the right climate.
So zoos and aquariums are left asking: What do you do in a world where you can't use money?
This episode was originally produced by Jess Jiang.
I remember when I was a kid getting ELIZA as part of a Software Toolworks collection of games from Babbage's. I was so excited ... for some reason I thought it would actually play games with me and stuff. Boy was I disappointed.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My work assignment would require my spouse to be fingerprinted and background checked
As part of my job, I’ve been tasked with securing a permit for the organization to serve alcohol at an upcoming event. In our jurisdiction, this requires submitting extensive personal information, background checks, fingerprinting, etc. for the applicant and spouse (“and spouse” is bold and underlined in the application instructions and forms).
I’m one of the few employees of our organization who is married, and I’m not comfortable with having my husband do this. He would certainly pass the background checks – he’s never had so much as a traffic ticket – but he’s a very private person and is not comfortable with it. Even if he was, I feel like it’s asking a lot for my employer to expect my husband to take time out of his workday to attend the appointments associated with applying. Is this as unreasonable as I think it is, or am I off base?
I want to push back, but I’m afraid it will look like I have something to hide. I’ve thought about asking someone else to do it but there aren’t any great alternatives. Our CEO really should be the one to do it (technically, no one else has authority to sign the forms on behalf of the organization) but he can’t due to a conflict of interest due to his relationship with the local authorities. My supervisor is also married, so her husband would be subjected to the same requirements. The org has a few other employees, but this event isn’t within the scope of their jobs. So, is there a tactful way to decline this, or do I need to suck it up and ask my husband to do it?
What on earth?! I’m dying to know the reasoning behind the spouse requirement.
If your husband just needed to sign his name on a form, I still wouldn’t love it, but just having him do it might be the easiest path since you don’t have other great alternatives. But fingerprinting and a background check and time off work for appointments? You can quite reasonably decline on those grounds. I’d frame it to your boss as, “Gavin is swamped right now and can’t take the time off work to do everything they’d require of him. Since that means I’m not an option, how do we want to handle this?”
(Also, any chance there are options that don’t require any of you to apply for the permit — like using a catering company that has their own liquor permit?)
2. Should we use one-way video interviews?
I’m in the middle of a hiring process, and my HR department is recommending that we do a one-way video screening (Spark Hire), instead of a phone screening. We have already done preliminary screening of written responses and need to cull the list down to a manageable number for zoom interviews. What are your thoughts on one-way video interviews?
Resist! Candidates hate those, and with good reason. They’re horrible. You’d be asking your candidates to invest not-insignificant time on their end doing something a lot of people find really uncomfortable (even people who are comfortable on camera in a more natural back-and-forth set-up) and to invest more of their time in your process without any opportunity for them to ask their own questions and find out if they’re even interested in the job. (This is true regardless but it goes double if the “written responses” you mentioned were something more than a resume and cover letter. If you have already asked them to produce something beyond the initial application, then it’s way too much to ask them to do yet another thing before they can even have a conversation with you.)
And you will lose some of your best candidates who will nope out rather than bother with it.
Do phone interviews so you can have real conversations with people. If you’re not convinced everyone you’re considering is worth the time of a short conversation, then cull them from the pool (or put them in a maybe pile to possibly go back to later).
3. Giving a dishonest reason for a layoff
In one of my first jobs out of college, I was in an assistant to two senior people at my organization. One of my bosses, Shirley, was super organized and easy to work with. The other, Laverne, was extremely unreliable. From what I could tell as her assistant, she worked maybe 20 hours a week max in a salaried full-time role. She worked in the office one morning a week, when we had a weekly team meeting with her boss. Otherwise, she “worked” from home and was almost entirely unreachable. Fending off folks demanding a response from Laverne became a significant part of my job. Projects were delayed, collaborators were livid, significant mistakes were made, costs were incurred, all because Laverne was unreachable and ultimately not really doing her job.
I got a sense from vague comments from Shirley and other senior folks that Laverne had some significant things going on, possibly health related, but she was not on FMLA to my knowledge — everyone, including her boss, seemed to expect that she would be working a normal number of hours, and none of this really appeared to be above-board or accommodated.
So clearly Laverne was not doing the tasks of her job. In retrospect, I do think Laverne was placed on a PIP while I worked there, because we had a very strange meeting where she called me into her office to let me know that “we” really needed to start doing better, and was very frantic about it for about two weeks.
The interesting thing was, Laverne was a nightmare to work with internally, but she clearly had a real knack for parts of the job. Everything was chaos before a project was delivered, but she had some of THE best performing work in the organization. In terms of sales metrics, she was doing incredibly.
Eventually, Laverne was let go — probably about eight months into my time there. However, her boss let us all know that Laverne had been laid off due to her market area underperforming, and there not really being a market for what she did. This was the same week that one of her recently released projects had reached a metric that our organization gave out special plaques for, so clearly the market for her work was there. Even though Laverne had been making my life miserable, it really rubbed me the wrong way to be so obviously lied to about why she was gone. I think as a kindness to Laverne, her boss decided to say she was laid off rather than fired due to poor performance, but that felt kind of unfair to the rest of us who had been dealing with her. I expected to feel hugely relieved that Laverne was gone, but the whole situation left a bad taste with how everything was handled.
Should her boss have been honest with us, or is this a reasonable thing to do as a manager of someone who is performing poorly, but possibly due to circumstances outside of their control? Did he assume that we would all know what really happened so it didn’t matter if he had a different cover story?
It’s common for employers to try to help fired employees save face a bit; in general, firings (and the circumstances around them) should shared on a “need to know” basis. Colleagues need to know the person is no longer there, of course, but they don’t usually need to know “and it’s because she was doing a terrible job.” So it’s not uncommon to be told something more bland than the real story.
What’s unusual in this situation is that they came up with a really specific cover story that didn’t make sense for the circumstances. They may have figured that anyone close enough to have seen the problems would read between the lines (and really didn’t need more information than that) … but I also wonder if this is the story they told Laverne herself. Sometimes employers do try to lay people off instead of firing them (there are times when that can be a kindness, although there are times when it’s not) and it’s possible they decided it would be easier for all involved, Laverne included, if they framed it as being about the market rather than her work, regardless of what the actual facts made clear.
4. Interviewing for out-of-state jobs just for practice
My soon-to-be-graduating-from-college son is getting contacted by recruiters for out-of-state jobs, even though he’s listed as interested in local jobs only. His stepmom, who used to work HR for a large company, told him to apply for those jobs even though he knows he wouldn’t accept them, because the practice he’d get from the whole process is good, plus they have connections and contacts that might lead to a local job.
This isn’t a good idea, is it? Applying for a job you know you’d never accept? My thought is no, but I’ve never worked HR, so, maybe?
It’s not a terrible idea for him to get some interviewing experience in low-risk situations, but he also shouldn’t waste a ton of people’s time while doing it … so I could see taking a few initial calls with recruiters to get a feel for how they go (and who knows, maybe someone will have an opportunity that intrigues him enough to consider a move) but he shouldn’t progress through multiple steps in their hiring process if he’s sure he’s not interested. Also, he’s very likely to be asked about his willingness to locate in those initial calls, so he’d want to be prepared for that.
If part of the motivation would be that the recruiters might have leads on local jobs too, then he’d want to be especially careful not to come across like he’s wasting their time. So, an initial call = fine, but remaining in their process after that = probably not.
5. Can I ask for clarification about the wording of this rejection?
I am currently, let’s say, the director of llama grooming at a very small company. I recently applied for a position as a manager of llama brushing at a much larger organization. Though the title is a step down and the area of focus is less broad, it seemed like the level of responsibility was on par with what I currently handle.
I just got an email letting me know that they’re not moving forward with my application. I’m disappointed, but understand that they’re making the decisions that are right for them. My question is about a specific line from the rejection email: “We hope you’ll continue to keep an eye out for more senior level openings that match your skills and experience.”
I am conflicted about how to interpret “more senior level openings.” To me there are three options:
1. Please keep an eye out for additional/other senior-level roles similar to this one that might be a better match for your skills than this one was.
2. Please keep an eye out for jobs that are more senior to this role, as we think those would be a better match for your skills.
3. This is the form letter they send out to all applicants and I am reading way too much into it.
I really like this org and don’t want to ruin my chance of maybe being hired someday by sending a reply digging into the ambiguous grammatical implications of their polite and timely email. No one likes unsolicited grammar critiques! But … I also feel like getting some clarity on what they mean would help me to be a better candidate in the future, and I would really like to be a better candidate in the future. Do I need to just let this go? Or can I send a brief and polite email asking for a little clarity? I need to just let this go, right?
Yeah, let it go. I agree it’s ambiguous and could be any of the three options you listed, but I think it would be a little too much to write back and ask for clarification.
For what it’s worth, I’d guess the third option (form letter) is most likely, followed by the first option (apply for similar roles). The second option (target jobs that are more senior next time) seems least likely to me if there wasn’t any other context for it (but could be more likely if, for example, they’d told you in an interview that they were concerned the role wasn’t senior enough for you).
Also, keep in mind that while candidates tend to read rejection emails really carefully, scrutinizing each word for meaning, on the employer’s end they’re often written more haphazardly than that. I would just continue to apply for roles there that interest you and seem like the right match with your skills.
According to a new study, nearly 72% of college students surveyed report that the reproductive health laws in the state where their school is located are important to their decision to stay enrolled. What do you think?
In the small Gulf Coast city of Freeport, a pretty mint-green house stands alone in a neighborhood called the East End, surrounded by what looks at first glance like a meadow. Closer examination reveals the grass is growing over recently emptied lots where other houses once stood. Now driveways lead to nowhere.
Pam Tilley, a retired military nurse who grew up here, returned in February to see her childhood home one last time. She was there to clear out her 98-year-old father Henry Jones’ belongings. Calendars on the wall were still turned to February 2020, the last full month anyone lived there. For the past three years, Jones has been living with another daughter in the Houston suburb of Katy, originally because of the COVID-19 pandemic but now because he no longer owns this home.
The commissioners of nearby Port Freeport have condemned Tilley’s family property by eminent domain. The port is expanding to accommodate bigger Panamax container ships, and has been buying up the East End bit by bit. Any day, the mint-green house will be demolished as its neighbors have been.
The neighborhood, until recently a vibrant community, was initially formed by segregation of the city’s Black residents in the 1930s into a few square blocks. When Tilley was growing up, the modus operandi was that “you have to live here or nowhere,” she said. She remembers that older African-American residents like her parents felt, “if we have to live here, it’s going to be the best community ever.” They made the best of the situation, and turned the East End into a happy place to live.
Back in 2017, lawyers for the nonprofit Lone Star Legal Aid stepped in to help residents make a federal civil rights complaint against Port Freeport, as well as the City of Freeport, to several federal agencies that have provided funding to the port and the city. The Department of Homeland Security finally agreed to investigate the case last year.
But the process has taken so long that almost everybody from this close-knit community is already gone.It was like being “one of the last on the planet,” Tilley said. Only one other family from her tight-knit African-American community remains at home.
A few East End families still have individual lawsuits pending against Port Freeport. Tilley and her family were set to go to court earlier this month in an effort to dispute the port’s valuation of Henry Jones’ home. Instead, after years of contentious negotiation, the family and the port recently reached a settlement, which Tilley called “forced.” She would have preferred to be heard in court, but her family was worn out from years of fighting.
Pam Tilley helps to pack up her 98-year-old father Henry Jones’ belongings after what she called a “forced” settlement with the Port of Freeport. Meridith Kohut for the Texas Observer
With barely any residential properties left to fight over, Port Freeport has now turned against the city itself, asserting eminent domain over city-owned park land, streets, and infrastructure in the neighborhood. When city officials fought the condemnation, the port escalated the battle over Freeport’s East End earlier this year to the Texas Legislature and got Representative Cody Vasut, a Republican from Angleton, to file House Bill 5336: a bill that would give much of the city’s regulatory authority over to the port instead. The bill was scheduled for a public hearing in the House Transportation Committee on Wednesday.
The passage of such a targeted bill against the City of Freeport, introduced specifically at the behest of Port Freeport, could set a precedent for other port communities around Texas that want to limit industrial development and preserve residential neighborhoods. It will also determine how easily the port can pursue future expansions in other areas of Freeport.
The East End is surrounded on three sides by the port and by fossil fuel and chemical plants—including BASF, Dow, Freeport LNG, Huntsman, Phillips 66, SI Group, and Gladieux Metals Recycling (formerly Gulf Chemical, which notoriously hid its pollution and flouted state air and water quality rules for years). By the 2010s, 71 percent of neighborhood residents identified as Hispanic and 15 percent as African-American.
Like many other communities of color in the United States, the East End long suffered from industrial pollution. Today, that sacrifice is stretching to its extreme, with the neighborhood almost completely swallowed up by the port.
Port Freeport’s management wants the port to become the “largest deep water landlord port on the gulf coast of Texas,” according to the 2017 civil rights complaint by Lone Star Legal Aid, making room for even more gargantuan Panamax ships following the 2016 expansion of the Panama Canal, as well as anticipating more traffic in the region due to oil and gas exports from the Eagle Ford Shale.
“All up and down the coast, all the ports, it’s like a race to see who can get deepened and widened first. And unfortunately, right now, Port Freeport is in the lead,” said local environmental activist Melanie Oldham, who founded Citizens for Clean Air and Water of Freeport and Brazoria County.
“This community was just being erased.”
The port has been buying property in the East End for more than 20 years, according to a 2021 op-ed in the Brazosport Facts by Port Freeport CEO Phyllis Saathoff. (A port spokesperson emailed an excerpt of that op-ed to the Texas Observer in response to questions about the civil rights complaint.) Port Freeport acquired more than 80 percent of these properties through voluntary deals, according to Saathoff. “Each and every offer to residential property owners was made in good faith, at a fair market value, and in addition to the relocation support,” she wrote.In 2015, the port added an option for landowners to exchange their East End properties for newly built homes elsewhere.
It’s too late to save most of the neighborhood’s homes. But Amy Dinn, one of the Lone Star Legal Aid attorneys who made the 2017 civil rights complaint, is hopeful that the Department of Homeland Security’s investigation will result in something, which would be “better than what was happening before, which was nothing,” she said. “This community was just being erased.” Dinn is based in Houston; but the nonprofit also has an office in Brazoria County.
Most civil rights investigations end in informal resolutions, Dinn explained. Reaching an informal resolution in Freeport would save the port’s and the city’s abilities to receive federal funds while still coming up with justice for residents and landowners. “The real objective is not to penalize them [the port and the city], it is to fix the problem for the East End residents,” she said.
Many former residents want some kind of historic preservation, display, or monument, so the East End community isn’t forgotten. Tilley is hoping the civil rights complaint will at least result in the recording of an oral history of the East End. She’s suggested creating a cookbook with her old neighbors, and has spoken with the Freeport Historical Museum about a display dedicated to the community’s former churches.
The port was able to erase so much of this community so quickly in part because the city denied homeowners permits to repair their houses, according to Lone Star Legal Aid’s civil rights complaint. (Manning Rollerson, the plaintiff in a lawsuit related to this complaint, previously told the Observer he had to demolish his family’s East End house after being denied such a permit.) Many other residents have complained about the city refusing to repair roads and install sidewalks in the neighborhood.
“In a nutshell, East End taxpayers are paying for city services, but not receiving them,” Dinn and her colleagues wrote in the civil rights complaint. “The City have worked expressly against the homeowners of the East End and tipped the scales in favor of the Port’s expansion.”
Pam Tilley says being at her father’s home in Freeport is like being one of the last people on planet Earth, due to the increasing isolation in the community. Meridith Kohut for the Texas Observer
But the City of Freeport has at times opposed Port Freeport, refusing to sell city-owned property in the East End. As a result, the port asserted eminent domain over the city as well. City officials are disputing the port’s appraised value of just over $4 million for its property in the neighborhood, and city and port are due to face off in Brazoria County Court on May 11.
Meanwhile, early this year Port Freeport quietly moved toward the nuclear option. Port commissioners voted in February to start lobbying state legislators to introduce a bill that would force the City of Freeport to deannex, or give up as part of the city, the entire East End to the port. The city only learned about this effort when Melanie Oldham, who meticulously tracks industry in the region, brought news of the port’s plans to the Freeport City Council.
Under threat of this bill, city council members acquiesced to mediation sessions with port officials. As a result, Vasut introduced somewhat toned-down legislation that would not force the city to deannex the East End, but would separate Freeport into a “port zone” and a “protected zone” for the city, while taking away much of the city’s power to regulate port activity.
“Port Freeport must be allowed to proceed with the public purposes for which it was created – to facilitate waterborne commerce and to responsibly develop projects that create jobs and economic opportunities for all residents of Brazoria County,” a port spokesperson wrote via email to the Observer. “The bill, as proposed, balances the Port’s mission to provide economic opportunities in a highly competitive environment while assuring the citizens that the Port’s future expansion will be limited and predetermined.”
The mediation sessions also produced a proposed interlocal agreement in which Port Freeport offered nearly $10 million for the same city property it was attempting to condemn through eminent domain. At a city council meeting on Monday, council members were evenly split on whether to adopt this agreement. Mayor Brooks Bass ultimately cast the deciding vote to reject the proposal.
“Just because they make an offer doesn’t mean I have to accept it,” the mayor said. The proposed agreement included language supporting HB 5336, which he adamantly opposed. Giving the port power to issue its own permits would be “a major transgression into a city’s ability for oversight,” he said. Bass described Port Freeport turning to the Legislature in the middle of eminent domain proceedings as changing the rules of the game, an action taken in bad faith. “It just didn’t pass the smell test,” he said.
The looming threat of Port Freeport’s expansion caused many people to leave the East End even before the port asserted eminent domain—making Lone Star Legal Aid question whether sellers involved in earlier voluntary deals with the port were truly willing, or simply afraid of the port seizing their land later for less money. “The Port has sought to acquire East End properties with the threat of condemnation as its hammer,” the lawyers wrote.
A cloud of “eminent domain blight” has hung over the East End for years, said Chris Johns, an attorney who has taught property rights law at the University of Texas at Austin and is now representing Tilley’s family in their individual lawsuit against Port Freeport, the government entity that runs the port itself. This eminent domain cloud, which lowered property values in the neighborhood and resulted in families being underpaid for their properties, can make it difficult for property owners to find comparable homes elsewhere, Johns said.
A similar story is often repeated near other ports and government property across Texas and across the country, he added. “A lot of these takings tend to target minority communities. … There’s a lot of potential for abuse and people taking advantage of other people and disbanding strong minority communities.”
“There’s a lot of potential for abuse and … disbanding strong minority communities.”
On paper, both the United States and Texas constitutions say landowners should receive “just compensation” when their property is taken by the government. In reality, just compensation is “a fiction,” according to Johns. Families pay for attorneys, expert witnesses, and court fees, all of which subtract from the price they ultimately get for their properties—properties already devalued by eminent domain blight and disinvestment.
After initially being offered less than $100,000 for their property, Tilley’s family fought the process.
“We just want justice,” Tilley said. What galled her was that after Port Freeport seized the East End homes, it would get much more economic value from that land than what it was offering her father and other property owners.
“They do what they want around here,” Tilley said of the port. “They have literally stolen the community to facilitate what they want.”
But even now, with just a few houses still standing, the East End community still exists in the ongoing tradition of neighbors helping neighbors. Henry Jones’ shotgun-style house was originally built by his brother, Tilley’s uncle, and expanded over the years to accommodate a growing family. One neighbor built the kitchen cabinets, and another put in plumbing. Tilley herself picked out the hallway’s floral wallpaper and laid colorful bathroom tiles. And this February, Kenny Roberts, who also grew up in the neighborhood, joined Pam Tilley to help her clear out the house. Roberts is something of an inside man—he won a bid from the Port of Freeport to remove ceiling fixtures from houses condemned by eminent domain.
During their recent visit, one special fixture remained in the Jones house for Roberts to remove: a small chandelier picked out by Tilley’s mother, with a beautiful pink and white stained-glass shade. The chandelier once hung above the family’s dining table, which had already been moved out. Below its light, only a carpet strewn with odds and ends remained.
After leaving the house, Tilley’s thoughts remained on her father, now living far away. “You talk about a man’s life: He’s soon to be 99, and 70 years of his life is spent on that property,” she said. “You’ve taken a man’s life.”
Kenny Roberts, who grew up in Freeport, helps unpack Henry Jones’ home, which has been condemned to make room for expansion of Port Freeport. Meridith Kohut for the Texas Observer
Editor’s note: This story originally stated that Lone Star Legal Aid attorneys from around Texas were involved in making a civil rights complaint on behalf of Freeport residents. Though the nonprofit has several offices, the attorneys involved are or were all based in Houston.
Aesthetic scrotums — Surprises abound in “The scrotum: A comparison of men’s and women’s aesthetic assessments”, a study done by plastic surgeon Carolin Eimer in Hamburg, Germany, and two colleagues at the Medical School of Hamburg.It begins by citing a 27-year-old psychology paper called “Gender and attractiveness biases in hiring decisions: Are more experienced managers less biased?” It avers that “studies have yet to investigate aesthetic preferences as regards the scrotum”. It…
Workaday experiment — What would two scientists discover by adding some small requirements to a person’s work day, then later removing one requirement?Here are the added requirements. (1) Eat nothing overnight or in the morning before coming to work. (2) Arrive at work more than an hour earlier than usual. (3) Prior to beginning the day’s work, sit quietly for 15 minutes while technicians prepare to wire you up so they can record electrical activity from your brain and heart as you do some mental tasks (in which you look at visual images and decide whether to press a button). Then, (4) fill out a 24-item survey designed to get at the question “How do you feel right now?” Then, (5) let the technicians extract a small amount of your blood. Then…
Me-in-a-museum — Have you discovered, in a museum, some non-human exhibit that looks startlingly like you? A taxidermied bird, perhaps, or a rock sample, or a historic old shoe? A waxwork flower? A fossil? Maybe a painted or sculpted depiction of some animal, vegetable, microbe or molecule? If so, we would love to hear about it….
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Today we talk about magnetic resonance imaging at record resolution, why the sun’s corona is so hot, nanoscale devices that can be reconfigured, an artificial tree that produces hydrogen from sunlight, a quantum light source on a chip, a sensor for plant health, aliens, quantum standards, and of course the telephone will ring.
00:00 Intro 00:48 MRI at Record Resolution 02:30 This Could Explain Why the Sun's Corona is So Hot 04:57 Nanoscale Devices that Can Be Reconfigured 06:22 A Prototype for Green Hydrogen Production 07:43 A Source for Entangled Light on a Chip 08:57 A Sensor for Plant Health 10:22 Alien Probes and Dandelion Seeds 11:58 Quantum Standards 13:57 Protect Your Privacy With Incogni
Colorado has enacted the nation's first state law guaranteeing farmers a right to repair tractors and other equipment themselves or at independent repair shops. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, signed the bill yesterday.
"I am proud to sign this important bipartisan legislation that saves hardworking farmers and ranchers time and money on repairs, and supports Colorado's thriving agriculture industry... Farmers and ranchers can lose precious weeks and months when equipment repairs are stalled due to long turnaround times by manufacturers and dealers. This bill will change that," Polis said.
The state House voted 46-14 in favor of the bill on April 11, while the Senate voted 21-12 on March 30. "The legislation advanced through long committee hearings, having been propelled forward mostly by Democrats even though a Republican lawmaker co-sponsored the bill," the Associated Press wrote. "The proposal left some GOP lawmakers stuck between their farming constituents pleading for the ability to repair their equipment and the manufacturers who vehemently opposed it."
As if we needed any more proof that excessive smartphone use is unhealthy for kids, new research has laid bare the very real consequences of our screen-addicted society: A study found that teens now spend 98 percent less time driving around drunk in corn fields while blasting Quiet Riot than they did in the ‘80s.
Yikes. Technology is clearly having a devastating impact on children.
A new study by researchers at Rutgers University compared how often today’s teens reported getting wasted on Blatz and ripping it up in corn fields while cranking Quiet Riot to how often teens did in the ‘80s. While teenagers in the ‘80s averaged five hours a month doing burnouts while shitfaced in muddy-ass corn fields with “Metal Health” cranked, today’s teens reported hardly doing that at all. The study also found a dramatic decrease in time today’s teens spend participating in similar activities such as shooting out headlights with BB guns at the scrapyard, giving one another shitty tattoos of pot leaves, lighting ponds on fire with gasoline, and stealing cigarettes from Kmart.
“We’ve known for years about the negative impact of screen addiction on children, but this data highlighting the drastic generational drop-off in kids blasting ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’ while drunkenly mowing down stalks of corn gives us a grim new understanding of just how damaging devices can be to young people’s mental and emotional development,” said lead researcher Allison Lee. “And it’s not just maniacally barreling through corn fields in their mom’s sedan that they’re missing out on. An alarmingly high percentage of today’s kids have never even hidden a soggy stack of Hustlers and a bong in the woods along the railroad tracks or huffed model glue while carving Mötley Crüe lyrics into their arms with a razor. If these worrying trends continue, it might not be long before smartphones have robbed an entire generation of pivotal formative experiences like getting fucked-up on half-frozen Burnett’s peach vodka and Sprite in a friend’s garage before heading out for a night of high-speed hellraising with the windows down and the opening guitar part of Van Halen’s ‘Eruption’ blaring at max volume.”
“Instead of critical social milestones like ganging up on dweebs to dunk their heads in toilets and breaking into abandoned houses to make out with freshman girls, today’s teens are largely spending their time chatting with friends on their phones and watching videos about things they’re interested in—and this should make parents very worried,” Lee continued. “The loss of these crucial childhood experiences has undoubtedly fueled the extreme increase in anxiety and depression we’ve observed in teens over the past decade.”
Depressing. This should be all the proof you need that kids shouldn’t have smartphones.
Imagine growing up without even once experiencing the magic of blasting Twisted Sister in your Trans Am with the sunroof open while going 60 through seven-foot stalks of corn and nursing your sixth Leinenkugel’s of the night. Sadly, that’s the reality most of today’s teenagers are living in. It’s disturbing to say the least, and unless parents can find a way to better manage their kids’ relationships with technology, we might just have to resign ourselves to the fact that children will no longer have real childhoods shaped by the destruction of private property and hair metal.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
Administrative Professionals’ Day is today, so please enjoy these horror stories submitted by readers in the past.
1. The dance lesson
For Administrative Professionals’ Day (a “holiday” that must die), my company used to order snacks and cheap wine and give us a little token like a mug with the company name on it. One year they decided to jazz it up by hiring ballroom dancing instructors and making us learn the mambo and cha cha. But they were all couple dances, so our 95% female admin staff got to deal with shouted instructions like, “Decide which one of you is the guy!”
2. The gifts
At my org, for Administrative Professionals’ Day, all the regular admin support staff (all women) were always gifted fancy bouquets. I like flowers, but I could only ever enjoy them at work, because they always had lilies and I have cats. It turned out that the shipper/receiver, who was the line man in our bargaining unit, always received a Visa gift card equivalent to the cost of the flowers, but no one noticed because his job was so separate from ours. It didn’t come out until another man was hired for a regular admin support position, and then a fuss was rightly made, we were given the choice between flowers or gift card, and everyone chose gift card. Since then, they don’t even bother asking, just give the gift card.
3. The mulch
For Administrative Professionals’ Day, which my male boss called “Secretaries’ Day,” the three male CEOS in our department made a big deal about “getting their girls flowers” (this was in 2016, by the way). All four of us admins had more education and professional credentialing than those particular executives did so there was a lot about that place that irked me. Finally, Administrative Professional’s Day comes around and they bring two giant wheelbarrows full of mulch and manure into our white-carpeted lobby along with three giant bags of tulip bulbs, saying we were given the day off to go plant the tulips around the existing landscaping since we all “loved gardening.” The company dress code at that point was still stockings, heels, skirts, and suits and I was in a linen pantsuit that day. None of us ever mentioned gardening. Ever. At all. In any way. They just thought women loved gardening. When buildings and grounds came by to get the gardening materials out of the lobby, they let it slip that our bosses eagerly asked if they could use the mulch and wheelbarrows for a “prank.” The joke was on them because the CEO and VP were fuming about the stains on the carpet from the wheelbarrows. I quit shortly after that anyway.
4. The cake
For Administrative Professionals’ Day, I had reminded my boss (head of office, I was his personal admin) that the day was coming. I offered to prepare for it (he declined), I made a list of plans he could follow through on, HR offered to coordinate it. The morning of he told me he’d done nothing and I needed to make it happen but then I could take the afternoon off.
I went into planner mode, ordered food on my credit card for him to reimburse, got a cake, got decorations and lunch went perfectly. Except he made me sit back in the closed office and sit next to his phone in case he got a call, while he told everyone in the lunch event how great he was for planning this. Then he sent all the other admins home. Oh, except me. He instead decided to go continue his affair with the individual in the office downstairs (AND TOOK THE LEFTOVER CAKE) and made me sit next to his phone for the rest of the afternoon. I never even got a slice of cake.
30 days later I had an offer in hand and gave my notice. I didn’t exactly care about the day but I sure cared about the disrespect on that day. His affair didn’t work out; he got divorced, new affair partner eventually took out a restraining order on him and it blew up publicly as these were all public officials.
5. The roses
On Administrative Professionals’ Day, all the women would arrive to work to find a lovely single red rose (in a vase, of course, tied with a pretty pink or red ribbon) on her desk. And, I do mean ALL the women. From the controller all the way to the actual admin assistant, regardless of what the woman’s actual role was. At the time, it never really crossed my mind that that might be inappropriate (plus, I confess, I was thrilled to receive the rose – it really was very lovely) , but looking back I’m just like, wow. LOL
The roses were purchased by the sales manager – he kind of fancied himself a ladies man and maybe he thought he was just being gentlemanly. Who knows.
6. The tool
At the time I was a subject matter expert for a particular tool and someone proudly gave me flowers (why) and a card (huh). “Thanks for all you do for us!” He seemed to think that my constant discussions with him about improving work processes in relation to this tool was me taking NOTES for him. No, dumbass, this is my job and I’m gently trying to make you better at yours.
7. The casino night
HR organized an employee appreciation event at a local casino. They rented a large meeting space and had cocktails and appetizers … and the admins needed to provide the bartending and waitressing services!
8. The engineers
On one Administrative Professionals’ Day, one of my friends came home from work in a fury. She’s a female engineer. The company decided to celebrate Administrative Professionals’ Day by giving all the admins flowers. And, for some reason, the three female engineers on staff.
Management was completely befuddled by the fact that the female engineers were not delighted with their flowers.
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