Cowboy Who?

Officials are worried that there’s arsenic in some of the estimated 13,500 private water wells in Ector and Midland counties.

This episode originally ran in 2015.

About one hundred years ago, a scientist and statistician named Francis Galston came upon an opportunity to test how well regular people were at answering a question. He was at a fair where lots of people were guessing the weight of an ox, so he decided to take the average of all their guesses and compare it to the correct answer.

What he found shocked him. The average of their guesses was almost exactly accurate. The crowd was off by just one pound.

This eerie phenomenon—this idea that the crowd is right—drives everything from the stock market to the price of orange juice.

So, we decided to test it for ourselves. We asked Planet Money listeners to guess the weight of a cow.

Spoiler: You can see the results here.

This episode was hosted by David Kestenbaum and Jacob Goldstein. It was produced by Nadia Wilson and edited by Bryant Urstadt. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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

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

1. Is the kiss emoji appropriate at work?

This is a low-stakes question, but I keep wondering: Is the kiss emoji 😘 ever appropriate in work communication?

Most of our team are in our thirties and forties. Our work environment is fairly informal — few emails, but lots of Slack messages, so of course emojis are everywhere. I enjoy using them, we even have silly traditions among coworkers. (Think: one of them writes that a famous llama groomer from France will be visiting next week, and instead of 👍🏼 or ✅, people will react with 🥖 and 🍷.)

It’s a lighthearted way of joking around, but for some reason, when people use the kiss emoji, it rubs me the wrong way. I helped a coworker out with something the other day and they wrote back, “Thank you so much! 😘” I like them well enough, but this felt odd. A different coworker recently put a kiss emoji underneath a Slack post in which one of our grandbosses announced a small perk (think additional parking spaces for our team in the company lot).

Obviously I would never say something, I’m not the emoji police. But just so I know whether my gut feeling is right or I‘m being overly literal: This is weird, right?

You’re taking it too literally. People aren’t using it to mean “imagine me kissing you.” They’re using it to mean “you’re awesome” or “this is great” or “I like this.” I can see why you’d be weirded out by it if you considered it in a vacuum … but you’ve got to take it in the cultural context, where it’s just a more effusive version of the thumbs-up.

To put it in much more old-fashioned terms, think of opening a letter with “dear” — you’re not really saying the stranger you are writing to is dear to you. Language, and now emojis, evolve in strange, non-literal ways.

(Only slightly related to this, I recently came across this old post and what.)

2. I misspelled the company’s name throughout my cover letter

I spent the last hour putting together a detailed cover letter and tailored resume for a job that I thought was a great fit for my skill set. Right after sending it, I realized that I’d consistently misspelled the name of the company throughout my application materials. To give myself a little credit, it is a kind of weird name, and my brain is pretty fried with applications, so somehow I didn’t notice the error in the many times I proofread my materials and checked them against the job description. Of course I noticed right after sending instead, and now I can’t stop cringing.

This is a fatal error and I should just write off the possibility I’ll ever hear from this job, right?

Well … it doesn’t look great. If it’s a job where attention to detail is important, it’s probably going to take you out of the running, or at least move you down the list. That said, it’s not going to put you on a do-not-hire list there or anything like that, and you can try again in the future without it being held against you.

3. My job wants me to find coverage after I quit

I put in my two weeks at work (food service job) because I’m going to be moving for the summer. After I did, I got an email back from my manager saying I needed to find someone to cover my shifts for the week after I quit because they’re “going to be really busy.” Are they allowed to do that? Isn’t that their responsibility?

I’m literally going to be moving and I don’t want to deal with the stress of finding someone to cover me for a whole week after I QUIT.

Haha, nice try, manager. They can propose anything they want — they can ask you to find coverage for the entire next year if they want to — but they have no way to make you comply.

I suspect what you’re worried about is less “can they make me do this?” (they can’t) and more “will I be violating some kind of professional convention if I refuse?” And the answer to that is also no. Finding coverage for after you’re gone is not your responsibility. (To be clear, if they want you to spend some of your time on-the-clock searching for shift coverage for dates after you’ll be gone, they can assign that as a work task. But it sounds like they’re expecting you to do it on your own time and … no.)

Respond with, “That’s not something I can do, but you can certainly schedule me through the 24th” (or whatever your last day is).

4. My friend applied for a job reporting to me and I don’t want to hire her

I’ve recently accepted a new job where I’ll have a small team reporting to me. I’m due to start next week. The organization is growing and this week my boss advertised a role that I’ll take over the hiring for once I start, and that will report to me.

Not knowing this role reported to me, a close friend of mine applied for it. She sent me a message saying she was applying at (company) and it was only when she told me the job I knew it was the one in my team.

The problem is, I don’t want to hire her. I’ve worked with her before — it’s actually how we know each other — and she’s a good worker. She gets stuff done, is pragmatic, and people tend to enjoy working with her. She’s also incredibly emotional, has very few boundaries, and has struggled a lot over the years with work stress, which I think is often created because of those boundary issues. While we used to share a lot of “work chat,” like sending funny memes or venting about our bosses, since we last worked together (~2 years ago) I’ve really worked on myself to have a better experience at work. I got a promotion into people leadership and had a massive perspective change about what it means to be the boss, having so much more appreciation for what my ex-bosses would have likely been struggling with. I’m excited to go into this new company with that perspective change and am actively trying to stop the cynical humor that I used to think was just a bit of a laugh, and I now see can sometimes be uncomfortable for colleagues. The old memes don’t really resonate anymore, but she sends them still. And to be honest, I don’t want someone reporting to me who complains about their job all day long. How should I handle this?

A talent acquisition team will do first round screening, and I’m concerned she’ll ask me why I didn’t tell them I want her to interview.

Even without the issues with her work style, it’s smarter not to manage a close friend. Would you be comfortable being up-front with her about that? You could say, “I know you do great work, but I don’t feel equipped to manage a close friend, and I especially don’t feel comfortable hiring a friend as one of my first moves there.”

If you don’t think she’ll get it, it could be easier to simply explain that the applicant pool was highly competitive and a lot of really qualified people didn’t get interviews. (It’s also quite reasonable that you wouldn’t want one of your first moves to be overruling the talent team to secure an interview for a friend.)

5. I’m grossed out by our potlucks

Our director has made potlucks an office tradition. The last one we had, I found multiple dishes with hair in them. I’m choosing not to participate in the next one and not consuming any dishes. I’m bringing my own lunch. Am I wrong?

No.

SILVER SPRING, MD—Urging all 340 million Americans to avoid filling up in order to better enjoy the evening’s meal, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning Thursday that if the U.S. populace ate now, it wouldn’t be hungry for supper. “Our findings suggest that if you have a snack right now, you’ll just…

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EVERYWHERE—Wondering when the unending barrage of content from The Onion’s Click Drive might finally give way, the nation was informed by insiders at the media outlet Wednesday that they would not stop pestering people until they gave in and engaged with the fucking thing. “Rest assured, the Click Drive will continue…

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CHICAGO—As a capstone to a record-breaking day for the internationally recognized brand’s views and advertising revenue, The Onion released a statement Wednesday confirming that it had used all of the funds raised from its annual Click Drive to purchase a Yamaha WaveRunner VX series. “Following a massive haul that…

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A woman in Florida was sentenced to jail time for stealing President Joe Biden’s daughter’s journal and selling it to the conservative group Project Veritas for $20,000. What do you think?

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Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain announced plans to scrap a so-called “golden visa” law that allows wealthy non-E.U. residents to live in Spain if they buy real estate there. What do you think?

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YOUR DATA- OR WIFI-ENABLED DEVICE—Feeling crushed under the oppressive demands to click and click and click on TheOnion.com, the nation was informed by experts from The Onion’s Click Drive Wednesday that this could all be made to stop for just 25 clicks. “For a mere 25 clicks on The Onion’s website, you could end all…

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Readers:

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You've heard of the British royal family, but what about the "working royals?" Today on the show, an expert on the royals explains what the job is like — how they measure productivity, how they get paid, and how this tiny, specialized workforce of 11 people might cope with the health crises of King Charles III and Kate Middleton.

Subscribe to journalist Elizabeth Holmes' newsletter on the British royal family.

Related episodes:
The U.K.'s most famous family firm in crisis

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

(Image credit: WPA Pool)

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

Here’s a round-up of posts about mistakes at work.

what to do when you make a mistake at work

you made a mistake at work — now what?

how do I recover from a huge, fireable mistake at work?

how do I handle a serious mistake on my self-evaluation?

how big of a deal are mistakes when you’re new to a job?

how to rebuild your credibility after messing up at work

when you didn’t make a mistake, but someone thinks you did

my boss thinks I made a mistake — but I didn’t

how can I explain a mistake wasn’t mine without looking like a tattletale?

my manager doesn’t defend me from mistaken complaints

mistakes and how you feel about them

I messed up at work and I’m so ashamed

I’m so nervous at work that it’s holding me back

I’m terrified of making mistakes at my first job (and the update)

when your coworkers make mistakes

I get angry when my coworkers make mistakes

how can I tactfully point out to coworkers that a miscommunication error is theirs?

my coworker keeps missing deadlines and it impacts my work

when you keep uncovering errors made by your well-loved predecessor

how do I reply to my coworker’s apology without saying her constant mistakes are OK?

mistakes and your manager

my manager wants me to take more responsibility for my mistakes

our boss cross-examines us over minor mistakes

should I take the blame for my manager’s mistake?

what should I say to my boss when coworkers tattle on me?

can boss deduct the cost of a mistake from my paycheck?

when you’re the boss

what to do when an employee makes a serious mistake

what to do when an employee keeps making mistakes

my employee never apologizes when his mistakes cause extra work for other people

my employee blames others for her mistakes

junior employee is flippant when I correct mistakes in her work

my employees are making mistakes, but I don’t want to micromanage

a very big mistake

I accidentally sent my boss to Italy instead of Florida

Back when it was a great, respected, and profitable business, journalism employed thousands of reporters who worked tirelessly to cover interesting and important stories from around the globe. But now, after years of neglect, an overreliance on programmatic advertising, and predation by private equity firms, the…

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ATLANTA—Saying that when it came to manual strength and dexterity the only options were to “use it or lose it,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a new set of health guidelines Wednesday that recommended a minimum of six hours of daily clicking for healthy fingers. “To ensure that your fingers…

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A 2023 Column Contest grand-prize winner, Laurence Pevsner’s Sorry Not Sorry investigates why we’re sick of everyone apologizing all the time—and how the collapse of the public apology leaves little room for forgiveness and grace in our politics and culture.

Late last month, Stephen Colbert made an unusual statement on The Late Show. It wasn’t quite an apology—more like sorry’s mysterious cousin.

Colbert offered a short preamble about how he tells a lot of jokes—mostly whatever’s in the public discourse. Then he got into it: “For the past six weeks to two months, everybody has been talking about the mystery of Kate Middleton’s disappearance from public life,” Colbert said. “Two weeks ago, we did some jokes about that mystery, and all the attendant froo-frah in the reporting about that.”

This looked like the start of an apology—it’s the kind of descriptive elocution that’s necessary at the start, where you lay out the facts and make it clear exactly what you’ve done. The wonderful phrase “froo-frah” even casts some judgment, implying Colbert doesn’t think much of the reporting or its seriousness, creating some useful distance from his own actions to those of the tabloids.

Then Colbert zoomed out: “When I made those jokes, that upset some people—even before her diagnosis was revealed. And I can understand that. A lot of my jokes have upset people in the past, and I’m sure some of my jokes will upset people in the future.”

This was less apology territory and more like the classic comedian line, what you might call the Ricky Gervais school of thought: Comedy is going to offend people! It’s just part of the business, so this way of thinking goes, and sometimes even the point. Notice the passive voice—as if to say, “I tell the jokes; it’s not my fault if people get upset.”

Colbert, though, is smarter than the “offending is the point” crowd, and harder to pin down, as his zigzagging shows. What came next was the key line of his statement: “But there’s a standard that I try to hold myself to: I do not make light of somebody else’s tragedy.”

Outraged royalists had been calling on Colbert to apologize. The Marchioness of Cholmondeley (yes, really) had even threatened him with legal action. I’m not a lawyer, but my understanding is that such a lawsuit would never fly here—we fought a war to ensure that random marchionesses can’t invoke the UK’s onerous libel laws in the US of A.

And yet, despite all this froo-frah, Colbert wanted us to know he is making this statement because of his personal standards. He interrupted his humorous show to make a serious point: that he doesn’t care so much about whether other people are offended as he does about whether he has crossed his own moral line.

Had he crossed that line though? That’s when it got particularly interesting, because the rest of his statement carefully elided Colbert’s views on the matter.

“Now, I don’t know whether her prognosis is a tragic one. She’s the future queen of England, and I assume she’s going to get the best possible medical care, but regardless of what it is… any cancer diagnosis of any kind is harrowing for the patient and for their family,” he said. “I and everyone here at The Late Show would like to extend our well wishes and heartfelt hope that her recovery is swift, and thorough.” Colbert’s argument, not quite stated, seemed to be: I didn’t cross a line before, but I’m not going to make any more jokes now that we know her situation has the potential for tragedy.

Colbert walked a tightrope here. She’s the future queen of England, he reminded us, implying correctly that Middleton isn’t the worst-off person in the world. But he also delivered this conclusion and his well wishes with genuine pathos. Colbert is, of course, no stranger to tragedy, having lost his father and two brothers in a plane crash when he was ten. More recently, Colbert was overcome with emotion at the end of a show last week before a black title card acknowledged the passing of his longtime executive assistant Amy Cole, who herself had been battling cancer. His authenticity when it comes to tragedy has, unfortunately, been earned.

The media did not know what to make of Colbert’s statement. The Hollywood Reporter’s headline read: “Stephen Colbert Sorry for His Kate Middleton Jokes.” ABC and Fox News went with similar angles. But UK outlets often claimed the opposite. “TV Host Stephen Colbert Refuses to Apologise for Kate Middleton Jokes Despite backlash,” read The Mirror. Meanwhile, Piers Morgan went on an unhinged screed about Colbert’s hypocrisy in the New York Post.

When I went back to view the actual jokes Colbert made about Middleton, I was struck not by hypocrisy but by consistency. He never actually poked fun at Middleton—the jokes were always pointed at the powerful and the pot-stirrers. Or he was just being goofy.

For example, after noting the tabloids were speculating that Kate Middleton may be dead or divorced, Colbert invented a headline where both were true for The Sun: “Zombie Kate Spotted Getting Her Groove Back with Pete Davidson.” The butts of the joke were the sensationalist rags and Pete Davidson’s ability to pull. The same was true the next day when Colbert made fun of the “internet sleuths” who suspected an affair. His main punchlines were drinking from a fancy tea set to pun on the phrase “spilling the tea” and the surprising pronunciation of “Cholmondeley” (Chumley). Hardly targeted shots at Kate.

What’s more, Colbert happened to demonstrate his commitment to his belief that not everything should be made fun of earlier in the same monologue as The Sun joke. Colbert got indignant at Trump (no surprise) for mocking Biden’s childhood stutter (no surprise). Another line, in Colbert’s mind, that ought not to be crossed in comedy.

In an era where so many public figures are either apologizing constantly in hopes of getting a quick hit of forgiveness, or else refusing to apologize and stubbornly insisting they are above reproach, Colbert’s move—a kind of in-between, liminal statement—might offer one way forward. We don’t need to apologize for everything. Sometimes, genuine sympathy will do.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

PALM BEACH, FL – In a video statement taped at his Mar-a-Lago country club, former President Trump assured voters that his firmly held stance on abortion is also whatever stance will create a sufficient permission structure for them to cast their vote for him in November. “They said it couldn’t be done, but I pulled […]

The post Trump clarifies abortion stance as “whatever will convince you, personally, to vote for me” appeared first on The Beaverton.

Country music singer Morgan Wallen was arrested after throwing a chair off the roof of a newly six-story bar in downtown Nashville, with the chair landing three feet from police officers. What do you think?

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The zombie eco-thriller “The Last of Us” has alerted us to the threats posed by fungi. But the show is not entirely science fiction. Our vulnerability to pathogenic fungi is more real than many people imagine. 

Find out what human activity drives global fungal threats, including their menace to food crops and many other species. Our high body temperature has long kept lethal fungi in check; but will climate change cause fungi to adapt to warmer temperatures and threaten our health? 

Plus, a radically new way to think about these organisms, how they make all life possible, and how we might find balance again.

Guests:

Emily Monosson – Toxicologist who writes about changes in the natural world. A member of the Ronin Institute and a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, she is the author of “Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic.”

Arturo Casadevall – Microbiologist, immunologist, professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Michael Hathaway – Anthropologist, director of the Asian Studies Center at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and author of “What a Mushroom Lives For.”

 *originally aired February 13, 2023

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THE HEAVENS—In a statement addressed to individuals at risk of having their access to life on earth permanently revoked, God, the Almighty Creator, confirmed Monday that He would soon delete millions of humans due to inactivity. “To my dear creations, per My all-seeing eye, you have not been an active participant in…

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PLANTATION, FL—Despite being a grown-ass adult in the year 2024, local resident Stu Jeffries told reporters Tuesday that he still thinks of a computer virus as a cartoon worm that bites through your screen. “I still imagine getting a computer virus by opening a program and clicking on some kind of neon egg, at which…

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New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

NASA debunks these and other myths: Will a solar eclipse harm a pregnant woman's baby if she looks at it? Does an eclipse emit special radiation that can instantly blind you?

(Image credit: Mario Tama)

Montreal is in the path of totality, and its largest eclipse-watching event is taking place in Parc Jean-Drapeau.

(Image credit: Ryan Remiorz)

Super excited! One of the wildflowers finally bloomed! I think it's a poppy?

Rejoice, sky-gazers, for you are about to behold one of the universe’s most amazing astronomical events. Watch now for a live view of the total solar eclipse.

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Click here to go see the bonus panel!

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No, OR is not a typo, but the lack of a bottom strap in panel 3 will require some retconning.

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