Texas Standard’s commentator remembers the Academy Award-winning actor who was not born a Texan, but played a heck of one on TV and film.

The shirt, which appeared to show civil rights protestors, led Judge Mark Pittman to halt jury selection.

#Kento #RoninWarriors

Hey man, is that you putting on all that weird stuff? #CowboyWho

[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.]

It seems like homemade tunnels are kind of having a moment. Just about everywhere I look, it feels like someone is carving new spaces from the ground and documenting the process online. Colin Furze might be the quintessential example, with his wild tunnel project connecting his shop and house to an underground garage. You can watch the entire process in a series of videos on his YouTube channel, and he even started a second channel to share more details of the build. But he’s far from the only one.

TikTok creator Kala, lovingly nicknamed “Tunnel Girl,” has been sharing the almost entirely solo excavation of a tunnel system below her house, amassing more than a million followers in the process. Zach from the JerryRigEverything channel has an ongoing series about a massive underground bunker project. Not strictly a tunnel, but in the same spirit. In Wisconsin, Eric Sutterlin and a team of volunteers have built Sandland, which features a maze of sandstone tunnels in the hillside that can occasionally be seen on the Save It For Parts Channel. My friend, Brent, bought the abandoned mining town of Cerro Gordo and regularly explores the shafts and drifts on his channel, Ghost Town Living. And there are lots more. Wikipedia has a whole page about “Hobby Tunneling,” which it defines as “tunnel construction as a pastime.”

There’s something captivating about subterranean construction, delving into the deep, carving habitable space from the earth. In one case in Toronto, a tunnel was discovered in a public park, sparking headlines worldwide and fueling wild conspiracy theories about terrorist plots. Turns out, it was just a guy who liked digging. When he was interviewed by Macleans, he said (quote) “Honestly, I loved it so much. I don’t know why I loved it. It was just something so cool…”

What more can you say than that? Some of us just yearn for the mines. Plenty of people have front yards and back yards, but not everyone has an underyard. But the thing is: underground construction is pretty dangerous. And not only that; it also poses a lot of very unique engineering challenges that a hobbyist might not be prepared to solve. So I thought it might be fun to do a little exploration into modern tunnel construction methods used in public infrastructure and how those lessons can be applied to endeavors of the more homemade variety. Don’t take it as advice; I am a civil engineer, but I’m not your civil engineer. That said, maybe I can at least give you a sense of what’s involved in a project like this, and some things you might want to study further before you get out the pickaxe and helmet light. I’m Grady, and this is Practical Engineering.

I think one of the reasons that tunneling is so awesome is that the underground seems like a kind of no man’s land. It’s a different kind of wilderness - unexplored territory in a world where everything already feels explored. But it’s not really true. Land ownership is a tricky subject, but in most places, when you own land, you don’t just own the surface but everything below it as well. There are obvious practical limitations to that; some places separate mineral rights; and there’s plenty of legal nuance too. But in effect, it means that trespassing is still a thing below the ground. Land ownership is 3D. Major tunnel projects, whether for transportation or utilities, are preceded by the acquisition of rights, typically in the form of subsurface easements. In some cases, it can be a pretty nice deal for a landowner: getting paid just for a subway or highway, sewer pipe or fiber optic line that can run deep below your property without you even noticing.

So that’s the first rule of hobby tunneling: only do it where you’re allowed to. There’s an old internet legend about a plumber in Ireland who dug a tunnel from his house to the local pub. It started as a satirical news article that a lot of people believed. But I think the reason it spread is that it taps into a comforting fantasy: that if you go deep enough, the rules stop applying. Unfortunately, they don’t. Even a tunnel that never breaks the surface can still constitute trespassing, and “nobody noticed” isn’t a permit.

Speaking of permits, just like any other part of the built environment, there are often regulations around where and how you can construct a tunnel. I’m talking about building codes. They can feel frustrating to someone who just wants the freedom to build what they want on their own property. The thing is: codes really aren’t there to protect you from yourself. They’re to protect the safety and well-being of everyone else. They’re kind of society’s way of recognizing that the built world is more stable than the people who make use of it. A tunnel is likely to outlast the person who designed and built it, so authorities often want a say in how it's made.

This is a very broad statement, but I think it’s fair to say that we generally enjoy an expectation of safety when we interact with the built environment. The main reason for that is codes. They’re how we bake lessons from past tragedies into the next generation of construction. Codes are often written in blood, as the saying goes. So that’s lesson 2: get a permit. Even if you live in an area with no building codes, if you have a loan, and especially if you have an insurance policy, there’s a good chance that your lender or insurer is going to have something to say about a hobby tunnel. No one likes red tape, but digging deep means the stakes are high enough that some amount of prudence makes sense.

Of course, if you do dig in a place with building codes, those codes probably aren’t going to give you specific design criteria for a tunnel project. Instead, for unusual projects with high consequences of failure, they’ll tell you something pretty simple: you need to hire an engineer. There’s just too much that can go wrong for any building authority to trust an unqualified hobbyist to get the details right. And I want to show you just a few of the things that an engineer is going to consider in the process.

First and foremost is the ground itself. Not all tunnels are created equal because geology varies across the world. And nearly every part of a subsurface project is affected by geology. You don’t choose the design parameters; the ground does.

Take, for example, the excavation process itself. Look at the vast array of mining and tunneling equipment to get a sense of how conditions dictate the methods and tools. Maybe you have soft sandy soil that’s easy to dislodge with a shovel or pickaxe. Firm clays or softer rock might require power tools like a hydraulic arm or hammer drill. Hard and competent rock steps up the challenge, where larger rock milling or grinding equipment or even blasting with explosives is the only way to make progress. The tools you need to excavate depend entirely on what kind of rock or soil you have to work with, but that’s not all it affects.

In general, the ease of excavation is inversely correlated with stability. The more readily soil or rock particles come free from each other when you’re digging, the more likely they are to do it when you don’t want them to. I’ve talked about excavation safety in some previous videos. The gist of it is that soil and rock don’t love tension. Any time you cut a steep or vertical slope, it changes the forces between the particles, whether they’re tiny grains, cobbles, boulders, or slabs. Soil particles are strong against each other, but they don’t hold on so much if they’re pulled apart. Trench collapses are one of the most common causes of construction fatalities. Modern projects go to great lengths and expense to stabilize excavations like trenches and holes. Temporary shoring supports the walls of the excavations so they’re safe to work inside. And what is a trench if not a topless tunnel? But adding that top makes things more complicated.

For one, you have a roof of earth above you. Talk about tension in soil and rock. Trying to use them as a ceiling is basically the most unstable loading condition you can have. For two, we have to talk about the idea of earth pressure. Just like the water pressure goes up as you swim downward, the Earth does a similar thing. The deeper you go, the more stress the materials are under from the weight of the soil and rock above. Of course, earthen materials don’t act exactly like fluids. They can arch and shift load paths around an opening, but it’s extremely material-dependent.

For most types of soil, you basically need support as soon as you excavate, particularly for the roof. Usually, that means using a shield. This is a hollow box or tube that advances with the tunnel, providing temporary support for the walls and roof while leaving the face open for excavation. As you cut and remove the soil, the shield moves forward to support the newly excavated area. These have been used since the early days of tunneling, and even modern tunnel boring machines in soft soils use a shield for temporary support until a permanent lining is installed.

For rocky tunnels, engineers often use the concept of “stand-up time” for gauging safety and the urgency of getting supports in place. This is very empirical. It’s based less on the physics of the situation than on simple observations over a long period of time. The idea is that, if you can measure a few important properties of the rock mass you’re tunneling through (like strength and spacing of joints), you can get a rough idea of how long an unsupported excavation will remain stable. This chart shows that relationship between the roof span, the rock mass rating, and the stand–up time. You can see there’s a zone of immediate collapse where the span is too big or the rock mass is too unstable. And there’s a zone where no support is needed for small spans and competent rock. In between, there’s a time limit for how long you have to install supports, and that limit can vary from hours all the way to years.

Beyond temporary supports used during excavation, most modern tunnels rely on some kind of permanent support. This is important not only to protect the people and stuff inside from a collapse, but also for the stability of anything above. When a tunnel collapses, that movement can translate all the way to the surface, leading to settlements, sinkholes, and damage to buildings and infrastructure above, especially when the tunnels are shallow. I have a whole video on that topic you can check out after this. Major tunneling projects have extensive monitoring plans to check for movements and adjust construction accordingly. That might mean instruments like extensometers and inclinometers, high-precision survey equipment, and vibration sensors. For a hobby tunnel, especially if you’re building below a structure like your house, monitoring for movement is a smart move, even if it’s just a well-placed benchmark and a cheap laser level. Otherwise, your instruments become doors that won’t close and foundation cracks that weren’t there before.

Like temporary supports during construction, permanent tunnel supports vary a lot. For fairly competent rock with only some joints and fractures, where the instability is dominated by discrete blocks and wedges, support can be as simple as rock bolts. These anchors are used to stitch the rock together, and they work surprisingly well. I have a video on that topic, too, where I used model rock bolts to create a table of gravel. For tunnels where the risk of collapse is greater, many use concrete for permanent lining. The big projects that use tunnel boring machines often have an entire system that can take pre-cast concrete segments and assemble them, almost like Lego, on the backside of the machine. Then the annular space between the tunnel walls and lining segments is often pressure grouted so that you get a consistent transfer of ground pressure into the tunnel lining. You can use traditional cast-in-place concrete for lining, too. It’s easy to get good contact with vertical walls because the concrete can be cast right up against them. But, it’s a lot harder to place concrete for a roof section that makes good contact without leaving voids. Instead of that, many tunnels rely on pneumatically-placed concrete, sometimes known as shotcrete or gunite. That gives you the benefit of not needing forms, but much like using a tunnel boring machine, shotcrete does require specialized machinery and concrete mix designs that aren’t super accessible to a hobbyist.

Of course, even if the walls of your tunnel are supported after excavation, you still have the challenge of spoils. This is a little silly to say outloud, but this is one of the most difficult parts of tunneling. When you build something on the surface of the earth, the stuff that was there already (namely, the air) essentially gets out of the way on its own. With a tunnel, you have to do that work yourself.

Do a little mental math exercise with me. Multiply the length of the room you're in right now by its width and its height. Then multiply that number by the average unit weight of soil. If you don’t know it by heart, I’ll put it on-screen now in a few unit systems. Was your answer more than 50 tons? (Either metric or imperial - they’re close enough that it doesn’t matter here.) If you are in anything other than a small closet right now, it definitely was. And I don’t know the last time you moved 50 tons of something, but that is an enormous endeavor on its own, especially because most hobby tunnels don’t have the space or budget for heavy equipment that is normally used for earth-moving projects. And not only do you have to get it out, you also have to get rid of it somehow, unless you happen to have the land to keep a stockpile nearby. At least with mining, the muck often contains ore, which is a valuable resource. For hobby tunnels, and indeed nearly all tunneling projects, the spoils from excavation are essentially a waste product and represent one of the most difficult aspects of the entire process. In many ways, tunneling is a supply chain problem disguised as digging.

Even once you have support, you still have the challenge of water. It doesn’t just flow downhill; it also flows down into hills and any other permeable material it can find. Lots of homeowners with old basements understand this challenge. Providing structural support and keeping water out are two distinct jobs for a basement wall or tunnel lining system to do. It’s not feasible to make the walls 100 percent waterproof, even in underwater tunnels. Concrete cracks. Joints open up. It’s basically inevitable that water will get in, so a good design takes that into account. Modern tunnels are equipped with sophisticated drainage systems that collect water, whether it seeps in from the ground or gets in through the portals. Many tunnels even use a sloped profile so that water can drain out the ends through gravity. If that’s not an option, a collection sump and pump is the other way to manage the water. Just keep in mind that any materials that struggle in moist environments, like wood and unprotected steel, may not last long below the ground.

Speaking of humidity, air is another challenge in tunnel engineering, both during construction and afterwards. In any confined space, you can have higher concentrations of dust and gases that aren’t safe to breathe. Work in spaces like this comes with very specific safety rules, that include ventilation, gas monitoring, and a standby attendant to maintain communications and call for help if it’s needed. Ventilation is important after construction, too. Of course, vehicle tunnels have to deal with exhaust fumes, so their design can get pretty complicated. I have a few diagrams in my book, Engineering In Plain Sight, if you want to learn more. But even in a simple hobby tunnel, fresh airflow is critical. Depending on the layout, it can be pretty tricky to get fresh air IN and stale air OUT of the entire space. Ducting and fans are just one more of the complicated systems to juggle.

Another reason ventilation is so important in tunnels is the potential for fires. Engineers have to consider where smoke will go and how to keep tunnel occupants safe in the event of a fire inside. Hobby tunnels usually don’t have vehicles with combustion engines, but they still carry life safety risks like any habitable structure. So the layout should consider multiple routes for egress and fire suppression. And there are so many of those kinds of details that are, at the very least, worth consideration, even if not absolutely necessary for a small-scale personal project.

I love the idea of hobby tunnels. There’s an aspect of exploration and mystery that you can’t really get anywhere else than underground. I don’t have a tunneling project of my own, but I definitely live vicariously through the ones I see online. And I hope this video doesn’t feel like a wet blanket over any of that. Obviously, the risk profile for an individual hobbyist is going to be a lot different than for a public infrastructure project, so the design, construction methods, and feasibility all look different as well. This is not a how-to video (again, don’t take it as advice), but it’s also not me saying “You can’t do this.” I just think it’s interesting to consider the modern solutions to engineering challenges in large-scale tunneling and how those lessons might apply to intrepid hobbyists.

With this location closing, Randalls will be down to 13 stores in the Houston area. The Randalls at 5161 San Felipe St, Houston, TX 77056, will close its doors around April 18th, which Albertsons confirmed to the media yesterday. The information provided indicates difficulty renewing the lease as the reason for closing the store. The store, which opened in 1996 as #67, was the final location to open under Onstead ownership. The store represented the ...

In brief: A warm and muggy air mass will dominate our region into the weekend before a front drops down from the northwest and sweeps it into the Gulf. Some inland areas may see lows in the upper 30s early next week, but a freeze is unlikely.

Overview

Houston’s weather will be dominated by a persistent onshore flow in the coming days that will bring mild, warm, and humid southerly air into the region. Despite the increasing moisture levels, lift of this warm air at the surface will be mostly suppressed, which will in turn limit our region’s rain chances. While we may see some light, misty showers in the coming days, I don’t think we are going to see much (if anything) in the way of accumulations. We will see a chance for late night and early morning fog, however, as dewpoints match temperatures and overnight winds settle down.

Wednesday

Highs today will reach around 80 degrees in Houston, with slightly cooler conditions closer to the coast. Afternoon wind gusts will reach about 20 mph, and with dewpoints in the 60s it will feel fairly humid outside. Overnight low temperatures will fall only into the 60s tonight.

Thursday and Friday

These two days will be similar in Houston, with highs in the lower 80s for the most part. Our daytime temperatures will depend on afternoon cloud cover. Each of these days will also have a low chance of light or misty showers, although again I would not anticipate anything in the way of accumulations. Fog chances will continue through Friday night.

Saturday

We should see more humid, partly cloudy, and warm weather with highs testing the 80 degree mark again. In terms of timing I still think the cold front will push through some time during the afternoon or early evening hours, with dewpoints quickly falling after its passage. Some light showers will be possible with the front, but again accumulations look very slight. By sunrise on Sunday morning we can expect lows probably in the upper 40s for all but coastal areas, which will be a shade warmer.

Sunday

The second half of the weekend will be sunny, with highs in the low- to mid-60s for Houston. The day will be breezy, with winds from the north at 10 to 15 mph and higher gusts bringing in a much drier air mass. By Sunday night we’ll see lows dropping probably into the lower 40s in Houston, with the possibility of some upper 30s for inland areas.

Next week

Monday night will be cold again, before we see temperatures begin to moderate some next week. By Wednesday or Thursday we should return to temperatures in the vicinity of 80 degrees. Skies look to be mostly sunny next week, with not much in the way of precipitation chances.

Oh, Merv! Merv!

WASHINGTON—In a new claim challenging traditional pediatric norms regarding infant safety, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Tuesday that being left in a hot car could “help babies sweat out toxins.” “Roll up the windows, park in a sunny spot, and let the sun do its magic—in a couple hours, your baby will have all the toxins flushed from its system,” said Kennedy, who leveled criticism at mainstream medical professionals for inflating the dangers of leaving a baby in a hot car and totally ignoring the multitude of health benefits. “Doctors love to tell you statistics about how it’s dangerous to leave a baby locked in a 110-degree car, but they’re distorting the facts to serve their own narrative. What they don’t tell you is how detoxified and refreshed those little ones feel afterwards. Even just one hour in a hot car can have a huge impact on most babies.” Kennedy went on to state that organ failure and seizures while in the car were signs of poisonous substances leaving the infant’s body.

The post RFK Jr.: ‘Time In Hot Cars Helps Babies To Sweat Out Toxins’ appeared first on The Onion.

SIOUX CITY, IA—Making the dire prediction shortly after being terminated for substandard work, marketing analyst Ryan Bronson, who was laid off solely for performance-related reasons Wednesday, warned that artificial intelligence was coming for everyone. “Yup, the way things are going, not a single one of us is safe from the threat of AI replacing us,” said Bronson, whose frequent unexcused absences and routine missing of important deadlines had been an ongoing liability for the management team of Edgewater Interactive for the past several months. “Mark my words: With the rise of automation, it’s only a matter of time before you’re all gone. Sure, things like downloading malware onto my work computer or putting incorrect information into investor slide decks gave the powers-that-be an excuse to use me as a sacrificial lamb, but really it could have been any one of us.” Bronson added that the soulless bean counters at the company wouldn’t think twice about saving a few bucks on unfeeling algorithms that didn’t require sexual harassment retraining on five separate occasions.

The post Coworker Laid Off Solely For Performance-Related Reasons Warns AI Coming For Everyone appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON D.C. – US President Donald Trump offered warm wishes to the family of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Today Show host Savannah Guthrie, after confirming that her kidnapping earlier this month was not perpetrated by the Department of Homeland Security. “We wish Nancy will be home soon,” Trump said in a brief statement, after […]

The post Trump sends well-wishes to Today host’s kidnapped mother after confirming she not in ICE detention appeared first on The Beaverton.

Toronto, ON – Metrolinx has responded to criticism of its project speed by adding Nancy Callahan to their team after her inspiring 30 minute walk across an intersection. “Just look at her go,” exclaimed Michael Lindsay, CEO of Metrolinx. “That’s the kind of chutzpah we’ve been looking for over here. With Ms. Callahan at the […]

The post Metrolinx hires elderly woman after watching her take 30 minutes to cross the street appeared first on The Beaverton.

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For all Dean’s bad personality problems, he has a genuine fondness for Glenn. He will not let him founder.

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Up to a third of people worldwide have shoulder pain; it's one of the most common musculoskeletal complaints. But medical imaging might not reveal the problem—in fact, it could even cloud it.

In a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine this week, 99 percent of adults over 40 were found to have at least one abnormality in a rotator cuff on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The rotator cuff is the group of muscles and tendons in a shoulder joint that keeps the upper arm bone securely in the shoulder socket—and is often blamed for pain and other symptoms. The trouble is, the vast majority of people in the study had no shoulder problems.

The finding calls into question the growing use of MRIs to try to diagnose shoulder pain—and, in turn, the growing problem of overtreatment of rotator cuff (RC) abnormalities, which includes partial- and full-thickness tears as well as signs of tendinopathy (tendon swelling and thickening).

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The civil rights leader, who ran for president twice in the 1980s, leaves a lasting legacy.

Voters registered in Harris County can cast their primary ballot at any polling location across the county. And they can vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary. 

Jackson, a protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and two-time presidential candidate who led the Civil Rights Movement after the revered leader's assassination, died Tuesday.

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

1. Coworker reports the smallest interactions to HR

I have a new coworker, Fran, who has not been fitting in with the vibe at work. She seems to have very thin skin, and at any perceived slight, will report coworkers or leaders to HR.

Just today, I had an interaction that would have been standard and unmemorable with any other coworker. I was working next to Fran. She asked me a question, and I gave a very calm and direct answer. Fran said she hasn’t performed this particular task before, and to please give her some grace. I didn’t respond, and that was the end of the interaction. Not long after, I was pulled into the office by leadership because Fran had reported that interaction, and I was given a written warning.

This has become a pattern, with multiple of my coworkers reported to leadership or HR by Fran. I want to report to leadership/ HR that Fran is putting the staff on edge because we are all afraid of being reported by her. How do I do this in a way that doesn’t seem like I’m retaliating or picking on her? I’m also worried that my leadership won’t take the issue seriously.

Fran sounds like a pain in the ass, but it’s also true that responding with silence to someone who says “please give me some grace” could read pretty as fairly rude. It’s still absurd that she escalated it, but she sounds like someone where it’s better not to give them any excuse to complain about you; your life will probably be easier if you just make a point of being scrupulously professional.

As for reporting what’s happening to leadership or HR … don’t they know? If Fran is constantly reporting people to leadership or HR, they by definition are aware of it. That said, you could certainly talk to your boss about the chilling effect it’s having on team relations and the fact that it’s hard to work with Fran when you have to worry that innocuous comments will set her off.

2. Protecting interns from office drama

I’m part of the management team of a company of about 300 staff. I have a problem with Trinity, who is on the same team I’m on. I’m not her manager, but I am senior to her (because both her boss, Collins, and I report to the CEO).

There is some drama with Robby, a new senior exec who has joined, and Langdon, who he’s brought onto his team as his right hand. Langdon took over a big project with a really important client — the type of project that my team has spearheaded and has been very successful in managing — and is failing, badly, despite repeated offers of help and support (never even taking our offer to give an initial overview of our experience with these projects). So that’s a whole big problem and I’m trying to keep my head down from the drama, although I expect my CEO to ask for my perspective in the coming days.

But Trinity is a huge gossip. She’s telling everyone and anyone all about her issues with Robby and Langdon, she is openly at our table complaining about them, and whenever she notices anyone talking about it she comes up laughingly and is like, “Haha I wanna know, too, let’s talk,” etc.

In the past, she has rejected feedback from me, so I’ve given it sparingly. The team lead of the team we’re both on, Collins, despite being very competent in most areas and a good friend, doesn’t love giving negative feedback and I know that’s another issue.

But I also have two interns right now, and Trinity is openly gossiping with them around. I’ve asked her to please keep the interns out of the situation, and impressed upon her that I’d recommend we all keep our heads down in this situation, that Robby and Langdon have very senior positions (and political maneuvering skills) and it might backfire massively to talk to so many people about them. She didn’t seem to catch my point. In fact, when I asked her to keep the interns out of it she said, “Oh but with Whitaker I always laugh so much and we have such a good relationship.”

I plan to have a conversation with both interns along the following lines: “It’s my responsibility to show you work norms around tricky things like office politics. I am aware there is currently some office drama, and I want to assure you that none of it will affect our project or you, and want to advise to not take everything flying around at face value and, furthermore, to engage with it as little as possible. If you have any questions, you can always come to me.” Is that the right approach? Is there anything else I should do?

Yes, that’s exactly the right approach. If I were one of the interns, I’d feel reassured that someone was being thoughtful about how we might be experiencing this and letting us know we didn’t need to worry about it.

You should also tell Trinity’s boss, Collins, that you’ve asked her to be more discreet around the interns and she’s just laughed you off. Feel free to say, “Could you tell her that she needs to rein it in?” Since it sounds like Collins is a wimpy manager, she may or may not do that, but it’s a reasonable request to make — and simply making it highlights that there’s a problem she’s currently not dealing with.

3. What are my responsibilities when leaving a problematic team?

I recently took a short-term contract while looking for a permanent role. It is a small, busy team with a high workload. On my first day of work, I was informed that a coworker has stage 4 brain cancer and we needed to be careful about staying away from work when we were sick (generally good advice, and something I read as a green flag).

After a few weeks, it was evident that their illness was worse than initially disclosed. As a result of treatment, they aren’t able to read well and have significant vision impairments, impacted emotional regulation, and poor boundaries, including continually disclosing medical details while at their desk, or using voice-to-text to read medical records aloud. Coworkers were often expected to stop work to help this person do a simple task like re-set a password or find a file, and effectively the team is down one full-time staff member, which means the workload increases for others alongside other support work expectations.

I lost a parent to brain cancer, and decided to end the contract early for my own mental health (I have a new role starting in the next few weeks, and the resources to cover the time off).

In my exit interview, the manager disclosed that other employees have left because of the same issue, and that he is also dealing (secretly) with a brain tumor himself. I think this explains some of the “missing stair” behavior around the unsafe norms in that workplace.

What are my responsibilities here? I recognize there are some personal impacts for me which made the environment difficult, but I do not think it is a safe workplace for anyone.

You don’t have any responsibilities here! You were a short-term contractor, and you’re no longer there. Employees of that team are well positioned to raise it if they want to, but it’s not something you’re responsible for raising, nor do you even really have standing to raise it at this point. The exceptions to this would be if (a) you were brought in by someone higher up there who you had a pre-existing relationship with, in which case you could share with them what your experience was or (b) the issues were related to physical safety. But short of something like that, mentally wish them all well and just focus on moving forward.

4. Firing an employee on April Fools’ Day

Should managers avoid firing/laying off employees on April Fools’ Day so they don’t think it’s a cruel April Fools’ joke?

Managers should avoid being the type of manager where it would ever cross an employee’s mind that they’d fake-fire someone as a cruel joke. If there’s any risk of anyone wondering about that, it’s a sign that something already has gone terribly wrong. (And sure, in those offices they should avoid it — but that’s the least of their problems at that point.)

Related:
when giving good news, my boss first pretends to be upset as a “joke”

5. Will I have to pay back insurance premiums if I don’t return from maternity leave?

Can you walk me through what could happen in the event I don’t return from maternity leave? I plan to use both FMLA and short-term disability. I get 16 weeks off —12 paid (100% pay for the first eight weeks and 60% pay for the last four weeks) and four weeks unpaid. I plan to take my full maternity leave but due to child care costs, I am leaning towards being a stay-at-home mom.

I am on my employer’s insurance plan. Can they demand I repay them for their part of my insurance premiums? How should I go about asking them this?

If you take paid maternity leave and then don’t return, legally you can be responsible for repaying the cost of your health insurance from the period when you were on leave (unless you return for at least 30 days).

Whether or not your company will do that is up to them. Ideally you’d be able to find out for sure by consulting an employee handbook or other written policies, but if you can’t find it there, you could frame the question this way to HR: “I plan to return once my maternity leave is over, but I want to be realistic that people’s plans sometimes change. Can you fill me in on how our policies work both if I do and if I don’t return?”

The post coworker reports small interactions to HR, protecting interns from office drama, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Hey my publishers asked me to remind you that my stuff is available in their shop!

After reaching the end of their automotive careers, the batteries have been repurposed and are online in Texas.

By Arcelia Martin

In the midday hours, prices plummet. An excess of energy produced across Texas, largely due to the state’s solar and wind fleet, signals it’s a good time to buy. It’s then that 500 batteries, which once fueled General Motors’ electric vehicles, charge up. 

I’m off for the holiday, so here’s an older post from the archives. This was originally published in 2020.

A reader writes:

I’ve worked for four years in a research laboratory and my supervisor is an associate professor. Her husband is a professor and a director of the research group (and that’s how she easily got her position). As part of standard procedure, the university requires all employees to complete what is called a performance development review.

In our meeting, she highlighted two development goals. One was to improve individual conflict management skills by reflecting on all instances of conflicts and how those can be handled better. The second was to improve my skills in communication and dealing with feedback from other colleagues, especially staff members who are on a higher academic and professional level than myself, and to write and reflect on all instances where inappropriate responses were provided to queries by other staff members.

I replied that I disagreed that these should be listed in the development goals on my personal form, as the conflicts are common and have largely resolved by various means. Also, the conflicts were a thing of the past and I do not want to recall them. I agree that they can be improved on, but I do not want this to be on my permanent record, as it reflects badly on a HR record. For the second point I replied to her saying that I would have appreciated if private feedback was provided at the time rather than only bringing it up during the performance development review. (And to keep a long story short, I didn’t agree that my response was inappropriate. My [negative] response was based on the decisions made at that time.)

This was her response:

The development objectives will stay recorded in the PDR system because they are areas that I as your direct line of manager has identified that you need to DEVELOP in. The activities are activities created by me to make you reflect on some of these instances and identify ways you can mitigate future conflicts. They do not go into the online talent system. At the next PDR meeting, the report by me will be “have you achieved the goals set out by me pertaining to the activities or not?”

You can choose to go through with this PDR process set out by me as your direct line manager, or you can choose to ignore it. At the end of the day, I submit a report and that goes on the record.

My conflict management strategies in the past pertaining to all the complaints against yourself have been to work out the entire situation by listening to all parties, set up meetings and work it through with everyone including yourself. The example provided is just an example and not an isolated incident, nor is it only coming from a particular individual. It is simply the most recent example.

I just felt that it was very insensitive and bossy response, not to mention her already insensitive way of putting such items as “development goals.”

Oooooh, no.

You need to do what your manager is asking.

She’s clearly saying that if you don’t, it will be insubordination and likely have serious consequences for you.

When your manager tells you that you’ve had multiple conflicts with coworkers and you need to reflect on those incidents and figure out how to handle them better in the future, you cannot dismiss that by saying those conflicts are in the past and you don’t want to have to think about them. She’s saying clearly that she has determined that, in order to succeed in your job, you do need to recall them and work on alternate strategies.

There’s no option here to just say, “No, I don’t want to.” Or rather, it’s an option, but it means you’ll be putting your professional standing and your job in jeopardy. If you worked for me, that would put you far along the path to getting fired.

The multiple conflicts themselves are already a serious problem. Refusing to work on it when asked is a real F-you to your boss … and really reinforces that you’re a problem for the team. (In fact, it reinforces the very feedback she’s giving you.)

And make no mistake, based on your boss’s email to you (both the actual content and the clipped, frustrated tone), she already thinks of you as a pretty big problem, and she sounds ready to to act on that.

Now, should she have addressed issues with you as they came up? Yes. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have standing to address it now, and if you fight her on that rather than addressing the problems themselves, you’re going to look like you’re deflecting, missing the point, and continuing a pattern of combativeness that’s already been flagged as a problem. You’ll have much more luck if you first do what she’s asking and then later say you’d like to receive feedback in a more ongoing way, rather than hearing about problems for the first time in a formal review.

I’m not sure why you thought her response was insensitive (it was certainly direct, but in a context where that was necessary) or bossy (she is in fact your boss), or why you find framing this stuff as “development goals” to be insensitive. These are development goals, and there’s nothing weird or insulting about calling them that. It also seems to be the terminology your organization uses. Personally, I think it’s rather soft; I would call them “performance requirements” because they would be!

The best thing you can do is to drop your instinct to push back or defend yourself and just … do what she’s asking you to do: reflect on the past conflicts and how you could have handled them differently. That’s a reasonable thing for a manager to ask, and it sounds like it’s based in real necessity here.

The post my boss asked me to reflect on my conflicts with coworkers and I don’t want to appeared first on Ask a Manager.

I’m off for the holiday, so here’s an older post from the archives. This was originally published in 2016.

A reader writes:

I’m currently interviewing for a new position with a company that works remotely. Over the past two weeks, I’ve had 10+ video calls with every member of the small team, along with a bunch of unpaid work tests that have included everything from client proposals to personality tests. It’s starting to feel like a full-time job just interviewing with them. I was willing to do all of this because the company is one that I know well with a social mission that I really believe in. I was even willing to accept that they are paying a good $20k below what is normal.

I was told that it was down to me and one other person and they were planning on making a decision this week. Today I got an email asking me to send one to two references in each of five categories. One of those categories is “coworker(s) that you didn’t get along with.” They say they want all of these references to get a complete picture of who I am and how I work, but this feels like a weird ask to me. There haven’t been many coworkers that I’ve had problems with and most are far in the past (5+ years) and were fired from their jobs. They aren’t people I’d want talking to a potential future employer on my behalf, even if I did have a way to contact them and ask if they’d be willing. I have plenty of great “normal” references and a solid work history with a portfolio to prove it, which seems like plenty to base their decision on in addition to the many phone calls and tests.

Am I off-base for feeling uncomfortable with what they’re asking of me? Is there a way that I can provide standard references and address my concerns of feeling uncomfortable without turning them off too much? I’m worried that I might have wasted a lot of time with this whole process.

What the actual F.

Seriously, this is ridiculous. 10 video calls over two weeks is absurd — it’s disrespectful of your (and their) time, and it’s indicative of a company that has no clue how to hire — and not even enough of a clue to realize that Something Doesn’t Seem Right About What We’re Doing. And now five to ten references, over five different categories? And names of coworkers who you didn’t get along with?

No. That is not reasonable.

References are valuable. And sure, in theory I’d love to be able to talk to a dozen people who worked with a candidate, with a whole bunch of different vantage points. I’d also like to have a video reel of the highlights of their last two years of work, a transcript of every time they got frustrated with a manager or a coworker, and a live blog of their last performance review meeting.

I can’t have those things because hiring doesn’t work that way. You will never know absolutely everything that you could know about a candidate. You do your best, based on a reasonable number of interviews, work samples, observations, and discussions with a handful of references. If you don’t feel like you have enough to confidently move forward with someone after doing that, they’re probably not the right candidate — or you need to seriously revisit your hiring practices. It’s not okay to put the burden of weak hiring practices or shaky confidence in your own judgment on to the candidate, and make them pay the price in the form of dozens of hours of interviews and exercises and tests, or to ask them to place an unreasonable burden on people they know.

You can never look under every single rock. Asking to be put in touch with coworkers who you didn’t get along with is just … ugh, it’s just not okay. They have to know it’s going to cause you a tremendous amount of discomfort (and the coworker too, I’d assume), and since they have no way of judging what happened between the two of you, they have no way of knowing how much weight to give whatever that person might say to them.

And really, it’s so very unreasonable that it’s worth you refusing. This is not a company you should continue placating. I’d seriously consider telling them, “This seems like overkill to me. This is exponentially more information than I’ve ever been asked for before by an employer. We’ve already had 10+ video calls and I’ve completed numerous tests for you. These aren’t reasonable demands to make of job candidates. I was very interested in working with you, despite the below-market salary, but I’m alarmed enough by these practices that at this point I’m withdrawing my application.”

But if you are absolutely committed to continuing, then I suppose you could say: “Hmmm, I’ve never really had any significant problems with coworkers, but I’m providing names and contact information for a variety of people who can speak to my work.”

(Or maybe you can just give them my contact info as one of your references so that I can give them a piece of my mind? No? Fine.)

The post company wants references from “coworkers you didn’t get along with” appeared first on Ask a Manager.

WASHINGTON, DC – President Donald Trump recently took to his Truth Social media platform to warn Nigeria that it will be targeted with more airstrikes, unless “Prince Adewale Oluewesan returns the money”, which the president claims he sent as part of an agreement that the prince has not upheld. Last night on his Truth Social […]

The post Trump threatens more attacks on Nigeria unless their prince returns his money appeared first on The Beaverton.

Where the hell have you been?

#CowboyWho