Cowboy Who?

This post, I quit my job but they insist I have to participate in an investigation, putting Mensa on your resume, and more , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

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

1. I quit my job but my old boss says I have to participate in an investigation of my complaints

I just quit my job at a restaurant. I sent my manager a very respectful text the other day because I didn’t have time for a phone call and wanted him to know right away.

The problem is that now I have lots of meetings and HR involvement. The reasons I quit include sexual harassment, regular harassment, screaming, cursing, and threats from other coworkers. I informed my manager of the incidents and what had occurred when he asked why I was quitting, and he made me take a call with him and go over everything in detail.

I tried to inform him of the incidents before I left — really, I did! I went up to him the weekend they occurred and asked for five minutes of his time and he said he didn’t have any time to give me. Now he says he “needs to do his due diligence” and investigate and is forcing me to be involved in the ongoing process. He knew I wanted to discuss an HR concern with him last weekend and brushed me off until I was no longer his employee.

Honestly, at this point I just want to put it all behind me and move on. I’m traumatized enough as it is and I just want to heal and move on with my life. How in the world do I navigate this? Do I get a lawyer? Do I HAVE to be involved? I definitely don’t work there anymore, and I don’t want to be further upset and anxious. Help!

You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do! You don’t work for that employer any more, and they have zero ability to command your time in any way. You’re right to point out that you tried to talk to your old boss before you resigned and he blew you off — but even if you hadn’t done that, you’d still have the right to simply quit and wash your hands of them. If you wanted to talk to them about what happened, you certainly could — but now that you’ve resigned, you have zero obligation to do it if you’d prefer not to.

If you want, you can tell him, “My schedule is fully booked and I’m not available for meetings or calls about this” or “This was something I tried to speak with you about before I left, but now that I’m gone it’s not something I’m available to keep meeting about.” Or you can simply ignore his calls if you want. If he persists, feel free to tell HR that he’s continuing to contact you when you’ve asked him to stop and they need to ensure he leaves you alone.

2. Should I put Mensa on my resume?

I have been employed in law enforcement my entire adult life, first at the local level, and now for over 25 years in federal law enforcement. Federal law enforcement has a mandatory retirement age of 57. I know that I want to continue working past that age, so as I am now in my early 50’s and eligible to retire, I am looking in private industry for positions that interest me.

Here’s a question I haven’t seen come up before: I am a member of Mensa. Do I include this in my resume or cover letter? You would think that having a high level of intelligence would be an automatic asset, but people can be weird about this. Would it be any different when dealing with a hiring manager? I know in the land of civil service it was not a factor, but can you see any benefit in private industry?

Don’t put Mensa membership on your resume — for the same reason you wouldn’t put your IQ on your resume. Hiring managers are interested in what you have actually accomplished, not what you might have the potential to accomplish, particularly when you’re many years into your career. After all, you could be brilliant but struggle with execution, follow-through, organization, dealing with other people — the list goes on — and what they really want to know is what you’ve done with your intelligence (since it’s the most reliable way of knowing what you might do with it for them).

If you want to convey that you’re smart, let it show through your your achievements. And if it doesn’t show through your achievements, then qualifying for a Mensa membership isn’t terribly relevant for hiring purposes.

It’s also likely to turn off a lot of people who will see it as a weird thing to list.

3. I’m upset that my coworker became my new boss without being interviewed

I graduated from college in 2018, and was at my previous job for a few years as a temp before being fully hired. I moved jobs and have been with my current organization since 2019, switching positions from an admin assistant to program specialist in June 2020. In that time I have received a masters of healthcare administration. In the fall of 2020, someone new joined my team after completing a fellowship program we have.

Recently my team has gone through some changes as people were promoted. My old manager moved into a senior role and we were informed that they were not backfilling her position. Two weeks later, it was announced that the person who joined in the fall of 2020 would be filling her position as she’s showed great commitment to the team. She is now my direct manager.

I’m having mixed feelings about this. No one on my team was told they were interviewing, and it seems shady she was moved right in without an interview. I know this because I was an admin assistant before, and I get all the calendar invites for our CEO who interviews EVERYONE before they are hired. Even internal promotions get interviews from him, but she did not. Am I just being emotional or do I have a right to be upset? I’m not sure as this is my first real job and I have never experienced anything like this.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with promoting an existing employee without a formal interview. Often working with and managing a person will provide a far more nuanced sense of whether they’d be right for a role than what you could get from an interview. (I’d argue it provides the best view; interviews are a distant second.) In a situation like that, there’s no requirement or expectation that you must conduct an interview, especially if it’s clear that no one else on the team would be the right pick.

If that was the situation here, then this is more an issue of messaging. It sounds like they missed an opportunity to explain why they filled the position this way and why they didn’t give anyone else the chance to throw their hat in the ring. They could have good reasons for everything they did, but if it’s leaving people feel disgruntled, they should have explained it better.

4. Asking to work from home after a colleague was hired to do the same work remotely

I was hired for a company two years ago but have been working from home for 19 months of those two years. I have proven myself over and over and have never had a performance issue or a complaint from management.

They gave us the option to work from home two days a week. Well, recently they hired an out-of-state full-time remote worker for the same job I do. We had five people quit this year and they’ve had trouble filling any of the positions which is why they hired out-of-state.

I have requested recently to my boss that I would like to work from home full-time. I haven’t heard anything back yet but I am nervous. Can they deny my remote work request? I don’t think it would be fair to deny my request but hire someone else for a full-time remote position.

Yes, they can deny your remote work request if they want to. No law requires employers to offer remote work equally, as long as they’re not offering it based on an illegal factor like race or religion. They could even have legitimate reasons for offering it to some people in a particular role but not all — like they see a work need for someone in your job to be in the office a few days a week and since it’s clearly not going to be the out-of-state hire, they’ll want it to be you.

That said, you might be able to use the out-of-state hire as a way to argue that your job doesn’t require you to be in the office. They don’t have to accept that argument, but you can certainly try. And if their recent search highlighted that they’d have a hard time replacing you with someone else local, that might help your case.

5. I was about to be offered a job and then they told me to fill out an application

I had a manager for a large corporation call me about a position they would like me to fill. It is a high-profile position that sounds really appealing, but it also comes with much more high stress than where I am now. I am currently operating independently and have really liked what I’m doing, but I have felt that this position being offered might give me more stability in the long run. We’ve talked collectively for about three hours and he told me he was ready to send me an offer. He asked what starting pay I was looking for and I told him a number equivalent to what I am making now, knowing that this is a commission-based job and the growth would be my responsibility. He said he would get that approved and follow up with me the next week.

A week later, I received an email from an HR person with a link to fill out a job application. No offer or other communication was included, just an application for the position. I am happy with where I am at and would only move positions if there was a better opportunity to grow and keep a stable book of business. This did not specify any of that or what we had discussed over the phone. The manager called me once and did not leave a message, and I called him back right away and left him a message to give me a call. That was four days ago. Am I going about this the right way not filling out the application? I wasn’t really looking to move unless this was an improvement. Am I burning a bridge by not responding to that email?

You should fill out the application since they may require it of all candidates before they’ll move you forward. If that’s the case, they should have explained that to you more explicitly, not just sent the application without comment, but it’s pretty common for HR to insist candidates fill out a full application before they can be offered a job. Partly it’s because applications often include attestations that the info you’re providing is correct, and partly it’s because it’s bad practice to hire people without ensuring you have the same basic information on them that you collect on everyone else you consider for jobs … and a large corporation is particularly unlikely to exempt you from that.

Filling out the application doesn’t say “I am interested in starting at the very beginning of your hiring process.” It’s just complying with a step they (probably) need to have completed before they can move forward.

This post, my coworker is secretly living at the office , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I started a new job two months ago. My role is a senior one that reports directly to the CEO.

I quickly discovered that one of my coworkers — who is also a manager — is living in the office. He would technically say that he lives in his van. However, his van is always parked in the office parking garage and it is clear he uses the office for all his personal needs. I live near the office so have driven by at all hours and he is always here! He cooks all his meals in the office kitchen and has a couch in his office. He will also post a sign on his door that says “out of office” but he is actually in his office, just not working. 

I think this has gone unnoticed because most people are still working remotely, but I am coming in every day and it is very uncomfortable. Sometimes it appears he has just woken up.

I don’t want to make waves because I am so new, but I also can’t stop thinking about this. Should I tell someone or just let it go and hope leadership notices soon?

A complicating factor to note — our CEO was recently let go and we are in the middle of a huge leadership transition. The organization is very chaotic right now and there is not clear leadership.

Well, it’s possible someone in leadership knows and has okayed it. Who knows why — most obviously, of course, he could have lost his housing. Or he could have split from his partner or simply decided this was more cost-effective while no one else was coming in anyway, or who knows what.

But it’s also possible that no one knows since most of your coworkers are still working remotely. And if that’s the case, the organization really does need to know — for safety and legal reasons, if nothing else. If they rent the space, someone living there could be a violation of the terms of their lease. It could be a problem for their insurance. And if something happens to the building in the middle of the night, someone needs to know a person is in there.

If you weren’t in a very senior role, I’d tell you this is above your pay grade and, especially as a new hire, to leave it alone for now unless it were causing problems for you (like if you were running into him half-clad in the mornings or unable to use the office fridge because it was stuffed with a month of his groceries or so forth).

But you’re in a senior role that reports to the CEO. Even though there’s no clear leadership right now, is there anyone above you or in a relatively senior operations-type role? If so, it’s worth mentioning it to that person — not in a “get Bob in trouble” kind of way, but framed as, “I wasn’t sure if anyone knew about this since he and I are generally the only ones here, and it seemed like something I should mention to someone.” That’s not making waves; if they’re fine with it, they’ll let you know that … and if they’re not fine with it, they’re unlikely to shoot the messenger.

It does risk making waves for Bob, of course. But you can’t start living in your office and expect your colleagues not to mention it. That’s not to ignore that he might be in a difficult spot — but again, there are legal and safety reasons the organization needs to know he’s there.

Hello Jim. Nothing says “hello and goodbye” as succinctly as a message that begins confidently in black and is otherwise entirely copy-and-pasted from somewhere else, does it, Jimbo? It says I care about you enough to customize two words of this email, and not a single one more. The reused text has ripened to a ludicrous purple while making its way through the tubes of Outlook. A forensic determination takes less than a second, lit up by prints from your dirty sausage fingers that have carried over a different font size in the rich-text-format metadata.

“hElP!” cries out the unholy mix of font colors and sizes, “this email was originally written for someone else.” Cover letters that have been spot-customized begin to read like a hostage letter. Sunny epistles shared among long-distance friends take the shape of accursed chain letters. Workplace bulletins reveal which analysts collated their division’s update
on their phone
at
the hairdresser.

Push your luck too far and Gmail has been known to collapse an entire pasted message into a lethal
****show quoted text****
widget that all but deposits your body into a coffin marked
****here lies Maria, for whom you were the ninth choice when it came to sending this pitch.****

You screwed up, Jim. You sent a lifted passage that is haunted by an off-white background
|| and nudged to the right, so
|| the more times you copy it
|| the deeper you go
|| into email purgatory.

You’d like to laugh it off with a sweaty-faced smiley (“”), but the transmission of your message several times over has turned the unicode symbol into a box. Deeper and deeper you go, exposed as a plagiarist of your own faff. (“”) Amateur hour, J J J .

The incompatibility of different email providers and baseline level of eye strain felt by anyone using a screen to work mean that right now in the U.S., there are approximately 45,000 people tilting their laptop screen back and forth to determine whether there is a shadow hovering over the fresh strategy notes a colleague sent, and whether there is a band of blue-grey font running across a strata of black text from a lover. Something, they feel, is definitely amiss. It’s a pox, Jim-Jams.

A POX ON ALL OUR HOUSES. But it didn’t have to happen!!! You could have copy-and-pasted the text in using Ctrl+Shift+V, coulda shook off the non-web-safe fonts like a zig-zagging getaway car.

There was more than one exit off this highway to hell, you sorry clown. You could have highlighted all (Ctrl+A) and selected the “remove formatting button,” which in Gmail looks like a crossed-out T—a T taking off its pants, Jimmy!!

You could have “painted format” over the secondhand text with the paint-roller symbol. Why didn’t you do it???

Remember the good emails, son. I didn’t want to have to do this, you know that. I loved you like family, but you left me no other choice than to

Part of this message cannot be loaded.

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham		www.phdcomics.com
title: "Current Status" - originally published 10/22/2021 For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE!

RARRGH! I'm Zombie Captain America!

Federation Pride pins are back – and glow command key pins are new!

GET TICKETS OR MISS OUT FOREVER ►► https://www.gamegrumps.com/live

The year is 20X6: the last manga translated by hand was years ago. When the Last Artisans passed, only the robots remained. It is a dark time.

MERCH ►► http://gamegrumps.com/merch

Support us on Patreon! ► http://patreon.com/gamegrumps
or support us by becoming a channel member! ► https://youtube.com/gamegrumps/join
Click to SUBSCRIBE ► http://bit.ly/GrumpSubscribe

*********************************************

We have NEW MERCH every other TUESDAY!

►►► http://gamegrumps.com/merch

*********************************************

FACEBOOK ► https://www.facebook.com/GameGrumps
TWITTER ► https://www.twitter.com/gamegrumps
INSTAGRAM ► https://www.instagram.com/gamegrumps/
WEBSITE ► http://gamegrumps.com

*********************************************

Game Grumps are:
Arin ► http://www.youtube.com/Egoraptor
Danny ► http://www.youtube.com/NinjaSexParty

#OneMangaDay #VisualNovel #Poogle

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

Cameras. How do they work?

Links 'n stuff
Technology Connections on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/TechConnectify
The TC Subreddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/technologyconnections
This channel is supported through viewer contributions on Patreon. Thanks to the generous support of people like you, Technology Connections has remained independent and possible. If you'd like to join the amazing people who've pledged their support, check out the link below. Thank you for your consideration!
https://www.patreon.com/technologyconnections

Oh, and look at these wonderful patrons!
Mark Muir, Andrew Moriarty, Steve Murray, J.C. Lundberg, Jacob Tuley, Alex Mader, Matthew Barnes, Hugh Jasole, Brian Thomas Garcia-Luense, Joel Eblin, Ted Kaplan, Sarah Marchesi, Dylan Ginsburg, Jocelyn Stericker, Jim Thoenen, Russell Pitcher, David Cichowski, ioangogo, Hargrimm , jay, Syber-Space, Todd Johnson, Nuki Chau, Tanner Smith, Chris & Anne Nash, Jordi Pakey-Rodriguez, Jim Moores, AuroranFilms, RegalRegex, Michael Lehenbauer, James Manes, Mihaly Barasz, Potatoots, Mark Johansson, Lee Dedmon, Berwin Xie, Grey Hodge, Jim Kropa, Tony B, David Collins, Alex Carbone, Ben Golus, Tim Doering, sanlaxsfo, Jonathan Grayum, Kodi , Colin Chan, James Cox, Cody Henthorne, Mark Komarinski, Jeff G, Ryan McLaughlin, J.P. Stewart, NADAV GERBER, Zac Schmitt, Bryce Swearingen, _Squire, Blair Simpkins, Nathan Fenner, Rittycat , Huub Heijnen, Joseph Dion, Jim Sells, Dustin Gilyard, KoolJBlack, nils m, Damione Moore, Jeremy Weeks, Carolyn Gerakines, Graham O'Mara, Cameron Ross, Etta Spangler, Kyle Boreing, Ben Waxler, Daniel Mattingley, Jason Fortezzo, Devan Bailey, Andreas Neidlinger, Andy Warren, Rowan Parker, Steven Dubnoff, Keaton Mowery, Father Cadan, Brett and Eric, Alexander Koch, Martin Haynes, Alipasha Sadri, Jimmy2Guys , Dash Buck, Christopher Schreiber, R. Anthony Lorensen, glw, Shawn, Adam Zaner, Bob , Emil , Dad , Holden Higgins, Zach Orum, HJ, michael waddle, Ultimatebadassandykillsu, Tayler Heaney, Ryan, Nate Tangsurat, Anne Gibson, Joseph Prest, Scott Waldron, Lars Naurath, Mike SoRelle, BabyET, Nick Blair, Richard Stephens, Ken Kasal, Bryce Chidester, Brian Recchia, Philip Buonadonna, BoneDepot, Barbara Ganschow, Amanda , Tino, Colin Brady, Inkydink , Colin Mutter, Ray Everett, Connor Taffe, Nope, Todd Hawk, Rich Delgado, Romain Dutot, Brian Hamilton, George , Caius Worthen, Justin Byers, Falldog , Funnyjk, David Guerrero

00:00 Intro
00:32 Camera Obscura
05:37 Conception of photography
06:37 The Daguerreotype process
10:19 Examining a daguerreotype
12:04 The strange viewing properties of the daguerreotype
14:44 The Ambrotype
17:20 The Tintype
19:10 Eastman Kodak and the path to mass-adoption
22:05 120 film format
24:25 A 120 format camera's quirks and features
27:44 Loading it with film
30:52 Using the camera
33:31 Unloading the camera
35:25 Bloopers

This post, when the red flags are even more ominous than you know… , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

In 2014, I received this letter. I get more mail than I can answer, and this one didn’t end up getting published. But read on, because there’s a twist coming.

After following your cover letter and resume advice, I landed an interview for a position I would love to have. It is similar to my current work but would allow me to be more proactive and have greater ownership over the work.

My issue is with the prospective company’s hiring practices. I would like to question them in the interview to gain some insight in their company culture and structure, but I don’t want to come across as overly critical. After two in-person interviews, one phone interview and one skype interview, the company is flying me out to their headquarters in California to interview with an unnamed “panel” (the actual job is in Arizona.) The scheduler keeps moving my interview date every few days and it’s been pushed back 6 times now, including 3 plane tickets. I’m also concerned that they don’t trust their Arizona team with this hire, when it seems from the conversations I’ve had, I would have little interaction with the California team. How do I approach the question of the constant rescheduling and the trust issues? Or do you think that both are non-issues?

Back to 2021. The writer of this letter recently emailed me about something else and included this note:

I noticed a question I submitted back in 2014 about some warning signs from an interview process I was embedded with at the time — and it was for a position at THERANOS! It was the craziest, most disorganized, lengthy hiring process I’ve ever experienced. I’m really thankful I didn’t pass the final interview.

I asked the letter-writer if she’d share more details and she obliged:

I had completely forgotten that I reached out for advice, and reading it over now with SO much hindsight, I should have said “no thank you” based on their constant rescheduling! It was an incredibly stressful process because I would schedule a day off from work to fly to California, and then have to reach back out to my supervisor and change the request- six times. A total red flag for my current job, but they didn’t seem to notice. At the time, Theranos had JUST emerged to the national scene and were in Walgreens test stores in Arizona, with a full board of directors including several high-profile military leaders, so I thought it would be a good opportunity and there was only glowing, credible press about their mission and future. They provided a voucher to go through the nanotainer collection process at a local Walgreens, but I didn’t have a chance — and I’m glad now since it’s been revealed that false positives were abundant in their testing.

On the interview day, I flew to Palo Alto into the last step of a three-month process (my fifth interview), and they had this weird stipulation that if you took a taxi, you wouldn’t be reimbursed for travel, only if you took public transportation or rental car/shuttle service — but with the timing of landing to interview time (they determined both), there was no time for any of the reimbursable options. The building was super secure and I had to wait in a stark lobby behind multiple security doors for at least an hour, but that was actually the fun part of the day, chatting about the Chicago Bulls with the security guards. When someone finally arrived, I was led to a smaller lobby, where, after another half hour (now 1.5 hours later than originally scheduled), I had an extremely abrupt, short, cold interview with one person from HR. We didn’t vibe at all, so I wasn’t shocked that I didn’t get the job, but I WAS surprised that after all of the effort on both of our sides, I received a generic email form letter signed “Kind Regards, Theranos Human Resources.”

Another part of the interview process that I’ll never forget was the Skype interview with Sunny Balwani. He looked absolutely miserable, stressed, and rushed. Like he had been sleeping at his desk for weeks and was just absolutely hating that he had to talk with me. I’ve heard in the meantime that Elizabeth Holmes’ defense was going to portray him as a conniving Svengali, which didn’t match at all what I saw back then!

My lesson learned from this experience was that red flags are called red for a reason, and I just kept ignoring them. Rescheduling an out-of-state interview six times to meet with one person should have clued me in that this would not be a great place to work! I think we all make excuses because we’re so wrapped up in the process and start imagining ourselves out of our current situation without detecting dysfunction in the future opportunity. I’m glad I was spared that job, because a year and a half later, the Wall Street Journal started exposing the company, ultimately leading to them liquidating. But boy, that year and a half would be full of stories I’d never forget, probably!!

I want to just give 2014 me a hug that she was trying SO HARD to impress people at this incredibly dysfunctional, toxic workplace.

But three companies later, I am happy and well-adjusted. Thanks again for all your great advice over the years!

Amos Fortune: Free Man
Yates
1951

Submitter: Somehow this book from 1951 was still on the shelf, maybe because of that shiny Newbery sticker on the cover. Or maybe it just got overlooked. Either way, a story of a slave written in the 50s is likely going to be questionable today, and I would say this one is. Descriptions comparing Black characters to dogs and untamed animals are jarring. The idea that Africans needed to be civilized before they could handle freedom seems to be presented not as something that many people wrongly believed at the time but as actually being true. At one point it is spoken directly from the still-enslaved main character himself. With some guidance and discussion, this book could be instructive of assorted historical and current trends in racist thought and language, but the public library kids biography section isn’t the place for that.

Holly: No, it isn’t. Just because a book is an award winner does not mean it should be kept forever. Either put it in a special Newbery reference collection or weed it.

Mary: This was pretty much the only slavery discussion that was around when I was a child in the 1960s. I remember liking the story. However, it was written in the 1950s for a white audience and of course it sanitized the evil of slavery for said audience. Although Amos Fortune was based on a real person, it really is a biographical novel. I think this article can give people more to chew on if they are second guessing weeding a Newbery.

The post Friday Fiction: Amos Fortune: Free Man appeared first on Awful Library Books.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The better approach is offensive optimism.

Today's News:

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Everyone on patreon said there was a typo in the votey panel, but the robot's just selling Xena episodes, you freaks.

Today's News:

Makint Toys
Hutchings
1972

We have so many craft books featured on this site. Holidays? Pick your favorite. Can’t decide which craft to try? We have you covered here. Holly and I have personal favorite craft books on this site: Applehead dolls, Pantyhose Crafts, and Macrame, to name a few. Old Testament toys might also join this esteemed list of crafts.

Old Testament theme? Not my favorite theme for crafting, but I suppose that might appeal to some folks. The color scheme is ugly and the 2 pages of photographs are not even amateur level. But the crafts…

• Noah and his family finger puppets
• Make a few frogs and locusts (you know, cuz plagues are cute!)
• Moses parting the Red Sea. Notice the little arms and legs of the people drowning.
• The best of the book: Joseph struggling to get out of the pit as a pop up toy.

I am trying to imagine if there is a New Testament craft book featuring lepers, stoning, and crucifixion.

Fun for the whole family!

Mary

 

The post Put the Fear of God Into Your Toys appeared first on Awful Library Books.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

 

WE FOUND DUANE!! Just kidding, we didn’t find Duane – and we never will! – but we found the song and we pressed it up on this strange, see-through, floppy blue material that you can play on a record player! Annnnnnd we added a remix by Sich Mang called “Duane The Lizard!” AND HERE IT IS!!!  While it LOOKS like a record (kind of) – and it SOUNDS like a record (kind of) – it’s actually a FLEXI-DISC!! Flexi-discs were invented by a somebody or other, a really really really long time ago, and they’ve been popular and well-played ever since! In short, it’s a phonograph record made of a thin, flexible vinyl sheet with a molded-in spiral stylus groove, designed to be playable on a normal phonograph turntable! You can buy the mp3 of “Duane’s Theme” but that’ll cost you $69.00 – not kidding! So why not grab the flexible “sound sheet” for much, much less – free download included! The covers are a two-color risograph print – another product of an anachronistic invention! Crush that link!

https://everythingisterrible.bandcamp.com/album/duanes-theme

Scott Gilbertson, writing for The Register: The legacy of Internet Explorer 6 haunts web developer nightmares to this day. Microsoft's browser of yore made their lives miserable and it's only slightly hyperbolic to say it very nearly destroyed the entire internet. It really was that bad, kids. It made us walk to school in the snow. Uphill. Both ways. You wouldn't understand. Or maybe you would. Today developers who want to use "cutting-edge" web APIs find themselves resorting to the same kind of browser-specific workarounds, but this time the browser dragging things down comes from Apple. Apple's Safari lags considerably behind its peers in supporting web features. Whether it's far enough behind to be considered "the new IE" is debatable and may say more about the shadow IE still casts across the web than it does about Safari. But Safari -- or more specifically the WebKit engine that powers it -- is well behind the competition. According to the Web Platform Tests dashboard, Chrome-based browsers support 94 per cent of the test suite, and Firefox pulls off 91 per cent, but Safari only manages 71 per cent. On the desktop this doesn't matter all that much because users can always switch to Google Chrome (or even better, Vivaldi). On iOS devices, however, that's not possible. According to Apple's App Store rules: "apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript." Every iPhone user is a Safari/WebKit user whether they use Safari or Chrome. Apple has a browser monopoly on iOS, which is something Microsoft was never able to achieve with IE. In Windows you could at least install Firefox. If you do that on iOS it might say Firefox, but you're still using WebKit. The reality is if you have an iOS device, you use Safari and are bound by its limitations. Another thing web developers find distressing is Apple's slow development cycle. Apple updates Safari roughly every six months at best. Blink-based browsers update every six weeks (soon every four), Firefox releases every four weeks, and Brave releases every three. This means that not only is Apple slow to add new features, but its development cycle means that even simple bug fixes have to wait a long time before they actually land on users' devices. Safari workarounds are not quick fixes. If your website is affected by a Safari bug, you can expect to wait up to a year before the problem is solved. One theme that emerges when you dig into the Web Platform Tests data on Safari's shortcomings is that even where WebKit has implemented a feature, it's often not complete.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This post, my employee wasn’t respectful enough after the company messed up her paycheck , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I’m not comfortable with one of my new staff members and how overconfident she is. Her work is great and she needed very little training but she’s got very big britches.

“Jane” has only been with us for two months. Just today she asked for a meeting with me and our payroll manager. It turns out payroll made an error entering her direct deposit information that resulted in Jane not getting paid, not once but two times.

Our company requires potential candidates to complete sample assignments during the interview process and we pay them an hourly contractor rate. It turns out she didn’t get paid for her assignment period, or for the next full pay cycle. The payroll employee apologized directly to Jane in an email, because it was their error in entering her information and not following up/fixing it that resulted in Jane not getting paid. Jane was able to show emails back and forth where she checked in with the payroll employee and asked if it was fixed, which they confirmed it was. Today was payday and Jane didn’t get paid. She checked with the employee again and they acknowledged that they “thought” it was fixed. It’s upsetting for Jane, I understand, but I think she was out of line about the whole thing. People make mistakes.

Neither payroll nor I knew anything about it until today. We both apologized and assured her the issue would be handled. After that, she looked at me and the payroll manager and said, “I appreciate your apology, but I need you both to understand that this can’t happen again. This has put me under financial strain and I can’t continue to work for COMPANY if this isn’t corrected today.”

The payroll manager was heavily in agreement, but I was speechless that she’d speak to management like that.

Payroll handled the whole thing and cut her a check with the okay from HR. Jane had referenced that not being paid put her in financial hardship and unable to pay bills, so HR allowed the use of the employee hardship fund and gave her $500 in gift cards so she can get groceries and gas and catch up on bills. I’m just kind of floored that she’s getting gift cards after speaking to her superiors like that. I’m also uncomfortable because why is our company responsible for her fiscal irresponsibility? Her personal finances or debts are not the company’s responsibility. I just don’t think it’s the company’s responsibility to give her more than what she’s earned (the extra $500 from the employee emergency relief fund) to fix things for her if she overspent or didn’t prioritize her bills or save smartly. We also don’t know if she is actually experiencing a financial hardship or just claiming she was.

HR allowed her paid time to go to the bank today and deposit her check. I told our HR person that while it’s not okay Jane didn’t get paid, the way she approached it was uncalled for. HR told me, “She’s right, it can’t happen again and it shouldn’t have happened at all.”

I’m getting tired of the respect gap I’m seeing with younger staff. I think Jane would be better suited in a different department. I’m not comfortable having her on my team since it’s obvious she doesn’t understand she’s entry-level and not in charge. Should I wait a while before suggesting she transfer to a different department?

I’m going to say this bluntly: you are very, very wrong about this situation, both as a manager and as a human.

Your company didn’t pay Jane money they owed her in the timeframe in which they were legally obligated to pay it. They did this twice.

Your company messed up, and their mistake impacted someone’s income. That’s a very big deal.

The payroll department handled this exactly as they should: they apologized, cut her a check immediately, and helped repair the damage their mistake had caused. Jane shouldn’t have to suffer for their error, and their remedies were appropriate and warranted.

Your objection to this because the company shouldn’t be responsible for Jane’s finances is nonsensical. Your company is responsible for paying the wages they’ve agreed to pay in the timeline they’ve agreed to pay them in. They didn’t meet that obligation, and so they fixed it. That’s not about them being responsible for Jane’s debts; it’s about them being responsible for adhering to a legal wage agreement and treating an employee well after failing at a basic responsibility and causing that person hardship.

Suggesting that someone who needs the paycheck they earned to be delivered to them on time “didn’t prioritize her bills or save smartly” is wildly out of touch with the reality of many people’s finances in this country and how many people live paycheck to paycheck (particularly someone entry-level who just started a job two months ago and may have been unemployed before that). But frankly, even if Jane didn’t save smartly, it’s irrelevant; your company’s mistake is what caused the problem, and it’s what’s at issue here.

Your speculation that Jane might be lying about her financial situation is bizarre and reflects poorly on you. It’s irrelevant and you don’t seem to have any reason for wondering that other than an apparent desire to cast Jane in a bad light.

You’re absolutely right that there’s a respect gap in this situation — but it’s from you toward your employees, not from Jane toward her employer.

There’s nothing disrespectful about Jane advocating for herself and explaining that she’d be unable to stay in the job if the payroll mistakes weren’t corrected. She gets to make that choice for herself, it’s not an unreasonable one, and it’s not disrespectful for her to spell it out. In fact, I’d argue it’s actively respectful since respect requires clear, polite, direct communication and she gave you that.

When you say Jane doesn’t seem to understand she’s entry-level and not in charge … Jane is very much in charge of where she’s willing to work and what she will and won’t tolerate. Every employee is, regardless of how junior or senior they might be.

Corporate power structures require deference in things like decision-making on a project, but not the sort of obeisance in all things that you seem to be looking for.

Somewhere along the way, you picked up a very warped idea of what employees owe their employers, but you don’t seem to have thought much about what employers owe their employees. You urgently need to do some rethinking and recalibration if you’re going to continue managing people.

This post, how do I talk to my anti-vaccine coworker? , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I would love some advice on working with people who do not want to get a COVID vaccine. It seems so obvious to me that vaccination is the only way out of this dark age, and I’m really losing patience with one of my teammates who refuses to get the shot.

Before the pandemic we were allowed two WFH days per week, if we wanted them. In March 2020, we went fully remote and the company took good care of us, offering stipends for new home office furniture, etc. In July 2021 (when the vaccine was readily available to all adults in my area) the office building opened in what they are calling “phase 1” to anyone who wants to come back, as often as they please, as long as you wear a mask and sign an attestation saying you got the vaccine.

They just announced at the latest company-wide meeting that starting in mid-January (a solid four months away, plenty of time for stuff to change) they will expect everyone to come to the office at least one day a week, and you will need to show proof of your vaccine to enter the building. The email they sent around after with meeting wrap-up notes said something like, “Here at [Company] we firmly believe vaccination is a necessary step toward a COVID-free world,” and I feel good knowing that I work for a company that believes in that. They also gave us extra PTO to go get the vaccine (up to two hours for each dose) and on top of that, another full day of PTO for vaccine side effects.

However, one of my teammates on my five-person team, “Lara,” keeps saying that no one in her family is vaccinated and never will be. She doesn’t give a reason, just says “no” super nonchalantly whenever it comes up. But after that meeting, she is constantly whining about how she is going to get fired for not getting the shot. She keeps going on rants about how it is so unfair that she will get fired and she is so mad and how could they do this to us and so on. It is getting to the point where I want to scream, “THEN JUST GET VACCINATED AND YOU WON’T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT IT.” For what it’s worth, I don’t think she will actually get fired since we have remote work as an option. And if she can’t get vaccinated for a medical reason, she would just need a note from her doctor (that’s straight from the corporate email communication).

I have gotten so close, so many times, to saying something like “do you mind sharing why you don’t plan to get vaccinated?” or “do you have any questions about vaccines because I have some great sources.” But I’m so scared it isn’t my business and I don’t want to damage our good working relationship. However, I am training her to take over a certain part of my job, and the fact that she refuses to get vaccinated is making me doubt her ability to do her job. If Lara can’t recognize something as obvious as vaccines save lives, how can she recognize if something is off in our system?

I am so tired of this pandemic and I’m really losing my patience with Lara (and other unvaccinated people). But I don’t want to sound like I’m on a soap box or calling her out, so when this comes up I try to just give general pro-vaccine advice. Do you have any suggestions on how to start and have this conversation, if at all? Do you think I have a reason to worry it is affecting her work?

I would love to believe you can change Lara’s mind and maybe you can … but the chances are high that you can’t. Do you have the stomach for that conversation with a coworker if that’s the case?

Maybe I’m overly influenced by my own utter fatigue with the situation, but I would just not be up for taking this on at work. I salute anyone who can do it successfully! But I’m hesitant to suggest that you engage.

If you google “how to talk about vaccine hesitancy,” you’ll find a lot of advice from people with more expertise in this than me if you want to try.

But rather than getting into it with someone who’s shown so little propensity toward logic, reason, or science — and who is clearly being governed by other forces — the other option is to focus on getting her to stop ranting around you.

There’s no reason you should need to listen to Lara’s diatribes, at work or anywhere. The next time she starts in, you could simply shut it down. For example: “I really don’t want to hear more about this. Please stop.” Or, “I disagree strongly with what you’re saying, and I’m not interested in continuing to hear about it. Let’s focus on work.” Or, “Wow. We disagree, so let’s just move on.”

If she continues after that, you’d have my blessing to say, “I think what you’re saying is absurd and I’m not going to keep listening to it. Is there anything work-related we need to cover before we end this call?”

As for whether Lara’s bad judgment in this area should make you doubt her work in general … there’s an argument for yes and if she had a job that involved science or medicine, I’d definitely say yes. But the reality is that because Covid has been so thoroughly politicized, it’s hard to say that decisively. People like Lara have been subjected to a tremendous amount of misinformation from sources they trust, sources that have been in a position to shape public discourse (to say nothing of some communities’ mistrust of the medical establishment given our history of racist public health practices). Lara’s decision is clearly terrible judgment — but she’s also being preyed upon by political forces that are using mass delusion for their own gains. You could argue that plenty of other people have been able to see past that and what does it mean that she can’t … but while Lara is part of the problem, she’s not the root of it.

And of course, what you’re grappling with is the workplace version of what so many people are struggling with right now with family members and others in their communities — the shock of “who are you?” and “how do we move forward when I have learned this devastating thing about who you are and your willingness to inflict harm on others?”

The best you can do in a work situation is probably to look at what you see of Lara’s work and her judgment aside from this and decide accordingly. But you’re not wrong to be struggling with it. I think that struggle is going to reverberate for all of us for a long time.

Thanks for choosing to fly overseas during one of the most challenging times in recent history. Since every state and country has its own complicated set of rules that we’re required to enforce, we are pleased to offer two understaffed testing sites located in wildly inconvenient areas of our enormous facility.

Even though there are two testing sites, you can get a COVID test only at one of them, which is chosen at random. We’re not sure the exact hours they will be open, but you can bet it’ll be sometime after your flight is scheduled to depart.

To make an appointment on our website, just scan the QR code that’s cleverly hidden throughout the airport. If you find yourself in one of the areas with no lighting and it looks as if it’s under construction, you’re probably pretty close.

It’s recommended that you first check-in at the testing site near Terminal A. If that site happens to be closed, search for the one near Concourse F, but you’ll still need to check-in at Concourse A before, even though there won’t be anyone there. The map near the crowded restrooms should help you find both sites, where you will learn that it takes over forty-five minutes to walk to each of them.

Please note that we also offer several tests that are not accepted by any airline flying to any country. You’ll learn about that after you wait hours in line for your boarding pass.

Use your time wisely and fill out all fifteen pages of tiny PDFs on your phone while you ignore the fact that you’ve been unable to go to the restroom all day. It’s also probably a good idea to have several phone chargers handy since the painfully slow Wi-Fi will drain your battery as you jump back and forth between tabs trying to locate detailed personal information about your health history and trip.

The test costs $225 per person, which you find out about immediately after getting tested. We are charging you this much because we know the results from the free test you got from your local drugstore didn’t come in on time. Don’t worry; we don’t accept insurance.

We realize that the cost of our tests is high. For this reason, it would be great if you could please help by purchasing an additional test and donating it to someone who cannot afford one. If you can afford to fly to Europe, you can probably afford an extra test. Please don’t make us or the government pay for it. We’d rather place the charitable responsibility solely on you. We won’t actually donate it, but the charitable act will sort of make you feel good.

If you want to feel even better, know that insurance isn’t accepted at European airports either. But the cost for the same tests is $200 cheaper.

We offer six different tests for COVID at our sites: the Antigen Rapid Result Test, the PCR Super-Fast but Dangerously Inaccurate Test, the Ultra-Slow Eight-Day Result Test, the Medium Result / Medium Accuracy Test, and the PCR Sort-of-Quick and Meh-Accuracy Test. Each requires different body parts to swab. Choose whatever test you’re most comfortable with by waiting in one of the many unmarked lines, even though picking the wrong one will completely derail your flight plans.

Regardless of which test you select, we’ve perfectly timed it so that results will be provided two minutes after your flight leaves without you. This is why we recommend arriving approximately twenty-four hours before your departure time.

Lastly, please do not be rude to our testing site employees. They don’t need to be treated poorly just because they’re underpaid and have worked only sixteen-hour days without breaks for entitled travelers like you for the past year.

Oh, and once you land, try to find the QR code for the testing location at your destination just in case you catch COVID during your six-hour fully-booked flight.

Safe travels!

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

I appreciate the hard work that went into this essay. It has many merits, but it also has something profoundly and disturbingly wrong with it. In fact, I’m writing this feedback on my phone, cowering in the bathtub with my wife, after your essay terrorized and nearly destroyed us.

Let me explain—

The essay was formatted correctly, and each sentence was more or less intelligible in itself. But altogether, the effect was—disorientation. Worse, actually. Pure senselessness. The Void.

I read the first paragraph three times and retained nothing (I mean, nothing at all)—but my tongue had suddenly gone numb? And that was only the introduction.

My wife Kate was watching Netflix on the other end of the sofa. “Read this,” I said and handed her the laptop. A minute later, Kate said, “There’s something very wrong with this essay.”

“Thank you,” I said. “The writing is fine, right? But also like—fucked up?”

“Reading it, it’s like… I’m drowning or something—”

“It made my tongue numb.”

“I’m shivering.”

In short, the body paragraphs of your essay suffused my entire home with an ambient, nightmarish anxiety.

“Okay, I’m scrolling to the conclusion,” Kate said. “Maybe I should try reading it aloud?”

I shrug like, Be my guest.

Seconds later, I’m explaining to Kate, calmly, so as not to freak her out, that her ears are bleeding—I mean, to be clear, your essay made dark, treacly blood leak from my wife’s ears.

But that’s not even the worst part. She hardly noticed the blood, because the screen on my laptop had started cycling through photographs from my old girlfriends—private photos—photos that I swear on my life I deleted when I started dating Kate.

So then Kate was, understandably, freaking out—about the old photos on my computer as much as the blood dripping from her ears. And I couldn’t really blame her for throwing my laptop across the room, where it settled in a cranny between the TV and the wall.

“Get that essay out of the house…now,” she hissed.

“Okay, okay,” I said, but she’d gone already—upstairs to get on the Peloton, meaning things between us were officially really bad. Meaning the conclusion of your essay may have ruined my marriage.

But before I dealt with that, I had to go pick up the laptop and dispose of the damn thing. Was I freaking out then? A little bit. Yes. But I persevered. I closed my eyes and reached for the laptop and—

When I came to, I was flat on my back in the living room. How long was I out? Can’t say. All the clocks were flashing as if the power went out. Also, my ears were now bleeding too.

And the laptop? Vanished. Worse, no sound was coming from upstairs—no peppy Peloton coach barking at my wife.

“Kate,” I screamed, sprinting upstairs, but she wasn’t there. I searched the whole house, screaming my head off, and at this point, I was very much convinced that your essay kidnapped my wife. I mean, I was about to call the police when—

I heard a whimper from the bathroom.

Inside, the mangled carcass of my laptop was strewn across the floor tiles, and Kate was curled up in the bathtub, crying.

“I did it,” she sobbed. “I killed it. I killed it.”

“You did it,” I said, climbing into the bathtub with her, holding my wife close. “It’s over. It’s all over now.”

Silence.

Then she said, “It’s not over.”

“What—”

“You still have to grade it.”

80%

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Googley eyes in the last panel drawn by my 7-year-old who is the world's foremost expert.

Today's News:

null

[link] [103 comments]

[link] [213 comments]

Cameras with AI image recognition are found everywhere these days, from the smartphones in our pockets to factory floors. But whenever artificial “intelligence” is part of the equation, there’s a chance for hilarity to ensue.

The Daily Mail reports that a 54-year-old UK man named David Knight from Dorking, Surrey, recently received a £90 (~$125) fine. His offense: driving down a bus lane in the city of Bath 120 miles away.

He had not been driving down a bus lane in Bath, so Knight looked closer at the photographic evidence printed on the notice. He was surprised to find that it didn’t show his car at all, but rather a woman walking down the road.

It turns out the traffic camera had mistaken the woman for a car due to her shirt, which had the word KNITTER across the front. Knight’s car has the license plate KN19TER, and it seems the woman’s bag strap caused the camera to see “KN19TER” as the “car’s” license plate.

A perfect "WTF?!" story for a Monday morning…

Couple with KN19 TER number plate hit with a £90 fine after an ANPR camera snapped a pedestrian walking in a bus lane wearing a 'KNITTER' t-shirt: https://t.co/KbCWBKtsRF

— Rob Hull (@robhull83) October 18, 2021

Luckily for Knight, the local government agreed to cancel the fine as soon as the error was brought to their attention.

“The fine had already gone up from £60 to £90 because we hadn’t paid within 30 days,” Knight’s wife, Paula, tells the Mail, adding that the government staff member on the phone “burst out laughing” when she learned what had happened. “Obviously no one had looked at the picture and it had been computer generated.”

If you need a smile today… Paula and Dave received a fixed penalty notice in the post. A CCTV camera had caught "them" driving in a bus-lane in Bath. Except it wasn't their car. In fact it wasn't a car at all. #BBCNews @BBCPointsWest @BBCRB pic.twitter.com/5rks7xsbcx

— Jon Kay (@jonkay01) October 18, 2021

Another recent example of an AI camera failing humorously is when a soccer tracking camera mistook a referee’s bald head for the soccer ball and began following the ref around for broadcast viewers instead of the action.

Computer vision technology has transformed modern life, but stories like these are a good reminder that artificial intelligence aren’t a perfect replacement for human eyes and minds… yet.