Massive climate change report: probably no surprise at all that this was released a month early, on Black Friday, when it would garner the least attention
As a parent who manages kid-free unattached staff and covers for them days nights, weekends and holidays as they need to care for their family or personal needs, as a person with chronic pain who never calls out unless it’s dire crippling pain and even then I don’t want to ask them to cover, I find these parent-coworkers enraging. What terrible selfish people!
Nnedi wanted to give Fwadausi Bello of this terrible story an alternative ending of triumph.
Thank goodness for this federal judge: A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a Mississippi state law that sought to forbid most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, writing a sharply worded opinion with implications for states weighing similar measures. Furthermore, he called the Legislature’s professed interest in women’s health “pure gaslighting,” pointing to evidence of the state’s high infant and maternal mortality rates. “Its leaders are proud to challenge Roe but choose not to lift a finger to address the tragedies lurking on the other side of the delivery room, such as high infant and maternal mortality rates,” he wrote in a footnote.
I didn’t know any of this about Billie Holiday’s life and death.
A. I don’t like giving feedback, it feels confrontational.
B. I shouldn’t have to give you feedback or tell you what I’m thinking. You’re my right hand, you should already know.
C. Why are you doing [what you thought was your job], you’re not responsible for that! You need to be doing [some other thing you were never informed of]!
These are just a few of the gems delivered by Past Terrible Managers in my Past Work Life.
Bad managers drive me more than a little bit ’round the bend. Not all managers became managers because they were actually good at managing people, they were usually promoted for doing their own job well. When that happens, either they learn how to do it well, or you get a dingleberry of a supervisor and that’s just bad times.
As a manager, past and present, giving feedback to staff, or really anybody, without either feeling or being confrontational is such a necessary skill. If you need someone to change, they need to KNOW that you need them to change! Relying on strategy C above is such nonsense.
I understand that delivering criticism feels fraught, it’s not always comfortable, and empathetic people who have had bad experiences on the receiving end of feedback don’t want to perpetuate that cycle. That does not relieve you of a key aspect of your duty as a manager.
When a manager tells me they just don’t want to give feedback, I often ask if they enjoy being irritated, resented and subpar. Because that’s the situation they’re setting up: their employee will continue to do things wrong, this will reflect badly on the employee and reflect badly on you. Also, it’s likely that the tolerance of poor performance by that employee will have a sinking effect on morale for the rest of the team.
And conversely, what would it be like to be the hapless employee who doesn’t know they’re doing things wrong or inefficiently, and catching flak for something they don’t even realize is a problem? Don’t be that jerk boss who sows confusion, induces anxiety, and breeds resentment!
As I said, this is a learned skill. I didn’t come by it naturally, especially since I’m both introverted and at least a little anti-social.
So, how do I give constructive feedback?
1. I treat feedback sessions as conversations.
This isn’t intended as a confrontation but girding yourself for a battle almost certainly turns it into one. Be prepared, just don’t assume it has to be that difficult.
First time offenses? I ask them to explain to me how and why they’re doing X so that I understand where they’re coming from. It’s possible that they’ll identify a weakness in the existing protocol, or the training documentation. In other words, this could be a learning opportunity for me too.
After I solicit some perspective from them, if it doesn’t change my mind, then I explain what we need them to do and why.
Repeat offenses, if the thing is non-negotiable? I remind them of previous conversations, and ask what, if anything, is preventing them from performing their duties as asked. This is not permission to stand their ground, this is checking whether I need to be doing another aspect of my job: removing barriers to their performance. Reiterate that I need them to do it this way, and follow up as needed.
2. Understand that your goal is improvement, not chastisement.
Even if they’re on a PIP, the end goal is improvement of the work situation, whether that’s ultimately a firing or a mediocre employee understanding what’s really needed from them and turning a corner.
When frustrated by an undesirable outcome, I’ve seen managers rage and rant at their staff. What’s the point? That intimidates some, irritates others, but rarely ever produces results. Besides, it’s rude and disrespectful. Respect goes both ways and is more easily lost than earned.
3. Take the emotion out of it.
This is about the job, remain professional. It’s not your feelings or their feelings or likes or dislikes or any of that other stuff. It’s not personal. That doesn’t mean be a robot! It just means don’t derail the conversation. Focus on the thing you want improved and find a way to fix it. If someone is causing a problem, then figure out a way to fix that but don’t make it personal.
No one benefits from going several rounds in the blame game.
There’s no magic bullet, and I’m not the perfect manager, but I try to address my weaknesses. The least we can do is help people do the same. After all, it’s your job.
:: What ridiculous things have you heard from management? :: What did you love in a good manager?
A few weeks back I finally tried out Bloglines and as a reader, I love it for the convenience of knowing when someone has updated. As a blogger, though, I wonder if the convenience of Bloglines or any other blog aggregator has any negative effect on the responses from the readers? I’ve a small handful of subscribers (yay!) but I don’t know how long you’ve been subscribers and if that encourages you to drop by more often or speak up less? Do you find that you comment more or less when you use a feed aggregator? Have you experienced a drop or increase in dialogue on your blogs?
Year 6, Day 42: I’ve got an executive level meeting invite for a 3 hour meeting this month that requires 14-16 hours of travel. That doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m not a key contributor at this level. I’m very much inclined to skip it since the timing is absolutely terrible for our family. It’s during the one week that I have JB signed up for a camp that requires me to drop off and pick up, it’s right before an exceptionally busy week, it’s right after we onboard another new hire. We cannot have me gallivanting all over the place when my team and my family both need me to be fully present.
In personal news, the whole ICE situation is overwhelming and frustrating. Details have been sparse and unclear. I’m getting information second- and third-hand and can’t be sure that all the information is accurate. Right now it seems like ICE is hopscotching him from state to state without any notifications to the family or letting him call home. I suspect this is intentional to stay ahead of any court orders that his lawyer might be able to file. His lawyer doesn’t seem to be moving fast enough to catch up. I’m not judging the lawyer, I have no idea what’s needed to get motions filed.
I had really hoped that I could at least leave the legal stuff (filings and advice) to the lawyer. The underage child keeps texting me asking for advice that should be directed to the lawyer, IMO. I’ve been pretty clear that I am learning as we go as well and that my only expertise here is in communications. But that only works if I can get information and a lot of the time I’m working with a quarter deck.
Year 6, Day 43: ICE situation: It’s been like pulling teeth to get any of the adults in the family to respond to me or to take actions the past few days. And when they do take actions, they often don’t update me so I have no clue where we are on anything. They were originally responsive but have defaulted to directing everyone to me even when that’s not practical.
I composed termination notices to their scammy lawyers for them to send but they didn’t send it because “we thought you were going to”. Well, no, I cannot cancel contracts on your behalf. So then they finally follow directions to contact the scammy lawyers and panic when the scammy lawyers call them back. “No I won’t talk to you, you go call Revanche.” But I’m not available …. ! We set them up with the press, I got a local reporter interested in doing an exclusive with the family, but they needed to decide who would talk to him. We got them in contact with our Senators’ offices caseworkers, they needed to sign releases to let those staffers get to work.
I’m not family, so I have no standing to be making unilateral decisions for them. Even though I was orchestrating everything for them, I need information and input from them before I can make an informed decision. But I have to ask questions multiple times and the only person responding to me is friend’s underage child. And when they do reply, it’s incomplete or lacks comprehension. I see that they are leaning on me to do what their remaining parent isn’t: making decisions, making judgement calls, figuring out how to bring their missing parent back. I’m not angry or resentful. I’m just recognizing what an impossible position I’m in. I offered them my time and energy in fighting this terrible situation but I always want to be respectful of their autonomy and their right to make the necessary decisions. Unfortunately, and I do understand – there’s a language barrier and likely a legitimate fear of ICE coming after them too, it feels like they’re hoping that I will do everything on their behalf. It’s just that I can’t.
Year 6, Day 44: ICE situation: It looks like we’ve lost this fight. He’s no longer in the ICE database and the family is telling me that he’s now in his home country where he is not safe. I don’t know what else we can do. Once they’ve gotten him out of the USA, they can bar him from reentry for years. I am honestly at a loss. And his kid is distraught, of course. He was their primary breadwinner so this is devastating for him and them both. I knew we faced some really long odds but, still, the final reality is like a cold lump in my stomach. It’s even more disheartening that this is the reality for so many people, regardless of their actual status. The legal retainers have cost them at least $4000, unless they were able to get some of the scammy lawyer’s retainer back, and that was a tough stretch. Even more so now that it looks like he won’t be able to resume working here.
Talking about this with my friends who are also children of immigrants, we feel such shame and indignity and fury at the attitudes that have led us here, particularly from other immigrants. We can just about understand white supremacists, but refugees / immigrants supporting this BS? After they benefited from whatever policies allowed them to come here? Slamming the door in the faces of people who have the same needs that they once faced? That’s hypocrisy and selfishness to the highest degree. It’s shameful. And maybe it’s not guilt precisely that I feel when I reflect on my/our failing to save him from deportation over an administrative error that could have easily been corrected if he had a little more access to his rights and to bilingual assistance; maybe this is survivor’s guilt that it could have been us and it was him and his family. I hate this so much. We’re gathering money to assist the family through this rough patch while they try to navigate their new reality.
There’s going to be a whole lot of hypernormalization going on as we have to keep living our lives knowing this is happening to many families. I’ll be donating money to the local community organization that did help, and looking into sharing the ICE related materials from the Rapid Response network.
Year 6, Day 45: We’ve been cramming our necessities into two 2009-era carry-on suitcases. Carry on size-limits have changed since, I’m sure. I looked up the capacity of carry on bags and it’s somewhere between 37-47L. We’ve needed more and/or larger luggage for years as the kids got older but I handwaved it because dropping diapers would open up space. It’s true we don’t have to pack diapers anymore but nevertheless both suitcases are stuffed to the brim when we have to travel for more than 3 days. If we pick up odds and ends while traveling, even expanded it’s not possible to fit everything into the cases anymore.
We have to visit family later this summer and I finally remembered the suitcase situation in time. Macy’s had a sale on my preferred brand, Victorinox with the lifetime guarantee including wear and tear, so I ordered a large suitcase and an attachable tote. The current cases are maybe 50L? capacity. The large case is twice the capacity at about 102L and the tote gives us another 47L. This should finally be enough space to keep everything in the suitcases instead of needing 16 extra tote bags hanging off our arms and suitcase handles. Fingers crossed that packing inflation doesn’t happen. Though I sort of want to start occasionally carrying our own towels because it turns out that I’m fussy about the smell of other people’s towels.
Year 6, Day 46: The rate at which these kids are plowing through my first aid kit’s bandaids this week is much higher than usual. JB with the giant bandage needs, SmolAc with the many small bandage needs. They’re both a LOT more accident prone than usual this week.
I’m mildly annoyed that I keep getting these emails: “Great news! You are pre-qualified for a generator or battery rebate. Prepare for outages, including Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS), with a $300* rebate on the purchase of a qualified generator or battery.”
But we are never eligible! They have our address, they should be able to easily tell if we are truly qualified, and yet they keep wasting my time telling me we’re pre-qualified for a thing we aren’t eligible for. And like a rube, I always go check. Of course, I would love to be eligible for a rebate on something I already want to buy for our disaster prep, but I’m just as glad not to be in a high enough threat area as required to be eligible.
We’re hosting a longtime friend this weekend and we’re all going to be so glad to see them. They are wonderful with the kids and so the kids will hog them as much as humanly possible. It’ll be a miracle if we get any actual adult time to hang out and catch up so we’re just going to plan to feed them well and thank them for being awesome. It’s been one hell of a week.
Helping folks:Lily Meade could really use some help. Her situation is so hard. I hate that healthcare in this country is so tied to income and employment.
Year 6, Day 21: What a day (negative). I dislike most of the new people I’ve worked with for the past 18 months, they are so incompetent and make my life so much more complicated than it needs to be. Today’s confidential news was like a gut punch: Someone I actually like working with is scheduled to be laid off. I hate this so much. Within this new and larger structure, my voice is not valued or respected at more than one level above me so I can’t do anything other than be angry. So! many! incompetent people all around us so of course this one actually competent person gets laid off. 🤬 I made it a point to give positive feedback about them in case it did make some secret sort of difference. I doubt it will but I had to do something. In other enraging work matters, upper management seems to think it’s ok to handwave clear violations of labor law and expect I’ll just go along with it. Newsflash, I won’t. I will never be that person. So I fought an uphill battle about that as well. More reasons for them to hate me but I won this round for my people. It doesn’t feel like a victory, though. Even though eventually someone had to admit they were wrong and apologize (not to me, though, couldn’t possibly apologize to the person who caught your department-wide mistakes) for the royal fork-up, I’m furious that I had to fight the fight in the first place.
This all feels like a flipping exhausting, completely unnecessary, exercise. It sent me spite job hunting. Sadly I’m still not seeing anything I especially want to do instead. If only we had retirement money. I would like to be secretly retired. I could handle all the usual kid stuff that I do, garden, continue with doing my Helping People work. Sigh.
Year 6, Day 22: Week 40 of working out with a trainer remotely. Sometimes I feel a little stronger. Most of the time I feel like I’m struggling to make progress. He keeps inching up the workouts every week, one way or another, that’s what he’s supposed to do, but that confuses my sense of progress because I only focus on how I feel doing today’s workout. More often than not I feel like noodle arms or weak. I noticed that my arms are probably (can’t say for sure, I haven’t measured for actual data) bigger because the sleeves of tees that fit fine last year feels too tight this year. Maybe I should measure for actual data. Part of me remains in denial about my changing body shape because I love my Fat Rabbit Farm tees, they don’t make these three designs anymore, and I don’t want to give them up.
Year 6, Day 23: ’tis a rough morning when I’m the first one awake, much later than we should be. I was up working til midnight last night, everyone else was long asleep by the time I called it quits so I thought they got good rest but we’re all running a bit ragged today.
I visited the garden for a moment of peace and maybe a reset. Out of 10 seeds, the green beans are doing the most. 5 out of 7 have a healthy start with leaves! 2 are trying their best (mood). 3 never germinated (also mood). Of the 10 cucumbers, 4 germinated and they’ve not been doing more than peeking a pair of tiny leaves above ground. I encourage them but won’t get my hopes up. Of the 6 sugar snap peas I planted, only 1 germinated and is doing a fine job of making a bundle of little leaves. Sometime this weekend I need to fix part of the auto watering setup and run it to make sure it works.
Year 6, Day 24: My personal policy is never to open the door to unexpected visitors because they’re either evangelicals or scammers. I don’t hold with being evangelized at by any religion or scammed TYVM. Unfortunately, PiC was home when someone came by and learned the hard way about my firm policy. They asked for times he’d be home and his phone number to schedule a visit. Personally I don’t think there’s any reason any legit company would be sending people door to door without business cards or having contacted us through official means so I was even more skeptical than usual. I did a few searches and asked if they said anything about an energy bill. Yep, they said they’d be coming to “review your energy bill” for savings related to the “IRA”. And there’s the scam. They’ll steal our account number and transfer our account without our authorization and rack up charges.
It was an object lesson for dinner: scammers can get anyone. They come at inconvenient times, they get you when you’re distracted, they pressure you to give personal information face to face which can be socially uncomfortable to refuse. They do this because their tactics are effective. If they can get you off guard, you’ll make mistakes that they can exploit. That can happen to anyone sufficiently distracted.
Year 6, Day 25: It’s daddy long legs season. Every year, there’s a point in the year when they are out in abundance and keep swarming our front door trying to get in. I don’t know why they want in so badly but it gets tiresome catching and releasing them. We’ve evicted four of them already.
It’s ALSO the time of year when I’m scheduling meetings 2-5 weeks out and having to shake myself when it crosses over into summer: Oh! I don’t have regular school pick up that day. What DO I have? The summer schedule (with camp, without camp, with travel, without travel) might just break my brain.
I was very frustrated this weekend when I took my 8P jeans for a test wear. It’s the right size and fits at all points. Until I start walking around. Then they kept slipping. Argh! The mental load of this week has been such that it wasn’t until today that I realized I don’t have to return them and start shopping again. There’s this thing called a belt! It helps keep pants up! They’re not purely decorative! So I’ll be trying on some belts next week. It’s a pity how little processing power I had this week for common sense problems.
Murderbot is out on AppleTV and to my great disappointment, it does indeed require a subscription. I suspected as much but hadn’t ever had enough interest to see for myself. I can do a free 7day trial. Maybe I wait til all the episodes are out and then binge them in a week.
Year 5, Day 351: This day started with the surprise visit of a neighbor dog as happy to see me as I was him. That was really nice. Lots of kisses and skritches. Every morning should start with a dog visit until we can bring home a dog friend.
I spent 2.25 hours trying to order pet food from not-terrible places to ship to the reservations. That is way too much time for what result I got out of it: having to order one part of the shipment from PetsSmart and 2/3 of it from Amazon. I also tried to get electricity hooked up for a family but we’re going 3 rounds of email and calls trying to locate their account and we’re not there yet.
Courtney Milan did a great explainer on the tariffs. I’ve been sharing this with people who aren’t plugged into the better sources of news (not mainstream media which fails on many fronts). I’ve also been recommending that they follow Celeste Pewter on Bluesky to get good political commentary and actions to encourage them to educate themselves a bit more and to hopefully take some action.
Year 5, Day 352: What a day. I woke up with blood pressure-brain problems so I was woozy all day long. Had a 2 hour call. Had to follow up on the Lakota orders, it wasn’t certain which would ship and which wouldn’t. Had to check in with staff to assign them more work and answer questions. SO many questions. OMG.
I catch myself staring at my to do list like there’s some magical line item that I can add that will fight fascism and make this country the place it should have been but has never been, and adding precisely nothing. There are a thousand things we can do, it’s just today, in this moment, my brain is stuck. It’ll shake loose, it’s just *waves hands*.
We’re also very close to ticking over into Year 6 since COVID and I wonder if it’s time to change the titles of these posts. COVID is obviously here to stay. We’re not likely to hear much about it with this completely reckless, thieving, homicidal administration. I don’t know what to switch to, though.
Almost back on track with my workouts after the big derailing in January. My stamina still feels hollowed out, though, not sure if that feeling will go away anytime soon. Occasionally I do feel stronger, though, and I’m grateful for those few feedback moments.
Year 5, Day 353: Lucky timing, border collie friend caught me early so we had a quick game of catch. I can never pet her anymore because my only job is to PLAY and dispense TREATS. Oh well.
I’ve been in a holding pattern for so many things, for months, that it feels weird now that most of them are resolved. Is this how it feels when stress levels are reset from Excessively High to Medium? This is good! I’m just a little wobbly.
We’ve filed our tax return, paid the state and received the federal refund (surprised and relieved).
The raise negotiations that were held up for months concluded abruptly (got an increase. not what I deserve but in this economy I’ll take it for now). Now the waiting for the paperwork begins.
We’ve met the minimum spend on the first churning credit card, bonus points deposited. The second churning credit card has arrived in time for us to pay for the big insurance premiums. (Our home and earthquake polices went up again, of course. Mrgh.)
The restructure at work is almost done, we know all the essential changes and people can live with them.
We took a day off and had an overnight trip with the kids that was pretty good. I’d been dreading the trip, worrying that SmolAc would be in Bad Traveler Grumpy mode. They were excited, though, so that helped.
I took advantage of the sun and the school minimum day to pull weeds for a quick half hour and worked up a sweat. Pretending that I can work my way up to my trainer’s level of buff. Hah!
Year 5, Day 354: My phone camera has started doing this strange thing. It strobes black vertical bars across the screen that causes the pictures to be partly blacked out. It seems to only do this indoors, but it’s cropping up at places where I’ve taken hundreds of photos and videos. I can work around it by taking a video and snapping pictures as I record but that doesn’t work for portraits. I don’t intend to buy a new phone so soon, this one’s only 3 years old! I’ll have to figure out a fix somehow.
In other phone news, PiC’s phone croaked so we ordered him a new one. Just like that, we hit the minimum spend on the card that just arrived today.
Year 5, Day 355: The slow motion ant infestation is making me lose it a little. I find them in the kitchen, put down bait. Two days later, I find them in the office, put down bait. Two days later, kitchen again. Bait, again. Two days later, bedroom. Bait. Four days later, bathroom. ARGHHHH!! It’s like they have us surrounded and every time I bait one area, they send their scouts in another room.
