Just a little (link) love: processing feedback edition
November 29, 2018
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.
busy vs. activated: a major lesson for productivity
Childhood poverty in Los Angeles.
It’s Still Radical For a Woman to Be Alone
Penny’s all over my money map this week with Giving is a Muscle and Why Money is Always More than a Math Problem
Luxe’s Black Friday spending. I like seeing what Luxe gets, it scratches a weird itch in my brain to see pretty things. I spent nearly $500 of our combined money this weekend on our Lakota families and it was incredibly satisfying, I daresay more satisfying than buying for myself because there was no regret involved.
Here’s about where I am on the parent-coworker thing: as individuals, I don’t think the parents in the letter are in the right. What they’re doing is infuriating.
But also…I think that allowing jobs to set requirements like this one does is a way to allow job discrimination against single parents and people who are acting as caregivers to aging/unwell relatives. I know that I’d need to find alternate childcare if daycare isn’t in session, and I suspect that a lot of caregiver options for adults evaporate during holidays, too. For the job requirement itself to be okay, the job should do a major pay boost for everyone doing holiday work– enough for paid caregivers to come and take care of the kids/relatives during days that the standard daycare/adult care coverage is likely not available. Otherwise, you’re potentially penalizing people who are doing a very specific form of double-duty already– they’re working at their jobs during business hours and then acting as safety nets outside of work.
And the thing is, I highly doubt that this business is offering anywhere near enough of a holiday-work pay boost, if they’re offering any. Nannies/babysitters in my area make $15-$20 an hour for daytime work, and I don’t know how much for night time. My guess is that finding a babysitter for Christmas eve, Christmas day, and New Year’s day would be difficult, and would probably require a higher-end cost just to get the sitter to come. Other days during the last week of December would also be hard, but hopefully not as hard.
Assuming that the employees have to be out of their homes for 8 hours of work, a 1 hour lunch, and at least 30-min commutes on either side of the day, does this business pay anyone working during holidays $180 extra per day? Because if they don’t, then I think that the business is at fault, too.
(And I think that being given the option of making $180 more per day would perhaps reduce the resentment among people who don’t have single parent/caregiver duties, too. They may not be happy about working, but– there were times pre-kids when I would’ve happily signed up to work the full week between Christmas and New Year’s for $900 more in my paycheck that week.)
Single, married, parenting, or not, I have never been interested in jobs that required regular on-call duties or 24/7 coverage shifts. Why? Because if I took one of those jobs, I’d have to do that, and I don’t want to. My solution is to not apply for those jobs, not take one and then insist on changing the terms and conditions.