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The Maroon Hawk
May 10, 2008

Chewbecca posted:

Also you don't get to use the term 'step father' about a man who met your child when they were an adult. The child can designate that title to the person if they want, but it's not your right just for marrying a parent

For real though. If my mother ever winds up remarrying and the guy is decent I’ll be genuinely happy for her, but I’m in my mid 30s - any guy she finds will only ever be my mother’s husband, in no way will I be calling them my father. Hell, I’m old enough to be someone’s father!

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ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
AITA for mocking my dad's failed marriages and telling him 'You've been divorced more times than Ross Geller'?

quote:

It was my(20m) birthday yesterday. My dad(38) and his fourth wife(35) came over.

My mom got me a Pop Mart figurine as a present. A Detective Conan blind box. My dad's wife quickly said that I'm too old for something like this and then told my mom she should have put some more thought into picking a present for me. Asked my mom if she's 'a dumbfuck.'

So I told her she is a bitch for insulting my mom in her own home for getting me a gift that I really like. My dad told me I should speak to his wife respectfully so I told him I respected his second and third wives because they never overstepped but can't respect this one because she isn't respectable. That he's already been divorced more times than Ross Geller and I'm never going to take any future marriage of his seriously again. I actually meant to say married more times than Ross but then the 'Three divorces!' thing just flashed across my mind.

Dad just said I should be more mature than this given my age, instead of deriding him. He called what I said a cheap shot and said that he expected better behaviour from me.

snergle
Aug 3, 2013

A kind little mouse!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lPMf4scsTg

trickybiscuits
Jan 13, 2008

yospos

nonathlon posted:

It's an unfortunate truism of so many r/r posts, such that the actual challenge is deciding what type of engineer they are.

And it's not just about relationships. I have quite a few engineers in my social circle and most are lovely but a few are constantly busting out with "I don't know why you / the government / society / etc. don't solve X like this, it's simple", where X can be systemic unemployment, epidemiology, labyrinthine and decades-old ethnic conflicts ...

My dad (generally a sweetheart but also a retired engineer) and I once got into an argument about racism that involved us both repeating ourselves again and again loudly until 1:00m in the morning. I mean, it's great that race is just a social construct, but don't tell ME that, go to the nearest Aryan Nation HQ and see what they think of this astonishing revelation.

AAM:

there’s nothing I can do about my nightmare workload … right?

quote:

I’m in a rough spot at work. When I started nearly two years ago, this was a six-person company: two owners and four staff. One staff member, who split a workload with me, moved away a few months later. They posted his position immediately, but nobody from the first wave of applicants worked out, things got hectic, and by the time the dust settled I had been handling the full workload for so long that they never replaced him.

A few months ago, my de facto supervisor took a job elsewhere. Three weeks later, my last remaining coworker did the same. (The timing was coincidental even if the root causes were similar.) During her notice period, one of the two owners went on maternity leave. The remaining owner is a few years from retirement and largely focused on client relationships and big-picture decisions. This left me as the only person around with any operational know-how, in an industry where regulations require us to stay in operation. We hired someone who’s been fantastic, but training is another thing on my plate and there’s only so fast I can do it, particularly since we have no written procedures. It’s slow going and hugely time-consuming to create them, but I know in the long run it saves me time over the “figure it out, and then I’ll look it over and tell you all the things you couldn’t have known you were missing” way of doing things.

We’re slowly easing down from having 100% of all tasks involve me in some way, but we’re still upwards of 90%. (There’s client-specific variation even between comparable work items, so it takes a while for someone new to be able to fly solo.) We’re supposed to get another new hire after the maternity leave is over, but that’ll be another situation where it’ll mean more work for me in the beginning. Having the other owner back will be helpful in some sorely-needed ways, but it’ll also be a net negative because the business will start ramping up for a busy spring.

We’re probably 4-5 months out from my job not being a complete nightmare, and a month and a half out from me being able to take a week off without this place collapsing. I have a retention bonus coming in April, and my plan is to quit if things aren’t really and truly good by July. The remaining owner means well and panics at any sign of me being unhappy, but I can’t think of anything they can do to meaningfully improve my situation that wouldn’t involve them going back in time and making better decisions about staffing, compensation, cross-training, and documentation.

Here’s my question: Am I right that in situations like this, there’s not really anything to be done except power through it while new hires are trained up? My outlook is basically, “This is miserable, but they’re throwing money at me to get them through it, so it is what it is.”

quote:

Yes and no.

When the only solution is “go back in time and hire more people months ago” and hiring them now will mean more work for you because you’ll have to train them, you don’t have a ton of options. Depending on the role, you can push to hire people who will need less training … or for someone else to help with the training (although that doesn’t sound possible in your situation) … or for the training to be structured in a way that minimizes the burden on you (for example, the new hires master X first so they can take X fully off your plate and you get a month to focus on Y before you do more training). But when those aren’t feasible or wouldn’t make enough of a difference, then yeah, it is what it is.

On the other hand, you have a lot of leverage in this situation. You can say, “I’m available for X hours a week and no more” and hold firm on that, or “I only have room for three of these six projects” or “there’s no way I cover all this work in the time I have; let me know how you want to prioritize but some of this is going to get dropped because there’s only one of me,” or whatever other boundary you want to set. Sometimes doing that can shift some of the burden off you and back to the business, where it belongs (meaning, for example, that maybe they don’t get to do every single project they want to do, if they haven’t staffed for it).

You can also ask for money! Point to how much extra work you’re doing and the increase in your responsibility level/hours/etc. and tell them what number it would take for you to do it happily. You mentioned a retention bonus and maybe it’s big enough to achieve that … but you’re also still planning to leave in July if things aren’t fixed, so there might be room to think about what number would make you want to stay (if any) and ask for that. Or maybe there are other things you want — more time off, a better title, a promotion. If so, now is the time to ask.

Your employer sounds very, very dependent on you right now, and they’re also making you miserable. You’ve got leverage. Think about how you might use it.

Update #1

quote:

I wrote in about getting through a staffing crisis after both my coworkers quit right when one of my company’s two owners went on maternity leave. I wanted to make sure that my “this is awful but that’s what all the extra money is for” outlook wasn’t distracting me from anything else the remaining owner could potentially do to help.

My letter was posted in March but I wrote it in January, during what was definitely the worst few weeks of the entire stretch. The owner came back in early February, and I was unsure of how that would go — she can be very exacting, and previously most conversations related to my work went through my supervisor. Turns out it was great! Her number one priority was figuring out what she could to do help me out and what she could take off my plate. By the time my letter went up, things were already much, much better than they’d been in a long time.

The owners were grateful I’d kept things running significantly better than they’d hoped. That was great to hear but also concerning, particularly since at the same time, we were working on two transitions to streamline the business. My biggest concern was that between the “that wasn’t so bad (for us)” relief and the efficiency gains from the transitions, they’d decide maybe we were actually fine with the one new hire we made and there wasn’t any need for another. But when we sat down for a post-maternity-leave state of the union, I was clear that I was only happy if the hiring plan was unchanged, and our next new hire is starting in a couple of weeks.

As things stand now, my workload and stress level are significantly lower than they were even before everyone started quitting, which is great considering the multiple raises I’ve gotten. I can basically do no wrong in the owners’ eyes and they’re really invested in my happiness and my growth in the company. So in theory, when it comes to my self-imposed “quit if it’s not fixed by July” deadline, there should be nothing to worry about.

In practice, I don’t think the owners have learned any lessons about the importance of staff retention, and I’m really unhappy with how our first new hire (who’s now five months in) is being treated. I get all the credit for getting the company through this mess and endless grace for any balls I’ve dropped in the process. There’s no recognition of the fact that our new hire was a huge help and that I couldn’t have done this without her, or that she was a great sport about being hired into a complete mess of a situation, with only me to guide her when I barely had the time or the brainpower for it. She’s taken on so much and made my job so much easier, and the owners extend zero appreciation for that and make her miserable holding her to a standard that’s massively unfair given how haphazard her training has been. My old supervisor used to say she was shielding us from a lot, and I took it with a grain of salt, but now I get what she meant.

So that’s where I’m going to be spending my capital for now. Most of it is that I think my coworker deserves better, but it’s also because if she quits or gets fired, I’m going to quit rather than take on the extra work. I’m gathering my thoughts right now and planning to meet with the owners soon to make it clear that if history repeats, I’m not sticking around to bail them out. I guess we’ll see how that goes, but no matter what I should have a happy update later this year — either I’ll be able to report that they’ve righted the ship, or I’ll be out of there.

Update #2

quote:

Well, I certainly wasn’t planning to have another update after a week and a half, but I am no longer at this job! Things deteriorated really, really quickly.

Last Monday, my coworker and I realized our bosses were planning to fire her. After they found the new hire we knew they were looking for, they kept the posting up and continued the search — there were poorly disguised interviews all over the office schedule, with timestamps clearly indicating they were added after the new hire accepted the offer. At that point, I was done. It would have been bad enough for her to quit, but the idea that they were going to proactively get rid of my only coworker just when I had room to breathe for the first time in a year and a half … it was the point of no return. The only reasons I didn’t give my notice that day: I wanted to give my coworker space to figure out her own next move, and I didn’t want to burn the bridge until I had my April retention bonus in hand.

Tuesday my coworker gave her notice. They told her they didn’t need her two weeks — she could just wrap up the next day. They broke the news to me on Wednesday morning and told me it was for the best. Even though I knew it was coming and had been heated up about it all week, I still wasn’t really prepared for how it felt. Once she left it was like the past year and a half all came down on me at once, which was pretty crushing. Thursday and Friday I was standoffish with my bosses. I kept to myself — no pleasantries, a couple of petty little silences, and for the most part I sent emails for things I usually would have popped into their offices to discuss.

Monday was mostly back to normal, and then at the end of the day was my annual review. They acknowledged I’d done a lot of great work, but the focus of the conversation was my professionalism and attitude, and that I should really think about whether the company was a good fit for me if I couldn’t be comfortable with change. (There was also a section about how I needed to work on time management and prioritization, because I could “appear to get flustered and overwhelmed.”) I said we should go our separate ways and offered a little more than two weeks notice — I was about to take a few days off, so two weeks starting from my first day back. In the interest of getting a clean break and getting me out before the new hire started, they said they only needed one more day from me. (I do wonder what she’ll think, showing up for her first day only to find both of the team members she was introduced to are gone.)

So now I’m out! The last few weeks have been an emotional rollercoaster, but I’m weirdly happy this is how it shook out. My (former) coworker’s relieved to be out, I got the bonus, I didn’t have to stress myself out about how to break the news I was leaving, and one day was such a laughably short handover period that I barely thought about the million things I would have wanted to tie up if I’d had more time. Most importantly, I think I always would have believed on some level that if only I had done things differently, everything could have worked out. This made it really clear that it would have gone absolutely horribly if I’d ever tried to intervene on my coworker’s behalf, and there was never any salvaging this.

I’ll be applying to new positions here and there if they look really good, but I’ve been chanting “summer off, SUMMER OFF” in my head for a little over a week, so the real plan right now is just to enjoy a nice long break.

I hope there's another update which is just a series of phone calls from the company screaming for help.

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




trickybiscuits posted:

I hope there's another update which is just a series of phone calls from the company screaming for help.

The alternative is worse: they didn't need to put OP through the wringer for a year and a half but did because of reasons.

Mx.
Dec 16, 2006

I'm a great fan! When I watch TV I'm always saying "That's political correctness gone mad!"
Why thankyew!


ApplesandOranges posted:

AITA for mocking my dad's failed marriages and telling him 'You've been divorced more times than Ross Geller'?

lol get his rear end

wheatpuppy
Apr 25, 2008

YOU HAVE MY POST!

ApplesandOranges posted:

AITA for mocking my dad's failed marriages and telling him 'You've been divorced more times than Ross Geller'?

Is F*R*I*E*N*D*S really popular with the kids nowadays for some reason? I watched it religiously back in the old days, but I can't imagine a situation where I'd be pulling out a Ross Geller reference in tyool 2024. Unless I was moving a couch, of course.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
It was easy sitcom binge during Covid. Similar to a bunch of other sitcoms like Modern Family and reality tv like Survivor.

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

wheatpuppy posted:

Is F*R*I*E*N*D*S really popular with the kids nowadays for some reason? I watched it religiously back in the old days, but I can't imagine a situation where I'd be pulling out a Ross Geller reference in tyool 2024. Unless I was moving a couch, of course.

It's always airing somewhere.

CommissarMega
Nov 18, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER

ApplesandOranges posted:

It was easy sitcom binge during Covid. Similar to a bunch of other sitcoms like Modern Family and reality tv like Survivor.

Yeah, I know quite a few zoomers (is that the term for 20-30 somethings in 2024?) who got into Friends during the plague years, at least here in Malaysia. Not sure why Friends specifically, and not, say, Married with Children or the Simpsons, but there you go.

Malachite_Dragon
Mar 31, 2010

Weaving Merry Christmas magic

ApplesandOranges posted:

AITA for mocking my dad's failed marriages and telling him 'You've been divorced more times than Ross Geller'?

quote:

Dad just said I should be more mature than this given my age, instead of deriding him. He called what I said a cheap shot and said that he expected better behaviour from me.
"How dare you own me so thoroughly. I expected better from you"

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.

CommissarMega posted:

Yeah, I know quite a few zoomers (is that the term for 20-30 somethings in 2024?) who got into Friends during the plague years, at least here in Malaysia. Not sure why Friends specifically, and not, say, Married with Children or the Simpsons, but there you go.

Can’t say for sure, but if I had to guess, it’s not generally got political content like the Simpsons (at a time when a lot of people needed a Break from politics), there’s familiar people in there like Jennifer Aniston (well, I don’t think any of the rest are relevant these days other than uh, Matthew Perry dying recently), and they probably kept hearing their parents talk about how they watched it in the good ol’ days.

Like yeah some parts of it haven’t aged well, but it’s honestly one of the ‘safer’ sitcoms if you just want something mindless.

Sanford
Jun 30, 2007

...and rarely post!


Malachite_Dragon posted:

"How dare you own me so thoroughly. I expected better from you"

An old acquaintance got in a big fight the first time he met his dad’s third wife, and when he tried to fix things she told him he’d “already blown it” so he said yeah he knows that, he was making notes for number four. Didn’t go down well but he wasn’t wrong!

RenegadeStyle1
Jun 7, 2005

Baby Come Back
Yeah there are problematic and outdated parts of friends but as far as 90s sitcoms go probably on the better end of that spectrum.

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

Friends is up there with The Nanny and Seinfeld in that I certainly never liked it and didn't watch it the first time around, but I've probably seen every episode at least once because I have trouble sleeping at night and they're all constantly re-run at like one to four o'clock..

SulfurMonoxideCute
Feb 9, 2008

I was under direct orders not to die
🐵❌💀

ApplesandOranges posted:

Can’t say for sure, but if I had to guess, it’s not generally got political content like the Simpsons (at a time when a lot of people needed a Break from politics), there’s familiar people in there like Jennifer Aniston (well, I don’t think any of the rest are relevant these days other than uh, Matthew Perry dying recently), and they probably kept hearing their parents talk about how they watched it in the good ol’ days.

Like yeah some parts of it haven’t aged well, but it’s honestly one of the ‘safer’ sitcoms if you just want something mindless.

And younger people are going to resonate more with 20 something singles and dating couples than married couples with kids in suburbia.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

StrangersInTheNight posted:

Yes, BV can lead to biological amines putrescine and cadaverine being present in ones vagina. These are the chemicals you can find in dead fish that give off that signature fishy odor. This is why the rule of thumb for vagina-havers is if it's smelling fishy, go see a doctor.

Putrescine is also naturally occurring in semen which is why unwashed dudejunk can smell fishy.

The human body is a wonderland of filth.
What a viscerally awful word that means almost exactly what I thought it did.

Biplane
Jul 18, 2005

Big Vag supressing this knowledge... smh

Facebook Aunt
Oct 4, 2008

wiggle wiggle




SulfurMonoxideCute posted:

And younger people are going to resonate more with 20 something singles and dating couples than married couples with kids in suburbia.

Those apartments though. How are they affording those huge new york apartments? They don't even have second jobs! Joey is a waiter/actor and Chandler works in data entry.

Strategic Tea
Sep 1, 2012

And they don't have a slow dawning realisation that their lives will amount to nothing either. I'm starting to suspect these aren't real people at all!

wheatpuppy
Apr 25, 2008

YOU HAVE MY POST!

Facebook Aunt posted:

Those apartments though. How are they affording those huge new york apartments? They don't even have second jobs! Joey is a waiter/actor and Chandler works in data entry.

IIRC Monica is illegally subletting from her rich grandmother. Chandler probably just embezzles.

Batterypowered7
Aug 8, 2009

The mist that chills you keeps me warm.

Facebook Aunt posted:

Those apartments though. How are they affording those huge new york apartments? They don't even have second jobs! Joey is a waiter/actor and Chandler works in data entry.

Buddy, a lot of people think computers are magic now. Imagine how they felt about them back then. Chandler's boss(es) probably had no idea what he actually did and paid him well.

big mean giraffe
Dec 13, 2003

Eat Shit and Die

Lipstick Apathy
Chandler was a high level computer toucher/data analyst not a dude entering huge amounts of numbers into a spreadsheet

Apprentice Dick
Dec 1, 2009

wheatpuppy posted:

IIRC Monica is illegally subletting from her rich grandmother. Chandler probably just embezzles.

Monica was lying that her grandmother still lived there for the rent control price not to change.

TACD
Oct 27, 2000

Facebook Aunt posted:

Those apartments though. How are they affording those huge new york apartments? They don't even have second jobs! Joey is a waiter/actor and Chandler works in data entry.
90s sitcoms had a lot of unexamined capitalist propaganda alongside their unexamined casual transphobia

haveblue
Aug 15, 2005



Toilet Rascal
Half capitalist propaganda and half the practical needs of filming, really

StrangersInTheNight
Dec 31, 2007
ABSOLUTE FUCKING GUDGEON

big mean giraffe posted:

Chandler was a high level computer toucher/data analyst not a dude entering huge amounts of numbers into a spreadsheet

Yeah there's an episode about how they are in different income brackets and the tension comes to play in they're all sharing a meal, and the comfortable career friends want to split while the just-scrapin-by friends are like, gently caress you I only ordered a tiny salad!

IIRC Chandler was in the 'comfortable' team, along with Monica and Ross. Joey, Phoebe, and Rachel were the poor team. Theres some poo poo with Hootie tickets, they never resolve it - Monica just gets fired and the episode ends lol

I suffered insomnia in the early 00s and it was frequently on syndication, so I've seen it probably multiple times through. It's the worst and I am sad it's back - I thought for sure that these affluent white people and their whiny problems were buried in the past. I should've known - that poo poo never dies.

Seinfeld, despite being described in the exact same manner, is far funnier bc it admits it's characters are terrible. But Friends? It wants you to root for these assholes!

\/\/\/ lol whoops. Most people do love Friends tho so I concede I'm in the minority. I hate that I know so much poo poo and could probably win a Friends trivia contest :psyduck:

StrangersInTheNight fucked around with this message at 13:27 on May 14, 2024

Deformed Church
May 12, 2012

5'5", IQ 81


Uh, he's not doing data entry, he's a transponster. It's a running joke that no-one knows what Chandler does.

But yeah I can confirm Friends is still very popular among the young. It was repeated constantly for years after it ended, other sitcoms were literally advertised "it's like Friends!", at least in the UK the broadcast/streaming rights changing hands was actual news for like a decade, and even now its still heavily memed. I am not at all surprised a 20 year old would be familiar with it.

And honestly, it's still just about the funniest and most emotionally powerful mainstream sitcom going.

Pope Corky the IX
Dec 18, 2006

What are you looking at?
I always loved them giving a Ross a black girlfriend for one season in response to complaints that there were no POC on the show despite being set in the middle of Manhattan.

StrangersInTheNight
Dec 31, 2007
ABSOLUTE FUCKING GUDGEON
Ross had a loving monkey. And that's not even a late-season jump the shark thing, it's season 1! The monkey goes on to become a celebrity:psyduck:

Mr. Lobe
Feb 23, 2007

... Dry bones...


Pope Corky the IX posted:

I always loved them giving a Ross a black girlfriend for one season in response to complaints that there were no POC on the show despite being set in the middle of Manhattan.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUc0vbSlanM

Cookie Cutter
Nov 29, 2020

Is there something else that's bothering you Mr. President?

Splicer posted:

What a viscerally awful word that means almost exactly what I thought it did.

If it's the same compound responsible for putrefaction, does that mean that rotting dead bodies literally smell like the worst most unwashed genitals ever?

Biplane
Jul 18, 2005

Friends is like the benzo of tv. A lot of people like it because its so stress free. Oh no will the gang celebrate christmas together. Oh they did, nice. Oh poo poo someone's in their spot at the coffee shop. How will this play out

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

StrangersInTheNight posted:

Ross had a loving monkey.

Eww a pet monkey is bad enough :barf:

Pope Corky the IX
Dec 18, 2006

What are you looking at?

I'm sure there's a more irritating way of conveying that information but I can't think of it at the moment.

Batterypowered7
Aug 8, 2009

The mist that chills you keeps me warm.

Didn't the show end with Rachel giving up a lucrative career abroad to stay with Ross even though he could have just gotten a job overseas as well?

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

Batterypowered7 posted:

Didn't the show end with Rachel giving up a lucrative career abroad to stay with Ross even though he could have just gotten a job overseas as well?

How? He was a complete poo poo.

John Wick of Dogs
Mar 4, 2017

A real hellraiser


A lucrative career in what? She has no marketable skills or qualifications

Pope Corky the IX
Dec 18, 2006

What are you looking at?
There was one episode where Rachel and Chandler eat cake off the floor and it was one of the few times I felt I could relate to any of them.

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Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Facebook Aunt posted:

Those apartments though. How are they affording those huge new york apartments? They don't even have second jobs! Joey is a waiter/actor and Chandler works in data entry.
The big one is an illegal sublet from Monica's grandmother. This is mentioned in a throwaway line exactly once.

The other one is less nice and Chandler made good money and then made even better money.

John Wick of Dogs posted:

A lucrative career in what? She has no marketable skills or qualifications
She worked in the fashion industry, so you know.

e: Also despite being all "I ran away from my rich parents" she's still her parents' daughter so if you want to go full realism you can assume a lot of her failing upwards was due to people around her going "Oh that's Greene's kid, give her the job."

Splicer fucked around with this message at 14:08 on May 14, 2024

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