MetaFilter

knoyers: “Yes. When you deliberately create negative publicity about your employer to get attention and sympathy online, you are putting your eggs in another basket, regardless of whether you objectively have a point or not. She made the choice to turn against her company and call them out. That meant giving up on that job. Very few people are in a position to publicly degrade their employer and expect to get paid for it”

So, just to be... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by koeselitz at 11:21 PM on February 21, 2016

I'm ten years into a career as a CSR myself.

My first position was shitty. I made $8.25 straight up, not just after taxes (admittedly I live nowhere near San Francisco, and I had 3 or 4 roommates at the time.) Today I'm making $17. A lot of people would still call that shitty, and I guess it some ways it is. I'm no jet setter and never will be.

Yet, I'm really proud of my tenacity and what I've accomplished in character sticking to this line of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dissolvedgirl22 at 6:27 PM on February 21, 2016

What fraction of CSRs move into marketing? Probably not just a single digit percentage; probably 1% or so. Because the people who take CSR jobs in general aren't qualified for anything and CSR is kind of a dead end, barely white collar-ish kind of gig that you give a kid until they come to their senses and move on.

Hi! I reactivated my account specifically to respond to this part, because I couldn't believe not a single other soul had called this out... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by palomar at 5:38 PM on February 21, 2016

The wages fall and the cost of living rises until an equilibrium is reached. How is that "immoral"?

How is that even a hard question to answer, much less a rhetorical one that you think wins an argument? It's immoral because it fucks up people's lives. Jesus.

The level of callous contempt for a worker's basic desire for a livable wage here is really astonishing; good evidence that the toxic... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by RogerB at 4:41 PM on February 21, 2016

I'm a public defender in Kentucky. Putting aside the low morale and high turnover that you get with wages averaging about $12-$15/hour for positions requiring a doctorate degree and over 60 hours a week, our caseloads are absolutely absurd and our clients are basically effed.

I asked around the office the other day, and folks were talking about their "records" of cases handled in court between the morning court hours of 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., when the judges... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by likeatoaster at 7:28 AM on February 20, 2016

I think part of the problem here is this site-wide Engineers Disease problem. Like obviously what this little lady needs is some incredibly Smart Dude to do the math that her poor little brain can't handle - otherwise she wouldn't be in this mess!! Before you make a comment like this, stop for a second and remember that most people aren't complete idiots and don't need you to solve problems that you went ahead and picked out for them. They need you to listen to what they are saying and respond... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by bleep at 6:12 PM on February 21, 2016

She gets out of college and takes a minimum wage job in the most expensive city in America. She's puzzled and upset when this doesn't work out to her satisfaction.

Talia, don't be mad at the CEO. Be mad at the string of relatives, friends, teachers and professors that all failed to arm you with sufficient critical-thinking skills to recognize that this is a terrible idea.
posted to MetaFilter by Cool Papa Bell at 2:26 PM on February 20, 2016

Look, guys, it's not that complicated. Josh, put down the dumbbell and pay attention. I'm doing this for your benefit.

So. There are four simultaneous days, same earth rotation, okay? You with me so far? So that means 4 corner simultaneous 24 hour Days that occur within a single 4 corner rotation of Earth. Right? You got that? It's not rocket science.
posted to MetaFilter by Naberius at 7:55 AM on February 19, 2016

Hi there, it's me, the nosy paint-by-number serial killer with precisely arched eyebrows :) Thanks to Johnny Wallflower for sending me the link to this discussion.

Yeah, not so sure where the eyebrow thing came from, but it's better than "Wright, a dark haired woman who at 37 is much too old to be sporting zits on her chin."

The paint-by-number comment was because I did so many of them during the two years I was stuck in bed at my... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by TarynHarperWright at 2:42 PM on February 18, 2016

The author knew that one thing the reading public can't stand is a hoax buster with imprecisely arched eyebrows.
posted to MetaFilter by Devils Rancher at 11:00 AM on February 18, 2016

Spiral / engrenages , is a French crime drama that I quite liked, and several seasons are available on Netflix currently. It's somewhat dark/adult themed.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by TheAdamist at 4:01 AM on February 18, 2016

I would also like to take a minute to appreciate that Scully Jr. used a riding crop on Mulder. Thumbs up.
posted to FanFare by fluffy battle kitten at 11:48 PM on February 16, 2016

It's not like it's just market forces acting. Many female diamonds think they are coal because of a deliberate attempt by men to devalue them so they can date them.
posted to MetaFilter by corb at 6:11 PM on February 16, 2016

Ah, I see. With incorrect visual cues, the brain can be tricked into thinking a soccer coach is a secret agent or even a can of corn.
posted to MetaFilter by condour75 at 7:24 PM on February 15, 2016

Also, when you need to do some soldering, a great place to work is at a table laden with explosives.
posted to FanFare by lefty lucky cat at 2:03 PM on February 16, 2016

Hey all. Apologies for the blerg that was only sorta germaine to the discussion. Guess I needed to get that out. Good news is five minutes after writing it and rereading it I saw how ridiculous it was to be even trying to deal with it and took option C. I just packed up my stuff and left. The awesome ladies I work with who understand that when stuff like this happens you just need some time and a bit of space to process said they would look after informing bossman.

Home... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Jalliah at 1:36 PM on February 16, 2016

In my experience, female anger is often perceived as irrational, shrill, and overblown, to be gaslit and dismissed (in that order).

I have made it my personal mission to be the person that my female friends can go to when they need someone to say "you are 100% allowed to be angry, this is a shitty thing that has happened that deserves your valid anger". It is an extremely satisfying feeling, but it's also heartbreaking how much we are trained to second-guess... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Phire at 11:59 AM on February 16, 2016

Seconding nadawi on this. The guys I know that have bought into that are often the ones who have exploded in rage at small provocations, because they haven't allowed themselves any other outlets. They're people to be feared, not loved or respected in my experience.
posted to MetaFilter by peppermind at 11:15 AM on February 16, 2016

i've personally found that men who have really internalized "boys don't cry" type stuff actually burden people, especially romantic partners, with their emotions constantly. they're the guys who hit the table when they're angry, who make you console them when they've upset you, who refuse to participate in things like small talk or gift exchanges or going to dinners they don't want to go to because they view it akin to blackmail. they talk a lot about how women's emotions are... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nadawi at 11:00 AM on February 16, 2016

Oh, I feel bad for Kumail Nanjiani having to watch that.
posted to FanFare by He Is Only The Imposter at 12:41 PM on February 16, 2016

By this time, I think it's fair to say a TV writer who unironically portrays a Muslim as a terrorist without any misdirection has declared himself a hack who needs to be put out to pasture.
posted to FanFare by wabbittwax at 12:32 PM on February 16, 2016

%n:"When the episode started, I hoped, against all logic, that maybe the two young men we were following were just nervous about a job interview or some other thing and that maybe the bombing that seemed inevitable would have been perpetrated by some government conspiracy or a white Christian nutjob."

I was hoping that the misdirection was that they were actually car salesmen (with the talk about blessing their voices and whatnot) and they... [more]
posted to FanFare by charred husk at 12:02 PM on February 16, 2016

I'm just going to say it: if you're breaking up with a man, you can ghost. In my experience, men are way more likely to act somewhere on the spectrum of terrible to terrifying when they're told no, I don't want to see you again.

For a woman, you can (and in my opinion, should) be more direct as per much of the above good advice. Don't ghost. And don't do what multiple men did to me when I was dating: finally acquiesce and say you'll come to my place, stand me up, and then ghost.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by sockermom at 7:03 AM on February 16, 2016

When the episode started, I hoped, against all logic, that maybe the two young men we were following were just nervous about a job interview or some other thing and that maybe the bombing that seemed inevitable would have been perpetrated by some government conspiracy or a white Christian nutjob.

Alas.

The last two episodes were the X-Files. This? Nope.
posted to FanFare by wabbittwax at 7:50 AM on February 16, 2016

During the final scene, I was thinking "this could go one of two ways" but since they didn't end up in adjacent bathtubs, it was in fact a car commercial, not an ad for Cialis.
posted to FanFare by lefty lucky cat at 11:08 PM on February 15, 2016

I happened to reread Shirley Jackson's "Got a Letter from Jimmy" last night, which sometimes comes to mind apropos of emotional labor and avoidance.


    Sometimes, she thought, stacking the dishes in the kitchen, sometimes I wonder if men are quite sane, any of them. Maybe they're all just crazy and every other woman knows it but me, and my mother never told me and my roommate just didn't mention it and all the other wives think... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chortly at 4:41 PM on February 15, 2016

I just want to thank the commenters in this thread for helping me with something. I read the EL thread and feel like I have a fairly good grasp on the concept. I've had plenty of relationships with men that involved me doing the bulk of the household work (both physical labor and the organizational/mental/emotional shit.)

But this thread helped me with framing my divorce differently, which I've really needed lately. I left my husband because I felt alone in our... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by misskaz at 3:00 PM on February 15, 2016

I'm not willing to be a bonsai person and tamp down my needs and goals in life to follow in the footsteps of some dude, and years of shitty manbaby relationships (and the great EL thread!) have me soured on the prospect of hand-holding and teaching yet another adult human being how to adult, both emotionally and with basic life skills. I am absolutely done nagging men to throw away their garbage instead of leaving it laying around.

PREACH.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by amnesia and magnets at 11:17 AM on February 15, 2016

I'm a criminal defense attorney. If I could give you one piece of advice, it would be to never talk to the police without consulting a lawyer and having that lawyer with you during questioning. If I could give you two pieces of advice, however, the second one would be this: have at least one close friend or family member who answers their phone and does not screen calls, and memorize that person's phone number.

I meet a ton of people who spent more time in jail than... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by decathecting at 9:36 AM on February 15, 2016

I was raised to be accommodating and nurturing. I was actually expressly taught not to have high expectations for men, but also shown by daily example that they were important and their egos fragile and in need of protection. The result?

- I have gently comforted a boyfriend I'd just started dating, because he had slapped me in the face and was then immediately overwhelmed by melancholy and anxiety about turning into his dad. (Btw, turns out if you do that, he'll just... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sively at 8:56 AM on February 15, 2016

I would say, however, that if you have a moment it's worth slowing down to recognize that the problem is kind of a tough one

women have been doing the slowing down and recognizing and trying to help this - that's what this post is about - about how women spend so much dang time focusing on how to cater to men's needs and teach them to be fully formed adults and hold our tongues while men learn, etc.

one of the greatest things... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nadawi at 8:44 AM on February 15, 2016

the best argument for innate sexual identity is that so many women still participate in heterosexuality.
posted to MetaFilter by nadawi at 7:20 AM on February 15, 2016

What's up with all these spoiled adult babies?

If you're referring to people who don't tell/contact their parents much, well, not everyone has a good relationship with their parents. A parent is not automatically good for their child.

Referring to people as "spoiled adult babies" is kind of nasty.
posted to MetaFilter by Solomon at 12:56 AM on February 15, 2016

Patriarchy is a social system that values and prioritizes maleness and masculinity above all else. Individual men may not be twitching the puppet strings behind the scenes; that does not mean the answer to "fixing" emotionally-stunted men who need their girlfriends to emote for them is to bemoan the mothers who haven't done enough for their sons, or female school administrators who weren't sympathetic enough to hypothetical male students. It does take all of us to fix this system. So... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Phire at 2:33 AM on February 15, 2016

"But I don't get how you're like Levin in Anna Karenina thinking, "oh how grand, a woman to listen to my thoughts on farming technology... !" without considering that maybe she dgaf and actually cares about things of her own"

I mean, honestly, I think a lot of them just ... don't. Children are self-centered creatures and they're (ideally) raised by people who DO spend a lot of time helping them regulate their emotional life. Like,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Eyebrows McGee at 9:25 PM on February 14, 2016

Honestly what's weird about the way current men seem to be going is that they themselves have decided to "free" themselves of prior expectations about marriage. Yes, women have always been expected to do emotional labor, but at least in the past, men knew they actually had to court women, had to care for and please their wives, spent a not insignificant amount of time rewarding women for putting up with their shit. Now men are happy to say "Yay equality! I don't have to pay for... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by corb at 6:41 PM on February 14, 2016

[Polymodus, Sangermaine, Jesus DEFINITELY wants you to make like Elsa and Let It Go.]
posted to MetaFilter by Eyebrows McGee at 8:36 PM on February 13, 2016

Post election he should just go T-shirt and jeans.

It's cold out, perhaps a hoodie.
posted to MetaFilter by Brandon Blatcher at 6:27 PM on February 13, 2016

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I wish Obama had put on a necktie for this announcement. A president memorializing a justice should be a formal occasion.
posted to MetaFilter by Pater Aletheias at 5:48 PM on February 13, 2016

#OurDumbSenator

(sigh, Knock out of the box, Feingold)
posted to MetaFilter by drezdn at 5:22 PM on February 13, 2016

Something else I've been thinking about enacting gender, recently: your ability to be queer or trans and transgress gender norms can be very, very class-marked and very regional. For instance, I live in a fairly liberal city and work at a place where there's some tolerance for visibly queer people. (Trans people, not so much, which is another thing that keeps matters where they stand for me.) I can't wear, like, a spangled glitter tuxedo to work, but I can be read as a butch woman at work and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Frowner at 2:57 PM on February 14, 2016

It's your actual mom. The point there is not densely packed, hyper efficient communication, it's establishing/reinforcing family bonds.

Mothers vary, and family bonds aren't always a positive thing.
posted to MetaFilter by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:36 PM on February 14, 2016

> The American people‎ should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice.

Isn't that why they elected Obama?
posted to MetaFilter by beerbajay at 5:06 PM on February 13, 2016

> Sweet! We might get to see Rubio get stuck in another sub-routine.

Let's tell him it's January 1, 1970 and see what happens!
posted to MetaFilter by benito.strauss at 5:00 PM on February 13, 2016

You guys, Joan Crawford has already been mentioned three times in this obit thread.

In the culture war case of Scalia v. McNamara, I won!
posted to MetaFilter by MCMikeNamara at 3:58 PM on February 13, 2016

300+ fucking days with a vacancy on the supreme court?


Drop the goddmanned hammer. I don't know what they can do from a parliamentary standpoint, but enough. Enough consensus, and pretending that this is okay. As an entire singular block, the democrats should be on every fucking channel every goddamned day describing this, not as politics as usual, but full-stop constitutional crisis.

Yeah it's pearl clutching, but I'm fucking... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Lord_Pall at 3:58 PM on February 13, 2016

Bernie Sanders: My thoughts and prayers are with Justice Scalia's family and colleagues, who mourn his passing.

Drop the mic, Bernie.
posted to MetaFilter by dry white toast at 3:51 PM on February 13, 2016

When I read he died on a west Texas ranch, naturally I immediately wondered if he had been shot in the face by Dick Cheney.
posted to MetaFilter by Daddy-O at 3:43 PM on February 13, 2016

Is there anything that can be done to reduce the risk? Making some dude take Valtrex when he hasn't had a cold sore in years seems pretty mean, but I don't know.

Valtrex prophylaxis taken by either of you would reduce transmission risk. Since you acknowledge this is your own issue exacerbated by your OCD, would you be willing to start taking daily Valtrex?

Finally, I have no specific recommendations for... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by telegraph at 8:50 AM on February 14, 2016

Data on 1,700 paid clients was lost when a surge in traffic fried his servers due to inadequate bandwidth. Recovering the data, says Rae, cost “thousands of dollars.”

Must have been quite a surge - probably blew off a data gasket and flooded his server with bits.
posted to MetaFilter by Dr Dracator at 3:21 AM on February 14, 2016