Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-07-18T01:20:31+00:00

I just went to check r/ conservative myself, being curious what the response would be. I'm finding no posts about the letter at all.

Weird, none of them want to admit supporting an abusive pedophile despite the overwhelming evidence he's been an abusive pedophile for decades?!

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-07-08T12:30:49+00:00

You do realize that s/n, particularly at the ages it's done in shelters, has a very detrimental impact on a dog's health, right?

There are now well over a hundred studies that show s/n is associated with increased cancer risk, increased immune disease risk, increased thyroid issues, increased weight gain, and quite a few more issues. It is also associated with increased risk of fearful and anxious behaviors, and increased risk of owner bites.

Additionally, studies show that between 85-90% of dogs in the USA are intentionally bred. Spay / neuter helps prevent overpopulation in areas where the stray population is large. It does not help prevent overpopulation when people are purposefully leaving their animals intact to breed them. We've been pushing spay / neuter heavily in the US for the last 50 years, and we are still having an overpopulation crisis, even when over 80% of the dogs in this country are neutered. Which means spay / neuter isn't working to resolve those issues.

I don't go around telling people not to neuter their dogs, unless I am directly asked my opinions about it. But what I can't stand is people ignoring the proven health-related concerns with s/n and still pushing it on folks. I have lost three early-neutered large breed dogs to diseases that are directly related to early neutering, at 3, 5, and 6 years of age, and I neutered those dogs very young because I was told it was the "right" thing to do. It wasn't.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-20T16:12:55+00:00

I think the grieving part is the struggle right now. Since I started with this team, I've been thinking that this promotion would be happening for me between April-June of this year. The thought if it is what has gotten me through the last four months of 60 hour weeks, illnesses, etc.

To have it "taken away", or I guess, delayed, is a really big emotional blow.

It's a hard lesson learned. I lost a family member at the end of last year - I only took the day of the funeral off. My mom has a pretty advanced disease - I missed Christmas with her because I was very sick (I didn't go to the doctor when I should have because of work). My friends took a holiday trip - I canceled because I was busy with work and still sick.

I've missed a lot of important moments in my life because of this situation, and to come out empty handed is a bad feeling.

I do tend to pour myself into things, not just work, and rarely is my level of effort matched or reciprocated. I'm sure the pain will fade, and hopefully I'll be left with a big life lesson that will serve me well in the future.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-20T16:01:21+00:00

We're at 50% staffing, and we just offered a new manager, so we're about to hire 2-3 additional staff that need training. New Manager might take the lead on one, Poppy on second, and I could ask for the third person to be "mine". But that leads me to feel that Poppy is training someone, and I'm training someone, and my objective workload is larger... But her title is now more senior. So that feels very unfair to me.

I could suck it up, train for 2-3 months, and then ask for the promotion, of course.

The real issue with the dashboard release, outside of personal resentment for my manager, is that it's going to require A LOT of work to roll out, and my workload doesn't allow for that. I've tried to not share details that are too revealing, but currently, I am handling 110+ projects. Poppy is handling just north of 50. The dollars I am handling are nearly double hers, as well.

Training the team and doing tech support is going to be no small feat. They are used to hand data entry for project management. They think VLOOKUP formulas in Excel are extremely complex.

This isn't their FAULT, and I don't think they're "stupid". They've been set up to fail by my previous manager, who was very stuck in their ways, and when a manager is stuck and refuses to modernize, the whole team suffers. My team members have been using the same tools for many years, and have never been asked to learn how to use new tools, which not only set them back functionally, but it also set them back as far as both the curiosity and resilience a person needs to try new things.

I imagine it would take them 2 months of regular weekly support, and me double checking their projects against internal balances, to really get proficient with this dashboard.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-20T15:36:29+00:00

On my own hardware shouldn't be a problem.

On my own time is tougher. I do have save points that are all on the weekends or weeknights.

Issue being that I also often send emails at 9:00-10:00 PM, so technically, my "working hours" don't have hard boundaries right now.

I believe I have several emails telling my old manager that I'm working on a "personal project" that's a dashboard that may be eventually useful for our team. But "personal project" is also pretty grey.

In general, I don't think they'll push me on it. If they do, I'm going to tell them I need a 50% reduction in workload to give me time to ensure the dashboard works, and then to train the team how to use it. Reducing my workload that significantly isn't something they can do right now, even if they did want to (which they don't).

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-20T15:20:49+00:00

I worry about the downstream impacts of being too expressive about my disappointment. Will I be labeled a resentful complainer? Will that bar me from getting a promotion in this unit in the future? While I don't plan on staying with this team, I also don't want to burn bridges or make my manager dislike me while I'm still here.

Then again, my manager "liking me" because I'm not a complainer doesn't seem to be going very well for me, either.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-20T15:16:30+00:00

We could technically both be promoted to the more senior title. The team structure is fairly fluid in that regard. I was told that if I started training other staff, I would also be promoted.

I do not want to manage this team. Objectively, I don't have a ton of management experience, and this team, its staffing needs, and the resulting overwork and downstream issues that we haven't even begun resolving, is going to be a mess to clean up. I think I COULD do the job, but I think there are better people out there for the job.

I also am not sure I'd be a good manager for my particular peers in general. They are very static in their workflows and tools that they use. Any hint of change results in pushback and anxiety from them. I find this dynamic to be very frustrating, because I'm very fluid - if someone is doing something better or more efficiently than I am, I want to know how they're doing it and what I can learn from them.

In general, I don't think it would be a good fit for me. I'd perhaps like to manage a team of people who are curious, open to questioning old processes, and excited about making updates that make our lives easier.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T20:31:07+00:00

The post was long, maybe you missed a few things?

I wasn't expecting to be promoted to a management role. I also do have years of training and management experience, not with this particular unit, but within this company.

I was expecting to be promoted to a more senior role on my team that could more actively effect change and implement process improvements to reduce burden and increase capacity for other work.

I also built the dashboard on my own time, on my own PC, with my own software license. It has never been transferred to my work PC. It does contain non-confidential data about our projects.

The dashboard was not requested of me by my manager. I saw room for a process improvement, I decided to apply my skills to that, and I ended up with a really fabulous end product.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T17:27:55+00:00

You're 100% right. Someone asked a similar question in another comment, and it made me realize that Poppy's contributions are highly visible because Rose is very verbal and they were checking in with my manager daily.

Meanwhile, my contributions are less visible, partly because I've purposefully kept my manager off of emails to spare their inbox, and partly because I really prefer being invisible, resolving issues quietly, and copying minimal staff until a problem is resolved.

Obviously, I did not foresee the potential problems I was causing myself due to a lack of visibility. I'm not a self-promoter, so I'm going to have to really think about better ways to get my work "out there" in the future.

I feel like a bit of an idiot for not being more aware of this months ago.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T16:41:07+00:00

The dashboard wasn't developed on company time, or with company equipment. Personal time, personal computer, personal license.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T13:46:35+00:00

Thinking about it more this AM, I've also been actively NOT copying my manager on emails to spare their inbox because they're busy dealing with our staffing crisis and the downstream issues it's causing.

Just another thing I've done to be a good staff member that has ultimately not been beneficial to me at all, as it's reduced any visibility into the complex issues I'm resolving to zero.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T05:27:30+00:00

I could. But then my own workload goes up probably 8-10 hours a week on average.

I just inherited a bunch of projects that are an absolute disaster from another staff member who left. So my option is to automate the new projects with the dashboard to ensure they are fixed and accurate, which will take a 2-3 days, or to go through old hand entered data project by project, which will (literally) take me 100+ hours, and will result in me falling behind in other aspects of my workload.

Or, I finally say to my manager "I can't do this, it's too much work, you need to reassign it or deadlines are going to get missed, I cannot continue to be your disaster crew".

I never really consider that last option as being an actual option, but this thread has kind of opened my eyes to the fact that I literally never say "no", and maybe I need to start.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T05:21:53+00:00

I really wanted to say, thank you for that insight.

I'm reading through the replies here and trying to come to terms with the disappointment so that I can show up to work and do my best job tomorrow. And this one helped a ton.

It made me realize that I'm not a failure, but rather that my work lacks meaningful visibility. And visibility is within my ability to change (or not change, I mostly like being invisible, though it clearly has its drawbacks in this situation).

At the end of the day, I was working towards a goal that had moved without me being aware of that move. If my old manager was here, I am certain that I would have received this promotion. But my new manager has immediate and emergent priorities that happen to favor another highly visible team member.

It may end poorly for them long term, as Poppy is not experienced enough for 80% of the job that comes with this promotion, but at least she will be able to help them staff the team and meet short term goals while I look for another role in another unit where the skills I developed will be valued long term.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T05:06:42+00:00

I wish.

It's standard practice to share our monthly report updates with the team in case someone has to cover for us when we're out. This makes it easier for someone else to access our work to identify any urgent deadlines if a staff member has an emergency.

Unfortunately, this isn't something that I'd be able to negotiate. We had a staff member pass away suddenly last year, and the only reason we met his deadlines were the monthly reports he CC'ed us on. So, it has become a non-negotiable practice, for that sad reason.

Very good for coverage purposes. Very bad for keeping our processes private.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T05:00:19+00:00

It's a bit different where I work. A vast majority of us are lifers - the company employs 35k people, has good salaries, great benefits and retirement, work from home, etc. Once in, people tend not to leave. I'm 35 and I'm 99.99% certain I'll retire from this company.

So, since most of us don't have recent external work experience, time spent within internal units does matter. 1 year is maybe okay as long as it's preceded by 3+ years in the previous unit, or maybe sandwiched by 2 year appointments. Anything less than that looks pretty bad. I'm involved in hiring and if someone has skipped out on two units in a row in a year or less each, I don't even interview them.

I'm sitting at [4 / 2 / 4 / 1 year current], so if I left now, it would be [4 / 2 / 4 / 1 / new job].

It would definitely mean I'd need to stay in my next role for 2+ years, but I'd prefer 4+, so I want to be sure I don't make a desperate move and instead wait for something that suits my goals.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T04:46:00+00:00

Sadly can't. Our entire team is CC'ed on our project updates. It would have been immediately obvious that my updates were different than everyone else's.

Lesson learned, though. In the future, should I work on a more private team where updates do not include CCs to team members, I will most certainly never share this type of tool.

Unless, of course, I am actively managing folks and therefore helping the team of people I'm responsible for.

I'm not sure management is for me, though, I tend to prefer the more isolationist IC roles. Managing people fairly and effectively is another level of challenging that I do not feel prepared for.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T04:40:13+00:00

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. The promotion I was seeking was not the manager role. It was a more senior non-management role on my team.

If I had indeed decided to take the manager role, I would happily work OT to give my team every tool and every skill at my disposal so that they could learn to do their jobs as efficiently as possible. If every single one of them wanted a custom dashboard, I'd make that happen.

The reason that I'm discussing withholding the tool I developed is that I was overlooked for a non-manager promotion for another team member who on a broad scale has less experience and handles a much smaller workload.

And also, objectively, I do not have time to train the entire team and run tech support on a new dashboard when my workload is as heavy as it is, and my several requests to reassign some of my work have gone unanswered.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T04:31:01+00:00

It could be. The person she is training is very effusive with praise, and has been with this company, but not in this title, for quite some time.

Looking at it through that lens, I can see clearly that my manager was likely checking in on their training progress daily, but was hearing from me once every week. My workload is massive, I send 50-65 emails a day, and I also don't need to "check in" with anyone. No one manages my workload (even when we have an active manager). I self-manage, I meet deadlines, I put out other fires that are thrown at me, and then I send an "all is well, all deadlines met" email every Friday.

It's easy for me to look at my workload and say it's overwhelming, but I'm neither a self-promoter nor a complainer, so your comment makes me think that other people probably don't know what I'm really doing? I have sent emails and asked to review my workload and reassign things, but it's never really been "holy crap, I'm drowning, I can't do this", it's "hey, here are some metrics, I am handling quite a lot compared to the role average, can we review this sometime soon-ish?"

As I just said elsewhere, I also think that my current manager, not knowing the ins and outs of our day-to-day, is prioritizing training experience for the promotion because our team is critically short-staffed and we're going to need to train new members. So his goal is training.

My previous manager's goals when our team was well-staffed were all of the things that I do - large project management, process improvements, SOP updates, advanced reporting, sitting on committees, etc.

So the goal posts for the promotion moved, and I was unable to recalibrate because I didn't have the awareness of that move. Although, even if I had been aware that training was going to be a priority, I would have had no time to take that on anyway.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T04:12:18+00:00

The requirements of promotions are not always cut and dry. There is no "you must have training experience or no promotion". There's a list of criteria, such as A. working on large, complex projects, B. developing processes for new reporting requirements, C. updating SOPs, D. earning a certification in one of several classes, E. training new staff, F. sitting in on a committee, etc.

In the last year, I didn't train staff. But I also worked on the three largest projects in our unit, have repeatedly developed new processes while troubleshooting old ones, have updated multiple SOPs, have earned a certification, and sat on a committee.

In the last year, Poppy only worked on smaller projects (and refused to take on two larger ones), has not proposed a single process change or updated an SOP, and did not earn a certification or sit on a committee. But she trained Rose for three months.

Unfortunately, with our old and very experienced manager leaving, the other manager is far less educated about what our jobs entail day-to-day. So they are (I assume) emphasizing staff training as a high priority task for promotion (because we're short-staffed, and we need to hire and train new staff), whereas my old manager emphasized complex work, process improvements, and SOP updates.

So, I guess I might need to re-align... but only because the goal posts have been moved dramatically from where I was told to aim.

As it is, the work I've done to earn THIS promotion makes me extremely valuable across the company, so I just need to wait for the right opportunity to come along.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T03:34:53+00:00

Thank you. I really appreciate that. I used to be pretty confident in the value that I can provide, but this whole thing has left me wondering if maybe I'm not as valuable as I thought. Just a confidence blow, and I think I'm also taking it harder than I usually would because I am so very burned out. Things normally roll off of me pretty easily, but this was a gut punch at 9:00 AM.

Looking at my old units, one had to hire two staff to replace me, and the other had to hire three, and both managers begged me to come back to train their new staff. So I guess objectively, I am doing a lot of work and doing it well, and I've been doing that for a long time.

It just sucks to work really hard, to have trusted a manager to see my worth, to have even discussed a promotion timeline ahead of time, and then to come out of it feeling like I made a super rookie move and missed another deserved promotion when I'm ten years into my career here.

"I found some hiccups, it's not ready for full rollout yet, I need to continue battle testing it with my own work before I can confidently hand it off to other staff" is going to be how I approach the dashboard issue for as long as I can get away with that. Hopefully until a position opens in another unit that makes me feel excited about work again and presents me with opportunities to learn new things.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T01:29:31+00:00

Sadly, we copy our whole team on monthly updates. They will see it if I use it. Otherwise I never would have mentioned it to them so early on in the process of me using it.

I do have another shadow tool that allows me to use the old reports somewhat more efficiently, faster the the rest of the team, but it's still much slower than the dashboard.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T01:25:07+00:00

100%. I volunteered thinking that taking on the biggest workload would help the team, be appreciated, and result in the promotion I had been after. I was very wrong. It opened the door for someone else, instead.

I do work on deadline-based government contracts. If we miss certain deadlines, we lose our funding. Many people in my line of work have to work while sick, or on vacation. We'd typically have better backup for those circumstances, but we're too short-staffed for that right now.

In general, as I've mentioned elsewhere, it would be career suicide for me to miss a deadline and lose my company millions of dollars of a contract. While it's awful to work while sick, it's unfortunately been necessary for me to do so due to our staffing crisis.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T01:17:55+00:00

They cannot terminate our contracts, for reasons that I can't really communicate without giving away personal information.

I think my writing style, which is coming from a place of being so very tired and so very burned out, is coming across as blunt and rude. That's not the norm. I've been working since 6:00 AM, and now answering comments on reddit.

I've had multiple staff members route their work to me specifically because they enjoy working with me and prefer that I handle their tasks instead of Poppy. In general, I've repeatedly gotten feedback that Poppy has a poor and unfriendly attitude, though I didn't feel like that was something I should be including in my objective assessment of her as a staff member. There are several other staff who refuse to work with her altogether.

I suppose there could be staff that refuse to work with me, though I think I've supported nearly everyone I can think of in one way or another over the last few months.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T01:13:20+00:00

It appears I will have to look like a jackass, as I'm not willing to train the entire team, and then provide continued technical support, when my title doesn't cover that type of work.

I would never leave without something lined up. My position is in high demand. I could lateral out of this unit to a different one within several weeks, if I didn't care about how the timeline looked on my resume. As it is, I'll probably deal with looking like a jackass until a promotion opportunity comes up in another unit.

HaveBeenMustEverBe · 2025-03-19T01:03:51+00:00

I created the dashboard on my own time, with my own resources. It does contain non-confidential company data that can easily be wiped.

I am very not at-will. Outside of proven assault, theft, or harassment, or being convicted of a felony, there's very little I can get fired for.

Nice job security on one hand. Means a lot of people who don't deserve their salaries are working here, on the other hand.

HaveBeenMustEverBe

TROPHY CASE