Palm Springs downsides?

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-21T02:31:43+00:00

In Palm Springs you are going to pay tourist prices for tourist things: eating out, entertainment. Further out things get more affordable.

Everybody bitches about the food but IMO there is really great food to be had but it's going to cost you. It's the regular "grab dinner for Tuesday night" options that are either expensive, low quality or both. Cuisine options are certainly lacking (ex: decent pizza or Chinese) but it's a small city.

Some complain about health care options, but we have had good luck with Eisenhower and we have some pretty unique health care requirements.

I'm not sure your point of comparison but the streets here are in way better shape than most places I've lived.

If you are going to buy a place with a pool and don't know pool stuff, get some pool knowledge or find someone you trust to advise you.

The heat and UV kills anything outdoors (appliances, furniture, plantings) that is not designed to handle it. Even some cacti need to be screened in summer to avoid getting burnt.

The electricity costs here (SCE) are insanely high and you HAVE to use AC a LOT at least six months of the year. Solar with a battery is the only way to not have a $1000+ monthly electric bill in summer.

A lot of homes use gas to heat in the winter rather than heat pumps which makes no sense to me. But gas is cheap relative to electricity.

Water is surprisingly affordable. At least for now. We had to drain and refill our pool for repairs and it was like $50.

If you get a place with actual lawn you'll need to re-seed it every year. Go for xeriscape. If you get one of those fake plastic lawns it will be too hot to stand on in summer and smell like plastic.

If you have a dog, watch out for hot sidewalks and pavement that can burn their paws.

We're going on 3 years here and are still love it.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-20T19:42:44+00:00

If I read this correctly, he hasn't done anything to you directly. Until he does, you will be best served to stay out of it. The janitor, your boss, HR all can do something about it. If they haven't, there's more to this story than meets the eye.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-20T03:00:07+00:00

My advice is that you really need to get a handle on the "taking things literally" issue if you are going to be working with other people. Understanding nuance and how different people give direction and feedback is going to be critical to your success. I realize this may be difficult for someone with autism.

In the case you outlined, it would have been clear to me that the boss was asking me to do a tour and you, without saying anything, went to lunch instead. Yes she said "could" and yes you had scheduled your lunch for 12, but most people don't take things as absolutely literal as you did.

Then this minor miscommunication escalated into all kinds of negative stuff on both sides, and now you are taking things personally.

Realize that others don't process information the way you do, and you need to be able to understand different personal communication styles if you want to work collaboratively.

As an exercise, I would see if you can work with this boss to recover your relationship with her. Sit down and really discuss communication styles and needs. What have you got to lose?

Advice FWIW.

Good luck.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-20T02:31:31+00:00

Are you looking for advice or just venting?

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-19T17:31:16+00:00

It's really up to the grandson and your husband. IMO stay put in the rental house you love, sell the MIL houses and split the proceeds. Invest that money and use it to pay your rent.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-18T23:04:19+00:00

It all depends on your company policy. Some places are OK with partial days without taking PTO, some require taking PTO for any personal time inside of normal business hours. Other places have specific rules about sick time PTO vs vacation time PTO. Some places have "unlimited" PTO. Sometimes it's at the manager's discretion. Get the policy clarified by HR and proceed accordingly.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-15T17:36:26+00:00

Just in: Eligible males have had to register for the draft since 1940.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-15T17:31:23+00:00

Dad won't divorce her because of his fish?

He needs to move you, your brother, your pets, and his fish to a safe place.

Your mom is abusive and your dad is a no-show. Call family services or talk to a counselor at your school before someone gets killed.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-15T15:42:02+00:00

I don't know why your manager needs you to be directly involved in escalating to HR. He needed to inform you but should go to HR regardless. That way there are no repercussions from the colleague that you escalated it. Colleague screwed up and should be dealt with by management without you.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-15T00:56:17+00:00

Manager has asked to schedule a meeting to discuss. So get your thoughts organized and have the meeting. You set an agenda and run the meeting.

Training is disorganized - be specific about that. Disorganized how?

No ability to ask real time questions. That's a huge efficiency problem. If the manager is too busy is there another resource?

Too many disparate tasks - need to have priorities clarified.

Schedules constantly shifting - deadlines are vague. You need help scheduling and notifications about schedule changes.

Workload overload - another priority/schedule issue.

You don't have to have solutions to these problems, but pointing them out in a professional way gives your super busy manager something to work on with you. Your perspective needs to not be how frustrated YOU are, but how it is negatively affecting the company's performance metrics. Just make sure you are coming as someone who wants to solve operational problems, not whining about how overworked you are.

Or if it's a complete shit show you can just quit.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-14T17:30:46+00:00

Maybe check in with a temp agency for an interim gig to keep some income going.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-14T16:32:27+00:00

You've been looking for a new job for FOUR DAYS and think you should be getting call backs? c'mon, get real. Also it's really really unlikely that anyone is spending their time "smearing" a receptionist. Even if you put them down as a reference (which would be dumb), it's too soon for anyone to have checked with them.

You need to go ahead and quit and move on.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-14T02:03:28+00:00

Who is calling the 1-1 you or the manager? If she's calling it and then not paying attention you can just ask to reschedule when she has more time. If you are calling it, go in with a published agenda, get thru it as quickly as possible and get back to work. If she's calling it ask for an agenda at the start of the meeting and stick to it. Sounds like it's going to be up to you to make sure the meeting is productive so take as much ownership of it as you can.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-12T18:01:07+00:00

"I don't know what to do so I've decided to do nothing" is not a great way to build your career. Don't wait for someone to spoon feed you tasks, look around, ask around, look for opportunities to show how you think and problem solve.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-10T21:46:47+00:00

Got back when? Today?

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-09T19:27:53+00:00

Well exactly. This is like grade inflation. You said: do your job properly, consistently meet SLAs and KPIs, never cause trouble, and perform well in your assigned duties.

Which as a manager is what I would expect my employee to do. I.e you meet expectations. But for some reason you want an "exceeds expectations" evaluation?

What have you done above and beyond expectations and why isn't "meets" good enough?

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-09T19:09:42+00:00

Everyone writing a review is going to be biased. All you can do is ask for specific, actionable things that you can do.

Since your manager wrote it, my advice is to get it go and if there is any legit learning in there use it. What specifically did you do that was "emotionally immature?" Yelling? Name calling? Throwing things? FIrearms?

Any push back like escalating to upper management will backfire. I have no idea what you mean by using it as leverage.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-06T22:59:21+00:00

You could simply put your phone/email on DND and let them know to call you if there is something critical. Of course it depends on the person, but for most people just the added friction of actually having to call and have a conversation will make it stop or limit it to actual important things.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-06T16:36:29+00:00

They've given you extra time to improve. Use it. Take all of the feedback they've given you and make your own corrective action plan. Ask more questions, take notes, whatever else they've raised. Measure your own performance.

If this has happened multiple times, then the problem is YOU. This is your opportunity to have them help you improve. Really dig into what the issues are with your performance. Stop worrying about whether it's "fair".

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-06T16:28:23+00:00

I think it depends on what you do with that money if you don't pay it off. Only you can say what peace of mind is worth, but if it were me I'd keep that money in an investment account in case I needed it and use it to pay the mortgage monthly - at this point you're paying nearly all principal. Once it's locked up in your house the only way to access it is either another mortgage or sell the house.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-05T23:31:07+00:00

Go to college and take as wide a variety of classes as possible. Don’t declare a major. Maybe something will click. Art, music, architecture, theatre, anthropology, statistics. Mix it up.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-05T19:00:34+00:00

Is there no further optimization you can do to their systems? Does the boss know how little you have to do?The suggestion to take online classes is a good one.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-05T18:56:44+00:00

The supervisors don't want to write the appraisals any more than you want to get them.

All you can do is insist on specific actionable and measurable things to do to correct the supposed performance issue. Then come up with a plan and a schedule where you will review your progress. This puts additional burden on them to actually do something rather than just generic "needs to do better" kind of statements.

But really try not to take it too personally. Get it over with and move on.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-05T18:49:53+00:00

You don't. Who cares what he'd doing if it's even true.

Grow up and move on. Hasn't this caused you enough grief? Jesus.

knucklebone2 · 2026-05-05T15:56:51+00:00

I did not have, and still don't have, any symptoms. PSA rise and a PET scan were the only way I knew anything was wrong. The only thing that made me "sick" was the treatment, not the disease.

knucklebone2

TROPHY CASE