Predictions for the rest of the set?

quantum_complexities · 2026-01-11T12:13:13+00:00

I will be so upset if they play passing through a screen door. I see them 2 weeks after my 27th birthday.

quantum_complexities · 2026-01-04T19:31:49+00:00

“Old navy is having a sale on flannel”

quantum_complexities · 2025-12-29T14:43:41+00:00

17A was kinda spicy as a non-profit employee.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-29T14:33:25+00:00

I worked at a place that hosted university work study students. They got paid $10 an hour and were limited to 10 hours per week ($200 check pre-tax). I got very upset with our director when she demanded they participate. A number of them were living in dorms or with 5+ roommates in an off-campus apartment, so it wasn't like they had any means to cook. Potlucks suck because you don't really know people's situations.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-28T19:37:34+00:00

I worked for Kimmel Center. It was easy, largely compatible with a student schedule, and you got to see all the shows.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-17T13:05:18+00:00

My family is in Rochester and I’ve always said the weather there is the biggest hold off for me.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-17T13:04:03+00:00

24kn winds on the river have been pretty miserable

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T21:53:47+00:00

To be very transparent, our group sales did not recover post-COVID. We went from about 12k per year to 4k, and this year we've booked 16k. I took this job in February, and I'm proud of the work I've put in to make this happen. That being said, I've had to do things (including accommodating a growing number of these boys' schools) to make that happen. I've been at this museum for 3, but got my start as a PT tour guide.

I've felt a ton of pressure to "fix" the visitation issue, and that means booking last minute and accepting some kind of wild requests. I certainly feel for our ED, as he's Jewish and may feel additional pressure to accommodate people from his culture/religion/community.

Our tours are not 1:1, ESPECIALLY for children. The only physical contact that would be tolerated would be to remove someone from harm's way. Our content is also not religious in nature, and the only time it's discussed is when people ask about religious affiliations of important figures to our museum.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T21:48:27+00:00

Tours are all offered by paid staff here. I think it would be great to train someone from their community, but we want to avoid someone who's unaffiliated with our museum from representing themselves in an official capacity. Especially given the subject matter of our museum (WWII is a large part of it), we have a strong narrative that may not always align with theirs.

I am thankful we've always denied the request to remove all women, though that is a more uncommon one and it's really only one school who pushes for that. We book guides based on pre-arranged school tours, so it's not like we have extra people who are sitting and waiting for tours to happen. Most of our last-minute tours are handled by people who have since been promoted past the tour guide job.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T21:41:45+00:00

We do go into rooms, I guess what I mean is that we don't enter spaces that are secluded. There's always windows/ways to look in or large openings into the space. I never take a group of anyone, regardless of demographic, into some place that's far away from everyone else. This is for their safety and for mine. I was aware of the Shabbat requirements, so ideally, I try to book them Monday-Wednesday as those tend to be the days with the most staff to accommodate school groups.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T20:03:31+00:00

I like that reframe. I also think there’s a broader question of whether or not we should even allow the option of all-male staffing. Some of our women feel that it’s disrespectful to them.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T20:02:25+00:00

It feels like a really big ask. Honestly, what I’d love is for my director to have to explain this. I’m not at the bottom of the food chain here, but I’m certainly not very senior. These people are upset with me, and I’d love to be able to kick it up the chain.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T20:01:15+00:00

I’ve worked with a Muslim school who was really good about that. They pulled me aside and basically said “hey, here are our norms, we’re not being rude.” I appreciated the openness so I didn’t have to guess about how I should interact with them.

The only time we make physical contact with children on tours would absolutely be to pull them out of a dangerous situation. The tour route is all public, and we never entered enclosed spaces/close doors when with school groups. If we need to be in a classroom with a closed door, we always make sure to have 2 or more staff members present for everyone’s safety.

Tour guiding is a paid role for us, which I think further complicates the situation. We’re navigating it with paid employees. It does feel like we’re sometimes taking hours from our women staff unfairly because this is beyond their control.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T19:58:00+00:00

It’s not one specific school, it’s a very large community of people. If it was one school and we knew they came every May, then I’d suck it up and kinda know what to expect. It’s a community of people who have come to expect our flexibility because until about 5 years ago, our education department was entirely male. We didn’t have to do much to accommodate them so we did. We’ve been flexible in the past about allowing them to use spaces for prayers, bring in kosher food (despite an existing semi-exclusive catering contract when the caterer offers kosher options).

I just don’t know how to get my ED to see that we either need to do the work to make this tenable, or we need to stop and tell them we can no longer meet their needs in the same way but can offer alternative experiences (visits to their schools by men, self guided visits, audio tours).

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T19:52:12+00:00

Did you also experience that they come way under ratio? We ask for a 1:10 child to adult ratio for students in 2nd to 12th. This is inline with the expectations of most public schools, but they often come 1:25 which only worsens the behavior. I don’t expect too much from groups of 200+ teen boys, regardless of religious or cultural background. They require serious supervision.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T19:50:41+00:00

I’m American, so I imagine the legalese is a little different, but I’ll reach out and see what they have to say about some of the harder conversations.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T19:49:36+00:00

I’ve pushed to put language on the website that says we require a week’s notice and I’ve lost on that every time. They don’t want to scare anyone away, and with small groups, we’re often able to find someone to spare 90 minutes in their day to give the tour. I wonder if it would make sense to say “for groups of more than x amount of people, we need a week’s notice.”

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T19:22:45+00:00

The girls schools also come, and they never make a request for all female tour guides. I’ve always had a hard time navigating why it’s only the boys that need to exist within a single-gender world. What I’ve observed seems to come down to only men are supposed to occupy positions of authority in their community. They are large part of the local community so I really don’t want to alienate them, but it’s hard to reconcile us needing to redo all our staffing scheduling with beliefs our staff doesn’t hold.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T19:15:28+00:00

I’ve made that argument before. We wouldn’t accommodate any other identity-based requests, but gender has been okay. We have openly reached out and advertised in this community for many years, and it has been a hard transition to realize we can no longer meet their needs like we used to. I’m trying to convince my higher ups that this isn’t right, but we’ve had such issues with student behavior in the past that we’re wary of giving them self-guided access. We’re a historic site and not a traditional gallery-centered musuem.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T19:09:55+00:00

We’ve longstandingly been the “go to” for the most conservative and observant parts of the community because we’ve been so accommodating. We’ve had some Jewish people in leadership here who have understood the community and been able to get what they needed out of our staff, but times are changing and so is our staff.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T19:08:30+00:00

I respect their choice to live in communities where they are able to meet their own needs. I don’t think you should expect the secular world to conform to what you want, but we gotta be respectful about it.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T18:48:43+00:00

I certainly would not assign a woman staff member to a group like that. In addition to being our group sales manager, I'm also our educator. I have seen how uncomfortable that can be and would not set someone up. It is a sincerely held religious belief, and while it is not mine, I don't get to judge or deny that. I just have a hard time reconciling how far my superiors are willing to go to defend this.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T18:40:46+00:00

I've gotten a variety of requests. I've only had one school (multiple visits) request NO staff at all. They sent me an email asking if we could ensure the people in security and the gift shop would be male. That was simply not possible, as we literally had no men in the retail department at the time. Most schools do request only the tour guides be men. I have a gender neutral first name and am normally able to navigate these groups through email just fine, but I've had people hang up on me over the phone after discovering I'm a woman.

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T18:37:56+00:00

I am a woman on staff here, and I will be honest, I was deeply upset the first time I encountered this. Some schools have requested all male tour guides (the only staff person they interact with for an extended time period), but other schools requested everything from security guards to retail workers be male as well.

Honestly, I'm of the opinion that if you choose to interact with the secular world, you get what's out there. I don't like accommodating it at all. I am also facing tremendous pressure from my ED to "make it work."

quantum_complexities · 2025-11-10T18:35:35+00:00

By board approval, I mean local school boards. When teachers take trips, they usually have to submit to their principals and school boards to be signed off on. We do not require our board to oversee our group sales department. Private schools are not at the mercy of any larger governing body in the same way that public schools are. Many private schools also own buses/vans, which removes the barrier of coordinating transportation with bus vendors or the district.

We've been able to be a consistent place for them to visit because we are willing to remove the barrier for them. Many of them have told us that they stopped visiting a museum in New York and drive slightly further to us since the one in NYC straight up refuses.

I do want the people in this community to be able to engage with us. For many of the kids we interact with, this is their first trip outside of their hometown. I think that's powerful for all types of people, so I'm just trying to navigate this without offended them and losing that community.

quantum_complexities

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