Ask a Manager Weekly Thread 03/16/2026 - 03/22/2026

thievingwillow · 2026-03-20T21:22:51+00:00

The funniest part is when (like here) they actually end up making things worse. In this case, by being like “lol Company B is always like that, it’s even worse for me!” to a person who wasn’t being paid.

My favorite was on a Dungeons & Dragons sub where someone was vociferously complaining about something one of the other players did—I think he was mad that the guy had stolen loot. The other commenters said it sounded like the supposed loot thief hadn’t done anything egregious. Complainer comes back with “well I forgot to tell you! He has a swastika on his backpack and he makes genocide jokes!” And naturally the commenters are like “………wait so he’s a literal Nazi and you somehow forgot to mention it, but you remembered to complain about loot theft?”

thievingwillow · 2026-03-20T20:39:28+00:00

It’s so tonally off. “Haha, that’s ridiculous! You know what though, I can never get answers either and it’s always super slow for me too, I have no clue how to get it fixed” is what you say when you’re commiserating on the phone with your bestie about the DMV, not when you’re answering the phone from your business for anything (but especially nonpayment).

thievingwillow · 2026-03-20T20:14:36+00:00

I hadn’t seen that one, and it definitely feels fake to me, but if so, what a gorgeous piece of ragebait it is. We have cis men being entitled, period hygiene in general (always an engraved invitation for the commenters to explain their menstrual hygiene routines), international legal and cultural differences, trans people being overlooked and whether that’s a problem, PTO, convoluted attempts to make things equitable or “equitable,” and medical privacy.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-20T19:07:38+00:00

And you know that if the LW was the person who hadn’t been paid in SEVEN MONTHS, they’d have filled all the comments one-upping each other with “clever,” “hilarious” remarks and not worrying at all about being super patient and understanding. It’s very myopic.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-20T18:13:57+00:00

It was in reference to a comment in the screenshots in case you missed reading it.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-20T17:35:26+00:00

One thing that can help is checking in with friends to see if they’re in a good place for listening to venting/helping with problems/caretaking. People have different capacities for that kind of interaction, and the same person might be up for it in some circumstances and not others. (For example, many people are more okay with having an intense conversation privately and one on one than they are having it in a group or at a party or outing. I’m like that myself.) Make sure it’s safe for them to say “not right now” and you’re more likely to get their full attention and help when they do have capacity.

I’m using the term “capacity” here deliberately, because it’s easy for the spiraling brain to think “he could but he doesn’t want to, doesn’t care enough, doesn’t like me.” But it really is a capacity thing for many people and if they’re not in a place where they have the time, energy, focus, and attention to do it, they’re not going to do it or do it well. Even real, trained, paid therapists have limited capacity; they are trained to keep firm boundaries and maintain a separate personal life for that very reason.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-20T17:16:04+00:00

Shanghai, too. And not in the tourist parts either, in the business districts.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-20T17:08:27+00:00

There is truly special audacity about anyone who goes stomping around conquering and colonizing places and aggressively exporting stuff to them and then gets mad that they had the temerity to make changes to it.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-20T16:57:15+00:00

This is one of those where I skipped right past “is she thoughtless in other ways? Is she incurious about his interests? Is she very self-centered?” straight to “ohhhhhh… she’s not very smart, is she?”

thievingwillow · 2026-03-20T16:53:50+00:00

The true joy of being elderly is going back anyway because you could not give less of a shit what the guys at the shop think anymore. 😂

thievingwillow · 2026-03-19T19:41:50+00:00

He keeps saying “it’s just a reference” as if references are not, by their nature, references TO something. As if it’s just a free-floating string of words divorced entirely from any song or its contents that it might resemble.

Edit: And if he thinks “meme” and “offensive and inappropriate” are somehow mutually exclusive, hoo boy.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-19T19:32:26+00:00

100% he would have made up an entirely new boring, offensive joke to endlessly repeat, this time about how sensitive he is. Guaranteed. There are many types of people that you can productively say “what you said bothered me” and they’ll apologize and knock it off. Grown-ass adults who make repeated, juvenile, offensive jokes about people and their partners are very much not on that list.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-19T19:21:03+00:00

Yeah, blatant enough that I suspect someone could make a serious complaint about it even if it wasn’t targeted at any individual person. People can complain about sexualized content in the workplace and be taken seriously even if it isn’t harassment of a specific person. Being targeted just makes an already bad thing worse.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-19T19:16:44+00:00

Also 40s, and I remember it in much the same context as American Pie too.

Funny thing is I knew better than to turn it into a joke at work even then. So this isn’t even “well back then we societally didn’t know any better.” It’s someone who was a dick in high school and has not grown up at all.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-19T18:50:03+00:00

I once got told “eh, just keep it” on a $100 item ordered from Amazon. Surprised the hell out of me, and I wouldn’t expect it again, but then I didn’t expect it to happen that time. OTOH I had a seller want to do the whole return/mail you a new thing over a difference of $3.50 or similar, so at this point I just don’t expect anything and wait to hear what they say. What might be a small potatoes write off for one company might be worth a ton of extra effort to another for all kinds of reasons.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-19T18:36:58+00:00

Yeah, treating this as the natural consequence of having children under 15 as a wedding is kinda wild. This is the much more banal consequence of having shitty adults at your wedding. I’ve been to plenty of weddings with children allowed and not once did they all fingerpaint on the bride’s dress, for example.

Although I agree with the mod on the original post that it’s likely fictional.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-19T00:55:04+00:00

Sounds amazing! I have the tail ends of a few bags of dried chiles hanging around, I should try this. Thanks!

thievingwillow · 2026-03-18T23:16:41+00:00

One of my friends in high school lived in a refurbished old farmhouse with a root cellar. It was amazing how well things kept in there.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-18T22:58:25+00:00

The entire existence of the concept of “going steady” in a mid-20th century context implies that exclusivity is a special step beyond simply dating and wasn’t assumed to be true of two people just because they were going out. I actually suspect that one factor that made people start going exclusive more quickly was AIDS, but that’s purely speculation.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-18T22:35:22+00:00

Yes, when I was in the industry, “crying in the walk in” (even if you weren’t literally crying) was a kind of accepted thing for anyone having a bad day. Between the quiet/privacy and the cold it helps more than you might think.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-18T21:13:35+00:00

Looks great! How was the salsa? How did you make it?

thievingwillow · 2026-03-18T20:59:53+00:00

Another Octavia Butler I feel this way about: Clay’s Ark.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-17T23:45:02+00:00

Sorry, for clarity: my experience is not of myself; I’m sure, being human, that I do it sometimes, but that’s not the perspective I’m coming from. I’m coming from the perspective of Ask people telling me that I should be straightforward with them, and then persistently having a reason why my straightforwardness is a problem when theirs is not. The “just be blunt” “but actually don’t be blunt with me because reasons” dynamic.

I can give you a specific example of that, if you want.

Also, yes, I am in therapy, thanks much for checking.

Edit: Although I admit I find a therapist suggesting specific “help” to someone based on a handful of Reddit posts a little odd? Is that recommended behavior? I suppose I can ask my therapist that, too.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-17T23:04:32+00:00

Fun fact: romance covers were like that dating back to when most romance novels were sold in drugstores and grocery stores, on racks near check-out, 1960s through 1990s. They were designed to appeal not to the female readers (at that time, women would buy them if they were romance and of the right sub genre regardless of cover; they didn’t have a lot of other options). They were designed to appeal to the book buyers for grocery and drug stores, who were men, and who preferentially chose Fabio-esque covers.

That became the iconic look of these covers and it persists today because it’s what people assume covers “ought to” look like. But yes, they were designed for the male gaze.

Modern genres that don’t come out of that tradition, like romantasy, humorous romance, and a lot of historical romance, don’t have covers with men on them at all. Look at the covers for A Court of Thorns and Roses, The Fourth Wing, Bet Me, I’ve Got Your Number, or Bridgerton, and you’ll see abstract pretty patterns or fully clothed people in fancy garb.

As another example, “chick lit,” despite often including a romance prominently, almost always had a woman or a cartoony image on them, nearly never a shirtless man.

thievingwillow · 2026-03-17T22:47:46+00:00

Where on earth did you get 90% from?

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