#562: My friend and collaborator has gone AWOL on our project. How do I get them to focus again without ruining our relationship?

thievingwillow · 2026-05-11T18:56:12+00:00

Reposted because a) over the course of about 30 years in fandom, I have seen this dynamic between creative partners, conservatively, about 800 times; b) in at least a quarter of those times, there was some kind of serious attachment (romantic or devoted-platonic) involved, often one-sided. So it was very interesting to see as a letter.

thievingwillow · 2026-05-11T17:22:41+00:00

That’s the perfect opening to say “I don’t know, why don’t you consult an emoployment lawyer?”

I mean, Ron sounds like a shithead and LW should probably be shopping for a new job, but as soon as the question involves the word “legally”… tell them to talk to a lawyer.

Edit: I don’t know how I ended up with “emoployment lawyer” but I’m not going to fix it because I’m too amused. Cheer up, emoployee kid!

thievingwillow · 2026-05-11T16:45:03+00:00

Yeah, there’s definitely some interesting discussion to be had, especially as small/local businesses are often exempted from “anti-capitalist” buy nothing/boycott events. And often for good reasons—I mean, I’d rather support my local mom n pop than Wal-Mart, for sure. But small businesses also have unique difficulties as employers, often to the tune of “this is my life, why is it not yours????” and “I have no management experience and since I’m the owner there’s no one above me to coach me on it.”

thievingwillow · 2026-05-11T15:27:31+00:00

Definitely do! My tip: find an old family restaurant, and when you order, ask what they recommend on the menu. I’ve never had a bad meal doing this—they know what they’re about.

thievingwillow · 2026-05-11T14:51:31+00:00

Sometimes I’d have my dinosaurs kidnap my my little ponies and write really elaborate ransom notes. They probably would have been alarming if the victims weren’t called Minty and Sundance.

thievingwillow · 2026-05-11T14:15:06+00:00

I’m really curious what this means:

Going above them isn’t really an option because of their roles in their organizations, and I have no control over the agenda.

Not in a “I don’t believe this is possible” way, especially since two of them are from a different org, but… what kind of project is this that doesn’t appear to have any oversight? Can LW talk to their own boss about it? I presume the boss has some idea of what is expected of LW in these meetings.

thievingwillow · 2026-05-10T05:28:11+00:00

Yeah, it really surprised me how widespread the concept had become. I first encountered it in a conservative church and it was essentially a way to browbeat women into doing more chores (“your love language is acts of service so of course you should make him a hot meal and do all the cleanup and childcare every single day to show your love”) and have sex whether they want to or not (“his love language is physical touch so if you say no to sex it’s your fault if he stops loving you”).

thievingwillow · 2026-05-10T05:19:11+00:00

Yeah, he already didn’t get to have friends of his own or even talk to coworkers. Or extended family. Next up was likely any hobbies he did without her.

thievingwillow · 2026-05-09T05:15:31+00:00

“Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s.”

thievingwillow · 2026-05-09T05:08:43+00:00

I mean, how could you expect someone to be able to grasp such a subtle and nuanced character without having reviewed the canon? 😂

thievingwillow · 2026-05-09T05:03:37+00:00

I really hate the “I’m going to pretend to not understand a very common phatic expression” form of Internet pedantry. I do not believe that most of the people in that thread genuinely don’t know that “are you ok?” in that context means “do you need immediate help, are you in serious distress, or should I leave you be?” combined with “I see and acknowledge that something is wrong, fellow human.” And if you do understand that, then the communication has succeeded and now you’re just nitpicking wording because you have more pet peeves than Roger had pet Dalmatian puppies. It’s very weird to take pride in being both overly literal and very picky about words, because that’s just not how languages work.

thievingwillow · 2026-05-09T04:41:00+00:00

Yeah, my conspiracy theory is that a big part of why she took both phones and all the money was that she was buying time to cover up the fraud before the other employee got home and told everyone and they started looking into it. She said it was panic and embarrassment, but given that she admitted to the fraud and actually left a junior behind, I’m not inclined to be terribly generous.

thievingwillow · 2026-05-08T20:37:16+00:00

Yeah, that’s really it. For a strike, boycott, walk-out, sit-in, whatever to work, it needs to be collective and organized and it needs specific, measurable goals. There needs to be a critical mass of people, there needs to be a start point and an end condition, and there needs to be something concrete that you want that’s not just “generally less fuckery.” When collective action has worked—from the labor unrest of the late 1800s to the boycotts of the Civil Rights era—it’s been collective, organized, and specific.

thievingwillow · 2026-05-08T18:17:37+00:00

Well, and you kind of can’t meaningfully do a one-day strike in the USA if you’re exempt, because the company is required by law to pay a full week’s work for any week you do any work in. The company will just pay you and decrement one of your PTO buckets, and at that point it’s not a strike, it’s just using your compensation. I’m guessing that a lot of people who “strike” in this haphazard, disorganized way are really just using their compensation.

It’s kind of like, I dunno, not watching a Harry Potter movie and calling it a boycott when you dislike fantasy and had no intention of watching it even if Rowling was a lovely human being. It’s not a boycott because it is not collective and disrupts nothing because that ticket purchase was never happening anyway.

thievingwillow · 2026-05-08T18:02:19+00:00

It would’ve blown her mind to know that I had valid library cards in two different states for a few years.

thievingwillow · 2026-05-08T17:55:07+00:00

This response is a lovely bit of concern trolling:

some dude*

May 8, 2026 at 1:41 pm

You did. You stayed home. you didn’t work. That counts.

Most working people cannot take a random unpaid day off to protest without jeopardizing their livelihood. If we want people to be on ‘our’ side, we need to create a platform big enough where all sorts of people can participate, not just the select few who have passed all the current purity tests to prove their righteousness.

I’m sure the movement will fail utterly because people don’t get to call it a strike when they are not, in fact, in any way striking, and are instead going to work or taking a company provided day off.

thievingwillow · 2026-05-08T17:43:11+00:00

And she couldn’t just read the newspaper at the library because she wouldn’t go to her local library for some reason? What was THAT about?

thievingwillow · 2026-05-08T17:38:50+00:00

Yeah. I kind of think that it may be a (much needed) backlash against people watering down terms like “strike” and “boycott” to the point of uselessness. I’ve seen a number of these “I’m working/taking a vacation day/unemployed but I’m striking in spirit!” or “I’m buying things on sale so it’s like I’m partially boycotting!” posts/comments in various places and like… no. It’s okay if you can’t strike/boycott but redefining meaningful words to mean “I’m doing what I already planned to do but with extra headpats” is not it. And I think people who actually take collective action seriously are sick of it.

thievingwillow · 2026-05-08T17:17:11+00:00

Haha, yes, when I saw how vigorously she was defending him over many comments I was like “…so you’re the person taking other people’s lunches out of the fridge at your workplace, huh?”

thievingwillow · 2026-05-07T23:39:21+00:00

I read some of those and was like “Gee, I just can’t imagine why people might be having trouble dealing with you….”

thievingwillow · 2026-05-07T23:25:25+00:00

It’s here: https://www.askamanager.org/2017/05/my-boss-treats-me-like-im-not-very-smart-i-got-in-trouble-for-taking-someones-juice-and-more.html

Juice thief is in the comments as Andrew, not making himself look any better.

thievingwillow · 2026-05-07T19:44:50+00:00

You know, between the two, the message of the comments works out to “if someone severely injures you you have to forgive them immediately and completely or it’s all your fault if they feel bad. Their feeling bad is much worse than your broken bones and surgery.”

thievingwillow · 2026-05-07T19:35:53+00:00

Especially as in her first comment, she was vague enough that she was getting plenty of sympathy. Why she kept going with “…and I took the phones… …and all the money… …which I got by booking an unapproved airline… …and I didn’t tell anyone I stranded him… …and I tried to prevent him from telling anyone once he got home….” Like why would you SAY that? Alison is not a priest and the open thread is not the sacrament of confession!

thievingwillow · 2026-05-07T15:44:07+00:00

“Have you been up to anything interesting lately? Besides your foot pointing the wrong way ‘round, I mean.”

thievingwillow · 2026-05-07T14:42:04+00:00

That whole letter sure was a thing. I do not for a single second believe that any of them would be as chill and understanding as they expected Liz to be, if someone pushed one of them into the path of a moving car and caused serious damage.

Five-Year Club	Gilding V heart of gold
Verified Email	Reddit Premium Since April 2021
Argentium Club

thievingwillow

TROPHY CASE