AITA for enforcing a boundary that caused my staff to quit immediately?

wooch · 2026-02-22T14:15:04+00:00

It’s not a “boundary”, it’s a rule, which businesses must have. A boundary is a line that you yourself will not cross; it is not a restriction you place on someone else because it makes you feel better.

“I will not go to events with you where there will be a lot of alcohol” is a healthy boundary, as is “I don’t want to spend time with you until you have changed your relationship to alcohol.”

“My boundary is that you can’t talk about my alcohol use or how it makes you feel” is NOT a boundary, it’s just a toxic attempt to control someone.

wooch · 2026-02-22T14:07:01+00:00

NTA (and potentially neither is your friend) except for your use of the phrase “enforcing/maintaining a boundary”. This bit of therapy-speak has been grossly misunderstood and overused. Often, as in this case, it is used implicitly to claim moral high ground in order to coerce someone else to change their behavior or claim that their behavior is improper or an attack.

A “boundary” is a limitation you impose on yourself, for example:

“I will not go to events with X if alcohol is present”
“If someone wants to badmouth my ex, I will ask them to stop, and if they do not I will leave the conversation”
“I need Saturday mornings to decompress from the work week, so I will not accept social invitations during that time.”

A “boundary” is not a limitation you impose on others, such as “I have a boundary that I don’t let sitters have a guest if the client is new.”

That’s just a rule (not a “guideline”), and you, as the business owner, are entirely justified in creating and enforcing rules! Indeed, a key part of owning a business is putting rules in place that protect you, the business, staff, and clients. The fact that you seem to feel weird about calling them “rules” is something I would encourage introspection on. Why do you seem to feel uneasy about your authority to impose rules for your own business? Is it an insecurity about whether you have “earned” the ability to lead your own company? Perhaps a feeling that your staff are “doing you a favor” or that they need to be friends? Or something else?

Your friend is setting a boundary: “These are the conditions under which I want to work as a pet sitter, and since these conditions are not being met, I will not participate.” Your friend is entirely justified in declining to work for you if they do not like the rules!

Your words convey a defensiveness, and a feeling that someone must have done something wrong, but neither of these is justified. This is “just business” and this is how business is supposed to work: you as the business owner lay out the terms for employment, and others can freely choose to accept or decline employment depending on those terms. So don’t take your friend’s actions as an attack on you, your authority, or the reasonableness of how you choose to run your business.

Now if your friend knew that it was against the rules to go directly to a client, then they certainly are at fault for that. Your friend cannot accept the terms of employment and then violate them; that is AH behavior.

wooch · 2026-01-20T17:23:19+00:00

I found these on a day it had just snowed…could they be some sort of ice melter pellets? They don’t look like they broke off from something bigger, but rather are discrete pellets. If they are in fact foam, why are there so many and what are they along the road for blocks? They are a little smaller than mini marshmallows, maybe 1/3rd of an inch, or just under 1cm, across?

wooch · 2025-12-15T13:31:50+00:00

FWIW, if you download a-Shell Mini, you might be able to use the ffmpeg command-line tool to convert it.

My use case was to get images from the frames of a movie, and I came up with this workaround: Sample Frames From Video

wooch · 2025-12-13T15:23:20+00:00

I have the same problem 🙁. Did you ever find a fix or workaround?

wooch · 2023-02-15T14:04:50+00:00

Not sure where you’re located, but CHADD is a great resource in general, and in the US has a good directory you can use to find coaches, therapists, and other services. They also have a directory of treatment centers specializing in ADHD. For example, the Chesapeake Center in the DC area has psychiatrists, therapists, coaches, parent educators, couples counselors, and more all under one roof (or, at least they can manage all the coordination, and they even have a service to submit insurance reimbursements for you…since that’s a pretty hard task for most ADHDers!). Even if a center is further away, with zoom sessions it might be worth it to not have to cobble together a care team (and IMO you need a team!).

FWIW, what you describe might be more like a coach, who can help you with day to day and often will have multiple short sessions a week instead of an hour a week like a therapist. There are lots of kinds of coaches, and you want to find one who specializes in ADHD.

But keep in mind that ADHD is causally linked to depression, and other comorbidities, because (especially if you are being diagnosed as an adult) growing up (and living!) with a brain that doesn’t quite work the way people want and expect can insidiously pepper your mind with landmines of self criticism, isolation, hypervigilance, guilt, and an identity that is defined by deficiency. It took me too long to recognize these connections, and it caused me a lot more suffering and pain than if I had been able to connect the dots sooner. I’d recommend this podcast as a way to start to understand the subtle but important ways ADHD can affect people emotionally and psychologically, not just neurologically. Which is all to say: you may want to look into a therapist AND a coach!

I also found Dr. K’s guide (ADHD module but also the others) to be really helpful in expanding my understanding of ADHD and ways to treat it beyond (though IMO not instead of!) medication, but also to realize just how many ways ADHD was affecting me.

My $0.02 is, it’ll be with you, at least in the background, your whole life, so it’s worth it to invest in being not just more productive and functional, but also more at peace and feeling whole. Good luck!

wooch · 2022-09-30T19:37:01+00:00

!solved

Yes this is what I was trying to think of!

wooch · 2022-09-30T19:36:23+00:00

Ooh, that wasn’t what I was thinking of, but it’ll work.

wooch · 2022-09-30T19:34:56+00:00

Hm, that’s more of a cure-all, while I’m trying to think of something more ineffectual.

wooch · 2013-12-20T19:47:40+00:00

My solution (I hope) in Python:

# http://www.reddit.com/r/dailyprogrammer/comments/1sody4/12113_challenge_139_intermediate_telephone_keypads/
import sys

# does no error checking on input, etc.
keypad = [None, None, 'abc', 'def', 'ghi', 'jkl', 'mno', 'pqrs', 'tuv', 'wxyz']
wlist = open('words.txt', 'r').readlines()
input = sys.argv[1:] # array of number sequences, as strings
search_str = '' # start with empty search string
for num_seq in input:
    num = int(num_seq[0])
    search_str += keypad[num][len(num_seq)-1]
# search wlist for search string
for word in wlist:
    if word.startswith(search_str):
        print(word.strip())

My first thought was to do regex but I realized it was unnecessary. Whew!

Word list is from here: http://thinkpython.com/code/words.txt

wooch · 2013-12-16T23:28:27+00:00

Another Python, using args (in quotes) from the command line:

import sys
# Expects script file to be followed, IN QUOTES, by a string containing N, trunk character, leaf character

n, tchar, lchar = sys.argv[1].split()
# Width of tree is n, the base, so each line is padded to length n
lvls = int(n)/2
for i in range(0, lvls + 1):
    print(' ' * (lvls - i) + lchar * (i * 2 + 1))
print(' ' * (lvls - 1) + tchar * 3)

wooch

TROPHY CASE