gender is a competition and i’m losing on purpose. i read the handbook and diligently wrote down every single rule violation i could perform. i even invented new ones
Time to feed unprofessional managers what they’ve been dishing out for far too long.
Couple things here, for when you do this to people:
1. if you get the “answer my call” text, NEVER ANSWER THE CALL.
They are calling you because they want to have the conversation verbally, and be able to lie later about what they said or didn’t say. Force them to continue via text or email- force them to continue the conversation in writing or not at all.
2. “Lack of 2 weeks notice is unprofessional!” or the other version, “Not providing notice is illegal!”
No it isn’t. Neither is true.
And in the US, all states except Montana are “at will” employment (though you may hear an employer refer to it as “right to work” to make it sound better, it’s the same thing). Sure, at-will employment means they can fire you without cause, BUT! It also means that you are not legally required to give a reason for quitting, or to give notice of any kind.
Is it polite to give notice when you can? Sure. Do bosses expect it? Absolutely. But that does not make you legally required to provide it.
3. The only thing I would change in the worker’s interaction here was their response when initially asked to come in.
Employee: “Hey Mark. Sorry I’m unable to cover the shift tonight because I’m studying for my exam tomorrow.”
Don’t give a reason for your lack of availability. It may be tempting to. You may feel rude if you don’t.
DON’T DO IT.
You do not owe your boss any information about what you do off the clock, and any reason you give will only ever be used against you.
Boss: “Hey I need you to cover Jasper’s shift tonight.”
Employee: “Sorry, I’m not available.”
And leave it at that.
Do not elaborate.
Do not offer additional information.
When you boss asks you to elaborate, because they will, be polite but firm. “With respect, that’s personal. I’m sorry, but I’m unavailable to cover this shift/work late/come in early/etc.”
Be a broken record- you’re unavailable. That’s the only information they need to know, and it’s the only information they have a LEGAL RIGHT to know.
Please stop giving your bosses information they don’t need to know and don’t get to have, because they’re only going to try and use it to fuck you over later.
This is akin all those hot takes about the 2k bug being an hoax:
“Remember when they told us every computer was going to crash on 1/1/01 and there would be chaos and then nothing happened?”
Yeah, I remember. And I’m sure every programmer and sysadmin that contributed the billion person/hour global effort to prevent it also remembers.
No one talks about acid rain anymore, either. And that’s a very good thing.
see also START and START II, which significantly reduced nuclear stockpiles
International cooperation is actually so effective that most people don’t even notice it happening, and then erroneously believe it can’t solve anything.
Fixing issues before they develop into actual disasters is such an underappreciated thing it hurts at all levels.
We don’t talk about acid rain because there isn’t any more acid rain because when acid rain started happening and we learned that the cause was mainly sulphur oxide and carbon monooxide from car exhausts, countries all over the world made it a law that car companies had to produce cars that produced less exhaust with better effectivenes (burning the fuel all the way to CO2 instead of the halfassed CO) and oil rafineries to remove the sulphur from the gasoline in the first place.
We don’t talk about computers crashing because of the turn of the century, because thousands of programmers worked very hard to write updates and patches for Every Single Program humanity as a whole used back in 1999 and then somehow managed to failtest, distribute, and update every single device and system, be it an online or offline one before the midnight of the 1st january of 2000.
On a much smaller scale, no one ever commenta or notices cleaners and housekeepers doing their job - be it at home or at whole buildings - because they always make sure that there’s nothing to notice. But don’t be fooled - at any point of your life you are one week of them not doing away from swimming in trash and filth with nothing to eat and nothing clean to wear. Only then you would notice.
Now it’s time to do that thing again and make sure that we don’t kill our whole planetary ecosystem within the next century.
english’s pronunciation rules are absolute bullshit poopoo made up crap but one of my favorite side effects of this in written english specifically is like. altering the spelling of a word in such a way that it’s technically pronounced the same. but reads very differently when your eyes go over it in written form. and that sort of dissonance between the proper spelling and the altered spelling producing the same basic sounds in your brain creates an unprecedented level of comedy.
ingredience. creacher. both of these are pronounced essentially exactly the same but the altered spellings are just hilarious for some stupid reason. the english language is a disaster but at least whatever is wrong with it is REALLY funny.
It’s actually also kind of cool re: accents. I’ve seen a few people use “licherally,” which is a distinctly English accent for “literally” (which, to me as an American, is written phonetically). Like that tells you something about those speakers that you wouldn’t know from the original word.
Also here’s a fun real-world one for you: when I was 14, someone online gently pulled me aside and said they could tell me exactly what county I lived in based on the way I spelled a single word. I was like “no way.” They named the county and when I was done freaking out they told me most of the country uses “diner” for both the person doing the dining, and the building they’re dining in.
In my home county—oh, hell, it’s Erie County, PA, you’ll find out just by looking up the spelling anyway, I don’t live there anymore so I don’t need to care—a diner eats in a dinor. Chains like Steak n Shake might be diners, depending on the person, but a small local concern will always be a dinor. I’ve actually seen two “diners” go out of business and get replaced with thriving dinors. Knowing what I know now, I’d bet a nickel the spelling gave away that the owners weren’t local.
It’s been 21 years since I learned that, and I begrudgingly spell it the “right” way online, but it still looks wrong to me and I hate it.
ALT
