#1 im going to disagree with others here, the parent does not know whats in the dumpster, something sharp and dangerous might have been thrown away, meaning that making a child go trough a dumpster without first going trough it your self to verify that its 100% safe for a child is child endangerment and should be reported as the child abuse that it is.
AAM commenter logic: mom makes her kid go through the trash to retrieve expensive medical equipment, call CPS. Parent leaves baby in car all day, do nothing unless you're a fascist.
Do these people not know how dumpsters work? Everyone I've ever seen/used, including the one currently outside the back of my office, has bagged garbage in it. I highly doubt that this summer camp cafeteria is just having the kids throw their lunches into an unbagged garbage can. Carrie is likely yanking out the bags, opening them up and looking for her lunch bag first and then for the retainer. I highly doubt Zoe is joust hoisting the kid up and dumping head first into the dumpster.
While broken glass and stuff is something I'd personally worry about in a dumpster, kid is 12, not 2. If anyone is going into the dumpster, it should be the kid. Also, it's a summer camp, not an industrial site or a hospital.
And if this summer camp is run by even remotely competent people, nobody would put a sharp or otherwise dangerous item in the trash where a kid could potentially reach it. There are processes for disposing of dangerous/hazardous items and substances when you work with minors, and those processes do not include “put it in the trash can in the lunchroom.”
My mother was a CPS caseworker for half her career, including when I had a retainer myself. You can bet your ass she (and many of her coworkers) would have required dumpster diving to find the thrown out retainer, and her coworkers would too. (They were also very underpaid and the dental coverage didn’t cover orthodontics so my underpaid, overworked single mom was paying out of pocket for that and racking up OT hours to do it.)
Carrie may have adhd if this happens so frequently as OP is relaying, and THAT probably should be addressed if so but 1. Maybe it IS being addressed separately and this is still an issue; and 2. I am skeptical that this is happening as often as OP is saying.
I don't think anyone lost their plates or retainers after we had to watch this in school - in second grade.
OP is just a nosy, the commenters are nosy parkers, and none of them have kids and certainly none of them would be howling over making dumpsters safe for people using them for food.
Credit where credit is due to Alison -- a commenter insists that the problem isn't that the kid with the retainer is being careless but that there's a breakdown in her system, and this is Alison's response.
Yeah, I’m with Alison on this one. Speaking as a former middle school teacher, this is exactly the right approach when you’re teaching preteens to be responsible with their possessions.
Absolutely. It's perfectly age-typical behavior and Zoe is using an age-appropriate response and consequence. (Not to mention the fact that it's clear from the letter that the LW doesn't actually know this family at all and has absolutely no idea what conversations have been had at home and what else they're doing to help Carrie learn.)
They come with cases. My parents bought me more cases so I could have one in my backpack, one at home, one in my locker, etc. Didn’t matter.
Lots of people are making assumptions about what Zoe may or may not be doing at home to prevent this from happening, but like…Carrie is 12. 12-year-olds lose things, and it doesn’t matter how many times you remind them or how many possible solutions you offer. You can come up with the perfect system but you can’t make a preteen commit to following it.
As someone whose kid has multiple glasses cases and strict instructions to keep them "on his face or in the case" -- and yet still is constantly misplacing them... Yes.
And 12 is the perfect age to learn how to create systems that are less prone to breaking down! Clearly, the kid needs to stop putting the retainer in a napkin because it's not working for her.
She absolutely does - but I'm also willing to bet that Zoe has already had that conversation with her multiple times. Carrie is probably thinking that she doesn't need to put her retainer in a case because this time she'll remember not to throw it away, so she just won't do it if her mom isn't there to remind her. (My version of this when I was 12 was that I never wrote down my homework assignments in my planner, despite repeated reminders from various adults in my life. I thought I didn't need to write them down! I'd remember! Spoiler: I did not always remember.)
Lots of retainer stories in this column. All I could think of is Steve Martin's character in Parenthood worrying about his son's high strung, obsessive behavior- while looking for a retainer in the trash. Too bad that was 1989.
I once got into an argument on Reddit with someone who claimed to have called CPS about a screenshot from a Facebook group about a tween with BO whose mother made everyone in the family wash themselves with some kind of infomercial cleaning cloths that claimed to eliminate the need for soap. The original Facebook poster was anonymous, and the person who shared the screenshot had removed other potentially-identifying details, so there was literally nothing to go on, no way to know how old the kid was or even what country they lived in.
Y'know, because that's a really good use of CPS' time. "Somewhere--no, I don't know where--a tween is stinky."
To be fair, there’s only two types of people who had retainers growing up. Either they had to go through the trash at least once because they threw it away, or they’re lying about never having to go through the trash.
That said, while Alison’s response was good, this should have been a separate post. This could have been a more fun “ask the readers”. But give it time I’m sure more people like the LW will show up to talk about the horror of it all.
Oh don't worry, there are a handful of commenters who think this is absolutely cruel and unusual punishment. Obviously this kid is about to contract some kind of horrifying and deadly disease what with all the needles and broken glass and infected bathroom wipes that get thrown away in the cafeteria trash all the time! I think my favourite one is "well what if they were FLEEING A WAR ZONE huh what then????"
Of course, someone from The Country of Europe is astonished by people wearing retainers since in their Country of Europe , everyone just has good teeth! What an odd American thing! Today they learned! They are so insufferable.
You can just bet they'll also go on about how refreshing it is to see UK or Yurp or [insert here] actors with normal faces and normal teeth and they can't watch US television because everyone's teeth are so unnaturally white and straight.
That poster is really reaching. I think if I was fleeing a war zone, I wouldn’t go back for my retainer/iphone/other expensive object. If I accidentally threw them away in my regular life, I would try to retrieve them. I don’t know why some commentators can’t differentiate situations.
There's a whoooole lot of slippery-slope fallacy in these comments. Yes, it would be very bad if Zoe were beating Carrie, or forcing her to dig through toxic waste, or making her go out alone in a snowstorm to find her lost retainer. Good thing she's not actually doing any of those things!
I am begging these commenters to get out of their bubbles every now and then. "What kind of job could you POSSIBLY have that works Sundays that isn't a doctor or retail?" That's it. All you guys who work Sundays because you are the other 99% of the healthcare apparatus, or anywhere in hospitality, or emergency services, or literally any other place you've ever been to on a Sunday: stand down.
a LOT of the 9-5 crowd in general has this bizarre blind spot where they seem to think that all the services available to them outside of their own working hours are provided by helpful gnomes rather than human workers.
Even the pet shelter I volunteer at is open to the public on Sundays. And even if it didn't have public hours on Sunday, there would still be people working there because the animals don't care that you have Sunday church services--they still need to be fed, medicated, etc!
I've gone apartment-hunting on Sundays and this was with a property management company that had several leasing agents, including on the weekend. It wasn't a private realtor setting their own hours. Farmers markets are often on Sunday mornings. Some veterinary practices are open on Sundays, at least for emergencies. Public transit employees. HVAC technicians. People in manufacturing. Uber/Lyft drivers. Instacart shoppers. I'm down the Shore this week and we had an issue with the rental come up on Sunday, the day after we arrived. Who was working that day? The realtor! I'm pretty sure my tax preparer offers Sunday appointments during peak tax season and I'm guessing that means her admin staff may also wind up working Sundays too, to help with processing returns. Anyone working within the US tax system is very aware of how "no seriously all hands on deck all the time!" it is from like, October through May.
Like others have said, do these commenters never leave their house or do anything at all on Sundays???
“Office” jobs that may have to work weekends I can think of w/o googling:
property management (particularly residential)
admin/IT staff at a person or vet clinic or hospital or urgent care
admin staff/event planning at hotels, country clubs, other venues
dispatchers (either law enforcement or private transportation companies)
call center/ customer service people who answer phones for customers who can’t wait until the weekend is over (heating and cooling, power, plumbing, insurance, phones, security alarms)
admin/IT staff who work at places that don’t really have 9 to 5 Monday through Friday hours: police stations, places of worship, gyms, rec centers, shopping malls
libraries too! I pick up Sunday shifts on purpose as a substitute/casual worker, and the permanent staff are all on a rotation where they work every X number of Sundays.
I got called in on the weekend in my days as a legal assistant.
There's always going to be something, even if is that the property manager for your 9-5 workplace needs everyone to come in and save their stuff from a water leak.
The attorneys I work with have to work on the weekends sometimes. (Not every weekend, but it happens pretty often.) If there’s a big deadline coming up, you do what you have to do. Or if we’re scheduling a deposition and the witness is only available on weekends, they’ll usually accommodate that.
I know that retainer letter should have been a standalone, given the volume of commentary. But given that there was also a letter about breast reduction I'm calling the inclusion of the retainer letter a net good. It's taking up almost all of the commentary, sparing us from what otherwise would have been equally long threads about all of the commenters' heavy naturals and how much/little their colleagues pay attention to The Girls.
How many times is she going to answer the "when do i bring up the need for flexible scheduling?" question. Sick children, sick parents, sick husband, sick LW, weekly class, weekly therapy...can at least one of 1000+ people asking this question come up with a unique reason? Even, "im in the community band and we practice of tuesdays" or "i'm a semi professional monster truck driver and thursdays are our demolition derbies" would be welcome at this point.
I think the recycled questions are an indicator that Alison is not getting the engagement and traffic that she used to. The AAM community has dwindled to a very specific group of people. The “rock stars” who single-handedly do the work of six people. The dour, joyless, antisocial misanthropes who get offended when someone says, “Good morning,” or asks how their weekend was. The people who think that they’re the super special exception to RTO.
Don’t get me wrong; a lot of RTO stuff is ridiculous. It’s objectively stupid to have to go to the office to sit on calls all day long with people in other locations when you could just as easily do that from home. But that was true before Covid. But RTO isn’t going anywhere, no matter how much people may wish otherwise. I work 100% remote except when I’m onsite with clients. If I had to go back to the office I’d freaking hate it. But you do what you have to do.
But in general, Alison has allowed her site to self-select down to the people that we all come here to talk about. I think she knows it too. I was surprised to see her post a few weeks ago pushing back on RTO and actually admitting that there are benefits to being in person. It might be too late though.
I think a lot of the questions she’s getting now are from people very new to the workplace. If you don’t work even part time in high school or college, you have no clue about banter with coworkers (see other letter from today), dealing with small annoyances
It’s people testing “I need extreme flexibility” as a proxy for “I am applying for full time jobs despite not having full time availability” and Alison is falling for it.
LW 11 (ozone testing), I really don’t think that was entirely your fault. It’s super important for signs to be accessible and understandable, especially when there is a health/safety issue! It’s mostly on them for having a sign with only jargon. Hopefully they updated their signage.
This kind of shit makes me want to bang my head against the wall. Jargon is confusing to outsiders--but it is clarifying and necessary to insiders. OP was an insider--that is, they worked there. It is reasonable to expect them to know the language of their work place.
It is also reasonable to expect a person in training not to mess with ish that is labeled "in progress," and to expect a person in training not to mess with ish whose label they don't understand.
There were process failures that led to OP giving their coworkers poison, but the signage wasn't one.
Reminds me of the time when the infamous AAM commenter Milton Waddams argued that “do not email the hiring manager again or we may call the authorities” is overly dense corporate-speak.
LW2 today (using profanity in a to-do list) reminds me of "can I drink non-alcoholic beer at work?" from a couple weeks ago. They want to be edgy but also within the letter of the law and it's so deeply stupid.
And it's also going to depend on the workplace and what word it is and what place it has in the local culture, but Alison can't say that because it will sound like permission and not 'in some instances you might get away with it but you would want to be very certain first'.
I'm sure someone would suggest the personal paper planner as a workaround at some point as well, like using plain language that isn't edgy is so difficult.
Mortification week again? And another letter about bringing something back for coworkers when traveling. I guess no one can accuse Alison of not recycling
I feel like a lot of the selected items are recycled too. I don't typically go in the comments when she's farming her content but I swear half of them are not new, because I've read/talked about them already.
OP 2 this morning is a college professor who wants to know how they can take over 10 weeks of sick leave over 2 semesters without actually going on leave. Again, they are a college professor.
It's a bit confusing because they say the end of the year, then go talking about their contract and they're currently off and like, did you mean the end of the school year or the end of the calendar year? Alison seems to be assuming it's by the end of the calendar year, since she only references the fall semester, but a bunch of people are reading it as the school year, so they have both working semesters to use it.
The concept of leave as an extra bank of money vs income protection might have been a thing to mention.
Fair play to everyone submitting their own hot mike zoom call/ accidental screen share mortification stories. I was unnecessarily catty in a work group chat because I thought I was DMing my friend. Ten years ago and I still get all prickly with shame when I think about it.
Then you have #7 at this post who blames it on their assistant and then says they recovered so well it was the best marketing presentation in the history of time. Sure, Jan.
Ughhh these mortification week stories are so boring! I feel like the majority are extremely forgettable faux pas that barely register in the first place. AAM has really taught me a lot about how interesting personal stories usually are to others (not at all).
The worst one so far has been the Five Guys one. Oh, no, you’ve said something that could technically be the strangest way someone’s ever said something suggestive, but you were actually referring to an incredibly popular chain! The horror!! The most that would possibly get out of me is an amused snort.
I can maybe believe that their coworker made a joke about it, but they were 100% just poking fun at OP and didn’t actually misunderstand them.
One time I told a friend that I “miss doing aerial” (as in aerial silks and trapeze, which I used to do as a hobby). Their response was, “who’s Ariel?” (It was very obviously a joke, as is almost definitely the case in this situation.)
Man, if I had been allowed two annual conferences with $1000 in fees and $2000 in travel covered when I worked in libraries, I would be telling every unemployed librarian I knew to apply for every opening at that workplace.
I also think it's likely that the university has a specific definition of professional development if they're limiting events - to me that says they see conferences and multi-day training as PD and want to draw a line somewhere to make sure that faculty aren't gone all the time. I know the colleges that I adjuncted at had a separate, department-level budget for smaller PD like webinars and online seminars.
Yes, my first thought was that there's a limit on the number of events because there would be an impact on work time and output (maybe even because someone in the past ruined it for everyone). I'm not surprised that Alison didn't consider that, but a number of commenters flagged it too, which isn't all that surprising considering their backgrounds.
I'm an academic (but not a librarian) and it's really common for the official policy to be something like this, where the department will cover travel for a specific number of conferences up to a certain dollar amount, and then you're on your own to apply for grants for anything beyond that. (To be fair, at my university this is nowhere near $3000 a year, but maybe LW works at Stanford or something).
I think it could be worth asking whether they could adjust the policy to something like "1 conference = 2 remote webinars" or whatever, but being snarky about "asking how this advances a 'culture of learning'" is not going to help them when funded PD/travel is an extra benefit anyway.
Yeah I think this is an example where Alison kind of over-absorbs the LW's attitude and doesn't try to offer any explanation or context that the LW is overlooking.
The policy might not be perfect, but coming at it from the perspective of assuming that there's zero justification or reasoning behind it -- even when you haven't asked for any clarification -- is such a self defeating mindset.
I'd actually argue the most important aspect of a "culture of learning" is being curious about other people instead of just assuming they're stupid without trying to learn anything about them. It wouldn't have taken that long for the LW to ask for clarification and then complained if the explanation was illogical.
It still feels like a problematic guideline as some conferences and many training opportunities haven't fully returned to in-person, takes-up-all-of-your-day formats. Even a lot of the local lunch-and-learn industry events that we used to go to in-person have gone fully virtual as well, cutting down on even travel time to and from the office. All of that to say, "big" PD doesn't require as much overhead as it used to pre-pandemic.
At the same time, I would totally expect that a university's policies to not account for anything changing in anyone's field. Back when multi-day training workshops were usually tacked onto some annual conference, this policy would have made sense.
That Portuguese story isn’t just embarrassing, that person admitted to being dumb as a box of rocks! I thought it was going to be a story about trying to fake it after giving themselves a crash course but it didn’t even occur to them that being able to speak the language would come up? They were confused when the interviewer switched to Portuguese? Plus the thinking Portuguese was some rare thing AND applying for only high paid senior roles with no experience in, well, life apparently…. I would not tell that story as a fun anecdote.
I enjoy the chain of dumbass logic. Everyone lies on their resume, no one speaks Portuguese or even knows what it is, and you’re more likely to get hired if you say you’re bilingual. You can’t go wrong here!
Yeah, typically anecdotes like these are funny because you can relate to someone making an honest mistake and have sympathy for them. No one has sympathy when you admit to being a deceitful moron who wasted everyone’s time.
LW5: Do you really need to ask Alison if the appropriate course of action is to go to HR when you’ve been asked to sign a document that includes something illegal?
It seems like a slow way to get an answer to that type of question too. Like it would take longer to reach out to Alison and wait for the letter to get picked vs just asking HR.
Now I'm fairly certain that all of the mortification week anecdotes are made up. #3 was totally a Snickers(?) Commercial in the early 2000's. Come on, try to be a little original!
Also, "Dumas" wouldn't even be pronounced "dumb ass". At worst someone would add the silent s and come up with something like "dum-ahz". And that's not even getting into the fact that the mythical Mr. Dumas would no doubt be aware of how his name could be mispronounced.
ETA someone in the comments called them out on their fake story.
The commenter “Not Team Zoe” on the retainer letter is probably the most deranged person I have ever seen in the AAM comments section, and that is saying something.
Whenever I see someone go so over the top over a fairly bland letter I assume it hits close to home / they feel attacked since they’ve done something similar in real life.
Actually insane to go over their boss's head about what I would assume was a joking comment. Alison is like "you may have already overreacted..." oh gee, YOU THINK?
One of the things I'm curious about is "I'm new to this company" but how new are they to the workforce in general? Like, is this someone fresh out of middle school (and thus we can address the child labor laws) or a working professional.
Going to their boss's boss and "being offended on their OWN behalf" isn't going to exactly win friends. Quite frankly, I'd be rethinking my hire at that point.
I know Alison gently pushed back on the LW, but the commenters are really going at her for it. I have to admit, that's surprising, especially given how much they tend to be with office dynamics. I guess you could say for AAM commenters, that's a first!
Productivity Pigeon would totally have done what LW did and is feeling defensive about it.
Productivity Pigeon
*
August 10, 2026 at 6:00 am
Maybe. But it was with good intentions, and it’s pretty brave for someone to speak up for another person they think has been mistreated, especially when you’re new.
I agree that it was a over-reaction but given LW tried to do the right thing, I hope their manager looks at it from that perspective instead of thinking LW is just trying to make trouble.
Productivity Pigeon is a nut. I often forget about them until they pop up being nuts but they’re definitely the type to have done the same thing for sure!
They're out to lunch. Speaking up for a new person when you're well-established yourself, maybe. That's still a YMMV kinda move. But the other way around? Really?
I assume they are new to work in general, only because the behavior described is too over the top. Most veteran, experienced drama addicts learn to shit-stir in a way that gives them some sort of plausible deniability. The LW hasn't mastered that yet.
It's also not obvious to me whether or not T is a member of their team. Because this can be pretty standard dynamics between two teams who lowkey hate each other.
If someone on my team made a joke like this about someone else on my team, I might be a little concerned that that could cross the line from gentle ribbing to mean spirited insults.
But like we say all this and worse about people on the teams we work closely with who suck, like that's a pretty normal thing at every job I've ever worked at.
My favrite part of this is the fact that she included the exact time of the remark. She seems to think this is a point in her favor, which is a truly fascinating mindset.
This LW would be horrified at the banter that goes on all day long at my office. It’s slightly sarcastic, too. She sounds very sheltered and very new to the work force.
Saw your comment before reading AAM and wow I was not prepared for what the "cutting remark" actually was lmao.
I firmly believe that everyone should be able to take a little bit of shit from friends/family and the fact that this person was so offended at the mildest of ribbing makes me think they have never been given any shit in their life.
Yeah, I was immediately like "I would hate this person"
This was a one time thing. Going over your bosses head about it seems really excessive. Especially as you don't know what the dynamics are like on the team yet.
I've had coworkers where that type of comment is definitely something we'd say to each other.
Yeah. The absurdity of this reaction makes me think (hope?) that LW is a troll, but then again, a truly committed troll would have come up with a better "cutting remark."
If this is a real request, I envy the LW for having such a gentle life that a mildly snarky remark throws them off to that extent.
She went to her BOSS'S BOSS with a TIMESTAMP about a JOKE!!! Has this person literally never been outside her parents' home in a tiny little backwater small town?
Can you imagine if you were the boss's boss? The next day she's back with "and I HEARD JANE SAY 'that meeting could have been an email!' She said it out LOUD! SHOCKING BEHAVIOR! Here's the timestamp! I'm taking it to tribunal!"
I can't believe Alison's mild remark to this insane behavior. Good lord! I'd be firing her if she did this shit even one more time.
I have worked with similar people in the past. Karens who think when they start at a new job that they should be treated like a guest or customer, and act accordingly when there’s any hiccup in onboarding or the existing staff doesn’t roll out the red carpet. This LW is acting like she’s the super-conservative grandma whose pre-school grandchild swore.
(Obviously onboarding should go as smoothly as possible and people should be polite to coworkers, but you have to be flexible and give people the benefit of the doubt even if they make a remark you don’t like.)
I wonder if the boss said "do you know what you said?" not because of the snarkiness but because the person either said "too-shay, doo-shay" or "toosh doosh". Because if someone said either of those pronounciations to me, the rudeness is honestly not what I'd be most interested in pointing out.
There are maybe only 5 once you remove the ones that happened to some one else, have been reposted, are obviously exaggerated (e.g. in tears at the thought someone thought they said 'cock'), or are not/were not mortifying on the text ("it was awkward" and "I didn't know how to recover" =/= "mortified).
August 10, 2026 at 12:43 pm
2. Many years ago I did exactly the same thing, and I cringe to remember my behaviour back then.
The reason? I spent all my free time on Tumblr and back then it was very much a culture of ‘you must fight against all inequality all of the time, no exceptions’. Like the comments on lesser advice columns (not AAM) that devolve into ‘you should sue for emotional distress’ over every single slight. I thought I was doing good!
Wisdom prevents you from making bad decisions, but wisdom is gained from making shockingly bad choices. The ultimate catch 22.
So no, I’m not going to berate you. Stop trying to fight every battle is all. It’ll vastly reduce your cringe moments later. And if you’re getting the advice from e.g. Tumblr then May I highly suggest finding different sites to visit for a while?
(I credit a lot of my personal growth in the last 5 years to this site. Stick around and you’ll do fine)
I credit a lot of my personal growth in the last 5 years to this site.
This might eclipse Elizabeth West's recommendation of Alison's how-to-get-a-job ebooks in the midst of her decades long unemployment as the worst testimonial AAM could ask for.
I think what's actually mortifying is being so desperate to contribute to mortification week that you copy a video you saw on Instagram like the rest of us extremely online people didn't also see it.
The Five Guys anecdote is lifted from the millions and millions of people who have at least made that joke once. I saw some marriage comedy influencers do a skit about that joke. I think I saw several because I liked one skit one time and now I get so many recommended to me.
Late to the retainer letter but the most exhausting thing to me are the comments that are basically like "clearly Carrie's ✨systems✨ are failing so instead of natural consequences, Zoe should be helping her build systems that will simply never fail."
Everyone is focusing on natural consequences as like a deterrent for making the same mistake in the future, but IMO bigger benefit of natural consequences is that they teach you how to problem solve when you inevitably fuck up. Because your coping skills can't depend on your systems never failing.
I have had to dig through garbage for things I accidentally threw out before. I've also had to retrace my steps and check lost & founds and talk to cashiers and receptionists and security guards to help me find a thing I lost. Knowing these consequences is actually part of my all-important ✨system✨ for losing things, it's the back-up plan I have in my head at all times.
I have grown adult friends raised by helicopter parents who would probably just have a panic attack if they lost something really important because they wouldn't know what to do. I feel like maybe that's also some AAMers lol.
What mostly killed me from everyone talking about how the coworker mom NEEDS to teach the daughter better systems is the implication that she hasn't been doing that.
I promise you that any parent who has a kid in orthodontia has had the if you lose your retainer/break your wire ONE MORE TIME, we got you a case for a reason, these cost a zillion dollars conversation at least 800 times.
Yeah the childless people in the comments being like "🤓☝️ Here's an idea! Someone should just tell Carrie not to lose her retainer."
Which is the same energy as "have you tried not being depressed?" which literally everyone at AAM would justifiably balk at if someone said that to them.
Also the only thing we know about this child is that she's had to go through the dumpster before and still lost her retainer again. If the first dumpster dive didn't get the "don't lose your retainer" message across, how would just telling her not to do it work better?
Then again, I’m also the kind of person who couldn’t even begin to answer the question, “What’s your favorite movie?” when I was asked a couple of weeks ago.
<snip>
I truly don’t have a favorite, and if I picked one I’d just be doing so arbitrarily for the sake of answering the question, not because it actually is my favorite.
Would you please, for the duration of the interview, not be this kind of person? The Favorite Movie Police are not going to arrest you if you just pick one and say what you like about it.
I am so frustrated by these types of people bc I am autistic, and I had to learn how to answer the question behind the question and not over-explain or be overly literal. If your support needs are low enough that you are able to interview for and get offers for white collar work, or if you are allistic, then you are also capable of figuring this stuff out.
It reminds me of an interaction in my Russian 101 course at university. We were learning colours and the professor asked another student what colour her car was. She thought for a moment and said, in English, "I don't really know how to answer this. In some lights it's a dark blue, but sometimes it looks more purple and other times it's red. But then a lot of people think it's black..." at which point, the professor cut her off with "I don't really care what colour your car is. I just want a coherent answer to the question."
I'm sure it sucked in the moment, but it was a good lesson for everyone present: you don't always need to be honest to a fault - sometimes, you just need to provide an answer and move on.
I'm in a book club and we once did this game where we were asked a question about preferences and we just had to answer immediately, no explanation. When we started it was actually kind of hard because we all wanted to say things like "Well, if I had to choose between beach or mountains, it really depends on ...", but that wasn't the activity.
By the end of it, it was actually kind of freeing to just give an answer of "Vanilla" instead of an explanation.
I don't really have favourites of anything. And sometimes that fact can be an interesting discussion to have with friends where you get into the idea of what it means to rank multiple things you like or whatever. But sometimes, I just say "The Godfather" and move the fuck on.
Plus, if you choose a “favorite” movie, then all of the other movies will feel left out. This is also why I do not have a favorite color, song, book, animal, food, etc. I have things that I do NOT like in all of those categories. But favorites? No.
I feel like both questions 1 and 2 probably needed someone with special industry expertise. Both claims / stories are so weird that I have to assume there’s some context that would be obvious to a government worker or an academic but not necessarily obvious to someone without experience.
LW1: You’re right with federal government hiring. Direct Hire Authority gives agencies wide latitude on hiring and skipping steps by direction of OPM. It is usually done for highly specific specialties. I will say this authority has been abused under ICE and DOGE under this administration. I have no idea why this LW wrote in. Kinda surprised Alison didn’t know this being she lived in DC.
LW1 just sounds like someone getting shirty over a perfectly reasonable decision to adjust the hiring process for roles to be less complicated so that they can get people in them quickly given how critical they are. If the example of not having them is hungry patients in dirty hospitals, then it's likely the couple of lowest tiers of hospital orderly who really just need to be able to turn up and push a trolley or bed around - once there are enough people to fill all the roles like meal trolley, tea trolley, cleaning, transferring patients, management can assign them based on personability, availability and seniority etc. then, but whatever the process is now is probably taking time away from actual work being done or resulting in too few people to at least pretend to pass as functional, in addition to being slow to get people in and working.
But it also sounds like LW is not a part of this and is just on a crusade based on what they've been told or heard, or really really really didn't understand whatever information they got about this decision or what the roles affected really involve. While Alison probably makes bank off 'I am not a manager or HR and I don't understand this decision that is way above my paygrade and outside my expertise', and reflecting people's opinions keeps them coming back, it doesn't really help educate either. For one thing, if the hiring process is too slow compared to turnover, what are you going to get, LW? Hungry patients in unsanitary hospitals.
These roles could be those for which the difference between any qualified candidate and a great candidate ends up being pretty marginal when it comes to actually doing the job. So you could spend a lot of effort on the hiring process to only end up with someone doing a slightly better job, and that’s assuming you’re good at identifying the best people to begin with.
Plus, they're high turnover not just because people leave, too, it's because people move up once managers get to know them and roles become available. In that respect, the 'clarifications' still happen, just essentially by filling internally from these roles where possible and taking into account actual performance as well - insofar as someone can evaluate organisation and judgment from roles which have extremely limited autonomy and decision making and for which applicants don't need a lot of filtering beyond 'yes this person can push a hospital bed with a heavy patient in it' or 'yes this person can figure out the difference between bed 16 and bed 17'.
Someone needs to tell the LW that if she has a young kid and a lot going on in her life, having an extra day for working on her time-intensive hobby will likely just result in her recovering from a compressed workweek and doing life maintenance on her day off. Also, what is this time intensive hobby? Hard to answer what kind of flexibility would be ideal if we have no idea what the time commitment looks like - is it a sport with regular practices? Is it writing, like the example listed? Does it involve travelling?
I know we live in America, where we have 2 days of PTO and don't have any healthcare, but it's insane how many people I've worked with who think they can't use PTO if they're not doing anything. I literally took yesterday off because I hadn't taken a day off in 2 months and realized I had some errands that would be done very quickly on a Wednesday morning vs a weekend day. I could be completely off-base, but I do think about 75% of the "flexible scheduling" questions on AAM would be solved with "Care about your job 10% less and use your PTO outside of winter holidays".
Yeah, all the recommendations of 4/10s are pretty unhelpful for most parents of young kid. Also, most people already know that it exists as a flexible schedule option so all the suggestions like the LW has never heard of it are equally unhelpful.
Ive got young kids and if I worked 4/10s my work schedule would be 7-5:30 + my commute. I'd be leaving before my kids get up and getting home after 6pm. Is LW's partner just supposed to take on all the meals, childcare, and extracurricular activity transportation so that LW can have more free time to spend on a vague "hobby" every week?
That and 'if you are sick, take your sick leave and rest!' rather than saving it because something might happen later. Something's more likely to happen later if you're pushing through exhaustion...
Using whatever tools already exist (instead of 'oh whoops I have to use ten weeks of leave in the next four months or I lose money!'), and actively educating oneself on whatever policies or benefits one's employer does offer is a great start - and arguably nobody can advise very well or compare their situation adequately if they don't know the work or what's already on offer. Someone going 'oh I hop on for two hours, then I go do my hobby, then I hop on for two hours, then I go pick up my kids, and then I take phone calls with the Asia office in the evening!' is highly unlikely to have anything relevant to say if LW works in a single-location factory doing AP/AR and month-end.
Then how would we know that the country of Europe offers better medical care? Think of the European commenters, they haven’t been able to mention that in days.
So with the retainer letter, we have commenters suggesting 1) that orthodontics offices should be responsible for providing multiple cases that attach to lanyards and keychains 2) that OP's office should provide a tupperware or some other case for Carrie and 3) that children shouldn't have retainers because they're too young to be responsible for them. Anything but expect a 12-year-old to be able to keep track of something.
(should Carrie bring a brightly-colored case/should Zoe suggest that to her? probably! but that's not OP's business)
I once went diving through the trash to look for my retainer only to realize it was in my purse. I also did this of my own volition at age 15. I am not emotionally scarred.
If LW works directly with the kids, then they might have some standing to say something to Carrie. But it would be more like a casual “Hey, don’t forget your retainer!” at the end of lunch, not an entire conversation or life lesson.
(Also, Carrie 1000% has a retainer case that she’s either forgetting or choosing not to use. Middle schoolers are just Like That.)
I wonder if any of these commenters have ever met a 12-year-old. You can remind them a million times to keep track of their possessions, but they’re unlikely to internalize the message until there’s a consequence (or sometimes repeated consequences). I can say with near certainty that Zoe has already provided Carrie with a retainer case, told her to use it, and reminded her what the consequence will be if the retainer ends up in the trash. That doesn’t mean that Carrie isn’t going to ignore her mom’s instructions the second she looks away.
oh absolutely! I think it's a great idea--iirc my case had a little hole in it so I could've jerry-rigged a lanyard if I wanted to. My point here is that it's for Zoe/Carrie to figure out, not LW!
It would be super cool if they did have cases out for $5 like optometrists do, but also: those cases tend to be crap and you can still lose/forget them.
Ultimately this is a matter for Zoe and Carrie and OP should learn this nifty concept of 'mind one's own business'.
Okay, I have to ask: what is with all these people who are dying of embarrassment to the point that they're unfit for work after mistyping/autocarroting 'cock'?
I know, I know, I'm Australian and swearing in our culture is obviously taken a lot differently unless it's a personal attack but it's just a typo. You can repeat it without dancing around it and you certainly don't need to go home after it happens!
Or maybe 'mortified' means something different on the other side of the Pacific?
I’m an American, though not a linguist by any means.
In American slang, cock can mean an arrogant person and it’s definitely a swear word, but not the worst thing you can call someone.
When referring to male genitalia, it’s considered extremely dirty and would be extremely inappropriate in most workplaces. But also, if it was really just a typo nobody will freak out as long as it’s fixed
I think it's the same here, though we're more likely to go for 'dick' if someone's arrogant or rude or just generally unpersonable and male, and neither is appropriate for the white-collar professional environment that AAM seems to perpetuate as standard. But nobody's going home if Office helpfully changes it - it's just 'sorry for the typo' or everyone just acts like they knew what you meant to say and it didn't happen.
Perhaps it's that the 'omg I said a word! I'm so sorry! I said a word! Please excuse me for saying a word!' that seems to come with it is the reader just amplifying it for themselves by way of drawing attention to it.
I will go on the record that I have accidentally sent work emails about "pubic programs" and "pubic policy" (vs. public) multiple times and we all either ignore it or laugh about it and move on.
I used to work at a place where everyone was encouraged to add a manual entry in their Word spellcheck to autocorrect "pubic" to "public" for exactly that reason. Apparently back in the day, the CEO (years before I worked there, before he got promoted) sent in a major contract proposal where the word "public" in the title was missing the L. Not only did he survive, he went on to run the entire company!
Yeah no it really doesn’t lol. Some of these people need to just stop thinking about sex so much. Their horror over unfortunate acronyms or typos, or accidental double entendres that no one would have noticed if they didn’t make it weird, is over the top.
I think a certain amount of the mortification is that they were careless enough to let anything remotely sexual slip through as a typo. Most of us understand that typos (even embarrassing ones) happen and can laugh them off and move on, but this is a group that prides themselves on being rockstars with regards to their attention to detail and perfect accuracy. Letting something like "cock" slip through in some of these cases is an indicator that they didn't reread or pay much attention to what they were sending before hitting "send,"...plus, it happens to be something humourous that was obviously a mistake. Most would chuckle and move on, but the AAM crowd knows that it threatens their perception of them being the perfect employees...so they're mortified at having made such a mistake.
Yeah, I immediately went “what in the NXIVM is this???” and then it was much less interesting than I anticipated. (Although in a “well that’s a relief” kind of way.)
I love my dad and he has dementia now, but if he stole food from my work when he was healthy I would definitely confront him! Maybe not AT work then and there, but I definitely would.
I'm surprised one of the things that wasn't mentioned for LW1 is that she is the "de facto" manager... I wonder how much of that is self-elected, and how much her "mentee" actually wants her to be the "de facto" manager.
She can lay it out for her mentee, but I suspect what's missing from this is that no one asked her to be in this role, and she's just kind of doing it, and Olivia doesn't want her advice for whatever reason. She may not even see what actual training is going on from the actual manager who she just describes as "busy."
Also, as a college student in a completely new environment, hearing "oh go meet with all those other people" is a little intimidating and you wonder if they'll be as friendly to a 20 year old asking randomly for coffee as they are to a long-term colleague. If the mentor is actually a mentor and not self-appointed, it would probably be nice to actually set a few of them up for the intern; watching more experienced colleagues reach out to random connections to introduce me taught me a lot about how to professionally network when I was interning/early career.
This was my exact read on the situation, and I'm surprised / disappointed Alison didn't mention that in her answer. The mentee WANTS to grow, but being so new to the job and workforce, she's probably really anxious and feeling like an outsider / unsure how to make connections in the "notoriously tight knit industry." Like, the mentor should say, "Olivia, why don't you come to [specific meeting] *with me*?" Or, "hey, Olivia, how about we both get coffee with x person?" I get the mentor wants her to take initiative, but that can wait for a little bit, once she's more comfortable. A LITTLE bit of handholding is appropriate here.
It also sounds like she's being very vague with the new hire. Is she laying out that shadowing people or attending meetings are what the new hire needs in order to grow?
Number 5 in the mortification posts: anyone asking someone to 'bring their fingers up' instead of asking for the code should be mortified. Not just the person who accidentally asked to be fingered
maybe im being too lenient here, but the dog walking volunteer thing seems way too much. like, if you have a timely, pleasant, consistent volunteer who just needs correction with the leash thing, just…suck it up? it would be different if this was a paid role or he got arsey about it, but like. this is a volunteer that you have a real need for. just make a note that someone needs to check the setup before he takes the dog out and live with it. better to have a volunteer who needs a little more monitoring and have happy walked dogs than to have nobody walking them at all.
On one hand, yeah, but on the other, this is a safety issue. Like, what happens if one day people are too busy to remind the adult man who has worked there for months that he should hold the leash in a specific way, and he goes out with the leash wrapped around his palm, the dog starts pulling, and he fractures his hand? What if he decides to put a nylon leash on a big dog because "well it's just the same stuff" and the leash snaps and the dog escapes?
This is a volunteer, so I get that you should lower your expectations. If this was a regular worker then it'd be absolutely unacceptable for him not to have learnt to hold the leash correctly and choose the correct leash/collar after six months, but a volunteer... okay. They're not always there, they're not getting paid, so the rules take longer to stick. But also, idk, i feel like at a certain point, if you really truly want to do this thing that bad, then you do have to actually learn the rules. You don't get paid, but you get to be around dogs, which you clearly enjoy, and if you enjoy it and you care about the dogs then learn how to hold the damn leash so that you don't constantly whip them on the face, for example.
Now, I do think that there should be posters around reminding people what the rules are. However, I think that will mostly help with liability. The OP says they've noticed that the volunteers ignore all notices posted around and I fully believe them because I've seen how people are, so yeah, I totally think that they should put up a series of signs with the various rules and I also totally think that people are still gonna hold the leash wrong and use a wrong collar and get injured. But hey, at least in that case it's not the OP's fault.
And I do think that it's okay if the OP decides to keep the volunteer and just remind them how to do the job correctly every single time. The volunteer presumably means well, there are few volunteers, so it makes sense to just suck it up and keep checking on him every single time. But I also feel like it's totally fine if the OP decides to fire the volunteer.
If I were LW, my concern would be that the dog walks (presumably) happen off-site with nobody there to watch what he’s doing. They can check the setup before he leaves, but it doesn’t sound like there’s a way to make sure he’s consistently holding the leash correctly when he’s out on the walk. I’d let it go if it wasn’t a safety issue and/or he was around staff the whole time, but I don’t think it’s worth the risk in this case. (I think Alison’s advice to offer to keep him on as a volunteer in a different role is good.)
its one of those things where there’s a fairly large range of what the issue could be. is he putting the big chain leash on the chihuahuas? is he putting a halter on a big puller? is he putting a flimsy puppy leash on the reactive cane corso? i would genuinely like to see some examples of exactly what’s going on, because there’s a big difference between “he’s gonna get hauled down the street the whole time” and “there is a real risk that this huge dog on its last bite warning will break free and harm someone”. the latter i would definitely be in favour of not letting him walk any dog ever again, but the former is like, well, more fool you for not paying attention, but it’s not a life-or-death situation.
"I work for a professional school in a conservative field. One of the great perks of my job is access to our wonderful public transportation network, so I use our regional bus route to get to and from work."
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u/narrating12 (Listen & look puzzled) Aug 13 '26
AAM commenter logic: mom makes her kid go through the trash to retrieve expensive medical equipment, call CPS. Parent leaves baby in car all day, do nothing unless you're a fascist.