BookWoman56

I don't consider Sheldon choosing to have sex as "growth" in the sense of a change from being asexual to being sexual (or from being sexually inactive to sexually active) somehow magically constituting character growth. However, I'm not sure that Sheldon was really asexual in the classic sense; he seemed to just be someone who had a fairly low libido and had been culturally programmed to regard sex outside of marriage as morally wrong. I've thought for a long time that Sheldon shows many symptoms of schizoid personality disorder, which would explain him not wanting to be emotionally close and/or physically intimate with many people. But I also despise the TV trope that character growth means learning to put somebody else's needs above your own. Having consideration for someone else's feelings, fine. But I'd be very uncomfortable with the idea of Sheldon, or any other character, choosing to engage in an activity he or she actively disliked or found abhorrent just to maintain a relationship. For me, the growth that Sheldon has exhibited was being able to decide for himself that he wanted to maintain the relationship with Amy, figuring out that doing so meant he needed to make her feel valued, deciding that having sex was a good way to indicate the strength of his feelings for her, and carrying through with his plan in a calm, rational way. He was able to balance his own emotions and desire to go to the movie premiere with the desire to maintain the relationship, and come to a decision that worked for him and with which he was comfortable. He showed enough self-awareness to discern that he was nervous about having sex for the first time, but also enough confidence in the strength of the relationship to feel that even though both of them might be nervous, it would work out. Overall, I thought the scenes with him and Amy were done very well and in a way that made sense for both characters.

Maharincess, I'd also be contacting corporate headquarters as well. Regardless of the fact that your daughter was able to take her refund and buy better stuff, there's no excuse for that kind of screw-up. My guess would be either an employee decided he/she wanted what was in that box, or the box got handed to another customer, that is, maybe another customer had a couple of boxes of stuff, and the employee mistakenly added your daughter's box in with it. And then the customer got home and didn't bother to return it, figuring it was free loot. Neither scenario speaks well for the store. I suppose it's possible the box is misplaced and landed in the part of the warehouse where they keep the stuff for the day-after-Xmas sale, but unlikely since they should have put all layaway stuff in one central location. The $10 gift card in no way makes up for the anxiety and distress your daughter went through. Hell, having to buy stuff at the last minute like that deserves hazard pay.

Very possibly so, but I think this might be even more effective. My daughter has a similar dress and it has been quite useful on occasion. Not that she's ever been "voluntold" to go to a Salvation Army location and hand out stuff. Sorry to hear that your pseudo-boss is still being an asshat, but I have to agree that you should probably start an active job search. This guy is not going to change and as long as he's making serious cash for the company, they're not going to get rid of him. If you can't finagle an internal transfer, then start looking around other companies. A couple of years ago I had realized I was unhappy at my job, and it took interviewing at another company to make me feel really valued. Ultimately I did not take the job with the other company and hung around until I could do an internal transfer. But there is very little more satisfying than being able to tell your jerk of a boss that you have gotten a better position elsewhere. You might be able to negotiate telecommuting at least part-time or working in a less crowded environment at a new job, which sounds as if it would be better for you.

It may be easy for some viewers to blame AJ Cook for the show's increased focus on JJ,, but I personally don't hold her at fault. I think her acting is adequate, if not inspired, but part of that may be the writing that has created JJ to be a very bland character. For some of the other characters, though, I dislike the characters and do find fault with the actors. Morgan struck me as a mean-spirited prick early in the series and from day one I disliked the idea that the team needed someone whose primary skill is physical strength. They're profiling killers presumably to figure out where they are and why they are killing, and so breaking down a door or getting into physical fights with suspects should be the exception, not the rule, at least IMO. As for Shemar himself, I think he is the show's weak link in terms of acting; I can't ever forget while watching his scenes that he's acting. Hotch as a character has never resonated with me, which is odd because I usually prefer quiet, stoic characters. I am largely indifferent to him, probably because for the last couple of seasons I've felt that he could be replaced by one of those animatronic devices that would simply repeat "Wheels up in 30" with no loss to the show. Gibson seems to be adequate as an actor most of the time, but nothing about his performance would ever make me look him up in another role. Garcia bugs because I feel like she should have adjusted by now to gory photographs, quit blowing her own horn, etc. but I think KV has played the character well enough. My rant: Why does it apparently seem impossible for them to bring in and keep a female profiler other than JJ for longer than a couple of seasons? They've gone through Elle, Emily, Seaver, Alex, and Kate. Three of those actresses left more or less of their own accord, AFAIK, while two were fired/laid off. And yet among the male profilers, only Gideon has left, which should have surprised nobody given Mandy's history. I know LG left because she wanted to move back to NY, but I have to wonder if JT and JLH left because TPTB made them feel undervalued. As an adjunct to that rant, my biggest issue with the show in terms of cast is that in the early seasons, it felt more like an ensemble cast where it was easy to see what each team member brought to the table. For the last few seasons, it's felt more like a couple of team members are always front and center, with everybody else relegated to the sidelines, and their skills are interchangeable. If I were a new viewer, I'd be wondering why the team is so large, when apparently all it really takes is two profilers and one magic computer to solve any given case.

That type of fruitless conversation with someone hellbent on converting you to his/her viewpoint seems to represent this mindset: If I like something (activity, genre, food, etc.) and other people do not, they are obviously incapable of making correct choices and I must guide them to better choices. OTOH, if others like something I dislike or in which I have no interest, they are just weird and need to shut the hell up about it.

I think there are a couple of factors playing into this. One is that there are people who go to the office because they like to socialize and for reasons I can't entirely comprehend, actually enjoy being the office social butterfly. (I am not one of those people.) However, it seems that many managers are more inclined to social interaction and so they are comfortable around similar personalities. On the issue of being as dumb as a box of rocks, my pet theory is that some managers prefer employees who are not especially skilled/intelligent because those employees won't figure out what an idiot the manager is. That said, I've almost always had managers who understood that I would do much better work if they left me the hell alone and didn't try to micromanage me or drive me nuts with a lot of social chitchat. Part of that may simply be the nature of my work as a tech writer/editor. Once I've explained that I need a good bit of quiet and solitude to write, managers and other workers generally accept that explanation. I'm currently working from home full-time, so I no longer have to deal with the physical presence of other workers, although we stay in touch via IM, email, etc. as needed. I can interact with others with no major problems, but my conversations tend to be very work-focused and so not much social talk is involved. However, I do keep a reminder posted on my calendar to engage in small talk once a week with a few of my colleagues so that I don't come across as too unfriendly. I changed positions in the same company a few months ago and prior to that I had a pseudo-boss who had no business being in the position he was and was clueless about most aspects of tech writing (hell, about writing at all). I pretty much did what I needed to but made a point once every week or two to ask his "professional" advice on something very minor, just to make him feel that I respected his position. When his opinion differed from mine, I just ignored what he said and did what I thought was the correct thing to do based on my own knowledge. He realized that I had done the opposite of what he said a few times, but every time he reconsidered the idea and decided my way was actually the right way after all. Even better were the times he then claimed that it had been his idea originally. No, I don't miss that situation at all, but it did make me understand there are times you need to fake some friendly social interaction until you can find a position that is a better fit or a manager who understands and appreciates introverts.

Even though I am one of those damn heathens, I try to roll with the secular greetings but I know the day is coming when I'm going to lose it and respond with either "Sorry, card-carrying atheist here" or "Sorry, I worship Satan. Want to try that again?" just to mess with their minds. ETA: I'm not going to throw a hissy fit when someone wishes me a blessed day if the obvious intent is to be nice. However, if the person is trying to "Jesus-shame" me as a former manager consistently did to me as the token atheist in the group and to a colleague who was Jewish by making snarky comments and asking our colleagues to pray for us so we would "see the light," then hell yeah, I'm going to snark right back. There's a big difference between giving an unwanted wish with religious overtones and being an asshat trying to shove your religion down my throat.

I have a regular FT job that pays reasonably well, but I do some paid mentoring/tutoring on a very part-time basis (roughly a couple of hours a week) because I like interacting with students. Some of my fellow mentors/tutors, however, put in 3 or 4 times as many hours as I do and use this part-time gig plus a few other similar part-time gigs as their main income. So, per the pay schedule, this past Friday was a payday, but no direct deposit showed up. Initially I thought, oh, maybe there's a 1-day delay because of the holiday. On Saturday, still no direct deposit. At that point, I checked the work emails and discovered the other tutors had not been paid either. So today the official email comes announcing that oops, sorry, because of the holiday we accidentally didn't get the payroll info submitted on time. But not to worry, you'll get your missing pay when the next regular payday occurs in two weeks. One of my colleagues fired right back pointing out that while nobody is getting rich from this work, some of the employees are counting on getting paid on time to meet various financial obligations. Again, this is a fairly small group of employees with an overall fairly small payroll amount (the parent organization, though is quite large with a correspondingly large payroll). But even though the late pay doesn't cause me any financial problems, I am appalled at the assumption by TPTB that it's okay to just delay the pay for two weeks. My view is that if the company had a payroll glitch, then it's their responsibility to do a special payroll run, even if that means paying extra to do it. From their perspective, it would definitely not be okay if I decided to blow off a scheduled tutoring session and three days later casually informed them that I'd get around to doing that session two weeks later. So why is it okay for them to do this? I might add, with my regular FT job, occasionally someone's time sheet might not get approved on time for the regular pay period, but guess what? There is a process in place to have a one-off paycheck cut for the employee if that happens.

And I understand that point. My objection is to the automatic assumption by stores that the customer in the store is actually purchasing something whereas the customer on the phone may or not be, when in reality the customer in the store is also only a potential purchaser until the sale is final. I've had to wait in line at stores while some customer talked to the sales clerk at length without ever buying anything, or has gone through 99% of the transaction and then changed his/her mind about buying it. So the policy of always putting phone customers on hold while dealing with in-store customers first, who may or may not buy anything, has the potential to lose some sales as well. I don't see stores telling customers in line that "hey, if you're actually buying something, you get to come to the head of the line while you people who just have questions can wait." (Although it would be nice in some stores to have the equivalent of the grocery store "15 items or fewer" line, such as a "if you are ready to check out, have all the price tags, have your cash/plastic ready and are not going to try to write a check with no ID" line.) Put another way, I think it's possible to handle the in-store versus phone customer issue with good sense and common courtesy. In the same way that I don't want to start a transaction in a store and have it be interrupted so the clerk can wait on a phone customer, I don't want to be in the middle of a phone transaction and have it interrupted so the clerk can handle another sale, no matter if the other sale is in person or on the phone. Let's say I have called a pizza place with an order for 15 pizzas and have gotten to the specs for pizza #14, when three people come up to the counter. Following the guideline of in-store customers coming first, then I'm going to get put on hold until those three customers have been waited on, when maybe all they want is to ask endless questions about the daily special without ordering anything. At that point, the pizza place has lost me as a customer because I will have called another store that is willing to take my order and finish it instead of treating me like a 2nd class customer. Fortunately, this is not usually an issue for me because I hate shopping in person and on the phone, and with the exception of grocery shopping, my usual attitude is that if something can't be ordered online, then I don't need it. And KnoxForPres, the idea that people will call to ask about a free snow globe is only slightly less scary than the idea that people will actually line up on Black Friday to acquire the free snow globe.

If he's not your actual manager, then you shouldn't be asking him to give you permission to leave early, etc. Every time you do, you're granting him authority that he doesn't/shouldn't have to fuck you over. Next time, check with the woman who is your manager and tell this guy, not ask, that you are leaving early or whatever. If he says he has problems with it, remind him that your manager approved it and he can discuss it with her. Even though you are asking him as a courtesy, given this guy's personality, all you're doing is enabling him to engage in the power plays. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I've encountered too many clones of this guy and as long as you or anyone else give him the slightest opportunity to do so, he will run right over you simply because he can and he enjoys it. In your situation, I would definitely follow up with HR. If you are in the same job level as others but are routinely being asked to put in more hours, etc., then there seems to be a pattern there, whether it is dictated by gender, ethnicity or just the fact that this guy is an asshat. If you are paid hourly, then be sure you are getting paid for those extra hours, including the hours you are being asked to be on standby in case asshat needs you for something. If you are salaried, then again, if you are being asked to put in many more hours per week than the other employees with the same job title, there needs to be an adjustment made in terms of pay level/job level. ETA: On the issue of being told to take your work laptop with you, should this issue arise again, the best solution might be to tell him that it's a moot point, because during your time off, you're going to be somewhere with no internet access. It's none of his damn business what you do/where you go during your time off. Look, I'm not an attorney or any kind of expert on labor law, so I don't know for sure if it is required that they pay you for "standby" time. However, the entire situation sounds ridiculous and HR needs to be aware of it. I have known people in IT who were expected as part of their job to be on call for certain weekends, etc., but that expectation was established when they were hired and either they were paid for those hours or if salaried, they got a higher initial salary than someone who would not be on call. In any case, it's not a reasonable expectation that you should be at this guy's beck and call when you are not supposed to be working and are not getting paid for it.

I have mixed feelings about this. I think all customers, actual or potential, should be assisted efficiently. I rarely call stores but when I do, it's normally because I have physically gone to a couple of stores that claim they have item X, when in fact they don't, or their websites are not set up so I can find and reserve item X, or better yet, have it shipped to me. So if I'm in a store and the clerks completely ignore the ringing telephone or don't deal with it appropriately, that's a negative thing for me. For me, it comes down to whether the physical customer or the phone customer made contact first. I sure as hell would be annoyed if I was on the phone with a clerk, only to be put on hold while they wait on someone who got to the counter after the phone conversation was already in progress. Whether it's in person or on the phone, just acknowledge the customer who is next in line and explain you will get to him/her as quickly as possible. However, the larger issue I think has to do with stores that do not adequately staff their stores or who do not train the sales clerks in good customer service. For the huge holiday season, when you can reasonably expect high volumes of in-store and phone traffic, why not have enough staff to deal with both? Lately it seems as if either there is one clerk trying to deal with a horde of customers; predatory clerks who will not leave you alone while you are shopping because they want to give you a gazillion different sales pitches but disappear as soon as you are ready to check out; or clerks who seem to think their job description is talking to each other about their personal lives instead of checking people out. On the phone issue, I can handle a clerk talking to a customer on the phone before waiting on me. But don't even get me started on the clerks who are on their cell phones talking to friends, etc. and get irritated if you ask them to ring up your purchases. The crappy customer service is a large part of the reason that I much prefer to do shopping online.

I have a double pet peeve today: incompetent store clerks and rude drivers. Normally, I have no issues with my mobile provider; I have dealt with them 99% online with no issues at all for a dozen years. However, the clerks at their retail stores have consistently given me incompetent service; not rude, but just not getting things right. This latest incident was no exception. A couple of days ago I had to go to the cell phone store because my daughter needed a new cell phone quickly. So we went, selected a new phone and I got the sales pitch on plan A vs plan B. I asked for plan A, the clerk said she would set the phone up before we left, and it would be working within 2 hours. The following day, it was still not working and on top of that, my daughter noticed that the signed paperwork was for plan B instead of the requested plan A. I chatted online with the carrier and they were able to get the phone working (clerk at retail store had forgotten to activate the SIM card) but I would have to go to the store itself again to deal with the wrong paperwork. They noted my account online so that when I went to the store, the clerk there would be able to see that I had already asked about the issue. I returned to the store and politely explained that I had requested plan A but been given paperwork for plan B, and I would like to have the correct plan. The original paperwork had taken maybe 5 minutes for them to do; this took over 30 minutes. Not helping was the attitude of the clerk who was fixing the problem, who alternated between trying to convince me to just keep plan B and acting as if it was my fault the wrong paperwork had been generated the first time around. My guess is the original sales clerk was new, given the combo of failure to activate the SIM card and wrong paperwork. But this guy was experienced; he just didn’t want to do the extra work entailed. And I could have understood it if the store had been busy, but I was one of three customers in the store during my entire time there, and there was another clerk who helped the other two customers, neither of whom wanted anything other than to just look at some new shiny gadget. So, what the hell is up with sales clerks who refuse to admit that they or one of their colleagues screwed up, and who then act as if you are inconveniencing them by asking them to fix the mistake? To top it off, on the way home I was about 5 cars away from an intersection, but everyone in the lane to the left of me was changing lanes into my lane; I looked and noticed a stalled car in the left lane just before the intersection. A car signaled that it needed to switch lanes and I slowed to let it get into my lane ahead of me. At which point the asshat behind me blew his horn repeatedly and rolled down his window to yell, “I’m in a hurry, bitch.” Really, dude? Let me then drive right over the cars in front of me so that you can get to the red light a little faster, and in addition, by no means will I do the polite thing to let someone switch lanes; I’ll just make those drivers sit there in an increasingly long line of cars stuck behind a stalled car. Seriously, if allowing one car to get ahead of you is going to make you late for whatever super important thing you have to do, then maybe you should have left a little earlier to allow for traffic.

I don't go to a lot of concerts, but this seems to be an ongoing issue. My favorite band is from Finland, and while they tour the U.S. when they release a new album, they're not here constantly and so when they are, I want to go see them. One reason they are my favorite band is they actually perform well live; in fact, I tend to prefer their live versions of songs to the studio versions. So the first time I saw them was a couple of years ago, and imagine my surprise when the voice that I usually love to hear sounded instead like Minnie Mouse. Things improved a bit as I moved a little back from the stage, and that's when I realized how many people were singing along entirely too loudly, to the point of drowning out the actual singer. So, important lesson: When one stands very close to the stage, what one tends to hear is not so much the lead singer as the off-key caterwauling of audience members, many of whom desperately need to be told not to quit their day job. My pet peeve for music in general is that I am extremely tired of the "performers" as opposed to actual musicians and/or singers who can carry a tune. Maybe it's just me, but when I see a singer or group with a dozen dancers, intense choreography, and a freaking bedazzled microphone, my first thought is that those elements are there to distract the audience from noticing that the lyrics are egregiously insipid, the so-called melody is the musical equivalent of a paint-by-numbers piece, and the lead singer has a vocal range of three notes, two of which are flat. What I want from a solo artist or a group is the ability to come on the stage without the theatrics and play/sing compelling songs in a way that does the songs justice.

Bastet, thanks for the clarification. I cannot even begin to understand that mindset, that it's somehow not okay to spend a lot of time on personal calls in general, but perfectly okay if those calls are from your kids. I will go one step further, though: if you can't manage your household issues well enough so that your kids don't need to call you multiple times a day (or you can't make your kids understand to call only in an emergency and otherwise just text questions that you can respond to during your breaks), then you probably are not that great at managing your job either, with or without the distractions of excessive phone calls. I do understand that there are actual child-related emergencies. My daughter is bipolar and over the past 10 years there have been maybe 3 occasions when I had to leave work abruptly after a frantic call in which she was experiencing enough extreme depressive symptoms to be afraid she was going to harm herself. But I had always made it clear to my manager what the situation was and that if I had to leave for that kind of emergency, I would either make up the time or use PTO for it, and make sure no deadlines were missed, etc. So, in that sense, I was given some flexibility but I don't see that as being significantly different from the flexibility to leave work if I myself suddenly became ill. As we both have noted, it's just part of life that sometimes things happen so that you have to take off a little time from work unexpectedly. To me the larger issue is whether the person abuses that flexibility. So I regard getting too many calls from your kids the same way I do taking a smoking break for 5-10 minutes of every hour that you are supposedly working.

I'm fine with Rowling admitting that she screwed up with the Hermione/Ron pairing, because that ending soured me on the last book. I am not a fan in any way of having virtually every character end up marrying their high school crush. And by the end of the series, I pretty much loathed Ron, so I had to make up an alt ending in my head where 10 minutes after the final book scene, Hermione informs Ron she's filing for divorce. My UO is that I wish more authors would admit they should have done something different, because to me that indicates they've reflected on the book and recognized its faults instead of just taking the attitude that it sold a gazillion copies, so it was obviously perfect. I do wonder though if it's less that she's not moving on as much as it is journalists and so forth always asking her about the HP series and what she would have done differently if she had it to do over. It's been a while, but years ago I used to work with many authors, and a constant complaint was how reporters (and fans to some extent) would ask the same stupid questions over and over again, and how the ones who did essentially no prep work prior to interviewing would fall back on the most famous book to ask about, as opposed to the new one. So a lot of interviews that were supposed to be about their new book would end up being 30 seconds of token questions about the new book (How is this book different from your famous book ABC?), followed by 10 minutes of questions about the more famous book. It's lazy journalism, but it's similar to interviews with musicians. My favorite band is from Finland, and they've been performing for about 20 years with several CDs, multiple tours in Europe and the U.S., and yet almost every interview I've seen with them includes the reporter asking the lead singer if it's true that he used to work in his father's sex shop in Helsinki (when he was 17 or 18, not recently, and not a damn thing to do with his music anyway), followed by rote questions about how the new album is different from an earlier album, etc. Very rarely do the interviewers do enough prep work to focus on current work only, and instead they go to the more famous book/album from the past.

I agree, but I've also seen way too many examples of people without kids getting crazy amounts of personal phone calls. Years ago, I ended up firing a temporary worker over the huge volume of calls she got from her BFFs, BF, etc. Most of us had direct lines but calls to her had to go through our department admin assistant, who came to me about how many calls she was having to transfer to this worker. I was supervising a project in another building at that time, and so had not seen this firsthand, but I had noticed that she wasn't getting as much actual work done as she should have. So, chatted with her about the personal calls. They persisted; chatted again with increased emphasis on the need to limit personal calls to breaks and lunch periods. Calls persisted; removed the phone from her cube. She switched over to using her mobile phone (this was back in the days before unlimited minutes were common) and I actually heard her on her mobile bitching that our company was interfering with her right to talk to whomever she wanted and forcing her to pay to talk to her friends. This was the point at which I was grateful she was a temporary worker and so could be fired on the spot. I wouldn't have fired her just for bitching and moaning to someone, but the combo of way the hell too many phone calls, inadequate productivity, and entitled attitude was too much to deal with. Another example: I've worked a good bit in instructional design, creating training for new employees at large companies. The employees are typically in training for about 6 weeks before being turned loose to their real jobs. And the instructors began coming to me and other instructional designers on a consistent basis because the new employees in training seemed not to understand the concept of "class time is for work-related training, not for talking and texting on your cell phone nonstop." So we had to build a notice into our curriculum that the employees would see on their first day, that said (albeit a bit more politely): Except for breaks and lunch, do not use your cell phone during class time unless it's an emergency (and by emergency, we mean something so serious that the person trying to contact you would feel compelled to come drag you out of class if unable to reach you otherwise). If you are unwilling to comply with this requirement, you will not be allowed to finish training. Final example, and my personal favorite: A few years ago my former stupid-ass manager hired a guy for an hourly position; the guy had graduated from law school a couple of years prior to that, passed the bar, but was unable to find a job as an attorney (he was definitely not someone at the top of his class). But he did have a few private clients on the side. While he was getting paid by the hour to work for us, he took calls from these clients and would go wander off into an empty conference room for a solid hour or so to discuss their legal issues with them. And obviously, he was billing them for that time. He apparently believed that because he knew the manager from church, that he should be given special privileges. A colleague began tracking the guy's calls, time away from the desk, and the time recorded via electronic timesheet and confronted the manager with it, essentially telling him this either had to stop or the colleague would go over the manager's head to report the issue. Of course, the employee who was doing this threw a hissy fit that someone had reported the situation to the manager. I guess my point here is that in the workplace, some people are going to be jerks about taking phone calls, not doing their fair share of the work, believing that their special situation entitles them to perks while your special situation does not, etc. I don't think the issue is parents or non-parents as a group engaging in this kind of behavior. The offending group seems to be instead people who are inconsiderate, selfish asshats.

Parents getting paid leave is not really a new idea, except for the U.S., which is the only industrialized country that does not offer paid maternity leave. Finland, for example, offers both maternal and paternal leave, in addition to a useful box of supplies for the newborn (also condoms for parents). If interested, details are here: http://www.kela.fi/web/en/parental-leave. The rationale for paid parental leave is fairly simple: Many studies have shown that kids who have a SAH parent for at least the first year or two have far fewer problems in school, lower rates of juvenile delinquency, etc. So, many countries look at the cost of providing paid maternal leave as being more than offset by fewer problems when the kids are older. I was lucky enough to get 8 weeks of paid maternity leave when I had my daughter, but I worked for a large, fairly progressive corporation at the time. I've never felt I was entitled to special breaks or perks simply because I had a child. Anyone in the workplace should be able to take an occasional day or half-day off for whatever purpose, illness, appointments, etc. without being made to feel that 4-8 hours away from work is going to destroy the productivity of the entire department. It may be that employers are more willing to be flexible with employees who have kids, but I think that's just them not wanting to look bad. Although my daughter is now old enough to deal with her own illnesses, when she was younger and was too ill to go to daycare or school, yes, I had to take time off, but that time was deducted from my standard allotment of paid time off (vacation days, sick days, etc.). I have apparently been lucky, but for virtually all of my career, I have worked for companies and with managers who recognized that every employee, parent or not, occasionally will need to take what we jokingly referred to as a "mental health day" just to decompress or handle stuff that can only be done during the normal working hours. My new pet peeve has to do with telemarketers. A few years ago, I sold my house because I needed to go assist my parents while one of them had a serious illness and recovery that took a couple of years. When I moved back to my current location, the real estate market was very volatile, and on top of that, I was unsure how long I would remain here (and in fact will be relocating in about 6 months), so rather than buy another home, I am renting.. I usually don't get the telemarketing calls aimed at homeowners. However, because I am now working full-time from home, I had a land line installed a couple of weeks ago and have received a ton of calls from people wanting to interest me in home security systems. So, when they ask me if I would be interested in getting a free home security system in exchange for sticking one of their signs in my front yard, I tell them I am not interested because, renting. And to please remove me from their list, because the same two or three freaking companies have called me several times a day for a couple of weeks. Instead of apologizing for wasting my time and for their company deluging me with unwanted calls, the response from every single one of them has been, "Oh, you don't qualify for our program since you are renting." Seriously? You interrupted me during working hours with an unsolicited sales pitch, and when I politely explain that I am not interested and that I would really appreciate it if you would remove me from the calling list, you can't offer even a half-assed apology, such as "Sorry to have disturbed you"? Instead, you're going to try to make me feel all deprived because I don't "qualify" for your product/advertising scheme? Even if I were in the market for a home security system, this lack of basic courtesy would make me unwilling to purchase one of their systems. If I dial a wrong number, I apologize to the person for having bothered them. I don't see that this is any different, but instead these people are acting as if they were doing me a huge favor by calling me and I have wasted their precious time.

I remember really liking Where Are the Children, and then years later, I was responsible for booking authors for speaking engagements for a major book fair. Part of the job was communicating with the authors prior to the event, meeting the authors when they arrived in town, and in general getting them oriented to the event. She was one of the authors I brought in, and she was very nice in person. She did explain that she started writing seriously after her husband's death because there was essentially no money and writing was what she knew how to do. One of the things she mentioned that I found both fascinating and chilling was that when doing prep work for her books, she would sometimes go sit in on murder trials. She described listening to a man testify whose wife was forcibly taken from their home and then killed. Understand this was back in the 60s or very early 70s, so attitudes were different on some subjects. The husband testified that he came home to an empty house and he immediately knew something terrible had happened because his wife's feminine hygiene products were in plain view in their bedroom. He said in all the years they had been married, she had always kept those items hidden from view even from him. So, seeing a box of sanitary napkins was enough for him to realize something seriously bad had happened. I haven't read anything of hers in several years. I don't intensely dislike her later works, but they began to seem a little repetitive and not compelling.

I liked the movie overall, on about the same par with the book. I especially liked that they didn't invent a worried spouse/child for Watney and instead just left him as a single guy; also liked that there was no romantic subplot worth mentioning. I do have one minor nitpick, though, about the "Council of Elrond" bit. In both the book and the movie, the media liaison did not know what the council was and seemed to barely know, if at all, about The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I understand they were trying to make a point that she was not a geek, but really? Every single media spokesperson I have ever met makes sure to be aware of major movies, tv shows, commercials, etc., because they have to understand mainstream pop culture references and be able to use them on occasion. Given the popularity of the books and then the major media coverage when the movies came out, I found it hard to believe that this character would have no freaking idea what LoTR was.

Maybe I am a heartless bitch, but if being around them causes you that much discomfort, then you need to get rid of the expectation that you will be there. I don't see a need to tell your grandmother all the gory details, but a simple "Being around Uncle A and Aunt B makes me so uncomfortable that I can't do it any longer" should be sufficient. If your grandmother insists on details, then just flatly tell her your uncle steals your pain pills and your aunt says inexcusably spiteful things. I don't see a lot of my family; I live two states away and so don't generally have to deal with this sort of crap. However, my younger sister is married to a druggie and has obviously become one herself, and so every time they used to visit my parents, things (including pain pills) would disappear. Since my father died a couple of years ago and my mother now lives with another sibling because of health issues, the rest of us have simply made it clear to my younger sister that if she wants to visit our mother, she can do so in supervised visits, but none of us is stupid enough to leave her and her husband alone in our homes to ransack them for pills or items to sell for drug money. We don't see a reason to upset my mother with this info; she is aware of the husband's drug issues but refuses to believe that my sister is also a user, and at this point, her memory is so bad it wouldn't do any good to tell her anyway. My other siblings and I have simply agreed that once my mother dies, we have zero reason to ever speak to the younger sister again. Because of the thievery and other things she has done, there's just irreparable damage done to the way we feel about her. Sometimes it's best to just make a clean break.

A friend is in the final stages of a 10-year relationship that has crashed and burned. IMO, it actually reached its expiry date a couple of years ago and has been toxic since then, but it has dragged out until there are only a few days left before he moves out. And so in his discussions with other friends, there are numerous condolences going to him on his “failed” relationship. My pet peeve is describing a relationship that has ended as “failed” simply because it did not last a lifetime, or saying that the person has wasted his/her time in the relationship with the ex. For me, I could only describe a relationship as failed if I learned absolutely nothing from it, either about the other person or about myself, or if I were absolutely miserable in the relationship every single second from the point it began, which would mean I was pretty damn stupid for getting into the relationship. In every serious romantic relationship I’ve been in, I gained a deeper understanding of the other person and of myself and my own limits, even if doing so was sometimes painful. I can’t see that as time wasted, or as a relationship that failed. Those relationships have in part made me who I am today. What’s wrong with simply saying that it is a previous relationship or a relationship that ended? I dislike describing these as failed relationships because that implies that either one or both people did something catastrophically wrong. Sometimes there is no big drama that causes a relationship to end; sometimes there’s just a gradual realization that this is no longer a good fit. So, how is that a failed relationship? Yes, it can be sad when a romantic relationship/marriage ends, but what’s even sadder would be when a toxic relationship, such as the one my friend is terminating, doesn’t end and both people are miserable the rest of their lives. For some reason, this reminds me of how years ago, advice columnists would frequently caution women about the perils of living with a man without being married to him, pointing out that supposedly in the majority of those situations, the couple did not end up getting married. And duh? Wouldn’t living together and realizing you’re not actually compatible be preferable to marrying that same person and then having to go through the legal and financial hassle of a divorce? I mean, by the logic of the advice columnists, you should never date anyone either, because the vast majority of the time, you’re going to be dating someone you don’t end up marrying either. Silly me, I thought part of the purpose of dating was to figure out if you liked each other well enough to have a serious relationship and then to figure out if you could sustain that relationship while cohabiting. Yet the advice columnists would describe living with someone you didn’t marry as “wasting your time” on him/her.

I’d frankly have less loathing for William Reid if he had been a “sperm donor” who simply skipped out after a one-night stand that resulted in a pregnancy or who filed for divorce immediately after Diana became pregnant. To me, his abandonment of Spencer and Diana is unforgivable because he did it knowing full well that Diana was mentally ill. I will freely admit this is a hot button topic for me because of personal experience with a similar situation. My former MIL was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when my ex was around the same age as Spencer when William left; she had been ill for a while and her condition deteriorated to the point where she was a danger to herself and those around her. Former FIL had her placed in a private hospital and then in a public institution when the money ran out. After a year, when the various doctors advised him that she was never going to recover enough to function on her own, much less take care of a child, he filed for divorce and took my ex away to a different city where he had family who could help take care of his child while he worked. It was a tough decision, but from my perspective it was the only responsible decision. William, OTOH, abandoned his child to the care of someone he knew to be mentally ill. He had options other than just leaving Spencer with Diana. He could have had Diana hospitalized whether she was willing to get treatment or not. As an aside, one major characteristic of paranoid schizophrenia is that the person does not believe himself/herself to be ill, and so frequently the person refuses treatment. So I don’t in any way agree that Diana knew what she was doing when she refused treatment. Instead, William just skipped out, leaving Spencer to the care of someone who could just as easily have killed him through neglect. IMO, if William wanted a relationship with Spencer after he left, it was his responsibility, not Spencer’s, to maintain that relationship. I cannot imagine in any way that it was incumbent upon Spencer to track down his father so they could continue to have a relationship. When a parent leaves and does not communicate in any way with his or her child, that’s a pretty clear signal the parent does not want to maintain a relationship. It was a difficult situation, but William’s response to it was to put his son in a position where he had to take care of his mother and himself, while William took no responsibility for what happened to Spencer. Whether his intent was only to leave Diana, the reality is that he left both of them. I understand that divorce is often the best solution to a marriage that is no longer viable. But especially when you have spent ten years as a father with your child, to then desert that child to be raised by a mentally ill mother means to me you have lost absolutely any right to call yourself a parent.

I saw some of Anne Tyler's novels mentioned in another thread, and it reminded me of what may be a very UO: I hated the ending of The Accidental Tourist. It's been a while since I read it, but I thought the comments the wife/ex-wife made about the main character's new love interest were dead-on accurate: she was not educated, she would not fit into the academic setting of the main character, his colleagues would be horrified by the relationship, and while the new love interest was entertaining, she and the main character had almost nothing in common. My dislike of the ending has only been reinforced by having watched a similar scenario play out IRL. A friend who was a professor of philosophy had gone through a bad experience and married someone "hot and quirky" after a brief relationship; she had never attended college and had no interest in doing so. In academia, it's almost required to have faculty parties at which both faculty and spouses mingle and discuss both their field and current events, etc. The new spouse just was completely out of her depth at those parties. It's not that she needed to know extreme details of various philosophical works, but she had no clue who even the major philosophers were, no awareness of current events, etc. She expressed a certain amount of contempt for people who read a lot, which did not go over well with his colleagues. She ridiculed them paying attention to political issues instead of playing sports. After a year or two, she left him for a construction worker. While I do believe that people from very different backgrounds can have good relationships, there has to be willingness on both sides to learn a little more about the settings in which each person is comfortable and to demonstrate at least some respect for that background. The ending of the book just plays into a pet peeve of mine, that so many books and films push the idea of love as a magic bullet that will miraculously overcome any relationship obstacles, up to and including people who have zero in common and actually don't even like each other somehow having a good relationship because they are "in love" with each other. ETA: I evidently confused some details of Macon's profession with another book; it's been so long since I read it I had convinced myself he was an academic who wrote the travel books on the side. But yes, most authors I've met, no matter what they write, tend to want relationships with people who are a bit more introspective than Muriel. I get that the death of his son made him more receptive to change, but for someone who had insisted for his entire adult life that he wanted to stay squarely in his comfort zone, to more or less reject his previous life seems too extreme. It was less as if he wanted to change and more as if he just latched on to Muriel as having some characteristics he wanted for himself. And I still maintain that for someone with Macon's personality, a year down the road Muriel is not going to seem forceful and headstrong to him so much as pushy and stubborn.

I could adjust the font size on a Kindle or whatever, but I don't want to have to flip pages every other sentence. I have a 22" external monitor and so I get the full page view, which is large enough I can see it without any problems. It doesn't bother me to read on a laptop screen at all. I'm a tech writer and on an ongoing basis I'm reviewing/editing 200+-page documents in Word, so reading with the Kindle app is not a problem, at least for me.

I use the Kindle app on my laptop almost exclusively now, for a variety of reasons. A few years ago I moved, and rediscovered what a hassle it was to pack up all my books. During that move, the rental moving truck was stolen and the contents were never recovered. I replaced some of my books, but could not find replacements for many of them. There was then another move to where I live now. About that time, I bought a Kindle but my daughter uses it more than I do, so I began using the Kindle app for my laptop instead and set about rebuilding my library electronically this time. I also stare at a computer screen all day for work, but for at least a couple of years now, I've just been reading on my laptop. I'm anticipating a relocation to a different city within the next year and do not want to have to box up more books. So, for the past few years I've been reluctant to purchase many new physical books. I am extremely nearsighted, and so while I wear glasses while reading from a screen, to read a physical book I have to remove my glasses (bifocals did not help this issue). In addition, over the past year my vision has deteriorated because of cataracts, for which I will have to have surgery next year. So at this point, reading on my laptop using the Kindle app (with a large external monitor) enables me to see the text well enough to actually read it. I still enjoy going to bookstores and will occasionally pick up a book there, but to me one major advantage of e-books is that if I find an author I like, it's very easy to locate his or her other books in the Kindle store, whereas my local B&N might have one or two books by the same author but not all of them. Ultimately, although I will buy a physical book sometimes just because the cover intrigues me or I really like the binding, about 95% of my reading is done on the laptop. I have a company-issued laptop for work, and I log off that one and switch to my personal laptop for everything else, so in my mind there's a definite break between staring at a screen for work and looking at a screen to read for pleasure. In addition, even though something might happen to my laptop, I can always download my kindle books again onto another device, whereas when I lost books to theft, I had to repurchase the ones I could to replace what I had lost.