Do I win something for achieving it all a few years early?

And it’s not like there are only unisex bathrooms there. It’s easy to choose another one if you prefer.

But why bother. They’re more private than most other public bathrooms in the US. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I fly through KC often and the gender neutral bathrooms are right past security, so I go in there nearly every time to at least wash my hands. There used to be a tiny jolt of surprise when I saw a man in there just because I’ve been so conditioned against seeing that for over 30 years, but that’s gone away because why tf do I care who sees me wash my hands?!

Yeah… her being in a higher position does add complexity. But you also have the coworker whose photo you were specifically talking about to back you up, right?

If one of the guys who reports to me told me this, I’d probably give them the same advice as I gave you, but add an offer talk to her for him. (But tbf I’ve received enough feedback to know I’m not exactly an average manager.)

You’re compassionate enough to know that you’re in the 1% on this and don’t seem resentful about that, so I’m sure people in your workplace see that in you. I don’t think talking about this is inherently “complaining,” as you put it, and how you present it could help a lot.

I keep a framework about giving feedback in my back pocket to use and share all the time, and I can’t help but share it here. It recommends formatting the feedback in 4 steps (with an example of what you might say for each part):

• Context (I was looking at photos with X, discussing examples of the poor photography practices resulting in subpar photos when Y came in and heard part of our conversation)
• Observation (I believe Y misconstrued our conversation to be about the people in the photos, not the photography issues, because she gave me feedback to not speak about coworker’s looks and didn’t give me a chance to explain that’s not what we were doing)
• Results (I am feeling afraid that Y may be misjudging my actions and that is causing me to withdraw from interacting with her)
• Next Steps (I want to resolve this so I don’t feel awkward around Y and to ensure my reputation isn’t negatively impacted; I’ve considered [these approaches] and would like your input on how to move forward)

It’s from a training called Radical Candor and they call it CORE, but c’mon, it’s CORNS! 🌽 I hope it might help you!

This sucks. Your coworker misjudged a situation and seems to be unfairly misjudging you because of it. I can understand why that would create tension and discomfort.

Can you try to talk to her about it? Approach her and ask if you can have a few minutes of her time. Then try to explain that you didn’t mean any offense because you were talking about the low quality of the photography, not about the people in it and it didn’t occur that someone might take it to be about the people. After her reaction it clicked that it could look/sound that way, but that was genuinely not the intent or your thought process at all.

Heck, you could also take a good selfie and a bad selfie (or internet examples of this) and show her those as an example to highlight that the same subject in different settings can look starkly different, and that was what you were commenting on, not the subjects themselves. Hopefully that would clear it up.

This approach would take some humility to concede some to her perception of you doing something wrong because doing so might soften her up enough to actually listen to you, but I want to clarify that I don’t think you did anything wrong (and FWIW, I’m a woman).

Do you need to do this? No. But it’s clearly eating at you, and this is a way that might put it to bed. And if she doubles down and gets worse, then you know you really should put distance in how you interact with this person.

Like the other commenter said, it might be worth mentioning to your manager first though, especially if you have a good relationship there. Doing so covers several bases:

1. If she was spiteful enough to report you for what she perceived to be happening, you have the real version out there.
2. Your manager may have a recommendation on how to approach her better than what I said since they actually know each other.
3. Your manager may recommend not reaching out, for whatever reason. One possibility, maybe this coworker is known to stir the pot and this could be another example. Sometimes there are performance things spoken about only at the manager level.

I wish you luck and peace in moving on from this. It’s stressful to be accused of something you haven’t done because of a misunderstanding (I’ve been there).

I used to use em dashes all the time and now I find myself rethinking my writing styles because of people like you and it’s obnoxious.

I have a friend with one but haven’t talked with her about it much.

I think a strong use case you may not have considered is women’s tiny or nonexistent pockets. Having a phone small enough to securely fit in a pocket while still having a large screen phone definitely has its appeal.

They can appear green because of the plant growth, but don’t produce the green color themselves.

The idea that vaccines cause autism and therefore we shouldn’t give vaccines inherently implies that autism is a worse scenario than any of the diseases vaccines protect against. We have a measles epidemic killing children, and people would still prefer to not vaccinate because of a fear of autism.

If people think having a dead child is better than having an autistic child, that doesn’t bode well for autistic folks.

This is always how I’ve framed it. Either it will recover or we’re dealing with societal collapse–level problems. In the former, great, wait it out. In the latter, good luck no matter how much you had.

I got an, “I’d never seen that before,” from a surgeon. Who is a specialist in her field focusing explicitly on the procedure she performed on me. 🙃

Look for local game shops and see what they have available; start connecting with the folks there even if it’s not necessarily the games you want to play because the more you build those connections, the more likely you are to end up with a group that does.

If you live somewhere that doesn’t have local game shops, there are online groups. I’ve been out of it long enough to not know what to suggest here specifically though.

Hello fellow Ruby-haver! Here is a picture of my Ruby. I have a toddler bed that her predecessor kitty slept on, but she hasn’t been interested in it. Instead, she sleeps on this cardboard couch on top of the bed.

I think your second point is fine, but your first point comes across as condescending and needlessly pedantic. The meaning was clear enough.

Ah, ok. Looks like West Virginia also had 100% of counties go for Trump, so “only” is still not right, but at least that makes more sense.

OK had 66.2% vote for Trump. Idaho, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming were all higher than that.

So what do you mean by “only state” and “100%”? I’m confused by your comment.

Talent, dedication, and luck. Spot on.

I am very successful in my career and earn more than my school-age self ever expected (tbf, I expected to be a teacher). I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for all three, though.

Lucky points include:

• Being the kid of small business owners who gave me/made me get a job with them at 16.
• Knowing someone at a company who recommended me for an internship.
• Working adjacent to a badass development team that made the best proof of concept to build a new app, so they brought me to their team to support it.
• My Lead retiring so I was able to move to her level after only a couple years.

I wouldn’t have gotten those opportunities if I didn’t also have the dedication and talent, but luck was a huge factor.

I have tried the metaphor that luck opened doors for me, but I had to get to and walk through them. I will never take where I am today for granted.

My fidgeting while I was in middle school led me to break every kind of mechanical pencil I used, except for 5. I forced myself to only use those in high school and college so I would always have a reliable pencil.

So there’s a lot of research suggesting neurodivergence has strong correlation with LGBT+ and there’s some indicating the BDSM correlation (not saying they are the same/related, but people who are in touch with themselves enough to identify as LGBT+ are more likely to be open about sexuality in general in my experience). It’s so present in my various social circles that I’ve connected nerd & neurodivergent and thought of those as the common factor.

But I realize there’s another commonality I hadn’t considered: they’re very community-oriented and attend community gatherings. There are three groups I’m thinking of: one has a ton of burners (not actually Burning Man, but smaller local variants), another are Quakers (and more specifically those who attend large regional/national gatherings), and the last are people who religiously attend DragonCon.

Maybe that has more to do with the sex-positivity and openness than the nerd piece? I don’t know. I just know I’m surrounded by it somehow, lol.

Sex. Neurodivergent/nerd social circles often have a lot of kink/BDSM and otherwise sex positive people, so my friends group is pretty open about sex.

I’m on the asexual spectrum and would rather forget that sex is a thing, but I love my friends and as long as everyone is consenting and safe, I’m happy for them. I sometimes get awkward when sex convos happen around me, but hey, I get awkward with many other convos too.

FMLA does cover leave for fathers, and in 2020 the DOL said 56% of US workers were covered by FMLA. That’s still a lot of people who don’t have those protections, but it’s still demonstrably incorrect to say there isn’t “any legal right [for fathers] to take time off from work.”