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Coffee Break: Rebel Backpack

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black leather backpack

Ooh, this new mini backpack from KAAI looks fabulous.

I like the asymmetrical flap, and the fact that they've thought about the ergonomics of it — they talk a lot about the even weight distribution. At 11.4 L x 11.4 H x 5.1 W, it fits a tablet but not a laptop. (They do have a special compartment for the tablet.)

The backpack is $675, at KAAI.com.

Looking for work backpacks to splurge on in 2025? Montblanc, MCM, Songmont, and Senreve (also!) are great, and readers are always huge fans of all things Tumi. Some of our favorites…

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Senreve
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MCM
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Montblanc
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Tumi (exact)

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178 Comments

  1. Can anyone speak to the quality of this brand? I don’t want a backpack but the totes are pretty.

  2. I had a mentee a while back. She wasn’t happy and we tried everything to help her stay in her job. She was an excellent worker and I’d rehire her in a minute — she was probably the best person at her job of all of the people who have had it before or since. I invested a lot of time training her and advocating for her within our org. It’s a hard job and I thought we’d have time to unwind when she decided that it wasn’t working for her (work-life balance, which I get since I’m in the same boat). Instead, she just reported her quitting to someone else and I found out from that person. No notice at all. She was still a person I felt bad for and I get how juggling is just hard. I recommended her for all sorts of step-back jobs. Eventually the “request for reference” things just appeared, often with no head’s up. Today, I stumbled upon her through Linked-In (not from her) and she’s back to working in our field, in my city, and for a rival company. I’m a bit just torn up / hurt / wondering if I’m becoming the person in a work break-up like the “Somebody that I used to know” song. I really appreciated everyone who invested in me when I was younger. Do we just not do that now? It seems like it would also be weird for me to reach out, since I have no idea how long this person has been back working in our field and I wasn’t on the list when this person got hired (I do work opposite some co-workers but it’s not likely that we’d otherwise cross paths).

    1. It sounds like this has been years, if she changed jobs and moved a couple of times since you worked with her?

    2. A couple of random thoughts:
      She might very well appreciate everything you did for her, AND be embarrassed by how she left, which sounds like a sudden thing. If it was sudden, any chance that she was making a choice for her mental and emotional well-being and wasn’t in a great place to make the rounds with people and have to explain her decision over and over?

      Ideally, she would’ve followed up with you when she was in a better place. She didn’t, and that stinks, and I get why you’re hurt. But I’m also guessing that by that point, she was either embarrassed or just wanted to move on.

    3. Something I have to remind myself of from time to time: not everything is about me. If someone I know is acting weird or being unfriendly, it’s not necessarily something I did or didn’t do. Sometimes it’s just them and something in their life I know nothing about.

      In your shoes, I’d just do my best to move on. Don’t try to reconnect. Just be friendly and professional if you happen to run into each other (it happens when you’re in the same industry!) but you do not need an official breakup talk or an explanation. Just leave it where it is.

    4. I might be her, and you might be my ex boss. If so, reach out. I have a lot of resentment towards that workplace, but I would exempt you from that resentment in a heartbeat if you just said “hi, and I hope you’re doing well now.”

    5. I’m in BigLaw. I wrote 3 nursing school recommendations for someone. Each required creating various logins and passwords and then typing it in. Over COVID. When our schools were closed. And I was still working.
      And for years after that.
      Now that someone is back in BigLaw.
      I’ve given up trying to figure out the world. Everyone hates BigLaw but no one hates the $.

      1. OP here. Clearly. I was really shocked to see her working in the industry. We had had lunch a bit before and she hated it, it was never going to work for her family, etc. I suspect maybe there was some reversal of fortune because everyone struggles with balance and the hours are lawful. That hasn’t changed.

        2. You don’t know her circumstances at all. I said I would never go back to my old industry (it is notorious for chewing people up and spitting them out). But a sudden job restructure that left me needing employment in the middle of Covid and a new cancer diagnosis that underscored the need for better healthcare with recognition COBRA wasn’t a long-term plan made me return. I put in two years within the horrible industry–one was to get my health stable and the next was to look for a longer-term job that checked all of my boxes. She may be doing exactly the same. Or making some other bargain with herself. I’ll do X until my kid is through college, I’ll do X until I have enough for a downpayment for my own house and can leave my husband, etc. etc. Or it may be as simple as she is working with a client she loves there or a friend is a colleague and making it more tolerable. Or they offer better wfh flex or whatever. She didn’t leave the job or industry “at” you.

    8. What were you expecting? A heart to heart and explanation of her career choices? She was doing what was best for her. Her life is full of many pressures, and she may think kindly of you, but you may not be top of mind. You aren’t her mom. It’s great you tried to support her, but sometimes people just need to make their own decisions in private and pull the plug or try something new and backtrack again without having to broadcast it to their colleagues. Not everything follows a clear roadmap.

    9. Work relationships are often more transactional and temporary. I wouldn’t expect close communication with any colleagues after they move on other than job reference requests and perhaps gossip and happy birthdays/Christmas cards. A lunch catch up of you genuinely enjoy each other but that’s rare.

    10. It sounds like she probably had a lot of life stuff going on at the time. I’ve had that happen and needed a break from a specific job situation but then life changed again and I could return. I would say you could reach out once and say congrats on the new job on LinkedIn because people do that all the time. Then see if she follows up. Honestly, if enough time has passed it can also be awkward to just keep reaching out to people and feel like it’s overbearing.

    11. I appreciate everyone who I tested in my when I was in biglaw. And three of those partners where references for me when I moved to a no -litigation attorney role and two of them were in my references again when I moved to a government litigation role. I did do them the courtesy of asking before you listed them, and following up and letting them know I had accepted the job. But I haven’t otherwise been in connect with them.

      They were not personal friends. And I can’t send them business. So, I feel like I would just be a bother if I reached out? And then it’s been so long, so it feels like it would be weird? I suspect lots of people have these same feelings about former colleagues

    12. I made a similar move. I assumed there’d be a clear opportunity to sit down and thank my mentor, and schedules never aligned (yay, trials), and I think about it a lot. I made sure there was a phone call to say thanks but would’ve loved more closure. I’d be delighted if my mentor reached out.

    13. Agree with all the “it’s not about you” comments, but I’d encourage you to reach out. You never know where your next job will come from and having a big network of people you’re on good terms with is invaluable. Just say hi and get coffee or lunch.

    14. What would “appreciation” look like, I think it might help to nail that down first. I do think that many of the more formal aspects of social manners have disappeared, frankly so you’re not wrong there. But I also think that sometimes the expectations are a little…unreasonable. It’s like when people say that it was the *manner* of the breakup that hurt them, not the breakup, as if there is a magical perfect way to break up. She left after you invested a lot, that was always going to hurt, even if she delivered it to your face in a tactful way.
      I get it, I helped a friend get a job at a previous company and they wound up leaving and it felt like a betrayal in a weird way.
      But that’s more on *me*, it’s always going to sting a little.

  3. What size (in carat weight) of diamond studs are appropriate for your office? I am tall with a proportionately sized head, if that matters.

    (Because someone will be Very Concerned about it if I don’t say anything, these will be lab grown diamonds).

    1. 5-4 and easily wear 1ct each diamond studs in each ear. I also wear other studs of similar size in a mix of metal and semi-precious stones (herhiker diamonds, which are just a type of quartz). In silver. I don’t think they come across as anything special, TBH.

      1. It’s not just about height–I am 5’6″ and earrings that large would look ridiculous on me, for the same reason that I can’t wear pearls of any size.

        2. I guarantee you that pearl studs do not look “ridiculous” on you, and no one would think they did.

    2. role, senority, industry, office-dependent. like, there’s a continuum between being the junior intern with a Birkin at a low-budget nonprofit, and being a high-powered Biglaw partner in offices that routinely host the Diamond Olympics.

      1. Totally fair. Senior associate, probably counsel next year. Big law on West Coast (not LA). Not a heavily client facing or court facing role.

    3. Can you try them on, or at least see them in person? Personally, I find that anything smaller than 1.5 carats looks like a piercing stud on my ears, so I ended up doing a pave setting around the diamond to give it a bit more surface area.

      1. Agree that this must be tried in person, even if you just go to a mall jewelry store and try them on for fun before you order online.

      2. Or play with cubic zirconias and see what you like. I ended up w 2 carats per ear but played with bigger and smaller. I’m tall and smaller looked silly on me and bigger looked fake.

  4. Anon for this. I’m feeling so much resentment about my nine years olds sports schedule. It’s out of control. He has something nearly every night and tournaments every weekend. I asked my husband to dial it back and he swore up and down that he’d take care of everything. And he pretty much does. But it’s still completely dominates our family dynamic and means I solo parent our other kid pretty much all weekend every weekend and family dinner just doesn’t exist. My son is eating pb and js or dinners out most nights and some nights he’s out until past 10pm. I’m not ok with that. But the kid is mostly happy and impossibly mopey when not playing a sport. He also plays a variety of sports so it’s not one crazy team it’s just the overall volume. I want to talk to my husband because I feel bitter and angry that I never get to see either of them and that we don’t have time together as a family. I also wfh and do all the cooking and most of the daily cleaning so I just want a break on the weekends. Am I being unfair?

    1. If the kid is truly passionate about it and DH is doing all the labor involved, I don’t think you can step in without being the villain. Can you make time as a family without interfering with the sport schedule?

      1. Clearly they can’t make family time without pulling back on some of the sports commitments. She said they don’t have time to eat as a family, and she has to solo-parent their other child all weekend. How is that fair to the other child, let alone the mom?

      2. He’s not doing all the labor involved. He’s handling the labor of taking the kid to the games or whatever, but leaving the associated cooking, cleaning, and childcare to his wife. That labor counts too and counts for more.

    2. No, you aren’t being unfair. And you also need to think about your other child, who is basically getting no time with their dad. Your 9 year old’s sports schedule should not be running the family’s life. It’s just nuts. You and your husband need to learn to say no. Your son will deal, he can still play sports, he just can’t expect the world to revolve around him. You’re doing him a massive favor in both the short and long term.

      But what I keep coming back to is your other child. Prepare for them to massively resent you, your husband, and your 9 year old if you let things continue this way.

      1. +1. I support you in believing that youth sports have gotten completely out of control. Athletics should not be a replacement for family life, and I will die on this hill.

    3. Obviously you’re not being unfair – that whole system isn’t working for your family. Your kid can play non-intense sports and still be active, ideally on local teams.

      As an aside, someone I know dedicates every weekend to her boys’ travel baseball teams and makes her daughter (the youngest) attend the games all weekend long, even when it’s 105 degrees, it’s her birthday, or she’s sick. Those teams can be really toxic to family dynamics and it’s not unfair to say so.

      1. That’s the thing. None of them are terrible travel or whatever but he’s on four separate teams for three different sports. So even if each coach or league is reasonable the schedule is heavy. Also it feels doable because it technically works but then it doesn’t practically because I’m angry and resentful. Like games on Sunday during dinner? Games at 8pm in strange towns? Even if my husband takes him it really curtails my own life. I just cried realized there isn’t a single hour Saturday or tomorrow afternoon where I can shop for a Father’s Day present for my dad. And why are we ina last minute emergency? Because every single day is like this. Every season he says it’ll slow down but then it doesn’t.

        1. The four teams part can change – he can make a choice and cut one of the duplicates. That’s totally reasonable. Then maybe he needs to pick two sports instead of 3. I really feel for you and your other kid.

        2. If you’ve already discussed this and he isn’t hearing you I think you have two options. One is to make more of life his problem. “Babe I’m not available tmrw afternoon so you’ve got both kids byeeee” and one is to face it super head on and scheduling counseling to work through it

        3. The “he’s mopey/hard to deal with” without all the activities stuck out to me. Has he had a neuropsych evaluation? Exercise and activity are great ways to help with symptoms of conditions like ADHD, but not at the expense of the entire family. If there’s a condition at play, then a diagnosis and getting some other tools for managing symptoms might be helpful. Maybe that was just a passing remark, but it did stick out to me I combination with the sheer volume of activity.

          1. And he can exercise the way normal kids exercise: running around the park or getting a pass to swim in the summer.

          2. Oh for goodness sake, children do not need neuropsych evaluations just because they like playing sports.

          3. I’m all over this thread. My hockey son has ADHD and the same comment stuck out to me. Sports are our ADHD medication for him, for all practical intents and purposes. There is no substitute, except maybe actual medication, but DH, son and I all agree sports > drugs. That said, you do not need to do organized sports every single day to get the benefits! Two nights of practice a week and one or two games on the weekend is completely sufficient. On the other days, he does other active stuff if he needs to burn off steam.

          4. @3:51, you’re absolutely right, no one needs an evaluation because they like playing sports. They may benefit from one when the amount of activity they require is so much that the rest of the family suffers.

          5. @4:39, or the parents can be parents and say no to the current structure, while still maintaining the requisite level of physical activity. You can burn just as much energy in much less “taxing on the family” ways.

        4. Four is WAY too many.

          We always said One Sport, One Art for our kids.

          Art ended up being music lessons for both, and they are both still accomplished musicians as young adults.

          Son didn’t want to do a sport so he did cub/boy scouts.

          Daughter did a sport – one club team, and her high school team. So that got kind of busy during the season, but fortunately there was a season.

          Four sports means your kid isn’t developing any other aspect of his personality. Think about replacing two of them with one art.

          You are the equal parent and your say should have at least 50% weight here.

        5. I have a longer comment below but four teams and three sports is nuts. One sport at a time, maybe two if the seasons overlap and both of them are rec level. What’s he playing? At least in our area, there are year round options for almost every sport, there’s no reason to play all of them at once!

        6. It’s very much not working for you and that’s OK. It wouldn’t work for me either. He’s got to drop some teams. Figure out which one would have the greatest positive impact from going away entirely (the one with the most practices? The one the farthest away?) and start there.

        7. why is he on 4 separate teams? that implies for one of the sports he is on 2 teams at once, which i’ve heard of people doing, but if that is the only thing they are doing, but usually at an older age. like maybe they are on their school team, and some other kind of travel team. You need to talk to your Husband, maybe there is a max of 2 teams at a time. Not every sport needs to be played in each season. Maybe he does soccer and baseball in the fall and spring, but basketball in the winter and lacrosse in the summer, or whatever it is. what are these 3 sports?

        8. Cut back to one sport/team per season per kid. Even with this, the travel will only ramp up over the next few years. From what I’ve seen in my own and friends’ kids, the worst of the travel sports stuff is in middle school, then it settles down a bit once they hit high school and play school sports. This would be different if your child was very competitive in a non-school sport like figure skating, though.

        9. This is way too much sports. Just make him pick between sports.

          I think it’s actually a much harder call when a kid loves a particular sport and wants to go all-in on an intense travel team. Yes the schedule can be overwhelming… but it’s hard trying say no when a kid has a genuine passion and really wants to play a higher level. This is a much easier call. No you can’t do four sports, pick one or two.

    4. No, you’re not. Youth sports is just like that, and families (esp siblings!) bear the fallout.

    6. Can dad and son work with some of the other families on the teams to share the load? If dad is missing everything for the other kiddo, it wouldn’t hurt him to miss a game a week for your son (or whatever). I personally think busy kids are great, so I would probably make the sacrifice, but I also think sharing the load with other families can lighten the lift. Your husband is an adult and needs to help with the household stuff, if that means getting up earlier or staying up later. It can’t all fall to you.

      1. Agreed. Your husband needs to lean on the other parents here.

        I also think you should drop the duplicate team and see if there are non-travel options for the others.

      2. too much busyness and kids usually burn out at some point and/or have no idea how to be alone with themselves, which is an important life skill.

    7. You’re not being unfair. We have this dynamic in my family during hockey season. DH has coached my oldest’s (localish) travel team for the last several years, and a couple months in I just start feeling like a single parent of my two other kids. But my son really, really loves hockey and is a much nicer person when he has a few intense sports practices a week. Some things that help:
      1. Pick one sport at a time. Our family rule is that each kid can’t have more than two weeknights of commitments regularly scheduled. (I also try to consolidate everyone’s things onto as few days as possible so we have a night or two with no activities.)
      2. Swap with your husband sometimes. Even when my husband is head coach, he will tell the assistants he can’t be there for an occasional practice or game, and I’ll go instead.
      3. Find fun stuff to do with the other kids. I can sometimes get stuck in a trap of not wanting to do “family outings” with only a subset of the family. But I’m much happier if I get out of the house, and dad and hockey kid miss the adventure because they are at a hockey game, that’s a womp-womp for them, as my kids would say (it’s not really, they love hockey and would prefer it to most other adventures).
      4. Do family after-school-snack or early dinner before sports practice. Or breakfast as a family if schedules allow. It’s important to me that we eat together several times a week, but it doesn’t have to be dinner.
      5. Bring the other kid to the games on weekends. There’s usually a lively sibling spectator contingent at any of my kids’ games, and I’m friendly with the other parents. Don’t drag them to every game every weekend if they hate it, but sports teams can be a fun community for the whole family.
      6. Look for a different league/team. 10pm is way too late for 9 year olds to be out on a weeknight, I’m really surprised they’re scheduling things so late for that age range!

      2. Why are the parents going to all the games? Granted I’m old but my parents went to like the championship match when I was growing up and I played on the team. It would have been so weird to have them at every game.

        1. School sports or a club sports? Were you old enough to drive? I probably wouldn’t go to every school game if I didn’t need to provide transportation, but if I have to drive the kid there and back anyway, I’m probably staying to watch. Youth sports games are usually around an hour long, which isn’t really enough time to do anything else useful once you factor in drive time, and I think they’re fun. Sometimes people carpool and then not all the parents are there, but for the most part, there is at least one parent of each kid at each game. IME, rec baseball, lacrosse, and soccer games are often in a park with a playground, so if the weather is nice, people just bring their other kids and make a family outing of it.

          1. Grew up long before club sports were a thing, but the school always provided a bus we’d take to games and practice was after school. We walked home. To the extent parents drove us places, it was all in one car and the moms rotated around so they were only driving once in a while. This everyone is involved thing is wild. It wasn’t always like that.

          2. No, that makes a lot of sense. At least on my kids’ teams, it’s not like all the kids are from the same neighborhood. Hockey especially pulls from a pretty wide radius around the rink, so it would be completely impractical (even if you could fit 5 hockey bags in a car, which you can’t) to have one parent do such a big carpool. My kids don’t do any school sports yet, but I know there is an “activity bus” schedule and I fully intend to just have the kids take that if they join those teams.

    8. How on earth is he able to play more than one sport per season? Once you get past about age 6, the scheduling just doesn’t work.

      1. There are some sports like baseball where you can do both rec and select teams. Same “season”(broadly speaking), in this case spring, but select starts after rec finishes and playing rec is typically a condition of being on a select team. It might be a situation like that.

      2. Not necessarily. My almost 9 year old daughter only does two sports, dance and softball, but they’re the same season. Dance is only once a week, and they really only overlap for a few weeks. Dance recital is early May and softball games don’t start until late April. Before the games start, softball is just twice weekly local practice so it’s 3 total practices/classes each week which is busy but manageable for us. It helps that the softball practice fields are two blocks from our house.
        A few of her friends do two ball sports in the same season at the rec level.

    9. Just nope ~ I was not popular with the kids, dh, or coaches. Oh well.
      I took a stand like this :
      1 sport per season ~ no summer ~no winter ~no travel team .
      It was my opinion that kids needed down time ~ and so did I
      How could they explore other interests when all they had were sports. Ps an injury would have left them with zero options

    10. That kind of schedule for young bodies can lead to serious injury as well, and then you have a kid with a broken, torn whatever and they have to take a long break from all sports to recover and don’t have any other interests to entertain themselves

    11. That is too much – it is entirely reasonable to want to see your child and husband, and to ensure you have time as a whole family and your other kid has time for dad. I’d cut down 1-2 teams. If being active is important for your kids wellbeing that’s great – more unscheduled time means they can go biking with friends, shoot a basketball at the playground, have family pool days or hiking or skiing outings on the weekends – the possibilities are endless.

    12. You’re being totally reasonable. I remember very clearly the obvious disconnect between “there’s a crisis of children not getting enough sleep” and “sports practice is 7-8.30” which is when he should have been sleeping. We didn’t do team sports for that reason, and is sucks.

  5. There have been several situations where people have offered me unsolicited advice under what appears to be the assumption that I don’t have a plan/know what I’m doing because I have less experience than they do. I don’t deny they have more experience, but do people think that gives them the right to dispense advice? I thought there was a general understanding that unsolicited advice is almost never appreciated. It’s not being offered in response to any mistakes on my part – it’s before I’m even starting the task or entering the new role. As an example, someone at work tried to tell me that her way of organizing documents (simplified example) for this particular type of project is what I should be doing too, but I was brought on to apply a specific system from a parallel project. Maybe she didn’t know that, but why jump in with advice right off the bat?

    1. You simply cannot be this precious about people giving you unsolicited input and succeed in the business world.

      1. Business is just one example. It’s also happening in my personal life and I don’t know why.

        1. Okay. You also cannot be this precious (worked up) about getting unsolicited advice in your personal life if you want to be successful (or happy).

          1. Huh, you feel worked up when you post a comment online? I don’t. It’s just a regular old post.

        2. In terms of the ‘personal’ component to this question, yes they really should know better than to be giving unsolicited advise. As you stated originally, it’s generally not appropriate for someone to comment on your relationship, friendships, gym schedule, etc. just because they think they know better. I also don’t know how to shut it down politely however, so I’m eagerly hoping for someone to provide some wisdom. I’ve tried “that’s not really something I discuss with other people”, and “ohh, I don’t think that would work for me”. But I’ve found neither phrase really works well, and I end up offending the other person who wants to dig into my life for gossip purposes, or ‘improve’ me in some way.

          1. FWIW, the only way I have ever shut this down is “I have it all under control, thanks.” Works regardless of the subject, from mommy-shaming to health issues to whatever.

          2. OP here and I’m having a hard time figuring out the personal and professional, and it’s hard to see the link between them too. I gave the professional example, but for a personal one, I mentioned before I had my baby that I was going to sell one of my two bikes to make more space in our small apartment. A friend who has two kids said “trust me, just sell both bikes, you are NOT going to have time to bike with a baby.” She repeated this probably twice more and I changed the subject eventually. I sold the bike, kept the other, and have ridden it probably 20 times since the baby was born five months ago, which is less than in the past but still pretty good. Maybe that sounds like a one-off, but it’s striking a nerve for some reason because I feel like it’s been happening a lot and it’s for stuff that shouldn’t matter at all to other people. Why does she care if I bike or not? She doesn’t bike herself.

          3. You’ve got to get a thicker skin. On the other hand, I guess people are pretty nice to you if this is your biggest social complaint!

          4. It’s not my biggest social complaint, but it’s one suitable for a 2-minute post on a fashion blog. We’re all allowed to have things that annoy us.

        3. If you get the sense that people are telling you what to do in both your personal and professional lives, have you considered that you could be misinterpreting routine, benign conversation as talking-down conversation? For this to happen in both your personal and professional lives suggests you could be the common denominator, rather than X number of different people speaking to you.

          1. Not the OP, but I have this happen a LOT when my life is going to hell.

            It’s not that I’m thin skinned; it’s that my confidence dips and some people take that as an invitation to steamroll me. It is also that some people are dumb AF and genuinely think that if you’re life isn’t running like a well-oiled machine, it is because you are somehow wrong.

          2. That’s exactly what I was trying to say as the original poster of this comment.

          3. Agreed. I think it’s more of how much you notice the comments vs how often the comments are made. The bike example to me read more like a “conversation maker”

    2. If any of these people AT WORK (key thing) either outranks you or has been doing it longer, that is part of their job and you should probably take their advice (or at least strongly consider it).

      1. I think I look a tad young but in performance reviews, I’ve been praised for showing a good level of confidence in our client interactions, which is what is most vital in our industry. I don’t think I’m giving off tentative or unsure vibes.

    5. I think some people are just pushy busybodies (I know several!) and talk this way to everyone. I don’t think they even really have an assumption that you have less experience. They missed out on the general understanding about unsolicited advice or they don’t buy it. Often they genuinely want to help people out.

      1. Also, it’s not the worst thing to just hear them out. I don’t take offense. Sometimes they have good advice, but people who give advice a lot are also pretty used to people not listening to them or taking their advice.

        Sometimes it’s just expressive (especially if someone has their own experience). They’re just projecting what they went through. It may feel like they’re trying to sway you when really they want to be understood themselves.

    6. If unsolicited advice is not your thing, what are you doing on this board? Seriously-it is impossible to comment, much less actually ask a question, without receiving heaps of unsolicited advice and criticism.

    7. I read somewhere that a good response to these overtures is to say “hmm, I’ll have to think about that” or similar innocuous statement that does not refute their point or put oneself in a conversational position that invites additional dialogue. Then immediate subject change. “How is your project coming along?”

      “Interesting, I’ll see how that works with my project. Speaking of projects, are you on the new Finch file” or whatever.

      It is the truth – you’ve thought about it. Then discarded it as not helpful for your circumstance. It closes the unasked for dialogue without dragging out the conversation. You can’t tell people to shut up or go away. But you can smoothly disengage.

      If they ask at a later point, you say, “yeah, I got the right method in place” or similar.

      3. I do this all the time in my professional life when people want to give me feedback. It works. And on rare occasions, I have actually implemented the suggestion. It works better than an outright no because everyone wants to feel their input has been considered, even if you don’t ask for it.

      4. My FIL’s late wife gave me the best unsolicited advice on how to handle unsolicited advice: “I’ll think about that, thanks!” also works for sales people.

    8. “Why jump in with advice right off the bat?”
      Because that’s what people do! People SHOULD watch their words, control what they say, hold off until they’re asked. They SHOULD be thoughtful and understanding and measured. People SHOULD think before they talk. But . . . that’s not how it works. People be people.

    9. Don’t assume you know better than other people at work who have more experience or authority. Listen and consider their ideas before taking it as a personal affront. In my first professional job, I used to argue or get annoyed at feedback, but now I realize they were absolutely right and I should have taken notes and said thank you.

    10. When you have less experience, it’s your turn to take advice, whether you want it or not. And then, in a few years when you have more experience, you get to be the advice giver. That is the way the world works.

    11. I appreciate people who don’t offer unsolicited advice but honestly, the world is full of people who have an answer and a suggestion for everything. In terms of work stuff, I’d listen to only to the person in charge – even an experienced person at a company may not know what’s what unless they are working on a project. With personal relationships, I try to spend less time OR not contact that person (love you, mom) when I know I’m not in a confident mood.

    12. I’ve recently given unsolicited advice because my friend’s lack of organization was impacting me. She would constantly reach out to me because she couldn’t locate stuff, like confirmation emails for hotels and flights. I’m planning a trip and she decided to join me after I had booked several hotel stays and airfare. I shared with her hotel info, plane reservations, etc. God knows what happened to those emails because she’s asking me to resend everything again (and some of it yet again!) because she “doesn’t know where it went”. I instructed her to set up a folder in her email specifically for our trip and that’s where all the emails should be filed. I could sense that she was a bit miffed but it’s amazing how unorganized she is. And she needs to print everything . . . I’m an old, and she is a bit older than me but I’m just astounded at her level of disorganization.

  6. Adults — what socks are we wearing with our nice sneakers (with casual, not gym, outfits)? The kids are wearing either no-shows or tall socks. But for adults — what are you doing in 2025? My old socks seem grimey because they are white (we’re still doing white, yes) and it’s time for a refresh.

      4. Same. The Youngs all wear tall crew socks, and I think it looks absurd. will not be following that trend

    2. For casual wear, I’d love to bring back the pom pom socks of my youth. In summer. Just for joy.

      2. I have! Bonus that pom pom socks are designed specifically not to fall into your shoes, so no more rubbing or blisters!

    3. i have recently switched to visible but not long socks. like they’re above my shoe but below my ankle bone

      1. This is me. The cuff needs to stay between my shoe and my ankle. The shoe must not touch my skin directly. If it does, straight to jail.

      1. I am obsessed with Bon Shoppe socks. They are amazing. They hold up really well, too. Especially if you air dry the wooly ones.

  7. THinking about the post from the mentor whose mentee is now working in the same field. People’s impulse is always to say that other people’s behavior has nothing to do with them but is that really true? I am aware when I have intentionally created distance in a relationship. Obviously i have pleasant acquaintances that are dropped unceremoniously when one changes jobs/ kids change schools/ exercise class moves etc but someone who you were friends with beyond that? Like this idea that you had been close with someone (maybe work is different maybe not) and they just stopped responding to texts or emails and that you should assume that this has nothing to do with you? do we really think that’s true or is it what we say because it’s hurtful to think someone doesn’t want to be our friend anymore?

    I have never really liked someone and just genuinely failed to make time.

    1. Whether it’s not about that OP or whether the former mentee has intentionally created distance, the proper response is the same–to drop it.

    2. “I have never really liked someone and just genuinely failed to make time.”
      Sadly, I have.

    3. I’m glad you’re perfect but I like lots of people but not enough to intentionally make time to see them as life moves on

    5. In the mentee example, the mentor wasn’t rebuffed or ignored. It’s not like her texts or phone calls went unanswered.

    6. Someone described it to me once like summer camp. It’s an apt description. You can be really close friends in a specific context but once that context is over, life just moves on. It’s usually not personal at all.

  8. The poster above with the 9 year old dominating the family schedule is adding to my seemingly never ending list of reasons to not want kids. Anyone else feel that way? (This is in no way attacking that poster, I feel sorry for her).

    1. It’s certainly one of the reasons I stopped at one. Mine is not of sports age yet, but my childhood was definitely overshadowed by my brother’s ADHD and the accompanying therapy, treatments, him playing sports to help (but of course not me, there was no $$ or time)…then stepsiblings and all their stuff that I didn’t really get a childhood. I don’t want that for my daughter.

      1. I also stopped at one because I didn’t want to take any resources away from her or risk having a sibling with Issues ruin her life.

      1. This. There are a million good practical reasons not to have kids, and they are all outweighed by, “I want to be a parent.” If you don’t want to parent, by all means, don’t have kids. If you do, you’ll figure out how to make the rest of it work for you.

          1. Lots of people absolutely should not be parents and it’s very selfish that they procreate

          2. Same. Wanting to be a parent is just table stakes. Really a selfish way to look at it actually.

    3. On the other hand, watching my kid do her sport is one of my favorite things ever and youth sports have been amazing for our family. I was not a team sports kid and don’t have a naturally athletic kid but we put her in lots of things (not all at once) when she was little to see what she liked, and kept gently encouraging her to stick with the thing she had the most interest in and aptitude for. And now at age 9 we’re really reaping the benefits in terms of social stuff and mental health. I don’t really care about the sport itself – she’ll be doing well if she makes her small high school’s varsity team and will almost certainly not be funding college this way – but the improvement in her grit and emotional resilience over the last 3 years of doing this sport has been incredible to witness. I feel like an evangelist for youth sports, which is so funny because I’m the least sporty person on the planet.

      I do only have one kid, which I think makes this easier. No worries about siblings being ignored. But I think even with 2 kids it’s possible to keep it manageable if you stay in the rec world.

      1. I’m with you as a sport evangelist. I was a music/arts kid, as were my siblings, and somehow I ended up with sporty kids. Like, really athletic, sporty kids. I must have a recessive gene for that. Anyway, youth sports are great! I find them entertaining to watch, and I’ve seen the same benefits you mentioned. It can get a little hectic with multiple kids, but controlled chaos is my jam. DH and I think it’s important to give kids a chance to find something they are excited about and can learn and grow at, and to support their interests within limits that are fair for everyone in the family. We would have done the same for dance, or chess, or music, but sports are what stuck. It’s worth a few hours on the weekends, to me.

    4. I have one kid and I’m excited for him to play sports if he wants to, but it won’t be anything that dominates weekends. We both work and need that time as a family.

      1. When do you presume most practices and games occur? Most if not all weekends get claimed in part.

        1. This may be regional but in my Midwest city rec sports are mostly on weeknights with maybe at most one of three weekly practices or games on a weekend. And these things are local and last an hour or so each, so if you have two kids each in one sport at a time you’re spending 2-3 hours of your weekend on sports, including driving. It’s not really excessive. Unless you have a kid in tons of sports or a lot of kids, weekends shouldn’t be “consumed” by sports at the rec level. Travel ball and weekend tournaments where you’re regularly staying overnight in hotels is a different story.

      2. My parents made me drop dance and gymnastics when it got to the point where weekends were required. I still resent their decision 40 years later. I ended up in music because at the beginning I could do it entirely through school. I ended up being quite successful despite the fact that they wouldn’t let me have private lessons until halfway through high school and never let me do youth orchestra or summer camps, but not having their full support was still very frustrating and held me back. I had an only child partly so I would have the time and money to support whatever passion she chose. I do not regret one moment of the 13 years of late pickups, lost weekends, etc., even though a lot of it was not fun for me in the moment.

        1. My parents wouldn’t let me do anything that involved driving me somewhere more than once a week. I was an arty, music-y, theater nerd and it held me back in a similar way. They also *hated* that I wasn’t sporty, even though I had really severe asthma that was exacerbated by exercise.

          For my own kids, they’ve done lots of activities and tried a few sports. Dance is the thing that “stuck” for one, the other is more of a music kid. I tried to find the slightly-less-than-hardcore studios and teachers, but offered to let them do private lessons/camps/intensives. I’ve definitely spent more money and time than my parents did on their activities, but I think it’s been positive for them.

          1. Your “Thanks!” tells me you’re low-key toxic. It seems you know what’s best for you and you’re steam rolling everyone else. Kids suffocate under the weight of “family time” and need the outlet of other people.

    5. Childfree here. I think that if you want kids, kids dominating the family schedule isn’t going to seem like as much of a negative as it would to someone who already does not want kids. Presumably, those experiences are also at least to some extent what you enjoy about having kids – family time! getting to see your kid grow and thrive and love a sport! And also, the upsides of being a parent should in theory make the trade off of kids dominating the schedule worth it. (Although, the situation with the poster above does seem unusually stressful.) Caveat that I’m generalizing for the sake of brevity, everyone has their limits, so on and so forth.

      I do not want kids. I think I’d do poorly with a schedule totally dominated by sports and activities etc. There is no compelling interest in being a parent that, in my view, for me, would make that worth it for me. It’s a valid thing to not want to deal with. It’s a valid reason to sigh with relief that you don’t have to deal with it.

    6. Yeah I don’t want kids for a lot of reasons. Between DH’s ADHD and my ASD I’m sure our kid would be much less remarkable than we are, the planet is literally on fire, we have two very important jobs to balance, etc. All our friends with kids have lost their spark and I think because we’re childfree they’re comfortable admitting some ugly truths to us that would otherwise be socially unacceptable.

    7. I’m sure people do, but I’m not one of them. My kids’ have a massive impact on my schedule, but it’s literally what I signed up for, and I don’t mind. *shrug*

    8. Nope! Parents have tons of choices if this one doesn’t appeal to you, you don’t have to do it.

      1. It’s also the kind of thing that adults are just as bad about (partners can have big hobbies or even unreasonable jobs). Adults are also the ones who created the insane travel sports schedules in the first place (there were plenty of ambitious, motivated, nine year old athletes before this became a thing).

        2. Yeah, the travel sports arms race and the insanity of dance competitions are entirely the inventions of pushy adults. At least in dance and theater I think the early push to perform actually harms long-term development. Dancers from competition studios never have the solid technique that students from serious ballet schools that don’t compete have. Kids who grow up being rewarded for singing in the trendy “belt with poor technique” style never learn the proper vocal technique that should come before belting, and can do real physical damage to their vocal cords. Kids who play baseball year-round are prone to overuse injuries. Etc. etc.

    9. I didn’t want to have kids and I didn’t, but I absolutely wanted to do the sports thing and I get to do it as a step mom. My favorite part is the weekend sport activities. It reminds me of my own youth.

      1. It’s great your supporting your step kid(s) this way and genuinely enjoy it. I bet it shows, and I bet it means a lot to them (even if they’re ages when they might not demonstrate that). Step parents can be such a force for good in kids’ lives when they look for common ground like that!

    10. I didn’t have kids for a myriad of reasons, a primary one being I didn’t like the lifestyle. School and sports are most of your free time for the child rearing years and I didn’t enjoy that the first time around. So, yes, absolutely valid reason to have on the list.

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