Weekend Open Thread: Ann Taylor

156 Comments

1. My dad had a PhD in engineering and worked for a large public company. I was going over old taxes that I found from when I finished law school. I was at a big law firm, but maybe just AmLaw 200 branch office and new. I was making about what he made with about 25 years of experience. Is that typical? It is now making sense to me why he pushed me so hard away from science even though I was very good at it (but good in the academic subjects where it’s not clear how liking math and chemistry = job or career). I thought that engineering was better paid and feel that it’s being sold to high school students that way.

   1. This is evidence that biglaw salaries are too high, not necessarily evidence that engineering salaries are too low. $225K is the going rate now, right? That’s an appropriate salary for a professional adult with 25 years of experience, not a kid straight out of law school.

      1. Yes, this.

         Also, your dad may not have maxed out his earning capacity. My dad is in a STEM field and eventually started refusing promotions (and accompanying raises) because he didn’t want to manage departments and liked his very nice WLB. He was happy leading smaller teams of technical people and didn’t want to give up all of his IC work that he loved doing. He also could have made more money working in a more lucrative niche of his field, but he didn’t want to because ethics.

         1. My Dad was the same.

      2. Yeah I think it has more to do with Big Law salaries being absurdly high than STEM salaries being low. My entry level Big Law salary was more than either of my parents had ever made and they had good professional jobs (assistant state attorney general + college professor in a STEM field). And this was back when Big Law was on the $160k scale! It’s just a staggering amount of money to make as a new grad.

         I doubt your dad discouraging you from STEM is about money. He likely could have made more if he wanted, and you don’t have to earn Big Law money to have a nice life, especially in a dual working adult household. My parents were upper middle class and paid full freight for my private college, funded an expensive hobby and took our family on occasional international vacations.

      3. Engineers make good money, but not law firm money. (Source: dad and husband are engineers). But I agree that this is evidence that Biglaw salaries are inflated, not that engineering salaries are too low. That said, the cost of living seems increasingly tailored to law firm/tech/finance salaries and not engineering salaries.

   2. Have you asked him why he did that?

      Engineering is a good paying job, doing interesting work, often with smart motivated colleagues. That makes a nice career. Of course “engineering” covers dozens of specialties with hundreds of types of jobs. I don’t know your age, but your father’s generation often worked at the same company for many years, and as you know now, salaries often do not rise as quickly when you stay at one company. But yes of course the average PhD engineer does not make as much as a Big Law trained lawyer. In general, high level academic or research type science that attracts PhDs in science are not paid as much as that level of work should be valued. In a capitalistic society, there are certain jobs/careers that are make more money than others and it doesn’t correlate with their value to society or difficulty.

      There are certain careers that seem to make staggering amounts of money coming right out of school. Law is one of them, particularly if you are in Big Law. You may have a distorted view of what is “normal” because of this.

   3. I think that’s probably normal? Think of something like a pharmaceutical company; do the science people make the kind of money the lawyers and the suits are making? Without asking people what they make, it doesn’t look like they do.

      1. Exactly true.

   4. You might need to provide specific numbers. Engineering is typically well-paid and I feel like I have always had a higher salary.

      1. I feel like engineering is well-paid compared to a history major’s likely post-college job. But send that history major to law school and all bets are off.

         OTOH, I used to work in BigLaw with some people who were staggeringly well-credentialled. I feel like they spent their teens and 20s chasing credentials and that is what they were good at doing. Those people are probably well-paid, but there is a new crop of those people every year and you don’t get to stay on the payroll forever just because you were smart in school.

         1. It’s well-paid compared to a history major for sure but it’s also well-paid compared to most majors.

   5. I mean, I think it highly depends on what kind of engineering and what the role is. My father was a civil engineer with a master’s degree and PE license. He worked for a consulting firm that bid on primarily municipal projects (wastewater treatment), and his top earning potential came when he was running an office and doing much more business and mangement and very little engineering. He didn’t necessarily like this, but that is the way it works. My husband has a PhD in civil engineering, but has always taught. So he doesn’t make a huge salary. But we’re happy.

   6. Most lawyers don’t make big law money; couldn’t engineering still be better paid in general?

   7. My sister is an engineer with a double major in engineering and chemistry from a school with a well-respected engineering program. She made $55k/year out of college and now makes $80k/year with 8 years of experience. I was surprised by this as well as I assumed it would be better paying.

      She said she could make more in certain industries (oil and gas) but the work in those industries isn’t appealing and she would lose her work/life balance. She has thought about doing a masters in engineering or a PhD in chemistry but it’s not at all clear that the salary bump would be worth the time/expense of the degree.

      Her husband was a computer science major and also made about $55k directly out of school and about $80k now. So at 30, they make together what I made as 25 year old first-year BigLaw associate years ago. I remind myself of this when I complain about my Biglaw job.

      1. I’d love to be a pharmacist (like an ER pharmacist vs working at a corporate retail pharmacy), but IDK why I’d go to school for that long when other things are also interesting and pay well once you factor in the cost of school and the years of not working while you are in school.

         1. This is why pharmacy school applications are down throughout the US.

            1. I know! As I age, it’s concerning.

            2. It’s also a very tough job with a v. high burn out rate.

            3. And it’s a job that can and should largely be automated.

            4. The flowcharts don’t exist for the decision making a hospital pharmacist is doing, so that can’t be automated. If you’re thinking of counting pills, isn’t that already a pharm tech job?

            5. Yes, I’m talking about consumer facing pharmacist jobs. A pharmacist is not necessary at CVS most of the time (especially for pre-packaged meds where no counting is done at all!). Hospital and compounding pharmacists are different. But those are not the most common pharmacist jobs.

      2. Does your sister live in a small city or something? Where I live the ethical engineering jobs are about 120-150k salary and the sell your soul jobs are 250+

      3. I think those jobs typically are better paying. FWIW, I made $55k directly out of school 20 years ago for a computer science job. Fresh out of college salaries where I work now are more like $80-95k depending on location. Not a fancy company known for high salaries and not a big expensive city like NY or SF.

      4. sounds like I need to encourage sister and BIL to look for better jobs! ha.

   8. was this a while ago? my dad’s first job as a patent lawyer paid $13,000 — but that was like 1975.

      there may also have been other things not apparent on taxes like pensions, vesting options, etc, etc

   9. Engineering is a huge field with a ton of variance in salaries. Civil engineering, esp. public sector, is often on the lower end.

   10. I’m in the technical side of the pharma/biotech industry with an MS in chemistry. I primarily hire chemical engineers and chemists/biologists. Starting salaries are roughly $75,000 – 90,000 in the northeast. With 25 years of experience, I’m qualified for jobs between roughly $250,000 and $400,000 depending on the company and role. Bonuses start in the 5% range and end up in the 40 or 50 % range. Most companies have stock incentive plans as well.

       1. Honestly, this is pretty similar to salaries of lawyers outside of Big Law.

          1. +1 most lawyers don’t make Big Law money.

   11. Both my husband and I are engineers and we talk about this subject a lot. We’re both making around low 100k’s each in the Midwest and get bonuses in the 10-15% salary range. Overall, engineering salaries are over hyped, IMO.
       One aspect of engineering that is not talked about it in school is how it can be difficult to equate your worth in profit. I would imagine in law with the ‘eat what you kill’ nature of the business, I would think it’s a little easier to compare profit versus salary investments. In engineering, especially depending on what type of engineer and to what type of specialty (ex. design engineers vs engineers supporting manufacturing or efficiency), it can be more difficult to compare day to day work versus the impact it makes to profits. Which then makes it difficult to justify promotions/negotiating a salary increase without a lot of job hopping. Most engineers I work with, do not like switching jobs every couple of years, so it likely stunts earning potential.
       Another aspect is the additional degrees. For a good amount of engineering disciplines, there can also be a huge gap between the logic of additional degrees vs earning potential. Not to discount that your dad very likely needed a PhD. But for some disciplines, additional masters and doctorate degrees become less necessary and then employers really do not compensate differently them. For most engineering employers they prioritize actual work experience most. When I was graduating it was heavily implied from my professors that it was critical we continue to work towards a masters, but I knew in practicality, a masters meant a roughly ~$5k pay pump in initial salary. Getting in the field, working and investing was going out earn the time and effort into additional more degrees for my area of work.
       In the very large grand scheme of things, I think where things to pan out from a compensation standpoint, is that yes engineers tend to make a higher salary right out the gate out of college compared to some other degrees. Given that’s typically happening in early 20’s, it gives more time for portions of that compensation to grow in retirement accounts. Lots of my colleagues have typically retired in their mid 50’s, because they’re set from overall market growth.

   12. My husband and I graduated from undergrad at the same time and from the same school. He got an MS in mechical/electrical engineering, I got a law degree. I started in Biglaw and then moved in house. We both work for large corporations and are both top performers. All in, I make about $550k and he makes about $350k. So we’re both well compensated, but the person with the law degree is paid more than the engineer.

   13. I have a child starting an entry-level engineering job this summer, a week after he graduates college. He will make $80K base with outstanding benefits, and he gets paid OT, of which he expects there will be a lot. He will easily make $100K his first year but could easily make more, and that’s not taking into account the generous relocation allowance (he gets cash for what he doesn’t use) and signing bonuses. He is a EE major from a mid-tier regional school and will graduate with no debt due to generous scholarships and parental support. That will make for a pretty amazing living for a 22 yo in a LCOL city. I don’t know what high schoolers are being told where you live, but I think a lot of new college grads would be pretty happy with this.

       1. OT on an $80k salary is pretty amazing!
          The minimum salary to be exempt is in the $40s (43,xxx I think?) and everywhere I’ve worked has treated pretty much everyone above that threshold as exempt and not eligible for OT. I quit my last job when they started to expect insane hours from me and I was making low $50s so the hourly rate was awful without OT, which I wasn’t eligible for.

          1. I know! We have told him that. The job is in the automotive industry, and I assume they have great benefits for management to keep up with hourly so they can fend off unions. Or something like that!

   14. Most lawyers do not make biglaw salaries. This post is pretty tone deaf.

       1. No kidding. The year I retired (from a very good government job) I made about the same as a first-year BIgLaw associate. Yikes. (Although I always said I got paid WAY more than they did per hour worked!)

          1. But those benefits…. Do you have health insurance covered now, as a retiree?

             1. Retiree health insurance isn’t that unusual.

             2. I’ve literally never heard of anyone other than govt getting retiree health insurance

             3. You have to pay your own premiums (like the regular employees) but my private sector employer lets retirees join the group health plan. It’s secondary to Medicare for anyone over 65 but I think that’s normal.

             4. that is very atypical, and if you have to pay the full premiums it is essentially Cobra and quite expensive.

                Government retiree insurance is nuch better than Medicare.

             5. I dunno, I work for a state government and I think our health insurance is awful! The premiums aren’t bad, but every plan has a ridiculously high deductible and out of pocket max. I basically avoid going to the doctor for illness as much as possible because it’s $200+ just to walk in the door before any tests are done or medicine is prescribed. Preventative care is the only thing we can access without a huge cost, and I thought the ACA made that pretty much universally free in the US. I’m only 40 so I don’t know a ton about Medicare but I always assumed I would just switch to that when I retire.

       2. Okay, but this poster did. This comment is tone deaf.

   15. I think the biglaw pay is the odd thing here, not his normal job. :)

       1. I think the really odd thing is wanting to compete with one’s parents like this.

       2. It’s BigLaw first year, which is for someone who is promising but knows nothing and is something most clients won’t pay for on their files. The established career engineer, OTOH, is useful and has skills.

   16. I hate questions like this—why do I make so much more than everyone else?! Are they deficient??

       1. Sorry your brain caused you to read it that way!

2. Thought working moms might appreciate this – my nephew’s preschool just axed after-care all of a sudden and the email announcing it to parents says “even though we are sad to end it, we are excited for the children to have more time with their families after school!” Because yeah, that’s what’s going to happen – good ol’ quality family time instead of cobbled-together off-site aftercare that is in very short supply. My son’s daycare also closed suddenly so she and I have a lot to complain about.

   1. ugh. Sorry, I laughed out loud when I read that email announcement. What were they thinking?

   2. I had two daycares close down. One with ample notice. One abruptly.

   3. That is insane. Why exactly did they think parents were sending their kids to aftercare?

   4. The messaging on that is just … ugh.

      1. OP here and it definitely came off as judgmental alongside the rest of it. My sister is now considering switching schools over it because they just can’t cobble things together or adjust their work schedules and now the school is all surprised Pikachu about it.

         1. Daycares can be wildly judgy! I like to think it means they’re dedicated to the kids, but in this case they’re letting everyone down, and it’s understandable to consider switching over it.

   5. I would be so, *so* tempted to reply with a snarky comment. That’s outrageous.

   6. My son’s preschool recently started having a family event every week, where parents are expected to come mid-morning to watch a dance or art or whatever. It’s cute for the kids, but obviously the kids cry when they don’t see their parent and all the working parents are complaining because now we have to rearrange the workday to make it or deal with the tears. Only a few more months and we are out of there!

      1. I lost it one year when the mother’s day program at daycare was at 2pm. Like way to make me feel even worse that I can’t ditch work in the middle of the afternoon.

         The next year the activities were set up “do it with your kid at pickup” and I thanked the director on the way out for shifting course.

   7. Wonder if there isn’t much competition in your area. That’s one helluva choice for spin, especially when the parents are still customers.

3. Parents of college kids, what do you pay for and what do you make them pay for? We pay for tuition/room/board not covered by scholarships, travel to and from school, car maintenance and insurance, and textbooks. We also take her on a big Target run whenever we are in town. Kid has a summer job and a part-time job during the school year. She is responsible for gas, personal expenses, clothing, concert tickets, eating out, etc.

   Kid has an opportunity to visit a friend over the summer when she’s not working. The plane ticket is not really in our budget but we could scrounge up the money. It would be a large expense for kid but she could swing it if it were a priority. I feel that this is exactly the sort of spending choice she should be learning to make for herself, but on the other hand I don’t want to be a scrooge. WWYD?

   1. My kid isn’t in college yet but I plan to offer spending money just for fun. My parents were mad I went out of state to college (not because they would miss me, but because they thought it was a stupid choice compared to in-state) and made a big point of not helping out when they easily could have. Long complicated story but tl;dr is that I see a lot of value in supporting your kid to have a great college experience and that includes some spending money. It would have helped me so much to be able to afford shampoo, tampons, AND an occasional dinner out. I worked all four years and summers so it wasn’t like I wasn’t trying to earn enough on my own, but the price of textbooks alone would sink me. I occasionally skipped buying them and SparkNotes’d my way through class but that isn’t what I want for my kid either.

      1. Don’t you think she is already being very generous?

         1. I think two things can be true. She is being generous.

            And trips like this can be awesome. My parents grew up in a rural area and went to the first good job my dad found (mom was a teacher, so she always found work easily when they moved). They didn’t know what they didn’t know. I was lucky in that I had a friend from college from DC and I got to go stay with her once and it was life-changing. I moved there after school and was able to talk about my experience there in a way that was less clueless and use her parents’ home as a base to interview out of. These connections are invaluable, especially if you are first-generation or otherwise needing connections to launch. If you can’t afford it, you can’t afford it. But I’d try to help make it happen for a kid who seems to be doing the right thing. Sure it will be social and fun. But it could be a lot more.

         2. I don’t. If she can afford more she should provide for her kid better.

            1. 100%

            2. A grown adult. Get real. Everything after 18, the child should be very grateful.

   2. Absolutely this should be her expense. Yes, continue to teach her the right lessons.

      Honestly, I think you are being overly generous already. Many I know expect their children to pay for their cars and/or contribute something of their summer earnings towards school costs. The other parents who pay for everything encourage their kids to contribute to Roth’s, sometimes doubling their contributions (when within the allowable limits).

   3. Offer to split the cost maybe, assuming you can.
      1. This is part of the reason I have a miles card. It lets me be generous for my niece in college, parental visits, etc.
      2. Summer travel can be crazy. But college students aren’t as bothered by wacky times when the flights are cheap. Encourage her to look around to inconvenient flights that may cost less.
      3. I wish I had travelled more as a student. I worked enough babysitting and crappy retail and have never had time to travel once I started working. I have only even seen the US beyond where I have family by tagging on an extra day here and there to work trips.

      1. Also, explain to student how bumping, etc. works. It may happen a lot more during the summer and if she is savvy and flexible, she could come out ahead.

      2. Oh, yes, we use credit card points to cover a lot of her travel back and forth to school. I don’t have enough points at the moment for a ticket. I was thinking that splitting the cost with her might make the most sense.

         It’s a difficult balance because even with the scholarships my entire after-tax salary goes to cover college. We cover the car expenses because it’s required for her degree program, we didn’t think it would be reasonable to make her shell out the $$$ for insurance, and we wanted to be sure she had a safe car. But we are on a very tight budget while she’s in school and are doing without a lot in order to give her this college experience. I don’t want to deprive her of travel and time with her friends, but I do want her to learn to make smart choices and don’t want to spoil her. It’s hard because this is a private college and many of her friends’ families seem much wealthier than we are–and we are by no means poor!

         1. Is her bday anytime soon? Can you split it as a bday gift?

         2. Whoa… this is a very different situation. You are not a very wealthy family and are really cutting back for your daughter’s benefit. No, you absolutely should not be subsidizing a pricey trip for your daughter when you are already on the edge.

            I am kind of shocked by some of the posts here. There are quite a few rich posters, as this is a lawyer heavy site.

   4. This would have fallen squarely on my shoulders as a college kid, the same way that flights for spring break were on me. *Could* my parents have paid my way? Yes, but that wasn’t the point.

   5. I’d say let her make the choice. At most, maybe offer to pay half. You’re already being very generous and if this is not in your budget, you should not hamper your financial goals for this very optional endeavor. I think that it’s important for kids to learn budgeting and that choices have trade offs, and if you’re already supporting her, blowing your budget to make this happen for her isn’t going to teach that lesson.

      You’re not being a scrooge. What you are doing already is very generous, and your plan is rational. You are graciously covering her large, important expenses that will enable her to get off on a good footing without debt. That’s so huge. She gets to cover fun stuff. I footed the bill for my entire undergrad and law school (with scholarships, loans, etc.) and my parents were there for emergencies and $50/month in spending money. I learned to make choices, save money for unexpected opportunities that I might want to pay for, and to live within my means.

   6. It is fine to make your kid pay for this type of expense. You’re covering plenty already.

   7. This is something my parents would’ve paid for, however, it was in their budget. If it was not in their budget i hope they wouldn’t have paid for it!!! There is absolutely nothing wrong with having your daughter pay for it herself, or split the cost. She should also book asap bc flight prices are climbing by the day

      1. If it were in my budget I would probably pay for it but if not then no. This is not something I would stretch the family budget for.

         1. +1 to not stretching the family budget for this expense.

   8. We found that when we gave x amount for something our kid kid got very creative in how to spend it versus us just saying yes, we’ll pay for it. Suddenly they were able to take a $99 Southwest flight at midnight because it meant they were budgeting “their” money instead of a 10am Delta flight for $400 on mom & dad’s dime.

   9. Pay everything you can afford to. Let your kid get internships that turn into jobs and go on trips with friends who will be their network. They can learn budgeting and hardship when they graduate.

      1. Honestly, yeah. There’s enough hardship waiting for her. I’m 37 and struggling to afford housing. Do what you can afford now.

      2. I was proud of working and paying for things when I was in college, and in retrospect, I missed opportunities while barely making a dent compared to tuition costs anyway after getting into a reach school.

      3. This. I am forever grateful that my parents paved the way for me by providing living and tuition and play money. I ended up in the csuite and a fully functional independent adult. The experience I had was priceless. It’s one thing if OP can’t afford this, but if she can, I don’t think you punish kids unnecessarily.

         1. Framing not paying for a plane ticket to visit a friend over the summer is very interesting.

         2. Repost: Framing not paying for a plane ticket to visit a friend over the summer as “punishment” is interesting.

         3. Not giving your child everything they want isn’t “punishing” them. Words have meaning.

      4. I agree with this. I had tiger parents who thought school should be my full-time job, and they didn’t let me have a job during the school year, so they provided me with spending money, and they probably would have funded something like this (it wouldn’t have stretched their budget though). I did work in the summers but they let me save that money and apply it to my law school tuition. Between that money + jobs during law school + a merit scholarship I graduated law school with very minimal debt, which made a huge difference to my life and my kids’ lives.

      5. If you’re raising someone helpless. This is such a nonsense take.

   10. Put me in the camp that you are doing plenty and she can be on her own for this.

       1. Same here. OP is covering the lion’s share of her kid’s expenses and stretching her budget to do so, based on her reply above. Kid will either figure it out or save for a trip later on.

       2. I agree and am the mom of a college student. We pay tuition, rent, car, medical, books, necessities, and give a grocery allowance. We would give the plane ticket as a birthday gift though!

   11. We did a similar division of costs and then when she moved into an apartment we paid half her rent and she was responsible for utilities and food, in addition to the other things she paid for when she was in the dorm. I would probably offer to split the cost of the plane ticket in this situation.

   12. You’re doing plenty and your kid can either be frugal with her money or try to pick up extra shifts to afford the plane ticket. If you feel guilty and she’s busting it to afford it, maybe you slide her a little bonus cash and tell her you’re proud of her for saving/doing extra.

       It meant the world when my Mom would transfer me $20 and tell me to take my roommate out for the Sunday chicken buffet at the grocery store. It was living large compared to my usual menu of PB&J and egg sandwiches.

4. Do you scope out secondhand stores like Style Encore? Similar concept to Plato’s Closet, more mature styles. Found a great vintage Coach purse!

5. Have you had any “glitch in the matrix” moments? My family and I had one a while ago while playing a boardgame… hard to explain but there was no way that everyone’s hands were chance. (Rummikub – We each had 2 tokens we couldn’t get rid of and it turned out that the people playing had 4&4, 6&6, 8&8, and 12&12… but there was someone not playing sitting between the 8 and 12, and there was another person not playing sitting in the other room who could have been the 2s.) just realized that night may have been momentous for other reasons.

   anyway – light question, i’d love to hear about all of your glitch in the matrix / deja vu / weird stories

   Anyway, I’d love to hear about your glitches/deja vu/weird moments.

   1. This post was written in an unknown-to-me, foreign language.

      1. the language is nerd, and I say that with love. Don’t have an example but I know what you meant!

      2. My family LOVES Rummikub, however it has never actually made sense to me.

      3. That must have been an infuriating round to finish.

   2. I was recently delighted by the fact that I happened to glance at my odometer when it hit 123456.

      1. I’ve taken photos of the odometer when it hit 100,000 and 200,000 miles.

   3. I live in NYC, which obviously has a lot of people, and whenever I see the same person in two different places randomly (say, someone I don’t know but notice for whatever reason), I internally think of it as a “glitch.” Best one was when we had the same cab driver twice in one day in two different locations.

   4. We were at a bar in a foreign city and ran into a band we really liked so we bought them a drink, started chatting, turns out my partner’s aunt was their highschool teacher, also in another foreign city.

      1. My friend and I were studying overseas in Europe when we were in college. While we were there, my friend’s girlfriend came to visit for a few days from South Carolina. While we were all walking through the streets of Vienna together, the girlfriend happened to see a friend of hers that she knew from Singapore, where she grew up.

   5. I have TWTh in-office days and was planning a trip. I was waffling over booking a flight that left at 5 on a Tuesday because it would make my trip feel a lot longer than it otherwise was, office politics-wise, due to the lopsided impact on the in-office schedule. Decided to book it anyway and said “oh maybe that will be declared a WFH week anyway since it’s around the 4th.”

      The next day, our CEO announced the WFH schedule for the following year, and that was one of the weeks. If only it always worked that way ;)

   6. My mom watches my son and befriended another grandmother in our neighborhood who watched her grandson. The two boys were born 2 days apart. It turns out the other boys mom actually met my mom when the other mom was leaving the hospital and my mom was coming in to visit us. I live in NYC so it’s not like there’s one hospital everyone goes to.

      There’s also a ton of random connections between our family’s (the other boys cousin has the same name as my son, I have the same name as the other boy’s grandmother, the other boy’s cousin’s family lives where I grew up; my husband and the other boy’s dad are from towns with the same name but in different states, etc etc). We joke that we are alternate reality versions of the same family.

   7. I’d call them coincidences, but I’m a very quantitative oriented person and I know coincidences like these are more common than they seem. I read the book Innumeracy when I was in my 20s and it made a deep impression.

   8. This is maybe a weird story –

      I went to law school where I went to undergrad, a few years apart, and lived in the school’s city in between. A few days before law school orientation, I ran into a guy I knew in college at a local bar. He told me he, also, was returning for law school, and introduced me to the guy he was with as another member of our class who was there a few days early moving in. When that guy and I made eye contact, I felt almost like a bolt of lightning came down between us. Something I have never felt before or since. It wasn’t like immediate attraction, which I had felt many times before. It wasn’t butterflies. It was like electricity and I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad or ominous or what. I was honestly shaken.

      Well, for the first year of school, he and I had a very close and complicated relationship. Friends, tried hooking up, part of a threesome of besties with another guy. Many at school viewed us as a couple. At one point he broke up with his girlfriend, he and I didn’t progress romantically, they got back together, and I was the subject of jealousy (apparently we weren’t supposed to speak anymore but we were still close confidants). The whole time we had long talks in person and by phone about serious and not serious things, just very intense and sometimes great but sometimes contentious. At some point, as we were kind of dissecting our relationship, I said “Do you remember when we first met at Bar?” And he said “Yeah, it was weird. Like . . . electric!”
      We pretty much fell off by 2d year and I think if I saw him again at, say, a reunion, we’d probably mostly avoid each other, but I can imagine him saying something personal and snarky to me in front of a group, after two decades, because we were just that much in each other’s soup for a year. And yet, I also think that if a few little things (and I mean little) had gone differently, we could have ended up married. In my mind, if we had, his life would probably look almost as it does and mine would be almost entirely different, which is probably why it is good we parted ways.

   9. I work remotely in a tiny little town during the winters that is a popular tourist destination for my sport. It’s common for people to hitchhike back to their original destination after a session (think floating down a river with a shuttle back to the car, thru hiking, sailing downwind, etc.).

      We picked up these hitchhikers from London, and we got to chatting about work. Turns out he was heading to a big sales meeting for the same company a friend of mine works for, and he’s seen their name on internal documents!

      Crazy that this fellow came all the way from London, and ended up hitchhiking in his co-worker’s car in the middle of nowhere.

   10. My (terrible) second husband and my (wonderful) third husband both have the same first name, and their last names start with the same letter. It’s like the universe was trying to put me with the right guy but got it wrong the first time…

       1. My husband pulled up for our first date with the exact same old, boxy Honda (in the same color with a weird automatic seatbelt), as my previous boyfriend (both tall, physics guys). It was so weird.

   11. In the middle of an off-grid rafting trip in the Southwest in 2018, we discovered that in our group of three people born in three different counties, we had three male relatives fighting in WWII. Two were against the Nazis and one was for. We wondered who may have met in the Battle of Berlin.

       1. Almost every male in Europe fought in ww2 so as a European, I don’t find this strange at all. It’s like saying we all ate a hamburger in our childhood.

          Cool that you all got along despite being on opposite sides. Always blows my mind how humans can be ok with killing other people when there’s a war, whereas it’s inconceivable in peace.

   12. I’m from City A. When I went to City B, I shared a taxi with a woman (they were in short supply). As we talked, we figured out that we lived maybe a tenth of a mile apart in city A. Even more weirdly, she grew up in City B, in the same small apartment building that one of my relatives lived in. She remembered my relative.

   13. Lived in a house with a ton of roommates for awhile while i was finishing school. There were 10 bedrooms, and every few months someone moved out and was replaced. So you knew some people well and some not at all.

       I was visiting London, and ran into one of my new roommates, who i wasn’t very familiar with at home. It was wild, can only be explained as a glitch. Neither of us had discussed travel plans with each other.

   14. Conversation with a neighbor in July-
       me “oh guess what, we just booked to go to Greece – found a great r/t to Athens for leaving around Labor Day!”
       neighbor “no way me too, when’s your flight?”
       me “we’re leaving the Thurs night before”
       neighbor “…so am I”
       me “…from JFK though, not PHL”
       neighbor “……..so am I”

       yep. we were on the same plane!

6. Anyone know of any dog friendly hotels in Massachusetts near the coast? Or are air bnbs our only option? Somehow when I search with the “pet friendly” option checked I get lots of results but when I go to the hotel website to check is says service animals only.

   1. I always feel like all of those fungible lower class hotels near highways should differentiate themselves by being the kid-friendly one, the pet-friendly one, the quiet one… comfort inn, holiday inn, etc.

      1. La Quinta is pet-friendly, and I always remember this.

         1. +1 on La Quinta is great for pets

      2. Yes look at lower end hotels like Best Western, Hampton Inn, Comfort Inn etc

   2. Kimptons are dog friendly

      1. Hotel Indigo is as well.

   3. I’m sorry you can’t easily find a good place. I’m at the other end of the scale and need pet “unfriendly”, and in my experience the IHG places are correctly marked.

   4. Some (all?) Best Westerns are dog-friendly.

   5. Marriott Residence inn

   6. Check bringfido.com for a whole range of hotels that have been vetted (ha ha) by the company. They are pretty specific about extra fees, size limitations, etc. Comments will tell you about available grassy areas.

      1. BringFido is essentially Yelp for travel with dogs. It definitely has a lot of good info, but it’s pretty much all user submitted, so things can be wrong or out of date and you should double- and triple-check any info you get from there. The company doesn’t independently verify the info.
         Source: I used to do contract work for BringFido

7. Not sure if I should post again during the week, but does anyone have any good Boston hotel recommendations? Taking the kids and would like to see the main sites. Would like to be somewhere easy and central, with good breakfast and dinner options nearby.

   1. The Dagny

      1. I love the Dagny. Stay there all the time for work. Great location, beautiful rooms, excellent martinis and clam chowder.

8. I’m looking for some advice on how to fit exercise into my life.

   I’m a single mom who used to do 1 hour of exercise a day at 5am. I had an au pair so there was an adult in the house sleeping and that hour was covered by the 45 hours worked. If there was a problem everyone knew to knock on her door.

   I’ve moved and no longer have the extra bedroom. It’s 1200sqft for myself and 3 tweens. I’m really struggling with how to exercise at 5am. It’s noisy and wakes up the kids. Once one of them is awake it’s not possible to exercise. They interrupt me every 2 mins. The children aren’t developmentally ready for me to leave them unsupervised. Before others jump on this to say I’m being crazy and I am fine to leave them, the elder two children have been diagnosed with developmental disorders.

   The children no longer qualify for the care in the gym and I’m pretty much a sole/lone parent. Work is 9am-6pm. Bedtime starts as soon as I finish work.

   Help! I’ve gained weight because of this and feel so yucky.

   1. Are you able to find a gym with kids classes? At ours, kids can participate in swim lessons and then swim team (competitions are optional) and parents can be elsewhere in the facility working out at the same time. There are also options for some rec sports and other things targeted toward kids who have aged out of the kids club.

   2. This is really hard. Can you take an hour during the work day? Lunch, or at the end of the day, maybe? Even a 1/2 hour would be useful.

      Also, your kids are old enough not to bug you when you’re working out in the morning. If you can push it to 6 am, then they can deal and figure things out on their own; it’ll take a bit of training to get them to respect that it’s your time, but it’s do-able. (I had to do something similar with my tweens a while ago.)

      Good luck!

      1. Did you miss the part about developmental disorders?

         To me it sounds like they need a babysitter, or the exercise has to involve the kids somehow (like taking them to the park and everyone roller blading or running or whatever works for everyone’s capabilities and supervisory needs).

         1. I did miss that part. Sorry my response wasn’t as helpful as it could have been.

   3. Lunch break.

   4. This is really tough

      Brainstorming a couple options: is there a quieter workout option? Would they still wake up if you worked out just outside (like on the porch/lunges on the sidewalk/etc – you’re close enough to still be available in an emergency)

      Bigger picture: as your kids get older, what kind of support is available for your children with disabilities? It sounds like you are in the transitional space where you need to start pulling in disability-specific resources: when they were younger, you were getting some respite just from services designed for young kids (is gym childcare), but now your kids are too old for those services but not as independent as their calendar ages. Some options to look at are things like Camp Easter Seals in the summer, signing them up for a special Olympics team (and you work out while they’re at practice), etc

      Even without a live in au pair, can you hire a nanny/college student/random sahm to come sit in your house after bedtime for a few hours a few times a week while your kids sleep & you go work out?

      1. Thank you for thinking sideways. Easter Seals don’t do anything for teens in my state. I’ve had a hard time getting my eldest signed up for their employment training program.

         We do special Olympics skiing, swim, soccer and running. I volunteer as a coach for swim and running but don’t get the needed exercise. The skiing is hard because its in the middle of nowhere and soccer is an indoor pitch which is a 45min session. You can’t walk around the perimeter and it’s 15m each way from the local gym.

         I’m frustrated in part because I was told I qualify for respite care and I’d get about 60 hours a month. Now they tell me they don’t have anyone available. I found my own person and they said they must to be hired by an approved agency. None of the approved agencies will take her on.

   5. What workouts are you doing and is there a way to make them quieter? I work out with dumbbells to youtube videos, and although I like the chatter of the hosts, I could easily turn off the sound and just follow along — the only noise would be me breathing. Bedtime starts early but is there a way to move that back a little, maybe take everyone for a walk right after dinner — it will tire the kids out and they might sleep a little later and give you some morning time, but meantime you could get in some steps. Or have everyone do a video with you.

   6. I’d go with the evening sitter – perhaps a college student or who sits in the living room once kids are asleep while you go to the gym. (And I’d look for the nearest 24-hour gym for this.)

   7. There’s some good advice on here about how to be able to exercise. I’m throwing in a reminder that diet is super important, along with hydration and rest. There are some awesome smartwatches available to be able to track sleep quality which I found correlated with when I had “off” days with low energy. Wishing you luck with your exercise.

      1. Yes! I’m doing what I can to manage my diet, sleep and hydration. It’s exhausting managing the children so I’ve learned to control those factors.

         Some days are really tough. I find my HRV is excellent at signaling stress. Last night was 35. Typically I’m in the 45-60 range. Not a shock as my eldest went on the rampage at bedtime as they were overtired. It was so stressful because at 5, I could pick her up. At 15, 5’7” there is not a lot that I can do.

         I get a lot of support from the state in terms of therapy but what I really need is respite care. A regular sitter is not safe with the children. Typically I need someone with a RBT or 2 years experience of working with special needs in a school setting. It’s $35/hr if I’m lucky. I found someone willing to work for $20/hr which I pay for myself. It just adds up to spend $40 each time I work out because they won’t come for 1 hour, they need a 2hr minimum.

         This administration has been terrible for the special needs community. My eldest is very sick at the moment and Ive needed to exercise to deal with the stress of handling them. ABA therapy was reduced to 25 hours a week by the insurance company. My eldest really needs the 40 hours of care during school time and 80 hours during school breaks.

9. I just did a closet inventory, I know some here like tracking their own wardrobe and seeing other peoples
   This is my first count in probably 8 years so, here’s my numbers.

   32yo, tech/casual office, wfh x2 week, midwest city.

   Sweaters 9

   Sweatshirts (hoodies, zip ups and pull overs) 12, includes 1 UV Protection, 2 from college, 1 company branded

   Button ups 10 (3 flannel)

   Long sleeves 16 (3 thermal henleys, 1 statement blouse)

   Short sleeves 30

   Tanks and sleeveless 19

   Shorts 7 (3 gym shirts, 1 active skort, 3 linen blend)

   Skirts 1 (midi navy polka dot)

   Dresses 6 (1 business casual, 1 cocktail, 1 summer wedding level formal, 3 casual office appropriate midi)

   Blazers 3 (1 formal, 2 business casual)

   Long pants 25 (3 PJ bottoms, 5 jeans, 1 jean overall, 1 cotton blend overall, 4 sweatpants or joggers, 1 legging, 1 yoga pant)

   2 swimsuits (1 tankini, 1 onepiece)
   Sneakers 6 (1 weighlifting, 1 running, 2 converse, 2 casual office sneaks)

   Sandals 3

   Loafers 3

   Boots 7 (1 uggs, 1 tall snow, 1 short winter hiking )

   Heels 3 ( 1 formal ankle bootie, 1 summry wedge, 1 black formal heel)

   Jackets and coats 15 ( 1 long puffer, 2 wool, 1 puffy vest, 1 insulated packable and waterproof coat)

   1. Thank you for sharing! Always interesting to see numbers.

      Are you happy with your current counts, or do you set goals or evaulate?

      1. The sweater count surprised me! A lot lower than I thought.

         I have found over the last few years some a styles in different categories that work for me, and Im trying to lean into that.

         I have so many linen and linen blend pants and button downs for my summer office uniform. Wide leg linen pant+ breezy tank and a slightly oversized button down.

         Leggings on the other hand are just not that comfortable to me so 1 pair is plenty.

         Most of my short sleeve and long sleeve shirt catagories are 2nd hand purchases and I think a subset those are reaching the ends of their useful lives.

         I actually had to trash a pair of jeans last week that finally tore a knee wide open after 9 years .

         I think I struggle with admiting when items have reached the end of their road.

         1. I have occasionally rebought the exact same item second hand, if something is at the end of the road or need a new size. I like the continuety, and don’t need to make any decisions about a new style.

10. Lawyers with kids who have maybe leaned out a bit, I’m starting to think of myself as a “7th year associate with 10 years of experience.” I’m really good at what I do. And that has changed a bit since the Lehman crisis. I’d like to branch out now that my kids are older and work another 10-15 years. But o feel that at my age and billable rate and with the in-firms assumption that I’m coasting, feel that that will be an uphill struggle. Any advice or consideration? I have some clients of my own but just do one line of work and no one else at my firm does what I do.

    1. I think of counsel is the usual path for this. Depending on your practice area and your local market, sometimes you can accomplish that within your firm and sometimes it requires a change of jobs.

    2. The Lehman crisis was almost 20 years ago at this point… how senior are you, actually?

       1. My thoughts exactly.

       2. Lehman was 2008. But if you were starting out then you probably got deferred at BigLaw for several rounds and then otherwise did document review for a few years. Very slow launch back then. And some firms froze you a year if you ever took maternity leave, so many women lost time that way.

          1. Yes, it’s 2026. 2008 was 18 years ago. I’m just not following the analogy. If OP had to adapt her practice post-Lehman she is more like 25+ years out of law school… but she feels like a 7th year associate?

             1. I’m not the 3:38 poster, but I read it the same way, I thought it was more about the impact of the financial crisis of those of us who graduated in the aftermath. I’m law school class of 2010 and I was un/underemployed for a year after graduation and when I finally got a Big Law offer it was as class of ’11. Then I lost another year along the way, so I was considered class of 2012 by the firm. So if I’d stayed in Big Law I’d be much closer to a 10th year than 25+ . You can also lose a class year for mat leaves.

    3. Your question is a bit confusing, but after I read it a couple of times, it sounds like you’re saying that you’ve been coasting for a while, and want to branch out a bit? I’m in leadership in a mid-size, regional firm…at my firm, I’d expect you to seek out attorneys with business you want to branch into, and ask them for work. Tell them you’ve got some bandwidth for more hours, are interested in learning, and offer to do work for them. Tell them they can bill you out lower if they want.

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