Coffee Break: Faux Leather Chain Belt

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I feel like I've mentioned this but can't find it in our recent posts — Ann Taylor has a TON of cute belts right now. Having just done our roundup of classic wine-colored heels for work, obviously I am drawn to this burgundy belt (and there is that whole theory that your leathers should match, although I don't think anyone will knock you for wearing a neutral belt and colorful shoes). The belt also comes in black, and it's $39-49 — but today you can take 50% off your purchase. Nice. Faux Leather Chain Belt This post contains affiliate links and Corporette® may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. For more details see here. Thank you so much for your support!

Sales of note for 2/7/25:

  • Nordstrom – Winter Sale, up to 60% off! 7850 new markdowns for women
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  • Rothy's – Final Few: Up to 40% off last-chance styles
  • Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
  • Talbots – 40% off one item + free shipping on $150+

And some of our latest threadjacks here at Corporette (reader questions and commentary) — see more here!

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93 Comments

  1. Heading to a meeting next week in Burbank, CA and need some airport advice…..would it be better to fly into LAX or Burbank airport (Bob Hope)? Flying from the East, so right now I am leaning towards a nonstop flight into LAX and Uber over to Burbank. Hotel Amarano was recommended. Any tips appreciated…

    1. I would do a nonstop any time over a connection into Burbank.

      Awaiting the angelenos because airport choice is the One True Religion in LA.

    2. Other Angelenos may differ, but I’d do the non-stop to LAX and Uber to Burbank.
      This should be after your trip, but note that starting on 10/29, on arrival, you will have to take a shuttle to get to Uber/Lyft/taxis at LAX, and the general view on this is that it will be a nightmare. It seems like you can get around this by taking Uber Black or booking another black car service, but who knows what the wait for that will be like.

      1. Awesome input, thank you…I am traveling on 10/24 for meeting on 10/25 and departing Saturday 10/26. I will go with the non stop to Lax and Uber to Burbank…I have plenty of time coming in and leaving on Saturday. Great to have the heads up on the Uber/Lyft situation at LAX and glad that I will be out of there before that starts! Thanks!!

    3. I’m flying into Burbank for a few days in around Anaheim and UC Irvine. Will be crunched for time the morning that I leave, figured 20 minutes to Bob Hope is easier than an hour or more to LAX.

      1. Why not go to John Wayne if you have to be in Irvine??? That’s like 1.5 hours of traffic! And yes, it’s a religion.

        And if I had meetings in Burbank, I wouldn’t want to sit in traffic from LAX when the Burbank airport is 15 minutes from where I need to be. Again, it can take over an hour to get over there.

      2. Burbank airport is much further than 20 minutes from UCI and Anaheim. Maybe you’re thinking of Orange County (John Wayne) airport.

        OP- Burbank airport is one of the absolute easiest airports you will ever visit. It is small and easy to navigate and pretty amazing. If it were me, I would strongly consider a connection and flying into Burbank. It will take an hour plus to get to Burbank from LAX.

    4. That is hard to know without more detail. It will take at least an hour (if you are not hitting rush hour) to get from LAX to Burbank. It can easily be twice that depending on the time of day (longer in the afternoon than morning). You have to balance that with whether your flight into Burbank is nonstop and the length of any connection.

      If your choice is a nonstop flight into LAX or a nonstop flight in Burbank, I would pick Burbank. If you choice is a nonstop flight into LAX versus a connection that takes you to Burbank, I would evaluate the on-time record of the connecting flight and how much it adds to your travel day versus the drive to Burbank. Nonstop to LAX is probably your best bet – but I often find people are surprised by how long it takes to get from Point A to Point B in Los Angeles.

      1. I live medium far from LAX, but close to a delightful smaller airport. So my line when booking flights is “I’d rather spend 2 hours in Phoenix changing planes than 2 hours on the freeway getting to LAX.” Especially when I’m flying to and from destery places, airline connections are more predictable, in their way, than traffic. And just the traffic *at* LAX, to drop off or pick up, can be a nightmare. So if worst-case-scenario is a 2.5-hour drive to LAX, well, I kinda have to give myself 3 hours because who knows what could happen. Whereas, generally speaking, if I’m going to have two hours to change planes in PHX or DFW or whatever, it’ll actually be those two hours. When work is paying for a flight, I also consider that the cheaper flight out of LAX might not actually be cheaper once I’ve factored in the cost of a ride to LAX, vs. getting dropped off by my family at the local airport. Also, though, my decision-making is influenced by the fact that I don’t mind getting lunch at an airport, and don’t mind flying generally (unlike my partner who hates flying so would prefer a nonstop to avoid two takeoffs), so that factors into things too.

        1. I responded above that I would fly into LAX. Connections are great when you actually connect, but a delayed first segment or weather at the connecting airport mean I’ve been stuck at Chicago or Denver or Houston more times than I can easily count. I don’t mind getting lunch, but I do mind running from one end of concourse B to the other, only to be told the door has already closed, and then be looking at staying the night.

          1. Yeah I hear that. Maybe I’ll get burned a few more times and flying out of LAX will seem better by comparison.

          2. Check on the construction situation at LAX before you choose. The terminal work alone can 20 minutes to getting to your flight!

      1. As a counterpoint, I used to go to (downtown) LA 4-6 times/year for work and I thought LAX was fine. It’s not my favorite airport for sure, but I would not have a layover just to avoid it. Even the smoothest airplane layover will add ~2 hours to your itinerary (1 hour for additional flying time due to extra takeoffs and landings, 1 hour for the connection) and an Uber from LAX to Burbank should not take that long. And that’s a *smooth* layover. A bad layover can leave you stranded in someplace like Dallas or Phoenix overnight. No thank you.

    5. LAX no longer allows Uber or taxi pickups at the arrival areas and you’ll now have to take a shuttle to a specific pickup lot in order to connect with those services. That effort alone might be worth considering a connection to Burbank. I know that I would.

  2. How can I incorporate my state university’s logo in my outfits? I’d prefer a non-jewelry suggestion. I have alumni events with business attire dress codes, as well as business casual happy hours and casual Fridays. I’m not a big fan of polos. I’m a lawyer. I rarely wear jeans.

    1. Can you just wear the colors in normal business attire? I’m hard pressed to think of a way to wear a logo that is office appropriate in a business dress setting. The best I can think of is a scarf with the logo.

    2. I’d go with a printed scarf if you really want the logo, but my actual recommendation is to lean on the color scheme. Maybe a cute t-shirt or sweatshirt for casual Fridays–not one of the boring ones they give you at orientation, but a cute one. If you search something like “[your school] women’s tailgate shirts” you should see some examples of what I mean.

      1. (Source: I work in higher ed and this is something I have to account for in my professional wardrobe.)

    3. I don’t think you need to wear anything university-related for these things, but if you want to and don’t want jewelry, maybe buttons? My university’s store sells fancy blazer buttons with the school logo you could swap out for regular buttons. Or fancy silk scarves with a logo if they have them? Otherwise just go for a top in school colors. Guys have it so easy for this-they just wear a tie with the logo.

    4. I would probably go with a small, tasteful, face tattoo of your school’s logo.

      1. This is my favorite response (in a sea of great ideas!). Thank you for the laugh!! :)

    5. This is about scarves or accent pieces in the college’s colors. Not the logo.

    6. Most state universities sell button down shirts with small embroidered logos on them.

  3. Has anyone else noticed an explosion in “you’re totally overreacting!!/you’re crazy/why are you making such a big deal” responses on posts where someone has asked for input on an annoyance they experienced? I’m struggling to understand why posting a general question on an anonymous website is “making a big deal out of it.” To use the 5K example from this morning, Nesta didn’t say that she was going to boycott the race company or start a petition to ban all cars or riot against the police. She just asked for the group’s opinion on whether something was normal (like the AITA board on Reddit).

    1. No but I’ve noticed a lot of people asking for “advice” and not wanting to hear from people who disagree with them.

      1. I’ve noticed that people are less receptive to “advice” when it’s hurled at them in a mocking, cruel way.

        1. Agreed.

          Also, the whole “gently” thing comes across as… far more patronising than kind, like you’re a delicate little flower who can’t handle someone just stating the facts. Just be kind in what you say and skip the “gently,” as if the person asking for advice needs to be coddled.

          1. And on the opposite side how gentle do you need me to be? Like, ya yelled at a cop, I think you’re tough enough.

          2. I mostly view “gently” as a shorthand for “I mean this is in the kindest way possible” and also to overcome the lack of tone you get from written exchanges with anonymous strangers. Tone is hard in this context.

          3. Yeah, I feel like that’s a feeble attempt at trying to come across as nice when what you actually have to say is, in fact, kinda brutal. Like, we’re all smart people, surely we know how to convey tone in way that’s more effective than just prefacing our comment with “gently.”

          4. I feel like tone is so hard to misconstrue in text, I appreciate the “gently” preface, I always read those comments with a softer tone than I might otherwise.

        2. Agree. Whoever is going around saying “Omg grow up. Omg nobody does this. Omg stop overthinking it.” is unkind, no matter how right they are.

          In defense of “gently,” though, I try to use it when someone is clearly really worried and I want my advice to not seem like I’m yelling at them when they’re already fragile. It’s hard to convey that.

          1. I don’t understand the assumption that all negative comments are made by one poster. I make some of them! But I assure you, not anywhere close to all.

          2. I’m the OP here and I use gently in that tone too, but if it bothers people I can stop. I can see how it would be taken differently.

          3. Ok for real, I don’t know how any of you who are so worried about the right way to disagree with someone without hurting their feelings even make it in the corporate world. I mean that sincerely, not as snark. If I got my feelings hurt every time someone disagreed with me at my job, I wouldn’t have made it past the first week.

          4. But Anon at 5:00, are the people you interact with at work really as senselessly snarky as the women on this site are sometimes?

            It feels like frequently on here the exchange is like, “Can you recommend a green dress in petite sizes for my nephew’s wedding?” “OMG no. No green.” It’s unnecessarily abrupt.

            If someone asked me, “How can I blah blah blah legally?” and I responded “OMG no. Don’t do that.” at work, I certainly wouldn’t be very popular. So I guess, yes, I do try to disagree with people / tell them no / give hard-to-hear advice in ways that read as kind and helpful, because that’s how I want to be perceived at work.

          5. I work with mostly men so yeah. If I say we should so this, I tend to get an “are you nuts? We don’t do that” – at best.

          6. Non anon at 5;00 but to answer rainbow hair, the responses on the morning thread were far nicer than the responses someone would have gotten to that same question in my office.

          7. I didn’t really follow that particular conversation, but it’s a bummer to me that incivility / not caring about other people’s feelings is wielded as sign of toughness or capability, especially in a professional environment. So much of any job, in my experience, is just about managing different people’s wants and needs.

    2. That’s been happening here for years, nothing new to see. I generally feel those responses are unkind and unhelpful. Sometimes the person is actually overreacting, but it seems like we often read a lot of emotion and outrage into the original post that isn’t actually there? Maybe there’s an assumption that if someone is putting it on the internet, it must be a really big deal, when really it could just be a simple sanity check. So, in other words “hey guys, this bothered me a little, but maybe it’s more common than I realized, what do you think?” is somehow twisted into “THIS HORRIBLE THING HAPPENED AND I AM SO UPSET I AM SPIRALING INTO HYSTERICS MY WORLD IS CRASHING DOWN AROUND ME”

      I do think that even when we feel an OP is out of line or making a mountain out of a molehill, a little kindness and empathy can go a long way.

      1. +1 I think it’s disappointing. This site can be so uplifting and encouraging when the commenters feel like it.

      2. I agree with this, and will tie it in with anon at 3:47. Often someone posts with a genuine question about something that bothered them but that left them unsure. People reply “you are spiraling into hysterics and your world is crashing down around you. Grow up.” Then the OP feels defensive and wants to explain more about why she posted, and that she isn’t an idiot, which can come off as her not being open to other input. In a way, she isn’t, because the input is rude. Whatever comments actually are constructive are sort of drowned out by the insults.

        1. Not to mention, those who feel the OP is overreacting or overthinking a situation often make really unkind and often baseless assumptions about the OP and her supposed “real” motives, which just makes them even more defensive. That didn’t happen in the runner discussion, but I’ve seen it happen other times, it’s so nasty.

          I won’t say it costs nothing to be kind, because that statement undervalues emotional labor, but I will say it costs zero dollars to not be a jerk.

    3. I mean, the poster literally ‘wanted to know if I was right to be outraged’ and whether ‘I shouldn’t have reacted as strongly as I did’.
      If other posters feel that way, ‘you are overreacting/this is not a big deal’ are exactly the answers that are warranted by this question. Other answers disagreed and said ‘yes, I would be outraged by this’. What do you expect?

      1. Not “the world doesn’t revolve around you” and “it’s not a tragedy” and “chill out” and “they don’t want to hear your sob story” per this morning’s thread. That’s just the responses I could find in a 15-second scan. There have been other bad ones lately too.

          1. It’s not that bad, but it’s also needlessly rude. Never in the history of the world has “you need to chill” or “calm down” actually encouraged someone to calm down.

          2. Tales of Wedded Bliss: I once threatened to divorce my husband if he ever told me to “calm down” again. (We’re good, it was just a fight, but foof not the right thing to say, dude.)

          3. Agreed. Normally chill out unprompted drives me nuts. But it feels like a completely reasonable response to am I overreacting

        1. Oh the other side it was, I don’t want to hear your opinion if you don’t run.

          So people who are stuck in traffic trying to get to work due to road closures – their opinion doesn’t count?

          The word elitist was thrown around a few times and I think it was right.

          1. Eh, I think that people said that because the non-runners didn’t understand that waiting 30 seconds during a race is actually a rather big deal, nor did they understand that you pay money for a race so that you have a course to run on (which includes not waiting 30 seconds for cars to pass). However, all of the runners have places to be in normal life, drive cars, etc., so they see both sides.

          2. I’m the one who was called elitist and it made me both laugh and shake my head. I’ve been called plenty of things in my life, but I’m pretty sure this is a first for elitist. Particularly for a race that we put on for our community, in our community and whose proceeds benefit the community. Those of us who put it on are volunteers. High school kids get community service hours for volunteering. The local university’s sports medicine program does outreach. Depending on the year, other local business and service agencies are on hand doing health/wellness outreach. It’s family friendly. We’ve had participants as young as 9 and as old as 80. There is a physically challenged division. Entry for kids is deeply discounted and we get the word out. We get the word out to various fitness affinity groups (Black Girls Run, Team RWB, etc) Short of making it free (which is impossible because cops & cones cost money and are necessary for a safe event), I don’t know how it could be more inclusive. The only inconvenience non-participants have is the possibility (which they are notified of at least a week in advance) of waiting a little longer at what is already a stop sign! The bus thing was a canard – there are no buses that time of day here. If you feel that having to wait an extra few seconds (seconds!) is more important than the benefit to several hundred members of your own community on one day out of the year, then we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

          3. Eh, some of us are runners and we *do* think that waiting 30 seconds during a 5K isn’t a big deal.

        2. The sob story-comment is condescending, but again, the OP asked whether others would have reacted as strongly, so the other responses are just synonyms for ‘I don’t think your strong reaction was warranted’.
          ‘The world doesn’t revolve around you’ is nowhere in that thread, not sure where you got that from.

    4. I genuinely thought she was overreacting. I’m allowed to have that opinion. Sometimes I think people make mountains out of molehills, and sometimes I think people are appropriately making mountains out of molehills.

      1. Sure, you definitely are, but being rude is optional. I didn’t see if you particularly posted anything rude, but I don’t think we need to defend “omg princess stop being so spoiled” types of responses.

        1. Nobody said anything like that though. “Chill out” is very different in tone than “princess, stop being so spoiled.” I didn’t see any comments like the latter on that thread.

  4. My neighbors (in an apartment building next to my condo building) have built a sukkah on the fire escape on their building, and the roof extends over the balcony – the one right outside my bedroom. Last night was the first night of sukkot, and I think they slept in the sukkah and there was loud singing late into the night (didn’t stop until 3:30am). Moving to the living room and wearing earplugs did not help much. We spoke to them about this in the morning, and they accused us of being anti-Semitic. Nah man, I am Jewish too.
    As background, we have had tons of other issues with these neighbors – mostly late-night noise (i.e., past 11pm). They always have their windows and doors open and routinely sing/chant/blare radio and TV, and noisy children routinely visit. But also some other issues such as kids throwing trash onto our balcony, the residents and visitors taking pictures/videos of us on their phones, a very odd light they installed that somehow penetrated black out shades, etc. We’ve spoken with them many times, but then the problem persists.
    My husband has been in contact with the property manager of their building about the light and noise. The property manager made them take down the insane light immediately, sent them letters about the noise (copying us and two other owners in our building who independently complained), and came at night to observe the noise several times. She is continually telling them to pipe down. The last letter threatened eviction. She is hesitant to do anything about the sukkah, despite the fact it is blocking the fire escape and generating complaints from people in my building and in the building she manages.
    So anyways, a few of my neighbors are prepared to call the police tonight if it is as loud as last night. I hate to do that and seem insensitive to religious practices, but we are not being unreasonable right? Not that it matters, but all three of us complainers are Jewish too, but not Orthodox so we don’t build sukkahs.

    1. You don’t have to wait until tonight when they are blocking a fire escape. Reaching out to the Fire Dept now instead of waiting until they have their dinner in it is also less aggressive, imo. Just ask if there is an exception in the provisions for fire escapes for religious structures.

    2. You don’t have to be Orthodox to build a sukkah. But yeah they’re being totally unreasonable and you’re totally in the right here.

      1. A succah is not meant to be built on a fire escape. Period. If they want to be holy, then they can build it in the woods or on the ground. There were no fire escapes in the Bible, Grandma Trudy says, and I agree. YAY!!!

  5. My health care provider is recommending that I take advantage of the therapy benefit provided through my EAP. I saw her for an annual wellness checkup and she has told me (several times now, for different items) that she thinks I should be seeing someone, especially if the lab work doesn’t turn up any physical issues.

    In this particular case, the issue at hand is a close co-worker who died suddenly a couple of months ago.
    I’ve been resistant so far, as I’m not really sure what good it will do. I think I feel worse when I talk about it.
    Can someone give me some tips on what I could expect from starting therapy?

    1. Hi, I’m so sorry you’re going through this. As someone who has been to therapy (and is currently in therapy) for various reasons, I can say you aren’t wrong that “it feels worse” to talk about it. In fact, I find the beginning of therapy to be very hard, usually because you are there talking about something very difficult and traumatizing. It can feel terrible at first, if I’m being honest. The good news is that it usually starts to get better after the first few sessions. I’ve definitely had sessions where I’m like “WOW – why am I rehashing all this stuff that I thought I put behind me; it’s making me feel terrible.” But it is mostly foundational, and your therapist can help you move forward, and you won’t always be talking about the painful stuff for the duration of your therapy. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, if you can get through it in the beginning. I would suggest scheduling your appointments on a day when you can either work from home, or at the end of the day on a Friday, or some other time where you won’t have any immediate obligations right after your appointment. (Or alternatively, if there is a meditation/yoga/easy workout class you can go to right afterwards, it isn’t bad to have therapy then go to restorative yoga for an hour, and it can either give you time to yourself to either (1) think about your session or to (2) get into a better head space if it was a tough session.)

      1. This advice is so good. I only go to therapy in the evenings, but I make sure that afterward I have what I call “quiet alone time.” I bring my journal and go to a cafe and sit without talking to anyone to kind of recenter myself.

        And I agree with what you’re saying about rehashing. I sort of think of it like opening up closed drawers in my brain, dumping all the stuff out, and then sorting it out so it can go where it should be. The dumping it out process is messy and the worst, but then when things are refiled, it’s so much better.

    2. You should absolutely try therapy. You’re at the point where your condition is so bad your doctor has repeatedly suggested it. You should expect help.

    3. If a provider is repeatedly urging you to seek therapy, then, gently, I think it means you need help.

      Has this provider also prescribed meds? Or discussed prescribing meds?

      Therapists – good ones, anyways – can help you challenge your thought patterns and look at your world in a different way. For example, years ago when I was in a terrible place over a bad relationship, I assumed I was unlovable. It took the therapist – a neutral third party – to highlight for me what was really going on (namely, he wasn’t emotionally available for reasons I didn’t see until after I had fallen for him).

      Working with that therapist was literally lifechanging for me, but so was finally getting on meds. I just naturally have a critical, cranky, bossy demeanor, and have since elementary school. Sad but true. (And led to my thinking above that I was unlovable because no one wanted to hang out with someone who was critical and cranky and bossy.) Meds make me pleasant and easy-going, and I’m grateful for them.

    4. I love therapy. It was hard for me to find a good therapist who took my insurance, but it was so, so worth it. I thought that perhaps because I was functioning just fine (…ish) I didn’t really super need therapy. But oh my word, I did! I think of my therapist as helping me on two planes: (1) helping me process trauma (I hope this isn’t a thing — or a big thing — for you) so that I can remember bad things and acknowledge them as upsetting without being zapped back in time to be right in the middle of the feelings they evoked; and (2) helping me develop more functional patterns of thinking and behaving. Together these changes really really really help with my depression and anxiety.

  6. My assistant is being let go, in small part due to complaints from me. I think getting rid of her is 100% the right decision for our group, but I still feel bad she is losing her job. This is normal, right?

    1. Yes, this is normal.

      Only advice I have is to think about what you will say if/when you are called as a reference for her. (Even if she doesn’t list you as a reference, the employer may want to talk to her most recent manager.) You can confirm dates of employment, or you could draw up a list of her strengths and discuss those, while also stating that the position was not a good fit for her because of various reasons. “She would be a valuable asset in an environment where…” might be good language to use.

      1. I’d be careful about saying anything other than the dates she worked there. People can get sued for saying more. It was absolutely prohibited to say more at my prior employer.

        1. That depends on the state and the contract the former employee signed with the company.

    2. Of course. Try to look at it this way – if she was that bad at her job, it must have made her unhappy too. Hopefully she will find something in the long run that is a better fit for her.

      But of course you are right to empathize with her today because losing your job, even one you don’t like, is hard for everyone.

      1. Yup, I’ve been there. I was fired from my first full-time job out of college, and I even though I didn’t like that job – I didn’t like the company, I didn’t like my boss, I disliked a lot of people in my department, and I dreaded coming into work just about every day – it still really, really sucked to get terminated from that job, because it felt like some big failure that I couldn’t hang on long enough to get a new job and put in my notice.

        Hopefully this assistant isn’t getting blindsided though. It’s one thing if she’s known for a while that she’s not doing well in this role and her job is in jeopardy; but if people have been lying to placate her, and acting like everything’s fine and dandy up until the actual termination meeting, that can really take the wind out of a person’s sails.

      2. Yep! Agree. I’m about halfway through the book _Radical Candor_ and the way it addresses letting people go from positions that aren’t a good fit is helpful. It doesn’t have to mean the person is bad at work–it’s just a bad fit. Ripping the band-aid is ultimately the best for everyone, but it still sucks in the moment. It’s human to feel that on both sides.

        PS I’ve been in your shoes, and I found the book mentioned above helpful in trying to do it better the next time around–coaching and giving honest feedback and just generally being a better boss to hopefully avoid making some of the same mistakes I’ve made in the past with my legal assistant. Not that a bad fit is 100% my fault, but I think there are ways I could have managed that whole situation better.

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