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Wednesday’s Workwear Report: Mary Dress

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Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.

Universal Standard is one of the best brands out there when it comes to size inclusivity. Until recently, I had always associated them with more casual clothes, but their selection of workwear dresses looks fantastic. I really like this short-sleeved V-neck dress, which comes in this pretty forest green, along with navy and black.

If you’re wondering what it looks like in different sizes, Universal Standard shows the black and navy dresses on models ranging in size from 6–32.

The dress is $68 on sale (originally $168) and available in sizes 00–40. Mary Dress

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Sales of note for 12.5

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366 Comments

  1. Has anyone who bought a Fitbit or smart watch kept using it for more than six months consistently? I have been thinking of getting one now that we are WFH. But it seems like everyone I know who got one eventually stopped wearing it after a while. So I’m not sure if it’s worth the money. Also, the straps for them look so masculine and ugly to me.

    1. If you wear a watch just normally, you might look into Fossil smartwatches. Some of them look really nice, and you can exchange the band for a sport one if you want to go running or something, and then switch back for regular wear.

    2. I’ve been wearing a fitbit for 8 years. I just have the basic one and although I’d like it to track cycling, I’m fine with the basic functions. Smart watches make me nervous, do I need to be any more connected than I am?

    3. Yes, I have consistently worn my Apple Watch for over two years. Previously, I had a FitBit that stopped working. That being said, I tend not to wear it during the summer, when I am usually at the beach a lot/lazier in general. But seeing my workouts logged is motivating to continue my “streak” and beat daily set goals (you close three rings-standing, moving, and calories burned.)

    4. I have been wearing my Apple Watch for two years, but I use it to guide my workouts rather than to track them. I use the Workouts app to keep pace on walks, and third-party apps for timing and pacing on interval runs and to time stretches. I turned the hourly stand reminders off when I was working in the office because they were disruptive during meetings, but I have been using them at home. I don’t really pay attention to the general activity tracking functions or the goal rings because they aren’t sufficiently customizable. I can’t stand all the text, phone, calendar, and app notifications, so I disabled them.

    5. I’ve been wearing an Apple Watch for two years. I keep meaning to buy a leather strap for it but haven’t yet. I love it.

      1. +1 for Apple Watch. I had a Fitbit for years but it never motivated me the way my AW does. I bought a few leather straps on Etsy for not much money.

        1. Agree. I would never give up my apple watch. I’ve had it for well over 2 years (previously had a fitbit) I love it and the fact that it allows me to locate my phone (which I ALWAYS seem to misplace) is an added bonus.

      2. +2 for Apple Watch, I’ve also been wearing mine for two years.I did not use my fitbit consistently when I had one. I have a couple of watch bands that I love, both from Amazon – one is a dupe of the Hermes double tour strap, and the other is a rose gold and tortoise shell one. I do NOT have any email or text notifications on it, because I didn’t need to be any more connected than I already am. I primarily use it for exercise tracking, activity monitoring, and weather, plus using it to create reminders, occasionally sending texts, and navigating (when you’re using maps for directions, it gives really cool haptic feedback for turns and such that I find really helpful).

        1. +3 for Apple Watch – it’s very handy between the ability to read messages on your watch and to ping your phone. I wear it daily and sometimes take it off for workouts but I’ll be following the thread to see if anyone has good 3rd party workout apps.

    6. wow I was just looking into fitness trackers last night! I’m debating between fitbit vs a cheap one (~30) on amazon to see how much I like it

    7. I started with a base model fitbit, and have almost annually upgraded models to the Versa. I really like that it can look more like a traditional albeit larger watch. I still have the basic black plasticy band, but I don’t have a fancy job or anything where I feel compelled to have a nice watch. The plastic ones do break after a while and replacements are cheap. I can’t speak to the quality of the leather or canvas bands.
      I wear mine all day everyday except in the shower. You technically can, but you are also supposed to be able to wear it swimming, and I’ve killed mine doing that before (fitbit replaced it for free).
      I like that it prompts me to move throughout the day. I really like the sleep and heart rate data, especially if I’ve been feeling lousy. I can say yep, stress has been high so has my pulse and I haven’t been sleeping well. I also really like the various activity tracking it has for timing my runs or hikes.

    8. I’ve used a Fitbit consistently for 6 years. I started with one of the clip ons and moved to a watch 2 years ago (a Charge). Previous to using this as a watch, I wore a regular old leather banded Timex. It’s been worth the money to me. I consistently hit a minimum of 11,000 steps a day.

    9. If you want one that has a more traditional watch look, I have a Withings Steel HR that I really like – I think they are more popular in Europe. I got one of the metal bands to go with it and have worn it daily for the last year.

    10. I can’t answer your question because I just got mine a week ago but I am loving my Charge 4. I have the Rosewood color and it is a pretty deep purple. Very feminine and professional. I’m also working from home for the foreseeable future so I have no need to wear my regular fancy watch. It’s on sale for $120-ish right now and it has so many cool features that I think that’s a steal. They are also offering 3 months of premium for free right now too.

      1. It also has the option to have texts and certain app pop ups on the tracker. I love the radar alert when I’m exercising outside. If you have an android you can use some programmed responses. They don’t yet have that for apple. There is Fitbit pay where you can use it like Apple pay.

    11. I’ve worn a Fitbit consistently for 6 or 7 years. Different versions throughout. Absolutely love it and have consistently been into the metrics, tracking etc.

    12. I love my FitBit watch! Look on Amazon and you can get tons of different straps, from leather to all metal-mesh types. I have silver, gold, brown (fake) leather, black (fake) leather, and a white silicon one for active days. Just search “FitBit *model you have* straps.” I don’t look at the app every day but I do check my watch activity to get a gauge of where I’m at. I’ve found collecting straps for all occasions helps me wear it as my everyday watch. I truthfully workout in the black leather one because it was like, what?, $15 on Amazon? I will say though with the newer models of FitBits, get the face metal in a color you wear more. I got silver.

    13. I’ve been wearing my fitbit for a year and a half andI’m almost addicted, I love it so much.

    14. I wear mine all the time! I wear it to bed, I wear it around the house, I pretty much only take it off when the battery is dead and needs to be charged. I feel naked without mine!

      And if you’re worried about masculine straps, consider getting an Inspire HR, it’s really sleek and the straps come in some nice feminine colors like lilac.

    15. I had similar thoughts before buying a Fitbit three years ago, but I have used it consistently. It really has become an important tool for keeping track of my health and fitness!

    16. I’ve been wearing a Fitbit as a watch for years, but I don’t love the bigger chunkier ones (and the new releases are all big, unless I’ve missed one) – I went back and bought another Alta on NRack when my last one died because I like the small form factor so much better. For me it’s a watch and notification of texts/phone calls, and a passive step counter (I used to use the ‘reminders to move’ but don’t at the moment). So I don’t really use it as a proper smart watch.

      I’m not sure what I’ll do when this Alta dies – I probably will go away from Fitbit given their new ownership.

    17. I use my Apple watch all the time for both workout data and other things — I’m a cyclist so bought the cell capability so I didn’t need to bring my watch everywhere. I have answered phone calls on the watch in the faintly ridiculous “Dick Tracy” method but it is convenient; also there is a feature if you crash, the watch detects it and will call 911 unless you tell it not to. Haven’t used it, but a fellow cyclist in my area did and it worked.

      Fitness related apps I use all the time: Zones for HIIT workouts, the watch buzzes when you move from one heart rate zone to the other and I really like the live heart rate recovery countdown; Seconds pro for Orange Theory style workouts that I design myself on the phone and then activate; the Apple activity tracker. The last time I was at the doctor’s office, he asked if he could see my phone and the Apple tracker to check my heart rate history, VO2 max, etc. so I assume it’s pretty reliable.

      Other things I use it for on a consistent basis — I work with colleagues globally so the face has Berlin and Tokyo time on it and the center complication allows me to scroll through London, Beijing, etc. to check meeting times, it’s a lot more convenient that going to timeanddate.com — I can see at a glance! Siri works so I tell her to set timers all the time; open MapMyRide and other apps; and you can dictate short texts on the watch although it sends without the ability to edit so my friends and I are familiar with autocorrect “watchspeak.”

      I would use the Wallet app for contactless pay when I don’t want to carry my phone, but I’ve struggled to get it to consistently read in stores. Bonus pandemic safety measure is that if you use the watch instead of your phone, you don’t touch your phone and bring it to your face in the grocery store, for example.

    18. I’ve been using my fitbit for over a year now. Some of my favorite features are sorta random – being able to set a timer, vibrating to indicate an incoming call. I have the Inspire HR which is slimmer and I guess looks more feminine.

    19. I really like my Garmin Vivomove HR. I went with the Rose Gold and white leather band combo. I love that it looks professional with watch hands, etc, but it has smartwatch capabilities!

  2. Paging the poster who was looking for resources for lawyers with ADHD – I saw your question too late to post this resource, but check out http://www.thejdhd.com. It is a resource specifically designed for lawyers with ADHD, by someone who knows the territory all too well. Links to books, websites, resources, a podcast – however you like to get your information, you can find it here. Good luck to you!

    3. That was me! Thank you!!! Also as an update I have an appointment with a psychiatrist in a few weeks.

  3. Posting this with full understanding that I’ll likely get dragged for it, and rightfully so. My place of employment (public sector located in a covid hotspot) recently sent out a memo asking folks with certain high-risk conditions who would need to continue to work remotely to please contact HR. One of the conditions listed was obesity. When someone is obese, it is typically a combination of genetics and behavioral choices and not easy to avoid, right? I suppose I just had a really rude, momentary feeling of being scared and frustrated that colleagues who meet this criteria would get to continue to work remotely and ostensibly stay safer. However, I want to recognize that regardless of not coming in to work, they are still at much greater risk overall, right? I guess what I’m asking is is it similar at all to a colleague who smokes cigarettes or consumes large quantities of alcohol getting to continue to work remotely or more like having a chronic, preexisting health condition largely out of one’s control.

    1. I mean you obviously know you’re being hideously hateful to fat people so why bother posting? Like. No.

      No I am not explaining this to you.

      No you aren’t entitled to be coddled

      No this isn’t okay.

      No you aren’t a good person.

      No you don’t need to share every horrible thought you have with the internet.

      1. +1. You made a hurtful mistake posting this and you should apologize. I cannot believe you resent ANYONE for “getting to stay home”, much less a group that already faces vicious abuse. You should be ashamed.

        1. Yup. You started a thread that’s now full of people essentially admitting they are also cool with obese people dying because they had it coming. I’m obese. This is wrong and a hateful way to start my day.

          1. Maybe I haven’t read the comments closely enough but it seems to me that the thread is about “why are people obese” rather than “do obese people deserve to die,” which I do not see anyone advocating for.

    3. There’s also a socioeconomic dimension to it so I’d say it’s more like the latter. In any case, having fewer people in the office is good for everyone so I’d try to look at it that way.

      1. OP here-thank you for your replies. I don’t know if it’s helpful to tell me I’m a horrible person-I know my thought is likely unacceptable, and that fat phobia is a huge societal problem. Is the best way to deal with biased thoughts to ignore them/push them down or to delve into them? I think folks who indicated that there is a socioeconomic dimension and potentially a racist dimension as well are spot-on, as BMI is possibly based on a Eurocentric standard. Yes, I could be discussing this with people IRL and not on the internet, so feel free to not read/respond if you don’t care to. Only folks with preexisting health conditions will be allowed to WFH.

        1. The best way to to research this, read up on it, and keep your ignorant hateful thoughts to yourself.

        2. Yeah, this would work if you were really interested in being educated or “delving into” something so you can develop your understanding. I do not think that’s your agenda and you don’t get a pass for posting horrifically offensive things by saying “feel free to not read/respond if you don’t care to.” What a cop-out for intellectual laziness and straight-up prejudice. Putting a “I’m just curious” facade on your bias is exactly what white supremacists/white nationalists have been doing on the Internet for years to goad people into arguments about race. Did you pick up your tactics from that playbook?

          2. Does shaming people and telling them they’re a horrible person help people examine or lessen their biases or encourage them to further dig in and cling to their position? Seriously, though. How is that helpful? Yes, some people are straight-up bigots and vicious racists/homophobic/classist/sizeist. It’s stands to reason that others are somewhere else on the spectrum having been inculcated by societal forces.

        3. Obviously don’t ignore your racist and bigoted thoughts. Do something about them privately.

        4. You can certainly learn more about the many influencing factors for obesity, but it seems to me that you are looking for one objective answer that will allow you to stop disapproving of other people’s bodies. Ultimately, the mix of what makes people who they are is highly individual and also changing over time, and that is as true for overweight people as for anyone else. I think some work needs to happen where you interrogate why you are passing judgement on other people’s bodies in the first place. Why does it matter to you to explain instead of just acknowledge their state of being? What’s behind that?

        6. Hi, I don’t know if you are still reading but I wanted to respond. The American standard of beauty is in large part racist and classist. It celebrates women who are small boned. It’s as if we were birds, and only quail were considered attractive. It is classist because it considers women of heavier boned stock unattractive, and it is often racist because only small boned women from other races are considered attractive. If you are not a bird boned girl, chances are you have given into societal pressure and adopted unhealthy eating habits to shrink yourself to an acceptable size. You can only maintain that for so long, and then you are left with a damaged metabolism where your body holds onto fat because you have repeatedly put it in starvation mode. Criticizing your colleague for being fat is nothing more than repeating this racist and classist B.S.

    4. There is a stunningly moving “This American Life” story by Elna Baker, hers is titled “It’s a Small World After All” (the whole story is called “Tell me I’m Fat”). I have never, ever looked at obesity or weight loss the same way again. She details in incredibly vulnerable terms what it was like to be obese, what she had to do to lose the weight, and how it still impacts her to this day. It really shakes you out of thinking that weight loss is simple and easy and just so straightforward. Really arresting. Give it a listen (I think it’s like 15 min) and report back.

      1. I also suggest reading “Hunger” by the incredible Roxane Gay for insight on what it is like to be morbidly obese and how someone might have become obese.

        1. Yes! she’s actually featured in the story–I’m re-listening to it now. She’s so great.

      2. Wow, this is amazing and really consistent with my experience being fat and then thin, although she was a happy fat person and I was most emphatically not.

        And OMG the conversations with her husband just rip my heart out.

        1. I remember listening and thinking, “her marriage is doomed.” Incidentally, she did divorce him later on.

          1. Not surprised at all. Good grief. It’s not so much that he wouldn’t have dated her when she was fat, as that he just. didn’t. get it.

    5. You’re right to try to squelch this particular feeling. Do you honestly think that someone would “choose” to be obese – with all of the associated downsides, both in terms of health and society’s judgment – to avail themselves of the ability to work from home longer?

      1. This. If it were so simple to be thin, everyone would be thin, since thin people get vastly more approval in Western culture.

        1. It isn’t easy to be thin. It isn’t easy to be pretty. It isn’t easy to be rich. It isn’t easy to have great relationships. ALL of that takes work.

          1. +1. And if you have a problem with thin/attractive people getting more societal approval, take it up with evolutionary biology and s*xual selection. We are hardwired to seek mates who possess certain characteristics.

          2. This is so funny to me. Won’t someone please think of the thin pretty rich girls with great relationships.

          3. Ah yes, 12:06, this must explain why standards of attractiveness, as we all know, are and always have been the same across all times and places.

          4. We do seek out mates who we deem “healthy” — the specifics of what that means/looks like depend on the zeitgeist, of course, but certain signals of fertility are pretty consistently desirable throughout history.

          5. LOL. My husband married me when I was a size 16. I think about that a lot when I see so many women here who describe themselves as being “fit” or “slim” also lamenting that they are still single at 40 and they just don’t understand why??? because they are pretty and they deserve a partner! It ain’t your looks, sweetheart.

          6. Simply being married isn’t anything to brag about. As we know from countless posts on this site, many of your husbands are crappy.

          7. “Simply being married isn’t anything to brag about. As we know from countless posts on this site, many of your husbands are crappy.”

            Being happily married for over two decades and still being in love with my husband is, though! He’s not one of the bad ones. Sorry you’re so bitter and angry. I don’t think that’s going to work out for you over the long term, partnered or not.

    6. So your initial reaction was people are being rewarded (with WFH) for poor lifestyle choices, but you feel better that they’re getting this undeserved reward because they’re more likely to die anyway? Wow. I mean, if you want to WFH that badly, you could try to gain 60 pounds yourself.

    7. It’s more like having a chronic, preexisting health condition largely out of one’s control.

    8. Pretty much nobody is choosing to be fat in the western world, right? So you know the answer already. It sounds like the real issue is that you want to work from home. You need to express that interest to your employer, you don’t get what you don’t ask for.

    9. Honestly, I would kind of feel the same way even though it’s not polite to admit. At a particularly unscrupulous previous employer I had to share a cube with a morbidly obese woman (so I saw everything she did for 8 hours a day) and let me tell you it was certainly a lifestyle choice whether or not she would admit it. She often outright lied about her activities and caloric intake too which certainly rubbed me the wrong way. The kicker was when she went on these monologues about how ‘lucky’ I was, as if she couldn’t see exactly what I ate every day and didn’t notice when I went on my lunch time runs.

          2. You realize that you are weight shaming thin people just like OP is weight shaming obese people.

            Thin is not a personality. Obese is not a personality. People who eat healthy and stay active are not doing that at obese people.

            People have totally lost the concept of what is a normal weight in the US. So tired of being told to ‘eat a cheeseburger’ when I have a normal BMI. People forget that 2/3 of the country is overweight or obese so the majority of people you see everyday are not at a healthy weight. It’s not about being size 2. It’s about being healthy. Excess weight is not healthy. And yes there are overweight marathon runners etc but those people are clearly the exception.

          4. “Thin is not a personality. Obese is not a personality. People who eat healthy and stay active are not doing that at obese people.”

            Oh, sweetie. It’s adorable that you would think this but less adorable that you would say it. I am clinically obese and I work out 3x a week and eat 1600-1800 calories a day (I’ve tracked using My Fitness Pal for a long time). Part of my issue is hormonal, part of it is genetics and part of it is that I killed my metabolism (the same way people on the Big Loser kill their metabolisms) with an eating disorder and extreme exercise at an earlier point in my life. You need to do so, so, so much education with yourself that I don’t even know where to tell you to start, and I honestly don’t even want to waste my time because I know you won’t do it. Please know this: many of the thin girls I knew in high school (25 years ago) who nearly broke their arms patting themselves on the back are overweight or obese now as their hormones have changed in perimenopause. Think it can’t happen to you because you are so disciplined and virtuous? Think again. I honestly hope it happens to you, it would be a really valuable life lesson that could improve your karma for the next lifetime.

          5. Gonna be straight here, I’m a size 2 and if anyone has ever told me to eat a cheeseburger or made cracks about my weight, the impact of that is vastly out weighed by the immense privilege afforded to me as a thin person. People are absolutely awful to fat people and fat people face tons of discrimination. Thin people do not experience anything comparable.

          6. Try 1200 and working out every day. I had to up my workouts to daily with menopause in order to maintain a healthy weight. HIIT helps me find the time.

          7. Imagine holding a grudge against thin high schoolers for 25 years… yikes. It’s not their fault you’re unhappy and I doubt your ill-will is earning you any good karma.

          8. I was physically and psychologically abused throughout my entire childhood and teenage years. If I can manage to not insult people who had idyllic childhoods, you can all manage to not insult women with leaner body types.

          9. “Imagine holding a grudge against thin high schoolers for 25 years… yikes. It’s not their fault you’re unhappy and I doubt your ill-will is earning you any good karma.”

            It’s not a grudge, it’s schadenfreude. You can go look up what the word means if you need to. And I’m not unhappy, but thanks so much for displaying how salty and distasteful you are! Bless your heart. You’re in my thoughts.

          10. No one who thinks that deriving pleasure at the misfortune of others who have done nothing wrong is a valid activity has any business saying “bless your heart” or praying for anyone.

            PS- That word has been in common use for at least 15 years.

          12. Agree with @2:09.

            @12:46 you can direct those thoughts and prayers to yourself while you work through your obvious bitterness and resentment issues. It’s not normal to have this much schadenfreude for random people from nearly 3 decades ago.

      3. What you may be missing is what would happen if she didn’t eat frequently.

        People with impaired blood sugar control and insulin resistance often become hungry after eating meals because their blood sugar is swinging too high and then too low again. When this happens, we lose our ability to focus or can feel sick or lightheaded.

        This happened to me, and the first doctor I saw told me to eat more frequently to stabilize my blood sugar and to eat whole grains and complex carbs instead of simple starches. I gained weight following this advice. It wasn’t until I started testing my blood sugar myself (which is painful, inconvenient, and relatively expensive) that I saw that complex carbs are just as bad as straight sugar for me. In the end, what I really needed was to eat less frequently and avoid eating anything that spikes my blood sugar and insulin, whether it’s a whole grain or not. But to get a handle on this, I had to completely transform my diet compared to how I was raised, learn to like different foods, and the way I eat now is expensive, inconvenient, and generally perceived as antisocial.

        And this is just a story about how I stopped gaining weight and avoided becoming obese; I have no idea how to lose weight and keep it off.

      5. I’m with you, Anon at 9:36am. Although there is a genetic component to obesity, lifestyle plays a bigger role. Eating and exercise are choices that the vast majority of us have the power to make.

        1. Healthy eating and exercise are great for our health. But they’re not an answer to obesity (people either can’t lose weight despite exercise and calorie restriction, or they achieve short term weight loss but gain it back later). There is a ton of research on this.

          1. Interesting! I wasn’t aware there are studies indicating that lifelong healthy eating and regular exercise do not impact obesity at all. Can you link a few studies that relate to this? I googled but I just got studies that followed participants for a short period of time and when they stopped eating healthy they obviously regained the weight.

          2. They’re the answer to preventing obesity in the first place. Obesity, whether people want to admit it or not, is almost always a direct result of lifestyle choices.

          3. “I wasn’t aware there are studies indicating that lifelong healthy eating and regular exercise do not impact obesity at all.”

            Is this what Anon at 10:27 said? Or are you building a straw man argument?

          4. I was obese before I had any ability to make choices about what I ate–as a child. You could blame my parents I guess, but I don’t. But once I was mature enough to be responsible for my own eating and exercise, I was already working against biology. Yes, if you come out of childhood thin by societal standards, healthy eating and exercise go a long way to keep you healthy. But, until you’ve come out of childhood 100 pounds overweight and tried to lose that and keep it off, you don’t really know what you are talking about. You are patting yourself on the back for continuing to walk on flat ground while criticizing others for never climbing Everest. There is study after study that shows how incredibly difficult–nearly impossible–it is to lose and keep off weight.

            I get all the psychology for why you think the way you do. I really do. And I am amazingly successful and pulled together by every metric other than weight, so I don’t lose a lot of self confidence because of it. But, I do encourage you to learn empathy.

    10. It might be helpful to think of it like cigarettes. A smoker who has COPD is at higher risk. They know that smoking is bad for them and may have struggled to stop in the past but irrespective of how they got where they are with COPD, they are objectively at higher risk of covid.

      Obesity is the same. It’s a struggle for many people. They ‘chose’ to be obese in the same way that a smoker ‘choses’ COPD. Obesity is a risk factor for covid regardless of the reasons for their obesity.

    11. This is right. I would also remember how frequently obesity is iatrogenic (weight gain is a very common side effect of medications needed for other conditions).

      But even smoking and drinking can be related to medical conditions (“self-medicating”) and genetic susceptibility. Look up what percentage of schizophrenia patients smoke, for example. For many people, alcohol functions like a (sadly more toxic) over-the-counter benzodiazepine.

    12. 1/3 of the US is obese so it’s not mostly genetics. It’s mostly behavioral but there are tons of socio-economic factors which contribute to obesity.

      But people are where they are. You being judgmental about why they are obese does not make them less at risk for covid.

    13. Let’s just focus on empathy and kindness and not vomit every cruel thought into the ether. That would be a good first step. Obese people suffer enough cruel judgement. If you are going to be frustrated focus on your employer who is forcing people back into offices during a pandemic.

      (Also, I will note that people who have undergone childhood trauma are at greater risk of adulthood obesity. So again…focus on kindness and empathy.)

    14. You feel what you feel. Seriously, you get to have your feelings, even if you or others find them odious or disagreeable. They are yours. What matters is how you act. Are you going to complain to your employer that it’s not fair obese people can work at home? Are you going to slight them, or be rude, or make fun of them? Are you going to hold it against them, and maybe all obese people? Based on your post, I don’t think so, and you’re fine.

      Don’t beat yourself up for not achieving some purity of thought. You get to be scared and frustrated, it’s what you do that matters.

      1. No no. She acted by posting this. This post is harmful and hurtful. To me. An obese woman who reads this site every day.

        1. The OP posted that she had a certain reaction, and she was questioning herself. She said she had a rude, momentary scared feeling. She didn’t attack obese people, she didn’t say it was unfair, she didn’t ask for advice on how to push back.

          I found her post interesting, in that it made me think about something that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. And my thought was, it must be so scary to be obese during this pandemic. And then I thought hmm, would my employer even ask, nope probably not.

          She gets to have her feelings, and you get to have yours.

          1. Agreed. The OP didn’t say she hated overweight people. She was simply pointing out that she was struggling with thoughts about why a benefit was being extended to someone who made poor lifestyle choices. That is a valid question.

    15. OP again-sorry for posting this. It’s clearly hurtful and coming from a gross place. I have much more to learn about the genetic and sociocultural underpinnings of being obese.

        1. Dude, she apologized, said she was trying to learn. Stop being rude indecent person yourself.

      2. You’re allowed to have thoughts and feelings, even if other people don’t like them! Don’t be ashamed of trying to recognize and dismantle your biases. Learning has to start somewhere and an anonymous online forum where the stakes are low seems reasonable to me.

        1. You realize that lots of gross selfish fat people who probably gained weight just to WFH read here too right? We don’t have to accommodate biases and be understanding because someone brought her vile thoughts to a public forum. It’s good she apologized, but it shouldn’t have happened.

          1. Yeah exactly. Want to learn more about obesity without being a terrible person? Post”hey looking to learn more about obesity can anyone recommend a good book”?

          2. Wow, I’m sorry you’re taking this so personally. I wish we could have a conversation without assuming the worst and calling her a bad person. That doesn’t change hearts or minds.

        2. I 100% do not think this was about learning or opening her mind to different opinions, but about the OP using an anonymous online forum to vent her feelings. Which, hey, I’ve done that too but let’s be honest about it when we do it. She still would have gotten dragged but I, at least, would have had more respect if she had said “this is my unpopular opinion and I’m venting about it” (which people have done here, plenty) instead of couching it in the dishonest “help me understand” type of language. My experience is that 99% of the time the people who say “help me understand” don’t want to understand, they want to make a point. If someone wants to make a point, they should just make the point.

          1. It’s hard to ask the right questions when you don’t know how much you don’t know. I almost never see accurate news reporting on obesity. People have all kinds of misconceptions about it.

        3. No… there are real people who read here. OP knew she was posting something that would be hurtful and she did it anyways. The best “low stakes” way to dismantle your own biases and learn more isn’t forcing others to educate you and saying things that will upset people, but simply doing some research. It’s not like this topic hasn’t been researched extensively. OP easily could have just done some googling.

          Also, being allowed to have thoughts and feelings doesn’t mean that you should say things that hurt people for no reason. Seriously, there was no reason that OP needed to share these thoughts in the manner that she did.

          1. I’m not defending or condemning the original post, but where is this clear answer on obesity research available from googling? I have researched it and asked every doctor, nurse, nutritionist, personal trainer about it and one thing I’ve learned is there is no consensus. There are a host of lifestyle, genetic, cultural, socioeconomic, psychological reasons why people are obese.
            Many in the obesity acceptance movement rail against the false equivalency of obesity = unhealthy, which seems to be a major underpinning of OP’s employer’s policy. So, if you follow that segment of the obese-advocacy population, OP’s employer is doing the obese a disservice by perpetuating the belief that obesity is “less healthy” than other weights.
            I have a tendency, as a childhood sexual abuse survivor myself and as someone who has been hyper focused on my weight, used food to medicate and sought to “hide” myself, to assume that many obese people are dealing with similar psychological issues and trauma. But, many people would rail on me because there are those that believe that obesity is not unhealthy and that a person can be perfectly happy, not dealing with immense psychological trauma, and obese.
            So, I guess this a topic not best discussed because there is no right answer or way to not hurt some segment of the obese population (because, as noted, its not a personality, so obese people will have a multitude of different views on the issue).

    16. Why am I obese? I have diagnosis that is genetic. The diagnosis means that I don’t process foods the way a normal person does. I can (and do) all the ‘right’ things and I’m still unable to lose weight without severe intervention. And, once it is off, it doesn’t stay off unless said interventions are maintained quite literally forever. There have bene times in my life when I’ve pursued said interventions, but today I have a toddler, a demanding job, I work from home during a global pandemic, I’m in fertility treatments (largely, but not exclusively, due to said genetic condition) and I’m also grappling with the recent loss of a parent and the imminent death of a family member due to brain cancer.

      What’s my biggest fear about people like you? You assume I don’t come into the office because my size puts me in a ‘high risk’ category and post horrendous comments like this anonymously on the internet. In fact, I’m not coming into the office because I want more than anything to spend time with my family member before he passes in the coming months. I’m also not coming in because once a week for the last 4 months I’ve MAYBE been pregnant after each subsequent round of treatments, so I would have to stay home during those weeks. It’s easier for me to just permanently stay home while we continue our course of treatment.

      Why are other people obese? I don’t know and it’s not my g-d effing business.

      2. Further, I fear people like you are going to hold it against me professionally. That because I don’t provide you a sufficient enough reason for why I’m staying home in your eyes (hey there, HIPPA) that I’m staying home because I’m simply fat and lazy, and that I’ll suffer professional consequences at some point down the road for this intensely personal decision.

        I have enough DECADES of mental angst over my condition and my size, now layer on ill family member and fertility issues, that, you know what… I AM going to have that ice cream cone with my daughter this hot summer and I AM going to have that bag of chips in my cubicle while you’r watchful eye takes note of my caloric intake.

        Stop policing me, my food, my choices. Once again, it’s not your g-d effing business.

        1. The OP wasn’t policing you or your food choices. This is part of why we can’t have a healthy open conversation anymore. Your insecurities are getting in the way. The OP said she had a problem with a workplace policy that favored people who made bad choices. I am sorry that you are going through fertility struggles and dealing with caring for an ill family member. It may be that the OP too is facing those problems (or something similar that would cause her to want to work from home). She is questioning why you get the prize of WFH when she doesn’t. She definitely isn’t policing you, your food or your choices.

          1. The problem is OP’s employer, not her coworkers. She should approach her manager about a WFH situation for herself if that’s what she wants.

      3. Hello! Would you mind sharing what the genetic condition is? We have girls that we are trying to raise without food / eating / body image issues, but my husband fears that one kiddo’s insatiable sweet tooth and secret eating is partially due to a “gene” he says runs in his family (I don’t know if that is legit though — maybe folklore from a family where my SILs are supermorbidly obese as well as many family members; there is also a tendency to drop dead of a massive heart attack early). I don’t want to make a big deal of it, but as a parent of a kid, is there anything to test for? I hadn’t thought spouse was serious (he has never named a condition or diagnosis) until now (he is within a couple pounds of being obese and merely overweight; for his family, he is considered not to have a problem with his weight).

        2. If you have a child with secret eating, take them to a child psychologist who specializes in eating issues. That’s a troubling behavior. If there is a genetic component, all the more reason to take proactive steps to figure out how to address the issue.

        3. I guess as a parent, I think that this all comes from culture (women’s magazines, instagram, etc.) and external pressures. I assume that having a home of birth that doesn’t f*ck up your relationship with food is enough (absent any s*xual abuse, etc.). What if there is a genetic component? I think most parents just want to shield kids from drama and establish good habits. What if they are unwittingly significantly swimming upstream on this?

        4. When I was a child (about 4), my dad followed me up to my bedroom because I was acting sneaky. He then proceeds to watch me look around behind me, open a drawer in my dresser, and pull out a piece of candy. Neither of my parents knew where this stash came from (turns out grandparents and I was hoarding). This craving probably came from my inherited sweet tooth from my mother who sometimes, sometimes makes homemade brownies instead of a real dinner because she wants to.

          Teach your kids more about balance, keep more fruit and veg in the house (strawberries and homemade whipped cream for dessert!), and have them help you cook all the colors of the rainbow. This is what my parents did even though I attempted to hide more candy from them after my stash was stolen from me by the government that was my parents (grrrr). I can assure you 25 years later, I turned out fine.

          1. OMG the story about your mother making a batch of brownies for dinner is giving me life. I want to be her!

    17. I bet the people who are gleefully joining the “I had a fat coworker who definitely made herself fat while I myself was thin” convo are the same ones who jumped on a poster for discussing the possibility of an eating disorder in a very thin woman who refueled with rice cakes after a full day of rafting and hiking: “omg you don’t know anything about her, how could you assume anything about her health and why she eats that way?”

      1. What an ugly comment. Can’t speak for everyone but you’re definitely wrong about me. I suggested that OP research this topic instead of saying things on a forum read by real people lest she hurt someone, and I also objected to the person who assumed that Rice Cake Woman had an eating disorder.

        The underlying theme in both of my comments is that people should not articulate harmful assumptions about other people’s weight.

        1. Rafting trips aren’t like ordinary life. You spend 24 hours a day with the people you’re with, including eating ALL meals with them, sleeping 10 feet from them, and literally using the same bucket for a toilet with them. There’s a window into people’s lives and habits that you can’t get in ordinary life. It doesn’t necessarily make it okay to comment on someone’s eating, but if you have good evidence they may be suffering from an eating disorder, there’s also an argument to be made for not turning the other way. That person may need help.

          1. Don’t do this. Don’t judge a random stranger. They don’t owe you their health info. How does the rice cakes eating person ‘need your help’ but an obese person doesn’t? Don’t say anything to either person. Leave to people to live their lives.

          2. I know. I’ve gone on rafting trips and long backpacking trips. I don’t recall that the trip discussed in the comment I am discussing was a particularly long/overnight trip. Nonetheless, that poster was *still* making assumptions. Also, you know very well that this commenter was not attempting to intervene and help this woman; she was simply judging her on the internet later on. Not sure why you’re going off on this irrelevant tangent that doesn’t bear at all on my point.

          4. An eating disorder is a potentially deadly mental illness. Being fat isn’t. Before you come back with “what about fat fatties who binge,” binge eating disorder affects people of all sizes. You should offer to help people who have mental illness if you can.

          5. 11:45am – disorders that cause weight gain like binge eating are also forms of mental illness. FYI

      2. Do you hate all thin people or just the ones you work with? People are living their lives. They are not being healthy and active AT you. Just like people with obesity are not being unhealthy AT their healthy fit coworkers.

        And thanks for bringing up the rafting thing again. Can’t WAIT for my 8 year daughter to grow up and get judged for eating in compliance with her food allergies while in high risk situations like remote travel activities with delayed access to hospitals. That will be SO great for her. It’s not like girls with food allergies are not already at a 1/3 higher risk for eating disorders. It will totally help her to have random strangers judging her food choices while she’s on vacation.

        1. How is it going to help her to have a fatphobic mother? If you don’t want her to have an eating disorder, you need to examine your biases against obese people and educate yourself about why “people with obesity are unhealthy” is false and reductive.

          1. The reason kids with food allergies frequently get eating disorders is that dealing with the stress of knowing that when you make a mistake on what you eat that it could kill you is a really hard thing to deal with every single time you put food in your mouth for your entire life. Especially if you cannot get to a hospital in the 20 minutes before the epipen wears off like in a rafting trip situation. Parents absorb a lot of that stress in childhood by being responsible for reading labels.

          2. +1 million. Anonymous at 10:45 – do some work on yourself. For your sake and your daughter’s.

    18. Going back to work in an office at all is bullshit

      Anyone who wants to stay home should get to

      If you don’t want to go to work that has nothing to do with your fat colleagues.

      1. This comment is the salient one on this thread (and I exclude my own comments from my assessment too). I shouldn’t have gotten drawn into this 4chan crap.

        1. Yep. Totally agree. Especially about the 4chan thing.

          Anonymous at 10:51, thanks for so perfectly encapsulating all that really needs to be said about this topic.

    19. There is no fully-proven link between obesity and COVID-19 deaths. Obesity also isn’t down to a combination of genetics and behavioural choices, it’s largely influenced by someone’s socioeconomic status.

    20. I’ve found that we sometimes have unkind thoughts, but what matters is what you think next. Do you double down on those unkind thoughts, or do you catch and correct yourself? Sounds like maybe you didn’t; you need to get over this resentment, it’s not fair to your obese coworkers to feel this way towards them. If this resentment is rooted in something else, identify and address it. Maybe the real issue is the company should be letting everyone work remotely and they’re not, in which case, be mad at management, not your colleagues.

      I would remind myself a couple things here:

      1) No one got fat on purpose, or took up smoking, just so they could stay home while healthy suckers like you still have to go to work.

      2) It would be cruel if the company decided that people with certain risk factors could stay home, but smokers and obese people had to keep coming in because their heightened risk was their own fault.

    21. You want to feel mad about this because you feel like it’s someone’s own fault that they’re obese. But regardless of whether that’s true, it’s none of your business, and unlike smoking, it’s not like they can just quit being obese today anyway.

      Obese people are at higher risk for death and severe complications from COVID. Presumably your workplace would rather not kill their valued employees who happen to be overweight.

      (And feeling like it’s their own fault they’re obese is kind of like telling poor people to just stop being poor. There’s a lot more that goes into it.)

    22. I don’t really understand the responses here–being obese and smoking are choices. It is fine with me that the OP feels annoyed that people who made bad choices are now receiving a benefit (WFH) that isn’t being extended to all employees. There is a visceral response from many commenters here when the topic of being overweight comes up. I am happy to be sensitive and careful–but if you are overweight, your bad choices played into that (how much may be up for debate). We don’t all start with the same genetic makeup–some of us are tall and conventionally attractive, some of us (like myself) are short and have chronic genetic conditions to manage to. What you do with what you were given is up to you. Overweight people have made some bad choices–so i too would be annoyed if a special benefit was extended to them. Same with smokers. FYI, i also don’t like the idea that people with children should get WFH if that benefit isn’t also extended to childless employees. Having kids is a choice too.

      1. What bad choices have overweight people made? What sort of things do you think they are doing and eating?

        1. Putting too much food in their mouth. No one is force feeding them. Quitting smoking is hard. Eating healthy is hard. Everything is life isn’t easy. Sometimes you do the harder thing because it’s right for your health.

          1. What you don’t understand is that eating less doesn’t reliably lead to weight loss. They’ve done inpatient studies. Obviously there comes a point where you start to starve, but this is actually very bad for health.

          2. Do you have proof of that? The fact is, you don’t. Many obese people have wrecked their metabolisms with yo-yo dieting. They probably eat less food than you do. Google “the Biggest Loser” NY Times and read some articles about what dieting does to metabolism.

          3. I’m not suggesting they diet or make fad diet changes. People need to eat healthy in a way that is sustainable for the rest of their life. You don’t ‘diet’ to address obesity. You make permanent changes. If you’re ever read anything on obesity you know that most people who are obese are consuming 5-10 times the necessary amount of calories per day. They don’t need to extreme diet they need healthy eating habits that they accept as something they have to live with for the rest of their life.

      2. IT IS NOT A CHOICE. For the love of god. The ignorance in this comment is more than I can comprehend.

      4. This. Any discussion on weight here degenerates. People need to take responsibility for their own health.

      5. You sure know a lot about what other people do very specifically in order to victimize you, don’t you?

        Why not focus on just being a better version of your self and quit worrying about what other people are doing?

        1. Because some of the desperately insecure people who post here genuinely have no idea who they really are, at their core, and gain their entire sense of identity from judging and denigrating other people. It’s sad but it’s true.

          2. “Lol but *you* would never do such a thing except…. oh wait, you just did!”
            Sorry that post hit a nerve; having your exact transparent-to-everyone-but-you weaknesses and grotesque behaviors pointed out to you is pretty disturbing, isn’t it? Maybe try working on yourself instead of getting defensive.

      6. “I am happy to be sensitive and careful”

        LOL no you aren’t.

        Just posting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” would have been a lot more concise and more honest.

    23. Just ask your manager if you can stay home. I bet if you ask nicely and explain your reasoning, they will let you.

    25. When it comes to health conditions, you either have them or you don’t, and “choices” aren’t really part of the equation (or they shouldn’t be, in my opinion). People could have stayed out of the sun and used sunscreen to avoid skin cancer…. but by the time they have it, does it matter? It is your prejudice against overweight people causing you to want to judge them for it.
      Anyone can guess why other people have COPD, cancer, liver or kidney disease, high blood pressure, or obesity… but just don’t. Why? (1) its just your assumption and obesity just happens to be outwardly visible, (2) it isn’t any of your business what anyone’s health condition is or the cause of it, and (3) their doctor might not even know the true cause or causes. . It doesn’t matter whose fault it is that another person has a health condition, just be glad you don’t have the health condition yourself and move on.

    26. Pandemics really bring out the need to think as a collective- we all benefit when any one of us stays healthy and safe. I want high risk people to stay safe and stay home, because any ICU bed used up is one less for someone else. One less case out in the world is one less chance that I’ll pick it up.

      And quite frankly, people will make their own choices and we have to take them as they are. Do I want people to stop smoking and take up jogging? Of course, but not as much as I want people who do smoke or carry extra weight to survive this pandemic.

    28. As someone who grew up with a highly critical (and thinnish) mother who was terrified that I’d get fat like my dad and viewed obesity as a moral failure, I’ve had to unlearn a lot of her attitudes over the years. If it was easy to be thin, or easy for people to lose weight, we wouldn’t have the bazillion-dollar diet industry.

    29. Sounds like OP’s easiest solution here is to take up smoking or heavy drinking so she can WFH under her employer’s unreasonable policy.

      No person who can do their job remotely should be asked to come back in to the office right now.

      1. “What you don’t understand is that eating less doesn’t reliably lead to weight loss. They’ve done inpatient studies. Obviously there comes a point where you start to starve, but this is actually very bad for health.”

        Anorexics eat less, and they lose weight doing so. Of course that’s not a healthy way to do it, and it requires treatment, but it’s intellectually dishonest to suggest there is no linkage between amount of food eaten and body habitus.

        1. I said food restriction would eventually lead to weight loss, but that it could be unhealthy; I think we are agreeing. Weight loss or maintaining a lower weight isn’t always a net benefit; it’s definitely worse to be anorexic than overweight.

    30. Wow, super late to the party here but just offering my two cents to the OP. I can somewhat sympathize with having these feelings – most of my family is overweight/obese and I have worked hard my entire life to eat healthy/exercise to avoid that and I’m still technically overweight by BMI charts (which are bunk but that’s a different story). I think what I’d be feeling in this situation is that it stinks that I feel like I was being penalized for doing what is for me the really hard work of avoiding obesity by having to go into the office while I would be able to WFH if I didn’t work as hard.

      But the real problem here is that your employer is being unreasonable. If coworkers with preexisting conditions can continue to work remotely without issue, they really should be allowing anyone who isn’t comfortable returning to the office continue to work remotely.

  4. I suspect that I may have a hormonal imbalance, but am wary of going to the doctor’s office at this time (not to mention, I don’t love my PCP and am looking to switch). Past bloodwork did not indicate anything, but I don’t think it was a comprehensive panel…mainly just whatever you usually get when you go for a check-up. I’m interested in at-home testing, and upon a quick search, found Everylywell. Has anyone tried that or any other at-home hormone level testing? I’d prefer something that doesn’t come with the $399 price tag that Everlywell does. Does insurance ever cover this stuff? Thanks!

    1. Perhaps I’m missing something, but what would be the benefit of at-home testing? If it revealed a hormone imbalance, wouldn’t you still need to find a doctor in order to address/regulate?

    2. Insurance covers you going to a doctor for actual medical care not self diagnosing at home from a test you bought on the Internet. If you have reason to believe something is up with your hormones book an appointment with an endocrinologist.

    4. You could probably do a telemedicine appointment and get directed to a lab for testing. Insurance should cover lab testing, it’ll be more accurate than a kit.

      1. Yes, you need an appointment with a doctor.

        In general, insurance will not pay for lab tests unless prescribed by a doctor for a diagnosis that the doctor has put on the order. The diagnosis can be a known disease like diabetes, or sometimes, a “symptom” like fatigue. Every insurance company is different with regard to what blood tests they cover, for what diagnoses, at what interval, and where they pay for testing. Almost NEVER would they pay for a test bought on the internet, not at an in network testing site.

        And they would not generally pay for anything not prescribed by a doctor, with the appropriate diagnosis codes.

    5. Insurance will cover the tests your next doctor orders. I’d focus on getting a telemedicine appt with a new doctor and going from there. Hospitals are hurting for income right now, so your chances of finding a doctor who is accepting new patients and offering telemedicine appointments is higher than usual.

    7. I had to get blood work done last month (I’m in Chicago, for reference). I would like to encourage you to get this done through your doctor, especially if insurance will cover all or part of it. I waited in the car until it was time to go in, they did temp checks and asked health questions at the door, I had about a 2 minute interaction with the person who drew my blood and then I was on my way.

      1. Oh, and my blood work was ordered by my doctor through a telemedicine appointment.

    8. This is a find a endocrinologist situation. Hormones are about as tricky as things come.

  5. I work at a law firm in DC but for a few years now I’ve been wondering about how DH and I could move back to his smaller, more regional home city (City X). Careers have been the biggest factor holding us back from exploring this. Recently, one of the partners I work for brought in substantial new work for a company headquartered in City X that has lots of in house jobs doing what I do. They are such an industry dominant employer in City X that I previously thought I would likely have to work at this company in order to have a non-firm career in City X. The work relationship is from a change in c-suite leadership. This new individual has a longstanding relationship with the partner. The partner has a very high opinion of me and has said I will be the main associate on this project due to my experience handling specific issues. She has been a big advocate for me and has mentioned supporting my partnership (down the road, I’m a mid level). I also know that loyalty is extremely important to her. This whole plot with the new client feels a bit like kismet, and I really want to explore moving to City X as much as possible. For example, I would love to visit the client more (when/if travel opens up) and would be enthusiastic about a secondment (independently a great resume booster for my topic area) if available. This type of client-facing involvement is consistent with my role on other matters with this partner so none of this would be stepping on toes. Is there a way to mention (down the road) to the partner my enthusiasm for this client in relation to my possible interest in moving to City X? I don’t want to rock the boat or seem like my loyalty is wavering, but I feel like this development is a connection I’ve been trying to build for so long and is very fortuitous!

    1. So is this a Bentonville type situation?

      Partners can be all sorts of lovey-dovey protective of star associates, but mention you have a foot halfway out the door and that status can change quickly. I would tread cautiously in how much you reveal to Partner, but do your best to impress Client. After the project is over (or after 6 months or so if it’s a steady stream of work), if you are serious about moving, you could then quietly ask your main contact, assuming you’ve built up a good rapport by then, if they are hiring (“you all have been such a great team to work with, my husband is from the area and we are trying to move back…” etc).

      1. If we are talking about Bentonville . . . I looked at real estate in the Bentonville area . . . you can get a PALACE on tons of land there for next to nothing. I know an attorney who just took a job there mid-pandemic so I assume they’re still hiring.

        1. Not Bentonville. It’s a much larger city so the COL is unfortunately not as drastic, but it will still offer more flexibility than we currently have now. The main appeal is moving back to family rather than having a better cost of living.

    2. What would be the point? I don’t see any benefit to this and could make partner panic and pull you from the case. Just do great work for the client and let this play out organically. In a year or two if things are going well, you will talk to the client more directly so they think about you for opening. If the partner wants you to stay and make partner they will feel totally burned by all of this, that’s just inevitable.

    3. Yeah! Ask about it! Frame as how good it would be for your company and how with COVID especially, it’s opened your eyes to how geography might matter less than it used to.

      1. I rescind my advice – I forgot how weird law firms and was answering based on a different world view:)

  6. Do you think remote work is here to stay? Or do you think in another 4-5 years, companies with mostly white collar employees will have gone the Best Buy/Yahoo route and said “everyone back to work”? My law firm has already had two votes to start mandating all employees to return to the office in a hot spot county, but surprisingly, we are voluntary WFH through at least Q3. I can’t help but wonder if all these companies -From Twitter to small businesses- that are permitting remote work will change their minds.

    I’ve read a couple articles and genuinely curious what the Hive thinks the work world will look like in 3-5 yrs!

    1. I think we’ll be back in the post-vaccine world. After 4 months of this, I can feel people not “checking out” exactly, but it’s harder to stay in sync with other teams, harder to manage interpersonal dynamics, etc… so while people are doing their jobs I don’t think 100% remote is going to be best for the extreme long-run.

      1. I just listened to yesterday’s Daily podcast about “vaccine skeptics.” Reportedly, only 50% of respondents are saying, as of now, that they would get a Covid19 vaccine if it were available this year. Some of it was connected to mistrust of Trump, but some of it will probably stick even if he doesn’t get a second term. Fauci said we would need 75%, but ideally 85% of the population to get the shot. So suddenly, a vaccine on the market doesn’t seem like a resolution anymore to me. :O

        1. That is crazy. If there is a vaccine, I will 100% get it, even if it is an annual imperfect thing like the flu vaccine. I want to see my elderly parents again and as I’d have a plane or 2-day drive to get to them, they’d not otherwise open the door to me (and my life doesn’t allow for a 2-week quarantine — yet another involuntary homeschooler juggling that and BigLaw).

          1. It’s not really crazy to not want to get a vaccine that hasn’t been tested appropriately and given all kinds of emergency exceptions to go to market.

            Past vaccines that have been rushed to market have been linked to lifetime health problems like narcolepsy.

            I’ll let others go first.

        2. Eh, I’m not going to be the first person to get a vaccine, but I’ll do it … I’m sure in time others will too.

        3. I feel like a vaccine really changes one’s control over things, though. I wear a mask because I might unwittingly spread the virus. I would expect an effective vaccination to ensure that high-risk people can effectively protect themselves, and allow me to be around high-risk people while keeping them as safe as possible. It would then matter less that anti-maskers or anti-vaxxers decline these public health tools. Now it matters much more.

          1. I’d like to think so too, but the target percentages that Fauci gave do not allow for the massive refusal that we see now. I’m no expert at all, but I believe this means it’s not as simple as: everyone who gets the shot is protected, and those who don’t are the only ones facing a risk. That’s why we need a herd effect that is not possible with 50% compliance.

          2. Monday, can you say more about that? I can totally see unequal access to a vaccine as a problem, and if the immunization rate is very low, there will still be the problem of rampant spread and understaffed, underequipped medical facilities, which increases mortality. But 50% say they would get a vaccine, plus from the 4M cases in the US (1% of pop), one could conservatively estimate that 3-5% of people have had it by now, which may easily be 10% by the time we get a widely available vaccine. The numbers that I’ve read suggest than a 40% immunized population should curb the spread significantly already. What other factor are you considering that I am missing?

          3. I’m really out of my depth, which is why I was citing Fauci rather than trying to explain on my own. Maybe someone with expertise on this will be able to take it? Or if Fauci is being too pessimistic, that would be great news.

            Offhand, I know that there are questions about how long immunity actually lasts. Apparently the vaccine would require boosters later to be effective, and then for anyone who already will have had Covid but doesn’t get the shot at all, we don’t know how long we can count them as immunized.

    2. I think it depends on how the company is doing. In the two examples you give, both companies were struggling when they made that decision, so it seemed right that they needed to make a big change or two.

      I guess the real question is, did having a lot of working from employees help cause them to go down the path of struggling, or would they have gotten there anyway given the other factors that led them there? Something impossible to say as there is not a parallel universe where they didn’t allow WFH to begin with, but I’m sure over time we’ll see the success stories or not about companies that have a mass WFH policy.

      1. My company, in the tech industry, is currently surveying managers to determine which employees/teams can WFH permanently, or perhaps only come to the office on occasion. Previously most managers were resistant to WFH. Some milestones have had to be rescheduled due to covid, but most teams are currently exceeding expectations (who knew a bunch of introverted engineers would perform better at home). My company has also been struggling to have enough cubicles, desks, and even parking spots, so WFH is seen as a great solution.

    3. I think it’s business, business line, and worker dependent. Where my partner works, they are on calls with each other all day and have a slack channel. That much “togetherness” wouldn’t work for a law firm, but might be helpful with newbies who need training. In hospitals and auto service centers and construction, it doesn’t matter. For some paper-pushing jobs, perhaps one can push .pdfs? But weeding out bad workers may make remote work really annoying (a friend who is remote for a large bank has to click a productivity monitor periodically or she gets in trouble; she can take only a limited time for lunch).

      I work better anywhere BUT my house, unless I am strictly doing reading and go outside or to a distraction-free room to do it in (old-school living room w/o a TV), which now includes kids who won’t be in school starting next month. I have a feeling that WFH involuntary-homeschooling parents may need a cathartic cleanse from their houses when this is over (WeWork Barbados is calling!; kidding, sort of).

    4. I think it depends on the type of work – when I talk to clients or vendors in person about projects I feel like we make better progress than discussing them over the phone or Zoom/WebEx/etc. I can see the need to meet people face to face for marketing or sales too. On the other hand, when I need a big chunk of uninterrupted time to do paperwork, WFH is better for me instead of being in the office with various interruptions.

    5. I think you see a lot more flexibility but not 100% remote, as with all extremes there are downsides to that. My prediction is a lot more comfort from a lot more companies and industries with people working from home a lot of the time if they want to, but in-person requirements won’t go away (ie. come in once a week/month/quarter, etc depending on the role). I also think a lot of people enjoy getting out of the house and going to work – there’s a whole scene that’s “fun” or at least “adult” (lunches w friends, coffees, drinks and dinner after work. I think people will want that again.

      1. My firm is leaning this way – a “fully remote if you want it” with routine monthly/quarterly meetings culture.

    6. Here in Germany, my company made a big deal about how it was transitioning to a remote-friendly workplace during the height of Corona, had experts come in and show how employees were even more effective when remote, etc.

      Nonetheless, now that life Germany is somewhat back to normal at the moment, they insist on having everyone back in the office. However, my company is somewhat old-school and resistant to change. Perhaps more modern companies will stick with remote work following the pandemic.

        1. I love living here (American living in Germany for context) but some things are just…slow to catch up with the rest of the world. Don’t get me started on the credit card aversion here!

    7. I think we’ll see more remote work. That cat is out of the bag now – no more “we can’t!!!” when really, we could. It’s better for health and the planet, especially in areas with lots of car commuters, and many people with in-demand skills prefer it. I, for one, am not going back without a damn good reason and “my boss says so” isn’t one. My health and others’ health is more important.

    8. Where I work, there is some thinking that to save $ on leasing, if you WFH once we are back, you will forfeit your office and have to compete for guest space if you come in. Leasing spend is huge and they are looking to put back whole floors, so they may be pushing you out or moving towards tiny phone-booth offices if not cube farms.

      1. My former company was already moving in this direction before the pandemic, so it’s just going to accelerate the trend.

      2. My company completely shut down our satellite building. Headquarters is in a different state. The lease is not up until 2022 and there were already rumors of the building closing, but I think covid accelerated the timeline.

        I could be sitting in a cubicle in the building on conference calls all day or I could be at home. It’s been a few years since I’ve actually had co-workers in the same physical location. Now everyone I work with is in India or scattered across the US.

        I’m in software development so I’m thankful it’s easy to do my job from anywhere.

        1. Ugh — how to you manage the time difference? I find that even with EST/PST, there are only a few good hours to get work done without seriously inconveniencing someone. And I have some clients on PST who keep EST financial business time (so are at their desk or otherwise working at 7am EST each day).

          1. Meetings with India in the evenings and Europe in the mornings. Everyone flexes their workday based on what is on the calendar. We also have to plan for off hours deployments, so I tend to work a schedule that is all over the board.

    9. Most people will go back to working in an office. I am having a lot of conversations with people lately about how out-of-the-loop we all are about cross-company and even cross-divisional projects and initiatives because we just don’t have the “random intersections” with people – in a break room, or the bathroom, or walking to meetings – that we used to. I think what my company is discovering is that having a larger percentage of people work remotely may work but having everyone work remote is probably not feasible. Also, there is the very real problem of, if everyone works remote, what happens to all the office buildings that people own or lease? Most companies are not just going to write off those large investments. It’s perverse, but I think there will be this thought process of – we have this gigantic investment in real estate; we can’t divest the real estate because no one wants it; we’ve got to get some kind of ROI on this = people need to go back to working in an office. I’ve just seen too much corporate decision-making in my time to think there will be pure, rational logic applied to the problem.

      I am an Old and remember how after the dot-com crash in 2000 there were all these articles talking about how “people will be more careful in the future investing in new-economy companies” – and then 20 years later we got WeWork, and also companies like Uber and Airbnb which may not ever turn a profit. There were lots of platitudes after the crash in 2008/2009 about how companies were going to run leaner and be less leveraged and make smarter investments that didn’t come to pass. I have just seen too much at this point regarding people’s short memories to have much faith that any changes that come out of the pandemic will persist very long. We have built entire sectors of the economy that rely on people physically going to work every day; that pull will be hard for companies to resist when there’s no longer an exigent crisis.

      1. +1 yes, I am also a cynical old (joking kind of) and I have posted on this site that I just don’t think mass working from home will happen long term despite what everyone thinks in this moment. A little more flexibility? Sure. A day or two a week you couldn’t do before? Sure. Living in Tahoe while logging in every day? I would say doubtful for most.

        To your point about experiences, back in ‘08/‘09 if you told the general population that there would be a time in a few years where people were bidding above ask and waiving contingencies on homes, most would have laughed at you. And yet…

      2. I agree that the cohesion and ‘random intersections’ suffer from most people working from home. I have to say though, my company invested in a lot of strategic communications training for some staff in the last years, and was able to counteract some of these effects with a deliberate shift in how stuff is communicated, both from corporate and within divisions. It’s a culture shift though, it doesn’t happen automatically.
        Given that we are in a HCOL area and running out of employee parking with no straigtforward way to expand, I think that a 20% work from home force (or more ppl wfh 2-4 days/week) and replacing 30% of meetings with virtual, would help my company to keep growing beyond the physical limitations in our city.

    10. I think companies will be more likely to consider allowing remote work in certain circumstances, like letting people WFH when sick, or even hiring remote employees when local talent isn’t available. I do think most places will transition to mostly in-office work once we’re all vaccinated.

      What I’m wondering is, will open offices be a thing of the past, now that we’re more aware of the risk of disease transmission? My mom and I were talking about this the other day, and man, if this pandemic kills the open office and companies bring back cubicles, that would be fine by me!

    11. I think that you can’t put a price on a lot of the random interactions at a shared office space, so there will be a return to office work for people. I think some jobs will continue to be remote. I think more companies will have nationwide searches for positions, and a strong candidate will have leverage in requesting to work remote (for example, if you wanted to work for a San Fran based tech company, but live in Kansas City and don’t want to move – I think we’ll see more of this).

      I think that what this massive WFH experiment has demonstrated is that you don’t need to have “butts in seats” like days of yore. However, for managers who in 2019 were “butts in seats” or you’re gone, but also expect 24/7 availability, that this will change and there will be more flexibility. I know my firm has lost a lot of good associates who worked for a partner that expected you physically in the office from 8:00-7:00 every day, and then available 24/7 otherwise, even though it was a finance practice with NYC based clients who work hours more like 10:00 AM-10:00 PM. And even if you were up util 2 am on a securitization printing the night before with nothing to do or nothing pressing the following day (which the partner knows about), you’d still be expected to be there at 8:00 am. So, if you worked for this partner and wanted to schedule a dentist appointment at 8:00, it was virtually impossible to stay in good standing with this partner. My hope is that there’s more understood flexibility in the work environment when you have a job that can be flexible.

    12. I think we’ll all be back in the office eventually, but I suspect that the fashion for totally open work spaces with employees sitting shoulder to shoulder at long tables may go out the window. I would be comfortable going to my office now, because we are lucky enough to sit in decent sized cubes with partitions, so if you’re at your desk you are not literally breathing on your cube neighbor. I think when we do go back in there will be rules about stuffing a bunch of folks into conference rooms for meetings, and there will be a lot more “join Teams from your desk” for meetings.

      1. Yes, very good points…it’s the nature of meetings that has been permanently changed. No more cramming into conference rooms and frankly we could better with less meetings. I prune my calendar every day of unnecessary, time wasting meetings that can be covered by a few emails or a very short Teams meeting.

    13. my group is already talking about the aspects of WFH we really like (no commute) and the parts we miss (more efficiency for certainty types of meetings in person) and talking about a hybrid approach even when it’s safe to return (eg. 2-3 days at the office, 2-3 days WFH). im looking forward to that set up as i do like parts of being there in person and would also love 2-3 days WFH.

    14. My large national employer is actively looking at how much real estate we can possibly jettison so a lot of this is likely to be long term for us.

  7. Does anyone do the MCT oil/bulletproof coffee thing? Experimenting with putting the oil in my coffee but resisting the whipped fat aspect and the oil by itself is pretty gross. Can’t I just take a pill?

    2. If you don’t like the taste or the texture, why do it? You stand nothing to gain by putting some overpriced oil in perfectly good coffee. Sounds like a great way to ruin otherwise decent coffee.

    3. I hate all vegan cream substitutes, so I did this for years. Are you blending it thoroughly enough? Are you using too much?

        1. I was thinking a frothing wand, a handheld blender, or an actual blender. I usually used a Nutribullet, and it came out better than when I used a wand.

          1. +1. When I add ghee and MCT oil to my coffee, it always comes out best when I blend it in my blender. With that said, I now buy the instamix packets on Amazon and mix them into my coffee at the office using a frothing wand and its my new go-to! I love it! Don’t try the bottled bulletproof (the small, individual sized cartons that whole foods has sometimes) — they have chunks and don’t taste right (sour).

      2. Try the silk almond milk caramel creamer. It is AMAZING. I am super fussy re: vegan creamers too and I could drink this stuff straight.

    4. I don’t see why it has to go in coffee. You can always take it straight/chug it in water or juice like flaxseed oil or cod liver oil.

    5. I don’t think bulletproof coffee has any real science behind it. The man who created it says he thinks he’ll live until 180 years old, FWIW.

    6. I’ll actually answer your question. I’ve done it and you need to use a blender or frothing wand to get a good consistency.

      I think it tastes ok and doesn’t seem oily when it’s blended.

    7. I have been using MCT oil. I use PikNik creamer, and since I choose the dairy kind, I don’t find it to be much different from half n’ half. I also use a powder that mixes into water or another beverage. It has a coffee-ish flavor, so I mix it with coconut milk for flavor and texture. One note — some MCT oil comes from palm oil, and palm oil production is the cause of a lot of harmful deforestation, so I implore you on behalf of the world’s orangutans to find coconut-based products. I did not know this, and it turns out the powder I bought sources from both. I am asking the company to change that, but palm oil is cheaper.

  8. I’ve been noticing that my pulse is elevated lately, going as high as 110 per minute (though not for long) at rest. I’m reasonably fit, although not amazingly so, and I’m not sure why this is happening. I’m going to call the doctor, but I know that a lot of you wear fitness trackers and I’m curious if you ever see this. I’m also cutting down on caffeine to see if that helps.

    1. I’d definitely check with your doctor, but I recently learned that my Fitbit pulse was consistently about 10-15 bpm higher than it is in the doctor’s office.

    2. Are you feeling this increase or is it what your fitness tracker is showing? If the latter, take it with a large grain of salt. Those wrist-band fitness trackers are not at all accurate as heartrate monitors. They get you in the ballpark, but that’s it. Even a chest strap can have some variation.
      Drink some water. It’s hot AF and so easy to get dehydrated. If that doesn’t help, and particularly if you can feel it, maybe check in with the doctor.

      1. I felt the increase (racing sensation) multiple times and checked it with a pulse oximeter, which we have in the house for a different medical reason. I don’t own a fitness tracker. Good point about the dehydration.

        1. You have to see your doctor. It could be an arrhythmia like atrial fibrillation or supraventricular tachycardia. I had the latter but it’s fixed now. If i can describe the feeling, it was like I was suddenly scared of something or like I had just done a big run, when I hadn’t. Mine came and went.

          If you have a PPO you can probably just go to a cardiologist. Many doctors are doing initial consults over zoom now, just a meeting where you describe what’s going on and they decide who you need to see.

          1. Thanks – will definitely call the doctor. I’ve had two EKGs in the past and both were normal so I’m less concerned about a chronic rhythm disorder, but of course something could have changed.

          2. Hi, all my EKGs were normal too, but no one doubted I had it. My SVT was “paroxysmal” meaning episodic, and not frequent enough to catch on a holster (a 24 hour recording of heart rhythm.) What finally got me treated was landing in the ER with an arrhythmia episode that didn’t stop on its own.

            But they will believe you. These are really more common than most people know. I have three friends who were treated for a-fib, all three were under 40 when it started.

          3. There’s also better technology for tracking heart rhythm than there used to be. Someone in my household has an issue, and the doctor was able to recommend a hand held device to use whenever symptoms arise, which produces data the doctor can review.

    3. I have had this all my life. It has been attributed to various medical issues but no doctor is certain. I have sleep apnea and it improved some when I treated it. I have ADHD and it got way worse with stimulants. I have Crohns and they blamed dehydration and electrolyte imbalance but it happens when I’m in remission to so it can’t just be that. Finally, after some concerningly high numbers while exercising that were consistent on the treadmill pulse tracker, my iphone heart rate monitor and a fitness tracker, my doctor agreed to do a full battery of testing with a cardiologist.

      The tests confirmed what I was experiencing but showed no structural abnormalities. The consensus is that I just have a higher than average natural heart beat and that my “cardio zone” is accordingly that much higher. They concluded it is not dangerous for me to exercise at an intense rate but if I start to feel dizzy I obviously need to stop. I also have to be very careful to cool down and not just stop on a dime. If I go from running to just done I will have a syncope type event. I won’t fully pass out but everything will go black for a few seconds. Instead I have to run slower and watch my heart rate go down, then walk, then stop.

      1. They didn’t think it was autonomic dysfunction or POTS? My GI issues have left me with B vitamin deficiencies which in turn, when untreated, have produced autonomic symptoms that sound just like this. It seems to run in my family.

      2. I have a client with POTS and when I was reading her medical records I was thinking hmmmm this sounds very familiar. I have my B vitamin levels checked fairly regularly and so far they have been okay. I’m still not convinced it’s “nothing” but I feel better exercising knowing that I “passed” a stress test.

        1. B12 deficiencies don’t always show up on testing. I learned this the hard way. My B12 levels were high, but my POTS symptoms resolved when I was diagnosed and treated for pernicious anemia. I think the same is true for B1. The doctors I saw initially were unaware that pernicious anemia patients could have normal or elevated B12 labs.

      1. Same. I have what is essentially a mini-panic attack. Heart starts racing suddenly, have a hard time breathing, and my chest gets tight. It happens when I would generally say I feel “ok”, but there’s clearly some stress going on that I’m ignoring.
        I’ve had EKGs and other scans to make sure nothing structurally is wrong so certainly get checked out, but it could just be anxiety.

  9. Did anyone else see this: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-types/symptom-tracker-app-reveals-six-distinct-types-of-covid-19-infection-idUSKCN24I1YI

    I think that this is good news. Confirming some mild types of infections (which seems to be the case in my city; spread seems to be largely by the <30 set; maybe college-aged kids going out in groups?). Also, some wickedly bad ones (e.g., Nick Cordero). FWIW, my doctor friends believe that Nick Cordero was unluckily in the first wave, before doctors knew what they knew now (early anticoagulant therapy), and that had he been a later infection may have fared better (they think his result in a healthy young person is reminiscent of the Russian figure skater who had a heart attack and died in his 20s — an absolutely horrifying outlier, but not an indication of what is likely).

      2. ??? Did you read the article? It’s just data. I am not sure how data can be “smug”? Unless you feel like the data doesn’t support the preconceived notions you want reinforced?

        2. I don’t have a strong opinion re: this article, but data is never just data. What you collect, what you don’t collect, and what patterns you find or don’t find is a product of one’s own perception filter.

    2. Sergei Grinkov had a genetic variant that put him at risk for an early heart attack. According to his wife’s memoir, he’d been aware of a family history of similar deaths and done just about everything he could have done to prevent it. I fail to see the parallel to the Nick Cordero case–Cordero died of a preventable, communicable disease that he contracted (as did everyone else who has contracted it) because of the negligence of our government.

      1. Compare COVID to ebola — people largely (90%-99.5%) survive COVID and we see clear patterns for those who do not. The outliers confound us. We haven’t yet figured them out. We have figured out using oxygen thereapy vs high-pressure ventilators, various medicines, and how not to kill people in nursing homes (thanks, Cuomo). We have a ways to go, but have traveled a great distance since early March.

    3. These categories are a way of describing the symptoms that are being reported and how they are clustering. It’s interesting, but in no way makes the leaps that you are making here. This again sounds like the type of argument that some frequently post here which seems to try to justify that since there are some people who can/will get COVID and become ill and others that won’t, that we can somehow bracket ourselves off into the “those that won’t” category. Anyone who is having non-masked, non-socially distanced contact with other people can get COVID if they are unlucky enough to have that contact with someone who is infectious. At this point, we do not yet know how to predict accurately who will get severely ill, though we can describe who has gotten more severely ill on a population level (people who are older, people with pre-existing conditions, BIPOC). We cannot, at this point, even say why we are seeing these divergent outcomes at a population level, let alone say why any one case became severely ill or whether we ourselves would be asymptomatic or hospitalized.

      1. +1
        Actually, deciding that you personally are not at high risk for COVID death or complications is magical thinking, because it’s hard to face the absolute fact that it may just be random and not within your control.

        What is largely within your control is not catching it in the first place.

        1. Right. Y’all keep them masks on!

          One interesting thing is that it there was initially a “no symptoms” was laughed off as “no symptoms YET.” It looks like there may be a “sustained non-awful,” which would be great (vs people cackling: just wait until you’re intubated, which seemed to be in complete bad form).

      1. Can we not pretend like they’re not similar?

        Similarities:
        – both largely have to do with the conditions one is born into
        – neither is any of your business

        1. Ding ding ding. MYOB. Don’t come back with “but fat people cost the system money” unless you’re also prepared to complain about expensive chronic overuse injuries in elite thin athletes, expensive reconstructive surgeries for people who get into car accidents when they could have walked instead, or expensive courses of antibiotics for people with bad breast implant reactions. Literally every condition anyone could ever have costs the system money. Unless you want to advocate for massive societal change to enable healthy eating and exercise for all, especially those in poverty (which may or may not affect the obesity rate), stfu with the fat-blaming and fat-shaming.

        2. You can change your weight. It’s not easy but it is possible.

          You cannot change your race. They are different things.

          2. Again, it’s none of your business if others choose to diet, which fails 95% of the time, or not. It’s none of your business if they try to loathe themselves thin, exercise 6 hours a day, starve themselves, or pass along their disordered eating to their kids. None. of. your. damn. business.

          3. I didn’t say it was my business. I just responded to the poster who said it was an immutable characteristic like race. It is not.

          4. I think people here sometimes use the “diets fail” thing as an excuse not to eat healthy or exercise.

            Eating healthy is a “diet” but it doesn’t have to be a diet with the goal of losing weight.

            I have morbidly obese in laws. About once a year, they go on an extreme weight loss diet. They eat the blandest, most basic food. Boiled chicken, vegetables with no seasoning. Super bland stuff. They lose a ton of weight. As soon as they end said diet, they revert to a diet consisting of chili cheese hot dogs, chips, fried food, etc. Weight comes back.

            There is a middle ground between the two. Small choices over time could make a huge difference for them versus one big “diet.” I think when the research shows “diets fail” this is what they mean. There has to be a lifestyle adjustment.

          5. I largely agree with this. I don’t agree with fat shaming or most of the comments upthread, but to compare weight and race is a false equivalency. I will caveat my statement with the fact that not *everyone* can change their weight due to underlying medical conditions/genetics, but I would post that many/most people can.

        4. They have similarities but that doesn’t mean they are equivalent. It’s pretty awful to pretend that fat discrimination is somehow the same as systemic racism. Lots of things have commonalities with racism but I really hate when people make the comparison because it implies that racism is less bad than it is. It’s like when anyone says something is “the same as the n-word”. No, it’s not. As evidenced by the fact that you’re willing to say one word but not the other, you know which one is worse.

  12. Hi, due to covid – my position is now 100% work from home. My family (me, two kids under 3, doc husband currently staying at home with them) are looking to make a move From our small urban, rowhome to somewhere that has more space.

    We are looking for ideas on what locations we should consider.

    Criteria:
    – somewhat diverse or at least not too closed minded (inter racial family practicing a minority religion)
    – along the philly to DC corridor but can be an hour or two outside of that area in any direction
    – ability to buy a nice 3 bed/2 bath home for $750k or less
    – good access to nature (very open on what this means)
    – cute town vibe
    – have a yard for the kids

    1. Last year, my brother bought a turn key 3 bedroom/3 bathroom home in Alexandria off of Duke Street (about a 6-7 minute drive from Old Town ALX) for around $600,000.

      1. Was that before HQ2 was announced? B/C I just don’t see that sort of pricing now.

        1. It was actually after! They were going to take their time and look, but once HQ2 was for sure, they noticed prices sky rocketing. Finding this place did take some work, but I am in the DC area as well and saw from their search that this particular part of Alexandria had some gems. They also ADORED their agent and largely contribute getting this house + selling their condo in Fairfax in a day to her. Their neighborhood is a long of wartime ranches that have been renovated, similar size to theirs but I am truly shocked by the actual space inside. FWIW, they do have a finished basement that has the 3rd bedroom and full bathroom. I think if anyone wants to stay in this area, houses between S Van Dorn and Old Town are worth checking out.

    2. A lot of my friends like Silver Spring MD (which is huge), but lots of brick raised ranches, so basements are often kid-friendly large rec rooms. As it is more affordable, it is going to be more diverse.

    3. Forgot one criteria!

      – within an hour of a good hospital – husband will return to work in the next two years and we need access to quality medical care in general

      1. I like Vienna and several friends live there. It is so expensive as to make it not terribly diverse. IMO the schools are pretty good and you’ve got the metro there.

    5. Are you into horses at all? I know of some cute towns in horse country that could fit the bill.

      1. Not into horses personally but not opposed to checking out a beautiful horsey area.

          1. Middleburg is my absolute favorite VA town. If you’re into water views, try Onancock (weird name, cute place).

    6. In Maryland – Frederick County is pretty up and coming and you can get brand new single family houses for about 500k, which is about half the price if you were in DC or immediate DC-adjacent counties. Yes, I know Frederick County has historically not been very diverse, but it’s changing in the last 5-10 years as young families are priced out of Howard and Montgomery Counties. Slightly closer to Philly, there’s also Catonsville in Baltimore County. Another Maryland option might by Harford County in between Baltimore and Philly, although I don’t know about diversity there.

      1. Looking at Harford county because being near the water is appealing.

        Concerned about the naval academy though making it more conservative/less welcoming. Anyone have any experience there?

        1. The Naval Academy is in Annapolis (Anne Arundel County), not Harford County. Annapolis itself tends to be more historically white especially in the neighborhoods that have been there since the 1700s but the rest of Anne Arundel County is more diverse just based on my on drivethroughs.

      2. Harford County (the northern county between Balto and Philly) is VERY white and not diverse at all. About half truly rural, half suburban. My middle and high schools there were 98-99% white. It is also a slow, far commute to downtown Baltimore (mine was about 45 min on a good day, 1hr+ on bad) and it’s 1.5 hours to Philly. Literally see no reason to move there and actively trying to get my parents back to civilization lol.

    7. That price is definitely doable in the Philly suburbs. Some suburbs are more diverse than others.

    8. Wild card suggestion – Newark, DE. College town, 2 hrs to DC, 45 min to Philly Int’l Airport, state park directly north. Plus you’re going to get a lot of bang for your buck there.

      1. Newark, DE is very cute! It’s definitely a small city and has a college town vibe. It’s definitely close to outdoor recreation areas and close to beaches. Philly is about 45 minutes away and Baltimore is about an hour. It’s close to a lot of the action but with a more relaxed town atmosphere if that’s what you’re after. Plus, no sales tax!

    9. You don’t mention schools being a factor, but I’d recommend Mt. Airy in Philly. It’s a very liberal / diverse neighborhood in the city with great access to the Wissahickon, Kelly Dr and Fairmount Park. From what I’ve heard, neighborhoods are close knit, though there aren’t as many bars/restaurants/shops in Mt. Airy as there are in other neighborhoods. There are pockets of them, just not a ton.

      The neighborhood is near Roxborough, Manayunk, East Falls, Chestnut Hill and Germantown. Manayunk’s Main Street has lots going on, Chestnut Hill has a very cute little main drag, East Falls and Roxborough have some but not a ton. All of those neighborhoods are super safe. Germantown is block by block.

      Homes in Mt. Airy are old, and have yards though some have small yards. Mt. Airy is split into east and west. Both are nice but have different vibes. West is closer to chestnut hill, east is closer to Germantown. The real estate is definitely in your budget, and houses run the gamut from mansions to row homes.

      Being in Philly, you’re close to several hospitals.

      Mt. Airy is part of the city so the public schools are atrocious and there’s city wage tax. LOTS of good private school, magnet and charter options, though.

    10. What about the area around Princeton? It’s <1 hr outside of Philly. You probably can't buy in Princeton itself, but there's several towns around there. West Windsor, Plainsboro, Lawrenceville.

  13. I am taking a new job but want to make sure I still receive my annual bonus at the end of August. The new employer wasn’t able to match my bonus as a sign-on but was willing to delay the start date by a few weeks so I could stay at my current company through the bonus payout date. I’ve been in my current role for several years, am close with my manager and would like to give as much notice as possible to ease the transition and maintain a good relationship because it’s a small industry, but I’m also worried that the company will terminate me early so they don’t have to pay out the bonus (employment-at-will state). How much notice would you give in this situation?

      1. 100%. You will never see that bonus if you give notice before its in your bank account.

    3. My experience at law firms was that people gave notice of 2-4 shortly after (sometimes same day) that bonus hit their account. Is your new employer willing to delay start date until late September?

      1. They are willing to delay until mid September, which means that I could give 2 weeks right after receiving the bonus but essentially have to go straight into the new job. I guess that’s the right/conservative answer – I feel a guilty not being able to give my current job more time to transition (others that have left have given notice of anywhere between 2 weeks to 2 months), but it is a sizeable bonus at risk.

        1. This is the wrong way to think about it.

          If your company reserves the right to pull the bonus payout if an employee gives them a lot of notice, they are running the risk of getting less notice. This is the decision they made; this is the risk they took for the benefit they want.

        2. You’re making a choice between the bonus money and time off between jobs. I’d choose the money too.

          Don’t feel bad about a short notice period. Your company would lay you off in a heartbeat if they thought it would improve their bottom line.

          Use the time between now and your bonus payout to document better and leave everything in good shape for your successor.

          If you can, take a few days off at your current job, because it will be harder to take time off at the new job, at least at first.

          1. +1,000,000

            Repeat this to yourself in the mirror: “Your company would lay you off in a heartbeat if they thought it would improve their bottom line.”

            Now repeat it again.

            Get the money, give your notice, move on.

        3. I also recommend taking a vacation before you get your bonus to give you some time to do things you maybe would do if you had more time in between.

    6. Get the money from the bonus first. I tried to help my employer by giving really early notice (like 8 weeks, where bonus was being given on week 2 because a big project deadline was happening on week 8 and I wanted to be sure there was a plan for if it pushed into week 9). They didn’t give me the bonus so I walked out (a very un-me thing to do) and then had our COO call me at home to tell me not to officially quit while they got the bonus straight. It was a lot of headache and heartache. And I didn’t get the full bonus (but most of it) at the end of the day. Save yourself grief. Get the money first. (I worked for that company for 13+ years, too, so don’t think you’re being loyal and they’ll be loyal to you).

    7. Skip the long notice period. Everyone I’ve ever known who has given more than two weeks has regretted it, including my husband after I TOLD him to go with no more than two weeks, tops. He gave a month and then followed up with a fuzzy “but I can stay longer since you begged.” He admits he was wrong not to just give two weeks and move on. Clean breaks are the best breaks.

    8. Agree with the comments to have the bonus in your bank account then give notice. That doesn’t mean you can’t be organizing for giving notice now — cleaning up files, preparing transition memos, thinking about who would be the best fit for transition, etc. As a manager/partner, making sure things transitioned smoothly was much more important to me than the length of notice given. You can be proactive and not burn any bridges without putting your bonus at risk.

  14. Question about this dress / this brand. I think it’s very pretty, but it’s difficult for me to tell what it looks like in straight sizes. Any feedback about this brand in general? (I would be either a 6-8 or a 10-12, would love feedback on how this brand runs.)

    1. If you go to the website – some items have a “see it in your size” bar at the top that allows you to toggle between pics of different sizes.

    2. I’ve ordered from this brand quite a bit, and I can say that most of their clothing runs a bit large – but that may also feel that way because they intentionally build in stretch into many of their garments. They are pretty up front about their fit (loose, skimming, etc.) and be sure to reference their size chart and compare it to your own body and fit preferences. The popular Geneva dress, for instance, is supposed to be more loose. Not all their pieces are my style but the items I have I love! And they have a great business model.

    3. I’ve also looked at this dress more than once. At the end of the day, I just didn’t need another work dress, but I was very close to pulling the trigger on this one, and I love this green color. Update us if you end up buying it!

    4. I used to think they ran large but I ordered recently and thought they ran small and had to return.

  15. I live in a small city of 100K where people seem to have…given up? I can’t understand how people can accept blatant bad behavior. Case in point. Our police chief was caught on video drinking in a bar on work time then driving home in his police cruiser. He was with a half dozen other cops. This apparently was a weekly tradition as evidenced by multiple days of video. The local news did an expose, the mayor demoted him, and the community collectively shrugged their shoulders. He remains employed due to his seniority and union membership. This absolutely blows my mind, particularly during this cultural moment of police accountability. No one seems to care. No local elected officials are calling for him to be fired. No civil rights groups, community activists, etc are concerned he and the other officers are still out policing despite flagrantly breaking the law and the public’s trust.
    How is a situation like this ok? When I bring it up, people look at me like I’m a judgmental troublemaker. Please, am I missing something?

    1. I don’t know, but this is all normal to me; I could tell a dozen similar stories about cops, teachers, and even the local mayor.

      1. Teachers out drinking at a bar and then driving home during school hours? (She said “during work hours.”) I think all h3ll would break loose if people saw such a video. Teachers are fired for even posting photos to their personal social media that show them drinking while off the clock.

    2. I agree that it’s not okay. I would also be frustrated if no one around me seemed to care.

      1. same. I guess, knowing how police union contracts hamper accountability, that the demotion is actually already a consequence of the infraction that you wouldn’t see everywhere. If half a dozen cops have nothing else to do than daydrink on the job regularly, that’s a pretty good argument for cutting a few jobs though. Clearly that’s not taxpayer money that needs to be spent there. I would be surprised if nobody in a city of 100k were frustrated by this, so maybe this is a sign that you live in a bubble (like we all do, of course).

    3. Are you doing anything? Writing letters to your city council? Writing letters to the editor of your local newspaper? Posting about it somewhere on the internet where at least you’re not anonymous?

      1. Yes, I did all of the above. That’s how I know people are responding by calling me a troublemaker and saying the cops work so hard and deserve a break now and then.

        1. The police chief was demoted. That is a consequence even though it’s not the one you want. You’ve put a lot of time & energy into this with little to no results. What is your goal here? Gently, maybe it’s time to focus your efforts on something more productive.

          1. OP here. That’s fair. I have several close friends or family members who received a first-time DUI that basically ruined their lives for several years in various ways: loss of job, license, income, even marriage in one case. I think a DUI is quite serious, so the cognitive dissonance of a police chief being on video drinking then driving his police cruiser and keeping his job, no charges filed, etc enrages me. But you’re right. There was a consequence, even though it wasn’t what I would envision. I’d like him fired and charges filed, but that doesn’t seem like it is going to happen.

  16. I posted the other day about a couple of skincare products I tried that intrigued me, wondering if I could get some more feedback on one of them. (For those who commented on the other, the Tatcha rice powder cleanser, thanks! I ordered a couple of travel sizes)

    I used a sample of Herbivore Emerald CBD+Adaptogens oil and really liked it. It seemed to calm redness/inflammation on my skin.

    Does anyone else use this product or other CBD facial products? Are they really as effective as this seems to be? Any other recommendations?

  17. I have a pair of Hunter Gloss Penny Loafers that I love, and noticed this morning that both shoes have a crack on top where my toes bend. Is there a way to prevent this if I get another pair? I wear them maybe 5 days a month, but I think they are 1-2 years old.

    2. This happens with rubber. Eventually the oxygen works its way in even with higher-quality lines like Hunter. FWIW, I’ve had better longevity (well, on year 3 now anyway) with the classic rainboots because the front is slightly curved already… meaning there’s less stress on the rubber at the toe when walking.

  18. Is anyone else watching Indian Matchmaking on Netflix? I’m a few episodes in and I’m obsessed. So far I really love Arpana. I know she’s high energy and very opinionated, but I agree with her – why should she try to change who she is for a man? (The matchmaker calls her “picky” and “stubborn.”)

    My favorite favorite show recently has been Taste the Nation hosted by Padma Lakshmi. I’m kind of sad we binged it so quickly.

    1. Love Aparna and her whole story arc. Pradhyuman doesn’t seem like he’s necessarily looking for a woman. There’s a super mamas boy introduced around episode 6 I feel bad for.

    2. I’m watching and I loved the show! I didn’t love Aparna — not because she’s “picky” (because she should be!), but because she seemed pretty self-centered and a little condescending.

    3. Apurna makes me crazy, she does not want a husband, I can’t imagine a man who would satisfy her requirements, and if he did he would not want to marry her, she’s not a nice person. I’m only 4 episodes in, does she change after June 19th? I can’t even understand how she has friends, she’s so stuck up. but maybe its a bad edit, like how they obliviously want you to know she has the smallest house on her street. I love the show though, super interesting.

      1. Keep watching! I think she’s actually been through a lot and develops through the show.

      2. I noticed that camera angle too! I thought it was weird – she lives alone and those giant 2-story houses are most likely inhabited by families and/or dual income households. For one person living alone, her house is totally appropriate in size. And if she were to want a larger house, more power to her. As a GC in TX, I’m sure she could afford a bigger place if she wanted to.
        I wanted to like her, but I did find her irritating. I loved her independence and her love of travel and how she didn’t seem to let being single stop her from having the experiences she wanted to have. But she was snobby and sometimes downright rude to her dates, such as when she said it was weird to want to go to Dubai or said something must be wrong with you if need to relax for more than 3 days. She doesn’t have to want those things, but those were just examples of how she was judgmental of other people’s life choices in a way that went beyond observing an area of incompatibility.

    4. Yes, I was highly entertained by it. I thought it was funny that Aparna was a lawyer who hates being a lawyer although. She’s definitely pretty judgmental. I think they did a good job of selecting the participants to showcase different personalities. According to an article in the LA Times none of the contestants ended up together!

    5. I actually ended up watching it on the insistence of my sister because Arpana reminded her so much of me! I loved it, so sad I watched it all in 1 days.

    6. Yes, I am watching and find it fascinating.

      I feel like Aparna does not want a husband, but is trying to convince herself that she does.

    7. I watched a couple episodes based on a recommendation here, and I think the show is possibly staged, but quite entertaining!

  19. Lady lawyers – what do you think of the formality and appropriateness of a dress suit (i.e. dress and matching jacket, provided they are in fact matching + provided they are black, navy or charcoal)? Trying to get my wardrobe ready for law school interviews although would like something that then works for job interviews, etc. later down the line. I’m much more comfortable in dresses and skirts, and really do prefer the former so as to avoid things riding up. For what it’s worth, I’m 28 and dress pretty traditionally anyway.

    Thinking of one of these (MM LaFleur kindly confirmed that these are in fact matching suit pairs):

    OPTION 1:
    jacket portion, in black: https://mmlafleur.com/shop/product/jackets/neale-jacket-washable-wool-twill-black
    dress portion, in black (not sure if belt is too much): https://mmlafleur.com/shop/product/dresses/cynthia-dress-washable-wool-twill-black

    OPTION 2:
    jacket portion, in charcoal: https://mmlafleur.com/shop/product/jackets/carson-blazer-light-twill-charcoal
    dress portion, in charcoal: https://mmlafleur.com/shop/product/dresses/shanna-dress-light-twill-charcoal

    Thank you! Much appreciate the advice.

    1. I think a dress suit is totally appropriate and both of these options are really nice. Personally, I would do navy or charcoal over black, but to each their own!

      1. Thank you! Just curious – why do you have that preference of navy or charcoal over black?. I actually do personally way prefer navy and charcoal over black, just curious on rationale here. Thanks again

        1. I guess in my mind black suit = funeral. Truly just a personal hangup. I’ve found that I heavily gravitate towards navy for work clothes because I find the color to be pretty universally flattering and it matches a lot.

    2. I didn’t click on your links but I think dress-suits are fine and perfectly formal. Once I figured this out they became my go-to because they’re much less fussy and way more comfy. I wear them to interviews and court all the time.

    3. IANAL so I can’t speak to the appropriateness of the looks (to me they seem fine though), but I would be concerned about how long the grey jacket is with the dress. Seems like it will just hit a little too close to the bum to look quite right with that dress.

      1. That is a very good point actually re: the length of this particular jacket. I had not thought of that.

  20. As someone who grew up with a highly critical (and thinnish) mother who was terrified that I’d get fat like my dad and viewed obesity as a moral failure, I’ve had to unlearn a lot of her attitudes over the years. If it was easy to be thin, or easy for people to lose weight, we wouldn’t have the bazillion-dollar diet industry.

  21. Any suggestions for a gift for a dear friend whose first born is due in a few weeks? Thinking under $150 but flexible.

    1. Prepared & delivered food, if she’s open to that. The first few weeks are hard!
      Savorski (sp?) crystal earrings/tiny chain necklace?

    2. I love getting piggy banks as gifts, and try to get something classic looking that also goes with the theme of the nursery. I’ve done banks from Mignon Faget (rabbit nursery), Reed & Barton (silver airplane), Kate Spade (elephant), and Pottery Barn (white owl). I still have a bank that was in my nursery as a baby, so I think its a nice timeless kind of gift.

      1. OMG I’m an idiot! I thought you meant for the baby until I saw the other response! Please disregard.

      1. For the friend. Previously I was thinking of getting her a pre-natal massage but then Covid became a nightmare so that’s not an option. Already bought some shower gifts, I just want to do something special for her.

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