Tuesday’s Workwear Report: Sterling Sweater
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Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.
What can I say? I’m a sucker for a jazzy button. This polo sweater from L’Agence is made of a gorgeous cotton/nylon/silk knit and is accessorized with gold flower-shaped buttons that caught my magpie eye. This is a perfect option for one of those business casual offices where folks are wearing a lot of polo shirts and you might be looking for something just a little more fun.
I’m wearing something similar today with the Eileen Fisher crepe ankle pants that have been in my closet for a decade, and it’s perfect for a casual day with no meetings.
The sweater is $395 at L’Agence and comes in sizes XXS-XXL. It’s also available in eight other colorways.
A couple of lower-priced options are from CeCe ($71.40 on sale, XS-XL) and Hyacinth House ($158, XXS-XXL).
Sales of note for 3/15/25:
- Nordstrom – Spring sale, up to 50% off
- Ann Taylor – 40% off everything + free shipping
- Banana Republic Factory – 40% off everything + extra 20% off
- Eloquii – 50% off select styles + extra 50% off sale
- J.Crew – Extra 30% off women's styles + spring break styles on sale
- J.Crew Factory – 40% off everything + extra 20% off 3 styles + 50% off clearance
- M.M.LaFleur – Friends and family sale, 20% off with code; use code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off
- Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
- Talbots – 40% off 1 item + 30% off everything else (includes markdowns, already 25% off)
The government carnage continues. If anyone needs a new area of focus for calls to representatives and senators, opposing the haphazard and draconian firings at health agencies under HHS is a good place to start. We’re all going to be left unprepared and at significant risk in the next pandemic (not even counting bird flu) and the thousands of talented employees who have been tossed out like yesterday’s garbage are losing their livelihoods. Please consider calling and taking any other action you can (I’d love for other ideas to be posted in the comments if you have them).
Would it help to contact doctors and nurses (and maybe healthcare administrators), to lobby their organizations to lobby? Or is that kind of hopeless
Please don’t add to overburdened medical professionals’ to-do list.
Pretty much everyone is overburdened, and health care professionals will be deeply affected by the long term impact of these cuts. In other words, they should be taking a stand (as should we all).
Agree with the other poster. No, your family doctor isn’t the place to burden. Contact the AHA and AMA to help with their mobilizing efforts. Otherwise, you’re actually doing more harm than good by standing between provider and patient getting care.
We all should be taking a stand. But going through their offices isn’t doing what you think it is. No more than walking into your grade school student’s classroom to ask the the teacher to call someone about the Dept of Education.
I would be so annoyed if someone tried to assign me homework.
Youngest teaches medicine and as President and Past President of the state Academy of Family Physicians has been lobbying Congress and the state legislature for years regarding prior authorization, doing everything they can to stop insurance companies from denying needed medical care. An uphill battle.
And the Forest Service just laid off thousands of employees, making it harder to manage wildfires. Most of the land that burns in the western US is federal, so if Trump thinks that California should be doing more to prevent fires, this is the primary agency that’s supposed to be doing it. The increasing number of fires has meant that they’ve spent so much money fighting fires that there’s hasn’t been a lot left for prevention, though the Biden administration had increased this recently.
I hope this one hits Trump supporters. If they can’t access Forest Service land this summer for recreation, they might get pissed off.
Let’s not kid ourselves that they learn lessons this way.
Sure, they probably won’t, but historically the National Park closures during government shutdowns have been very unpopular on both sides.
If things get really bad, they’ll scapegoat societal others and persecute them before they admit they made a mistake.
True. I read somewhere that Trump supporters will gladly eat sh*t if it means the libs have to smell their breath.
I also think the layoffs at the FAA, and the Forest Service layoffs that include EMTs should draw some more attention. Both put lives at risk.
The FAA layoffs terrify me. I was always somewhat of a nervous air passenger but there have been too many issues in the last 2 weeks, and this is before SpaceX comes in to “modernize” the FAA (what even!).
I’m also irritated because we had planned to visit some national parks this summer and now it sounds like the staffing issues are going to be pretty rough and impact things like facilities and trail maintenance.
I’m married to an FAA employee (essential safety worker). The modernization is terrifying, as is the extreme disregard for understaffing. They need more people, not fewer.
The only good news I have: only firings that I’m aware of have been in admin (though this has implications for payroll, etc), and it’s harder to fire controllers than other employees because of the contract they have with the government. But it’s pretty bleak.
It’s wild to me that Trump supporters are like ‘well they fired logistics and admin people not controlllers’?
Like who do you think is coordinating schedules or hiring or vacation approvals etc for the controllers??
I’m genuinely curious how this ends. I get it in the context of a company like Twitter. You fire everyone, figure out who you need and rehire as needed. This doesn’t work for the Fed govt though. You can’t fire all the VA doctors and nurses, all the nuclear scientists, all the lawyers and special agents, all the FAA controllers and just rehire them when you figure out who is essential. Who is going to want to work for the govt after this? Sure, you will have some true believers but that’s at most a third of any group and probably not the A team in most categories so then what? Is everything just going to be privatized?
Yes it feels like they don’t understand that one of the reasons people were willing to take these jobs was for security. Bringing in the worst of private sector shock and awe tactics undercuts that perk pretty thoroughly!
But yes the idea for decades has been to privatize as much as possible.
In government and non profits, the true believers are usually the A team, from experience.
absolutely. All high performers who don’t strongly believe in the mission, have been poached by private industry. The high performers who stick around while having options do it because they care(d).
i don’t really understand how we can privatize everything. i work in higher ed at a top 20 university. yesterday i spoke with a student via Zoom who is currently studying abroad in Georgia (the country). He speaks Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, Farsi, Chinese and is currently learning Russian. He has/had an internship lined up with the State Department for the summer working on counter terrorism…how many 20 somethings do we think there are who speak all of those languages? he would be a HUGE asset to the state department. this is destroying not only the existing talent, but the talent pipeline
While working, my team was regularly offered higher pay for private jobs but stayed because the government offered security and they believed in what we were doing. I stayed purely to take my health insurance into retirement, I now wish I had thrown that away and taken the money and run.
They know that this isn’t a reasonable approach to “trim” the federal government workforce. That’s not the real goal. It’s sickening.
Best case scenario, it “ends” with less talent in government, fewer talented people trying to work for the government, uncertainty that disincentivizes working with the government or relying on the work it carries out, disruption to government services and private sector services that rely on government in some way, shape or form, and a massive propaganda campaign continuing to push the narrative that federal workers are lazy/useless, government is “too bloated,” that government is full of fraud and waste and supporting “silly” causes rather than essential functions, that the government can’t function for people’s benefit, etc…. and yes increased privatization.
Privatization is the primary goal. They know the services they’re slashing are needed; they just want you to have to pay private companies for them.
Also, it’s twisted to fire off employees responsible for overseeing program evaluations (to determine which government programs are effective and cost-effective) when your stated goal is to improve efficiency. Really shows their true colors.
Yeah, I was discussing USAID with someone who was genuinely open to more information about what they fund, how they measure success, is it actually helping anyone, etc – but you can’t access those reports (created with taxpayer money, btw!) because their website was taken down.
(if you run into this, you can still get them from the Internet Archive — but if you’re casually googling “USAID impact measurement”, you will just hit tons of broken links)
I was born in the Soviet Union. In the early 90s, everything was very rapidly and disastrously privatized. Most average families lost essentially everything with hyperinflation, and only a few got lucky enough to establish businesses that ended up doing well. The very few with the best connections/access raided the country for their own benefit and are now doing quite well.
This will out me to people who know me but… my mom was an academic researcher in 1991, and chose to not immigrate when she had the chance. She has run a succession of small businesses at a souvenir market since then. Some did well enough, others failed. She luckily figured out currency markets pretty fast so has been able to maintain some semblance of savings. The joke at her market is that you have to have a PhD in a hard science to work there. The only person she knows who stuck it out in academia also tutors in the evenings and works at a supermarket on weekends. We also have a family friend who is an academic researcher, who inherited an apartment in addition to the one she lives in (from her mother), and she lives primarily on the rent from that apartment. Professor salaries in Moscow are around $300 a month, and rent for a studio apartment starts at $500.
If this keeps going in this direction, I assume the US is heading towards some version of this.
As a scientist, this hits hard. This is something everyone should care about, not because I think people like me are entitled to secure, well paying jobs (though I do take issue with the cruelty and arbitrariness of the layoffs), but because investment in science has been one of the engines of economic growth in the United States and it seems so foolhardy to destroy that. Post Soviet Russia and China during the Cultural Revolution aren’t the economies or societies we want to model.
I think people like you (highly educated, productive) are entitled to have secure, well paying jobs. We have enough wealth in this country to support it. And our society would be better off if people’s hard work and good decisions were rewarded justly.
Haha, even before all of this, most jobs in science aren’t secure or high paying. But this certainly makes things a lot worse.
One thing that has struck me is that the billionaires in charge view every upper middle class salary (academics, physicians, engineers) as value to be extracted. Surely, they can squeeze out the work for less money and pocket the rest. Nobody is safe from their greed.
The billionaires also don’t care about economic development in general. They care about maximizing profits for themselves in the short run, usually at the expense of long-term success for any individual company or economy. If they destroy one company, they can always buy another to strip the value out of it and destroy it too.
They are already doing this. That is why Musk and others are so eager to increase Visas for high impact jobs. Drain India for their engineers and doctors and pay them less.
So they did fire some of the nuclear scientists… and now they realize they desperately need them back, but don’t have any way to get in touch with them
I do think there will be people who are still willing to work for the government, in the same way there are still engineers willing to work for X – people do take high risk jobs at unstable companies, or places with mercurial leadership, etc, but it has to be balanced out by some other factor — are they paying enough to make the risk worth it, are they offering much better than average benefits, or actually great growth opportunities, in the best case; worst case is their balancing other factor becomes “willing to hire people with no other options”. Tech bro world believes in making most workers desperate & having no other options, so they might even think they get great employees out of that strategy.
It’s not just that they can’t get in touch with them, it’s that they illegally claimed they were firing for cause which automatically means you can’t be rehired.
“can’t get in touch with them”
I suspect in many instances their calls and emails are not being returned by people who are in a FAFO mood
There is no intention to rehire anyone. The whole thing is dystopian – literally. It seems ridiculous, and maybe somehow it will be stopped, but the plan being implemented is to dismantle the federal workforce, permanently, privatize everything, and corporatize authority to the benefit of a few. It is to end democracy. There is a playbook for this that these freaks have been talking about for a while and are literally trying to work from, right down to the technocrat shadow president, a role to which Elon appointed himself. I think he just saw an opening at some point toward the end of the campaign and decided to throw in a chunk of money to see if he could make real what he and all his buddies have been fantasizing about in dark spaces for a while. He may be surprised at how easy it was. But Trump is the perfect tool in this scheme – very malleable, bribable, and stupid. Musk saw that. DJT is the President in name only, fully cucked by Musk and a larger cabal attempting a coup. Again, maybe someone will stop it, but this is the plan.
This is also my understanding, but I don’t know why media isn’t covering it this way. These plans are not a secret!
+1, WHERE is the media coverage???
The media are overwhelmed. There is so much to investigate and write about. And good quality media is underfunded.
Yes, this. Cutting HHS is a horrible way to save a buck.
The lack of humanity continues!
I’m no psychologist, but Musk seems to fit the bill for sociopathy. How else could you explain the gleeful “USAID is in the wood chipper” tweets while shellshocked employees are in tears and people around the world are losing access to essential medicines that cost pennies?
I agree. I don’t think he’s doing it because he thinks it’s for the best. He’s doing it because he thinks he’s the best
I always thought musk was a dumb person’s idea of a smart person. But I also assumed he was somewhat smart, just not this genius people seemed to think. The more he tweets and talks, he is actually very dumb, or just average but very good at lying / having no conscious about what he is doing. The true damage is in the people who are just eating it up. Him complaining about free speech and 20 minutes later saying the 60 minutes team should face criminal charges. His inability to understand or read government contracts. His inability to read data or spreadsheets as it pertains to SSA. And yet so many people just cheer that he is “cutting fraud”.
Al Gore cut waste so n behalf of the people. Elon is blowing things up for the benefit of himself. And it is not genius, but what you identified – lack of conscience – that makes him the one able to do it.
But there simply can’t be as many sociopaths as there are people cheering this on.
Those are half sociopaths and half gullible idiots.
Americans love billionaires. I read somewhere that certain religious doctrines view wealth as a sign of favor from God, so that the billionaires are to be admired and aided. But even aside from religion, there’s huge support for billionaires who are stripping the country of its resources. I can’t explain it.
Contemporary American culture has totally bought into the prosperity gospel–the idea that wealth is a sign of virtue and favor from the Almighty, and that poverty is a deserved punishment for lack of virtue. It’s why we have hustle culture and self-help books and gazillionaires and not high-quality subsidized child care or high-quality public education.
Do.not.care. You’re getting laid off. Get over it.
Really like the sweater though.
Melania?
No it’s all the rest of America who doesn’t care.
Oh! You must not realize you have a choice whether to read something or not. You simply… skip over stuff you’re not interested in.
I hope this helps!!
Why are you going off so hard 😂 Like yes, the comment wasn’t nice but you could’ve scrolled past it too, instead of getting weird and passive aggressive about it.
Hope this h– just kidding.
Would Boden’s Richmond 7/8 pants and ponte jacket be a good 2025 soft suit or do the fabrics not work together?
Alternatively, Banana still has wool suiting (pants are unlined; skirts are lined), so will try that (pants hemmed for flats, b/c 2025 doesn’t allow for hurting feet).
What I’d like is a patterned dress with 3 colors, black being one of them, to wear with a black jacket or lady jacket over. For some reason, I’m not finding anything that I think works. Shape would need to be A-line (struggling with the waist area now), knee length or slightly longer (but I’m short and don’t want a very long skirt for work items). Any leads (if so, pls post a link).
This doesn’t have 3 colors, but could this dress fit the bill?
https://www.anntaylor.com/work/work-dresses/cat2060002/multi/?&page=1#850341
It’s in the right neighborhood! And there is an AT at my mall, so promising. My plan is to wear said jacket and jeans and then go try on things. 3 isn’t a strict limit, but I’ve noticed that if there are two non-neutral colors, it doesn’t seem to pair well with anything (so 3 or some need to echo the jacket color — it seemed like a simple idea but complicated to execute; I’m just tired of solids but without a blouse in an outfit, it’s hard to get away from).
If you are short waisted, Hobbs dresses might work. They are at Bloomingdale’s.
+1, you have to wade through a lot of “what to wear if you’re invited to a Buckingham Palace garden party” dresses to get to the work styles, but they’re good.
My eyelashes have started falling out recently. It’s becoming noticeable as my lashes are now thinner but the most annoying part is fishing lashes out of my eye or off my face regularly.
I’m 38 and showing signs of peri but haven’t changed my face routine or products. Been using the same mascara for probably a decade. Any other ideas on what’s causing this and how to stop it?
This can be a symptom, so I’d bring it up with your doctor. A lot of the signs of perimenopause can also be symptoms of medical conditions, and they can’t really tell without running any tests.
Thyroid irregularities affect hair in the eyebrow and eyelash areas – a doctor suggested I get my thyroid tested because my brow hairs are noticeably sparser on the outside 1/3 of my brows. I was within normal range but it’s worth looking into
This sounds like me — always cold; parent, cousin, grandparent, and child with hypothyroidism; eyebrows thinning in spots. Blood levels are never enough to trigger a need for synthroid and I try to check each year.
My TSH never gets super high, but my antibodies sometimes do. I have every symptom if I’m nearer the top of the normal range, and feel completely fine if I’m medicated towards the lower end of the normal range. One thing I learned is that the acceptable range for TTC is narrower. You may want to consider whether your levels are “good enough for a woman” but not “good enough for a pregnancy,” since a lot of women feel better in the narrower range.
If there is anything else going on with your lashes or eyelids (redness, flaking) this could be related to blepharitis which, for me at least, was diagnosed by my optometrist.
First my eyelashes started falling out, and then my eyebrows were thinning on the ends, and after my hair on my head started falling out. It took awhile but they found out I had an autoimmune hair disorder that is more common in perimenopausal women – frontal fibrosing alopecia. It is really underdiagnosed. Dr. Jen Gunter on her The Vajenda substack was talking about it, as it was discussed at the big nationwide medical conference.
I would bring it up with your doctor, but ideally a dermatologist that specializes in hair. It is always good to check thyroid tests and vitamin levels when hair starts to fall out. But few PCPs even know to do that.
I’d also stop using whatever you are using on your lids/lashes for awhile. Maybe just use vaseline on a wand, just in case you are allergic to something you are putting on your eyes.
Could be telogen effluvium. How’s the hair on your head doing?
I went through telogen effluvium a couple of months after I had COVID. My dermatologist diagnosed it.
I need to spend a weekend in each of Greensboro NC, Lynchburg VA, and Charlottesville VA for various wedding / family things this spring. Hit me with your best places to stay (anywhere downtown or walkable to restaurants will be ideal) and dining options (will be there for some stays with spouse and teen kids) that aren’t too fancy. And any things not to miss. I’ve been to Charlottesville before, but it seems like it has grown so much over the years into a city with a college in it vs a big college town from 20 years ago. Lynchburg and Greensboro are new to me. Will have a car.
100% The Virginian in Lynchburg. No specific dining recommendations but they have a bit of a downtown area nearby with plenty of options.
The children’s museum in Lynchburg is actually kinda cute and the downtown area is nice. Charlottesville, the easiest walkable hotel in my opinion is the Marriott in downtown. It’s nice, but obviously still a Marriott. Easily walkable to the main street strip.
Greensboro is not a super walkable city. Where is the wedding? The O.Henry is a cute hotel with a good restaurant, but not walkable.
The Omni in Charlottesville is right on the Downtown Mall” (pedestrian-only street in downtown with lots of shops and restaurants). I’ve stayed there before and it was nice but not overly fancy. Get bagels from Bodos. Go to Monticello if you haven’t seen it and walk around “The Lawn” on UVA’s campus. If you’re there for a few days and have a car, there are some vineyards and cideries in the surrounding area that are worth a stop.
Another fed post here – I was about to apologize because I feel like we’ve had so many of these, but given the impact on all Americans (not just feds), and friends abroad, this has, I won’t apologize. I will apologize for the novel though. I just need to get my thoughts out on paper.
As of now, I still have a job (sadly, the same cannot be said for 3 of my work friends who lost theirs yesterday). I love my job, both the day to day work, the exciting but challenging TDY work, and the mission of my org. It’s the best job I’ve had all around (liking the job and the people, work life balance, and pay). I worked really hard to get where I am – lots of super long hours in not good conditions, for example.
I work in a field that doesn’t really exist without government – the non-federal positions in my field are usually federal grant funded. I thought about going back to my old employer at the state (which I liked less, but a job is a job) but that doesn’t feel terribly secure (and they have no openings right now, but I’m keeping an eye out).
I also have two leads outside of my current industry: my friend works for an NGO that is hiring a lot right now and my alma mater is interested in having me to come back and teach.
NGO: It would probably be fine, not very interesting or in my field, but fine and it’s still mission based which is very important to me. My friend there is pretty new (and doesn’t have much pull), but so far really seems to like it. Great 401k match (but not til the year mark), good health benefits, time off is fine but combined sick and vacation which I hate. He says the pay is good for the NGO world, but that could mean a lot. Job is hybrid – 3 days in office, 2 days WFH. I could keep my apartment and walk to work, which is nice.
Alma Mater: Private school, so no need for a teaching cert. TBD what jobs will be open for next school year yet, but they are interviewing me already to get me in the pipeline. I have several friends who work here. School hires a lot of people with industry experience who are new to teaching and has a program to get them ready for the classroom – obviously it would be a lot of work to get ready to teach. My dad is now retired, but worked there for years too so I have a pretty good insight into how things work as a faculty member. Pay is not good (probably close to a 50% cut), the schedule is both a pro and a con (lots of time off, no flexibility). It’s a high performing, expensive private school so while there are difficulties (overbearing parents), you don’t have other problems with teaching (students below grade level, unengaged students or parents, discipline problems). I’ve guest lectured a few times and really liked the atmosphere of being in a school again. I have off and on toyed with the idea of going into teaching. Biggest thing here would be the lifestyle change: school is in the far burbs, so I wouldn’t continue to live in the city (also I couldn’t afford it) – almost all of my friends still live downtown, I have a very active social life here, and I just love the walkable city lifestyle.
Going back to the state: A known entity, but I left for a reason (work life balance and leadership). Real concern here is the reliance on federal grants for funding staff positions. Most of my friends have also left, but a few close friends are still there – they don’t love it. Would be a pay cut (somewhere between 10-25k) and longer hours. Job is fully in person. Time off is approximately what I have now, but doesn’t increase for 10 years (I’m 1 year away from increasing now). Healthcare is decent and very cheap. Retirement bennies are fine but not great. 5 days a week in office, 10 min drive/bus commute.
I could also hang on to my job now as long as I can. I love it. I’ve been given great opportunities and the team has really invested in me, which would be a shame to leave but I do need to do what’s best for me. But, it still feels like cheating to leave – this is my life’s work, the work still needs to be done so I’d love to stick it out as long as I can but I just can’t be so noble as to shoot myself in the foot to keep up the good fight only to turn around and get fired.
I’m single and live alone, so being out of a paycheck would be really rough. Unemployment presumably would cover my rent and I have savings, but I’m so financially cautious I’d be a nervous wreck. Also, a lot of feds have been fired for “performance” even with great performance reviews – so would I even be eligible for unemployment? If I don’t qualify for unemployment, I have just enough in savings to cover rent (but nothing else) until the end of my lease. I would plan, of course, on getting some sort of serving, retail, or other quick hire job to bridge the gap.
The stress of not knowing right is also eating me alive – I’m not sleeping, I don’t have much of an appetite, my mental health is beginning to get better but I was so depressed for the first few weeks that I did not leave my bed except to go to work. Slowly getting back to a few of my interests, but not all of them. We were told that there were going to be no layoffs in our division on Friday, then people got fired yesterday. There’s just absolutely NO certainty, no ability to plan. I’d hate to give up something I love only to later find out that my job was safe and I didn’t need to leave… but I’d also hate to not strike while the iron is hot at other jobs and then lose my job and the ability to apply for something there. Job wise, the only option that excites me is teaching but that’s SUCH a lifestyle change I don’t know that I wouldn’t end up with regrets. Teaching is also hard, because it’s obviously a small window to a) get hired and b) start the job. If I stay at my current job but then lose my job in October, I’m SOL until the next school year.
Are you with HHS? No advice but commiseration. Federal contractor here just waiting for that pink slip.
Personally, I think you have your answer that the uncertainty is destroying you from stress. Even if you make it through the next 6 months, the next 3.5 years will continue to be as they are now. I’d move to the NGO due to the fact that you can stay in your apartment and the easy commute. See if you can negotiate for more vacation time. Once you settle into the NGO, if the other options are still appealing (alma matter, etc) you can always change roles if it’s not for you.
Can you treat the private school opportunity as a back up plan while trying to make current job or another less secure option work? I would feel better taking some risks knowing that I’m wanted and needed to teach if other options don’t work out. I hear you about the school year calendar, but you may be able to come up with a plan whether it’s subbing for public schools or one of the quick hire jobs you mentioned.
As terrible as it all is, given how much you like your job and your life, I would hang in there. They can’t continue at this rate and you may have just been spared.
In reality, the layoffs are just starting. Pretty much the only people who have been laid off so far (in most agencies, at least) are probationary employees (aka new hires under the PFT hiring mechanism). Probationary employees are easy to fire. Contrary to popular belief, other employees can be fired too it just needs to be for cause and the documentation for that can take a while.
In the federal government probationary just means new – depending on the job you typically have a 1-3 year probationary period. It has nothing to do with performance or conduct (despite what the name might mean in other industries).
They are still looking to layoff more people, it will just take a little more time.
+1. The layoffs are just beginning. Musk and crew haven’t even gotten to target all the programs that have health equity components yet (public health outreach programs and the like) and once they do, it’s going to be a bloodbath. That’s going to be when I lose my job.
In higher ed, and nothing but commiseration. Nobody knows how this is going to play out, and my U was already facing budget problems. My mental health is hanging on by a thread. I think my position will ultimately be safe (though can’t be sure), but I don’t know that this is an environment I can continue working in and stay sane. The attacks from all angles are too much. All that to say: I don’t know what I’m going to do, either.
You job isn’t safe! Don’t be delusional. If the NGO is willing to hire you now go after it with everything you’ve got and take it.
I am under no pretenses that my job is safe. It’s just really hard to walk away from something you’ve put so much into and you love.
Yeah it is. And you need to.
I think you have to go — move to the NGO while you can. So many people are going to be in the job market and desperate in the next few months that there won’t be any place for you to move if you wait. I am so sorry this is happening to you. It’s completely unfair.
Love yourself first. You need to make the change.
It’s a terrible situation, but sometimes you need to do what you have to do. You will not be able to do what you love during this administration, so you can leave with options or suddenly find yourself unemployed with fewer options. The NGO sounds like your best bet.
Thanks all for the insight. One concern I have is if I move to the NGO – will it be too hard to move back into a field I care about if and when (big if) things course correct in the future? My dream would be to either move back to what I do now (whatever that looks like), but like I mentioned, I’ve always kind of considered education (especially when and if I have children).
The NGO doesn’t have any openings right now, but they’re expected to be posted next month (per my friend).
There are no guarantees that there’s an easy way back into public service, unfortunately. Hindsight may show us that for those who left, there isn’t / wasn’t a way back because of the probationary period. Or, maybe with an administration changes, everyone is welcomed back with open arms. I think that the workplace constructs are crumbling (i.e. being in the government will be stable, etc). IMO the only thing you can do is what’s right for the here and now. For teaching, personally I wouldn’t do that next as a full time career with that big of a pay cut. If the NGO allows for outside work, you could dip your toe into being an adjunct for 1 class a semester and see how it goes (or just for summer session, etc).
You need to worry about 4 years from now in 4 years
I have a masters degree in an extremely rural area. If I lose my federal job, which i moved across the country to take, my backup plan is substitute teaching and custodial at the local school until I can find something in my field and move again. This is what the country voted for. Put us uppity, educated women back in our places.
Don’t you need a black seal license to be a custodian?
Does anyone have a favorite to go coffee cup that’s truly leakproof? I’d like something that I can toss in my bag with my laptop and not worry about it leaking.
Yeti with hot shot lid. Only one I use and totally leak proof.
Ooo, I like all the colors this comes in! Have you had any issues with the colored part getting scratched up from keys or other things in your bag?
All the paint chipped off my Yeti mug, but they replaced it. I got the one without paint this time and have been happy with it.
+1 this is my ride or die. No paint scratches other than when I accidentally drop-kicked it off a restaurant balcony and dented it a bit. Still works perfectly.
I love my Yeti cups more than is reasonable. They really are that good.
Same. And I like the kids’ bottle but then swap the hot shot lid onto it. The kids is 12 oz which is big enough for me and then is smaller and lighter in my bag.
I cannot imagine doing this no matter the marketing. It is. A cup. Filled with. Liquid.
LOL, fair. Also, it’s hot liquid, not water.
I never actually had a leak using Contigo (though because it’s a button design, it’s totally possible!). If I had been more concerned about leaks I would have tried the Zojirushi, but it’s not really a cup.
My Zojirushi really is 100% spill proof. I don’t love drinking from a tall skinny thermos so I toss it in my bag then decant into a mug at my destination.
I love my Zojirushi!
+1
Just make sure you wash and when you put it back together you put all of the gaskets on super well, or it will leak.
But as most things Japanese, when you use it correctly it works great.
Same. My Contigo, from Costco, is going on ten years old now. The Zojirushi has been tempting because of what I’ve read about how it holds temperature but that’s not enough reason to trash the Contigo. And same with Yeti.
I think the Contigo were two for $12.99 or something. They’re fine.
i have two contigio ones and they’re my favorite. the only time they leak is operator error of me failing to set them to “lock”
My usual swimming routine: fill my Zojirushi with hot water, throw it into my gym bag, swim, add chocolate LMNT after my swim, enjoy.
It’s never once leaked.
Contigo now has a lid with a “lock” button to solve for that possible problem.
Zojirushi thermos. I have an older one with a little metal thing you flip up to cover the press open thing (for coffee) and a second one with a screw on top (for tea). Neither has ever leaked, and I always have to cool my beverage first before pouring it in because otherwise it is too hot to drive for at least 12 hours.
I use contigo because I like that I don’t have to bother with unscrewing the lid to take a drink.
I wouldn’t toss it or anything containing liquid in with my laptop though. I would carefully place in an upright position preferably in a different compartment of the bag.
I have had a Kinto mug for 5 years and can confirm it is 100% spill proof. I throw it in my bag every day and have never had an issue.
I also like my Kinto and I like that it feels like drinking from a cup. I don’t like drinking from a sippy spout.
I’ve started taking iron supplements to get my ferritin numbers up but the pills are making my stomach hurt, regardless of whether I take them with food. Can anyone recommend a supplement that’s high quality (third party tested, etc.) but doesn’t make your stomach hurt? Or does the stomach pain go away if you take them consistently?
There’s an RX pill you can get called Concept DHA which is designed for pregnant/lactating women that has some kind of propriety way that increases iron absorption. With a coupon, it was about $50 with insurance for a 90 day supply (since it’s a name brand and not generic). Your insurance may not cover, but it could be worth a shot. Your OBGYN might even have samples if you call.
The one from Fullwell.
Proferrin Clear is the only one that doesn’t hurt my stomach.
Another vote for Proferrin, although I use the ES version.
I take anything with iron in a full stomach or at night. Makes all the difference for me. Never on an empty stomach.
This. Another idea if it’s a big pill or 2 pills – would one in the morning and one at night have a similar positive effect while reducing the negative effects?
This is where it’s at for a first approach. It’s free and if it doesn’t work for you, gives you another data point to mention to your PCP.
Many iron supplements can cause constipation. Is that why your stomach is hurting? Regardless, your dr should be able to prescribe an iron supplement that doesn’t make your stomach hurt.
My OB recommended SlowFE for both pregnancies. I did not have stomach upset with it.
Seconding this; mine specifically said she recommended it because it’s easier on the digestive system. I will say that I wasn’t on it for very long so it’s possible problems could have kicked in after a few weeks, but it was fine for that time.
SlowFE or the Kroger version.
I couldn’t tolerate iron supplements so I ended up doing iron infusions for my severe anemia. Might be worth looking into.
FWIW, my doctor said to focus on iron-rich foods rather than supplements.
I think the idea behind Proferrin is that it’s the heme form found in iron rich animal based foods, which is supposed to be very easy to digest, so the iron rich foods suggestion makes sense. I don’t think it’s actually superior to eating an equivalent amount from liver except that I got out of eating liver.
I have hypochlorhydria, so I don’t do well with plant based iron where the absorbability depends more on stomach acid.
Look into lucky iron fish. It’s just a chunk of iron. The idea behind it is that you boil water using this and a few drops of lemon juice that helps leech the iron out of the chunk of iron and basically have fortified iron water. You can also cook with it so almost any food can become iron fortified. It’s a similar concept as cooking in cast iron. I’ve always been anemic and have taken iron supplements but switched to this after a doctor friend’s rec. Definitely works for me and doesn’t give me the GI issues.
I’m the commenter right below you. I also use this and find it effective without causing stomach distress. I don’t do the lemon thing; I just drop it in whatever I’m cooking.
There really isn’t one, sadly. If your stomach really doesn’t like iron supplements, the brand doesn’t matter that much. Cook meat in cast iron and eat that, and push for infusions if that doesn’t do it.
Pure Encapsulations Opti-Ferrin C. I take two a day – morning and evening – and can do so on an empty stomach and they never hurt. Read the reviews on A ma zon – I’m a fanatic like the reviewers ha.
Solgar Gentle Iron worked better for my stomach than some of the other formulations.
MegaFood Blood Builder. I’m taking it for the same reason and have no issues, I take it with or without food, just whenever I remember. I’m not very consistent. I need to go back and get my levels rechecked but I am feeling soo much better since taking it 4-5 days a week for 2+ months. My levels were low due to frequent blood donation.
This is the best one I’ve found, but as someone who gets constipated from iron supplements, I can still only take this one a max of 2x a week without getting constipated. But my hematologist points out that 2x a week is better than 0x!
Simply Heme
My solution was to buy a house on well water pulled from an extremely iron-heavy aquifer. Everything you own will slowly turn orange, and you can deflect running water with a magnet, but goodbye anemia!
/s
Are you taking them at night? That’s the only way I’ve ever been able to take iron. Ditto for my son.
I used to have difficulty taking iron supplements because my body wouldn’t absorb iron in pill form. The doctor suggested getting pediatric iron drops, which are designed to be mixed into a liquid. At the time, I had to get them from a pharmacy, not because they were a prescription but because they were an often stolen item. I think you can order them now.
VitronC.
Doctor recommended. Both my parents took it, and now I take it. Includes a touch of vitamin C to help absorption. Easy to swallow. One pill once a day is a full dose of a good formulation of iron.
I can take it with food or without and no problems. And honestly, it is probably absorbed better with less food.
Be sure to separate it from when you take calcium, or the calcium will inhibit the iron absorption. Also check for drug interactions, as iron inhibits a lot of medications, so you need to separate in time.
Make sure you get your screening colonoscopy.
I have no issues taking Country Life “Easy Iron” (ferrous bisglycinate chelate). Have been taking it for years to successfully treat iron-deficient anemia.
Packing help needed. I am heading on a work trip to Asia for 8 days with my boss. I found out that she generally checks a suitcase which is a relief (I want to just mirror her preferences so I am not holding anyone back). We have three work events to attend that will be business attire, and have two days of train travel, and one free day. I will check my bag but wondering how I should do my carryon. Backpack + tote + purse? Carryon size bag too? I need to navigate myself to the train station so I think a backpack + overnighter + checked suitcase is the way to go here but I always hate holding things on my shoulders while waiting in passport control / etc. Flying business to and from Asia if it makes a difference.
Where in Asia and what season would be my first question? I would hate to do train travel with a backpack + airline carryon + checked bag, but it’s what your preference is. Are you normally a “everything and the kitchen sink” packer or more of a “one bag” packer?
If you’re checking a bag for a trip that’s only 8 days why would you need a carry on bag overnighter or a tote too?
I’d just do a backpack with a crossbody purse (I find it easier to keep phones, wallet, and passport in a crossbody or similar size purse while navigating the airport, then tuck it into my backpack once I”m on the plane).
My backpack I just have my meds, work stuff (I work in government and have a policy I cannot check my work computer, phone, or badge) and plane needs (entertainment, chargers, a layer or wrap, water bottle, snack, basic toiletries), . If I’m going to a developed country I’ve stopped bringing a backup change of clothes and toiletries, I figure I can get those easily enough upon landing if my luggage is lost.
This is similar to what I do.
Crossbody has passport, wallet, phones, some basic meds
Backpack has laptop, chargers, meds, change of clothes, basic toiletries, water bottle, a snack. Just enough to cover me for a night or two in case my checked in bag gets lost. I also keep a small tote bag that I use if I need a bag larger than the crossbody during the trip, and a few zip loc bags that have come in handy in different ways.
I also got a larger more backpacker style backpack when I started traveling regularly, instead of the lululemon commuter backpack I had before.
This is what I do, too.
I would normally agree. But Asian countries mean tiny clothes and tiny shoes. I’d be SOL if I needed to buy something. If OP is in the same situation, I’d recommend bringing something like this backpack. It fits a gazillion things and is light weight. It also is good if I’m doing a work meeting while staying somewhere and want something semi-professional for my laptop for the day. I’ve got a TON of use out of mine over the past year (like at least one trip a month and often more).
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BJCS9HVZ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1
I would do “personal item” (backpack or tote), duffel bag carryon with a day’s worth of clothes & toiletries in case of baggage delay, and wheeled checked bag. (You can’t do backpack + tote + purse – you’ll get flagged as having too many items – unless you stick the purse in one of the other two.)
That way when you’re on the go, you can roll the duffel on top of the checked bag, rather than having to drag two wheeled bags around.
Check a suitcase and carry on a tote that your purse fits in. You don’t need an overnight bag and a backpack to carry on if you’re checking a suitcase
This, You’re only going for 8 days!!
For a trip like this where shopping may be limited, you should plan an extra pair of biz clothes or two.
I would personally do this with a backpack, crossbody purse and carry-on only, but I travel light.
If the checked bag is set, then backpack with an extra change of clothes, and crossbody purse. If business clothes are an issue, and you’d like to have a suit with you that’s not checked in, you could always wear your pants and blazer when boarding, change into comfortable clothes on the plane (flight attendants will hang stuff on hangers for you) and change into business before landing. No extra overnight bag.
Checked bag, business tote (which will hold your laptop and work papers, and more), and very small rolling carry-on, plus cross-body (for your mobile phones and passport, etc.) which you put in your tote when going through security. The very small rollaboard holds extra clothes, a neck pillow, noise-cancelling earphones, vitamins and medications, etc., while your business tote holds a sweater, magazines, make up, sunglasses, reading glasses, face masks, compression socks, phone chargers, etc. There is a lot to bring with you to be comfortable when you are traveling long-haul to Asia.
I toured a SLAC with my teens yesterday. It’s not a highly-selective SLAC and it is more of a regional college. Even still, it was really impressed by how the students presented their school — academic research even as freshman with teachers who know your name and you get your name on any published papers (plentiful ones were blown up and posted along hallways), your professors may call you if you don’t go to class, random encounter with professor who stopped and chatted. I was really impressed. I may be the neurotic parent who has teens that COVID practically broke, but now I feel that things may be looking up longer-term and they may be able to find a place that suits them (not necessarily this place, but maybe, but that really good places are out there and we’d better get to road-tripping). The even better news is that I feel that they saw a version of their future that they hadn’t realized existed. Yay!
Sorry to be Debbie Downer but the statistic i heard on NPR yesterday was that one US college closed every week last year – 52 colleges. The demographic cliff is real. Make sure the smaller school is in good financial shape. I’m not sure how to find this out
Sigh. Just let her be happy. There are hundreds of great small schools.
I feel that colleges may close departments bit by bit to focus on basics. So, yes to English and core math/science and humanities. Maybe it will be harder to be a Classics major or take a class in what my dad calls Outrage Studies (after a cousin majored in something that seemed not just questionable but off-putting to put on a resume) vs Bland Studies. IDK. A cousin put a deposit down at WVU and then it closed a bunch of departments (he still went though).
I’m so curious what an “off-putting” major would be. The only thing I can think of is gender & sexuality studies, which doesn’t seem too contentious to me.
If it’s a non profit, just look at their actual report to understand their financial stability. Read (aka have your kid read) their latest accreditation report. Yes, some small schools are in financial trouble, but remember there are thousands and thousands of schools – 52 closing is a small percentage
For someone who doesn’t work in higher ed, I feel like I’m pretty in the know. IME, I haven’t heard of an “academically strong” school, no matter how small or niche, closing, with the exception of an arts college in my area – the arts programs were strong but the school was ONLY an arts school.
Academically strong doesn’t mean super selective here, even schools rated as “less selective” (usually 50-75% acceptance rates) seem to be thriving financially. Sure, the super small “least selective” school might be in danger but there are plenty of safe options
These tend to be schools that accept over 90% of their applicants and need to entice them with substantial discounts.
Just figure out what the endowment is.
Funnily enough, a friend and I were talking about college last night. She went to Berkeley, I went to a college with about 5k undergrad (that’s quite selective but not Berkeley selective – I think about a 20% acceptance rate). She was talking about clickers and I said I never had one, but I only had a handful of big classes. She explained that they also used the clickers in small classes of about 40, to which I said that is a big class! Sure, I had a few lectures (Econ 1 or freshman bio), but most of my classes had about 20 students. It’s just funny the difference among schools!
Berkeley is very prestigious and selective, but still a public university and public universities have larger class sizes.
I am now realizing that my college of 6K undergrads must be “small” now. Or smallish. My kids are in a high school of between 3-4K kids, which my parent brain treats as “lots of novice drivers in one place.”
Also, some kids will only be Greek at some place with Bama Rush vibes and some kids will only be Greek without Bama Rush vibes (more like go to an ice cream social and see if you click, wear whatever you like).
Yes, my ~5k students college was like 70% Greek (and about half of the non-Greeks were athletes and quite a few of us, myself included, were both). The “tagline” was with so many houses and such high Greek involvement there was a house for everyone, and that was honestly true.
It was funny to realize as an adult that Greek life had a very different reputation on other campuses!
My sorority has a house at Bama and a house at Johns Hopkins and maybe Cornell? I’d love to go to a convention at some point or see on a road trip some time just to see what other places are like. We had a lot of sisters doing ROTC and athletes and were the house that was OK with sisters smoking on the porch (which means that any greek woman at my college smoked with us and they were all very nice and gracious and it was great for networking in retrospect even though I don’t actually smoke).
Hi fellow Dartmouth grad! (?)
I went to an ivy. i did nothing extracurricular the whole time i was there in stark contrast to HS and no one knew my name. my senior in HS applied exclusively to SLAC ranging from highly competitive to less. Agree with everything you said about the opportunities at these smaller schools and i’m surprised that they are sort of out of favor right now because all these covid kids seem to me reasonably ill equipped to manage huge state schools. Just because a school is regional or less selective doesn’t mean they are struggling financially. If you’re worried look at their filings, see what the endowment is etc. also there are small schools with greek life and football teams if that’s what appeals.
that was kind of on you. i also went to an ivy and was involved in many many extra curricular activities and attended a passover seder at my tenured professors house. you have to make a lot more happen for yourself. all universities are in danger of losing A LOT of money due to NIH and proposed tax rates
I teach at a SLAC (and have taught at SLACs for my entire career, am a full tenured professor), and I think they are by far the best for students — high touch, lots of contact with faculty, copious support systems. I would recommend looking for one that’s well-resourced/has a solid endowment, if possible.
Some kids thrive in that environment, but others thrive by being thrown off a cliff. I was the latter type and got that experience in undergrad. Going to a more “high touch” school for my graduate degree left me feeling infantilized and resentful of the administration.
My one large school experience was NYU, which was miserable. Not the actual class part, but just dealing with things like they sign you up for their health insurance and it takes half a day to go to a building with a bunch of forms and your card and wait to get it taken off of your bill, bookstore having books weeks later for your class, my stuff getting stolen and delay in getting a swipe card to get back in, always with the lecturing tone in any school communications. I just felt like a funding source. And my best teachers were adjuncts.
I attended a huge very highly ranked public university and my experience was similar. I don’t care how resourceful and tough a kid is, there is no need to subject them to all the administrative snafus, course availability issues, etc. that occur at a big school. At a small school, if there is a problem you can usually find an adult who is willing to fix it. At a big school, you can’t get a live human on the phone and you are SOL.
I went to a smaller school (undergrad size: about 5,000 students, so 1200ish per class).
There was a massive scheduling snafu caused by one of our professors. (He gave out wrong information to his advisees and that would have caused them to need an extra year.) Another professor found out about it, notified the dean, and within a week, all affected students were automatically enrolled in an independent study, curriculum was designed, and they were told how to graduate on time.
My friends at state schools were floored.
NYU person here and I vividly remember the health insurance thing. You get a bill. You call the number to get it removed (I was working then and had health insurance from my job). Then you get told you need to go in person, to a place. That place is actually undergoing renovation, so the “office” is now housed in another building. You go there. The buzzer didn’t work, but you wait and catch the door as someone is leaving, only to find the office but the person is at lunch. No one knows when that person will return. You’ve already lost half a day of work, so you decide to wait so you don’t have to do this again, but you also don’t want to miss class. You keep waiting. You literally run to the bathroom at one point so you don’t miss the person. Finally, it gets done and you literally run several blocks to your class. That health insurance was expensive. The $s gained by waiting plugged the hole in my budget that NYU created. IDK why this had to be done in person, but the school was very much the opposite of user-friendly. I remember when I got my diploma, which should have been a happy day, that there was a printed insert saying that under no circumstances could I get a replacement copy. Like WTF NYU? It was just a horrible experience; some of the adjunct professors were great.
In my last quarter of college somehow the phone-based registration for half of my courses did not go through. I was attending class and submitting assignments, and none of the professors bothered to tell me that I wasn’t on the roster, even in small classes with professors who knew me personally. I got a letter saying my financial aid was being revoked because I wasn’t registered full time. Fortunately I was able to get registered late after jumping through many hoops, getting many forms signed, and waiting in many lines, but why didn’t I get any kind of alert from anyone at the beginning of the semester when I could have just re-registered before the add deadline? I was lucky to graduate.
The summer before my junior year, my roommate got a call from a person claiming to be her new random roommate. She called me in a panic. I called the housing office. They claimed I had never paid the deposit, even though I had the cancelled check. I worked for residential life so my boss was able to get me into a different room with a random freshman roommate, but for some reason could not get me put back with my chosen roommate. Again, lots of red tape and luck. At a SLAC this would never have happened in the first place, and if it had someone would have fixed it.
+1 I loved my huge state undergrad- there were tons of opportunities to do undergrad research, to look into weird degree programs I wouldn’t have considered, a robust study abroad program etc. I would have struggled in a smaller school I think.
+1. I do not think there is a blanket “best” when it comes to the best type of college for the students. I would not have enjoyed a SLAC, but loved my experience at a huge flagship state school.
My daughter, who had very competitive high school stats, chose a SLAC for all of these reasons and is quite happy there. The one downside I’ve seen is that some individual academic departments can be weak even if the school is academically strong overall. She ruled out a lot of schools because they were quite weak in her primary major, and her choice of a second major has been influenced by faculty quality. One of the big advantages of a SLAC is supposed to be that you don’t need to have chosen a major before you apply, but it really does seem to matter after all.
One other thing is flexibility. Like in some schools, if you are admitted to engineering, you can’t double-major in that and accounting. Or accounting (business school) and minor in music. Or you’re admitted in the pre-X program but due to weed-out classes, don’t qualify to actually be admitted to that major for classes to finish the degree (and IDK what a fall-back is in that case, but it seems to happen regularly from schools that work like that). It seems that a lot of SLACs want you to dabble and have exposure and then figure out how to make things happen. Sort of a commitment to dynamic thinking vs just being locked into boxes.
What I’m saying is that yes, SLACs offer more flexibility than a large university, but not quite as much as they would have you believe.
i think it depends on a student’s goals. like a lot of employers only recruit at certain schools, etc. so i would make sure they have a robust career center, etc. and a good alumni base for their career/location of interest
yay!
Reposting because it was posted late on Friday, with some additional context:
I have a career/job question.
Current Role: Lawyer; Lots of flexibility and autonomy; nice boss; report to C suite; comp is high compared to market; hybrid; people are nice; worked there for 6+ years. Significant layoffs, including laying off my whole team. The company is 20% of the size it once was due to attrition/layoffs. The business strategy has shifted and it is promising, but I don’t like the new work.
Personal Life: 1 child; spouse has long, inflexible hours so I do all mornings/evenings/coordinating backup care. I’ve been doing fertility treatment for a long time for #2 and plan to stop at year end if not successful.
Two questions:
1. Would you leave? It feels foolish to leave due to comp/flexibility, but I really dislike the work and am concerned that I will finally get pregnant and get laid off. I wouldn’t be surprised if we do another layoff at year end and it will be 50/50 whether it’s me or my peer who is let go. I am emotionally attached to the job since it’s a startup and I’ve been there for so long/like the people.
2. What would you target doing next? All seem possible based on preliminary network feedback.
(a) Similar role at a bigger company that is hybrid or rarely remote, understanding I will have a 10-20% pay cut and lower title. More long term career advancement options and stability.
(b) Return to a specialty area I worked in previously, most likely fully remote with good work life balance and comp is equal or more. Less career advancement but I know I like the work and the roles are stable.
(c) Lead my function at a startup. Better career prospects/title, comp would be similar, but work life balance would be worse and less stability. This is what most people who have my role go on to do as a next step.
I’ll tell you that I was in a similar situation – comp was 20% higher than market, I was pregnant and didn’t want to make a move and knew there was a high risk of layoffs. Well, I stayed throughout the pregnancy and delivery onto to be laid off on maternity leave (and there were some rumors that they were trying to lay me off pre-leave so they wouldn’t have to pay it — consider if your org would try the same). Having to job hunt with a newborn was so, so hard. As was starting a new job with a 4 month old. I don’t wish that on anyone. However, I did make out financially because I got my maternity leave plus severance. Looking back, had I been more motivated to find a place to land, I would’ve had much more flexibility with the kind of role I was taking. For you, I’d say leave now rather than later. This gives you more control over where you land. I wouldn’t worry about long-term career advancement unless you think pivoting will close a door or make it much harder to come back. Personally, I’d take (B) in your situation. Having 2 kids will be tough, especially with a partner that also has an inflexible job.
a or b would get my vote. I’ve seen too many friends go the “startup after startup” route and it just looks exhausting.
If you think there’s a 50% chance you’ll be laid off by the end of the year regardless of whether you get pregnant or not, you should be looking now. You don’t like the work and the outlook is not stable.
I am a bit of a germaphobe. I wish I could live in a shoe-free house, but my partner refuses. This morning, he touched the bottom of his shoe showing me his sole, and didn’t wash his hands. Then immediately proceeded to touch our coffee maker. Would this upset you given that he knows I’m like this? I guess I’m on high alert since a lot of people I know have had some sickness lately that knocks them out for a week or two. I get that germs are everywhere, but washing your hands doesn’t take that much of an effort. He just ignored me and walked off.
Yikes yes this would enrage me. That shoe has been on dog poop and most likely other men’s pee, If he’s ever been to a washroom in it. I would do a strict no shoe policy and a strict wash your hands before you touch anything in the kitchen.
We are a no shoes inside house so I don’t that inherently makes you a germs phone but to me the issue here is not about shoes or no shoes, it’s a lack of respect for boundaries.
He chose to violate your boundary in a blatant, dismissive and childish way.
FWIW I have ten year old twin boys and they would never be this immature. Have they or their friends forgotten and run inside on occasion without taking shoes off? Of course. But that’s massively different from this level of disrespect.
It’s a communal house and a communal coffee maker. His evaluation of the situation is just as valid as hers.
If she cares this much, she can get her own coffeemaker. Then that would be violating a boundary. But you don’t get to “set boundaries” that control how other people used shared objects. You can just choose to no longer have the objects be shared.
He’s purposely ignoring her comfort in her own home and dismissing her concern.
There shoe or no shoe households and then there is wiping your hand from the bottom of your shoe on kitchen appliances which is just weird AF.
How I assume this went, because no one said “wiped” in the post – OP’s partner picked up his shoe from above (either with it on, or from the floor) and their fingers touched the sole in doing so. Not like they licked their hand and cleaned the bottom of the shoe with it…
And she’s purposefully ignoring his comfort, which is to have a shoes on household.
It’s not clear from her post whether he, like, spitefully touched a shoe that was smeared with poop and then rubbed it all over her coffee pot or (and I think this is the more likely one) he showed her the sole of his shoe to show that it wasn’t dirty and then incidentally touched the coffeepot some time later. I agree that there’s no household in which option 1 is acceptable, because it’s contemptuous. Option 2 is like…what anyone who takes their shoes off any time does? Not a big deal. You surely can’t be suggesting that people are washing their hands every time they take their shoes on/off, right?
+1000 he is the problem, very disrespectful!
No, this has nothing to do with boundaries. No one is stopping her from wiping down the coffee maker. I seriously doubt he consciously chose anything; he’s just living his life like a person who isn’t a germaphobe.
Wearing shoes inside the house is disgusting. He should at least have inside shoes/slippers to change into.
Would not upset me at all. I think your expectations are fine for you and unreasonable to expect others to follow.
I honestly wouldn’t be able to live with someone who was this germ sensitive – I could do an indoor-shoes only household; but washing my hands every time I touch my outdoor shoes would be too much for me. It’s ok if that’s a must-have for you though! But it sounds like you and partner need to have a discussion and figure out if you’re compatible on this.
How often does touching the bottom of shoes come up? It’s not like she’s complaining that he put them on and then touched the coffee maker. He wiped the shoe bottom and then wiped his hand on the coffee maker.
There’s no way he was paying attention to even notice though. A lot of people who don’t have special medical needs, don’t have a high degree of scientific understanding, or who don’t have germaphobia simply aren’t paying attention and they’d need to either learn a lot about germ transmission or give themselves an anxiety disorder to pay as much attention as someone who cares more.
That isn’t what the original post says.
Touched =/= wiped. OP said touched for both.
I’d like to clarify that I don’t expect him to wash his hands every time he puts on shoes! Omg. Wiping his hand on the bottom of his shoe is different to me versus touching the part that doesn’t touch ground/floors.
All I didn’t think through the linguistics this A.M. when I originally posted. Sorry. Partner had boots on. He showed me his heel was rubberized (by moving his finger back and forth on the heel) when we were talking about being careful on the slick driveway.
No worries on the linguistics part.
If there was not visible dirt/poop on the shoe, my view that this isn’t gross stands, especially since he didn’t do this contemptuously, which I think some people thought he did.
That being said, you could just …ask him next time? “Hey, can you wash your hands really quickly since you touched the bottom of your shoe? It just gives me the ick.”
Some people are just dirty!
Some people are just crazy!
Perhaps they can compromise and wear one shoe at all times, or 2 mis-matching shoes.
agreed, some people are just dirty – I grew up on a farm and didn’t think I was a germaphobe at all (e.g. once dropped an apple on the floor of the subway, picked it up and ate it, it was fine). And then I worked with a partner at my firm who was just… dirty… and I was grossed out all the time. Like he just didn’t have clean habits, I don’t know a better way to describe it.
+1
This wouldn’t upset me at all, but I’m still upset for OP because of the flagrant disregard for her feelings that the partner demonstrated. Everyone is allowed to have Certain Things that are kinda silly and unreasonable because that’s part of being human. (Mine is going outside in all sorts of inclement weather because I don’t want to cancel or reschedule plans.) Part of being in a relationship with someone is giving them consideration over their Things. Could I live with someone who has this level of germ phobia? No. But I didn’t commit to being in a relationship with someone that I know has this hangup.
But she is in a relationship with someone who doesn’t feel similarly. His feelings are also valid. It is NBD to him and adults don’t try to control other adults. Flip the genders and see how it feels.
Yeah, my opinion is the same whether man or woman is hyper clean. Tbh, I know more annoyingly clean men than women. Completely ignoring how your partner feels, even if your partner’s feelings are irrational, is always a bad move. If I were OP’s partner, I’d tell them “I cannot live up to your cleanliness standards, am I moving out of are you getting over it?” Not just ignore my partner’s preferences despite their discomfort.
I don’t like your partner’s attitude overall (and agree with you that a no-shoe house is the way to go!). But if you’re already not a no-shoe household, one incident of touching a shoe and then an object is not what I’d pick to fight about.
As someone who’s pretty germ conscious I think this is excessive. The risk of him transferring a germ from his dry shoe…to the coffee maker…to you…and having it be a large enough bacterial load to make you sick is miniscule. The risk isn’t any higher than you picking up an item off your floor. I live in the city with disgusting sidewalks and a shared apartment lobby so I wash my hands the second I get inside and require my SO to remove his shoes when he gets home. But I don’t care if he puts on his dry shoes an hour later then wanders around the hardwood floors.
Agree with you. Being obsessed with imaginary germs is quality of life issue.
I would get therapy for your unreasonable obsession not harass your husband about living.
Amen.
My late mother-in-law actually had to be institutionalized for mental illness and it all started with imaginary germ phobia like the OP describes. Nip it in the bud now. Get help, OP.
Nipping it in the bud is not how extreme mental illness works (not that I think this is what the OP is exhibiting.)
They literally told her and her family they could have kept it outpatient if she’d gotten help sooner. Glad you know so much about my family!
This level of open conflict about an item that likely comes up daily is not sustainable. You don’t seem like a person who wants to try therapy for the germaphobia or budge. And he is how he is. Either agree to let it go or you need to end it. I see a vegan having better odds with someone on the Atkins diet.
You get to be how you are, but you don’t get to demand that others change to suit you.
Was he touching the coffee beans? Or just pressing a button on the machine? I wouldn’t expect to have to wash my hands every time I opened the fridge door.
I guess I think it’s an unreasonable request for the day to day grime, but if you suspect he stuck his hand in something gross on the shoe (moreso than just ordinary dirt) then yes, I think it’s fine to ask him to wash his hands before handling foodstuffs.
“A bit” of a germaphobe seems like an understatement.
This.
How often do you all wash your hands after using a tissue when you blow your nose?
I didn’t think so.
Yeah, you are supposed to.
Family member is immunocompromised.
Our compromise is lots of bottles of hand sanitizer anywhere in the house. Once you train yourself/others, it isn’t hard.
That only makes sense if you’re immunocompromised though. For the rest of us, it’s not necessary.
I guess it depends on where on the coffeemaker he touched it. If it was a quick barely-touched on the outside mechanism I’d wince and then quietly sponge it off or whatever. If it was touching a part where the coffee or water flows into/out-of that’s another thing and I’d maybe mention it.
But I’d also look at ways to make this easier for him and other family members. I dislike washing my hands frequently as I have dry hands and really fragile nails and cuticles. In the winter it’s unpleasant to wash with cold water and waiting for it to heat up is a pain. Finding a clean dish towel or using a papertowel for a single hand-wash over something really minor feels annoying too. *Obviously* if my hands are genuinely dirty I make it work. But touching the sole of my shoe for a second or toe is in the iffy zone.
Would antibac spray or gel work? I’d maybe hand him the bottle or whatever and say “hey, before you do anything else, since you were just handling your shoe…do you mind?”
We keep a big bottle of hand sanitizer by the front/back doors.
Yes this would upset me.
I go by the simple principle that the bottom of a shoe is not a clean thing. So ideally don’t bring it that far into the house, and if you touch the bottom (not the top or sides, the bottom), clean your hands before touching other things. As another commenter said, even a 10 year old could figure out how to handle this. Ignoring you and walking off seems extra rude.
I am not a germaphobe, but my home is strictly shoes-off (and you get comfy slippers) and we wash hands after coming from the outside.
I am shocked an adult does not comprehend why fecal matter on a coffee maker is unacceptable. Sure, you could clean it – but the point is you shouldn’t have to. Your partner should have basic hygiene standards, clean it himself and show respect to you, your home & boundaries.
Do you not get sick with infectious diseases? I prefer to take effective precautions that successfully prevent illness over focusing on ick factor. I’d have washed my hands after coming in from outside, but I also am not pretending to myself that there no germs in my kitchen either.
I guess the ick factor is cultural to some degree. I was born and raised in Central Europe, the no-shoes policy is a norm here and washing hands when coming from the outside is common (at least in my circle). I recall this was also the norm in my kindergarten, elementary school and after-school.
Answering your question – I get sick (cold/flu or upset stomach) rarely.
These sound like good traditions! My household is both immune suppressed and immune deficient, so I would not be relying on it that no germ from the sink, trash, food, etc., ever made it to a food prep surface even if hands had been washed. I appreciate ick factor since it helps me remember to wash my hands when I should, but I think if OP is this worried, it would make sense to wipe down food prep surfaces vs. worrying this much about what touched what historically.
I shuddered reading your comment. I don’t think it’s a germaphobe thing at all. Touching shoes means you have to wash your hands before touching anything food related. Presumably the coffee maker was in the kitchen with a sink right there? So he could have just washed his hands??
My 2 cents (or 3)…
1. Wearing shoes in the house is disgusting.
2. Not washing your hands after touching your shoe is disgusting.
3. Most diseases that are going around right now are transmitted via breathing in other people’s air. If you’re worried about germs and getting sick, wear a N95 mask. And yes, handwashing helps, but not as much as people think, unless you’re constantly putting your hands in your face.
I want to update a bunch of the photo frames in my home (mostly 5x7s and small tabletop things). I’m looking for a frame source that’s higher quality than Target or Michaels. Is this a job for ye old Pottery Barn? Would love some other ideas.
i changed out all my frames a few years ago. i got them from amazon. i’m not sure that better quality frames really matter for my purposes or that pottery barn is necessarily higher quality than something less expensive.
I love the Anthro sale section for this. Their full price frames are overpriced, IMO, but they are good quality, so the sale section is where it’s at.
Blick art supplies often has frames on clearance. And if you want variety, you can thrift or check out TJMaxx or Homegoods.
How to deal with getting through the workday when you resent your job and boss?
I’m not a fed, I’m not even American so I know I shouldn’t be complaining but…I’m so burned out and fed up with my job and toxic boss. I’m looking and applying elsewhere as much as I can, but in the meantime I still need to do my job. I feel so depressed and discouraged all the time.
Looking at my bank account and seeing my paycheck hit and my expenses come out usually works for me.
Yes, I suppose this is where the gif with Don Draper yelling “That’s what the money is for!” comes in.
I am in a similar boat and first, it 100% is frustrating and discouraging.
Second, I remind myself every day that they’re paying me. Sometimes I even calculate it by hourly: if they want to pay me $X to write a compelling analysis that option A meets our needs at the lowest cost and Executive chucks it in the trash because his friend runs the company that pitched Option B… oh well, Exec has to live with the long term consequences of his decision, and I get to keep the $X when I leave.
You can also have a bad work situation even if you’re not a U.S. fed! You don’t have to feel guilty about it.
I don’t know what that is, but worked facilities/custodial before and during college.
After a bit of weight gain that’s proving stubborn, my wedding band and engagement ring no longer fit comfortably. They both have engraved writing on the inside (covering about 1/3 of the band) which I wouldn’t want to damage – can jewelers expand by 0.5-1 size if there are engravings without impacting that?
If the answer is no, what are good sources for a partial eternity band I could purcahse instead? My budget is prob $500-1,000 but I’m getting overwhelmed with the store options – lab created, online, etc. I remember Blue Nile from 20 years ago and love Tacori rings for instance.
Not sure whether it works the same way, but my husband had his wedding band sized down by a full size and they somehow managed to preserve the engraving.
If the engraving is across the bottom of the band, then no. They have to cut the ring and add more material, so that will disturb the engraving (unless it’s a plain band without a top or bottom, so they could cut anywhere. Mureta & Co and Grown Brilliance are good for lab grown. Costco for mined diamonds or plain bands.
Feel free to disregard, but I’ve been really pleased with Quince’s gold and platinum jewelry.
I have been in this boat and just got something relatively cheap and boring from Nordstrom!
Amateur silversmith here: Both of these are standard full bench jeweler tasks.
So expanding a symmetric band with no stones is super simple- ring stretchers can do this in a snap.
Expanding a ring with a stone or other asymmetry is quite a bit more complicated- usually you’d need to add metal, which can require removing stones, cutting the band, adding metal, polishing and resetting stones. That said, entirely doable even with the engraving, just a bit more involved.
When I was pregnant, I bought myself a $100 ring off etsy to serve as my wedding ring while on the larger hand side of weight fluctuations. Just picked a store with good reviews and it was fine. I think it’s generally good advice if you’re going through weight fluctuations for other reasons – personal stressors or health things can often lead to temporary weight fluctuations. If you’re certain this is a more permanent change, then spend some money on the jeweler’s because they’ll be able to resize it, but you can also get something relatively cheap to buy you a couple years.
Online, lab created maybe the way to go unless you want something totally unique.
I personally like to go browse my neighborhood jeweler, which is a full bench jeweler where they make almost all of the jewelry that’s on display, and I have unique rings because of that. I’m on my third wedding ring to the same husband, I’m just more loyal to the man that I am to the ring.
I also am confident that a very good bench jeweler could size your rings without losing the engraving. One way or another it’s worth asking them, because a good bench jeweler will tell you what they can and can’t do. And then that trip will give you a chance to look at what they have in the display case.
A bit of an antidote from me about finger size. When I got married, my ring size was 6 1/2. I got pregnant, gained weight, and found my rings uncomfortable. Had them sized up to about a 7 1/2. Then eventually, I sized them up to a 9 because my fingers just kept getting bigger as I got older, and didn’t necessarily gain more weight.
They went on a very intentional, very slow weight-loss journey and have lost 90% of the weight at this point.
My fingers are not back down to even a 7 1/2, much less 6 1/2. I’d say they’re 8 1/2, now but I don’t think they’re ever going to be that small again, and I’m not sure why. But it is what it is.
Anyway my point is, my ring finger sizes didn’t correspond 1:1 to my body weight.
*anecdote, sorry. Was dictating.
I posted a bunch of Ashland recs late last night.
Oh, thanks! Will check it out!
And I corrected my post about the motel in Weed. It’s the Hi-Lo Motel & Cafe.
Holy Dynasty, the styling of this sweater.
This could be a date worthy sweater. Top 3 buttons should remain unbuttoned for optimal youthfulness and boyfriend approval.