Gift Idea: The Pedi System

70 Comments

1. Will consult an employment lawyer, but generally…. if someone isn’t doing their job (they are working, but pulled away on other matters) but the supervisor hasn’t conducted any performance review for years AND the supervisor doesn’t schedule supervisory meetings about the projects/work assigned to the role, is the institution/supervisor to any extent responsible for the worker not performing at their max potential or minimally doing their job?

   Sorry have to be vague about this.

   1. No. What are you even talking about? An employment lawyer is going to tell you that unless you’ve got an employment contract, employment in the US is at will and they can fire you for any reason at any time unless it is discriminatory. And since all you talked about is job performance there’s no legal issue here.

      1. Public sector employers may have obligations with respect to evaluations, progressive discipline, etc., as may employers dealing with bargaining unit employees.

         1. Yes, if there’s a contract.

            1. In the non-union situation, often is no contract. Rather, there are laws and interpretations that provide protections to public employees in ways other than protections against discrimination, which the poster at 3:35 suggested provide the only non-contractual protections.

         2. Yes. Those are contracts.

      2. Bingo!

   2. No.

   3. unless it’s for an illegal reason (like it meets the legal definition of discrimination), no, being a cr-ppy boss is not illegal.

      1. +1

   4. You can fire an at will employee for any reason that isn’t discrimination against a protected class. You can fire them because they looked at you funny or you don’t like the brand of shoes they wear. Of course you can fire them because they aren’t doing their job.

2. So in our town (and many others) commuter rail ridership and general foot traffic is down. I took the train into Boston for a meeting/work dinner and knew I’d be coming home late (10:30ish) so parked in the arrival lot so I didn’t have to walk over the dimly lit pedestrain foot bridge to the departure lot when I got in. I was coming off the train with a few other women who obviously did the same thing and who were also doing the usual late night ‘scan the lot and walk with your keys out and ready’ stance. Today my husband is going in for dinner with a friend and coming home about the same time. I mentioned parking in the arrival lot for ease/safety and he just looked at me confused like, ‘what would it matter? it’s like a 5 minute difference’. Yup, because THAT’S my concern. It must be really, really nice to never think about your surroundings at night. Oh, and I was also mentally kicking myself for forgetting my byrdie (small device that makes a really loud racket/lights up when you pull it apart) because ‘I really should have planned better’.

   1. I agree, trying to talk to men about personal safety is so hard. My ex loved to take walks alone at night and seemed confused that I always took my solo walks during the day.

      1. +1

   2. I have this conversation all the time with DH. I work in criminal justice and unfortunately see many criminal cases, which has changed how I view what is safe vs. unsafe. DH cannot begin to comprehend that things he does everyday are simply not safe for a woman.

      1. I’ve been a criminal defense lawyer for a long time and am less afraid of random, stranger violence than I used to be because it is more rare. But I still am on alert while walking through a dark parking lot alone.

   3. Yup – my husband and I are essentially the same size so the difference in how we can move through the world is 100% about women being targets not about ability to defend ourselves. It’s so infuriating that my husband can do a 9PM run to CVS without a problem but for me the route is too dark to walk just because I’m more of a target.

   4. I agree, it’s so frustrating that men don’t automatically get it. My husband never questions the steps I take for my own safety (and tbh, living in San Francisco, he is more safety-conscious himself than when we lived back east), but it’s still a totally different mindset. They also don’t have to wonder if it’s safe to share a rental car with a male coworker you’ve never met or if it’s okay to ride the elevator late at night with two men from some other office in the building.

   5. I will say that personal safety is almost always on my mind, and I do take precautions that my male friends don’t (like parking like you did, carrying pepper spray, etc), but overall there’s very, very little that I don’t do because of feeling unsafe.

      For example – I walk home from friends houses/the bar alone late at night (will walk with friends as far as we can go together and then split off), I occasionally have to be in the office very early or very late and commute as normal (usually walk or bus), I park my car in a covered lot a .75 mile walk from my apartment and walk to/from it at all hours, etc

   6. White men don’t get it. Kids, teens, and men of color or males who don’t look ‘white’ on the other hand may very thoroughly understand this situation.
      It is definitely the height of privilege, to be able to walk where ever, when ever and not worry about a thing. It’s a bit disheartening to me to hear that the men in your lives can’t or won’t try put themselves in your shoes or even try to empathize with what it’s like to not be in their position. Before you jump all over me, obviously not all the comments are saying the men in their life can’t do this.

      1. Even then, the risk and perceptions aren’t the same for men and women. Men of color may be afraid of police harassment or racial violence, but they’re typically not afraid of stranger rape. It’s okay to acknowledge that women’s unique fears so we can address them.

         1. Yes, my husband is a big, tall brown man and never thinks twice about walking through a parking lot alone at night. He does think twice when he gets pulled over.

         2. But we don’t address them. We acknowledge but there isn’t any mention here of how to change anything- seems the lowest hanging fruit is to teach our sons about empathy, helping others feel safe, being an ally, dealing with their feelings in a healthy manner, dealing with rejection, etc, but we rarely to never have that discussion. It also seems holding our partners to higher expectations than just ‘wow you really don’t get it do you…insert subject change’ is also another aspect of this. But we don’t discuss that very often or directly. We are swift to DTMF and yet also recognize very different price of admissions, but there is little collective will here to wield our intelligence and power to discuss and implement changes. The patriarchy has us very thoroughly in our place doesn’t it.

   7. Add in harassment, and yes I find it very frustrating.

   8. I clearly remember my first day of Criminal Law, when the professor asks people to raise a hand if they’d felt unsafe walking outside in the past week. 100% of women and all POC raised their hands; not a single white guy did. It was a crude but simple demonstration that white men live in and experience the world differently than many of the rest of us.

      1. I get this in my outdoor club where people are incredulous that I hike but don’t really camp. I like the outdoors during the day but want a lockable door when it is dark and I want to sleep. In a big group it is different but I guess dudes don’t feel vulnerable because they are just not the same sort of target.

   9. Had a similar moment with my husband when we were both in the car and the car behind us had followed us for 5 turns. He could not understand why out of habit I needed to double back to lose the car, as his immediate assumption was, oh we must be going to the same place.

   10. Interesting. The men in my life, most white, are often the first to raise concerns about my personal safety. My friends walk me to my car if I leave separately or walk me home even if it means they then have to walk themselves home alone. My BF is ex-LEO, so he is always hyperaware of safety issues for me, though he is also super feminist so he’s never one to suggest I can’t do something, he just encourages/reminds me to take steps to protect myself and he always drives so he’s the one driving home alone.

   11. I will say my husband now thinks about things he used to do that can unintentionally freak women out after hearing many of my stories. (stuff like insisting a woman go first off the elevator.)

3. How do you reconcile the pace and mileage differences between your smart watch and the treadmill? I recently bought myself a treadmill for christmas, and the mileage and consequently pace is very different between my fitbit and the treadmill. My fitbit is reading about a quarter mile lower. It seems like the treadmill’s count would be more accurate?
   I’m mostly interested in keeping track to measure my progress and challenge myself to run faster and longer.

   1. I’d pick one and stick with it for consistency but I would probably trust the treadmill more.

   2. Mine is the opposite – my apple watch consistently shows higher mileage than the treadmill. I go with the treadmill.

   3. I have a Garmin that is consistently .1 to .25 off from my treadmill. It has the option to “calibrate” the run when I go to save it, so I just input the correct mileage from the treadmill. The treadmill will be more accurate than your watch.

   4. I’ve tried conferencing the FitBit and Peloton customer service to ask about fixing this with zero luck. I ended up returning my Peloton treadmill due to the inherent defects, and I have not been able to find a replacement treadmill I like enough yet, but I find the ones at my private gym and my building gym are also different, so this seems to be a FitBit flaw they are refusing to address. What is important is that you look at one metric consistently and use that to make you faster and have more endurance, because being better is the goal. And assume that you will run :15 seconds slower per mile in a race anyway so you need to be training faster than you think to actually get a respectable time.

4. How does one explain a long gap in employment. I have been unemployed since May 2020. Last year my job search was hampered by COVID, and the strict lockdowns where I am e.g. I would apply for jobs and get responses that employers liked my resume but had suspended hiring. In 2021, I changed my job search strategy, concentrating more on data analytics jobs since I also have that skillset. I have had more interviews than last year but not yet landed a position. In between applying for jobs I have been working on upskilling in areas where I have gaps and often include the URL for my portfolio on my CV. I also had to take a break from all job searching when I contracted COVID in June this year and had health issues that persisted for some months. Fortunately I have had financial support during this long time away from employment.
   But my worry for January 2022 is how to list what I did in 2021 on my resume because my last employment was in 2020. I have seen people use words like Sabbatical but usually these are planned breaks to travel. Advice appreciated, thanks in advance.

   1. You don’t address it up front, hope you can get interviews, and just say “obviously job searching in a pandemic was hard so I also used that time to focus on my skills.”

      I would not say anything like you did here because it sounds like a lot of excuses for “I didn’t really try that hard to find a job because I don’t need to work for money.”

   2. FWIW, I was on an interview where someone was laid off in 2020 and she listed a passion project as 2020 to current to fill the gap. I liked the approach and we discussed the project in addition to her work experience during our conversation.

   3. Given your timeline, as a hiring manager I’d assume the resume gap was associated with COVID.

   4. I would be pretty honest – you were laid off due to Covid and have found pandemic-related hiring freezes to pose a challenge, but you are eager to get back to work.

      1. Yeah, a somewhat glossed and more vague version of what you wrote above sounds fine to me. I’d emphasize that you were training and applying for jobs, and leave out anything about finances.

         1. +1

   5. I have a six-year gap (downsized in 2008 like everyone else, stuck in a small town with limited work) that I filled with freelance work. Set up my own LLC, took a few short crappily-paid jobs in my field, done. Nobody asks why I went to self-employment after an economic crash (there wasn’t anything else), nor why I wanted to leave it (healthcare!), nor how much work I actually performed (very little, I kept a roof over my head with three waitressing jobs).

      1. I do minimal side consulting work in addition to my day job, but have an LLC, and have it listed on my LinkedIn for this exact reason. If push came to shove, I can use it to show work continuity instead of a gap in my work history. I would try to ramp up the consulting if I got laid off, but in my field, I am not sure I could make enough money at it to support myself.

         1. The trouble is that if you are getting unemployment it makes it very hard to do this—I could have gotten freelance writing gigs but $200 of unstable income won’t offset $1600 a month Cobra on top of all your other bills like $800 every two weeks would. If you freelance during a gap it is a huge commitment that you have to go all in on. Granted, unemployment isn’t permanent (and that rate is highest in my state) but the reality is sometimes you need that support or you’ll be going under fast.

   6. Mention you were downsized due to COVID 100 percent–people get it. These haven’t been normal times. Then say that after a couple of months of interviewing, you were feeling like you weren’t finding the right fit and decided to focus more on data analytics. You started to set up to do this as freelance but in the experience you have realized that you really prefer to work as part of a team and that being a freelancer isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. Mention a lot of the things you. liked about the old job and successes using your skills. If you have a stable work history prior, most folks won’t give it a second thought. The past couple of years have just not been normal and I’m sorry the lay off happened when it did–that was like the worst time to be hitting the market. It’s always easiest to match when you’re newly unemployed and that window kind of got taken from so many folks.

      1. One other thing if you haven’t thought of it yet—consider your salary expectation. I was getting few bites for months after having my position eliminated (I’m late 40s) and was feeling so frustrated. Dropping my expectation to the level prior to my last job opened the floodgates on interviews. At a certain point just being employed again matters most and you can always move on again on your own timeline (and back at your normal salary) once you’ve spent a year or so employed. It’s a ton easier to get another job once you have a job.

         1. You should never give a salary expectation in an online job application. Just say “negotiable.”

            1. Many applications (especially bigger companies) no longer allow that. Like literally it is an online form that makes you put yourself in a range in order to proceed. Obviously don’t do it unless forced.

   7. I would not over-explain.

      “Downsized due to COVID” is fine; I would say I’d you have kids, they are a convenient additional explanation if you feel like you need one. Every parent I’ve spoken to since March 2020 has contemplated quitting/not returning to work.

      1. I would not bring the kid stuff into it unless it’s a very unique situation, like you have a child with cancer that couldn’t attend school due to Covid risk – and even then I think that’s too much detail to go into at any stage before the interview. As you noted, any parent doing the interviewing will have been in the same boat but they decided to stick it out in the workforce and might not take too kindly to someone saying they had to leave the workforce “bc kids” (generically). “Downsized due to Covid” is a perfectly satisfactory explanation on its own, and much safer imo.

5. Carrying over from before, if you are giving your assistant $500 or $1000 for Xmas, do you do venmo? Cash (that’s a lot of bills but $100s are hard to spend)? A check seems not right.

   1. Personally, I would give cash regardless of amount.

   2. Cash. I go to the bank and get new bills for holiday tips.

   3. Normally I would hand her a holiday card with cash inside, but we are all WFH so I just Venmo’d her (with an apology for not being able to give it to her in person). I thought about getting one of those Visa cards with money loaded on it, but I wanted to give her the simplest most cash-like gift.

6. I’m fascinated by the differences in gift-giving cultures. In a Midwest college town, and I have yet to hear of anyone tipping their hairdressers, daycare teachers, cleaners, assistants, etc. with cash. It’s not unusual to give a small gift, or even a gift card, but simply giving someone cash would come across very strangely. Maybe I’m missing something and everyone else is doing it except me, haha. Not saying one approach is better or worse, but it’s interesting how culturally driven this seems to be!

   1. I give to my mailman, but only because my dad is one so I like to pitch in. Otherwise, I don’t tip these folks but no one I know does either!

      1. In the US, mail carriers are prohibited from accepting cash or cash equivalents like gift cards from customers, regardless of the amount. Non-cash gifts are permitted up to $20 per occasion but limited to $50 in a year from the same donor.

         1. I was just going to ask about this!

         2. I give my mail carrier Rachel a $19 starbucks gift card most years, and it’s never been a problem. I mean, she accepts it gratefully and has never said no.

   2. Midwest college town here, and giving cash/giftcards to daycare teachers is completely normal. Everyone I know does it. We spend about $500 on daycare teachers at the holidays between our contribution to the collective fund (which gets distributed to all staff, including floaters, kitchen staff and the receptionist) and larger individual gifts to my child’s teachers. I also know many people who tip their cleaners the cost of one cleaning at the holidays, although we don’t. I think giving cash beyond those situations that is not standard in our area though.

   3. We give cash tips to any service providers that we work with throughout the year, but whom we don’t tip on a per-service basis. This includes our landscaper, housekeeper, personal trainers etc. We give a cash tip/bonus in the range of about 2 weeks of service.

      Hair dressers get tipped on a per-service basis.

   4. I remember when the local paper started running articles around Thanksgiving that explained year-end bonus giving in Latin America. I understood it to be a way to get the clueless in the US (who didn’t have this tradition) to pony up. It seems to have worked, to go by all the “tip the movers” to “tip the ____” we have now.

7. Following up on the secretary bonus question this morning, I switched firms this year and now have a pool of 4 secretaries. At my old firm, I had a dedicated secretary who supported me and a few other folks, plus she was freaking fantastic. I gave $500 as an NEP.

   Now an EP at my new firm. Big law, major market. 4 secretaries who do very, very little for me and are low performers. Like I have basically had to re-write every engagement letter they’ve done for me because they can’t even get things like client name, my phone number, or billing rates right in the letters. They also support 22 people (mix of EP, NEP, associates). I have only been here half the year.

   Any idea what I do here? Maybe do $100-150 each? That feels like a lot given how poor their performance is, but it also feels like this is a situation where you bump up for good performance but don’t decrease for bad.

   1. Ask what other people do.

8. Where do you order return address labels from? Looking for new ones…

   1. I use a self-inking stamp. They have a bunch of them at Zazzle dot com.

      1. Same, got ours from American Stationery

   2. I wait for the life insurance sales packet to come from the Auto Club. Their pre-printed return labels are really cute!

   3. I get them free from charities I give to. I don’t think I’ve ever purchased them.

      1. +1. Even after I move, they always catch up with me remarkably fast. I end up with way more than I could ever use, and some are pretty nice.

Comments are closed.