Splurge Monday’s Workwear Report: Xeno Leather-Trim Jersey Long-Sleeve Dress

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1. Good morning ladies! I’m headed to a conference near Boca Raton/Delray Florida this week and my “conference buddy” has dropped out due to illness. This means I’m on my own for 2 lunches and 1 dinner. Which is great! I have kids and a .. what shall I call it? codependent? dysfunctional? … workplace so some time alone is just what the doctor ordered, I think.

   I’m looking for causal and relatively inexpensive local don’t-miss places for meals. The fancy meals are taken care of as part of the conference, and our per diem when not entertaining is pretty stingy. Where should I eat? Open to all cuisines.

   1. Boca is not a great food scene, it’s actually mostly pretty terrible restaurants. I would err on the side of scenery so you can soak up relaxing beach vibes as much as possible, which will be easier in Del Ray than most of Boca.

      That being said, I love New York Grilled Cheese in Boca (look them up- amazing sandwiches!). I would probably order it through a delivery service to my room and enjoy in my PJs, though!

      Rebel House in Boca is fine. I’ve had one great experience there (the cheesesteak sandwich!) and one meh experience (something with fried rice, don’t remember exactly).

      People often recommend the Mizner Park area. Look it up and see how you feel. If you live in a relatively large metropolitan area it’s nothing special, but I can see enjoying a meal there alone and strolling around, ice cream, maybe some shopping, etc. one evening.

   2. el camino in delray beach is great mexican. They make their own hot sauce which is phenomenal too.

   3. Concur the restaurant situation is actually not that great. I did have some good Cuban at The Cuban Cafe in Boca Raton. It’s in a small strip mall and not exactly atmospheric, but good food.

   4. Boca may not have the best “foodie” scene, but you’re in the mecca of South American and Caribbean food. I would get Cuban food (ropa vieja) and also get some Colombian hot dogs/Bandeja Paisa. Basically any and all South American food and the less Zagat-y the locale, the better.

      1. My family and I have had many delicious meals at Caffe Luna Rosa in Delray, including one meal where I ate alone at the bar.

   5. I live in South Florida and agree that del Ray has better food scene over Boca. I prefer Dada in Del Ray, but it’s a little pricey. Rocco’s Tacos is more casual Mexican food.

2. I’m in consulting and managing a team member who’s relatively new to the US (3 years total, 2 is business school and 1 with us, we’re ~30) and at the beginning of our project she asked me to let her know if she’s running afoul of cultural things, as that’s been an adjustment for her and something she’s working on. For example, she learned the hard way in business school that some things she would say casually are pretty racist and understands that and has worked to stop saying those things. In the spirit of helping her grow and complying with her request, I need to talk to her about being rude and superior with support staff or anyone who’s similarly lower in status. I think she’ll be receptive and I don’t think she’s remotely aware of this, but she’s also generally very insecure, has a ton of feelings and poor ability to self-manage, and is having some other performance issues that are related to some attitude and mindset things that I think do overlap with some of her cultural challenges. My parents were immigrants so while I haven’t experienced this personally. I’m very sympathetic to how hard this adjustment must be for her, so I want to deliver this message in a kind and gentle way. Anyone have any ideas or a script?

   1. I would go right to given her the words to use. And I say this as someone immersed in another language and culture right now, who frequently comes across as far blunter than I intended because I don’t know how to say things the polite way! I’d suggest you say something like “I noticed in your recent email to your admin that your tone wasn’t quite what you intended. The better was to phrase that is “Could you possible book the conference room for me next Tuesday” Some other helpful phrases are:…”” etc. It’s almost not worth telling her what she said was rude, just tell her what phrases *to* use!

      1. Actually I strongly disagree. Use her own words as an example of what was rude, but you need to explain to her certain cultural expectations. The problem isn’t “we don’t just not SAY rude things to staff, we see them as integral members of the company’s team who deserve respect for their contributions just as much as you and I deserve respect for your contributions.” If you want to help her understand how to fit in culturally, she needs to understand and at least consciously try to correct her “lower position = servant and/or inferior” mentality that is so common in many countries with a large poverty class.

         1. +1

         2. Agree.

            Also, “kiss up, kick down” is a thing that people do. It doesn’t matter if it’s her personality or her culture; it’s your job as a manager to convey that people subordinate to her will be treated with dignity and respect.

         3. I would do a balance of the two. Give her new words to use, but also explain the “why”. For example:

            “I noticed in your email to Katie you said ‘print 12 of these and put them on my desk by noon’. While you are permitted to assign her tasks in your current role, it is important to word the request in a friendly way that shows gratitude. The way you worded it sounded like a command, which comes across as rude to most people. I know command vs. assignment is difficult, but it is an important distinction in our culture. In the future, it would be more appropriate to say ‘Hi, Katie! Can you please print 12 of these for our 1:00 meeting? I would like to have them by noon if possible. Thank you!’ We don’t value administrative staff less as people just because their work is different than ours, and so it’s important to be friendly and polite when sending requests. Does that make sense? Do you want to talk about some more situations where you would interact with the admins and recommendations on phrases to use?”

            1. Whoa, this is an over correction. Add “please” and “thank you” and To the original direction and it’s perfectly fine.

   2. If she treats equals and superiors well, then it might be helpful to tell her that there shouldn’t be a difference in tone in her direction to lower-level staff than to equals or superiors.

      If there is a more general issue (is she too blunt?), I’d also mention that. I’m American, but didn’t realize that my organizational culture at an early job required a more deferential way of writing (that friends who work in France say is common there). I am forever grateful for the superior who kindly, but bluntly, told me the problem that I’d caused and so I could rehabilitate my reputation and become more effective within the organization.

   3. Does she really need to do this or do you think that you are projecting norms about what women in the US are supposed to do onto her? Maybe she can just keep being blunt instead of being deferential? I say this because I think it has been extremely valuable in my career to just keep being this way, even though I was criticized as a more junior person for being blunt/direct.

      1. No, being blunt is totally fine. She’s rude, demanding, and very high maintenance. It is the source of part though not all of her performance problems here, and she may be counseled out if she doesn’t learn how to become less difficult to work with.

         Being a complete jerk to people she perceives as beneath her is something of a personal irritant of mine, but the issue overall is definitely one that a lot have noticed. Direct is great. Being an a$$ isn’t, male or female.

         1. Thanks for the clarification. This honestly does not sound cultural, and she sounds like she needs a complete attitude adjustment. Good luck!

            1. There is definitely an attitude adjustment component as well, and I think that’s the bigger of the two and also extends to other things. Despite all the above, she is genuinely well intentioned and I think the cultural thing (which is why she doesn’t realize she’s being rude in these instances) and the personality things are really compounding on one another. This is definitely the easier piece to address!

3. There’s another woman in a shared hobby that I do with my boyfriend who flirts pretty blatantly with him, and I’d like some perspective on how to handle this. The first time she practically fell into his lap talking with him, he reached over to me afterwards and put his arm around me and kissed my cheek, pretty clearly conveyed that he was with me. But she continues to seek him out, ignores me even if I’m standing right next to him, and laugh and smile and be generally delightfully flirtatious. This makes me feel really uncomfortable… Partially because I wouldn’t be surprised if my boyfriend does find her attractive. I will admit I’m not the most secure person out there – I’ve had a lot of loss in my life, and absolutely can believe bad things can happen, because they already have. I trust that my boyfriend wants to be with me – he tells me very clearly that I’m the girl he was waiting for, and we have a really good relationship. But I don’t really know how a secure person would handle this situation, hence, asking for help here. Should I say something to my boyfriend? Do something the next time this inevitably happens? Just grab some popcorn to enjoy the show?

   1. Ask your boyfriend to shut this down! He has already given her some signals that he’s with you, but he could politely make it more clear to her that her flirtation is not welcome.

      1. How is the boyfriend supposed to stop the other woman’s behaviour?? Say “You’re smiling and laughing delightfully which I think that means you’re flirting, please stop”? Walk away when she approaches him? It doesn’t sound like he’s responding in kind to the flirting, and is instead signalling to the other woman that he is with OP as well as reassuring OP in the moment it happens. I think it would be find for OP to check in with her boyfriend and talk about it along the lines of “Hey, that woman from shared hobby flirts with you pretty aggressively. What’s going on there?” but I think telling him he has to find a way to control the other woman’s behaviour or else is too much. OP, I think your best option is making an inside joke out of it.

         1. I agree with the last sentence – making a joke of it is best for everyone. It’s hard to shut down someone who’s overly “friendly.” If BF is cold to her or asks her to stop then he will look like a jerk to others in the group. I suppose OP could respond by being aggressively cheerful back to this woman… but you can only do that a few times before it comes off as passive aggressive.

            FWIW I wouldn’t be surprised if BF is oblivious to all of this. Ime men fall into two categories – men who think a woman wants them if she so much as glances in his direction (aka gross jerks) and men who wouldn’t know a woman is flirting with them unless she’s basically taking off his pants. It kind of sounds like OP’s bf is the second kind of guy. It’s totally fair to point out that this woman is a little too “friendly” so he’s aware of it.

         2. Boyfriend can say “You know I have a girlfriend. All this attention you are giving me is making me feel uncomfortable. Can you take the attention down a few notches? ” It sounds like he was uncomfortable, if his response was to non-verbally show he was there with his girlfriend. He can’t control the other ladies behavior, but he can set some boundaries on how it’s okay to act around him and his relationship with OP. Which it sounds like he hasn’t been doing just yet, because he’s either oblivious or he’s been ignoring it and hoping it goes away.

            1. I agree. It’s best for him to be straight forward in this situation. For anyone saying “you guys are being presumptuous”. It’s achingly clear when a woman completely ignores half of a couple and displays commonly accepted flirtatious behavior (inordinate amount of attention to one particular person, laughing and smiling significantly more than with others of the same and different sex, casual touching in a way that is more familiar than normally accepted). And if he’s wrong, then so what? She says “I’m sorry I come off flirty but I’m not interested” and everyone goes about their day. But bf needs to set up clear boundaries, i.e.
               1) making sure his gf is included in the conversation and if this chick is excluding her on purpose, ending the convo and walking away
               2) backing away and saying her touching him makes him uncomfortable if she tries to touch him
               3) engaging more people in the conversation so there is less one on one
               4) if he thinks she’s being too flirty let her know he’s uncomfortable and she’s coming on strong.
               It’s perfectly okay to make her feel awkward to correct this situation.

            2. This level of bluntness is totally uncalled for, especially given that this is someone consistently in their orbit for reasons unrelated to her (possible) interest in OP’s BF.

            3. He could actively do 1-3, without verbally rejecting her. I like AAM’s script “whoa there, you’re in my personal bubble!” for 2).

            4. Agree with BT and Anon at 10:36.

               For what it’s worth, my husband is a very, very secure person, but nevertheless greatly appreciates the fact that when we were dating and engaged, I shut down men who tried to flirt with me.

            5. I agree with 10:36. The easiest approach is to immediately include the OP in any conversation this woman strikes up in the next breath he takes (“oh LOVE did you hear that? Isn’t she witty? Hahaha, remember that time you did xyz and you were brilliant? I’m the luckiest guy ever to have you etc etc… *gives you a kiss and continues waxing poetic about how amazing you are*” and shift the conversation so the OP is the center of conversation. Also he can laugh, smile, and otherwise respond appropriately to anything this woman says and then shift his eye contact to the OP and have his next sentence directly address OP. He can ABSOLUTELY SHUT THIS DOWN.

            6. Anon @ 10:51 – I think the level of bluntness is called for *because* she’s so consistently in their orbit. I mean, it’s an approach that only works if BF is actually feeling uncomfortable and the attention is more than he wants, but it focuses on his feelings and doesn’t make any presumptions on why Other Lady is doing what she’s doing.

   2. Your boyfriend probably doesn’t think he needs to shut it down because probably in his mind, nothing worse is going to happen because it’s clear the two of you are together. I agree with the person above that you should ask him to be a little more assertive and demand respect towards you and the relationship the two of you have. He won’t know how uncomfortable it makes you unless you’re very honest with him, and he should want to fix that. This person sounds like the type of person who will make the moves regardless (I know crappy men and women like this) but at least if your boyfriend shows some sort of control over the situation, you know that the message is conveyed.

      1. +1. You need to make sure you do NOT like this, b/c you are his girlfreind, and you are the one who expects him NOT to flirt with other women b/c YOU are the one who is supposed to have $ex with him, NOT her. If you are NOT careful, she will do even more when you are not there–ranging from rubbing up against his private parts to showing him her private parts and then letting it get to the next level. Before you know it, if left unchecked, he will have had $ex with her and will NOT tell you. That is NOT the way you want your relationship to go. The woman is a skank, and needs to be put back where she belongs. If for any reason you suspect your boyfreind may or has had $ex with her, do NOT have any kind of $ex with him until he is STD tested, b/c he could spread whatever the skank gave him to YOU! You do NOT need this, and the best way to fix this from happening is to tell your boyfreind that it is EGGZOVER if you find out he does anything at all $exueal with her. OK? This is simple. He can only have one girlfreind at a time, and as long as you are in the picture, he cannot have any $exueal interaction with her or anyone else (male or female). OK? These rules are simple!

   3. Women who do this kind of thing are clowns, and they don’t deserve your emotional energy. This whole “he’s not your man if I can take him” attitude is a sign she is hugely insecure. All insecure people are, at their core, just looking for attention, aka validation they exist. The more attention you (or your boyfriend) pay to her antics, the longer the antics will continue, and they will probably escalate. The best course of action is for you and your BF to ignore her. Not in an obvious cold-shoulder/shun type of way, but the kind of ignoring you do when a four-year-old you don’t know very well acts up at a party. I call it “dismissive acknowledgement” – yep, I sure do see you but I’m not going to give this behavior more attention than it deserves, which is none. Second tactic is to wait patiently for a good opportunity to let her know you see what she’s doing and you don’t think very much of her behavior, or her, in a subtle way. I’ve handled this in the past by waiting for the right moment and then addressing a comment or action with something like “it’s so interesting that you would say/do that,” followed by a concerned or puzzled look.

      I’m sure at a root level, you know this, but if your boyfriend wanted to be with this other girl, he would take action to do that, and bottom line, there’s not much you can do to prevent that (and if he does dump you for her, take it as a favor granted from the universe). Men either stay or they go; there’s no “keeping” them, IMO, and expending time/energy worrying about whether or not you’re going to “lose” them to someone else is a waste of time. (Obviously, don’t make your partner miserable, but if you’re being authentic and loving and considerate and he still leaves or cheats – that’s a him problem, not a you problem.) The more emotional energy you give this situation, the more it will annoy your BF and delight this other woman. Don’t give her the satisfaction.

      1. Wow, this comment shocks me. I can’t imagine going through the world thinking that every chatty person is trying to “steal my man.” My read on this situation is that the OP is being insecure (which she admitted), and the woman in question probably just has a friendly/outgoing demeanor. Some might read that as flirtatious, but honestly, who cares? Jealousy is a wasted emotion. Unless she’s actively seeking one-on-one time with your bf, I would let this go.

         1. The OP says that this woman flirts pretty blatantly with her boyfriend. I don’t see anything in the post that provides reason to second-guess OP’s assessment, and the limited description she provided does sound like this woman is flirting with her boyfriend and not just an outgoing person. If for no other reason, an outgoing person wouldn’t just ignore OP in conversations

            1. The reason I doubt the OP’s description is that the only specific examples she gave of this woman’s conduct is that she is “smiling and laughing.” Nothing in the OP’s description suggested that this woman is being a “clown,” as the poster above noted.

               But even assuming that the woman is being overly flirtatious, who cares? It just doesn’t seem worth getting upset about. I don’t say this for any purpose other than the OP’s best interest — jealousy is truly a self-fulfilling prophecy.

            2. anon at 11:08, the problem is that this is an internet forum. The OP may have very good reasons to not go into too much detail, i.e. she doesn’t want people whom she knows reading about this and knowing she’s the one saying it.

               Absent some indication that her perception is off, I think prudence demands we take her at her word.

               (Also, please note that her boyfriend also thinks this woman is flirting with him.)

         2. Your comment shocks me as being presumptuous. You literally have no idea how this woman is behaving, so it makes more sense to take OP at her word that the woman is flirting. There is nothing in OP’s comment to indicate that this woman is only “being chatty”. We all know chatty women – the like to talk. Simply chatty women don’t ignore your significant other standing next to you, laugh and smile an inordinate amount to the conversation, stand close and take up intimate personal space, and touch partnered man in a too familiar flirty manner. I swear I think so many of the smart women on this board got to where they are by being focused on school and work because they never learned to pick up on social cues.

         3. “I can’t imagine going through the world thinking that every chatty person is trying to ‘steal my man.'”
            That’s not what I said; stop being intentionally obtuse. There’s a big difference between someone being chatty and someone being flirtatious. I trust the OP when she says she is reading the signals as flirting. It’s making her uncomfortable and the woman she’s dealing with is apparently not aware enough to read the room and figure out she’s making the OP and the boyfriend uncomfortable. Women who think they are “just being friendly” when, in fact, it’s very obvious to others they are trying to flirt with someone who is taken generally take offense at someone calling out their behavior.

            1. But there is also big difference between being flirtatious (which is just how some people, both men and women, comport themselves in the world) and “clownishly” trying to communicate “he’S Not yOUR MAN iF I can tAke HiM.” I was shocked that you think every flirty person is literally trying to communicate that they can “take” other people’s significant others. That’s a very cynical way of moving through life!

            2. Whatever, girl. I think this hit a nerve with you for a very particular reason, which I’m not going to explicitly explain because I think you can probably figure it out.

            3. Yikes! Y’all need to calm down.

            4. Hmm, so you are implying that I must be flirtatious because I was shocked by your comment. That’s… something. In fact, what I take offense to is the kind of person who sees ill intent in others wherever they look. I stand by my comment — I don’t think it’s a healthy or productive way to move through life, for anyone — but mostly for yourself.

               I wish the OP the best and hope that she works this out without too much pain and suffering.

            5. As a pretty smiley person myself, I’m going to say that smiling and laughing are often parts of normal friendly social behavior, and, smiling and laughing are usually parts of flirting. When they come together with standing or sitting 2 inches from my boyfriend, leaning into his lap, talking an inordinately long time, and ignoring me, I’m going to put things in the flirting category.

      2. Eh, disagree.

         The bf needs to shut this down. First question: what good is he hoping to have come from having this woman flutter around him? What constructive ends are served with her in his life? Call me cynical, but having encountered a good many people who behave the way this woman (the flirt, not the gf) behaves, it’s a headache now getting rid of her or a headache later when she stirs up trouble.

         The other issue is that you have a dating mentality, not a marriage mentality. All marriages go through rough times, and if you let these people into your life and let them probe for chinks in the armour, they may eventually probe just the right spot at the right time. Often, the differences between marriages that make it and those that fail are that couples in the former are just as committed to each other during the bad times as during the good times. (Disclaimer: this does not apply to situations of abuse, emotional or verbal abuse, fraud, etc.) Ergo, it’s important that it be reflexive and instinctive to shut this down: don’t be the kind of person who lets the lil’ flirty-flirt continue to go on.

         1. This was really helpful, and describes why I think it’s not ok to flirt with people in committed relationships – we all go through though times. And your comments are helping me take things a step further and think about the precedent I setting – because I absolutely want to build a life with my boyfriend, and, he’s outgoing and handsome and warm and kind and I’m sure this isn’t the only time this is going to happen.

      3. I couldn’t have said it better myself. I definitely use the “hmmm interesting” followed by silence and the look with a slight head tilt. I’ll have to remember the dismissive acknowledgment phrase!

      4. I bought we as a society we’re trying to move beyond acting like everything a woman does or says, esp if she’s “could be attractive” to a man means she is throwing herself at him? I find this whole thread kind of gross. You have no right to dictate how another woman acts around your boyfriend. If her behavior is truly offensive, don’t be around her. Change hobby groups or whatever it is that has you in her presence.

         To answer your question, as a exude person, I couldn’t care less if an attractive woman flirted with my husband, esp if I was present. I would tease my husband about it and probably find the slight, fleeting ego boost he’d enjoy as a result of the flirting cute.

         If a man is going to cheat, he’s going to cheat and trying to keep all the attractive friendly women away from him is a losing battle and waste of energy.

         1. THANK YOU. It’s so gross. Esp. the “women are trying to steal your man poster” (who then subsequently accused her critics of being flirts themselves). Ugh, ugh, ugh.

            1. I think it’s gross when people assert that their right to “express themselves” trumps other people’s right not to be made uncomfortable by that person’s behavior. Do we have the right to “control” other people’s behavior? No. Can we use social cues and nonverbal or verbal communication to communicate to other people that their behavior is unacceptable and unwelcome? Yes, absolutely. If these kind of cues are happening to you, maybe take it as a growth opportunity instead of taking offense.

            2. Wow, just no! I think it’s a decent thing to always try to make other people comfortable, and I try to live by that maxim in my own life. I go out of my way to never, ever been seen as coming onto with a guy who’s partnered, because I don’t want to ever make the man or the woman uncomfortable. So, no, I am not at all asserting that one’s right to “express oneself” is more important than decency. I don’t believe that at at all.

               My issue is that calling women “flirts” for being to “smiley” and “laughing” can really border on sexism. And I think the fact that I expressed this opinion — and you then turned around and accused ME of being a flirt — underscores how pervasive this type of misogyny is. So, yeah: it’s gross.

         2. This isn’t an issue of sexism. It’s not appropriate to flirt with people who are in a relationship, and you shouldn’t be shocked if you get smacked down when that happens.

            The people in the relationship get to decide the boundaries, not you.

            1. Each person gets to set their own boundaries. You don’t get to “smack down” someone else because you view her as a threat to your partner’s fidelity. You can remove yourself from the situation/person, but that’s about all the control you have over other people.

            2. Anonymous at 12:45 pm, that’s not how it works. Sorry, if you want to do the flirt routine with some guy who is taken, and he and/or his SO smacks you down, that’s not them “controlling” you. That’s you being told to stop acting that way.

            3. I am not a fan of flirting with people who are clearly in committed relationships, and i do think it is disrespectful to both partners. But this comment really rubs me the wrong way–“the people in the relationship get to decide the boundaries, not you.” The people in the relationship aren’t holier than the Other Lady, just by virtue of being in a relationship. They don’t get to “smack down” anyone who annoys them by flirting too much. And in a healthy relationship, the excess flirting is really just that–an annoyance that makes the OP uncomfortable during group hang outs. This community tends to get really worked up around the idea of scheming women out there, trying to steal boyfriends and husbands. The people in the relationship definitely get to decide how they act–but they don’t get to set the boundaries for all of the world.

            4. I think it is, though. You never, ever hear men described as “having low self esteem” because they are flirtatious.

            5. “Control” and “expression of disapproval” are two very different things. We can’t “control” how other people behave. We absolutely can express that we disapprove of someone’s behavior, and actually societies are built around enforcement of social mores. You saying people shouldn’t express their disapproval when someone is engaging in disruptive behavior is just as controlling as what you’re accusing people of.

            6. I dont want to “do the flirt’ routine (whatever you think that is). I want you and others to understand that other women are not responsible for your relationship or whatever insecurity you have about your boyfriend. “Flirting” is a sexist, gendered term that has been used for generations to denigrate women, especially single women, as either “asking” for sexual advances by men (usually in a position of power over them) or of “trying to steal” husbands from insecure wives. This attitude has held women back in the workplace and socially for-literally-ever and should stop. “Flirting” is not a defined term and women are allowed to smile and be attractive and interact with men who have partners. The OP admitted she is insecure and worried her boyfriend finds the other woman attractive. It is incredibly sexist to suggest publicly shaming this woman because she is attractive and has paid attention to a man. It is not up to all the other women in the world to make you feel secure that your partner wont cheat. And, if OP had 100% confidence that he wouldnt cheat, she wouldnt care. Healthy boundaries and relationships exist where the individuals involved understand that the only person over whom they have control is oneself.

               Rather than “smacking down” the attractive woman that OP perceived to have “flirted” with her boyfriend, OP should focus on building her own self worth and examining the trust issues she has with her boyfriend.

            7. Wow, this post generated a lot of interesting comments while I was at a meeting! I’m really appreciative of all the perspectives. I’m definitely someone who thinks that it’s not ok to flirt with someone when they are in a committed relationship, so I find her behavior really disrespectful to both of us.

   4. To answer your question on how to handle this, you should definitely mention it to your boyfriend. It doesn’t have to be in an extremely serious way, but more along the lines of “whoa, so-and-so is a super flirt! she is all over you.” Just something to acknowledge that you see what is happening and you are calling it out to him. He should be able to handle it from there.
      In response to all of the other posters, the OP made this sound like more than just a friendly person–and the Other Lady probably does know what she is doing (flirting with a man who isn’t on the market). The Other Lady might be bored, might think she is cuter than the OP, might really think the OP’s boyfriend is a good catch, whatever–but I definitely think she knows what she is doing. However, I do agree that if you are dating a man who wants to cheat, he will cheat. I don’t actually think that there is anything the OP can do to stop that, if her boyfriend has that inclination. I think this situation is more one where the OP feels uncomfortable when the Other Lady is hanging out in a group situation where the OP and her boyfriend are. The OP should be able to hang out with a group of shared friends and not feel uncomfortable–which is why she has to address it with her boyfriend.

      1. Thanks, that’s a really helpful way to handle it! I’ll try that. That feels like the right balance of playfulness, not making it too big a deal, but also acknowledging what’s happening.
         And thank you for saying that I should be able to hang out with a shared group of friends and not feel uncomfortable!

   5. I mean, it sounds like your bf is doing exactly what I would do in this scenario. Make it clear that I’m with someone else and politely disengage. There is no need for any escalation beyond that unless it’s really so over the top that it’s weird and a massive annoyance. But in that case she is making a fool of herself and it’s also kinda sad.

      I agree with others who said that your best bet is making an inside joke out of it. You can’t control other people’s behavior and I tend to think that getting too worked up about this sort of thing ends up giving it more attention than it warrants.

   6. You can tell your boyfriend you’ve noticed it and that the chick makes you uncomfortable, and he’ll know to help physically distance both of you from her. I do think it would be over the line for him to be too direct in person. However, if she ever tries to get his phone number, or message him directly on any platform, I think he can be more direct. It’s worth having a discussion over, though. Everyone has different philosophies on what is/is not appropriate in terms of friendship with members of the opposite sex in a relationship. If your views on that don’t align and you can’t come to an agreement, it’s best to find that out earlier rather than later.

      FWIW my now-husband and I grandfathered in plenty of friends of the opposite sex, but we don’t really make new, single friends of the opposite sex unless they’re someone we both know. Not to say I won’t ever text a male colleague like “omg I couldn’t believe so and so’s outburst in that meeting this morning, that was insane!” or get lunch/coffee with male colleagues, but we’re not going to text eachother about our feelings or really at all outside of work hours.

   7. Why not just have a separate conversation with her when you see her. It can be about anything like the weather. Getting her to acknowledge you and see you as a friend/acquaintance might make her at least acknowledge you in your future encounters with her where your boyfriend is also present.

      Sometimes, as someone with absolutely zero romantic interest in a guy, I’ve experienced cases where I’m just talking to a dude about a subject that interests me, and suddenly I get death stares from a girl who is with him. Usually, the more we’ll adjusted girls well directly introduce themselves to me, as “hi, I’m…not sure if we have met before, I’m his girlfriend” but do it in a super friendly way. Usually, I’ll immediately pivot the conversation to put the focus on her or the couple, as a way of letting her/them know that I’m not romantically interested in the dude. Not saying that you’re too sensitive at all. I’m just suggesting what has worked well the past where I felt like girls were marking their territories.

      1. I like this, thanks! And if she doesn’t respond as you would – immediately including me in the conversation – then I have a bit more of a leg to stand on talking to my boyfriend.

   8. This is a bit late to the game and I’m commenting in the hopes you check the thread just one more time. A friend of mine has dealt with this before, her boyfriend is very popular in the hobby community and she’d often notice women flirting with him, so she had this script for dealing it that started with “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but” and then describe the behavior and how it looked to her. This would always be done in private, like at home or in the hotel room if it happened at an event away from home, and the expectation was that the next time he’d see the woman in question, he’d be a little more aware of the behavior and ready to shut it down or discourage it.

      1. I did! And thank you! Very helpful to hear another example of how to handle this – I like just describing the behavior.

4. I’m emailing a client whose favored college football team won this weekend at a game he travelled to go see. What’s the appropriate way to acknowledge this? “Congrats on the [team] win this weekend!”?? I’m not very footbally or old southern white-guy-like, and despite having grown up in the south I don’t speak football. Help?

   1. I was happy to see ____ won the game. It must have been very exciting to be there.

   2. “I saw that -team- won. I’m sure you enjoyed the game.” or your sentence is fine too. Or you don’t have to mention it at all.

   3. Yep, “Congrats on the Tigers win this weekend!” is fine! :)

      1. That was my assumption, too!

   4. Don’t overthink this. Just say “congrats on the big win.”

   5. Do you follow football? Could you carry on a conversation about this game? If not, I would not mention it. It will just seem artificial.

      1. I don’t know much about sport’s but would just tell the guy:

         “Hey, Lester! I learned that your team won last weekend! You must be so excited! I am happy for you! Let me know if you want to stop by and the manageing partner and I will take you out for a non-billeable drink!”

   6. Thanks all!

   7. Your sentence is perfectly fine!

5. I recently cut my straight, fine hair to just about my shoulder blades, the shortest I’ve had it in years. Any particular suggestions on how to style it, what hair clips etc to use. I’m finding that a lot of the styles and pins I used with my longer hair don’t work here. I love my new hair cut, and I’m also glad it’s still long enough to put up some times.

   1. Invisibobble hair ties work well if you want a messy bun. For work, I usually straighten my hair and wear it down, but if I want to style it up my go-tos are a very low bun or a sideways french twist and I just use good ol’ bobby pins and an obscene amount of texturizer (I like Bumble and Bumble pret-a-powder).

   2. Tapered rod curling iron to create a “tousled” look.

6. I like this dress! It is my aspirational “what would Cersei Lannister wear if she were in management consulting or plotting a hostile takeover, assume good-hair Cersei and not bad-Carole-Brady-wig Cersei.

   Don’t have 1K in my wallet to burn, but if I did, I’d be up for this!

7. Anyone have recs for packing & moving services for a move from DC to Philly? We live in a 2 bed, but have 2 young kids so are looking to make this as painless as possible. Thanks so much!

   1. My brother and his wife have moved between Arlington, Fairfax, and Alexandria and have used College Hunks Hauling Junk for all his moves. They highly recommends them!

   2. Atlas has been great the two times I’ve moved over 1000 miles.

   3. I’ve used My Guys Moving multiple times from PA to VA and then again from VA back to PA (as well as within VA and within PA). They have always been on-time, professional, courteous, and well-priced. Highly recommend.

   4. Have you looked at Bellhops? https://www.getbellhops.com/moving-services/long-distance-moving/

8. The Jonas Brothers are coming to my city. I couldn’t name any songs of theirs. I did win the lottery for two extra seats in our box from work. Would it be wrong to show up with a sign proclaiming “The Queen in the North”? I am a huge GOT / Sophie Turner / Sansa Stark fan and could represent for that.

   1. You do you, but I think it’s weird. The majority of attendees at a Jonas Bro’s concert are preteen/teen girls who don’t watch GOT.

      1. I think that’s not entirely correct – the majority will be late 20’s millennials who grew up loving the Jonas Brothers and are soooo happy we can finally afford to see them.
         Source: myself and friends went when they came to our city.

         1. That is true — and why bands tour forever. What I would have loved to have seen at 16 I pay bank to see now.

         2. Agreed. I went when they were in DC (see: 29 here) and it was all 21-35 year olds, with a smattering of kids in the mix since they’re generally fairly friendly. Still, you’re in a work box, it’d be weird to bring a sign.

      2. 10-4

         Taking my tween niece, who is very excited. I am excited for her. I will probably just be all OMG is Sansa here? (probably not, since we are in not a major city, so it would be like me visiting a BF in Major Easy To Fly Into European City but not smaller city 4 hours away from that).

         The Queen in the North!!!

   2. Do you know someone who might enjoy the tickets? My 20 year old sister would lose her mind.

   3. I think this is fabulous and a clutch way to enjoy the show.

      and truly, if Soph or Joe saw you — they would totally love the shit out of it as well

   4. Are you allowed to gift the tickets you won to someone else, or does your work ask people who won’t use the tickets they won to turn them back in to the company? If you’re allowed to give them away, you could make someone who really, really loves the Jonas Brothers and would kill to see them very happy by giving them your tickets, since you don’t really care about going. This is a great opportunity to help out a friend or cultivate a relationship with a client or coworker. But I’m old and at this point no longer have the patience to sit through a concert for a musician/group if I don’t really love their music.

   5. I would not bring a sign to a concert if you’re sitting in a work box.

      1. I’m indifferent to the sign itself, although I don’t get it because I’m not a GOT fan. But I would really discourage you from bring a sign if you are sitting in the work box. Do you have any idea who else is going to be there? I’m viewing this like going to a sports event in the company box – I have fun and cheer for the team, but don’t go all out as I would with friends.

         1. Also no one really brings signs to concerts anymore.

            1. Yeah, this whole idea is weird.

         2. I am also not a GOT fan and thus am genuinely curious – What does the sign mean and why would it be relevant for a Jonas Brother’s concert?

            And also I wouldn’t bring any sign to an event in the company’s box. I think that would stand out in a not great way.

            1. One of the Jo Bros is married to the actress who played Sansa Stark, aka the Queen in the North

            2. Joe Jonas is married to Sophie Turner who plays Sansa Stark in GOT who ended up as the Queen in the North.

            3. ok, that’s just weird then. You are going to bring a sign telling them that you like one of the signer’s wives??? That seems so inappropriate. Just like you wouldn’t bring a sign to a Beyoncé concert saying that you liked Jay-Z.

   6. So weird.

   7. I’m late to this, but let me be the dissenter who loves the idea. Just keep the sign smallish :)

9. My sister is in the very early stages of pregnancy with *intense* all-day morning sickness (whatever one Kate Middleton had?). She’s got medical attention & a caring husband who does the house stuff, any suggestions on things I could do to help? Hanging out to watch movies is all I have. Would love a present idea or two.

   1. Honestly, I might ask the husband if you can treat them to a house cleaner or something. Obviously your sister needs the most help, but her husband could probably use some support too! Source: my spouse was sidelined with a (mercifully brief) illness causing me to take on 100% of household, childcare and spousecare responsibilities for a short time. It was a rough few weeks!

      1. +1 Also– maybe a gift card to a food delivery service or grocery delivery. (I realize she’s probably not eating normal food, but being able to get Gatorade or something similar delivered could be nice.)

   2. The Trader Joe’s “12 Days of Beauty” calendar!

   3. I had hyperemesis (what Kate Middleton had) and there’s really not much people can do to help. Definitely do not bring food over unless you know for sure she can even stomach the smell of it in the house – we could not cook meat at home for 12 weeks as the smell of it cooking would send me into protracted vomiting. I lived on cornflakes, strawberry smoothies and the occasional Ensure (when I could stomach it). The housecleaning suggestion is a good one as our house cleanliness definitely took a downturn during that time, but make sure she can give guidance to the cleaning people about what cleaning products she can tolerate the smell of (it is amazing how sensitive my sense of smell got). Hyperemesis nausea for me was round-the-clock and I didn’t get a lot of sleep, so I slept as I could on the weekends and let everything else go. Anything you can do to ease the burden of daily life will help her.

      Your sister may end up in the hospital (not everyone does; I did, when I got really dehydrated and lost 15 lbs). If she does, just know she’s in the best place she could be and will likely be really relieved to get some treatment and not have to deal with life on top of the hyperemesis. People got really concerned when I got sent to the hospital but it was the best place I could go – I got a lot of rest; they gave me antinausea drugs and IV hydration so I immediately felt better; and I didn’t have to work or cope with daily life for awhile, which had become nearly impossible by the time I got hospitalized. I stayed for three days and was off work for another week, and by that point the HE had nearly run its course. I continued to have episodic bouts of nausea the rest of my pregnancy but the extreme nausea was mostly over by 16 weeks. One of the most important things you can do is say “I am here for you and I am so sorry this is happening” vs. “It can’t possibly be that bad; you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself; if you get out of bed and move around you’ll feel better” which is what I got from some of my relatives.

      1. Wow, your nausea stayed that bad even with treatment? That sucks! I know some women try to suffer through and I just don’t understand that.

         1. Part of it was my own stubbornness in refusing to do the initial treatment which was offered to me by the OB (Unisom and B12). I just kept thinking that it was going to get better. It was so bad it had to get better at some point, right? And I didn’t want to take ANY meds (even though that combo has been used to treat morning sickness for a long time and is very safe). I kept trying to tough it out and it just got worse and worse. I started carrying a box of gallon Ziploc bags with me everywhere to vomit into. I finally called the doctor at 10 weeks (after about 5 weeks of this) and when I showed up in his office looking like I was on death’s door, that was when I got sent to the hospital. They put me on IV Zofran in the hospital and gave me tablets when I left, which I was very reluctant to take (no one knows for sure how safe it is in pregnancy, although studies indicate any risks are minimal) but it completely turned things around for me, and I probably would have miscarried without it. I agree with you: women sometimes feel like they just have to dig in and grit their teeth through it, and they don’t have to. In hindsight I really regret not asking for (and taking) help sooner.

            1. Not the Anon at 11:14, but thank you for being so honest about your experience.

               I’m an older expecting mom, and often feel like I’m doing ‘pregnancy ‘wrong’ because I so shamelessly ask for help (despite being someone who usually toughs it out to an extreme degree). It’s awful for the women in question, but a relief to hear, when women talk about how they wished they had asked for help sooner, set more firm boundaries with people, not tried to be a hero in the delivery room, etc.

   4. Gift certificate for acupuncture? I have no experience, but it helps some people, and she may want to try if she’s into that kind of thing?

   5. I had it and it was horrific at the time (because I didn’t want to use FMLA to take off of work because I wanted to save it for when the baby came) so outside of PTO I was just having to deal and occasionally take a few days off if I ended up in the doctor’s office on IV hydration. Which meant a lot of vomiting in bizarre situations. Someone gave me really cute puke bags they found online and it was A. a funny gift and B. actually very useful because it was less embarrassing to sneak that out to the dumpster than my flimsy clear office trashcan bag full of vomit. Probably depends on the person, but I saw the humour in it (and the utility).

      Someone else gifted me a bag of different types of sour hard candies to suck on. One of the few things I could stomach was a diet lemonade and biscuit from a certain fast food chain, so some people got me a gift card to that place. They were all sweet gestures that I remember.

   6. An Etsy gift certificate with a couple links to the frighteningly adorable crocheted baby photo sets where you dress the baby up like a tiny turtle/snail/gnome/etc.

      I went through different difficulties, but sometimes you almost lost sight of the excitement. Like, this is a baby! Snuggles! Let’s be frivolous and buy an absurd little outfit that will cost way too much and they’ll wear for 90 seconds before puking on!

      My sister also brought me a really soft blanket when I was hospitalized (that could be machine washed and sanitized). My kid now sleeps with that blanket on his bed and it’s a reminder of what now seems like a distant memory.

      1. Oh, also! If they have a dog, either hire a dog walker or offer to take the dog for a walk. That was something I was so thankful for.

10. I just got the sweater jacket from Nic & Zoe that was featured here recently and love it! How do you guys store jardigans? Hangers? Folded? Folded on hangers?

    1. this is it – it does have shoulder pads
       https://shop.nordstrom.com/s/niczoe-grace-jacket/5268077/full?origin=keywordsearch-personalizedsort&breadcrumb=Home%2FAll%20Results&color=black%20onyx

    2. Does this thing fit super long? It’s hard to tell on the model if the model is just short waisted or if it really does come to mid-thigh. I know they have petite sizes but that is just an unflattering cut on a short and/or curvy woman.

       1. That’s hardly mid-thigh.

    3. I store mine on hangers like any other jacket. It doesn’t seem to stretch them out.

       I love that jacket. I ordered it and it sadly didn’t fit me but I love the cut.

11. I need help figuring out how much to give my (newish) employees for a holiday bonus and can’t find a standard rule of thumb. I am a solo attorney and have three part time employees: a legal assistant, 10 to 15 hours/wk at $27/hr; a personal/general assistant, 10 to 12 hours/wk at $22/hr; and a very short-term legal assistant, just starting today so weekly hours are unknown, at $27/hr, and will likely only work through early January. The first two started at about the beginning of October, the legal assistant a few weeks before the personal assistant.

    They have been really great so far and work hard—I want to reward them appropriately and fairly. How in the world do I figure out what their bonuses should be? Should I also get each of them a small gift (in the $30-50 range)? I feel like a token bonus to the short-term assistant is sufficient since she is SO short-term—maybe $50 or $100? Thoughts or suggestions? Thank you! I’m in a Texas city, in case region is relevant, and these are their second or third jobs.

    1. No gifts. Give them cash and a nice card. Full-time assistants in my non-NYC biglaw office get something like $1k from the firm, if that helps. Maybe $200 for each of the regular part-timers and $100 for the temp (assuming they are actually a temp – otherwise I’d give everyone the same)? I wouldn’t consider their short tenure or relative pay levels for holiday bonus purposes; this isn’t a merit bonus, it’s a goodwill bonus.

    2. Cash.

    3. Cash. Not gift cards. Cold hard cash.

       1. If it must be a gift card, do a Visa gift card, which is essentially a cash equivalent that can be spent at 99% of places.

    4. Because you are the owner, I agree with cash. Whenever the holiday gift giving discussion comes up, I always add my voice of experience to “know your firm.” My firm has a no cash gift or cash gift equivalent rule. It’s a royal pain in the rear because I then have to find an appropriate to the person actual present that has significant value. I understand why my work has the rule though. They didn’t publicize it until I asked about the holiday gift procedure at the firm and I’m really glad I asked.

    5. I actually disagree with cash. You are the company owner and they are your employees. The bonus should be paid in the same form as any other payment they receive from the company and included in their payroll check. I would probably aim for something over $500 after taxes.

    6. I fully intend to give them a cash bonus–the gift would be on top of that. It’s the amount of the cash bonus that I am stumped on. [And cash to me means a check, that is processed as compensation, because that’s what it is, and therefore taxed.]

       1. Cash bonus, along with a small token gift if you want. Normally bonuses should be 1 – 2 times their weekly salary, if the employee is working out well and someone you want to keep. But in this case, since they have worked for you only a short time, I would give approx. 25% – 50% of their weekly pay, with a smaller, token cash gift to the temp.

          1. Thank you! That’s the rule of thumb I was looking for :).

12. I’m flying into Sofia, Bulgaria and have ~10 days starting next Friday. I’m considering going to Pristina or Skopje as well and would happily do day trips from any of the above cities. I don’t want to be spending a ton of time in transit or feel like I have a jam packed schedule. Any recs for what I should do in the area?

    1. There are not a ton of things to do in Skopje. The city (and North Macedonia in general) has potential but is still lacking in developing a robust tourism industry. Hopefully once it is part of NATO and the EU it will have access to resources that will allow it to develop more tourism. You could probably see most of what you want to see in Skopje in a day. The center city is filled with statues…a number of them are resin and not marble or stone as they appear (they were erected by previous governments who were mismanaging money and grifting for them and their cronies). There is a fortress above the city, an old bazaar, and Mother Theresa’s birthplace. The food in North Macedonia is great and inexpensive….super fresh produce and some good wine that is produced in the region. From Skopje you could take day trips to Tetovo to see the painted mosque (which is beautiful) and to Stobi (to check out old Roman ruins with incredible mosaics; the ruins are only partially excavated at this time but what is available to see is pretty cool). Although I have not been, Prishtina would be another easy day trip from Skopje. You could also check out Lake Ohrid although that is probably a little too far for a day trip.

    2. I don’t have any specific suggestions but I have had great luck with toursbylocals dot com everywhere in the world, so I’d check that out.

    3. I actually used to live in Skopje, I’ll post tomorrow!

    4. Native Bulgarian here – although living abroad for close to 20 years. I would never think of hopping over to Macedonia or Kosovo as an easy day trip out of Sofia. Nobody does it and there’s no real infrastructure to maintain this kind of tourism – i.e. border crossings can take a very random amount of time, I wouldn’t drive on my own there and not sure public transport options would exist. If you are in Bulgaria – there are lots of day trip options in the country itself – Plovdiv, Rila Monastery, Melnik a bit further south, Velingrad is a great spa town.

13. Advice for visiting museums with an SO who needs to spend an eternity in each museum? I’ve unsuccessfully tried: agreeing to a time limit ahead of time (He blows the limit and I become the time police), scheduling a ticketed event ~30 mins after the agreed upon time limit (I have to drag him out of the museum/start to leave without him), hanging out in the gift shop or cafe while he finishes (now he wants to see the gift shop and cafe too).

    I love going to museums but I’m good for like 2-3 hours. BF needs to see absolutely everything; it’s almost a full day event for him. I find this tedious and tiring. BF is also very tired and sore after being on his feet for so long, so it basically ruins the rest of our day/evening. I really don’t want to give up museums altogether; it’s so nice to finally date someone who doesn’t feel like museums are a total bore! Now I guess I know how my exes felt. Any advice for how to address this?

    1. Sounds like he wants the full day at the museum and you want more like half a day. Can you just leave completely when you feel done, and meet him for dinner later after the museum closes? (He can’t try to negotiate that timeline, and someone else has to enforce it).

       1. +1 – you don’t have to compromise, just don’t do everything together.

       2. I’m like your boyfriend. I would much rather my spouse do something she enjoys and let me nose around a museum for an obnoxious amount of time. Do your own thing and then meet up later.

       3. +1. I love spending all day in a museum and would feel really frustrated if my SO was trying to rush me along. But I would be completely fine staying by myself and meeting up later.

       4. Thanks, I should’ve mentioned in the original – he gets pretty butthurt if I suggest that I leave to do something else for a while. We’re usually on vacation when we go to museums, so he feels like we should spend every waking moment together. Maybe if I give him fair warning in advance, he’ll be more likely to be cool with it.

          1. See and this I find unacceptable. “Nope! We agreed to stay for 3 hours, and I am now done. I will see you later.” And then “it’s unclear to me why you think it’s fair to agree to one thing, do another, and then be grumpy about it. Not at all cool.”

          2. This is a bigger issue than what I assumed in my response below. I am the slow museum person in my group, and I understand that the space/time continuum means that I can’t stay in the museum all day and do other things.

             One strategy that my ex husband and I used to use for vacations was that I got to plan one whole day with whatever I wanted (usually this would be the spot where a full day in the county museum comes in), he got to plan a whole day with what he wanted, and depending on how many days were left, we’d plan X activities that we both wanted to do and also have X days that were “free” so we could decide once we got to the destination. This worked out really well because we each got absolute power to do something that was important to one of us but that the other might not be excited about.

       5. Yup. This sounds like a good solution.

    2. I see that you are dating my dad! Congrats! He is quite a character, no?

       Here is how I deal, as I had much time to work on this as a wee child:
       — Bring a book
       — Bring money: there is a shop, cafe, etc.
       — Bring stamps (postcards from gift shop you can write, address, and send)
       — Go to the nearby museum
       — Tell him: I am hungry so I am going to get something to eat; do you want to come? I am done, so I am going to Nearby Other Museum; text me when you are done here and I’m going to get dinner at 6 regardless. Or something so that you are not miserable. Folks like this are hardwired this way for museums, they won’t be changing. So adjust your expectations and plan so that you are happy!

       AND BE GLAD YOU AREN”T DRIVING DOWN ROUTE 13 IN DELMARVA WHEN HE WANTS TO GO INTO EVERY DECOY FACTORY.

       1. If you’re in the Delmarva area, take your dad to the Waterfowl Festival in Easton! I think it’s over for this year unfortunately. Dad can look at all the decoys (maybe even people actually carving the decoys!) and you can eat awesome crab soup, crabcakes, oysters, see some art, and hang out in the beer and wine tent.

          1. OMG so happy that I am not a wee child any more and can escape to the beer / wine tent!

             Dude is a boon to any museum person who worries that their captions and narratives will never be read and pondered over. Yes. Yes, they were.

       2. I 100% support these ideas. Almost all museums these days have a comfy spot, or a café, or a park outside.
          I also frequently traveled in groups to museums as day-long field trips, and the same tactics seem to apply–don’t heckle the kids who are still museuming, but after a couple hours it’s fine to take a little walk for fresh air, get a snack out of your lunch bag, get out your sketchbook/journal/novel…

    3. Is there something nearby that you’d like to do that he’s less interested in? A nearby museum he’s not interested in, grabbing a book and going to an actual cafe, going for a walk outside, calling your mom? I’d just finish in the time you would normally take and reallocate that time to do something else you like that he won’t feel compelled to partake in. My husband and I do this sort of thing all the time when we have moderately differential interests in something, but not enough to warrant one of us not going.

    4. Can you go later in the day/2-3 hours before closing? That way, it’s not you pushing him out, it’s the actual museum/security staff? So, instead of “museum then dinner reservations” make it “dinner reservations then museum” (or however timing works).

       Otherwise, I suggest asking your bf what he thinks is an agreeable compromise. I find that sometimes with my husband, making him part of the decision making process on this stuff (totally not a “real” problem, but something that I think needs to be addressed) works better than me unilaterally coming up with an idea.

    5. Go separately? Find other activities you can enjoy together. I’d be annoyed if someone was rushing me through something I was enjoying.

    6. If you’re planning any kind of long-term relationship with him, you’ll need good strategies for dealing with someone who can go down a rabbit hole and stay there until he’s absorbed all the information. (I assume this trait doesn’t only come out when he’s in a museum.) In order to protect my sanity, I’d try:

       • Meet up with him at the museum, do what you can together, and then you leave and go on with your day and he stays until closing time.
       • Take a book or other entertainment and go to a local coffee shop to wait for him, offsite. With the agreement that if he doesn’t show up, you’re going to go on with your day.
       • Do 2-3 hours at the museum, break for lunch, he goes back to museum, you go on with your day.

       Also, pay attention to his willingness to grow in his ability to self-regulate these “attention holes” for the sake of relationship. If he wants to go down a hole and stay there, then he does that alone. If he wants to relate to you in a “rabbit-hole adjacent” way, then he has to learn to manage that. Both of you will need to learn how to compromise.

       1. I really like the lunchtime suggestion. Such a good way to break up the day, have a nice little break together, and for me to leave without him feeling like I’m abandoning him out of impatience.

          I hear you on the rabbit hole thing – sometimes he’ll do this with reading the news. “I am getting dressed and you have not showered yet, please go do that because it is almost time to leave.” But I’m in the middle of a great article! “Your time to read articles was when I was in the shower. And doing my hair. And makeup. Now is the time for getting out of bed.” He’s a lot more receptive to that, though. And fwiw I’m not always the one rushing him about, he has to tell me to pick up the pace sometimes too, so it’s all (mostly) good natured.

    7. Maybe meet him at the museum after he’s already been there for a few hours? You could spend the morning at a cafe with a book (or something similar), meet him for lunch at the museum restaurant, and then explore the museum together. If the issue is more that you prefer to “skim” and he wants to view every single piece… well, I’m looking for advice on that myself.

    8. Solution: You agree to stay for 2-3 hours, until you’ve seen what you want to see. After that, you’re free to go explore on your own! Leave the museum and go explore the neighborhood – read or grab a bite to eat in a cafe, check out a small museum or shopping district, stroll in the park, go on a walking tour, take photographs, etc. It sounds like you feel obligated to follow him around the museum, wait for him in the museum, or find strategies to get him to leave — but you are not! You can agree to split up for portions of the day. Keep in touch via text and meet up at a middle location afterwards, go to dinner, and tell each other about what you did.

    9. My husband is like this too. I bring a book or something to work on and have come to really enjoy museum cafes, especially if they offer booze.

    10. Are you in a city that a museum/s has later weekend hours? For example, the Met is open until 9 on Friday nights. My boyfriend isn’t the biggest fan of museums, so we compromise by allotting 2ish hours on a Friday early evening (enough to pop in for an exhibit) before a dinner reservation/drink plans somewhere after. I am not a person who likes to be late and likes to stick to a schedule, so he knows this compromise works for me.

    11. Hi, I am your boyfriend. If I go to a really great museum I have to stay until I see everything. My family deals with this by leaving when they feel “done” looking at things and meeting up with me later. I take responsibility for managing my own energy so that I’m not too tired at the end of the day to go to dinner or do other fun things. You’re not going to change him and he’s not going to change you, so the best course of action is to figure out how to do “separate togetherness” in a way that lets everyone get their needs met.

        1. Same here! This is a running joke with my friends. I also just don’t think it’s really fair to require another adult to see the museum on someone else’s timeline, unless we have have tickets to a play or something immediately after. My view is that spending hours in a museum is what I want to do with my vacation day, and if my friend wants to do something else with theirs, then they should do that! I understand that by spending the whole day in the museum, I’m going to be missing out on other activities, and that is fine with me.

           If a time limit is necessary (like tickets to a show–not just that my friends want to do something else that I don’t care about), my coping strategy is that I pick one or two areas of the museum to really focus on for the allotted time and don’t even walk past any other areas, to the extent possible. But your SO should be involved in that conversation or decision; you can’t just tell SO how to enjoy a thing they enjoy.

           1. He was involved! He agreed to three hours!

    12. “Sure I’ll go to the museum, but we need to talk about last time. We agreed in advance to spend 3 hours there, and that’s the max for me. Any more and it takes over the whole day. Even though you agreed to that, then you insisted on staying longer, which felt disrespectful to me. I’m not interested in chasing you out of museums! At all! But these marathon days don’t work for me. How do you think we should handle this?”

        1. No, don’t do this. Just split up for a few hours and do your own thing. It’s not a crime for your partner to want to spend longer in a museum, just like it’s not a crime for you to leave early.

           1. I’m not saying it’s a crime at all, but I don’t like it when people say yes to something and then don’t follow through. If this is on a vacation, I’d rather have planned my day differently. If this is just a day out in my local city, I don’t necessarily want to hang around waiting for him to finish before we go onto something else.

        2. This sounds so needlessly aggressive, OP, please don’t say this. You handle it by simply going home when you’re done museuming. SO comes home later when he’s done.

           1. DH has a band that he LOVES and I merely tolerate. After one concert for this band together, we mutually decided that he would find a friend for the next time they were in town and never go together again. We can go see other bands together where we have a more similar level of like, but not this. Never again.

        3. this is such an aggressive, ultimatum type comment. please don’t say this to your boyfriend. he isn’t a subordinate at work. you guys like each other! and are in a relationship! be nice. go to the museum for 2 to 3 hours and then read a book in the lobby, go to lunch at the cafe or go somewhere else. let him enjoy his time at the museum. it is good that he has hobbies and likes stuff!

           1. +1 Plus this is about spending time in museums, not a life or death issue.

           2. He’s grumpy and gives her a hard time about doing this!

           3. Eyeroll – she didn’t say “leave or else” (Aka an actual ultimatum).

              She said “you said one thing and then did another thing and that was frustrating for me. How can we do this better in the future.” Which is about setting boundaries and working together to find a solution.

              It’s straightforward (which can feel aggressive), but isn’t that what we’re supposed to do – talk about these things in a straightforward manner to ward off resentment stewing?

              1. “Sure I’ll go to the museum, but we need to talk about last time.” This is an ultimatum–I will go to the museum, but only if you agree to talk to me about what happened last time. “We agreed in advance to spend 3 hours there, and that’s the max for me. Any more and it takes over the whole day. Even though you agreed to that, then you insisted on staying longer, which felt disrespectful to me.” This says–I am keeping score, and I didn’t like what happened last time, which is that you didn’t follow through on exactly what we agreed to ahead of time. This type of talk is fine in the workplace, for someone who reports to you and must follow through on agreed upon directions, but not fine in relationships. All of that is aggressive. A normal conversation is “hey, i get bored at museums. I am cool for a few hours to look at stuff and then i will find a way to entertain myself. i hope you have a good time, and you can tell me about it later.” Also–it is a museum.

              2. I’m way late to this thread, but I really appreciate Anonymous at 3:31 PM’s perspective here. It makes me wonder if I’ve fallen into “workplace” talk outside of work that has understandably triggered conflict.

    13. Agree with the advice to have him go before you, then you meet him there. Hopefully, you’ll be ready to leave around the same time, or the museum will just close.

    14. This is really easy. Don’t stay with him the whole time! He can spend a day in a museum and you can spend a few hours and then go do your thing.

    15. Leave when you want to leave, go do something you want to do, and then meet for dinner afterward. Then you’ll both have had a great day and there’s the added excitement of seeing your partner again after a gap.

        1. good point on seeing your partner again after a gap.

    16. What about it you just go to the museum 3 hours before it closes so there’s an external deadline?

    17. I know I’m very late to this party but I think this is a bigger issue than it initially sounds. He agreed to a time limit, doesn’t want you to go do your own thing without him, and wants to take as much time as he wants. It’s a selfish behavior–note, I don’t think he’s trying to be a rude d*ck but it is kind of mean to say, “no, I don’t care what we agreed to initially, and I will be so reluctant to do the thing I said I would that it will make You feel like the bad guy for being the time police.” I don’t think these are conscious choices, but it’s a behavior that will cause problems later on. I would have an open conversation about it. “Hey, x happened. It made me feel this way because of these reasons.” Doesn’t need to be a huge thing but if I were in your shoes I would feel very uncared for by having my SO not respect my time and my plans as much as their own.

14. Has anyone in NYC had their kitchen knives professionally sharpened? I do it at home, but they’re a few years old and are in need of the hands of a professional at this point.

    1. My neighbor (in Alexandria, VA) runs a mail order knife sharpening business. He’s super fast, cheap, and has been written up in the Washington Post. It’s Precision Knife Sharpening.

    2. I’ve been considering it. The Basics hardware store near me (UWS) does it for $7 or $8 per knife.

       1. When I lived in a big city, the small local hardware store offered this service too and I used it on more than one occasion.

    3. I like KnifeAid. You order a sharpening envelope, they ship it with knife sheaths, you put your knives in and send it (prepaid), then they send it back containing your sharpened knives.

       The butcher shop near me sharpens knives but I could never make their hours. I find the mail order thing much easier.

    4. I’ve used Mike’s Sharpening – he’s super old-school, has a truck with all his gear. You call him and he tells you when he’ll be in your area.

    5. +1 for exploring the local options, rather than mail order. Support your local businesses, reduce your carbon footprint. The advantage of being in NYC — so many stores…

15. Why did you get married? Over the weekend someone told me he always saw himself married by a certain age. When that age was approaching, he proposed to the person he happened to be dating at that time. They’ve been married for a decade now. She’s nice enough but he’s not in love with her. That got me thinking about whypeople get married. I’ve never been married, but if I were to get married I would hope love and knowing I’d met the right person had a major role in doing so. I think it would bother me if I found out my spouse purposed because of some milestone in their life and not because it was me specifically.

    1. I agree with you. But IME it is not uncommon for guys to get to a stage in life where they decide they are ready to settle down and get married and then basically marry the next person they date. I’m not saying that they don’t love their spouse, but they may not love them any more than the person they dated 2 years earlier who dumped them because the guy was not ready to get married and was not willing to discuss a timeline of when he would be ready.

    2. It’s pretty simple: He was the person I could imagine building a long, happy life with. And obvs, I was and am in love with him, and the feeling was/is mutual!

       This dude’s take on marriage makes me sad, but more for his wife than for him. And I don’t think it’s wise to go around blabbing that you’re not in love with your wife, even if it is true. Serious eye rolls to this dude.

       1. I do think there are different kinds of love and you can get married without being head over heels/infatuated. But this dude is an *sshat. That is simply not something you tell other people.

    3. Life is complicated and a whole host of reasons are tied together in why people get married. You can love someone and not get married because they’re not ready, not stable, have other issues you can’t live with. And you can get married because you get along well, want stability and companionship, and to build a life with someone without being “in love” with them. That doesn’t mean there is no love there, just a different kind of love – the familial instead of romantic kind. I can’t think of anyone that I know that has gotten married without ANY kind of love – but yeah, sometimes the timing and someone being “right enough” is a big factor. I don’t like to think of it as “settling” because you only settle by marrying someone you know you don’t want but think you can’t do better – and “better” is relative as there isn’t really a soul mate or perfect partner for anyone, just someone you can build a good life with.

    4. I come from a dysfunctional family background and did not want to get married for a long time.

       My husband and I got married because we love each other a LOT, but also for practical reasons: we have the same values, want the same things out of life, spend money in a similar manner (both joyfully live below our means), faith is important to both of us, and we both believe the other person will be an outstanding parent. There is also a very hard to quantify issue of just feeling like we are supposed to be together.

    5. I became engaged when I was 21 with my university sweetheart because I was starting to make plans for my future and wanted to know how to include him in those plans. (My personal values are that I was willing to change/compromise my plans for my life partner but not for someone I was dating; I get that other people will have different views on that.) We got married at 23, sooner than planned, because a dear family member I wanted at my wedding was very ill. The overall decision to get married was to build a life with my husband, a person I loved and enjoyed spending time with and could imagine as a life partner, but the timing mostly had do to with external pressures.

       We’ve been married 10 years.

       1. I got married for similar reasons–we were in college, I was about to graduate, and due to the religion of our families and school it was essentially a decision between getting married or trying to do a long-distance relationship without much room to grow/get to know each other better.

          I wish we had waited a few years to marry. It worked out and I’m glad we’re married now, but we were young and changed in major ways in the first few years (leaving our very intense religion, him graduating, figuring out life and work as an adult, me realizing I never want to have children, him growing up in some major ways re: finances and executive function, dealing with addiction, etc.). I think if we’d had the space to cohabitate, grow up a bit, and really separate from our families, we would have been on much better footing to get married.

          1. We had the same experience – the first few years of our marriage were very hard because we and our lives were so much in flux. Over the years I’ve gone back and forth about whether we should have waited – I think not being married would have turned down the emotional temperature during those years which would have been welcome, but I also think we may have packed it in if we hadn’t had the hassle and stigma of divorce to keep us working at it.

    6. My husband and I got married because we loved each other and wanted to spend our lives together. We had been engaged for a year, but were still in school and were just planning on having a long engagement before really planning our wedding. Then his dad was diagnosed with cancer. It was really important to my husband to have his dad at the wedding and so we planned a small ceremony and reception quickly. His dad died about 5 months later. We will celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary next week. So the reason for getting married was based on love, but the timing was sped up.

    7. Pretty sure my parents married and had kids because that’s just what one did. My mom, for all her faults, did made damn sure I knew that wasn’t the only way to live and I’m thankful for that.

    8. Frankly I think the guy who told you that is trying to sleep with you. Either that or he has incredibly low emotional IQ (my brother once told me something like this about his wife – clearly he’s not trying to sleep with me but yeah no emotional intelligence at all). And not to make everything about “gardening” but I think people tell themselves stuff like this to justify having an affair. “Spouse is ok but I’ve never really been in love with them and I deserve some passion in my life; I’m a good person because I’m staying with spouse.”

       1. He was not hitting on me. I was catching up with a distant relative who was in town. I only met him for the first time a year ago and I have not met his wife. We were chatting about a divorce in the family which led to marriage talk. I can agree to the low EQ.

       2. +1. Also, even when that line about the marriage lacking spark is true, that doesn’t make it ok! You either married the wrong person, or your marriage is dying and you’re coping by cheating. Neither was a great move on your part! (Hypothetical “you.)

          Of course, when there’s a mutual agreement to open up the marriage, that’s different. But so, so many people claim this dynamic when their spouses/partners would tell you something quite different.

    9. I was crazy in love with him. We were sexually compatible. We had similar values and life goals. He seemed like he would be a good father. I thought the chances were extremely slim that I would meet someone I was more compatible with this guy while I was still young enough to have children (in other words, we were very compatible and it didn’t feel like anything major was missing in our relationship). I liked his company and wanted to hang out with him for the rest of my life.

       So far, so good. Best decision of my life.

       1. +1, I could have written this. I married my husband because this is how I felt about him. He said he felt this way about me too. Married 20+ years and it’s still good.

          I have heard people (male and female) say they got married because “it was time” – either they felt like they needed to be married by a particular age, or they had been with their partner so long breaking up didn’t make sense/wasn’t what they wanted, although getting married wasn’t necessarily what they wanted either. Agree with the person above who said that this kind of statement is very often used as justification for an affair. As in, yes I am married to this person but I am not passionate about them and never have been and I deserve to have passion in my life. It’s a really gross way to avoid owning one’s own choices – to marry someone they didn’t really love, to stay in a loveless marriage, and to then cheat on their spouse because they need “passion” or “excitement” or whatever. All of those things are choices.

    10. My husband proposed when he was 29, and I flat out asked him (later, after the proposal!) if he wanted to get married TO ME, or get married because he was turning 30 soon. He admitted he had thought about that, and said he wanted to marry me. We’ve been married 12 years, and love each other very much, although of course we’ve had ups and downs during our marriage, including, briefly, marriage counseling. For my husband and me, getting married was a combination of loving each other and being at a stage in life when marriage made sense. I think either of us could have been happy with someone else, but we were together and in love during the right stage of life (for us) to get married.

    11. To be honest – I think a lot of guys are like that. They date lovely women who they don’t marry because they are not ready. They marry who they are dating when they are ready to be married.

    12. I have heard a lot of men say this. It’s not a love thing, it’s a timing thing. They pick someone good enough to have kids with.

        1. I agree, and it makes me disappointed in these men as a single lady. It seems like they see women as interchangeable dolls, with very limited differences in personality. Is she hot enough? Is she willing to do the things I want to do/ want her to do (S*x, household chores, emotional labor, etc.)? Great, good enough, let me lock that down and move on with my important life plan!

           Then, in 10 years they are divorced either because she leaves because she realizes she’s just an upgraded Stepford wife in his opinion, or because as he lives with her he realizes she is not an upgraded Stepford wife, and he didn’t sign up for a real person as a wife! And, they are back on the market at 40 looking to do it again!

           1. This is unfortunate but I believe it is correct in many cases. Men want an administrative assistant. The arrangement holds for a few years, through a few kids, and then falls apart as one spouse starts to see what is going on.

    13. 1. This dude is 100% trying to start an affair with you or with someone else. You don’t just go around saying you’re not in love with your wife. Uncool.

        Anyway, we got married because we really really enjoyed each other’s company, and thought the drudgery of life to come (career decisions! retirement planning! caring for aging parents!) would be more fun with the other by our side and that our combined faults and strengths complimented each other well. We wanted the legal and financial security that a binding agreement like marriage brings, to know we were there to support each other if, say, someone got hurt or lost their job and couldn’t work or wanted to make a huge career change the other person agreed on. I want to make decisions with the bonus of his input and carry them out with him there to support me. Being married provides a level of trust in another person that I personally couldn’t have if we were not in a legally binding situation that would make it basically impossible to say “I’m out tomorrow you’re on your own bye”. The security of the complexity of marriage enables me to make decisions and take risks I wouldn’t otherwise, and the same for my husband. My income has more than doubled since we’ve been married because I’ve been able to take risks and make decisions knowing there was a committed emotional and financial safety net/champion in my corner.

        It is nice for both of us to have someone to remind us to take care of ourselves, to say “I know you’re feeling tired right now, but I don’t think you should cancel that dinner with your friend.” and be right. Someone you can 100% be yourself around. Someone that, when something you find outrageous happens in a social setting, you can lock eyes with and know that they get it and you will definitely be discussing it and laughing on the way home later. It’s fun to have someone you can’t wait to tell a funny story about your day to. Someone I can talk about retirement planning with in the afternoon, put kids to bed with in the evening, and then go on a wonderful dinner date that night, and enjoy them all almost equally.

        Also, I came into the marriage with a child from a previous marriage (where I did NOT get married for the right reasons), and “stepdad” carries a lot more weight with society than “mom’s boyfriend”.

        1. I am the poster below who only got married because it made logistics easier, but the feelings you describe so beautifully are how I knew that it was The One. And those feelings made me not think twice to finally get married when the circumstances arose, even though I still think the government treats marriage in ways that solidify patriarchal structures. But for all the reasons you state, I was ok bending on that philosophical stance.

    14. I met THE guy for me, but we weren’t interested in a piece of paper from the government, and not religiously affiliated. We were going along happily in a deeply committed relationship. Then I got a job offer abroad, and we married so he could come with me. For us it’s not much different, except that we have our wedding anniversary in addition to the day we met. A lot of other people seemed to take our relationship much more seriously after we got married. shrug emoji.

    15. I knew my husband was The One because I was incredibly in love with him, our values were aligned, I thought he’d make a terrific dad and we shared a similar sense of humor. And he felt similarly and was confident I was the one for him immediately. But I was ready to get married sooner than he was. When we were 26 and had been dating a couple years, I basically told him I wanted to get married soon and he needed to get on board. It wasn’t exactly an ultimatum because I didn’t say “marry me or I’ll leave you” but I made my feelings clearly known and he went along with it, even though he said on his own timeline he would have probably gotten married closer to 30. I’ll admit that some friends had started getting married and that made me more eager to get married, but only because I knew I’d found the one. My friends’ lives didn’t have anything to do with choice of guy and I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to get married if I hadn’t found the one (I knew my previous BF was not the one and freaked when he talked marriage).

        1. Same. We’d been dating for a little over 4 years; I was 25 and all of our friends were getting married. It was clear to both of us that marriage was the end game but he was waiting for x, y, z things to fall into place before proposing and getting married. I said, I don’t care about life being perfectly in place, I just want to be married to you. He proposed 9 months later. X, Y, Z things fell into place about 6 months after we got married.

    16. We are Very Old (at the time I was 57, he was 68) and we were having a grand old time dating and hanging out at both our houses and generally being very much a loving and committed couple but not really thinking about marriage. For myself, my thought was “maybe in a few years when we retire but for now things are fine so if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

        Then a close friend of ours died unexpectedly and we realized that maybe we didn’t have all the time in the world, and yes, we really wanted to be married. And six months later we were.

        And on the merits? He’s just the best man I’ve ever met and I adore him to pieces in every way. And strangely he feels similarly about me.

        1. I still remember when this happened and you were freaking out because you thought you didn’t want to get married again and then realized that you did, because it was him :-). Probably one of my best memories from a decade on this site.

           1. Aw, that’s so sweet! Thanks for remembering! :-)

           2. I remember this too! So sweet!

    17. I feel like I have good perspective on this because I did NOT want to get married for most of my 30s. I was married and divorced young, and then was really, REALLY not interested in being tied down again. I had an awesome, independent life, a good job, great friends, tons of travel, etc. I dated but walked away from a lot of good guys when it became apparent that they had marriage on their minds.

        And all that time, I had this great guy friend. We never dated because we weren’t always single at the same time and because I think I kept him at a bit of a distance because I subconsciously knew there could be more and I was enjoying my freedom too much. But over the years, he became my very best friend (I was always attracted to him). I hit 38 and decided I was going to have a baby and of course I discussed that decision with him like I do everything else important in my life. Initially he offered to be my donor, but as we kept talking about it, it became apparent that there was no good reason at all why we shouldn’t be doing this together, as a couple.

        So almost a decade after we met, I’m pregnant and we’re engaged, and I think all the time about how lucky I am that this person who knows we so incredibly well is also the person I’ll get to come home to every day.

        1. Aw, I love this!

    18. We were super young, poor, and in college and absolutely head over heels in love with each other.

        He is also incredibly attractive, talented, and has a heart of gold. He is a saint. I knew that no one would compare and it’s proven true–he’s aged incredibly well too–still a hottie. We are in our second decade and loving it more and more.

    19. We were crazy about each other and we had been together for long enough that I was confident he was a great partner for me and vice versa (similar lifestyle, values, goals, etc.). We were in our early 30s and had each been in serious long-term relationships, so I think we both had a good sense of what’s out there and felt really lucky to have found someone that we’re really compatible with. He didn’t particularly care about timing around getting officially married, and we weren’t planning to have kids so that wasn’t a consideration. After a few years of living together, I decided I wanted the legal and social benefits of marriage, so I told him I’d like to get married, he agreed, and we went for it. Several years later and I am still absolutely delighted to have him as my partner.

16. Hi Ladies!

    I am kind of freaking out. My last FT role was as Director of Sales & Marketing at my father’s startup, where I excelled but it was pretty toxic. I left in January and have been working on my own projects while continuing to consult for my dad here and there. I recently was hired as a commission only sales consultant at a really early stage startup that I connected with on LinkedIn. They want to bring me in FT with a base of 50k as soon as possible and I very much wanted that… except that I was just DM’d by a recruiter about a VP Sales & Marketing role. I honestly did not know that it was possible for me to be up for a role like that. I have about 5 years of sales and marketing experience. My job search had not been going very well – I was applying for Account Exec roles and I think I wasn’t making it past hiring algos because I also did marketing. The VP role is in my industry. Could I be a ringer candidate? Does it sound like this could be real? Thoughts? Thanks.

    1. There is zero downside to exploring the recruiter opportunity. Tell the other place you’re currently consulting with that you’d like to stay consultant through year end for whatever reason (tax reasons, personal reasons, doesn’t matter – it doesn’t prevent you from working with them now) and explore the VP position.

    2. Why are you freaking out instead of contacting the recruiter and asking for more information?

       1. I already did! The call is set up for tomorrow. I guess I just didn’t see this as a real possibility. I don’t know. The good news is that now that I’ve calmed down, I can see that I’ve already done everything the recruiter described. I think the title is throwing me off, honestly. Thank you.

    3. Why wouldn’t you pursue it? You won’t know if you don’t try.

17. I got a big raise and want to treat myself by investing in a nice purse. $1K budget, would prefer a tote or shoulder bag (not a crossbody or smaller handbag), something classic so probably black. Any suggestions?

    1. Something from Frank Clegg?

       1. Thank you for the rec. They’re based in my state! Sold! Happy to support a local brand. Their bags look fabulous, too.

    2. I would love to buy the Senreve Maestra! Can’t afford it yet, so I can’t speak to how it actually is. It would definitely be my pick for a splurge bag, though.

       1. That’s a beautiful bag with nice pockets for organization.

    3. I wanted to do this and ended up buying a very gently used Chloe bag off Poshmark (more like 2k new) instead. Might be worth seeing what’s on there (or Real Real) you like.

18. Drooling over this dress.

19. A few years ago, I noticed that the yoga mommies and working women not afraid of post-recession branding in my city were going all in on Goyard totes vs the LV Neverfull. My guess was b/c you had to go to Paris to get the Goyard (always monogrammed), it was more exclusive and less likely to be fake. But guess what — the Neverfull has staged a bit of a comeback where I see them all the time now, much more so than the Goyards. Crazy!

    Me, I’m just a spectator (my bag is an on-sale OG which is at least 5 years old).

    1. My guess? Those women now have slightly older children that will wreck their nicer/newer bags with cheetoe hands and the like grabbing gum, mints, snacks, change etc. out of their purse. So they’re switching to the less expensive large bags they already own.

    2. You don’t have to go to Paris. That’s not my style, but I know there is a San Fancisco shop that’s been around for ages.

    3. I think the Neverfull is just more neutral – some of the Goyards are in kind-of-bright colors. There is a woman (older, extremely elegant) in my building who wears very, very expensive suits and bags. Honestly, I see her with the Neverfull a LOT more than any other bag she owns (including a couple of to-die-for Chanel handbags).

       1. There are Goyard locations in SF, LA, and NY. I don’t know how long the LA & NY ones have been in business, but the SF one is very old.

20. How often do you change your makeup look? Do you buy new products fairly often, or just rebuy the same thing over and over again? Do you switch up your techniques regularly or just stick with what works? I feel like I’m really fickle in some ways — like I’m always looking for a magical product that’s even better than the one I currently own — yet I don’t know that my overall look changes that much. Now that I’m closing in on 40, I feel like the formula is a huge dealbreaker; the flaws of a not-quite-right foundation/concealer are just much more obvious on my skin now. The biggest change I’ve made in the past year is wearing foundation primer, which I always believed to be a huge gimmick.

    1. I’m the same as you. I like trying new products (almost obsessively – I’m a VIB Rouge member at Sephora if that give you an indication) and methods. My look is mostly the same day-to-day, but it changes year to year based on what I think is most flattering (which is partly due to changes in my skin/features and partly due to trends). In the same vein as your experience with primer, I’ve started “baking” which I always thought was way too extra, but I love my Hourglass Translucent Setting Powder so much that I gave it a go and loved the results.

    2. Caveat that I’m a makeup geek and buy new products to try and explore new makeup looks as a hobby.

       However my base makeup and routine stays the same. I switch up eyeliner occassionally and play with eyeshadows but once I’ve found a holy grail foundation, concealer, blush and nude lipstick, those stay put until some external change (condition of skin usually) makes me change. For everyday look I also stick with the basics because of time and efficiency – the colors may change but I’m going to be wearing a pearl finish neutral color on the lid with a matte slightly darker version of that in the crease.

21. I would love to buy the Senreve Maestra! Can’t afford it yet, so I can’t speak to how it actually is. It would definitely be my pick for a splurge bag, though.

    1. Sorry, meant for the poster asking for purse suggestions above.

22. Any tips for changing jobs (within the org but a completely different role) near the end of a project without feeling guilty? I’m to be offered a new post starting Jan 1st but my current project doesn’t wrap up until mid Feb and my manager will try to convince me to stay until it’s done. They may not be replacing me immediately but the team is due to grow anyway in 2020.
    For context, I’m not in the US and would have to give 1 month notice to leave the company entirely.

    1. Are you opposed to staying with current team through project completion? One strategy might be to ask new manager and old manager to fight it out themselves. Give new manager the heads up that you expect old manager to push back on timing and see how she’d like you to handle it.

    2. Depends on your company culture but in all the companies I’ve worked in, the management would try to work something out, especially if it’s a project that is acknowledged by many to be critical to the business. It’s not a reason not to take the job.

23. Can someone explain cosigning on a home mortgage? I have only recently discovered that people have parents who co sign on their home loans, but I’m unclear on what that really means or what advantage it confers, if any. I know co-signing means that if you don’t pay, the person who signed will have to pay; but these aren’t people who are likely to not pay their mortgages. Living in NYC and DC I know a HUGE number of people whose parents give them their down payment — all of it or 1/2 of it or whatever, and that advantage is clear — it allows you to buy sooner because you aren’t saving the down payment for years and years; or it allows you to buy more house because you can add your saved up down payment to your parents’ contribution and buy something bigger; or it allows you to buy with a much smaller mortgage because your down payment plus your parents’ contribution is well over 20% so you’re looking at a shorter term and/or lower monthly payment. What exactly is the benefit of co signing though?

    1. Getting approved to buy more house.

    2. A friend of mine at my old law firm bought and closed before we started as first year associates, so her parents co-signed the mortgage because she was K through JD and hadn’t had a full-time job for more than a few months at at ime.

    3. Contrarian view: if a bank says that your solo credit isn’t good enough on its own, believe it. Co-signing is (literally) borrowing trouble. Ain’t nothing wrong with waiting and saving.

    4. I would guess it’s to avoid paying gift tax.

       1. No I don’t think this has anything to do with it. It’s still a gift to repay someone’s loans. And for most people I know who had parents co-sign, it was just for purposes of securing the loan and the child paid the debt in full.

          1. It’s not a gift to repay a loan if your name is on the loan. Just like it’s not a gift to put down the down payment if your name is on the mortgage/house.

    5. Just like with any other loan, if you have a wealthier co-signer you can get a bigger loan. So you can buy a more expensive house.

       1. This OP is right. My dad said that he did not want to be responsible if I didn’t pay, so he did not cosign, but paid for the coop outright and put my name on the stock certificates. So as far as the coop knows, I had alot of money and I just cover the maintnance now (Dad pays it out of my checking account).

    6. We offered to cosign for a family member because of two reasons. One, a portion of their income is from self-employment and varied wildly.

       Two (and the more important factor) was that they would briefly carry two mortgages as they would have had to do some renovations (think: turning a 3 season home into a 4 season home) before moving.

       We were and are willing and able to carry both mortgages; however, my understanding is that the cosigner is often for people with high income potential but lower current income and wealthy parents willing to ‘help out’. FWIW, never an option for me (for many reasons).

24. Might be a little late – but I hope you can help with a travel issue I just had. When I checked out of a hotel, I saw a charge to one of the hotel restaurants that I didn’t use during my stay. The hotel explained, someone must’ve used my room number by accident. The restaurant check requires a name and a signature, in addition to a room number, so I was confused why the hotel or restaurant didn’t catch the error. The hotel said the restaurants don’t have a way to check that. I was floored – surely this can’t be how most hotels with restaurants, shops, etc. operate? Someone must be in charge of confirming that the room number and signature/name match???

    1. I don’t see how confirming the signature would be that easy, necessarily, but they should be able to match the name with the room number.

    2. You caught it. That is how this works.

       1. Exactly how it works..always check your receipts

    3. I don’t know how they’re supposed to match your signature up, they’re not handwriting experts. And many adults have sloppy signatures so it seems hard to even check a name – Joe Roe written in sloppy cursive can easily look like Jane Doe.

    4. Yes, and that person is the guest paying the final bill… (sorry a bit sn@rky there).

       I guess to improve security, the hotel could ask everyone charging something to a room to show ID and then the hotel would confirm it was the name of a registered guest in that room… but that would be contrary to the goal of making you feel welcomed (vs carded) and like charging to the room is effortless play money. So they probably figure it’s a better policy to have a few guests catch errors rather than put a chilling effect on room charges generally.

       1. Yeah I’m not suggesting that hotels scrutinize the signature or card everyone. A cursory glance at the check when you’re entering it onto my bill would show you that the name on the check doesn’t match mine. Surely most hotels must do that? To say, we just let anyone off the street write down a random room number and charge whatever they want, seems absolutely nuts to me!

          1. No, they don’t. Hospitality is a low-wage, high-turnover industry and billing errors are ridiculously common. I look at these all day long as part of my job and am constantly harping on travelers to scrutinize their bills carefully. Higher end hotels aren’t any better about it than lower end establishments. As much as it’s a pain to deal with during checkout, it’s much more painful to sort it out over the phone once they’ve already been paid.

    5. I mean, maybe but also mistakes happen and the people working at hotels are human . . . I don’t know that I would be “floored” about this.

       1. I’m not floored that a mistake happened. I’m floored that the hotel informed me that they have no policy in place to look at the room number and name written in the check and make sure the two things match the hotel records before charging the room. That’s not a mistake, that’s a policy decision. So what I’m wondering is – is this common? Do all hotels have this lack of control?

          1. But a lot of people don’t have handwriting that is easy to read. Or are sharing a room with someone, such that their name may not be on the room reservation.

             But also, how does the hotel benefit from checking? Right now, they have a system that works and, I assume, easily remove the charge if you question it. But some percent of people won’t look, so the hotel still gets some money. If they checked all of the bills, they would get paid for none of the ones were the name didn’t match that on the reservation, even if it was a valid charge.

    6. I’m pretty sure the signature you give on a credit card transaction is never checked until you dispute a charge.

    7. For eating at the restaurant? I don’t see how that would be possible given the volume they deal with and how bad many people’s handwriting is, and it is easy enough to have guests catch it when reviewing the final bill. For room service? It’s basically solved by the fact that they are delivering to the room.

       1. +1. Though I guess we’ve found a way to eat free at hotels …

          1. ha, my first reaction upon the hotel telling the OP it was “accidentally” the wrong room number was uhhhh yeah right someone most definitely wanted a free meal!

             1. It happens, though. I have on occasion transposed the room numbers when signing for a meal or bar tab.

    8. this has happened to me before. i travel a fair amount for work, and I wouldn’t say it is extremely common, but it definitely isn’t unheard of. obviously, implementing measures like checking ID every time someone uses the room # to pay a bill aren’t worth the hassle. the hotel has assessed that it makes more sense to just let things run and deal with any discrepancies on the back end. You dealt with it.

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