Letters to the Editor
Taliesan
Published Letters: 942 Editor's Choice: 19
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brickbat
[Read the article: The workers I supervise are out of control]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bosses and coworkers aren't there to take your shit.
If they were you would pay them an call it therapy.
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adlibris
[Read the article: The workers I supervise are out of control]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've seen it. I have worked with it. It has nothing to do with them questioning him professionally.
Think about the office misery. Every office has one, a person who is always down, always moaning about something or someone, and who generally guards the stationary cupboard. There is just something about stationary that attracts that sort.
This person is contagious if you aren't careful. They spread and infect perfectly nice employees with a case of Bitch-and-Moan disease. This is because nothing spreads quite like a bad mood and these people are always, always in a bad mood.
Eventually you end up with a critical mass of this. It becomes harder to face it because people being down is simply, well, tiring. More tiring then tedious work. This begins to weaken your own will to work, until finally you feel like shutting your door and keeping it all on the other side of it.
What is worse, those who don't give in to it when it hits this critical mass point are named "teacher's pets" and become outcast, slowly making them less happy until they become dark little stormclouds all of their own.
This situation should not have developed, but now that it has it is going to take a cold, hard mind to fix it. It will take upping their work, and making it known that you won't take people bringing their personal shit to work.
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Anonymous
[Read the article: The workers I supervise are out of control]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Your boss's problem is an old one: She is new to the position and doesn't realise that she doesn't need to do as much as she is currently doing, and she probably has no idea of what you are capable of.
What you need to do is to go to her in person, not in writing but in person, and ask what you can do to help. Put a smile on your face and in your voice, use a relaxed posture and don't power-dress (In fact, don't do that in general. There was once a time when it worked, now it comes across as being dishonest and threatening.) Phrase it as possibly being something you want to learn how to do.
If she is not stupid, and by the sounds of it she isn't she just doesn't trust her staff, she will think better of you for it and give you more work. In time she will grow to trust you more, and give you more difficult work to do.
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What the leftwing offers the Zionist
[Read the article: "Nazis" and "Hitler" -- the Right's casual, trivializing political insults]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I hate to say that Jewish groups are silent on the right's badness for...well, everything and everybody because of the latter's support for Israel, but I think there's something to it. The left offers people who support Israel's right to exist--even those who believe in a two-state solution--nothing. Well, that's the unnuanced view that the right seems to want American Jews to beleve. And so some of us are willing to overlook the apocalyptic and frankly antisemitic source of this support, and let our own home fall under the spell of theocrats.
--Anonymous
The left offers the pro-Israel sect one important thing: The left is willing to treat Israel like an independent country, and not a special case.
With the leftwing you can criticise Israel without being called a Nazi, you can disagree with Israel's policies and you can call for a better Israel - just like you can do with Peru, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, France or Japan right now.
Under the left, Israel is a country, under the rightwing, Israel is the Jewish religion.
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The right reaction to the haircut story
[Read the article: John Edwards banks on sincerity]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]would have been for Edwards to thank his hair-dresser.
"You know, I was dubious about it, I mean, $400 for a haircut? Then this came along and I am frankly just charmed that y'all noticed."
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Anonymous
[Read the article: The workers I supervise are out of control]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Okay, in which case she reminds me of a German woman I met once. She basically thought she knew everything and drove her immediate subordinate into a mental breakdown (Seriously, a not kidding full blown white padded walls breakdown.)
The best bet is to get it together to leave. Start using that extra time you have to look for another job, maybe start studying and when you are ready, politely go over her head and them why you are leaving.
In SA I would suggest seeing a lawyer about suing for constructive dismissal, but I don't think that concept exists in America. (Being as unpleasant as possible in the hopes that your employee will quit isn't legal in SA, which makes being an unpleasant sod-of-a-boss less viable.)