Oooooh! How very intimate.
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“This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship” a la Casablanca?
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Interview done. Don’t think I messed up too badly but we’ll see!
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Good luck!
I am working in an office for the first time in two years, and the first time ever for my current employer. Somehow, that’s weirder than the office being on the wrong continent.
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There are wrong continents?
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It’s not the one I got out of bed on.
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Went back to the gym for the first time since Covid lockdown (I had canceled my membership - I’ve not been paying for nothing for 2+years! 
) and then immediately went into the working day which mainly involves sitting. My thighs have seized up…
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I am quite puzzled, and mildly annoyed. Puzzled because I don’t know if I should actually feel annoyed. Yesterday I had a nice chat with my manager, quite friendly, discussing the next three weeks (my last ones here). One comment she made is the source of my annoyance. ‘Oh, it has been nice to see the “old you” these last few days’.
I don’t know how to take it. At the time it felt like a nice comment, but as the evening went on I was feeling more and more annoyed about it. I think it has been hard work, specially the last year or year and a half, when we have struggled more, me for time, her for pressure from above and lack of staff among other things. I think her comment was well intended, but it did leave an aftertaste that I have not been happy with. Felt sort of patronizing, in a way?
I thought I’d vent in here. Sorry for the rant, one of those things that help is having the community here for all the support we give each other. Thanks for that.
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Sometimes people just don‘t think these comments through. And I get that it’s hard to think about what we say, often enough I don’t and my mouth is faster than my brain. But growing up more and more (1), most of us learn to do better most of the time. Sometimes these slip through.
The feeling you have now… we call that „the comment had a G’schmäckle“ (an aftertaste, a not so good one, too). On the surface, it seems well-meaning but whatever the intent, it left you feeling like something was off. And so would I. I mean if she noticed you changed in what she perceived in a „negative“ way, maybe as your manager it was up to her to figure out what could be done about it.
(1) Tangentially, I feel like I never stop growing up. I am in my mid 40s and I thought I‘d be good at adulting by now… but whenever I turn around I feel like there‘s another lesson I only just learned.
Changing jobs… I have another part of my partner‘s saga.
Remember how his old superiors negotiated that has to stay on until September? Well, his old boss just quit and is switching to a new position by July 1st. I can‘t even.
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Every so often in my experience someone says something like “I always felt that there was a day at school when they told you how to be a grown-up, and I missed that day”. And everyone in the room agrees.
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You are very much on point, often I may have made comments that people felt hurtful, specially in my teens. I remember my mother (she was always into Zodiac signs for people’s behaviour) saying that we were both Sagitarius, and we were always easily hitting the spot with our arrows. I never gave it much of a thought with regards to Zodiac signs, but I learned through my Uni years to restrain myself, and then 16 years in the UK taught me a lot more to not being so direct. But the odd arrow can scape now and then, it will do me good to remind myslef about it, if anything else.
Regarding adulting… if you saw my late history on my google searches, it’s all D&D and boardgames, with a few incursions in Wikipedia for History stuff… not much adulting there. So plenty of room for improvement (biggest room in the World!). I am also in my mid 40s, and I thought that I would have it figured out by now, but plenty of learning still going on.
Regarding your partner, the double standards like that are soooooo annoying. And those, very often, most companies are completely oblivious to how upsetting they can be.
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This is how you get your employees to quit, and not give notice.
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After a very stressful week last week (I hate quarterly planning season) I logged into Teams today to find a message from one of our senior leadership team objecting to my use of an exclamation mark in an email… I had signed off with “have a nice weekend!”
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
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I feel your senior team have too much time on their hands
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I’d agree, except they are all super busy! The thing that confused me was that they said that the exclamation mark indicated that I objected to their previous email… Rather than the contents of my reply where I politely disagreed with everything they had said indicating my objection 
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This brings memories of the Hurt Feelings song from Flight of the Conchords
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Have you ever been told that you look like a llama?
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Alpaca my bags…
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I’ve always called the exclamation point the businessperson’s emoticon.
However, I’ve never logged it as a symbol of protest.
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