Email us questions at [email protected], subject line “businesslady.” Previous installments can be found here.
Dear Businesslady,
I have a situation at work that is stressing me the heck out! I’ve been an associate at my current firm for about three years now. It’s a great place to work and I think I’m fairly good at my job. When I first started, I worked most closely with one of the partners, let’s call her Julie. At first, I worked mostly on whatever Julie needed help with, but over the past year or so I have taken on more projects on my own. Since I started at the firm, Julie has had two kids and gone on maternity leave twice. During that time, I managed her projects, and handed them back over to her when she got back.
We are now working on a major project that requires multiple people — there is certainly more than enough work to go around! The problem is that Julie is driving me crazy. She has taken three vacations already this year, each more than a week long, and was also out sick for more than a week. When she is out, her tasks fall to me. That’s plenty stressful, as I’ve had to do two people’s jobs for over a month all told so far this year. But even worse, when she gets back she is very passive aggressive and possessive. She never thanks me for picking up the slack (petty to want, I know, but it would be nice!) and she criticizes minor errors. The last in particular drives me crazy because she is right! I should have formatted that part of the report differently! But mistakes like that happen when you are doing two people’s jobs.
Our firm is small, and while we do have a set leave policy (which she’s already exceeded for the year), it is not strictly enforced. And even when she is here, she’s only half present — she’ll get in late and leave early, and make mistakes she shouldn’t. I get that being a parent to two kids under three is stressful, and it’s a position I might one day find myself in. I am trying to find compassion here. If it were just picking up the slack on projects, I would be stressed but could handle it. But the fact that she is not just unappreciative, but actually hostile is really unpleasant.
Julie and I worked well together in the past, and there are parts of her job that I simply could not do. She is much better at dealing with clients than I am, for example. I don’t want her job — I just want her to do her job! I feel like she thinks I’m All About Eve-ing her, and I feel like she is taking advantage of me. It’s not a good situation, and I’m not sure how to fix it. Any advice would be much appreciated!
Dear Stressed,
I’m tackling coworker drama today (more on that below), and I think a lot of people will relate to the situation you’re struggling with. It’s one thing to have a coworker whose antics are so comically awful that they almost become a source of entertainment. It’s another thing to work closely with someone who is making your work-life miserable through a series of individually minor incidents. And then once you get to the point where your default mode is “annoyed” (what some might call the bitch-eating-crackers phase) it’s almost impossible to proceed with a normal, healthy, well-functioning workplace relationship.
But the fact that your compassion well hasn’t run completely dry yet makes me feel like there’s hope here. And you offer some useful perspective on where Julie’s coming from too, even if it’s (understandably) colored by your own frustration.
I think the key word in your letter is “possessive.” In keeping with a grand tradition of counterproductive human behaviors, it’s pretty common for people who are worried about their place in the office hierarchy to double down on reinforcing it. This is in no way effective, and it has the added benefit of irritating everyone who’s around to see it happening. (Pro tip to those who are prone to this tendency: stop it right now; you’re not fooling anyone, and no one cares to hear your thoughts on how integral you are.)
In addition to the demands of parenthood, I’m sure Julie actively feels like The Person Who’s Not Pulling Her Weight Anymore—on top of all the other baggage that comes with combining motherhood with a demanding career. By nitpicking your work, she’s reasserting her status; by not thanking you, she’s probably trying to develop a counter-narrative in which she unequivocally deserves this level of assistance due to her unassailable importance. There may even be a dimension in which your previous camaraderie makes you feel “safe” as a dumping ground for all her work-related insecurities.
All of which is bullshit, obviously, and now that it’s starting to wear on you, it’s time to reboot your dynamic. You guys need to have a conversation—not about these issues specifically, but also not not about them either. I’m a fan of the “go out to lunch” technique, but you can pick something that fits your particular history: lunch, coffee, happy hour, whatever. Pick a moment when it seems like you both have the time to talk one-on-one and make it happen.
When you do sit down together, begin by establishing common ground. How are the kiddos? What’s the deal with [show you both enjoy/longstanding workplace inside joke/etc.]? If she complains about her own work stuff, try to think about how that might be influencing some of her more negative behavior.
At some point—as naturally as possible—you want to pivot to the “let’s fix this” part of the talk. The exact path you take will depend on your respective personalities and the vibe of the conversation thus far, but you might start with: “I feel like you’ve been really frustrated by some of the minor mistakes I’ve been making, and I feel like I’ve been making them because I’m so overwhelmed. How can we work together to get things back on track?” Ideally this will open up a dialogue where you can each accept responsibility for the ways you’ve contributed to the current pattern, vent (nicely) about external factors, and develop a plan for avoiding the same issues in the future. If all goes according to plan, the result will be a hard reset on your working relationship that keeps the negativity at bay for a while.
Of course, that’s the optimistic view of things. The pessimist in me says that this will do nothing, or possibly even exacerbate the worst parts of your dynamic in a kicking-the-hornet’s’-nest kind of way. But you should do it anyway.
Even if The Talk goes horribly awry, you’ll still be in a better spot: you’ll have gotten things off your chest, you’ll have a better sense of where Julie is coming from, and you’ll know that you you at least tried to patch things up. A reasonable person in Julie’s shoes will see your actions as an olive branch and will welcome the opportunity to make everyone’s work-life easier. An unreasonable person will double down on everything that’s causing problems in the first place, implicitly declaring “I am not a reasonable person” in the process. Knowing your enemy—including the fact that they are, in fact, your enemy—is crucial to overcoming any kind of challenge. So when you view things in a big-picture context, hashing things out with Julie is a win/win.
If you conversation is productive, then your problem is solved right there. If not, then you can decide what the best course of action is based on the current reality (i.e., that Julie is not going to change). Maybe you talk to your boss/colleagues about your workload and developing strategies for minimizing Julie’s involvement. Maybe you mentally append “okay, but you’re THE WORRRRRRRST” after every interaction you have with her. Maybe you look for a new job and leave your coworkers to deal with that nonsense. Maybe some combination of all the above. Whatever the solution, you’ll be able to pursue it with a clear conscience, unburdened by “maybe I’d be more understanding if I had kids too” and “but we used to work so well together.”
My hope, though, is that she’ll be relieved to have the chance to start afresh. Workplace possessiveness, like so many self-defeating habits, is hard to stop once it starts. But if she’s able to see you as an ally—and not a vulture coming to pick at the carcass of her professional relevance—she might be able to relax into her old self again.
—Businesslady
* * *
Dear Businesslady,
I’m a woman in my 60s, and I need some advice about how to deal with the changing values of the workplace. I work for a midsized company, but my division has changed little in the past decade. Most of my colleagues are past 50. The one change has been the addition of “Molly” who started 4 years ago in a part-time position, and is now in her late 20s. I know many details of Molly’s life, including the fact that she lives with her parents and the reason she only works part-time is so she can pursue her artistic ambitions. Though she’s not had any real success, she firmly believes that she’s going to ‘make it big’ and somehow become rich and famous.
I think that is ridiculous. I been on my own since I was 16, and I cannot fathom how a woman pushing 30 feels that she can sponge off her parents. I’ve told her many times that she needs to grow up and take responsibility for herself. I’ve encouraged her toward full-time jobs within the company. But she has gotten hostile toward my advice, and now I’ve been told by HR that I must restrict my conversations with her to what’s necessary for the job!
What do I do? How can I trust the decisions she makes at work when I know that she makes such poor ones in her personal life? Does character simply not matter anymore? When I was young, a woman who did not know her place was quickly reminded, and they were the better off for it. Some of my colleagues are retiring soon, so it’s quite possible that we could end up with a few more Mollys in the division. Have arrogance and ridiculous ambition replaced the value of hard work and being grateful for what one has? Has the workplace changed so much, or have I passed through the looking glass?
Call me,
Knows my Place
Dear Place-Knower,
This letter is a trip. Nicole Cliffe and I even think it might be fake. But whether it’s legit, utterly fabricated, or somewhere in between (perhaps penned by “Molly” as a way of thinking through the motivations of her busybody coworker?), I think it’s a useful jumping-off point for discussing the potential problems of entangling the personal and the professional.
The thing is, as much as it’s easy to say, “oh my god, lady, back off on Molly already,” I suspect we’ve all been in a similar position—albeit, hopefully, less outspoken about it. Almost everyone has had a coworker whose life is just one giant trainwreck, and who generates an internal monologue to match: how can someone get evicted twice / you’re clearly about to get dumped / no I can’t lend you $20 / why on earth would you think that outfit was work-appropriate / yes of course the “cruise” you “won” turned out to be a scam / etc. etc. etc. People like this seem to exist to make us feel better about our own degree of shit-together-having while simultaneously reminding us how petty and judgmental we’re capable of being. And yes, they’re a huge pain to work with.
Molly sounds like she’s suffering from a serious maturity deficit, and it’s probably true that she could stand to be more realistic about her career prospects. But if you’ve been banging that drum so hard that HR has gotten involved, then you’re out of line here too. It’s just not okay to appoint yourself as your colleague’s life coach, no matter how well-intentioned (or right) you happen to be. It’s not really okay to do this with your friends either (whether work-friends or otherwise); if someone specifically asks, “here’s a problem I’d like your help in fixing,” then maybe share your suggestions, but still be prepared to have them ultimately ignored or discarded.
A few years back, I was venting to my grandma and some of her similarly octogenarian associates about a friend who was making Many Choices I Deemed Incorrect. At the end of my rant, I sighed and said, “But of course, saying this to him would do nothing—he’ll either figure it out, or he won’t, and all I can do is just be supportive from a distance.” Grandma and crew all nodded so vigorously and so meaningfully that it felt like an affirmation: yes, you’ve finally figured out the core truth of human relationships. If you’ve been independently navigating the world for close to half a century, surely you’ve had the opportunity to come to this realization as well—micromanaging another person’s life won’t just aggravate them, it’s also a flat-out waste of your time. There are plenty of things I’d like to go back and tell my younger self in theory, but I also know that people were telling me those things, in real time, and I didn’t see the wisdom in their advice until I’d learned the lessons for myself. Molly will grow up, or she won’t, but either way you need to accept that it’s not your problem.
So, with that out of the way, let me quickly answer your real questions: What do I do? Treat her like any other coworker and limit your chitchat to neutral topics free of your own personal judgment. How can I trust the decisions she makes at work when I know that she makes such poor ones in her personal life? Pretend you don’t know about her personal life, and if she does screw up something work-related, see “treat her like any other coworker” above.
The rest of your queries are basically rhetorical, so I’ll leave them be—although I should note that I have a hard time sympathizing with your laments over the supposedly “changed workplace.” First of all, I’d argue that people have been making bad choices for as long as they’ve had the free will to do so; second of all, it’s dangerous to romanticize an era that was basically defined by its exclusion or marginalization of everyone who wasn’t a straight white male. So there.
It’s a big world out there, and for all the people who are badass and thoughtful and funny and smart and perceptive, there are also people who are deluded and ungrateful and entitled and immature and incompetent. It’s not an exact science, but I’m pretty sure that the best way to edge yourself toward the former camp is to avoid scrutinizing the latter one. And if you simply must rail against the poor decision-making that inevitably surrounds us all, do it on your own time.
—Businesslady
Tags: advice, business, dear businesslady, jobs
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For as long as humans have been existing they have been making bad choices and/or choices others don’t agree with. This is like, a central theme in all literature. I’m pretty sure there are cave paintings depicting someone going “I TOLD YOU, Krog, not to chase that mastodon into a corner, now you have a flattened leg and you’re going to ask us all to look after your children. Dammit, Krog, listen next time! I’m tired of watching you fuck up and winter is coming!”
My office includes a dour grandmother who enjoys policing the office for banned fragrances and facebook use. But that doesn’t mean I presume ALL dour grandmothers behave this way. Every office has a nutball, I think it’s a mandatory section in modern life.
Banned fragrances? Are these just fragrances that the nana lady doesn’t like and thus has banned them? I hope so, as that is bananas.
I’m actually kind of on board with banned fragrances, mostly due to the memory of headaches triggered by crowded college lectures (so much vanilla perfume and cheap cologne). If it’s an office with sensitive people working or coming there (e.g. an allergist’s clinic) especially.
And I kind of hope one of them is bananas. Bananas: nice. Banana perfume in your office: yeeeeeurgh!
We’ve had to ban all fragrances in my office as the office nutball would apply cheap perfume aggressively when she knew she would be working with her arch nemesis.
That’s amazing. The bad lady seductress lady in The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold tries to do that to Miles as she knows he’s allergic to her perfume. He outwits her by putting in noseplugs before their meeting though. Am imagining that you live in the universe of the Vorkosigan Saga now.
ahhhhh <3 <3 <3 love this
That is hilarious! Did she angrily spray herself down in the office or did she just come in some days with an extra heavy perfume application?
I… may have done something similar before. It wasn’t cheap perfume and I wouldn’t spray piles of it or target a particular person, but for a while I did have an “angry” perfume that I loved but was probably off-putting to most people and when I was feeling particularly like saying “fuck you all” to some of my coworkers, I’d wear that perfume to work instead.
Similar to what Ninjajulia said below, EXCEPT only applied to people she doesn’t like. Intern’s Georgio (that makes me sneeze) totally cool. Friend’s subtle and light BPAL Ophelia? BANHAMMER.
Which is what makes her the office nutball.
RE: LW1: Consider reading Crucial Conversations prior to having The Talk with your coworker. The tips/strategies/etc don’t really help with the truly unhinged toxic humans in your life, but most humans in your life will not be that terrible, and I have found the book to be very helpful.
“When I was young, a woman who did not know her place was quickly reminded, and they were the better off for it”?
If you’re 65 in 2015, then you entered the workforce in…1982, maybe? Decades ago, sure, but we’re not talking about millinery shops and secretarial pools. This letter reads like someone trying to imagine what it was like for women working in The Old Days.
A person who is 65 now would most likely have started working in the 1970s. Which was The Old Days as far as a lot of this stuff goes.
Not that this letter doesn’t read like a total hoax, but I graduated from high school in the 1980s, and I’m not old enough to be anyone’s grandmother.
If the LW is in her “60s,” and has been on her own since 16, then she entered the work force sometime between 1962 and 1970.
Possibly closer to 1968. For the record, that’s the year my 65-year-old mother entered the workplace, and she noted that it was the same year hats and gloves were no longer required for the secretarial dress code, so…literally millinery shops and secretarial pools.
Regardless, the letter seems suspicious.
Oops, haha. My math was wrong. Probably on account of I’m a Millennial, so I got trophies just for taking math tests and I’ve never had to work a day in my life :).
Weird letter regardless! I also agree with the folks downthread who think this sounds kiiiiind of like an older dude.
I’m also deeply annoyed by the phrasing “they were the better off for it.” They may have been better off, or they may have been the better for it, but not both.
Hah.
If she started working at 16 (I think she said she’s been independent since 16), that would be 1966, which really was a different world. But still. Long past the Victorian era. Did anyone put Mary Tyler Moore in her place?
My mother started university in 1980 and she still tells me the story of how her stats prof flat out told the class on the first day that women couldn’t do math and should just drop the (required) course because they would probably fail. The administration did not care at all.
When my mom was in university (late seventies/early eighties) she had a history professor tell the class that “Japan invading [country] would’ve been like raping an eighty-year-old woman- sure you could, but why bother?”
And no, he was not fired.
(Of course, I also had an English professor in the year of our lord 2009 tell the class that “first-year girls dress more immodestly than fourth-year girls because they’re more insecure.” I dropped the class in a rage, but as far as I know, he still works at that school.)
As university support staff, I have the feeling that sometimes the administration cares, but lives in terror of the faculty; also, tenure.
I have a “problem coworker’ eerily similar to “Julie,” who fortunately was not my superior, just my senior and de facto mentor. I brought up the issue with our boss and it’s worked out about as well as it could without coworker just having a drastic change of work ethic (if you want details on working it out, let me know, I’m very proud of my diplomacy there). Now “he’ll either figure it out, or he won’t, and all I can do is just be [understanding] from a distance,” as you say in the response to LW2. That is super super hard, especially because his habits still occasionally make my life harder, but I’m trying to be zen about the whole thing, learn to let go my accumulated resentment.
The scene with the nodding grandmas made me laugh. I’m still pretty young and foolish but I’ve at least realized that truth about human relationships, although acting on that realization (or rather, not acting) is still sometimes very hard & will take more maturing.
(The language of LW2 does seem a bit too pat to be real, but the advice is good! Glad you answered anyways without taking the trollish bait.)
It’s the NOT acting on certain things that are the hardest. I feel like I bite straight through my tongue when visiting my mother-in-law, because I knoooooooow that most things I say won’t be received well but it’s so goddamn hard!
With regard to the first letter, I’m assuming the LW works at a law firm or some other professional firm with a similar ownership structure, and with the caveat that I’m coming at it from the perspective of an associate in BigLaw (which can be harsher and more demanding than smaller law firms, but not always–smaller firms can be cutthroat hell holes). If Julie is a partner and you’re an associate, she’s an owner of the firm and your boss. How you describe your experience sounds completely typical for an associate who is on partnership track–working on a partner’s cases, handling your own projects, increasing workload and responsibility, etc. Her no longer working as many hours as she used to is not your business (her other partners may not be happy with her, but it’s still not your business), and I think if you were even to hint at it with her it would go badly for you. From what you describe, I suspect Julie is a recent partner who paid her dues (in working lots of hours), made partner, and now is enjoying the benefits of being an owner of the firm by easing up on her workload.
If you want to do something about the amount of work you’re being given, I would frame it in terms of trying to get additional help, like, in the form of hiring more associates to work under you, or getting more associates assigned to help out on your cases, or getting a paralegal or someone else to check your documents for formatting issues, etc. And, branch out in terms of trying to build relationships with other partners.
Even though you say Julie is a partner, your letter reads (to me, anyway) like you’re complaining about someone with whom you’re on equal footing, and at least in the firms I’ve worked in, that is not at all the case between associates and partners. You can tell another associate to do her job, but that’s just not something you can say, directly or indirectly, to your boss.
That’s a good point, the letter and response make sense in terms of a “regular” workplace, but in the case that Julie is a partner, if she’s working fewer hours, she’s probably also be getting paid for fewer hours–unless LW1 suspects Julie is billing for work that she’s not getting done because she’s taking so many vacations and short days. Doesn’t mean it’s not an annoyance for LW1, but the issue of workers pulling equal weight matters more when the job is salaried.
It’s not even a matter of salary. Julie probably gets equity so it’s a totally different calculation altogether.
I agree with this comment completely. Not only is Julie not the LW’s co-worker, but as a partner is something more than a superior. She is territorial about her cases not because she is a terrible person, but because she likely brought in those cases and her partnership is based on her relationship with those clients. But the hours that Julie works (or doesn’t) really is a matter for the partners to handle among themselves – and it might not be an issue for the partners because their concern is revenue generated not hours in the office.
If the LW is feeling overworked generally, she could take it up with the managing partner, but I’d hesitate to do that or to complain about Julie specifically. Word gets around and it is better to be the associate that a partner trusts and relies on than one to avoid.
Yes, this. It honestly doesn’t sound quite like biglaw (or even medium law) to me, although maybe. It’s just the way the letter is written is either entirely, shockingly clueless, or it is a different industry, perhaps with a different billing structure. I work in a mid-size firm that has grown quite a bit since I’ve been here, on the west coast, for perspective.
But yes, in an ownership structure like that there is basically no “boss”* to go to, and nothing to be done. Also, the complaints are a bit… obtuse. Like, she doesn’t work enough for your tastes? But she’s a partner? That’s really none of your business.
*maaaaybe the managing partner or another senior partner that you really trust, but that is a total case by case basis and is VERY tricky and risky.
It sounds like Julie is a difficult(ish) partner to work for. In my mind, you have two choices: 1) figure out how to make her happy, thereby making your worklife better, or 2) get out from underneath her, which may require a move in firms if you can’t switch groups or transition to getting more work from other partners. The talk suggested by businesslady, I suspect, would go nothing but badly, unless it was 100% “how can I improve/how can I help improve the workflow”.
Also, the LW should very much stop keeping track of how much leave her boss takes.
it sounds like LW has to keep track inevitably as a result of boss’s leave meaning an overwhelming workload. I would definitely be keeping track mentally if someone else’s absence was screwing up my work life that badly, or if I felt like I couldn’t take any leave myself due to workload.
but yeah, obviously someone is approving the leave and it’s not LW’s place to question whether it’s too much or not for valid reasons. the issues would still be issues whether Julie’s taking 1 or 3 or 10 weeks off.
No, you’re totally right in that way. I should have been more precise, like you: the LW should stop, immediately, thinking about whether or not the leave is valid. If it keeps being overwhelming professionally, that’s a different thing.
In my firm, I don’t even KNOW the firm’s leave policy for partners. Plus it’s totally individual, and likely is individual in Julie’s case. Either the LW’s firm is very different from other professional firms, or her assumption that they are working under the same leave policy as associate vs partner is probably mistaken.
yep, bringing how much leave Julie takes up in a talk with the Big Boss isn’t going to look good at all.
At the risk of sounding too defensive, i wanted to clarify. We definitely don’t have the same leave! But they mail around the leave policy at both the associate and partner level to everyone for some reason- transparency?- so I do know how much she is supposed to take. I think a big part of the problem is that no one IS approving her (or anyone’s) leave. The head boss has made a number of “Julie’s on vacation again?” comments. So that’s an institutional problem, but challenging nonetheless!
Interesting! That does sound like a weird and challenging situation. Good luck! And keep us updated…
Letter writer here! Replying anonymously for obvious reasons. Without getting into too many details on what industry it is, it’s not a law firm. No idea how law firms work, but I think our ownership structure is pretty different– there’s a head boss who technically owns the firm, who we all report to.
Thanks for the good advice all. I certainly wouldn’t bring up the vacation– or any instance in particular– in conversation! But I can’t help but notice, since her work falls to me then.
Anyway I promise I’m not being clueless about how things work in our industry. As much as I dislike confrontation of even the most mild sort, I think it would be a good idea to have a how do we get back on track talk, maybe once this big project is over. Until then, I’ll keep keeping my head down and getting stuff done, which is stressful but manageable.
I just can’t believe that anyone who had worked at any law firm for more than a hot second could be unaware of this power dynamic–either the writer is one of the most profoundly clueless people one could ever meet in professional life, or she’s not working at a law firm.
I think Letter Writer #2, if she in fact is real, could really benefit from watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A6Bu96ALOw
If you assume the fake thing about this letter is that it’s a 60-something man and not a 60-something woman writing, the rest of it makes a lot more sense.
I’m looking particularly at this sentence: When I was young, a woman who did not know her place was quickly reminded, and they were the better off for it. Wishful thinking much?
Also HR getting involved. Older woman ‘advising’ younger woman is annoying, certainly, but probably not concerning to the company from a legal standpoint. Older man getting too aggressive about controlling his young female colleague’s personal affairs? Seems much more like an HR situation.
I don’t want to give HR more credit than it deserves, but any HR department that even tried to be compliant with anything at all would not brush off a harassment complaint based on the gender of the harasser rather than the content of the harassment.
and I think it is totally fake, but I don’t see an older man – especially one who wants women to know their place – getting indignant because a young woman sponges off her parents and has no ambition. Living at home under your parents’ watchful eyes and working a ‘hobby’ job that offers you no real independence is exactly what a young woman’s place is supposed to be, if you’re an old-school sexist. If there’s a real busybody behind this letter, I call woman.
edit: maybe that’s the real tell that this is fantasy, the idea that an HR department would respond correctly and speedily to a valid complaint about a co-worker that interferes with one’s work while also offering no danger of a lawsuit (so, they could have safely ignored it if they didn’t care about enforcing professional behavior and boundaries, and yet, if the letter is to be believed, they didn’t. miraculous.
I think it’s a man trying to ape what he thinks a ‘good’ woman of his generation would say. If he is in his sixties he’s well past the years where women stayed home until marriage but comfortably in a period where women were in the workplace but always in less authoritative roles.
As for HR – I agree they should, but they don’t. If you’re dealing with two complaints – one about older man/younger woman and one about older woman /younger woman – legal is going to be much more concerned about the former than the latter.
A 60-year-old man reading The Toast though? That seems more unlikely, but if I’m off base and this describes anyone in the commentariat, chime in.
Yeah this is probably the hole in my theory tbh. I wouldn’t swear to it, but it makes most sense to me – even as a fake letter! – through this lens.
Gah, I WISH more 60-something men would read The Toast. Read, be silent, and learn. Bless their hearts.
My dad reads the toast and is 62.
I bet there are more than we’d think! And at least one who sends trolly letters, probably still mad about being called a white man who probably owns some books.
I have a lot of problems believing someone like Know My Place reads a site as live-and-let-live as The Toast, but I have no problem believing that someone on their own since 16 would resent a younger person who seems to have life handed to them on a silver platter (don’t we all sort of resent silver-platter people in that way?), so I’m glad the advice was given as if the letter were real! LW, other people’s lives and choices are theirs and are not a judgement or criticism of yours. Molly is just one person, not a representative of Young Women These Days or Those Darn Millenials. It might help to see her decisions as hers alone and not a sign of the impending apocalypse, yeah?
“… it’s dangerous to romanticize an era that was basically defined by its exclusion or marginalization of everyone who wasn’t a straight white male. So there.” motherfuckin’ yes to the nth degree. THE OLD DAYS WERE NOT GREAT HAVE YOU WATCHED MAD MEN AT /ALL/
I’m 99% sure that letter is fake, but one additional point: the cost of housing in many areas has *exploded* since the ’60-’70s (or whatever era the LW is talking about). Even when you adjust for inflation, it was a hell of a lot easier for most young people to afford a place on their own back then, compared to now.
It makes me nuts when older people complain about “kids these days” not doing things the way they did, while completely ignoring the economic advantages they had at the same age (e.g., cheaper housing, cheap gas, affordable college tuition, no student loans, etc.) Most people I know in their 20s are already starting their working lives in debt.
Also, most people of my grandfathers’ age received pretty substantial government subsidies in the form of the GI Bill, VA mortgages, etc., which helped move a lot of folks into a middle-class life. (I certainly don’t begrudge veterans getting those benefits, by any means, but it’s not like you had much of a choice back then during the draft).
I once had the (dis)pleasure of debating an economics professor on Facebook, who started doing the “kids these days are so entitled wanting a raise to the minimum wage, when I had my first job in 1972 I earned $3 an hour and I was happy about it” rant.
I quickly went to an inflation converter and replied, “wow, you’re so progressive! You want people earning the minimum wage to be getting to be getting paid at the same rate that you were paid for your first job? That would be over sixteen bucks an hour! Even in Seattle, they’re only pushing for $15!”
He ignored my point, of course. Sigh.
Ah yes, Baby Boomers took commands to ‘know their place’ so darn well that they were known as the most compliant generation of all time.
Don’t worry, whoever you are, life will crush the dreams out off Molly soon enough.
RE: Know My Place
KMP may have been on her own at 16, and hey, I was too, in the late 80s. But I have a just-turned-19-yr-old around and I tell you the world won’t let her be an adult yet.
Problems she faced last year as a trying-to-be-independent 18 yr old:
Cell phone contract: Needed an adult to sign
Apt rentals: Needed an adult co-signer
Finishing school in a non-traditional way: Needed an adult to sign
Criminal record check for work: Needed an adult to sign
Utilities: Needed an adult co-signer
Student loan: Doesn’t qualify as an independent student for another four years
The only thing she was legally considered as an adult for at age 18 was: driver’s license, join the military, and vote in municipal or provincial elections.
Join the military and be prepared to kill and die for your country! But not yet considered old enough to have her own cellphone.
For fucks sake, world.
Wait what? How old did the adult have to be to sign the papers?
I had this happen when I was getting my first apartment (~19/20 years old) in college. My dad had to cosign or they wouldn’t have rented to me. And my next apartment, right after I graduated, didn’t require a cosigner but did take an extra months rent up front as a deposit.
It’s not so much needing an “adult” to sign as needing someone who has a good/existent credit history saying they’ll be responsible. I had absolutely 0 credit HISTORY at that age, and it’s almost impossible to build without people cosigning your first credit-building activities.
When my mom was in university (late seventies/early eighties) she had a history professor tell the class that "Japan invading [country] would've been like raping an eighty-year-old woman- sure you could, but why bother?"
And no, he was not fired.
(Of course, I also had an English professor in the year of our lord 2009 tell the class that "first-year girls dress more immodestly than fourth-year girls because they're more insecure." I dropped the class in a rage, but as far as I know, he still works at that school.)
I buy the second letter as a person, but not as a Toast reader.
Hah.
If she started working at 16 (I think she said she's been independent since 16), that would be 1966, which really was a different world. But still. Long past the Victorian era. Did anyone put Mary Tyler Moore in her place?
Hey Toast! I’ve read a couple articles today where I’ve been in the middle of the page and then I get pulled to the top or bottom of the screen where a video ad is playing on the side. Not sure if it’s just me, but it’s been hard to get through a whole article without this happening a couple times. Wanted to let you know. Thanks guys 🙂
Sorry Emily!! We are looking into it.
And you know, I just want to add with the ‘how dare this young (almost 30-year-old) lady be sponging off her parents!’ thing.. my brother still lives at home because my mother was basically like “please stay a little longer” because it is easier to have another adult who can drive if you need to see the eye doctor and shouldn’t drive home, if you need help getting the groceries up the stairs, if an adult has to be home to receive packages or get the gas turned back on or whatever and you’re out of the house all the business hours, etc. etc. For some people, an adult child staying at home makes the most sense, and there is very little recognition of that. I mean personally no, I’ve little desire to stay home, but what is the point when it is just spend ongoing chunks of money to rent elsewhere to prove a point of independence?