Helicopter Crash
Click on the link in the tweet. The story is unbelievable -- but not implausible.
Hiring the overmommied -- it's worse than you'd imagine. https://t.co/oDedh2PC4t
— Amy Alkon (@amyalkon) July 13, 2019
An excerpt:
I think I'm much better as a mediator because I approached mediation with a lot of humility -- saying to colleagues, "I'm a beginner. Tell me where I go wrong. Tell me where I need to do better." And I listened and worked hard to do better.
Now, I am really comfortable doing it and have my own style -- but it's a style comprised of a lot of "best ofs" from other mediators that I collected both from asking and observing, which came out of being humble enough about my beginnerhood to do that.
Many years ago I was a freelance food writer in Toronto and submitted an article with a recipe for "Maine Clam Chowder". It was accepted.
A few days later, I dropped into the editor's office to submit another article. She showed me the galley for my first article because she was very proud of her attractive layout.
I noticed she had changed the title of the recipe to "Main Clam Chowder" and I asked her why she did that. She told me the state of Maine was spelled without an e on the end. I suggested we look it up in the dictionary. She was VERY annoyed and refused because she KNEW she was right. SHE was the editor of a magazine and I was a poor freelance writer.
She also, sight unseen, refused the article I had brought and it was obvious she would never again buy my work.
When the magazine came out, some people in the industry asked me about the lack of an e. So did some of my friends. I told them the story and offered them her office number if they were curious.
P.S. The magazine did not last very long. I did. I will be 82 soon. Amy asks if people drive to work in cars or pirates. I ride a motorcycle and would use it to go to work. Life is good.
Grandma Elizabeth at July 13, 2019 3:32 AM
The correct response to these snowflakes is;
“Feel free to write your own dictionary. But until your dictionary is as widely accepted as Daniel Websters’, we will be using his. “
Isab at July 13, 2019 5:58 AM
The thread goes on to mention how the young lady called her mother (on speaker) about the incident, and how the mother assured her that the boss was wrong to correct the spelling.
My husband got a text from someone’s mother the other day regarding a paycheck that had not been received. Husband let Mommy know that if Babyboy would submit his hours (which had not happened) by a certain deadline, he would be paid on the next payday. He also let Mommy know that Babyboy could contact him personally. The worker in question is a 20-something man working on a demolition crew.
ahw at July 13, 2019 6:06 AM
The boss does not have to approach this kind of encounter with humility. I'm willing to bet she'd looked up the spelling of "hamster" before bringing said employee in for the conference. The employee could not, or would not, point to a reference that okayed spelling it "hampster" other than her own preference.
You'd think the squiggly red line underneath it in her word processing program would have clued her in; or the fact that Autocorrect autocorrects it to "hamster" - both of which I experienced typing this comment.
I used to work for a woman who used the term "irregardless" frequently. It took all my self-control not to correct her, but she was the team lead so I gritted my teeth and left the correction unuttered. Other than that, she was a decent team lead and a congenial person.
I had another boss who insisted I build database tables with dates as column headers - like a cross tab query, but inside the database in a base table. I finally talked him into using normalized data structures. With that, writing queries became much easier and faster. Adding data to the table was simplified as well, since I no longer had to add a column for every update, but could just run an append query to add data to an existing structure and run a simple cross tab query to get him the data in his preferred format. He never quite understood my logic in doing it that way, but he liked the time and cost savings I achieved through automating both processes.
Sometimes you let the boss have it his/her way and sometimes you fight for your positions. It's in knowing the difference where wisdom begins. You don't fight your boss for "hampster" - especially if you don't have a dictionary to back you up.
Reading the rest of the linked tweet string is amusing. The employee then called her mother on speakerphone in the common area and told Mom that she was hungover and insisted the boss "had no right" to correct her. Mom agreed. Life's gonna smack that kid hard.
That seems to be a persistent thing with some people, rights; as in "you have no right to [inconvenience/correct/contradict] me." Um, folks, that is not what a "right" is.
Conan the Grammarian at July 13, 2019 6:34 AM
"Main Clam Chowder"
Ugh.
PS Psych Today's copy editor changed where I live in my piece from the correct "Venice, California" to "Venice Los Angeles."
This is like referring to Jersey City Newark, or something. Or West Bloomfield Detroit."
Amy Alkon at July 13, 2019 6:49 AM
"Psych Today"
I'd hazard a guess that whomever is responsible for changing Psychology Today into a womyn's journal probably hired said editor.
[My hampster is undecided on whether 'whomever' is proper usage].
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 13, 2019 7:56 AM
@Isab: Were you to tell the young woman to consult “Daniel Webster’s” dictionary, first she’s accuse you of sexism and trying to oppress her, and next you’d be defending your continued employment due to her Title IX complaint.
Wfjag at July 13, 2019 8:03 AM
> The worker in question is a
> 20-something man working on
> a demolition crew.
Crid at July 13, 2019 8:46 AM
Walked through one once.
Probably not a safe vehicle with respect to contemporary design and build standards.
GM should be allowed to make as many new ones as they want anyway.
Crid at July 13, 2019 9:07 AM
I've worked w/ a lot of younger people ( post college through early 30's ) and have found most of the stereotypes to be overblown. But one that's accurate is that they tend to be uncomfortable with criticism a/o contradiction of their ideas, much more so than boomers or X'ers. And it's hard to get them to offer criticism because they see that as 'negative'.
It's to the point that any appraisal has to be re-gauged, so that 'OK' is bad and 'good' is OK. Words like 'awesome' and 'super' need to be peppered in as well, but they're just intensifiers.
to exaggerate their appraisal of things - everything is 'awesome' or 'super' by default. OK means bad.
Kara at July 13, 2019 10:12 AM
It comes from the self esteem movement in schools Kara. Everything is awesome, everyone is getting happy stickers, everyone is the greatest (no matter how impossible that actually is). When a teacher says we have a problem you may be looking at expulsion. There is no middle ground, either perfection of worthless. Which tends to make people a bit neurotic.
Ben at July 13, 2019 10:45 AM
This is not a new phenomenon. A long time ago, as an in-coming college freshman, I had to argue with my college graduate teaching assistant that "floe" as in "ice floe" was an actual word.
She adamantly insisted to me that "floe" was not a word. Mind you, as a GTA, she had finished one degree and was working on an advanced degree, IN ENGLISH, and did not know that "floe" was an actual word.
Of course, we didn't have dictionary.com in those days. My opinion of my professors and instructors was shaken at that point.
WarEagle82 at July 13, 2019 11:00 AM
But... hampster IS an alternate spelling of hamster.
Like colour/color
NicoleK at July 13, 2019 11:41 AM
Hmm, I stand corrected... the dictionaries say hamster and it is the wiktionaries of the world that have hampster as an alternate spelling
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Hampsters
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hampster
So this is a case of something out at large that the more conservative, long standing dictionaries have not adopted
NicoleK at July 13, 2019 11:46 AM
"Colour" is the British spelling of "color."
Like "honour" or "realise" or "fibre" or "defence," British English has different spellings than American English. English has at its roots both Latin and French, so spellings originally varied in both countries.
Lexicographer, Noah Webster, wanted Americans spellings to be distinct from British spellings. He set out to implement a standardized spelling for Americans and wrote a dictionary to accomplish that.
Canadians generally use the British spellings.
"Hampster" on the other hand is a made-up spelling of "hamster" - a child screaming "I want it spelled this way!" - and one not recognized by any reasonable lexicographical authority, on either side of the pond.
Conan the Grammarian at July 13, 2019 12:26 PM
The free dictionary recognizes it though...
NicoleK at July 13, 2019 12:35 PM
I wonder if people who came of age when the Hampster Dance page took off tend to spell it with a P?
NicoleK at July 13, 2019 12:36 PM
To be fair a number of us are just terrible at spelling NicoleK. I can sympathize with her inability and her argument. But not with her trying that argument on a boss. I had a number of English teachers who taught spelling by saying 'Just spell it how it feels.' Which was swiftly followed by 'No, you feel wrong.'
Ben at July 13, 2019 3:56 PM
“Feel free to write your own dictionary. But until your dictionary is as widely accepted as Daniel Websters’, we will be using his. “
Be careful what you wish for. If she were to take you up on that challenge, she'd win, because Daniel Webster never wrote a dictionary. Noah Webster did.
Rex Little at July 13, 2019 4:05 PM
As an undergrad, I presumed sloe gin would get you just as drunk but it would take hold slower… You'd have time to get back to the dorm before throwing up.
Well, no.
Crid at July 13, 2019 5:05 PM
Maybe she thought it was like Hamptons or Hipster. Putting feelings ahead of reality is eventually going to destroy you.
cc at July 13, 2019 5:17 PM
Wait, isn't hampster one of those weaved basket thingamajigs meant for you to dumps your dirty clothing after a long day?
Sixclaws at July 13, 2019 7:15 PM
You may have seen me complain of the advance of Reasoning Deficit Disorder. This is a condition in which the sufferer cannot recognize that they hold two completely incompatible ideas about the same issue; they are loud about the idea they have at the time without ever noticing their errors.
This deal about spelling, and minor assertion about what is correct is a mild case of this disease.
I've noticed two cases on LivePD© which make me think there is an advanced stage of the disease. Two people, confronted by police in two different states, claimed they and police acted differently than we could see on camera, and that, of course, police had no reason whatsoever to be there. They were vocal about it - CONVINCED that their version of events would be revealed on camera playback. No, they *complied* with police instructions. No, they did *nothing* wrong.
Both had warrants. One had warrants for child abuse!
This is worse than the comical efforts of people lying about their drug possession saying, "these aren't my pants", or claiming that the pill bottle isn't theirs when it has their *name* on it.
This means that some people have been told their entire lives that they are so precious that their view of events is correct - there can be no other explanation.
THAT may be what permissive parenting has set up for us: not only a "trap" in which a child who cannot handle their own neighborhood grows into an adult who cannot cope with ordinary life, but a loose cannon who cannot believe anything they do is criminal!
Radwaste at July 13, 2019 7:46 PM
"Wood you believe this story if I told you?"
Yes, I once had someone, whose work I was charged with editing, insist that "wood" instead of "would" was the correct spelling.
Get this! Her reason was that was the way black people spelled it and I, as a white man, had no business correcting it.
charles at July 14, 2019 6:08 AM
If this young woman had ever had any experience with things that give direct and un-ignorable feedback as to whether you're doing it right...riding a horse, programming a computer, cooking dinner for a group...she would have learned that there is more to the universe than her feeelings.
David Foster at July 14, 2019 7:28 AM
"To be fair a number of us are just terrible at spelling NicoleK."
Why would anyone have trouble spelling NicoleK?
Steve Daniels at July 14, 2019 10:05 AM
"To be fair a number of us are just terrible at spelling NicoleK."
Why would anyone have trouble spelling NicoleK? Also, why would anyone need to?
Steve Daniels at July 14, 2019 10:06 AM
"Is this the Main Clam Chowder?"
"No, sir. The Main Clam Chowder is down for maintenance. This is the Auxiliary Clam Chowder."
Steve Daniels at July 14, 2019 10:10 AM
A couple of lessons for people like this (which they will never learn):
You aren't special.
Bosses should only be corrected if it will blow up or blow back on you.
You aren't special.
It is a miracle someone pays you to work. Act like it.
cc at July 14, 2019 12:00 PM
Wrong thread for the truck. Sorry.
I don't know what the hamster dance is, but what came to mind was "everybody look at your hands" 🎶
Crid at July 14, 2019 12:40 PM
"I don't know what the hamster dance is"
It's the horror from beyond, a colour out of space, the scritching beneath the floorboards.
Do not speak of it.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 14, 2019 2:03 PM
Speaking of helicopters
Colombia: Exorcism via rotor wash
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 14, 2019 6:10 PM
Do the Humpster in the Dumpster
a at July 14, 2019 6:14 PM
What the heck is Maine/Main Clam Chowder anyway?
The markets I go to have New England or Manhattan style (barf).
Jay J. Hector at July 15, 2019 11:05 AM
I imagine it's just a naming convention or a variation on regular New England chowder, perhaps heavy on the lobster. Maybe you have to be wearing an LL Bean sweater to eat it.
On the West Coast, Safeway offers a "Pacific Chowder" from their in-store soup bar that's pretty tasty. I never figured out what made it different from New England style clam chowder.
Conan the Grammarian at July 15, 2019 4:18 PM
Maine Clams:
https://maineclammers.org/clamming/shellfish/
I used the Maine Ocean Quahog clams and encircled the serving bowls with their pretty brown shells.
Grandma Elizabeth at July 16, 2019 3:38 PM
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