canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
Recently Hawk and I both encountered the term Altruistic Narcissist. I'd seen it in a new article I'd skimmed this week; she'd seen it in a social media forum she follows about dealing with difficult people. When I saw it I immediately thought, "OMG, that totally describes one of Hawk's relatives who passed away a few years ago." Hawk agreed on that, though her first thought about the term when she saw it was a difficult person she has to work with in a professional context.

I don't remember what article I saw the term in, but the best one I found in doing a search today is this page about Altruistic Narcissists at MentalHealth.com. The simple layperson's definition I'd give is:

An Altruistic Narcissist is a person who appears friendly, charming, and charitable in public but does so primarily for admiration and rewards, then turns around and is abusive to their family at home.


Curiously that last phrase in the definition, and is abusive to their family at home, appeared in every source I checked today as a classic marker of the type. And it's also what made the relative I'm thinking of such a frustrating riddle to figure out at the time. If only we'd known this term it would've made sense in two seconds!

This relative was like a woman of two personalities. To her family she was a monster. She'd been emotionally abusive to her kids when they were young, distanced herself from them as they became adults, and treated them as house-slaves when they rallied around her to take care of her in ill health toward the end of her life. Even when they were helping bathe, dress, and eat, she had nothing but nasty things to say to them. Nothing they did was ever good enough. (Personally I would tell a parent who abused me all my life she could die rotting in a gutter for all I care, but not everyone shares my values.)

To friends in the community, though, this woman was a saint. She was active in a support group for people with a specific type of cancer. With these people she shared links to information, personal stories of her struggles and victories, and gave them a shoulder to cry on. They loved her. She was like an angel to them.

It's common for altruistic narcissists, also called charitable narcissists or benevolent narcissists in different texts, to act as givers, martyrs, or heroes... in visibly public situations. They're not motivated by actually helping others, though. They thrive on the positive attention they get for being seen as do-gooders. They enjoy the praise, the admiration, or just their own sense of self satisfaction. They may also use their good deeds as a form of manipulation. "I did this nice thing for you, now you need to do this for me." If they don't get enough praise, or if the value of their actions is questioned, or if the return favor they expect is refused, they'll react angrily. That's a classic narcissist tell.
canyonwalker: Roll to hit! (d&d)
A few weeks ago I blogged about strengthening trust between players in role-playing games, "Trust & Promises in Role-Playing Games". It was inspired by a blog I'd seen on Gnome Stew on the same topic. Well, the Gnomes wrote a sequel to their blog, "Earning Their Trust: The Rules" and it has inspired me to write on the topic again.

The focus of the Gnomes' latest article in the series is how game masters (GMs) can use game rules well— or poorly— to make or break the players' enjoyment of the game. The gist is that slavish adherence to "The Rules" generally weakens enjoyment of the game and that good GMs will think about when it's right to loosen up their interpretation/application of the rules to promote everyone having a fun time. That's pretty much in line with an idea I wrote about in a few blogs entries back in January, "What's Your Roleplaying Game About?" and "Taking it Easy with Encumbrance in D&D". What really resonated with me in the Gnomes' latest article, though, was one of their sub-headings, Punitive Parent VS “Cool Mom” GM.

Within that phrase it was the two words Punitive Parent that really resonated. ...And not because I've ever been punitive parent or worried about being one, but because it immediately struck me, "OMG, 'punitive parent' totally describes almost all the GMs I played with in my teen years!"

What's a punitive-parent type GM? It's someone who's actually more than just a stickler for the rules. Getting stuck on rules is a trap that a person with low imagination or low confidence might stumble into. Using the rules so as to be punitive, though, is different. It's more. It's not lack of creativity or courage, it's asserting your will over the players' style of play and using the rules as punishment to enforce compliance. It's being a dick.

How is a dick GM different from a mere rules-stickler GM? A rules stickler can be tedious but ultimately they're likely to be fair. A dick GM goes out of their way to use and abuse the rules, including making up new rules at the table, to punish players for not doing things their way. For example:

  • One GM in high school would enforce trivial rules to slow down the game every time he hadn't prepared actual content for the game session. I remember one full-day session when we players spent the whole day rolling dice to see if our characters could avoid getting lost in the forest, forage food, cook it safely, and survive the effects of dehydration, starvation, and food poisoning. Yes, we were making Fortitude Saves to see if we puked from eating undercooked deer meat! That dick had the gall further to gaslight us into thinking we wasted a whole fucking game session rolling not to puke because we weren't playing intelligently enough.

  • One of my GMs in high school would keep a ledge of black marks against players for actions he deemed to be "not in character". Each black mark was an experience point penalty, meaning it slowed your character's advancement. (Advancing characters is a huge part of RPGs, BTW.) Nominally these were judgments that you weren't playing your character "in character" and thus not eligible to advance. Except in reality the black marks were arbitrary behavior grades. If GM thought you, the player, weren't taking things seriously enough, black mark. Making a joke at the table that he didn't like, black mark. Speaking out of turn too much, black mark.

Yeah, I played with a bunch of dick GMs in my teen years. Partly it was common cultural assumption of how the game was supposed to be played back then. Partly it's because people who are dicks are often ego-driven and thus attracted to GMing because they see it as an opportunity to flex on others. And partly it's because enough of us gamers put up with dick GMs treating us poorly. (Why did I/we put up with it? I reflected on the social dynamics of speaking up about problems players/GMs in another blog after I tried— and quit— several virtual gaming groups during the Pandemic.)

And yeah, players can be dicks, too; it's not just GMs. In addition to fellow players being a big part of the reason I quit or nearly quit multiple new games I tried a few years ago, I still remember games from 20+ years ago when I, as a GM, ended a game or asked a player to leave because the player was being a dick.

It's like how when people ask me at work, "What do you look for in hiring a successful sales candidate?" My concise answer is, "1) ... 2) ... And 3) Don't be a dick." I'll start using the same Rule Number Three for deciding whom to play with in roleplaying games.

canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
Several days ago Hawk and I visited a popular ice cream shop on our way home from a day of hiking. It was a warm evening at around 7pm after a very hot day; an ideal time to visit a great ice cream place. Other folks obviously thought so, too, because the restaurant was crowded. There was a whole girls' soccer team in line in front of us at the ice cream counter, not to mention various people standing in the lobby waiting for tables for dinner service.

Just as we'd gotten to the front of the line for ice cream and were "next" to place our orders, a guy walks in the front door and sashays up to the check-out register. After having looked around at all the people standing/sitting in the lobby he loudly asks at the (empty) register, "Is this where I order ice cream?"

One of the ice cream employees, seeing someone at the cash register, walked up to help him. The man repeated his inquiry: He'd like to order ice cream, and wonders if this is where he starts. Like the 10 or so of us in line at the ice cream counter (people had come in after us while the soccer team was ordering and paying) were just standing around for the fun of it. And worse, the tired and overworked employee agreed to take his order— letting him completely cut the line of people who were waiting patiently.

"Excuse me," Hawk called out. Then louder, to get his attention. "EXCUSE ME! The line's over here."

The customer feigned surprise. "Oh, there's a line?"

"Yes, it's behind us," Hawk pointed out.

"And everyone else who's waiting," I added.

The guy looked at the line again and left.

It pisses me off that some people play stupid games like this, feigning ignorance when it's pretty obvious they know damn well they're angling to cheat the unwritten rules.

It also pisses me off that the employees were about to let him get away with that. Employees wanting to avoid conflict, I understand. I get the mindset. But employees have to stick up for the obvious unwritten rules. Like, No, you can't just push your way to the front of the line and be served first.

And from the employees' perspective it doesn't have to be conflict. It's not conflict if they address it promptly and correctly the first time. A simple, nonthreatening answer like, "Great, and welcome in, sir! The line for ice cream is over here [pointing] to the right," nips it in the bud.
canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
It was a hot day today. The weather app said the high temperature was 95° F. That's hot for around here. A typical daily high in mid-late July around here is 81° F. Global warming is making hot days like this more common and more widespread.

Note I'm not saying the fact it was hot today proves global warming or man-made climate change. Just like the fact it there was a blizzard in Minneapolis last January doesn't disprove climate change—much though climate deniers love to scoff, "Look at this snow! So much for gLoBaL wArMiNg!1!" Climate is not about whether one day is hot or cold, or whether it snowed in January in places where it normally snows. Climate refers to long term averages. Patterns.

Thirty years ago my scientifically educated friends and I were dismissive of the science of climate change. ...Well, actually, we were dismissive of the people arguing climate change— because the people making most of the noise about climate change 30 years ago were not scientifically educated, and they were repeating a lot of junk science. My friends and I didn't know what were the right answers but we could definitely spot flawed methods. And we reveled in how much we could point out the flaws in the climate advocates' arguments. The problem with that was, sometimes a person's right about the conclusions even when they're arguing the wrong reasons.

What was a wrong reason? The wrong reason was trying to prove climate change by defending a scientifically provable model for how it happens. When Isaac Newton formulated the theory of gravity, anyone could drop an object and measure gravitational acceleration, g = 9.8 m/s2, modulo things like wind resistance. This was never going to work with climate science. There's no way to conduct a scientific experiment on climate. There's no, "Let's pollute the Earth's atmosphere for decades while simultaneously not polluting the atmosphere of a control Earth."

A control Earth?!?! You can see how preposterous that is. But that's the trap actual climate deniers started setting more than 30 years ago. Early climate advocates fell right into it, thinking they could argue experimental proof. And a lot of us otherwise neutral scientifically minded people fell into the same trap by laughing at them for coming up short on proof, as if running an experiment with a control Earth were some kind of achievable scientific gold standard. It turned out we weren't the geniuses we thought we were. We were just really smart assholes.

So, if experiments can't prove man-made climate change, what does? The answer goes straight back to what climate is: Averages. Trends. The fact is the world has been getting warmer at an accelerated pace over the past 100+ years. Yes, the world has gone through cycles of warming and cooling over millions of years, but the rate of change right now is 10x ~ 100x of any change seen before.

We're seeing the manifestations of a warming climate all around us. The heat wave of a few weeks ago wasn't just "a" heat wave, it set all-time records in many places. And beyond just having a really hot day or week or two weeks, the past few years have been record hot years. Globally.

It's past time for anyone who's still a climate holdout, who's thinking, "Oh, I'm scientifically smart, and the people arguing climate change haven't proven it yet," to wake up. You're not a genius. You're not even that smart. The smart ones are the people peddling the lies you're still falling for while smugly patting yourself on the back.


canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
BuzzFeed posted an interesting listicle yesterday, "Everyday Things People Are Too Old For" (26 Mar 2024). The subheading is that it's according to Millennials and above. I'm... above... and I agree with most of the list. To be clear, these are not "Kids get off my lawn!" grumbles. These are things I embraced or at least tolerated in, say, my early 20s that I decided by my 30s weren't worth it. The listicle counts from 1 to 21. I'll call out just Five Things:

If I'm not having fun, I leave [#1]

This is the #1 item in the listicle and it's pretty high on my own list, too, of things I've changed as I've gotten older. I won't stay long at an optional activity I don't enjoy just to satisfy others or meet expectations. And especially if people there are being jerks, as in the example given in the listicle, I'll nope out. My leisure time is too precious to waste.

I don't try to be friends with jerks [#2]

This is #2 in the listicle and also high on my own list. When I was a kid... and up through college age... I wasted a lot of time trying to be friends with people who were jerks. One part of it was my upbringing that if someone was treating me poorly it's because I must have done something wrong and needed to make amends. The other part of it was me yearning to be friends with the "cool" people, even if they were jerks. I learned the hard way through years of experience that, one, some people are just assholes. And two, abasing myself to win the praise of jerks isn't worth it. It's far more worthwhile to invest my precious time with people who like and respect me for who I am.

I'll stay at a hotel [#8]

I've always loved to travel. When I was younger I lacked time to do much of it, and even more so than time I lacked money. Thus I always looked to crash with relatives or friends. That included sleeping on a couch or the floor a bunch of times. As I got older I found that to be less and less comfortable. Fortunately as I've gotten older I've improved my budget such that I can afford to stay at a hotel when I travel. That gets me not only a real bed to sleep in but also a private space I can withdraw to at the end of the day. Even when the trip's purpose is visiting those friends and family, it's better when we're not crammed together 24/7. I'll note, though, that staying at a hotel is not a rule. When someone has real space for me in their house, for example my inlaws, I'm happy to be a sleepover guest.

I hate loud music in restaurants/clubs [#13]

This is one where I'm tempted to say, "I'm not sure if it's just me..." but I know it's not just me! And it's not just a thing of getting older. Restaurants and clubs have gotten louder. I noticed it when it was happening. I studied architecture enough to recognize the trends years ago toward designs and materials that made social spaces thunderously loud. Similar to the first item on my list, if I'm not enjoying myself somewhere, I'll leave. And that includes leaving because the environment is unpleasant in addition to leaving if the company is unpleasant.

A lot music, TV, and movies are crap [#16]

This one veers a bit toward "You kids get off my lawn!" old-fogeyness in the BuzzFeed listicle, but I agree with it with a bit of nuance. Like the complaint in the article mentions, one basic problem is that the talent threshold is lower today than years ago. But even that has a root underneath it: the increased number of publications and media channels clamoring for content. Consider just TV for a moment. When I was a kid, there were, like, 5 channels of TV. Today there are hundreds. And while there are some amazing things on TV today, there's also tons of crap because of all those channels scraping the bottom of the barrel. All that crap makes it challenging to find the relatively few things that are genuinely worth it.

In movies there's a different problem. The problem there is formulism. Almost everything nowadays is a franchise sequel, prequel, or reboot. And almost every franchise is a based on a comic book, a line of toys, or a theme park ride. Producers choose and fund these franchise movies because they're seen as surer bets for making money. The audience is already known and the marketing tie-ins already exist. Too bad it results in increasingly insipid, repetitive stories.


canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
On Friday I walked out of a meeting at work.

The situation was a sales colleague, Mike— I'll call him Mike because that's his name— and I were "discussing" the next steps we'd take in working with a prospective customer. I quote discussing because a proper discussion requires mutual respect. This interaction did not have that. Mike was instead hectoring me, assuming poor intentions on my part, focusing on trying to manage my time (when he's not my boss!), and not really listening to my position on the issues at hand but instead demanding repeatedly that I take a specific action he was ordering me (again, not my boss) to take.

My boss was in the conversation, too. He'd offered to broker the meeting when I showed him a string of demeaning things Mike wrote to me in Slack. I told him I found them unprofessional as was preparing to tell Mike that in simple, blunt terms. He suggested we call Mike together to "straighten this out".

My boss and I were both at the same training summit Friday. It was winding down by noon Friday, so we found a quiet spot out in the hotel hallway and called Mike on speakerphone. That's where Mike continued his hectoring, this time aloud, along with improper focus on criticizing how I am prioritizing my time at work. His criticism was not only inappropriate, BTW— inappropriate because, again, he's not my boss— but also factually wrong. I am actually already spending time on the category of things he told me should be my main job responsibility. I'm just not doing the thing he instructed me to do because I disagree that (a) it's the appropriate next step and (b) that's it's my responsibility... it's actually his as the account manager.

During the call I stated a few times, "Mike, you're not listening to me." When he continued criticizing my time management— falsely— and went back to hectoring language, I stated outright and simply, "Mike, you're being disrespectful, and I don't like that."

His response? "You're disrespectful!"

Really. His response was straight off an elementary school playground.

At that point I told Mike and my boss— remember, boss was standing next to me— "I'm done with this for today. f you can't be respectful toward me, find someone else to work on this project." And with that I picked up my bag and walked away.

What happened nextI regrouped and came back to give my boss a verbal warning!

canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
My spouse got an unusual gift in the mail a few days ago. It was... a year of dicks.

My spouse received this as an anonymous gift... and tracked down the sender via postal and customs information! (Nov 2023)

Or, in other words, "NATURE's DONGS 2024 CALENDAR", a calendar with monthly pics of things in nature that happen to look like dicks. With NEW DONGS FOR 2024!

We both got a chuckle as she unwrapped it. But almost as quickly we both asked, "WTF?" And, since there was no return address and no sender note, we wondered who would send something like this.

Hawk has a few friends who make sex jokes about things in nature. It's a long running in-joke among them. Could one of them have sent it? Enh. It would be weird for a close friend not to include a note. Also, IMO, Hawk enjoys that humor less than they do, and they know it.

Hawk has a relative who collects tchotchkes that look like dicks. Could a different relative have made a mistake and sent Hawk a gag gift meant for this other person? We figured likely not. A gift sent by a relative would likely include a personalized note, even if just something teasing like, "I know this is up your alley ❤️🍆🤣."

We quickly discarded these first two ideas. Our next thoughts turned dark. Was this a mean-spirited gift? Was it someone effectively telling Hawk, "I think you are a dick"?

Sadly there are a few categories of people who might send Hawk a mean gift. There are people from her job who dislike her because of things she's had to do as a manager, or refused to do or accept because they're inappropriate in the workplace. Could a coworker or ex-coworker have gotten her address and doxxed her? With dicks? Dick doxxed? Dixxed?

Ditto people in the neighborhood. For example, one of our neighbors blames her for "causing" legal trouble when a member of their family caused property damage over $10,000 and police were involved. Said family member also egged our house and screamed profanities at us once. We thought such things were settled and in the past now, but could this be a resumption of threatening behavior from them?

And ditto some of her net.friends. I don't know that any of them have bad blood with her like that one neighbor does, but there are definitely a few with poor enough social skills that might think this is an appropriate and funny response to her "having been a dick" to them by calling out their poor behavior in an online forum.

But mostly she worried it was a neighbor or (ex)coworker, someone from whom this gag gift was actually an attack— and possibly only the first in a series. 😨
canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
One week ago Israel was viciously attacked by the terrorist group Hamas, which is also de facto government of the Gaza Strip. Hamas fighters purposefully massacred hundreds of civilians in addition to waging attacks on military targets. Soon thereafter I started seeing the analogy in the news, "10/7 is Israel's 9/11." I was already thinking it myself.

I've also seen some articles where writers highhandedly admonish readers how 10/7 and 9/11 are not alike, because of how al Qaeda was a non-state actor and Hamas is a state actor, or some equally beside-the-point thing like that. There are two big problems with this. First, fuck the finger-wagging man-splaining. Anyone attempting to use asshole style arguments and rub my nose in how smart they are by explaining to me how I've been mistaken the whole time is rarely going to win points with me. Rarely, because it's rarely the case such people are actually right! I will agree with an asshole's point if they are right. But almost invariably assholes are not right, because they are too caught up in their own egos to recognize facts contrary to their prejudices. In this case these finger-waggers are wrong because of problem #2: All analogies fail when you take them too far.

The point of making an analogy is to illustrate how something unfamiliar or simply new, in this case the 10/7 attacks on Israel, is similar in a few keys respects to something much more familiar, like the 9/11 attacks on the US. The key is in a few key respects. An analogy will always— always— break down if you take it too far. The "take it too far" in the case of these contrarian writers is them comparing the different geopolitical positions of Hamas vs. Al Qaeda and arguing that because those two are not the identical the whole comparison is null and void. That's horseshit. Their argument is a logical fallacy (overextending an analogy proves nothing) and an indication of arguing in bad faith.

The point of the analogy between the attacks is not that Hamas and Al Qaeda are the same (except also in some limited regards) but that the impact and consequences of the attacks have, or are likely to have, key similarities. Here are three big similarities I can think of right off the top of my head:

1) The attack killed a huge number of people, proportionately. The 9/11 attacks in the US killed just under 3,000 people, virtually all civilians. The initial death toll in the attacks on Israel was estimated at just over 100 in the hours after the attack. Just that death toll is a comparable loss as the US population in 2001 of 285 million is 30x Israel's population of 9.3 million today. And as the breathtaking scope of the 10/7 attacks became clearer after the first few hours, the death toll increased to over 900. Edit: after several days it was increased to 1,400. That makes 10/7 actually fourteen times as bad as 9/11 in terms of proportionate loss of life.

2) Policy reaction to the attacks will change government and society. The US government implemented sweeping, permanent changes after 9/11. The changes are still all around us in our daily lives. In Israel, this attack is seen as a massive failure of the country's sophisticated and far-reaching intelligence apparatus. What changes in surveillance and security policies will be made? And will this attack ultimately topple the precarious government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Israelis are understandably pulling together in this time of war, but at the same time many are openly criticizing the leadership of Netanyahu— who for years has defined his political brand as his ability to keep Israelis safe from attack better than absolutely anyone else.

3) Israel has a rare moment of global support— and may overplay it. Following 9/11 the US had broad international support, including from geopolitical rivals who'd ordinarily condemn US foreign actions, to find and bring to justice the parties responsible. This support backed the invasion of Afghanistan and tolerated, to a certain extent, broad suspicion of Muslim people and Muslim majority countries. The US overplayed its hand, though, in invading Iraq under flimsy pretenses that later proved false— arguably knowingly false— and in violating its own commitments to the international rules of law through actions such as detaining prisoners without charges or trial and using torture. Nevermind that the US's enemies did such things as a matter of course; the US was held by its peers and its own people to a higher standard. Israel faces the same challenge today. This attack was brutal. It violated the rules of war, via its deliberate attack on civilians and taking of hostages. But Israel will lose its moment of international support if it does the same in return. It may seem unfair that it's held to a higher standard, but it's simply a fact that it is. And already its war on Hamas is causing a widespread humanitarian crisis. The 2 million residents of the Gaza Strip have been without power or piped water for several days. Israel is telling 1 million of them to leave ahead of a ground invasion, but where will they go? The borders, including Egypt's border, are all closed.
canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
I'm coming to hate drivers for Doordash and other delivery services. They act like doing their job is more important than everyone else at the store where they're picking things up. They park in handicap spaces and fire lanes. In the store, they walk around the line of customers waiting and wave their phones at the cashier, expecting immediate service.

When this happened the other day I was happy to see the cashier tell the Doordasher to wait his turn. I was the customer at the register, and I was in the middle of giving the cashier my member number to get a discount. I quickly got the sense the cashier was as miffed at the interruption as I was, as the cashier continued the amiable discussion he and I were having about the items I was buying. We kept on chatting as if no one was waiting.

Screw the impatient dashers.

canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
This past weekend the comic strip "Dilbert" was canceled, and its author, Scott Adams, effectively was, too. As I mentioned in a brief blog yesterday, these were consequences of Adams publishing video of himself going on a racist tirade.

Do I care that "Dilbert" got canceled? No. I stopped reading the comic strip over 10 years ago. It had ceased being funny years before that. That's a harsh thing to say because for years it was funny, enormously funny, especially to me as a software engineer and person in IT. You see, the main character in Dilbert is/was a software engineer, and the comic was about the foolishness that goes on particularly in the corporate world of software and IT. ...At least it used to be. Adams started rehashing old material and gradually folded in too much right wing politics.

Even after the comic strip became tedious and stupidly political I continued reading Adams' blog for a while. Back in 2015-2016 he shared a number of trenchant observations about Donald Trump's rising political campaign. Adams has studied techniques of persuasion and recognized Trump as being a master of these techniques. His blog was, for a while, an excellent "inside baseball" type explanation of what Trump was doing and why it was working.

I specify for a while because after a few months of sharing insight on Trump's techniques, Adams shifted to actively using those techniques to argue Trump's White nationalism cause. For the first week or so I wondered if it was a test for his readers; could we spot the techniques? But it wasn't a test. Adams had gone full MAGA. I stopped following him.

One of the many problems with going full MAGA is that it rots your brain. MAGA-heads wall themselves off in echo chambers of the like minded. Gradually they believe that everything they believe is normal. Thus Adams shameless posted an overtly racist screed, figuring since he was such a master of persuasive arts he'd show us all how smart he is. Well, I'm sure the 30% or so who are MAGA see his brilliance. The rest of us say Good riddance.
canyonwalker: I see dumb people (i see dumb people)
I saw a car accident on Saturday when we were coming home from errands. Nobody was hurt... but the driver of one of the vehicles totally deserved what happened to his car.

We were stopped at a traffic light, waiting to make a right turn. We were the 3rd or 4th vehicle in line. At the front of the line, at the red light, was a delivery truck. The truck was angled sort of like the driver was trying to make a right turn, but the driver seemed not to be taking advantage of opportunities to (safely, legally) turn right on red.

Coming up to this intersection the shoulder is almost fully paved. It's striped off as the shoulder, though. It momentarily occurred to me, "I could use the shoulder to slip around that indecisive truck driver," but better judgment quickly prevailed. It would be an unsafe move and illegal.

A driver in a red sedan rolled up behind me. I could tell from seeing his eyes and head movement in my rearview mirror that he was sizing up the situation similar to how I did and looking at the shoulder lane. He started to steer into the shoulder.

"Look at this clown, trying to go around the line of us waiting to turn right," I remarked to my passenger.

The sedan got up right next to the truck at the front of the line but couldn't quite get past. The truck was angled as if to turn right, and at the intersection the shoulder narrowed.

The light turned green. "I wonder if the truck's going to hit that car...." I said aloud. And just then— CRACK! The truck clipped the front left corner of the car.

The truck driver didn't realize at first there had been a collision. The car was in his blindspot, and it was the cargo box part of the truck that was striking the car. The trucker pulled forward a bit further through his right-turn motion, inflicting a flat tire on the sedan.

By that point the trucker realized something bad had happened... I think the sedan driver may have honked his horn a few times... and the two vehicles pulled out of the intersection and parked in the bicycle lane of the next street.

Hawk and I decided since we witnessed the accident— including the illegal maneuver of the sedan driver— we should let the truck driver know. We pulled off into the next driveway and parked in the empty lot of an office building. We both spoke to the truck driver, letting him know what we saw.

The driver was already on the phone with his manager, whose instructions seemed to be "Exchange insurance information, don't wait for police." Nobody was hurt, the truck had suffered only cosmetic damage (the at-fault driver's car would need a tow), so after giving the trucker our contact information we left.

It was oddly satisfying to see someone who pulled an asshole move in traffic suffer appropriate consequences for it.
canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
There's a Reddit sub I like to read, r/AITA. In it people post stories about situations where someone's gotten upset and them they're not sure if they're in the right or wrong. They ask "AITA?" — Am I The Asshole?

One type of AITA post involves someone getting fired from their job. Employee X does something on the job that Person Y, who could be a customer or a coworker, doesn't like. Person Y tells X's manager, and X gets fired. X and/or their friends rage at Y for "getting" X fired. Y worries, "AITA?"

My response is that Y in these stories is rarely the asshole. I point out that notion of "getting" someone fired is generally a misstatement of responsibility. If you report an employee's misbehavior accurately and in context, and they get fired for it, it's on them. It's the consequence of their actions. They've gotten themselves fired.


canyonwalker: My old '98 M3 convertible (cars)
I finished my trek of I would fly 500 miles and I would drive 500 more on Sunday. We left the hotel in Bakersfield at 9am. It's 251 miles from there to my house. We split the drive with a stop for recharging and lunch at an oasis near Firebaugh on I-5.

The car got better mileage on Sunday. Partly that's due to less sweltering temperatures; they ranged between about 80-93° (27-35 C) in the Central Valley during our late-morning drive through there. And partly it's because we didn't drive as fast. Yes, I-5 is a long, straight road... but it's also crowded compared to I-15 and US-58 yesterday. With slow trucks and cars all over the places there isn't as much room to open the throttle.

At the charging stop I solidified my awareness of an emergent pattern among EV owners and their behavior at charging stations. It's a dichotomy that splits mostly along the lines of EV newcomers vs. EV grizzled veterans— which you can tell based on whether they're driving an EV that looks, say, at least 2 years old vs. one that looks relatively new.

  • For EV newcomers, recharging is a social event. When they hook up the charger they look around and are eager to chat with others about their vehicles and experiences. They're also conscientious about using the chargers. They pull into the spaces straight, and monitor their charge to pull out of the slot when they're done— so the next person can start charging.

  • The grizzled vets are the opposite of that. They pull in quickly and carelessly, often parking diagonally across two spaces. They connect the cables without acknowledging their neighbors. They leave their cars well past the time it takes to complete a charge, continuing to block multiple spaces that others could be using. You can't ask them to move because they're nowhere to be seen— for hours.

Every charging station we visited this weekend— and we visited four of them— had both types of people. And it aligned 100% with driving a new car vs. a slightly older one.

canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
About six weeks ago Better.com CEO Vishal Garg was in the news for firing 900 employees via Zoom (my blog from then). It wasn't just that he fired them in a callous manner, BTW. He also insulted them as idiots and literal thieves, continuing a pattern of communication creating a hostile work environment. Under pressure from the public and the board of directors he took a leave of absence a few days later (Daily Beast article, 10 Dec 2021). This week he came back from leave to resume his role as CEO, proclaiming himself a changed person.

In a memo announcing Garg coming back off leave, the Better board of directors crowed that it is “Moving forward with strong, dynamic CEO leadership" (Tech Crunch article, 18 Jan 2022). While everyone can certainly hope Garg is a better person now, I doubt he's changed. His tirades against employees during and after the mass firing weren't just one botched move; they were part of a pattern of hostile behavior stretching back years. The board's actions smack of the "Promise change and lay low until it blows over, then go back to business as usual" school of PR.

It must be nice to be Garg, being able to come back to his old job with the slate wiped clean, unlike the 900 employees he fired and the many who resigned over his behavior.
canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
Last week Better.com CEO Vishal Garg fired 900 employees over Zoom. "If you're on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off," he said. "Your employment here is terminated effective immediately." Employees found their access to company software systems shut off shortly thereafter. Example news coverage: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees over Zoom, CNN.com article updated 6 Dec 2021.

Much of the media coverage I've read about this in the past few days has had a breathless nature to it. Breathless, as in reporters not understanding which parts of the story are actually unusual so they emphasize everything. Like, "A CEO fired people over Zoom! 900 people! Fired! Over Zoom!" That failure to understand happens, BTW, because most business articles are written by young 20-something writers. They lack the professional experience, and even the life experience, to put things in perspective.

From my perspective getting fired over Zoom would be nothing new. I've had remote managers, and thus remote employment reviews, for 10 years. I resigned from a job by telephone (we weren't really doing Zoom back then) 8 years ago. I was fired from a job (laid off) by phone 6 years ago. 4½ years ago I had a contentious performance review via phone. I tendered a resignation with 2 weeks notice, then the company dismissing me summarily. This was all via phone, not even Zoom. But the point is, getting fired (or quitting) without walking into the boss's office is hardly news.

What is news is how poorly Better.com CEO Garg handled this. A better approach would've been to convene a company all-hands meeting to announce there would be layoffs, followed by 1:1 conversations between employees and managers to confirm their status. That's basically a remote-working adaptation of the process I've gone through twice in major corporate layoffs that booted 30% of the companies. Better.com's layoff was 9% of its workforce.

Why didn't they do this? Almost certainly the answer is because it's expensive. It takes time. And Garg has a history of being a total jerkwad when it comes to cheaping out with employees. He's hounded them as "stealing" from their colleagues by only working "2 hours a day".

Another question is why nobody at the company, particularly nobody from HR, averted this disaster. There's 2 parts to the answer to that one, and basically both of them boil down to, because HR protects the company, not the employees. The first part is that a CEO like Garg with strong (stupid) beliefs is not going to hire/retain an HR exec who challenges him. He'll hire a toadie. And second, there are plenty of toadies out there. In Corporate America it's referred to as "Aligning with the business". That's a euphemism for supporting whatever the boss wants, whether it's fair, just, ethical, etc., or not. In HR that means things like sweeping sexual harassment allegations against key executives under the rug, as documenting and reporting them would be bad for the business. That's why sexual harassment is still such a problem in Corporate America even 30 years after HR started lecturing the rest of us on why it's wrong!

In the past few days a few Better.com executives have resigned. It looks like 2 PR heads and the VP Communication. Example news coverage: 3 Better.com executives resign after CEO lays off 900 over Zoom, CNN.com article 8 Dec 2021. Notably these are not HR leaders. They're external-facing PR people— people who, presumably, who don't want their PR careers tarnished as being the tools who defended Garg's ass-hat behavior. The tools in HR who approved it, supported it coordinated it, or at the very least enabled it, are still there.

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