This is my entire mood today, also, here is the actual story:
Like many of us, I have been enjoying the Co-op mockumentary by John Mulaney and co., and it made me eager to rewatch the original DA Pennebaker Original Cast Recording: Company which has been STRIPPED from YouTube and you cannot find anywhere now except eBay, so I have a literal VHS copy on its way to me just to watch Elaine Stritch at her most Elaine.
Something marvelous about Company, one of my favourite Sondheim shows of all time, is that we strongly associate Dean Jones as the first Bobby, but Jones actually dropped out of the show before it opened because of the stress of getting divorced. They made him agree to do the opening night and the cast recording, but Larry Kert (RIP, sweet one) was the Bobby who actually walked the boards in the role. So when I’m watching Dean Jones belt out “Being Alive,” now all I can think is how brutal it must have been to spend months rehearsing THAT SHOW while knowing your own marriage is going in the shitter.
My own favourite “Being Alive” is Raul Esparza, but I also believe you have to be at least a little bit gay to really play Bobby:
Here is a photograph of me which is very flattering and was taken the night I did Dear Prudie: Live! in Denver with my Daniel Ortberg.
Back to Reddit!
You are correct to leave him:
I am a librarian at a prek-12 school. I lead one class every period with the younger kids, and high schoolers are free to use the library at any time during the day.
For any women that teach small kids, you know that they grab your boobs. A lot. It's not intentional, my boobs are just eye level for the kids and they often use them for balance or to get my attention. They don't realize what they're doing. Usually I just say "watch your hands!" or gently move their hands away, but I don't get mad, because they're little and they don't understand that they're doing something wrong.
One day, I was crouched down next to a 6 year old helping him find a book. He stumbled and grabbed my chest. Again, not a big deal, but one of the 17 year olds in the library saw it happened and yelled, "LOOKS LIKE MS. aitaitaita IS LETTING THE BOYS COP A FEEL." I went up to him and told him he was being inappropriate and threaten detention and all that, and he gets lippy (his friends were watching) and reaches out AND GRABS MY BOOB. I could tell from his face that he knew he fucked up as soon as he did it and I took him straight to the office. The principal tore him a new one, and then we discussed it for a bit and decided that a 3 day suspension and a call home was appropriate, since the kid was clearly scared shitless and seemed to both of us to be more of a smartass than a danger to students or other teachers. The suspension will also have to be reported to colleges, which is what my (ex)fiance took issue with.
I told my fiance about it that night and he didn't react as expected. He said that the high schooler was just a kid who clearly didn't realize what he was doing, and it was a double standard to punish him and not punish the younger kids for the same infraction. I pushed back because I think there's a huge difference between being 6 and being 17, and he accused me of being an unfair teacher who was targeting a student because I weighed in on the punishment, and therefore he wasn't treated impartially. He also told me that this being on the kids record was too harsh and he didn't deserve to be marked forever for a "joke." I pointed out he should know better, but he just doubled down on telling me I should learn to take a joke and laugh it off and not be such a bitch.
I tried to discuss it several times but he wouldn't budge, and I felt incredibly unsupported and hurt, so I decided to break off the engagement. HIs friends have been reaching out and accusing me of being unfair and rash. AITA?
Classic r/UnexpectedMulaney:
This lady is hand-feeding a shark and…it goes badly.
Hard pass, my man:
Pretty much what the title says... My laptop was low on power and couldn’t load an online game properly, I used his PC. I wanted to write down some info on some cheats and when I opened a text file that seemed empty, it showed my PayPal password written and saved. I was very weirded out by this and when I confronted him he said he wanted to play a prank on me as I’m always secretive about payment information as I was taught to do so all my life. When I asked how he even wrote it down he said that a pc automatically saves down every written thing, and he just forgot to bring it up. Only time i wrote down my PayPal password was when He asked me to buy a few games over the course of our relationship, he always gave back the money he borrowed. I’m not sure how true this is, as far as I know you need some program to save all written things on a pc. Is this true? If he went through to headache of downloading some program, ask me to buy a game, then save the written PayPal password, to prank me and the forget about it... it’s not making sense you know? Am I being too paranoid? Could this just be innocent fun he had planned? We have this joke when I type down my PayPal password he looks away as not to “steal” it. He said he just wanted to scare me by saying it out loud while turned away. Could this just be a dumb joke about that? We’re in a serious relationship and have been dating for 4 years.
1. My manager asked me to mediate between her and my coworkers
I’ve been at my company for about a year and in the time there’s been a lot of turnover. My former manager left around the same time we hired Jane at a level above me. Jane was quickly promoted into the role of manager, which felt fast but was mainly due to her great past experience and the need to fill the manager role. She has never managed a team before, but seemed eager to learn.
In the past few months, things have gotten really messy. She’s very clear about the fact that she’s overwhelmed and there’s a lot of work to be done and she often falls short or misses things. One team member, Nora, is very blunt to Jane daily about these problems. She often calls her out in meetings if she can tell what Jane is saying is a little poorly thought out, and she frequently pushes back when she feels Jane isn’t responding to emails or issues in a timely manner. Nora is someone I have a great personal and professional relationship with.
Last week, Jane called me into a conference room and opened up to me about how she feels Nora is “bullying her” and making her job as a manager impossible. She told me that she sees the way I get along with Nora and wants me to mediate between the two of them. I was out of office for two weeks and she said while I was gone “things fell apart” and it made her realize she needs me to be here to help “control the energy of the team” and make sure everyone is getting along. She asked me if I could start encouraging people to be nicer to her, and also to mediate for her and be the “middle man” between employee complaints and her, rather than her having to hear them 1:1 from the rest of the team.
I’m not sure what to do here. I feel like she’s asking me to either co-manage, in that she’d handle the actual work and I’d handle the interpersonal stuff, or, honestly, spy for her. Nora is my peer and I now feel in a very weird spot where I feel that I’m supposed to be “managing her attitude” to make Jane’s job easier. Any advice on how to handle this? Or am I in the wrong and is this a normal thing to expect of one of your employees who happens to have a bit of a sunnier attitude than the others?
I watched the Leaving Neverland documentary and it broke my heart. If you can watch it (it’s very hard) please do.
Love,
Nicole