the "things you wish you could say" thread

[fishbrains]

Why, given my institution's repeated statements about the importance of a work/life balance, have I gotten at least a dozen emails from administration on a Sunday?

Not an adminicritter, but since COVID hit, my best day to work and send out emails requiring actual thought on my part is Sunday. Kids are busy, wife is busy, house is quiet, etc. I don't expect anyone to respond to me on a Sunday, though. Fridays and Saturdays have been the new weekends for me; the rest is kind of just Blursday.

Alas, that's about to change in a couple of weeks.

This might be the best time for you to do it, but since you don't expect an immediate response, why send it at that time?

My sister-in-law has similar work habits, tackling tricky stuff in the evening or on weekends. But she sets the emails about them to send automatically at 9:00 a.m. the next working day. (She works for a large non-profit, not academic.) She does this in order not to imply to her team that she expects them to work on those emails outside of their scheduled hours.

I recommend the practice. It gets the stuff off of her mental checklist, gets it done when she wants, and doesn't pressure anybody. It also implicitly set boundaries on the length of the work day.

Basically, I'm not really in a position where anyone would care so much about an email I sent that they would feel pressured by it. 

[dr_codex]

Why, given my institution's repeated statements about the importance of a work/life balance, have I gotten at least a dozen emails from administration on a Sunday?

Not an adminicritter, but since COVID hit, my best day to work and send out emails requiring actual thought on my part is Sunday. Kids are busy, wife is busy, house is quiet, etc. I don't expect anyone to respond to me on a Sunday, though. Fridays and Saturdays have been the new weekends for me; the rest is kind of just Blursday.

Alas, that's about to change in a couple of weeks.

This might be the best time for you to do it, but since you don't expect an immediate response, why send it at that time?

My sister-in-law has similar work habits, tackling tricky stuff in the evening or on weekends. But she sets the emails about them to send automatically at 9:00 a.m. the next working day. (She works for a large non-profit, not academic.) She does this in order not to imply to her team that she expects them to work on those emails outside of their scheduled hours.

I recommend the practice. It gets the stuff off of her mental checklist, gets it done when she wants, and doesn't pressure anybody. It also implicitly set boundaries on the length of the work day.

Basically, I'm not really in a position where anyone would care so much about an email I sent that they would feel pressured by it.

Fair enough. I guess what I was proposing was a solution to Sinenomine's issue: queue up the emails, but have them actually go out on Monday at 9:00 a.m.

[dr_codex]

[Unrelated]

If you aren't on the clock, get out of the way. I'm the one who's going to have to execute whatever is decided; your input is not welcome.

[fishbrains]

We are just little Humanities people doing our thing on the far edge of the campus. 95% of the time, it's a good thing that admins don't really travel this way very often. Don't f*ck it up. A few extra one-time dollars isn't worth it.

[AmLitHist]

We are just little Humanities people doing our thing on the far edge of the campus. 95% of the time, it's a good thing that admins don't really travel this way very often. Don't f*ck it up. A few extra one-time dollars isn't worth it.

Amen.  Being off the radar is not necessarily a bad place to be for us in the humanities these days.

[Stockmann]

I'm sorry you're poorly, maybe you could ask your two oldest kids for help - oh, that's right, you abandoned both of them, one of them you don't know if he's even alive and the other one keeps you at arms' length. Yeah, I get you were a kid yourself, but so was my wife, and she was one of the people who picked up the pieces of the mess you and the babydaddy made, and she was most certainly not responsible for any of it. Given all that, I find you now turning to my wife cap-in-hand morally repulsive - she already shouldered a very heavy load she wasn't responsible for partly because of you. She does not and has never had any obligations towards you. Do you have no shame, turning to her (and, indirectly, to me) for help?

[apl68]

Amen.  Being off the radar is not necessarily a bad place to be for us in the humanities these days.

It can be comforting for those of us in the library business at times too.  Then again, it's not good that we seem also to have fallen off the radars of most of our potential patrons.

[Istiblennius]

Your kid is a bully and all-around @$$hole. Stop trying to make me feel guilty because my kid doesn't want to play with your kid. Making my kid apologize to your kid after your kid physically assaulted them and they stood up for themselves was the last straw. We're done.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Just shut the f*ck up! Stop! You watch too much conspiracy theory crap! I swear, I feel dirty after listening to this crap. I need a shower.

[the_geneticist]

I don't care what the previous person did.  This is my class now.  I have the full support of the department chair to make the changes I want to make.  Either get me what I need or get out of my way. 
P.S. The dean LOVES me.  I'll get the money to buy the needed equipment.  The question is if you want to look like a fool or not.

[mamselle]

"No, just because you learned the simplified version of "Maple Leaf Rag in a few months, you aren't going to be able to do the full, 4-page version in three more weeks.

You're good, and you might even get to be very good, but...not quite yet, and not if you rush things and don't get the technique and timing first....I'm glad you're so inspired, but we do need to have a bit of realism here."

(Thankfully, saying something more nuanced was well-received, and we'll get the full arrangement and think about working on it over the next year, which is what I think it's going to take for a 12-year-old who's only been playing for two years at this point...)

It could be so much worse...

M.

[Vkw10]

Why do administrative assistants keep leaving you? Why do potential administrative assistants turn down your job offers? It might be your obvious total lack of respect for them. If you can't speak to them courteously, you could at least replace that WWII era desk chair with the taped up seat.

[San Joaquin]

You know, the system shows the date for the last time anyone accessed a particular file.  The dates on ALL the accreditation materials I posted to inform the project for which you are the chair still read December 20, 2020, which is the day I posted them to our shared work site. 

[Vkw10]

Why don't you register for Remedial Outlook Basics for Dummies?

[ergative]

Job candidate, you do not need to spend 15% of your allotted job talk time walking through the 'roadmap' slide of your talk and explaining how you've structured this talk only just selected relevant subparts rather than giving a comprehensive discussion of your entire research and teaching philosophy. We know! That's the point of the jobtalk! Get on with it! Give us fifteen seconds to read the bullet points and move on!