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Cake day: March 21st, 2024

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  • This is how I feel about several acronyms at work! There’s a three letter acronym recently that was coming up a lot on a meeting. I had to search for a definition to understand the discussion. The meaning is fully encompassed by just using one four letter English word that nobody past kindergarten will be confused about. But this acronym is everywhere! Also, the single word has fewer syllables than the stupid acronym, so it’s faster to say. Not by much, but it just adds insult to injury every time I hear it.
















  • I thought this first too. But then I remembered an interaction where one colleague of mine told another pair who were speaking another language that “secrets don’t make friends” or some such. I think it was intended as a jokey way to express that he was uncomfortable with the conversation that he couldn’t understand. He also joked that they were probably talking poorly of him. I noticed this person was normalizing controlling the discussion by throwing negative or secretive intentions onto the others’ discussions. In reality, they’re just friends discussing something in their primary language.

    Anyway, long story long, I don’t think this colleague would tell us he has a problem with others speaking a language besides English, but then he’d probably follow that up with a bunch of clarifiers that indicate he does in fact have a problem with it.


  • Similar story. Few years ago in a previous life, I was a teacher. Our administration would make an announcement in the morning that we had to check uniforms in first period and send non-compliant students to the office. Kids were generally in uniform, but a lot of the rules were nitpicky. One of the uniform rules was that students had to wear a certain color sock of a certain length. I don’t care what socks kids are wearing so never checked. They’re under their pants. Our assistant principal would stand in the hallway and check uniforms. When he found kids out of uniform, he would figure out who their first period teacher was and send a nastygram. Imagine living a life where you allow your blood pressure to rise because of the kind of socks on somebody else’s feet.