Author: Beth Younker

When is Fussy Too Fussy?

/ Beth Younker / Leave a comment

I started a new job a few months ago and was put on a project to update all of the documents on our SharePoint site as they needed rebranding. Sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it? Replace a few different old company words/acronyms with the new ones, replace the logo, update colors and voila, update done. Unfortunately for me, I’m also REALLY persnickety about formatting, spelling, and punctuation, so as I find documents that need fixing, I have to fix them.  It’s just not in my nature to ignore them. I’ve tried, and I absolutely, positively can’t do it.

Why is it that so many professionals in business don’t know how to create a clean, professional business document? I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve seen sentences without periods at the end, confusion around common and proper nouns, commas where they don’t belong, and other assorted issues. I know, I know, you’re all rolling your eyes at me, it’s ok! I know I’m strange about stuff like this, and I can live with it.

Years ago, I had a manager who was picker than me about making documents look good, and at the time she really got on me about mistakes. I remember being upset with her at the time, but honestly, she taught me so much. (I saw her several years ago and told her how grateful I was for what she taught me, and that turned out to be one of the most gratifying conversations I have ever had!) She made me a really good proofreader…for other people’s documents, that is. For my own, not so much. I don’t know why I can’t see my own mistakes, but it’s probably because I’m too close to them. The good news is that at least I know it and ask other people to proofread for me when it’s important or run everything through spell and grammar check. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do that. I just think it looks awful to have those kinds of mistakes in a document that is being shared outside of your team, and worse, with clients because you know that the client has someone just as odd as me, who will see those careless mistakes. (If you read a prior post from me about job hunting, you’ll remember I commented on my discovery that my spell and grammar check wasn’t working and how horrified I was about the cover letters I’d sent out.)

Another annoyance for me is not aligning numbers and bullets in a list. Use the functions built into the application to align things correctly for heaven’s sake! That’s what the indent is for, or the little tab markers in the ruler at the top of the page. I’ve seen indent used on one line, spaces on the next and nothing on a line following that, so nothing lined up correctly at all! All of this fussiness meant that my fairly simple little project grew exponentially because of my own pickiness. Yep, it’s my own fault, I know that. At least when I was done with them, they looked fantastic. Unfortunately, no one appointed me proofreading czar, so that means I’ll have to learn to bite my tongue going forward as those same people will continue to churn out documents with the same reckless abandon they always have. 

Maybe someday I’ll be in charge and can have that expectation on my team but in the meantime, I’ll have to learn to roll my eyes in silence, which is probably a good skill to have anyhow. To amuse myself in the interim I’ve been reading “Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” by Lynne Truss. It’s a humorous look at what a difference correct punctuation makes in writing. Just the title ought to be enough to demonstrate. If one were to add a comma, it becomes “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” meaning sometime came along, ate something then took a photograph (or perhaps shot a bow and arrow or fired a gun) then left. Without the comma it is “Eats Shoots and Leaves” meaning the diet of an herbivore. Punctuation matters!

So after all my ranting above, did you find any errors I missed? Let me know, please! Also, what pet peeves in your professional life you do you have?  Feel free to share. I know I’ll feel better not being the only fussy one out there. 

Death of the Editor-2025 Kickoff

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I originally was going to title this “2024 Closeout”, but then realized I didn’t have enough content for a post at the end of the year. Instead, we’ll kick off 2025 in style with more things from the internet that make you tilt your head and say “huh?”

This story about an Indiana execution and an individual with schizophrenia who killed his brother and three other men is sad enough on its own. But as you read through it, the story feels strange. First it says he was executed, then a short time later it goes on to say he COULD be executed. The story is just oddly written and the order is all wrong.

From People.com on December 30. Katie Holds to Starbucks cups…what does she hold them to? From the photo I would venture a guess that she is holding “two Starbucks cups” but hey, I could be wrong.

While not strictly filled with errors, I had to chuckle at some of the entries noted in this article on “Celebrities Known for Their Generous Tipping Habits” (I know, brainless reading one morning!) There are several listed (Ethan Hawke and Keanu Reeves, among others) that tipped 20%. Last time I checked, that wasn’t generous, that is STANDARD. Don’t get me wrong, 20% of $10,000 would certainly be a generous tip, but on the other hand, if you’re wealthy enough to afford a 10K dinner, you can afford a 2K tip. With both of these actors, the actual amount of their bill was not known, so I don’t know if the tip they provided was $50, $500 or something else. But 20% isn’t generous. Donnie Wahlberg leaving a $2020 tip on a $35 bill during the 2020 tip challenge is, however. The other funny thing about that story is the number of times the writer said that a particular actor was a generous tipper, but then listed both the bill and the amount as unknown. Well, if both are unknown, how do you KNOW they are a generous tipper?

From NBCNews.com, a clickbait story (which I did not click on to read!) about placing a bottle on your tire when traveling. Maybe it’s legit, maybe not but the content of the story isn’t the issue with this one, it’s the photo. Now call me crazy, but when you have a title that says “Place a Bottle on Your Tire When Traveling”, shouldn’t the photo show bottles and not cans? Maybe it’s just me…

And then there was this headline on January 21 in People Magazine online

 So whose 95th birthday was it? I mean, I know it’s Tippi’s and not Melanie’s, but it does read as if Melanie was 95 and her mother was something more than that.

And finally, from The Guardian on 2/6/2025, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/05/cuny-pregnant-student-protections

 When abbreviating the name of something, shouldn’t it be CUNY and not Cuny, as if Cuny was a word? It’s an ACRONYM. Sheesh.

What editorial oopsies are you spotting?

Is It Really a Coup

/ Beth Younker / Leave a comment

Good morning. I recently subscribed to a newsletter from journalist, lawyer and law professor Joyce Vance and today’s is extremely thought provoking and well worth sharing. I’ve copied and pasted it below, but want to be very clear: This is content and photographs from Joyce and are not my words. (I could never be this insightful!) If you want to get her newsletters directly, you can find her on Substack, https://substack.com/@joycevance

Ordinarily I shy away from writing and posting about politics, but more and more I believe that Democary does die in darkness. We have to be brave enough to speak up.

Is It Really a Coup

Is it really a coup if it doesn’t feel like one? If your day-to-day life hasn’t changed? Can it be a coup if I can still write posts like this? 

What we’ve seen over the last two weeks and accelerating over the weekend looks like a coup, a hostile, undemocratic takeover of government. Merriam-Webster says a coup is “a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics and especially the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group.” No violence so far because this is a coup fueled by tech bros, not the military. But we’re watching the alteration of government happen before our eyes.

Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat calls it “a new kind of coup,” writing in Lucid about Elon Musk’s seeming power sharing with Trump: “And here is where the U.S. 2025 situation starts to look different. The point of personalist rule is to reinforce the strongman. There is only room for one authoritarian leader at the top of the power vertical. Here there are two.” It is unusual, but it is still an effort to use extra-legal, undemocratic practices to radically alter American democracy, undoing the balance of power the Founding Fathers established between the three branches of government by consolidating power in the hands of the presidency as a complacent, Republican-led Congress looks on.

Monday night, Heather Cox Richardson started her nightly column by explaining that if Republicans wanted to do away with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the federal agency the Trump administration suddenly shuttered over the weekend, they could do that legally. Republicans now control the White House and Congress. There is a 6-3 majority of justices appointed by Republican presidents on the Supreme Court. But instead of doing it lawfully, with Congress passing a bill for Donald Trump to sign, Richardson writes, “They are permitting unelected billionaire Elon Musk, whose investment of $290 million in Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election apparently has bought him freedom to run the government, to override Congress and enact whatever his own policies are by rooting around in government agencies and cancelling those programs that he, personally, dislikes.” 

Richardson concluded: “The replacement of our constitutional system of government with the whims of an unelected private citizen is a coup. The U.S. president has no authority to cut programs created and funded by Congress, and a private citizen tapped by a president has even less standing to try anything so radical.” 

So, “coup” is the correct way to label the transformation of government we are living through. But with so much continuing normally, it’s easy to doubt what you’re seeing. Even experiencing it from the perspective of historians who understand this moment through the lens of history, it doesn’t seem quite real.

Reporter Garrett Graff wrote a piece titled, “Musk’s Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government,” that he pitched as “Imagining how we’d cover overseas what’s happening to the U.S. right now.” He started out like this: “I’ve long believed that the American media would be more clear-eyed about the rise and return of Donald Trump if it was happening overseas in a foreign country, where we’re used to foreign correspondents writing with more incisive authority. Having watched with growing alarm the developments of the last 24 and 36 hours in Washington, I thought I’d take a stab at just such a dispatch.” He concludes that “What started Thursday as a political purge of the internal security services accelerated Friday into a full-blown coup, as elite technical units aligned with media oligarch Elon Musk moved to seize key systems at the national treasury, block outside access to federal personnel records, and take offline governmental communication networks.”

Why damage the American experiment as we near the celebration of its 250th anniversary? Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy had some thoughts about that as he joined his colleagues outside of USAID’s closed offices on Monday. Suggesting this was not the time to pull punches, he called it a move to benefit the oligarchs who lined the front rows at Trump’s inauguration. “Elon Musk makes billions of dollars based off of his business with China. And China is cheering at [the destruction of USAID]. There is no question that the billionaire class trying to take over our government right now is doing it based on self-interest: their belief that if they can make us weaker in the world, if they can elevate their business partners all around the world, they will gain the benefit.” Senator Murphy also suggested that by closing agencies and cutting back the federal workforce, conservatives could “create the illusion they’re saving money” while they pass giant tax cuts that would benefit “billionaires and corporations.”

Sunday night, I called it a coup as well, writing in exasperation that “Musk and his crew of men barely out of their teens haven’t taken an oath to serve, and they are not accountable to the public. They are not a ‘Department’ of anything. They’re a private army that has taken over. Presidents can set up private advisory groups, but they have to function according to the rules, which include transparency. That’s not what’s happening here.” Worse still, there is little reason to believe that what starts in USAID, Treasury, and the FBI won’t continue to spread to other agencies that are in disfavor with Trump and Musk.

But long-term success is not a foregone conclusion with coups, especially when citizens are unwilling to accept them. Already, we are seeing signs Americans have no intention of letting it happen here. It’s a slow, still-fragile start, but elected officials and American citizens seem to be figuring it out.

Protesters outside of Treasury today (February 4, 2025).
Members of Congress rallying against Musk’s access to government information.

The lawyers are at work, too. So far, they’ve convinced courts to enjoin Trump’s birthright citizenship plans and his effort to stop federal spending that offends his sensibilities. Today, lawyers filed two separate cases designed to prevent the FBI from firing agents who worked on January 6 cases and to keep the Justice Department from making their names public. Placing faith in the courts feels like unsteady ground in light of the Supreme Court’s willingness to give Trump a pass on criminality. Having already given him immunity from criminal prosecution for any official acts he commits, perhaps the conservative majority will see the wisdom of declining to consolidate all of the power of government in the hands of the president. 

There is still plenty of fight left in our democracy, but it’s an all-hands-on-deck moment. This isn’t a coup with tanks in the streets and mobs overrunning government offices. It’s a quieter coup, a billionaires’ coup. Talk with the people around you about what’s happening and what it means if they’re not aware. 

Call it what it is: A coup. Let’s make sure it doesn’t succeed.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

The Road Trip

/ Beth Younker / Leave a comment

Last week my husband and I took a road trip to central Missouri to visit family, which makes this the third time in just over a year we’ve driven down there. The first time was a REALLY quick trip, down and back in 3 days to surprise our niece for her wedding shower, and the second was for her wedding a month later. This time was just for fun. I think we’re getting better – and worse –  at this road trip thing thing. We’re figuring out what we really need to bring but we’re also finding we bring too much. Needs include extension cords because we have too many electronics and the outlets are never convenient, and motion sensitive nightlights for the bathroom because we’re getting older, can’t sleep through the night, and when you’re in a strange place who knows what you’ll walk into!  Things we don’t need on a short road trip include my guitar. It was fun to sit outside at my in-laws house and play but honestly, it was a bit of a pain to haul it around.

The trip down was pretty uneventful, getting a little more than halfway the first night since we were able to hit the road around 4 PM, and then the rest of the way the next morning. We were fortunate enough to stop at another niece’s house on the way. She just bought her first home a few months ago, a fixer-upper. I did the same when I was around her age, and remember what a metric ton of work it was. Back then I didn’t know how to do anything and relied on a book from Reader’s Digest on how to fix almost anything. I learned about electrical (white to white, black to black, ground to ground – and disclaimer, that’s NOT instructions!), plumbing (which I still despise to this day), and lots of other useful stuff. Some of it I just made up as I went along. One example (which NO ONE should follow) was cleaning my basement concrete blocks of mold and mildew. Bleach kills mold, right? And vinegar gets rid of mildew? So killing 2 birds with one stone, I made up a mixture of both in water and cleaned the walls…and proceeded to talk like a frog for a week. I was told by a friend who was former military how dumb I was for that, because mixing those two makes mustard gas. But hey, the walls looked better! Another project that I did was refinish my floors, but I was poor and too scared to rent a floor sander, so I sanded the hardwood by hand with a wood block. It took me weeks and probably didn’t look as good as it would have had I rented a sander, but after sanding, re-staining and sealing it looked a lot better than before. Had the internet existed back then, it probably would have made my life simpler. Our niece is fortunate in that her father is close by and can help but it’s still her house and her responsibility and we’re really proud of her for taking this on. I can’t wait to see what it looks like when it’s done.

The rest of the visit there was fun, we did a lot of relaxing, some hiking, and had a lovely bonfire one evening. My in-laws live in the country, and he has a business selling firewood locally. IMG_7907One thing he does as well, is sell logs that are hollowed out from decay, along with color packs for the fire, and when you put that hollow log upright on a fire and toss in the color pack you get a really cool effect. Unfortunately we don’t have an open fire pit here, so we couldn’t bring any of the logs back with us.

The trip home was fun too. As we headed west of Macon, MO on highway 36, I suddenly spotted what looked like a large black panther in a field. I know it wasn’t a dog, wrong shape for that, and was very cat like but BIG. I did some digging and found a subreddit this morning from about 4 months ago, indicating someone else had seen it in the same place we did. While they aren’t native to MO, apparently there are sightings from time to time. I just wish I’d had the camera ready, so let that be a lesson to road-trippers…always have a camera at hand!

As part of the trip home we had decided to drive west to Omaha and visit the Strategic Air Command Museum in Ashland, NE. They have a number of planes and exhibits from SAC used during the Cold War. IMG_7926There is a U2 plane, the kind that Francis Gary Powers was in when he was shot down, an SR-71A Blackbird which is dramatically displayed allowing you to get quite close to it. My husband could have reached out and touched the pitot tube off the nose of the plane.

Then there is the macdaddy of them all, a Convair B-36J Peacemaker. 

Screenshot 2024-10-12 at 9.51.32 AM

IMG_7952

You absolutely can’t believe the size of this thing, it is a monster of a plane. In the photo above, note the size of the cockpit relative to the rest of the plane. The wheels alone weighed over 1300 lb and had enough rubber for 60 car tires. The wingspan is 230 feet, the length 162 feet and the height 46 feet. Fully loaded it weighed 410,000 lb. In my photo you can see it – sort of – but it’s so darn big even standing on the catwalk above it, there was no way to get the whole thing in the photo. By comparison, an A320 plane, which is commonly flown today has a wingspan of 117 feet, length of 123 feet and height of 32 feet with a fully loaded weight of 171,000 lbs. If you are ever in the Omaha area, I would encourage you to visit, it’s a fascinating place. We ended up getting there later than expected so we didn’t get to see all of the exhibits, or go on the simulator, but are definitely planning to go again and spend more time. They are also getting ready to add a new virtual reality experience which should be fun.

The last day of the trip we did something else we’d been wanting to do for ages, and that was to visit the Spam museum in Austin, MN. Located in downtown Austin, it’s a great opportunity to learn about the history of the Hormel company and Spam. Apparently in addition to being hugely popular in Hawaii, it’s a favorite in Japan and the Philippines. In fact, it is so popular in the Philippines that Hormel has a variety to reflect their culture, called Tocino. The museum is free, and you get samples of Spam while you’re there so go if you are ever in the area.

What fun road trips have you taken? Feel free to leave recommendations for fun places to visit.

The Write Stuff

/ Beth Younker / Leave a comment

When I graduated from college, the gift my father gave me was a Mont Blanc pen, which was really special to me. A few years before that, he’d given his brother one and I remember my uncle got very emotional about it. I asked my mom why it was such a big deal, and she said that giving someone a Mont Blanc as a gift was a sign that “you’d arrived”. Somewhere I still have a photo of me opening the box and seeing it for the first time, then hugging him.

While I love the pen and love writing with it, the refill rollerball cartridges aren’t cheap. A while back I found a YouTube video explaining how to refill them, and while it does work, eventually the rollerballs wear out and you have to buy new cartridges again (at least, that’s what I think is happening, or maybe I’m not using the right kind of ink, who knows).

When doing a search for ink, I found the Goulet Pen Company and a few weeks ago I decided to give writing with fountain pens a try for a couple of reasons, one of which is that the informational videos from the Goulet Pen Company are really funny and engaging. So, I bought my first fountain pen, and wow, what a difference.

I’m not going to go into detail about how they work and why they write so nicely as Brian Goulet does a fantastic job of that in his video blog in Fountain Pens 101. But I’m having so much fun with it that I’ve ordered a couple more pens (each has a specific purpose) and I am having a blast playing with them. Writing has become a lot more fun again, which has led me to restart my journaling. I have two that I’m working on right now. One is just some general thoughts on day-to-day things and I don’t know that I’ll ever plan to share that as it’s really more like a diary but the other is kind of a ‘memory book’ where I’m trying to record as much information as I can about my childhood, recollections that I have or stories I was told. An early post that I wrote titled “Fancy Pillows” has some of those memories and stories about my grandparents and events around them. So many of these tidbits just get lost to time, and if they aren’t written down someplace then they’re gone. I’m finding myself really searching my brain to find things to write down since it’s so fun to use the pen. My hope is that someday my niece and nephew will read the book and find out some interesting things about their great- and great-great-grandparents that they didn’t know.

Goulet also sells a TON of different kinds of ink, and I think nearly every color and type comes in a sample size vial that’s 2 ml, so you can try out many different ones until you find something you like. There are “wet” inks and “dry inks”, which sounds odd because aren’t all inks wet? And yes, they are, but what that means is that some bleed through paper more, feather on the edges more, and that kind of thing. If you’re using a fountain pen as a daily writer like I am now, that’s important if you are like me, taking notes on plain old loose-leaf paper. Wet ink bleeding through means I can only write on one side of the paper, so I prefer drier inks.

One of the pens I ordered is called a “dip pen” and as you might guess, it is a pen that you dip into the ink. This one is from a company called Jacques Herbin, and the pen is all glass, each one individually crafted. IMG_7759.jpegIt has ridges on the clear glass end and as the ink flows down the ridges and is used up, you just redip it again. If you decide you don’t like the color just wipe off with a damp paper towel. No need to refill a whole pen which makes it a great choice for playing around with all the ink samples I’ve gotten so far (too many, really!) Another pen I ordered is one that has a flex nib which allows you to write with both thick and thin lines as well. It writes a little like calligraphy with the variable line width, or you can just keep it as a fine point writer.  I also ordered a book on cursive writing, because apparently this is a lost art. I grew up taking penmanship and writing cursive and was quite surprised to learn that is stopped being required in schools around 2010 (Wikipedia has good info on this) but is now starting to be required again.  One thing that has become very clear to me with all of this, is that writing slowly is key to writing fancier. Here’s a sample of what writing with a flex nib looks like.  I’m using practice calligraphy paper, and if you look closely, you’ll see some bleeding (around the x and the n) due to the paper being cheaper quality and using a wet ink. IMG_7858

There are so many different pens at all different price points, which I think has my husband slightly concerned. He commented the other day “you’re really getting into this fountain pen thing, aren’t you?” and all I could do was smile and nod my head. Just doing a quick check of their site, the prices start at $3.95 and go all the way up to $16,000! When you purchase one of those, you’re actually getting a one-of-a-kind pen with a barrel crafted by an artisan. I can’t imagine spending that on a pen, but I’m sure someone must or they wouldn’t have them. For now, I’m happy sticking with my entry level starter pens that work really well and learning how to write fancier.

Things Mom Never Told You, Vol IX

/ Beth Younker / Leave a comment

Time for another installment of…

How often have gone into your kitchen after dark, and only needed the light on over your stove, only to realize in order to see the button for the light on your over-the-stove microwave you must first turn on another light? Kind of seems to defeat the purpose, doesn’t it? Even with all of the technological improvements to microwaves that have been made including drawer styles where you only need wave your hand in front of a panel to open it, manufacturers still haven’t figured out how to have some sort of way for us to figure out where the light is. Maybe a dimple in the panel? How about a single always on LED light behind a light bulb symbol? It’s not like the thing doesn’t have electricity going to it all the time for Pete’s sake.

Enter the microwave light finder, new from the mind of Beth. OK maybe not new, I did it with our last microwave that died and my husband thought it was such a wonderful idea I’m doing it again. I took a small rounded clear plastic self-sticking dot and put it on the button on the microwave panel. MIcrowaveNow even in total darkness, we can just find the raised bump  by touch and voila! Instant light. You can see the dot in the photo at right and about every 6 months or so my husband says “that was SUCH a s good idea”. As a matter of fact, Samsung, here is the criteria for the perfect microwave: 1. Lighted   Screen Shot 2020-01-04 at 8.29.13 AM (or dimpled) light button.

  1. See picture at right for which buttons can be eliminated due to their being unnecessary. 3. Simplify, simplify, simplify. 4. Charge less. Seriously who uses all of these? I already know how long to put butter in the microwave to soften it by virtue of having done it for 20 years without a button to tell me, I don’t need to have a sensor for that. I also know how long to cook other food, again, no special sensor needed. Popcorn, 3 minutes. Hot water in a cup, 3 minutes. Slice of leftover pizza, 1 minute. See, no special buttons needed!

Speaking of useful places for a little raised button, we have a Decora-style dimmer on the light in the master bedroom, and I’m always hitting the wrong button, accidentally turning the light on full, when I wanted to hit a different button and just barely turn it on, so I’ve added one of the little clear buttons where I need it. NO more bright lights at 11:00 PM! Of course, since the switch also happens to be a smart switch connected to our phones, if I was smarter, I would say “Hey, Siri, turn the bedroom light on at 5%” before I walked up the stairs, and the problem would have been solved that way too!

While I’m on a rant, why has no one made a string of incandescent Christmas lights  that are only about 5 or 6 lights long, and the set comes with decorative blackout covers for unused lights? Yep, you heard that right, blackout covers. How many of us have changed over to LED lights on our Christmas trees either because we like the brightness of the lights, or want to save money? But in doing that, we can no longer connect our old Hallmark ornaments that needed to actually be plugged into an incandescent light string to work. This year I ended up buying a 10-light string so we could enjoy them again, and unfortunately not all of the old bases are the same shape so a little re-rigging was in order. However, the old ornaments are once again lighted, moving and talking, but we also have 5 other lights that look weird and out of place compared to the LED lights. So, there’s a solution but a bit of a hinkey one. (Word of caution, if you do this, do NOT plug LED and incandescent into the same series.) It’s best to use a surge suppressor and plug each type of light into a different spot on the surge suppressor.

Are you someone that loves to grind your own coffee from beans? If so, you may have noticed bags of beans have a funny little disc on them near the top of the bag and wondered what it’s for. Well, my husband did a little research for you. That’s a one-way valve designed to release the carbon dioxide off-gassed by the beans, and prevent oxygen from getting into the bag, preserving freshness. Without it, the bag would eventually expand until it blew up, but in order for it to work properly, the bag needs to be standing upright.

Last on the list, a gadget that truly works. How many times do you need to interrupt your dryer in the middle of the cycle to untangle/unroll the sheets? I usually did it twice, sometimes three times but not anymore! I give you the “Wad-Free“. I linked to it on Amazon but do want to say I am not an affiliate, and make no money off of it. Screenshot 2024-09-12 at 7.13.44 AMI just love it. You attach the 4 corners of the sheet to the 4 corners of the plastic disk, (They attach a little like a garter). Voila! No more tangled up sheets. I don’t remember where I heard about them but finally decided to try them and after 4 months, I think they’re the best thing since sliced bread. The worst thing about them is that the 4 corners come out slightly wrinkled because of being attached to the little garter thingy, and there are folks in the reviews that fuss about that. Honestly, I don’t have anyone that persnickety in my house. If a guest is going to see those little wrinkles, I can’t call for a hotel room for them. I also know there were some folks that didn’t have as good luck as I’ve had, and I think perhaps they had king size sheets, which might be too big for this to work. We have queen size and they’re perfect.

What tips or ideas do you have to make life easier?

 

The Job Hunter

/ Beth Younker / Leave a comment

I was in a position this year that I never expected – to be hunting for a new job less than 6 months after starting the previous one, and this painful process has provided some insights that I think are worth sharing.  Finding a new job isn’t like it used to be. It can take MANY rounds of interviews and lots of time, and it’s frustrating. Please note, this is a longer post than usual.

  1. Everyone deserves to be treated with respect. Even if you don’t get along with your manager, or find the job isn’t what you thought it was, disrespect just has no place in a professional setting. Whether you’re experiencing it from your leader or your coworkers, then that isn’t the place for you.  A company without a good moral compass will demonstrate from the top down that it’s toxic, and disrespect is just one sign of toxicity. No job, regardless of pay or benefits, is worth putting up with toxicity.
  2. Job hunting is hard. It will exhaust you, burn you out, make you cry, throw things, scream at the world, feel like you have nothing to offer and make you want to curl up under a blanket. Be ready for it, and know it’s not you.
  3. Plan ahead. Save up as much money as you can and be ready to make a move. Try to avoid quitting your job before you have another because you don’t know how long you’ll be out of work. In 2017 the team I was on was let go as part of a company reorganizational effort. It took me 182 applications and 20 months to find a job. This time around I applied for 109 in just over 2 months before I found a new position. 
  4. Make sure your resume looks really good. If you haven’t had it professionally done, consider doing so, or look for examples on the internet. You will find it helpful to have a section with skills – mine is right at the top, above experiences. I have a short professional summary followed by 9 bullets with skill keywords. Those get customized for each application to make sure AI picks out those keywords. Try to limit your experience to about 10 years, and keep the resume to 2 pages if possible. I’ve also tried to have a short description about each job, followed by one or two accomplishments in the role. 
  5. Use your eyes. Are you baffled by why you aren’t getting responses to your applications, despite customizing your resume and writing cover letters?  Occam’s Razor might be the answer. I ran my cover letters through spell check in Word every time and found nothing. What I failed to do was to use my own abilities to proofread, and suddenly one day my spell and grammar check started acting up, converting itself into French and telling me the cover letter had 0 words and characters. I downloaded a free grammar program, and was horrified at the mistakes that I had let go through. Recruiters are inundated with hundreds of applications for each job. You won’t make it past the initial AI screening if you have mistakes.
  6. Update your profile on LinkedIn. Reach out to every contact that you have that might be able to help with a referral. In today’s job market, networking is king. You still need a current resume and must submit applications, but you shouldn’t overlook the value of networking. You never know when a job will be posted and someone will think of you and say to themselves, “I know JUST the person for this”. The position that I accepted happened because of networking.
  7. How many applicants are there? Look at the number of applicants for a job, which is a LinkedIn feature. If there are more than 25 or so, your chances of getting reviewed by the recruiter are lower than if you’re in the top 10 or so. If there are more than 100, it may not be worth applying for the job although there seem to be mixed opinions on this.
  8. Is it REALLY remote? As you look through listings, you’re going to find that “remote” doesn’t always really mean remote. Some jobs will say remote but you must live in a particular city or state. You’ll have to read carefully through listings to see if you truly can live anywhere in the US for that job. I wish that recruiters and companies like Workday or Taleo who have application programs would develop different classification options of remote such as “Fully Remote” and “Limited Remote” to make it easier to search. 
  9. Follow someone like Liz Ryan on LinkedIn. Liz is a career coach and has some wonderful words of advice. Lessons I’ve learned from her include things like recognizing red flags in the application and interview process, when to move on, and how to realize your own value.
  10. Be ready to negotiate. I’ve learned that while a job posting may have a salary range listed, that doesn’t mean there isn’t wiggle room on it. If you’re interested and want the job, apply for it. You can always make a case for why you are worth more, but if you’re going to do that, be prepared with data and facts to support it. What are you able to bring to justify a higher salary? And if they can’t go higher, then ask for either a hiring bonus or perhaps some additional vacation time. What’s the worst that can happen? They can’t meet your requests and then you have to decide if you want the job or not.
  11. Why are you leaving? This is a question you’ll probably be asked especially if you’ve been there a short time. Be ready with talking points and be careful what you say. It may not be well received to run down another company, so choose your words wisely but don’t lie either. 
  12. Research the company you are considering. Glassdoor.com is a good site for that information. For example, had I done so I would have seen a company I went to was rated 2.8 out of 5 stars and had a lot of negative reviews.  I’d like to think that I would have not gone there had I remembered to do this research.
  13. Prepare to be ghosted. You’re not going to hear back from a lot of your applications. There are 5 that I applied to in mid-April, and still hadn’t heard a peep from those companies as of September 3. I assume by now they have either hired someone or have put the jobs on hold but it would have been nice to at least know I’m not being considered.
  14. Always write a “thank you” note to the recruiter and to anyone that interviews you. If you don’t have email addresses for the interviewers, you can always send a thank you in a Word document to the recruiter and ask them to forward it for you. You need to positively stand out in the interviewer’s mind, and a note is a good way to do that.
  15. Be ready to be rejected. I have been, many, many times. I try to not take it personally but it is really difficult not to, especially if you’re desperately unhappy in your job and need to get out, or when you learn you were the top candidate but they selected someone else with just “that much more” experience or who is internal.
  16. Have confidants and let them help lift you up. I’ve found support in so many places, and am grateful for it. I leaned on family and friends and they kept me sane. I knew I’d get through this, but I also must admit there were days when it felt like I wouldn’t, and couldn’t manage another day in that horrid job. Somehow, I did, and you will too.

 

Finally, not specific to job hunting but in general if you’re still in the early stages of your career, the best advice I can offer is to invest wisely now, so you’ll be ready to retire when you want to. As I have gotten closer to the end of my career, I find I have less patience for nonsense and wish I had socked away a lot more so I could just retire and walk away. Until I actually can I’ll give my best to my new (and hopefully last!) employer. 

I hope a few folks see this and find it helpful.

 

The Great Minnesota Get Together

/ Beth Younker / 2 Comments

Back in 2019 I wrote a post titled “The Great Minnesota Stay Apart”. It was the first year of COVID and was the first time in the history of the fair that it was cancelled. Well thank goodness it’s the ONLY time it was cancelled, and August 27 was our day to go. Of course, it’s not the fair without a little adventure, and this one started the day before with some interesting storms going through around dusk. Unfortunately, there was a second round of storms around 4:30 the next morning and those were WAY worse. Tree limbs came down, there was localized flooding, some of the vendors had things tossed around, and the corker was the loss of the cover of the Giant Slide. The slide has been a state fair staple for more than 50 years, and overnight the iconic green and yellow striped awning blew off. It just looks weird without it.

Image 8-27-24 at 8.51 PM

Photo courtesy of the Minnesota State Fair

The other thing that was odd was that for the first time in the entire history of the fair it opened late. Unfortunately not everyone got the memo and so there were folks that showed up at the normal time and then had to wait 2 hours in line just to get in the door. The moral of that story is, of course, CHECK YOUR APPS!

That aside, we had a great time although it was just a scootch humid. For those of you not from around these parts, ‘scootch’ s a Minnesota term, as in “I’m just going to scootch past you”. If you want to see some others check out this story on Kare11, one of our local news stations about a funny contest they were running to determine the best expression from Minnesota. They had brackets for voting and the winner was “You betcha” (which I could have predicted!) We were lucky enough to connect with a friend who was celebrating her birthday and spent most of the day with her. She’s a fair employee and takes vacation time each year from her ‘real’ job to work in the Creative Arts building so it was fun having her perspective and experience. One of the highlights was sitting in on a newscast at Kare11 which is another fair tradition and one we’ve never done usually because by the time we remember and get to to the broadcast area, it’s full and I don’t like just standing around. What made it especially fun was watching our friend be part of the broadcast by holding up a card displaying part of the weather forecast.

One of the most entertaining things we do at the fair is people watch, and this year provided no shortage of amusement. From the woman wearing a dreadlock wig that was blond and strawberry pink who we called “Strawberry Shortcake”, to the footwear that made me shake my head. Maybe it’s because I’m older and can’t make it at the fair unless I have on good, supportive tennis shoes but I am amazed when I see women in wedges or heels. How in the world can they walk around all day in those? And this isn’t like wearing them all day to the office. At an office you’re probably up and down, sitting to standing all day. Here at the fair the bulk of what you do is WALK. For us, I got in over 19,000 steps and had 6.6 miles in about 7 hours. Now, having said that, I do have to say maybe these same women are learning their lessons as I did see far fewer women in those shoes and a lot more tennis shoes and sandals but there were still plenty in odd footwear.

The blow-up stuff you can buy is funny too, like the 4-foot aliens. Seriously who buys those? Or the old record albums that were laser cut into different designs and then had a clock mounted in the middle or all the heavy blankets, fur pelts, winter coats and vests and a vendor with a lot of plaid flannel shirts, which of course are a nod to our governor Tim Walz. (And unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know he is Kamala Harris running mate and the third Minnesotan to be selected for a possible VP slot.) but who looks at fur, flannel, and fleece in August in 85 degrees? I wonder how much they actually sell at these fairs.

As usual, by the end of our day I was so tired I could barely walk back to the transit center to catch our bus home but after a shower and normal food I slowly started to feel like myself  again. Until next year, when of course I will have forgotten the humidity, joint pain and the fatigue, and will go with enthusiasm.

Buyer Beware

/ Beth Younker / Leave a comment

Like many, during the pandemic we came to rely on the ease of Amazon ordering to help make it through. (I know, the good workers of Amazon have had a tough time of it, and a lot of us didn’t help, but that’s a story for another day.) We ordered a fair amount, and definitely got our money’s worth from our Prime membership. When a charge for $13.92 showed up one month, I honestly didn’t think about it, because after all, it was just another Amazon charge, right? 

Then the other day I was looking at Quicken and our transactions and happened to notice that we were charged that amount on May 22 AND May 27. I thought, hmm that’s odd. I scrolled back a bit and noticed that I was also charged that on April 22 and 27. When I looked back, I noticed this: 

Feb 22 $13.92 AMAZON PRIME AMAZON 

March 22 $13.92 AMAZON PRIME AMAZON 

April 22 $13.92 AMAZON PRIME AMAZON 

April 27 $13.92 AMAZON PRIME AMAZON 

May 22 $13.92 AMAZON PRIME AMAZON 

May 27 $13.92 AMAZON PRIME AMAZON 

June 8 $13.92 AMAZON PRIME AMAZON 

What the heck? It really hadn’t caught my eye at first, I guess I was thinking that it was a monthly Prime charge instead of annual, however I looked back and realized we paid our Prime membership back in December. The transaction showed the same, AMAZON PRIME AMAZON. (Note: If you make a purchase from Amazon, it probably is going to show up on a credit card as either from AMAZON MARKETPLACE or AMAZON.COM*G7XXXXXX or something with a similar syntax. So, it’s easy to differentiate the transactions.)  

I tried to talk to someone at Amazon about it and all they could tell me was it appeared that I have two accounts, one of which ends in a phone number with 2 digits that I’ve never had. Because of that, they couldn’t send me a confirmation code and asked if I had a transaction number. I didn’t as AMEX doesn’t have them in the statements, so they refused to do anything else for me. I let them know I would take the next step, which was to open a dispute with my credit card company since I wasn’t going to allow them to continue to charge me for something they couldn’t explain, and I didn’t purchase or authorize. Oddly enough, that didn’t seem to faze the agent at all. I would think companies wouldn’t like having fraud cases against them but maybe Amazon is so big now that Jeff Bezos doesn’t care about those kinds of things. After all, what’s one more fraud case more or less in the grand scheme of things…will it stop him from going into the stratosphere? Probably not. 

So that’s exactly what I did. I called Amex, and they were wonderful, setting up the fraud case, closing the card down and issuing me a new card, and starting the process to refund my money. It will take about a month for it to be investigated and resolved although I actually had the money back within a week and the new card in under 10 days. I also was able to keep using my Apple Pay, plus all recurring transactions that had been set up for payments will be automatically paid as well, I don’t need to do anything with them. I only need to update payments on one-time purchases as I make them. 

The weird thing is, as I think about it…so did someone get ahold of my card, and open a second account in my name? It sure sounds like that’s what happened. I can’t close it down, since I can’t get into it, and don’t have the username associated with the account, but at least I can feel better about having the card replaced. I just wish I had more recourse with Amazon. I did set up an account years ago as a business account when I was thinking about doing some selling there, but then decided that it was easier to work with eBay and I never completed all the steps needed to make the business account live. I checked it and that was inactive, with no phone number, email or anything attached to it, so that couldn’t be it but did close it down just to be sure. 

There’s a good lesson here, however, to keep a close eye on your electronic transactions, and make sure you know what everything is for. Credit card companies will stand behind you and help you, as long as you have done your due diligence and can provide them with some facts. 

Quick update: I wrote this post a while ago and it sat in my drafts unpublished. I just did a quick search to see if there were any additional charges for “Amazon Prime Amazon”, and there weren’t, thank goodness. 

 

Death of the Editor, Part III

/ Beth Younker / Leave a comment

I’m baaaacccckkk! After a long, long hiatus, mostly due to COVID and not feeling particularly inspired, I’ve been feeling lately like it’s time to resurrect the fun that I had with the blog. I started the post below back in early 2021, and now over 2 years later in late 2023, I’m finally going to finish it. So here we go, with more examples of found internet stories that would have benefitted from an editor’s eye.

From Us magazine on January 18, 2021:

Oh, for the love of God, she wasn’t born Betty Marion White Ludden, she married Allen Ludden. I don’t know if they forgot a comma and meant to write “born Betty Marion White, Ludden got her start” or what, but it’s wrong. Just wrong.

I’d like to say it’s taking me longer to find these kooky headlines because I’m reading less online news, but since that’s not true, maybe the editors aren’t dead but merely sleeping…heavily sleeping. They sure were on 11/4/2023 at People in a story about Mark Harmon:

Seriously? How difficult is it to spell “Harmon”?

A second story the same day produced a second mistake, so the editor really WAS asleep at the wheel. In a story about Neil Diamond’s children I saw this:

I had to read that one about 5 times before I was sure I was reading it correctly. Jessie likely didn’t divorce his son; he divorced his wife, Sheryl. Yikes!

I guess no one is familiar with acronyms anymore. From The Guardian on 11/6/23, from both the headline of the article as well as the text:

It’s ICE, not Ice and is an acronym. Apparently, it’s impossible to find editors, despite the fact that the role is one that is truly all online and could be done remotely as a matter of routine.

And finally, from The Huffington Post on 11/22/23, from a sweet story by Sarah Paulson about Matthew Perry (could I BE any sadder about that?)…”goad”. Say what?

I keep seeing ads on Facebook and in games about “work as a proofreader at home”. Perhaps the universe is sending me a message and I should check that out as a side gig? On the other hand, it feels like suspicious click bait so perhaps best to leave well enough alone.