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coffinlid · 4 months

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If y’all wanna hear some shit read below the cut. It’s a lot. Sorry 🩷

OK SO! Yesterday I go into work at 4 and one of my coworkers immediately tells me that the restaurant is closed Saturday. I was like oh ok…. Why? Like shut down for the day or…. And he said no like the business is shutting down forever. He kinda jumped the gun bc soon after the director of operations (Pete) gathers all of the evening crew around and lets us know the situation.

(I’m gonna try to explain some context without being confusing. The company I work for owns 3 restaurants. The restaurant I work at is technically not owned by them, but they manage it for the original owner/landlord. The landlord (who fucked off to the Dominican Republic because he’s in trouble with the law) saw our finances for the first time in like a year and decided to just shut it all down. He has no restaurant experience and doesn’t understand the concept of slow season in the food world. Yes, business has been slow since November. However, we are ALWAYS popping off spring-fall. Business BOOMS. Well. Landlord guy gave our company an ultimatum.)

Pete explains that himself, the CEO, and I guess some of the other corporate people tried reasoning with landlord and even just begged to let the restaurant stay open until spring when business picks up. Landlord said they could do 3 things:

1. Buy the restaurant from him for an astronomical amount

2. Continue to run the restaurant but with absolutely no financial support from him from now on (which we were already kind of doing for a year…)

3. Shut down the whole bitch

Our company can’t afford to keep the restaurant with no support so they had to concede to landlord and just shut the whole thing down. And it had to be on Saturday. There was no reasoning with him. This took absolutely EVERYBODY by surprise. EVERYBODY, including corporate and head management of the restaurant, got a total of 2! DAYS! of notice.

I could tell when I walked into work yesterday that Pete and my two managers had been crying a lot. I know the GM is gonna float between the other restaurants as a training coordinator, but I have no clue what’s gonna happen to the assistant manager bc there are no other management positions available in the company. She’s pretty much just been hung out to dry. With 2 days notice.

My front of house and back of house coworkers were all discussing where we’re gonna go from here and what the fuck we do now. 2 days to find a new job. Everybody was scrambling to get each other’s socials so we can all keep in touch. This fucking sucks dude. I loved coming into work just for my coworkers, not even the work itself. I know it’s a cliche that companies call themselves a “family” but honestly truly we really were a little family.

Pete wants us all to stay within the company if we can, and I know at least 3 of us are going to transfer to one of the other restaurants. It’s technically not the end of the world, at least for servers. But I have no clue if the other restaurants have any space for back of house employees. I know I’m never gonna see some of these people ever again.

And we have a whole ass brewery in the back. And we JUST CHANGED THE MENU AND INVESTED IN ALL THIS OTHER SHIT JUST LAST FRIDAY!!!! We had 1 week with the new menu and that’s it. Everything is completely stocked. There are so many fixtures and plants and technology, so much new merch that we just bought.

Somehow a mass text went out to all the other stores and restaurants on our street that we were shutting down and we had so many people walking in to share their condolences. But this text went out before most of the restaurant even knew about it. So when they came in some of us were like uh… what are you talking about…. How the fuck did that happen???? No one knows who sent the text.

On the bright side, I got a SHIT TON of sympathy tips last night and made almost $200.

It was going to be my last night since I wasn’t scheduled for the next 2 days but thankfully my manager added me to the roster for Saturday night. So I will be there for the end of it all 🥲

#long post #I hope the cut actually works on mobile #so yeah I’m technically out of a job in 2 days #but I just got an offer letter for the funeral home so it’s not like I’m scrambling #THIS SHIT SUUUCCCCCKKKKSSSSSS #tt #I’m gonna miss my people so bad I think I might cry on Saturday

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varemosa · 6 years

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Asking

A/N: When I started writing this a week ago, I thought it would be less than half this long, but it just kept growing. I hope you like it. Word count: 1,692 | AO3 link

Spencer held the door open as you exited the restaurant. This was your first date, but you had the feeling he would still be just as chivalrous on your tenth date and after. He seemed like a really nice guy, and you had been pleasantly surprised when he asked you out.

---

The two of you had been attending a 10-week book discussion series at the library. You glanced at him a couple times the first night and thought he was fairly cute, but you’d really noticed him the second week when he went into a five-minute monologue about an obscure historical topic that was briefly mentioned in that week’s book. Everyone else had started shifting in their seats and shooting glances at each other, but you were enthralled by his enthusiasm, the sound of his voice, and the way he moved his hands. You smiled encouragingly when he looked your way and, when he was finished, came up with a comment (which you hoped sounded relatively intelligent compared to everything he'd just said) to show him you’d been paying attention.

You were disappointed when he missed the third session and hoped he hadn't been put off by the others' reactions to his contribution. You approached him the next week to ask how he'd been.

"Hey. Spencer, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm Dr. Spencer Reid. And you're Y/N."

"That's right." You smiled. "Good memory."

"Eidetic actually. I remember almost everything I read."

"Oh. Wow." You were impressed, but also a little embarrassed that you'd thought he was paying attention to you specifically, instead of just reading everyone's nametags from the first night.

He noticed your discomfort and quickly added, "I remember you though. You had really good insights into the character motivations from the first week's book."

"Thank you. I was surprised not to see here you last week."

"Yeah, I hated to miss it, but we were called away on a case."

"A case?"

"I'm a profiler with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, the BAU. We work on serial killings, kidnappings, those kinds of things."

"Oh wow! Well now I'm especially flattered that you appreciated my character analysis. I guess you know almost everything about human behavior."

He looked like he was about to say something else, but the librarian moderating the discussions called for everyone's attention and the group quieted down and settled into their seats, cutting your conversation short.

You and Spencer exchanged a few comments at the following sessions. He would be kind of awkward at first, but you made an effort to bring up things you thought he'd be interested in, and then he could go on talking excitedly for a while and not be so self-conscious. When he ended up missing another week for work, he arrived early the next time and was waiting for you.

"Hey Y/N."

"Hey Spencer! Did you have another case? How'd it go?"

"It ended well, thankfully. We found a missing kid and were able to get her home safely."

"That's great! My brain was coming up with all kinds of crazy ideas of what you might be working on." You hesitated for a minute. "I wished I had a way to contact you and make sure you were doing okay."

"Oh. Oh, well, um, I'm not very techy but I could give you my cell phone number. And if you wanted to give me yours I can maybe let you know next time, if I can't make it."

"That sounds good," you said with a smile. You were glad he offered and you hadn't needed to ask for his number outright. You usually left it up to the other person to ask you things like that early in the relationship, but you were afraid Spencer would be too shy and you really liked him.

There were only two weeks left in the discussion series after that though, and you and Spencer hadn't needed to contact each other over any absences. As the final discussion session was wrapping up, you were contemplating how to say goodbye to him, unsure if you would get to see him again. Deep in thought as the other attendees were gathering their things and filing out of the room, you didn't notice Spencer walking over until he was right in front of you. You'd barely registered his presence when he blurted out, "I was wondering if you might want to go out to dinner with me next week? Maybe this same time?" He bit his lip and shifted his eyes around nervously, but looked back at you and smiled after you said yes.

---

Your conversation over dinner tonight had started much the same as usual, but it was nice to have more time one-on-one without interruptions and you did get into learning more personal information about each other. It was a very different atmosphere with the two of you in the candlelit restaurant compared to the group setting under fluorescent lights in the library community room. Someone at the table next to you knocked over the salt shaker and threw a pinch over their shoulder. You voiced your surprise that someone would do that in a nice restaurant, and Spencer went into a detailed explanation of the old superstition.

"You probably didn't want to hear all that though..." he finished.

"It's fine. I'm always amazed at the things you know. And I like listening to you talk."

"You're really the only one," he said with a nervous chuckle. "Even my coworkers, we're like family, but they all just kind of joke about it when I talk a lot unless it's directly necessary for the case. But you always listen, Y/N."

Eventually the waiter came over to ask if you needed anything else and gently reminded you that the restaurant was about to close.

"I've had a really nice time tonight, Spencer."

"So have I, Y/N."

Now you and Spencer started walking up the street from the restaurant to the downtown parking lot, close enough to each other that your arms kept brushing together. You hunched your shoulders up a bit in the chill night air.

“Are you cold?” he asked, unfolding his coat from where it had been draped over his other arm.

You nodded and stopped at the edge of the sidewalk. “Mostly my back. There’s a cutout in my dress.”

He moved behind you to put the coat over your shoulders and you pulled your hair around in front of you.

“That’s very nice,” he said softly from behind you.

“Thank you.”

Spencer gently brushed over a piece of hair you had missed and his fingertips grazed lightly over your skin, lingering longer than they needed to. He rested that hand at your shoulder for a moment and his other hand traced across your exposed back, the collar of the coat hooked over his thumb. You smiled, though he couldn’t see it. Then he cleared his throat and settled the coat around you.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” you replied.

“I touched you without asking.”

You turned around so you could see each other’s faces. “Well, I appreciate your awareness of the issue,” you said genuinely. “You don’t have to ask about every single thing though."

He still looked uncomfortable.

"Consider the context here.”

He raised an eyebrow at you.

“Think through it, Mr. Profiler,” you teased gently.

Now he was in analysis mode. “We're not strangers, we’ve known each other for a while, and we’re on a date."

You nodded. Spencer shifted his weight between his feet and unfocused his gaze as he was thinking.

"You already said when we finished dinner that you enjoyed the evening.”

“I have.”

“Your body language was open and engaged during dinner, and just now we were walking closer together than people usually do. That was some touching there, actually, kind of.”

Another nod as he looked up at you again.

“You mentioned the cutout in your dress and you let me see it instead of saying you didn’t want the coat or leaving your hair down over it like it was.” He paused for a brief moment, thinking back. “You didn’t tense up when I moved your hair; your shoulders actually relaxed a little bit. And then you didn’t move away at all when I touched your back.”

“All true,” you replied. “And it was a gentle touch on a fairly innocuous part of the body."

You reached your arms out toward him but paused, waiting until he looked at you and lifted his hands before taking them in your own.

"See, as long as you’re mindful of the other person, you can often use nonverbal cues to determine consent.”

Spencer was nodding now, and seemed to be feeling better about the situation.

“Of course, there are certainly times when it’s better to communicate more directly.” You moved a bit closer and faced him straight on. “For example, you still look a little tense, so I’m going to ask first... Can I kiss you?”

He hesitated for a moment, chewing on his lip. It seemed like a nervous habit; he’d done the same thing when he asked you out.

"You’re allowed to say no,” you said, catching his eye.

He shook his head and rocked slightly back on his heels before settling down. “I’d like it if we kissed,” he said firmly. You smiled and leaned closer, and he moved an arm to your waist.

The kiss was slow and soft, but warm. You felt him smile as he pulled back. He kept his arm at your waist as the two of you resumed the walk to your cars.

"Is it too early to ask you for another date?" Spencer asked.

"No."

"Would you like to keep meeting at this time? Um, maybe every week whenever I'm in town? Is that too much?"

"No, that sounds great."

"Good. I would hate to see you any less than we have been."

"And Spencer?"

He turned his head toward you.

"Just so you know, I really like having my back traced."

His arm slipped up under his coat on your shoulders, his fingers finding the cutout in your dress again.

#fanfiction #criminal minds #spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #dr spencer reid #reid #reid x reader #first date #first kiss

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afriendlypokealien · 3 years

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News and useful info on Point of Sale & POS Hardware.

This article was produced through the NPR NextGen/Texas Observer Print Scholars program, a new collaboration designed to offer mentorship and hands-on training to student journalists and recent graduates interested in a career in investigative journalism.

For Greyson’s safety, identifying details, locations, and recent photos of his face have been intentionally left out of this story.

The lull between spring and fall semester was short-lived at the Rodriguez house. Lauren Rodriguez, a 37-year-old social worker, was busy managing a list of things that need to get done before her teenage son, Greyson Rodriguez, can start college in the fall. But before orientation and moving Greyson more than 1,000 miles away to begin his undergraduate career, the Rodriguez family needed to get through high school graduation.

Several boxes of supplies cluttered the dining room table, ready to be shipped to the school. Rodriguez checked on Greyson for the second time, warning the sleeping teen that he had a student advising appointment beginning in a few minutes. Greyson emerged, sluggish and silent, to sit on an oversized brown loveseat and stare at his phone. The neediest of their three dogs, Daisy, hopped into his lap to demand attention.

“He can be lazy sometimes, because that’s all teenagers,” Rodriguez says of Greyson. “But when he wants something, he’s very driven.”

Greyson has had to be driven. He graduated a year early to escape Texas, which he has mockingly nicknamed “the great state of hate.” Indeed, Texas is one of the most dangerous states in the country for a teen like Greyson.

At 13, Greyson came out as trans. He and his family faced abuse, cruelty, death threats, and aggression. “While I never read them, I know that during the summer I got death threats when I was 13 from people in my neighborhood who were sending me mail telling me to kill myself and they wanted me to die,” Greyson says. He was forced to switch to an online school and the family eventually moved to the more progressive Austin area to get away from their conservative hometown. Texas ranks second in the U.S. in number of cases of fatal violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people since 2013, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Since he came out, both he and his mother have become advocates for LGBTQ Texans, especially trans youth. In March, Lauren Rodriguez testified in front of the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence in support of House Bill 73, which would have banned the use of the “gay/trans panic” defense. The panic defense, often cited by defendants in cases of violence directed at gay or trans people, argues that after an individual discovered someone was gay or trans, they panicked and assaulted or killed them.

“Currently in the state of Texas, a criminal penalty for a defendants’ violence, including murder, can be lessened or eliminated if the perpetrator claims that the victim’s gender identity or sexual orientation triggered a mental breakdown that resulted in their loss of self control and subsequent assault,” state Representative Gina Hinojosa, a Democrat who filed HB 73, said during the public hearing.

In more than 100 criminal cases between 1970 and 2020 where defendants attempted to use the “gay/trans panic” defense, the highest concentration of cases took place in Texas, according to W. Carsten Andresen a professor at St. Edwards University in Austin and an expert on the topic.

But the 87th Texas Legislature failed to pass HB 73, signaling to LGBTQ Texans like Greyson Rodriguez and his family that the “gay/trans panic” defense is still an acceptable excuse for violence against vulnerable Texans. The bill was brought to a vote and rejected in the House committee, while the Senate companion never got a hearing. Despite the defense’s conflict with federal hate crime laws and a 2013 resolution from the American Bar Association calling for states to ban it, so far only 15 states and D.C. have passed legislation banning the use of the “gay/trans panic” defense, with bills proposed in Texas and 10 other states.

In 2018, James Miller, a 69-year-old Austin man, was sentenced to six months in jail plus 10 years probation for stabbing his neighbor Daniel Spencer to death. Instead of a murder or manslaughter charge, Miller was convicted of the lesser offense of criminally negligent homicide after claiming that Spencer had made sexual advances and that he acted in self-defense. However, prosecutors called the self-defense claim “ludicrous,” saying Miller didn’t have “so much as a scratch on him.” LGBTQ rights advocates and experts like Andresen point to the light sentence in this case as an example of the “gay/trans panic” defense at work.

“‘Are they going to get away with murder?’ That’s the concern,” Greyson says. “It’s not a matter of if it’ll stop or to lower the rates that we’re being killed. It’s, if we do die at least justice is being served properly.”

During the public hearing, 11 people, including Rodriguez, testified in support of banning the defense and submitted a total of 15 pages of written statements supporting the bill. In contrast, only a lobbyist from Texas Values Action, a conservative think tank and evangelical Christian organization, testified against HB 73.

“I think it’s not good public policy to include definitions of sexual orientation or gender identity because it forces us to determine what a person perceives,” said Jonathan Covey, the Texas Values Action lobbyist. “You easily run into issues of constitutional vagueness when you use this terminology.”

In 2009, the federal definition of a hate crime was expanded to include crimes motivated by gender identity and sexual orientation in federal cases, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. While Texas’s hate crime statute includes crimes motivated by sexual orientation, it does not include crimes motivated by gender identity.

During the public hearing on HB 73, Covey also said that his organization opposed the bill due to free speech concerns. “It’s typically a bad public policy to ban offensive speech,” Covey said. “Open discussion even in a courtroom is better than allowing supposed bias to fester in a type of subconscious realm.”

“This is not a free speech bill,” state Representative Ann Johnson replied. “We are talking about the criminal context where it’s assaultive conduct. Right? So it’s not a speech.”

“I understand that,” Covey said.

Johnson continued: “For example if a 16-year-old has sex with a 32-year-old, we would not allow the 32-year old to say, ‘but she consented.’ We have made a policy decision that there is no consent, correct?”

“I think I’m following what you’re saying,” Covey said. But, “we don’t create laws that hinge on someone’s perception of how much they weigh or create laws that hinge on someone’s perception of how tall they are.”

Greyson Rodriguez poses with his maternal grandparents, who flew into Texas to attend his graduation. Sadie Brown

Rodriguez says that this failure to support and affirm gay, trans, and gender diverse Texans at the state level exacerbates safety concerns for Greyson. “My son has to live in fear of someone finding out he is trans and hurting him,” Rodriguez said during her testimony.

In nearly every social situation, Greyson has to consider how someone would react to him coming out as trans. At his first job as a host in a restaurant, Greyson says he “tested the waters” to gauge his coworkers’ acceptance of him by mentioning his long-time boyfriend; he didn’t tell them he was trans.

Rodriguez and her son have strict rules around dating, specifically about coming out to potential partners. Because LGBTQ people are at a much greater risk of intimate partner violence, Rodriguez and Greyson have agreed that the first few dates with a new person will always be in public and that Greyson will only come out if he decides it’s safe and wants to pursue a relationship. He says that conversation is also about mutual respect.

“If I think I want to have a relationship with you and you think you want to have a relationship with me, I still want that to be built on everything being out in the open,” he says. “Not built on your assumptions on what you think is going on, only for that to be thrown out the window and you having a crisis or not understanding what to do with this information.”

On a humid day in early June, Greyson accepts his high school diploma during a socially distanced, in-person commencement ceremony. He’s difficult to spot in his emerald cap and gown with a black mask covering nearly his entire face.

When his name is called, Greyson walks out onto the stage to shake hands with administrators, as his mother, father, and grandparents cheer from a section near the front of the room. Then he disappears again into the first few rows of seats filled with other teens leaving high school behind.

Greyson also plans to leave behind his activism, at least for a while. “Passing isn’t the goal,” Rodriguez says, but both she and Greyson describe the importance of his identity outside of being trans, and safety concerns around his visibility.

“There’s some people who think every single person on the planet has a right to know,” Greyson says. “In my opinion it would be great if everyone had the ability to know and it wasn’t a threat. But the less random people who freaking know, the less risk there is.”

Greyson will start college in the fall, 1,200 miles away from his home and parents because he says he isn’t safe in “the great state of hate.” Inspired by the affirming care he has received from his medical team, Rodriguez says that he plans on studying nursing. Lauren had hoped that a bill banning the “gay/trans panic” defense would bring some peace of mind that would allow her family to remain close.

“If we pass this bill, my son may be able to feel safe enough to return to Texas and live as his authentic self,” Rodriguez said during her testimony. “And I would have my son closer to me.”

This program is made possible by gifts from Roxanne Elder in memory of her mother, journalist and journalism teacher Virginia Stephenson Elder, Vincent LoVoi in honor of Jim Marston and Annette LoVoi, and other generous donors.

This post was first provided here.

We trust you found the above useful or interesting. You can find similar content on our blog here: southtxpointofsale.com Let me have your feedback in the comments section below. Let us know what topics we should cover for you in the future.

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afrolatinxsunited · 3 years

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News and useful info on Point of Sale & POS Hardware.

For Greyson’s safety, identifying details, locations, and recent photos of his face have been intentionally left out of this story.

“He can be lazy sometimes, because that’s all teenagers,” Rodriguez says of Greyson. “But when he wants something, he’s very driven.”

“This is not a free speech bill,” state Representative Ann Johnson replied. “We are talking about the criminal context where it’s assaultive conduct. Right? So it’s not a speech.”

“I understand that,” Covey said.

Greyson Rodriguez poses with his maternal grandparents, who flew into Texas to attend his graduation. Sadie Brown

“If we pass this bill, my son may be able to feel safe enough to return to Texas and live as his authentic self,” Rodriguez said during her testimony. “And I would have my son closer to me.”

This post was first provided here.

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afroavocadowitch · 3 years

Text

News and useful info on Point of Sale & POS Hardware.

For Greyson’s safety, identifying details, locations, and recent photos of his face have been intentionally left out of this story.

“He can be lazy sometimes, because that’s all teenagers,” Rodriguez says of Greyson. “But when he wants something, he’s very driven.”

“This is not a free speech bill,” state Representative Ann Johnson replied. “We are talking about the criminal context where it’s assaultive conduct. Right? So it’s not a speech.”

“I understand that,” Covey said.

Greyson Rodriguez poses with his maternal grandparents, who flew into Texas to attend his graduation. Sadie Brown

“If we pass this bill, my son may be able to feel safe enough to return to Texas and live as his authentic self,” Rodriguez said during her testimony. “And I would have my son closer to me.”

This post was first provided here.

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miki-agrawal · 3 years

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Is the World Ready for Miki Agrawal and Her Next Big Idea?

Originally Published on Glamour.com By Eliza Brooke On April 4, 2019

She wants to talk about poop — if we all could just forget what happened when she tried to change the world with period underwear.

In late January the entrepreneur Miki Agrawal held a launch event for her book, Disrupt-Her, at The Assemblage, the latest coworking-slash-coliving space in Lower Manhattan. The room was decorated with wall rugs and cacti; Spanish moss descended around a nonalcoholic bar. Agrawal sat on a low stage with Lauren Zander, her life coach, and the stylist Stacy London, who was serving as interviewer for the evening. A crowd including Assemblage members and Agrawal’s friends and fans perched on couches, armchairs, and floor pillows, sipping water and nibbling on vegan snacks while the three women talked.

“I want to talk about what happened with Thinx,” London said, “because I think that that was an absolute, completely life-changing moment for you, and really worth discussing because we always talk about success and failure, which for me are words that don’t make a whole lot of sense. It’s all experience. So how do we use experience to our advantage, when it feels like we have been brought to our knees?”

Agrawal founded the period underwear brand Thinx in 2014, and as the company’s profile rose, she became a well-known figure on the start-up circuit. Suddenly, in March 2017, Jezebel reported that Agrawal had stepped down as CEO after several employees quit. Days later, Racked quoted, anonymously, employees who described the company as a volatile work environment with poor compensation and benefits; sources said that Agrawal pitted staffers against one another and implied that they were ungrateful for seeking higher pay. Then The Cut reported that Chelsea Leibow, Thinx’s former head of PR, had filed a sexual harassment complaint against Agrawal, alleging that Agrawal routinely made comments about Leibow’s breasts and touched them without her consent. It was a hard turn left for a start-up with a progressive, feminist image.

Miki Agrawal, photographed at her home Michelle Rose Sulcov

Agrawal with her son, Hiro Michelle Rose Sulcov

Speaking to The Cut at the time, Agrawal called Leibow’s accusations “baseless” and denied that she had touched her breasts; a Thinx spokesperson also said in a statement that the company took the allegations “very seriously” and that “the company commissioned an investigation that concluded the allegations had no legal merit” and declined to comment further. Agrawal also put out a Medium post characterizing Thinx’s HR issues as problems that many fast-growing start-ups face. Forbes reported the sexual harassment claim was withdrawn after a private settlement.

Agrawal didn’t mention Thinx by name when she answered London’s question at The Assemblage. In fact, she didn’t use the word once in the hour-plus she spent onstage that night. “There were a few people that needed to be restructured out that were kind of wearing the feminist T-shirts and the vagina necklaces but were singing a different tune, culturally, for the business,” Agrawal said, noting that when she did finally restructure, “it was just twisted out of context, and you know, it was one of the darkest times of my life.”

If this sounds like a vague description of events, it is. For legal reasons, Agrawal says, she can’t say anything about her time at Thinx, her work there, or her employees. I reached out to seven former employees; only two agreed to talk about their tenure at Thinx, and even then requested anonymity. This makes writing a profile of Agrawal challenging, and reading one potentially unsatisfying: Two years after the fact, the Thinx allegations remain a major piece of her public image and business backstory, but if you want the details of what really happened, there’s a blank space.

We’re left to fill in some of the void with reports from that time period. In the spring of 2017, the critique of Agrawal was swift and widespread. Her case seemed like an isolated incident. It predated a rush of workplace misconduct accusations; Harvey Weinstein had just wrapped what we didn’t know would be his final awards season. This was before pundits learned to parse the nuances of “bad behavior” and before scores of famous men issued their careful, vague apologies. As a culture we’re now figuring out what the rehabilitation of a disgraced public figure can and should look like. This is no easy process, and as Agrawal’s case shows, it doesn’t always come with a clear, public resolution.

At The Assemblage, Agrawal described how she got through those dark days, which took place when she was five months pregnant. She remembered crying “all the time” and calling Zander multiple times a day. She said the experience stretched her emotional capacity, and in that, she found gratitude. “I get to feel the depths of betrayal, the depths of sadness, the depths of pain, which only will then accentuate the heights of joy and the height of wow-ness in life,” she said. And it fed her book, Disrupt-Her: “All of that negative shit that I inhaled, that was so painful, that I wanted to just fight back so badly; instead I just pushed it down and put it into this book.”

Disrupt-Her spans the professional and personal, and instructs readers on how to question all manner of entrenched societal conventions, block out the haters, and fight gendered norms dictated by the patriarchy and sometimes reinforced by other women. In it Agrawal talks a lot about transmuting negative energy into positive action, but her underlying principle is this: If you’re a rule-breaking woman in the world, people will try to take you down.

In the book’s introduction, there’s a handwritten message that prompts readers to “press here” on a drawing of a bull’s-eye — “to eliminate all self-judgment + judgment of others.” Were this any other self-help guide, you might touch a finger to the button, earnestly or feeling a little silly, and move on. In the context of this particular book, the request to avoid judgment seems pointed, because many people are likely to go into it with preconceived notions about Agrawal — good and bad.

Agrawal has always positioned herself as someone in the business of taboo-breaking, and that paid off with Thinx: The brand came to many people’s attention when its ads, which mentioned periods explicitly and used photos of grapefruit halves as an artistic stand-in for vaginas, were initially deemed too suggestive for the New York City subway. Thinx effectively put period underwear on the map, and Agrawal became known as an outspoken, successful woman in the overwhelmingly male start-up world, albeit one who very much fit the mold of a Burning Man–going tech executive. (A key difference: While there she posted photos on Instagram of herself pumping breast milk while out and about, writing that she had given it to other attendees to drink.) Like so many entrepreneurs, Agrawal dresses distinctively. Her style identifier is a tall, wide-brimmed hat that adds to her small stature. She talks fast, in an energetic, almost muscular way, occasionally smacking a fist into her palm for emphasis. When she’s onstage at events and conferences, she gets laughs.

It turns out operating start-ups in spaces that, in her words, “make people uncomfortable,” is good business. She opened a gluten-free pizza restaurant called Wild in 2005, at a time when gluten-free food wasn’t as trendy as it has become, and it now has three locations in New York and Guatemala. Thinx came in 2014, and a pee-proof underwear line called Icon followed in 2015; by 2017 the CEO that replaced Agrawal reported that the company (which oversees both brands) was doing $50 million in annual revenue. As chief creative officer of Tushy, a company that makes bidet attachments, Agrawal now has her sights on changing how we poop. The brand is projecting triple-digit sales growth for 2019, with annual revenue under $20 million and, according to LinkedIn, a staff of 11.

“Over these last 15 years, so many people were like, ‘No one’s going to buy your products.’ ‘No one’s going to eat gluten-free pizza — it probably tastes like shit.’ ‘No one’s going to bleed in their underwear,’” Agrawal said at the book launch. “It took a long time to get investment in all of the business ideas, and it turns out that society was wrong. People did want to try these things.”

In fact, society is wrong about a lot more than just “periods, pee, poop, and pizza,” Agrawal said, drawing laughter from the audience. “This generation and the next is not interested in doing the things that people did 100 years ago. Not interested.” To that point, each chapter of Disrupt-Her names a common way of thinking, then explains where it came from in order to present an alternative. For the notion that “failure is embarrassing,” for instance, readers are instructed to “replace the word failure with revelation.”

Disrupt-Her isn’t billed as a memoir, and much of it focuses on universal topics like the importance of investing one’s money, cultivating a partner’s best qualities, and decluttering one’s home. It is a rebirth, in a sense: Before its launch Agrawal released a video-poem that begins with her crawling from a bleeding animated vagina. (A hat is conveniently waiting nearby; she puts it on.) While the public may view it as a comeback, the timeline isn’t so linear: Agrawal founded Tushy two years after she launched Thinx, then hired leadership to run it while she focused on the period-underwear brand; when she left Thinx, she seamlessly transitioned over to Tushy. If Disrupt-Her answers any question about Agrawal, it’s how she wants to present herself to the world after being accused of abusive behavior in the workplace. Less contrition, more ideology.

In her emphasis on transforming anger, betrayal, and pain into empathy and gratitude, Agrawal performs an amazing alchemical act. The book creates a space in which she’s able to comment on the bad publicity — effectively getting the last word — and land on higher ground. This puts those members of the public who are reckoning with how to regard her, post-Thinx, in the difficult position of arguing against positivity, against personal growth, if they question her at all.

Someone who worked with Agrawal at the time, who agreed to talk only on the condition of anonymity, says that Agrawal knows the value of building her personal brand through this kind of storytelling. Publishing a new book in the aftermath of the Thinx allegations reinforces a narrative in which, the former staffer says, “She’s the hero.”

In February I visited Agrawal at her home in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, a sleek space filled with colorful woven rugs and air plants. During our interview, her husband, Andrew Horn, popped in and out of the room on his way to and from errands. Their 20-month-old son, Hiro, occasionally toddled into the conversation, cheerfully making a grab at a water glass or one of the cell phones recording the conversation.

Agrawal wrote Disrupt-Her in the two and a half months following Hiro’s birth in July 2017. Laid up in bed healing from her C-section, she wrote between feedings and while the baby was asleep. “I had so many thoughts around the culture of complaining, takedown culture, feminism, patriarchy, fake feminists, people who wear the feminist T-shirts and the vagina necklaces but are really mean girls on the inside,” Agrawal says. These topics appear in the book, in chapters that deal with woman-on-woman hate and gossipy media coverage — the products, Agrawal writes, of scarcity mind-sets and a news business that rewards clickbait.

Agrawal says she believes in creating a culture that is progressive and supportive of people being themselves — but that doesn’t mean lowering her standards. “I demand excellence. I do,” Agrawal says. “Shouldn’t you demand it for yourself? And if I’m going to bring it out of you, that’s a good thing. If that sometimes requires tough love, like, ‘Hey, I asked for that three times, come on, you’ve got this.’ Then you go back and tell everyone, ‘She’s yelling at me!’ Like, is that yelling or just being like, ‘Come on, you’re better than this!’?”

In her book Agrawal writes that she learned to “constructively look at where I actually did go wrong as a leader and how I can improve.” When I asked what those areas of personal betterment were, she said that she had to become more cautious about who she surrounds herself with. As a more experienced boss (Agrawal is now 40), “I realized that, wow, I do shoot from the hip, and I just say, ‘Oh, you love my idea? Come work with me.’” At Tushy she’s looked for people with a lot of experience in the workforce.

“I spent seven months, myself, hiring my CEO. I spent all of my time calling everyone’s references,” says Agrawal. “I looked at everyone’s social media accounts…. I looked at people’s profiles, I looked at what they wrote, I looked at how they said it — if they sounded snarky or mean-girl-style, no. They had to be bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, loved life, came with a big smile, optimistic.”

While Disrupt-Her bolsters Agrawal’s public image as someone who’s overcome adversity, many of the professional changes that Agrawal has made since moving over to Tushy seem to have to do with protecting herself against a repeat of the Thinx affair. Being a consummate “Disrupt-Her,” she still lives her life out loud, but when it comes to Tushy’s internal operations, it seems she has created boundaries that help her feel safe. Agrawal no longer wants the sticky job of managing team dynamics, so she is Tushy’s chief creative officer, not its CEO: That’s Jason Ojalvo, who spent nearly a decade at Amazon-owned Audible before joining Tushy. Agrawal works from home, sitting at her long kitchen table, and staffers will drop by for meetings. Socially, she keeps a distance between herself and her employees.

“With my team at Tushy, it’s a relationship of respect,” Agrawal says. Earlier in her career “I thought, We’re all friends, we’re all doing this together. Then all of a sudden you have to make hard calls,” she says. It’s part of the complicated work of being a manager — a lesson she learned the hard way. “I’m just like, OK, clearly I get too connected with my team or I get too trusting, and I’m just — I’m definitely not going to do that again.”

Not being a CEO also means that she has more time for the creative marketing work she loves best, Agrawal says. When I ask Ojalvo about Agrawal’s leadership style, he touts her exuberance. “We have really complementary skill sets. Miki is great at getting everyone excited about her creative ideas. Her passion for our products, our mission, and the PR stunts we do is infectious,” Ojalvo writes in an email. “I can make those all a reality by growing and managing the team executing all of it, facilitating communication among the team, and making sure we have the outside funding and/or profit to execute on our dreams — but Miki always brings the enthusiasm and excitement to the next level.”

Agrawal’s creativity is one reason Ojalvo joined Tushy; he says he was similarly motivated by its product and accessible price point ($69 for the bidet attachment), its potential to change Americans’ hygiene habits, and, more jokingly, the opportunity to talk about poop all day (“My inner 14-year-old is living the dream,” he says). At the moment Agrawal is organizing a “funeral for a tree,” a cheeky means of talking about the number of trees that get cut down every year to make toilet paper (and that could be saved by her bidet attachment). “That’s going to be one of our biggest press events of the year, I just know it,” she says.

Agrawal has a complicated relationship with the media. She has deftly used it to raise her companies’ profiles and her own, and embraced stories like those about the Thinx subway ad controversy that cemented her products in people’s minds. The former staffer, who worked with her at the time of the allegations, recalls Agrawal placing a heavy emphasis on using the media to fuel growth. “It became clear to me that there was an increasing dependence on finding the next buzzy thing,” she says. The employee wished Agrawal would have focused more on growing the company than press opportunities.

But Agrawal could at times be critical of the press, even before the allegations of March 2017. After The Cut published an early profile about her, quoting her about how she started relating to being a feminist only when she launched Thinx, she put out a Medium post titled “An Open Letter to Respectfully Quit Telling Me How to ‘Do Feminism’ (and to just support one another, please!).”

In her book Agrawal takes aim at journalists chasing after “inflamed, exaggerated headlines” and writes about being interviewed by a reporter who was “almost licking her lips, like an animal about to get a big, bloody feast.” (Below this there’s a drawing, done by the author, of a wolf licking its chops.) As a reporter working on a profile of Agrawal, it’s hard not to think about this. It’s also impossible not to see a parallel with the current American president’s relationship to the press, a whirlpool of interdependence and combativeness that plays out every day on Twitter and TV.

During her book event at The Assemblage, Agrawal talked about a few of the mental coping tactics that Zander has taught her. One was pattern interruption: When a bad thought comes into your mind and threatens to fester there, you literally change position, stand up, or walk around. She turned this into a game at a recent press dinner.

“I had literally 13 of the top press at my house last Wednesday, and it was the first time that I had met with all the press, post–all the shit that went down a year and a half ago, and I was like, ‘Ha-ha-ha, in my lair, let’s do this,’” Agrawal told the audience, adopting a faux-evil voice.

“It was a 13-course disruptive dinner, and we had them play all these games,” she continued. “Like, dance like you’re three years old! Imagine the New York Times person dancing like she’s three years old.”

I attended the dinner, and that may sound like more of an exercise in humiliation than it was. The email invitation had instructed us to dress in our silliest outfits, which the reporters and editors in attendance did with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Agrawal had on a glittering hat, a bright pink wig, and a gauzy white cape that she’d worn at her wedding. I wore a blue tie-dye shirt. Each course of the meal and its corresponding discussion or activity was based on a lesson from the book, and dancing like children was chapter one: “You can still live in a childlike state of curiosity, playfulness, and awe and be a responsible adult, on and off the job,” Agrawal writes.

Agrawal isn’t afraid to dance. She isn’t afraid to talk about periods and breastfeeding and bowel movements. To tell you that what you think you know about covering and cleaning your ass is woefully misguided.

I am not a performer, and inventing goofy dance moves in front of my peers — or worse, dancing “sensually,” as we were later encouraged to do — felt awkward and embarrassing. But it was effective programming on Agrawal’s part. You cannot argue against this kind of activity, even as you internally debate its value. To not participate, or to participate with one eye on the clock, is to admit that you’re rigid and hemmed in by your self-consciousness, that you’re choosing to bind yourself to the societal conventions you’re supposed to be dismantling. Sooner or later you’ll have to commit wholeheartedly to finding your childlike sense of play and trying something new, because your rationalizing doesn’t matter, and the only way to relieve yourself of the agony of resisting is to give in.

Eliza Brooke is a freelance reporter. She lives in Brooklyn.

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mrsteveecook · 5 years

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pushing back when an employee calls in sick, renegotiating an offer you’ve already accepted, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Should I ever push back when an employee calls in sick?

As someone’s supervisor, are there ever limits on someone using their sick leave if they have it to use? We’ve had employees tell us “my allergies are acting up today” or “I have to stay home to make sure my pipes don’t freeze.” I don’t want to be in the business of questioning when people are sick, but are there ever times to push back when employees want to use their sick time at the last minute? They do get a generous amount of sick time. We are an organization that requires coverage on customer service points, if that makes a difference.

In general, you want to err on the side of treating employees like responsible adults and giving them as much leeway as possible to manage their own sick leave. If someone says they’re not well enough to come in to work, your default should be to believe them. (And really, allergies can be quite bad. I think you’re hearing that as “I’m a little sniffly” but it can be eyes that won’t stop watering, an awful fog in your head, and extreme exhaustion. And that difference in itself is an illustration of why you shouldn’t assume and should trust people to decide for themselves.)

That said, unless there were extenuating circumstances (and there might have been), staying home to make sure your pipes don’t freeze isn’t generally what sick leave is intended for — but that’s really about the fact that they should probably be using another form of PTO, not that they shouldn’t stay home at all. Again — adults. Trust them to know more about their situations and what’s necessary than you do.

If someone isn’t acting like a responsible adult (like repeatedly calling in sick for things like a stubbed toe, or always seeming to be sick on the one day a month they’d have to do inventory, or so forth), then you should address that pattern. But otherwise, if you offer sick leave and people are using it for sickness, that’s what it’s there for. That covers the last-minute element of your question too — most sick leave, by definition, is going to be taken at the last minute, since sickness usually isn’t scheduled.

2. I don’t want to eat all my meals with my coworker when we travel together

I’m planning on traveling with a coworker (Jane) next week to an out-of-state function. We know each other pretty well and usually talk in person several times a week about both work and home life.

Jane struggles with downtime. She has to be doing something every waking minute and usually wants company while she is doing it. I am an introvert who needs my downtime after spending all day out of my element, meeting with the out of state people.

The concern is about meal times and free time in the evening. I enjoy going to a nice restaurant and eating a quiet meal but last time we traveled together I found that impossible! Every day, Jane asks what I’m doing for every meal and if it’s anything other than room service, she assumes she is going with me. It doesn’t matter if I make it at an awkward time or food that she doesn’t like, she’ll make it work. Once out, it’s an endless litany of complaints on everything from the meeting, to our mutual boss, to her kids and the weather.

How do I manage a meal in peace without resorting to room service every day? I don’t mind a few meals with venting, or several meals with some friendly chatter, but I think I’m going to wind up saying something I really shouldn’t if every meal for a week is liberally seasoned with complaints. I have tried to ask her for more positive conversation before, but that leads to a lot of tears and that’s no better. A gentle redirect never works because she can find something in anything to complain about.

She sounds exhausting.

Ideally, you’d be up-front with her at the start of the trip about your need for downtime. As you’re ending the first workday, say something like, “I’m going to head back for the hotel for a bit and then will probably grab dinner on my own. I’ve realized I need some quiet alone time at the end of workdays when I travel or I can’t unwind. But want to meet in the lobby tomorrow morning at 8:30 and head to the work site together?”

Alternately, you could say a version of that to her earlier — like, “Hey, I know last time we traveled together we had meals together every day, and I wanted to give you a heads-up I’ll probably fend for myself for meals most of the time on this trip. I’ve realized I need…” (Insert the language from above.)

But if you’re willing to have one meal with her, that’s a nice thing to offer.

3. Can you try to renegotiate an offer you’ve already accepted if you get a better one?

This is a situation that an acquaintance of mine ran into. He is graduating, and accepted a job at somewhat below market rate because he had been searching for a while and was worried about not being able to find anything He then continued interviewing elsewhere. A few weeks later, he’s gotten an offer elsewhere for 30% more, which it sounds like he’s already accepted (they’re talking start dates, at least).

He thinks he should go back to the first company and ask them to match salary on the new offer.

I think that he should email the first company apologizing profusely, letting them know that an opportunity “fell into his lap” and he couldn’t say no, but make it very clear that he understands what an inconvenience this is and he’s very sorry, and make no suggestion of matching salary (especially when he’s already accepted the other offer! especially when it’s a 30% difference!)

Am I off-base in thinking this would be really unprofessional? We’re in a smaller city, and the industry has a lot of job-hopping, so the chances of running into someone associated with the first company later in your career seem pretty high.

Nooooooo. You are right and he is wrong. Assuming he has indeed already accepted the first offer, it would look incredibly bad to go back and say, “No, wait, actually I want 30% more.” He’s already made a commitment to them based on the first salary, and he will look like he’s operating in really bad faith if he tries to reopen negotiations. It is very, very likely that they’ll tell him to take the other offer and will consider him an ass and the bridge burnt. (That’s especially true because it’s 30% more, but it would be true regardless.)

Maybe ask him what he’d think if they came back to him and said, “Sorry, but we found someone else we like who will do the job for less, so we want to lower the salary we’re offering you.”

I’d actually tweak your suggested approach a little — I do think it’s okay for him to explain that the other salary is so much higher that he can’t turn down the opportunity, because that will give context for his reneging that will make it make more sense. But he shouldn’t do that with the intent of hoping they’ll match it — it’s helpful context only. Other than that, I think your advice is perfect.

4. Responding when a coworker apologizes for a mistake

What is the best way to respond when a colleague dropped the ball and apologized, without being a pushover? I received a brief apology email this morning, and I don’t want to completely absolve the person for a mistake that shouldn’t be occurring for someone at her level. I tend to be a pushover in these situations and say things like, “Oh no problem!” or “Hey it happens!” when it really isn’t. But I also don’t want to over-correct and turn my response into a disproportionate reprimand.

You’re not this person’s manager, right, just a colleague? The first time it happens, I’d go with one of those responses you don’t like — like “I understand, stuff happens!” or “No worries!” — because it’s not about you absolving them (and since you’re not their manager, that’s not really your place anyway), just about you being kind to a fellow human. But if it’s a pattern, those responses can signal it’s not a big deal when it in fact is. So in that case, I’d go with “Thanks, I appreciate it” or something else that acknowledges their message without characterizing the situation in any way. And in some cases, it would be appropriate to say, “Thanks, I appreciate it! I know this has happened a few times — could we talk about how we might be able to set things up differently so it doesn’t keep happening?”

5. How much insider knowledge can I use in an interview?

I have a job interview coming up at a local non-profit that I’m very excited about – I’ve wanted to work for this organization for a long time! The thing is, my mom has worked for this company for many years. Her department has nothing to do with the role I’m applying for – I wouldn’t even be in the same building as her – and I’ve been up-front about the fact that I have family working for the company already. My concern is that I have much more of an intimate understanding of the organization than I’ve ever had when applying for a position before. I know a number of the employees socially; I’ve been privy to quite a bit of gossip, venting, and the kind of day-to-day discussion of company goings-on that would not ordinarily be public information; and I’ve even lent a hand on occasion as sort of an informal volunteer.

On the one hand, this is great. I have a solid grasp of what it’s like to work there, good and bad. But how familiar would it be okay to come across as in the interview? It’d be disingenuous at best to pretend to know only as much as any other interviewee, and there’s some things I know that definitely skirt the edge of confidentiality, which I should obviously steer clear of bringing up! But in between those extremes, I’m a little lost. Can I ask questions about concerns I probably wouldn’t have without the background knowledge I have? Can I bring up sort of internal but not confidential things I’m aware of — ongoing development of new programs, for instance?

It’s an organization that has some unique challenges for employees to overcome, and I want to highlight that I really do know what I’m in for, and that I’m thinking seriously about how my skills connect with the needs of the company, but I’m worried about coming off as presumptuous or overly familiar.

I’d err on the side of leaving all that stuff out. At most, you could ask a couple of questions about new programs that you know about through your connections, but I wouldn’t get into other insider information. Largely that’s because you don’t know what biases and agendas your contacts might have, and there’s a real danger of coming across as (a) thinking you have more of an insider vantage point than you really do and (b) having a biased perspective because of the biases of your contacts. If I’m hiring an external person, I really don’t want them coming in already having allegiances and pre-formed opinions about internal politics and goings-on. I want them to come in without biases and form their own opinions. That stuff could end up being a negative for your candidacy rather than a positive, especially if you appear to be putting a lot of stock in it.

However, you can let the info you have inform your thinking and the kinds of questions you ask. For example, if you’ve heard a lot of complaining about work-life balance, you can ask about typical hours and workload and so forth. Or if you know there’s been high turnover in the position you’re interviewing for, you can ask about that and how that’s affected things. And if there’s something you’ve heard that really concerns you, and where you wouldn’t take the job without first asking about it, you can always raise that at the offer stage, once they’ve already decided they want to hire you.

But in general, err on the side of not assuming familiarity and coming in determined to form your opinions.