#this has been me trying to get my coworkers more involved in the union

[taxonomicons]

AITA: I (6000+ M) took a long distance job offer after my (6000+ M) kissed me, now he thinks I don’t love him

Hey Reddit, throwaway because I have quite nosy coworkers that know my other account. I have been at this heavenly company for a really long time but a couple years ago they fired me for being involved with someone from a rival company. Now he’s my best friend. He also got fired but he never really like his company anyway and doesn’t seem that upset about it. He lost his apartment though so he’s been coming over a lot more often so he doesn’t have to sleep in his car.

The problem is that the company I used to work for offered me a senior position out of the blue, which has basically been my dream since I can remember. I knew it would mean being away from my best friend though so I worked out a deal to have him come with me, and the company actually offered to hire us both. When I went to tell him the good news he blew up at me and said this isn’t what he wanted and he’d rather start over somewhere new. When I told him this is better for both of us he kissed me and stormed off. We’ve been companions, friends, whatever you would call it for ages but we’ve never kissed before.

After he stormed out he waited by his car but I didn’t go after him. I don’t know if it was the anger or the fear of what he might say but I couldn’t face him. I still took the job and left him because I can’t miss this opportunity even if it means losing him, and this is where I think I might be TA. I’m really frustrated that I stuck my neck out and got both of us jobs again, and he won’t even consider it. Especially after he’s been at my place so much and clearly wants to be more than friends I feel like it only makes sense for us to both work together again. We are such a good team and I don’t understand why he think abandoning our lives makes more sense then trying to repair the ones we’ve got. I really love him and don’t want to hurt his feelings but now he’s not talking to me. Was it wrong to take the job even though I know I can fix things and make it better for him?

Edit: for everyone asking why he wouldn’t want to work it’s because he’s worked for this company before and they fired him and a bunch of coworkers for trying to unionize/question higher management.

Edit 2: Okay I’m trying to respond to as many of these as I can but I get it I’m the asshole. I am going to go after him and try to make things right as soon as I get off work. Will post update soon.

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “I Have Seen.”

Wrote something easy and more similar to my original stories today. I hope you like it. 

I have been thinking about taking a couple days off from writing these stories, since I have been working non stop on this and the book for over a year now, so I am considering taking a break for about a week so I don’t burn out. I haven’t decided yet, so we shall see, but I hope you all have a great day.

I have a job no one knows about.

I don’t think anyone would be surprised if they heard about my job. I don’t even think they would care all that much.

None of this explains why my work station is in the basement of a nondescript government bunker on a death planet…. A!36. I can’t explain why I need three codes to get into my office, or why I go through five locked doors, or why I am not allowed to tell anyone what I do on pain of termination and imprisonment. 

You would assume, perhaps that I am a spy, and involved in some covert cloak and dagger espionage against other species and nations: you would be wrong.

You might assume I am a weapons developer, but you would also be wrong.

Perhaps you think I spend my time wire-tapping on important calls between species and recording important information.

None of this is really the case.

In fact, what I do is quite safe and relatively simple, plenty of other non-humans are doing it of their own accord and plenty more humans do it on a regular basis. What I do is not illegal, it is not espionage, it wouldn’t even phase you.

If that is the case.

Why do so many of my coworkers go missing?

Why are there absent desks every few months?

Why can I not make any lasting friends?

Management always give excuses to those of us who are left.

They left for mental health reasons.

THey moved on to a different job.

They are moving up in the company.

They had to be let go.

All things generic and all things that wouldn’t generally raise suspicion… unless they happen so frequently as us.

You may be wondering at this point, what it is I do for a job.

Perhaps, you think, it is very boring and unfulfilling that I would go insane from sheer boredom.

No, I actually find my job quite interesting.

Perhaps you think my job forces me to watch very disturbing and violent things…. And I suppose that could be close to the truth, though no one forces us to watch the videos if we don’t want, and no one makes us read the material if we cannot handle it. In fact, there are those of us who specialize in that sort of thing.

I do.

I am a specialist in historical xenopsychology.

I study human history.

When I say that I study human history, I do not mean as in a passing fancy. I do not simply read their school children’s textbooks and accept everything I see as truth, no, every day , I come into work and it is my job, to learn about everything that has ever happened in human history, to the best of my ability.

It is my job to know the good, the bad, the ugly, and the monstrous.

I work from day to night, cataloguing and filling my brain with all the information I can before recording it as a lecture on aura drives, which are then stored away for future use in a deep backup system under the surface of this planet.

I have followed human history since the beginning of time.

And I have marveled at it.

Much of my research is flawed, I know. Human history has always been biased, history being shaped and molded by the winners of conflict. Much of what else I know stems primarily from scholarly work humans have done on their own species, looking back the centuries and making assumptions about what they were doing.

While this is a good insite -- humans trying to explain the behavior of other humans-- it isn’t necessarily correct.

For this reason, it is my job to study every piece of information that comes across my desk.

Due to a government agreement between the galactic assembly and the United Nations of Earth, I was given access to the rebuilt library of Alexandria and all of its electronic files which include photos and information on the original documents that they keep in sealed vaults below the library.

I have read every account of human history, and every second hand interpretation of human history that I could possibly find in my time working here.

I have read Darwin and his early theory regarding evolution. I have examined his evidence, which include images and diagrams of the human body spanning centuries. My determinations were made just the same as the rest of them. Humanity was a tree-living species that found its evolutionary niche through walking and the use of opposable thumbs.

This ability to walk, in tandem with the use of hands eventually gave rise to the slow swelling of the brain in comparison to other animals. Human evolved primitive tools, and even more primitive religions, societies and rules.

They developed art early on, painting on the walls of their caves, in the darkness of night surrounded by their fires.

I have read about their befriending of animals in that same darkness. Man’s slow molding of the wolf into the dog - a species designed specifically for the needs of man.

I have attempted to read every account of every atrocity ever inflicted on humanity.

I have read of wars, and battles, Marathon, Thermopylae, Kadesh, D-day, Vietnam, Korea, Russo-Japanese, World wars I, II, III,  and IV and the Panasian War. 

I have witnessed in images and first hand accounts the chilling discoveries of natural disasters gone back thousands of years. Pompeii, Mt. St Helens, Katrina, Tsunamis, earthquakes, the fire of london, 1887 yellow river flood, the 3130 California earthquake, and Haiti earthquakes. 

And I have studied and witnessed every atrocity man has ever committed on its own people. The Mongol hordes, the crusades, Mayan and Aztec sacrifices, The Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, mustard gas, 9/11, slavery in the America, the Trail of Tears, The Bataan Death March, the Berlin wall, Civil war, the French revolution, Nanjing, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I tore a hole in humanity and looked inside to see your rot. 

I study the maggots that crawl under your skin.

Don’t confuse me with someone who fears you, or is even disgusted by you. You have committed thousands of horrors, yes this is true. But humanity is not a polished gem, it is an uncut stone marred by dirt and debris, but beautiful in a way that can hardly be explained.

You scrub away the rot only to find more underneath, yet you continue to scrub, in a futile attempt to better yourselves.

It is a beautiful thing if not in vain.

I do not judge you for your crimes because I have also seen your achievements. I watched you survive  the dark ages, I learned your philosophy from the greek world which brought the beauty of democracy and equity in later forms. I watched the enlightenment of the Renaissance, and have seen your beautiful artwork from each period of time. 

I have witnessed your great nations and empires rise and fall, Assyria, Byzantine, Rome, Britain, Egypt, Mongole, Aztek, Soviet Union, The chinese Dynasties and the Communist parties. The United States, and the Asian Co-Prosperity Collective

I have seen your bravery and your loss.

I have learned about the good that walks your earth.

Humans who stood up to tyrants.

I have even examined your stories of creation, of deities who molded humans from clay or dust, watched your world come into form in seven days, or ride on the backs of giant animals. I have seen the gods gift you with fire and learned the teaching of your martyrs over the centuries. Men and women slain and stoned or pulled away by spirits. I have learned of crucifixion, death and rebirth as well as reincarnation and a return to the very fabric of the universe itself.

I see everything.

I see everything. I see it all in my dreams laid out before me like a tapestry following each woven thread through the ages. I thought if I looked back, I could know as much as I possibly could. If I dug deep enough, I would be able to see your secrets.

And I have discovered you.

I see you hiding in there.

I know what you are.

Come out, come out.

And I won’t stop until it is all over and your cities crumbled into dust and bone.

…

…

I am being called into my manager’s office. Perhaps I too am ready to go up in the company.

...

I will be back soon…

Deus 

[sineala]

Captain America: Patriot

This isn't really an organized meta post or review so much as a few half-finished thoughts I wanted to get out after I read a Cap miniseries a few weeks ago that I can't really stop thinking about, because it had a scene that really stuck with me and that I think we could use more of in current comics and also with Steve, because even though it was a relatively recent mini it wasn't about Steve.

Captain America: Patriot is a 2011 miniseries about the third Captain America, Jeff Mace. For those of you who are more familiar with the MCU, I should probably explain something about 616, which is that Steve Rogers' identity as Captain America was not public during the war; it wasn't public until after 9/11, although generally his fellow superheroes knew. This meant that when Steve died -- well, as far as the Allies knew -- during World War II, what they did was conceal Captain America's death entirely. So they started putting other men in the Cap suit. It's important to note that none of these people were super-soldiers or superhuman in any way. They just wanted to keep morale up by making the world believe that Captain America was still alive. (Also Bucky. There are a bunch of Buckys too.)

The second Captain America was a guy named William Naslund, and he fought alongside what remained of the Invaders for about a year before dying in battle -- see above, re: not actually a superhuman. Coincidentally, Jeff Mace happens to be the guy who finds him on the battlefield, and Naslund actually dies in his arms.

Now, Mace isn't superpowered, but that doesn't mean he's not a superhero. Previously a Daily Bugle reporter, he decides to put on a costume and fight injustice as the Patriot, backed by the All-Winners Squad, which is how he manages to be around a battlefield to find Naslund dying.

And then basically the government says, "Hey, would you like to be the next Captain America?" and Jeff Mace here, despite having no superpowers whatsoever (there is in fact a plot thread about how he's the only baseline human on the All-Winners Squad and is worried about keeping up) and knowing that the last guy only lasted a year... well, he says yes. Of course he does.

But that's not really the part of this miniseries I want to talk about.

No, what I want to talk about is the subplot involving Jeff's friend Jack Casey. They were coworkers together at the Bugle before the war; Jack was a photographer and then served in the Navy during the war, took some great photos of him as the Patriot that made it into Life magazine, and so on. And then Jeff finds out that Jack was discharged from the Navy and committed suicide. He tells his superhero friends he'll go to the funeral and give a eulogy for him as Captain America.

And they say, no, Jeff, you can't do that. And when he asks why, they say it's because Jack was blue-ticketed.

A blue-ticket discharge can mean a lot of things (as Jeff points out while trying to wrap his mind around this), but it's pretty clear from context here that Jack Casey was gay. ("Did he ever have a girlfriend?" asks the Whizzer.)

Jeff says that it doesn't matter, that he's going to the funeral anyway, that he doesn't care if they take the Captain America uniform away from him.

The rest of his friends tell him he can't do that. Because the rest of the world is a terrible and homophobic place, he needs to remember that he's not the only Captain America, and if he does this, he'll destroy the world's trust in any Captain America who ever comes after him, or the ones before him. They point out that people will lose all respect for Captain America.

So he goes as the Patriot. His original identity. He lets the world keep respecting Captain America, and he sacrifices the identity that is actually his, and his dead gay friend gets a very touching eulogy.

Afterwards, he puts his Cap uniform back on, and hands his old Patriot costume to Torch to burn.

And then Namor, of course, tells him he is stupid: "Your loyalty is admirable, Mace, but clearly you've killed the Patriot and gained nothing in return! No opinions were changed, no legacies redeemed -- no mark left of any kind!"

This is when Jeff Mace demonstrates that he is truly the ally we all need and PUNCHES NAMOR RIGHT IN THE FUCKING FACE, breaking his hand in the process. (The new Bucky has to help patch his hand up.)

Right. So that's a thing you can read in a comic.

And mostly I just wanted to mention it because I keep thinking about it, both because I think it's absolutely what Steve Rogers would have done if it had been him in the uniform instead, and also because it demonstrates a really heartening amount of -- I don't know what to say, solidarity, maybe -- that I feel like I don't see in comics a lot these days. There's something really nice in knowing that Captain America would stand up for people like you, you know? (Especially when you, say, read Marvel #1000 and find that Waid's Cap speech was edited to make it less overtly political.)

We all know that Steve has demonstrated nothing but respect and affection for his queer friends and teammates, as far back as the storyline that introduced Arnie Roth, Steve's childhood best friend, way back in 1982 in Cap #268. Despite the fact that no one in this comic is actually allowed to say the word "gay" (ah, Comics Code, how I don't miss you!), Arnie is definitely gay, and at one point Steve explicitly compares the relationship Arnie has with his, ahem, roommate Michael, to the love he feels for Bernie, whom he's dating at the time. So that was also nice.

(Steve also has canonically gay teammates from World War II -- Brian Falsworth (Union Jack) and Roger Aubrey (The Destroyer) were a couple, but this was retconned into canon much later so to the best of my knowledge we never see Steve interact with them as gay characters during, say, the 70s Invaders series.)

Spencer's recent run actually gave us a few more glimpses at queerness, even if Steve wasn't really himself. There's a panel of Sam on a Pride float, and longtime sidekick Dennis Dunphy (D-Man) actually came out, but, of course, we don't know what the real Steve thinks about that, or if he's ever gone to Pride.

So at that point I was getting kind of frustrated, because, I mean, yes, Marvel has plenty of actually canonically queer characters elsewhere and I love them too, but it would sure be nice to see that Captain America stood for me too once in a while, you know?

The most satisfying recent issue I can point to is Tini Howard's recent Cap annual. It's a World War II-set story about Steve and Bucky helping out some injured people in need of assistance, and one of them eventually confesses that he's gay, expecting that Steve won't still want to help him and of course Steve does. It's really, really sweet, but I feel that it lacks the immediately extremely public stance that Jeff was unhesitatingly willing to take for his friend, knowing that people would hate him for it, which I think is part of why the Patriot miniseries keeps sticking with me. Steve's support here was very nice, but it was also... very quiet. No one else is going to know, which is not the case for what Jeff was willing to do and for what he eventually did.

Plus, Jeff got to punch Namor in the face.

So I guess I just keep thinking that I want more of... that. I want Marvel to write Steve standing up and just doing the right thing, dammit, even if it's the unpopular thing -- the essence of no, you move, I guess, and I think maybe these days they're... not.

Anyway, yeah. Captain America: Patriot. I recommend it.

[youzicha]

could the Chernobyl disaster have happened outside the Soviet Union or the communist bloc? was there anything socialist or autocratic about it? or could it have happened in any similarly-dangerous and similarly-complex engineering project?

My immediate reaction is to group the Chernobyl accident with other high-tech accidents like plane crashes, industrial fires, or radiation incidents in the west, but maybe that’s because I like to read step-by-step accident descriptions which focus on the technical aspects! It was definitely the case that Soviet nuclear power plants were much less safe than the western ones, although it’s not obvious if that is due to authoritarianism…

From an outside view, I think the various western incidents should make us less comfortable that it couldn’t have happened here.

• The radiation releases from the Fukushima accident were ten times smaller than at Chernobyl, but it still represents a failure of reactor containment. Apparently quite a lot of Cs-137 was in fact released from Fukushima (like a third of the Chernobyl release), but most of it went into the Pacific ocean rather than the atmosphere.

• The Three Mile Island accident showed that U.S. reactor operators can make mistakes too. I used to dismiss it—in the end there were no big radioactivity releases, so no big deal, right?—but after the Fukushima accident maybe we should re-evaluate it. TMI had a core meltdown and a hydrogen explosion, much like Fukushima, so I guess it could have gone badly.

• The Windscale reactor was also graphite moderated, so the 1957 Windscale fire might have developed into a miniature version of the Chernobyl accident. (The physical size of the reactors were similar—180 tonnes uranium and 2000 tonnes graphite at Windscale, versus 190 tonnes uranium and 1700 tonnes graphite at Chernobyl 4—but the Chernobyl burnup was 10.9 MW-d/kg while a typical value for making weapons plutonium is 0.5 MW-d/kg, so the Chernobyl reactor contained 20 times more radioactivity.)

At Chernobyl the core was scattered and caught fire, and then over the course of a few days almost all the graphite burned and the radioactive material was dispersed in the smoke. At Windscale, the graphite caught fire inside the reactor and there were no plans for how to extinguish it. According to the post-accident report,

[After the fire had been going on for about a day] the use of water was first considered. Two hazards had to be examined: first the danger of a hydrogen-oxygen explosion which would blow out the filters, second a possible criticality hazard due to the replacement of air by water. The Management were informed, however, of the danger of releasing high temperature Wigner energy if the graphite temperatures were to rise much higher than 1200°C. It was thought that this might well ignite the whole pile.

Happily the water worked well and the fire was put out before it spread to the rest of the core, but the filters in the air stack basically did nothing, so a large fire would have created a major radiological disaster.

Chernobyl was much bigger than all western accidents, but to me it feels like an extreme point on a spectrum.

If we take an inside view, the Chernobyl accident happened because of a combination of operator error and poor design, and we could try to trace either of these to Soviet authoritarianism.

As for the operator errors, there were three fateful decisions. First, the Chernobyl chief engineer Nikolai Fomin approved the plan for the turbine draw-down experiment, classifying it as an “electrical” experiment which could be signed off locally. In hindsight, because the experiment involved manipulating the power level of the reactor and the flow-rate of the cooling loop, it affected the dynamics of the reactor and should have been referred to physicists at Scientific Research Institute of Power Engineering (NIKIET) and the Committee for the Supervision of Nuclear Power Safety (Gosatomenergonadzor) for analysis and approval. It’s unclear if that would have changed matters, because the experiment would have been safe if executed according to the plan, but the physicists could perhaps have drawn attention to the safety aspects. As it were, the Chernobyl staff were quite complacent—perhaps because they had already tried it several times before, making various adjustments to the turbine control logic each time. On the day of the accident they seem to have treated it as a routine matter, and Fomin did not even notify plant director Brukhanov.

Maybe you can see the Soviet penchant for centralization here. I don’t know how it works in America, but Swedish nuclear power stations employ staff physicists who carry out calculations about how the plant will respond to various abnormal scenarios. That seems like it may be helpful for ensuring that the operating staff has easy access to physics expertise, compared to the Soviet system where those calculations where done far off in another city, and under a separate bureaucracy (NIKIET was under the Ministry of Medium-sized Machinery, while the reactor staff was employed by the Ministry of Energy).

Then in the reactor control room, deputy chief engineer Anatoly Dyatlov gave two crucial bad orders. First, he had the operators deviate from the plan and start the experiment from a 200 MW power level instead of 700 MW. It’s unclear why he would do that—at the trial it was suggested that he might have thought a lower level would be safer, although it actually made the reactor dangerously unstable. Then, when the reactor was inadvertently shut down, he insisted that the operators violate regulations and start it up again, which created the conditions for the explosion. Interestingly, Dyatlov’s position was administrative, outside the operational chain of command, so formally he had no authority to give orders to the operators on duty, but he still expected to be obeyed and threatened to have them fired if they didn’t comply.

The Chernobyl tv-series tries to sell this as part of Soviet authoritarianism too—they insert a fictional scene where plant director Brukhanov pressures Dyatlov to complete the test so that Brukhanov can get a promotion—but that still would not explain the 200MW order. Perhaps some of the blame should go to Dyatlov’s personality: his coworkers say he was knowledgeable but stubborn and intolerant of dissent. Either way, it’s hard to believe that that overconfident, authoritarian managers were unique to the Soviet Union. I don’t have any examples from the nuclear industry, but maybe you could look at e.g. ship captains—it is easy to find examples of captains making bad decisions, either because of pressure from their bosses or because they are just being stupid.

Meanwhile, the reactor design also suffered from several problems that contributed to the disaster. On paper, this should not have happened. The Soviet nuclear energy industry was monitored by the USSR State Committee for the Supervision of Nuclear Power Safety (Gosatomenergonadzor), who produced a set of Nuclear Safety Regulations for Nuclear Power Plants (NSR), and then approved the technical safety report of a reactor design. The Chernobyl plant was approved in May 1975.

It shouldn’t have been. A 1991 report points out that the regulations include NSR Article 3.2.2, the total power coefficient of reactivity is not positive under any operating condition, and NSR Article 3.3.26, the reactor’s emergency protection system must ensure that the chain reaction is automatically, quickly and reliably terminated—which point to the two major flaws which caused the accident. At the time of the approval, Gosatomenergonadzor was part of the Ministry of Medium-sized Machinery, and the same ministry also controlled the NIKIET and the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, the two main designers of the reactors. In this way, there was very little external checks of what the (notoriously secretive) Ministry was doing. Former Chernobyl physicist Vladimir Chernousenko writes:

How could a reactor with so many defects be built and put into operation? Firstly, no-one analyzed the RBMK plans at the design stage (that is, there was no independent, external scrutiny). Secondly, the designers themselves did carry out an analysis, but on a very superficial level (because of the poor experimental facilities, the chronic backwardness of the available computer technology, etc.).

Thirdly, thanks to the monopoly that exists in Soviet nuclear science, the RBMK reactors, unlike airplanes, automobiles, etc., were not subjected to any serious tests or trials of their durability. That is why 16 reactors were brought on line without even a Technical Basis of Safety of Reactor Installation (TBSRI) or a TBS of Nuclear Power Stations (TBSNPS) certificate.However, with these obligatory parts of the project missing, it is illegal to not only operate a nuclear power station, but even to build it (GSG §§1.2.3, 2.1.14). It was only in 1988 that the chief designer made an attempt to officially certify the safety of the second- and third-generation RBMK stations.

As for why the design had these flaws in the first place, both of them can be traced to schedule pressures and cost-cutting. First, the choice of a water cooled/graphite moderated reactor is inherently risky, because a disruption of the water supply can cause a power surge. When drawing up the plans for civilian nuclear power the Ministry of Power had considered three possible designs named RMBK-1000 (water-cooled/graphite-moderated), RK-1000 (gas-cooled/graphite-moderated) and WWER-1000 (water-cooled/water-moderated), and in September 1967 they announced that the RK-1000 had been selected. However, this was too technically ambitious to meet the schedule, and one year later they instead opted for the RBMK-1000, which was similar to the reactors already used to produce weapons plutonium.

A graphite moderated reactor has a positive void coefficient, and as it turned out, when the control rods were fully withdrawn this could get big enough to overwhelm the thermal coefficient and make the overall power coefficient positive. This effect had not been anticipated ahead of time, but was noticed experimentally when the reactors were taken in use:

Neither the designers, nor the plant operators, nor the regulatory body attached proper importance to the large positive coefficients of reactivity which became apparent from experiments, and they did not attempt to find acceptable theoretical explanations. The obvious discrepancy between the actual core characteristics and the projected design values was not adequately analysed and consequently it was not known how the RBMK reactor would behave in accident situations.There are a number of explanations for the poor quality of the calculational analysis of the safety of the design. These include the fact that, until recently, Soviet computer techniques were chronically outdated and the standard of computer codes was very low. Three dimensional non-stationary neutron-thermal-hydraulic models are required in order to calculate the physical parameters of an RBMK reactor under different operating conditions. Such models first became available only shortly before the Chernobyl accident and were not really developed until after the accident.

Second, the scram rods were poorly designed. In addition to the too-short graphite tips (which makes the reactor explode instead of stopping), the system was much too slow—the rods were forced through a water-filled channel and took 18 seconds to fully deploy. Actually, the 1969 technical drawings had neither of these problems, because the scram rod tubes were water-film cooled, so the rods could be inserted in 2.5 seconds and did not displace water. Film-cooled channels are more difficult to construct and more expensive, and the final design reused the water-filled channels for control rods for the scram rods as well.

In addition to the above two flaws, western publications after the accident generally pointed at a difference in design philosophy. Western power plants follow a “Defense in Depth” philosophy, with redundant systems designed to handle multiple simultaneous failures. The USSR took a “different” approach:

The Soviet philosophy of safety with both breeder and conventional reactors places heavy emphasis on excellence of design, reliability of equipment, and careful operating procedures to prevent any releases of radioactivity to the environment. Special containment structures are not thought to be justified because of the improbability of any serious accident, and such domes are therefore judged to be costly and superfluous precautions. The design-basis accident also does not include loss of coolant in the core, and thus the reactors do not have a special emergency core cooling system. Soviet writers question the philosophy of designing redundant systems, for:

 “An excess of such backup systems, where the need or the reliability is not clearly assured, introduces operational complexity and reduces over-all safety.”

It is acknowledged that some types of accidents might release radiation accumulated in the coolant, or possibly even some of the activity from unsealed fuel cans, but such releases are not projected as exceeding the daily permissible releases from power stations (1,000-10,000 Curies or less).

The Soviet equipment reliability was far from excellent, so I guess this difference in outlook was mainly due to a more relaxed attitude to radiation leaks. In the 1957 Kyshtym disaster the USSR had suffered what was then the worst radiation accident in history, and successfully kept the whole thing secret.

Indeed, the first six RBMK reactors (Leningrad 1&2, Chernobyl 1&2, and Kursk 1&2) had no structures at all to contain water/steam leaks, so any break in the cooling circuit would lead to a radioactivity release. (A 1991 report about post-Chernobyl safety improvements comments, “The main aim in these units must be to reduce the probability of large diameter pipe breaks to a point where such accidents may be termed hypothetical. With this in mind, some computerized and experimental research was carried out into the processes which cause cracks to appear.”)

Later RBMK reactors, including Chernobyl-4, added some containment structures more similar to Western reactors, by enclosing parts of the cooling circuit in pressure-tight concrete rooms that vented into a pressure-suppression (bubbler) pool. However, the reactor itself was too big to contain in this way. It was given pressure relief pipes, but they were only dimensioned to handle breaks in at most two of the 1661 fuel channels—the pressure from more extensive breaks could tear apart the entire core. NIKIET estimated the probability of a simultaneous two-channel break as 1e-8 per reactor-year, and three or more as negligibly improbable.

Although a lot of western publications after the accident highlighted the lack of containment, it is not known if a western-style containment building would have prevented the disaster—it’s impossible to say for sure, since it is not even known exactly what caused the explosion or how big it was. But in any case, it clearly shows the higher Soviet risk tolerance.

The risk tolerance is even more visible in the way that accidents were treated. The positive power coefficient was noted soon after the first RMBK reactor (Leningrad-1) was started, but never properly investigated. There were about 10 major accidents at Soviet nuclear reactors between 1970-85, killing at least 17 reactor workers and leading to multiple radiation releases to the environment. RBMK reactors suffered partial core meltdowns at Leningrad-1 in 1975 and Chernobyl-1 in 1982, proving that the supposedly unlikely simultaneous fuel channel rupture could happen quite often. And in 1983, the positive reactivity effect of the scram rods were noticed at both Ignalina-1 and Chernobyl-4. These accidents were more serious than Three Mile Island, and in the west any one of them would had prompted big efforts, but in the USSR they were kept secret.

The reactor designers at NIKIET were notified of the scram anomaly, and started to consider improvement to the rods to eliminate it, but it was not treated as a priority; the Chernobyl-4 reactor was to be upgraded after the next shutdown in 1986. They sent out a short and inconspicuous notice to the reactor operators. NIKIET also revised the operating instructions for the RBMK-1000, specifying a new minimum “operational reactivity margin” (ORM), i.e. a limit on how far the control rods may be retracted. In 1980 the ORM  limit was set to 10, and then in 1983 it was increased to 15. (After the disaster, it was increased again to 30.) If this limit had been respected, it would have kept the power reactivity coefficient negative and prevented situations where the scram-rod could cause a reactivity increase, so the NIKIET engineers might have considered the two main flaws of the reactor solved. But the updated manual only stated a number for the ORM; it didn’t flag it as a safety-critical limit. The RBMK reactors were plagued by shoddy workmanship and the operators were in the habit of constantly improvising to work around issues.

So the safety standard of the Soviet reactors was low. But are these failings particular to east bloc authoritarianism? For each cause I listed above, it seems one can find examples of the same thing happening in the west.The RBMK designers assumed there would be no safety issue as long as the reactor operators followed the ORM in the manual; this seems very similar to how Boeing reasoned about the 737 MAX. Very low failure probabilities were invented out of thin air; much like in Feynman’s description of the space shuttle program. Equipment was in disrepair forcing the operators to improvise; much like in the U.S. Navy. Reports of safety incidents were ignored; when the crew was evacuated off the Deepwater Horizon, the installation manager was heard shouting “Are you fucking happy? Are you fucking happy? The rig’s on fire! I told you this was gonna happen” into a satellite phone.

And there was trouble even in the western nuclear program. The 1944 Hanford B reactor was also water cooled/graphite moderated, and it was placed in remote location since the core might explode. In the 1950s there was several core meltdowns in small American research reactors. And as we saw above, the Windscale reactor was rushed into service with no containment at all. Instead of asking why Soviet reactors were shoddy, perhaps we should ask how the western reactors became safe.

Part of the credit must go to the open society. From 1954 onwards, the U.S. government invited commercial companies to build nuclear power plants. Unlike secret military reactors, the application to build such plants were public, as was the Atomic Energy Commission’s decisions to judge them safe or not. And the first serious study of a worst-case nuclear accident, WASH-740, was done because Congress was considering a law to indemnify nuclear power companies.

But the nuclear industry is not unique in being regulated in this way, and nuclear power plants still seem safer than, e.g., oil rigs. Perhaps the other part of the credit belongs to the anti-nuclear movement. The very first commercial nuclear power plant was planned to be built at Bodega Bay near San Francisco—local activist started to organize against it already in 1958, and in 1964 the public pressure forced the AEC to reject the plant. In other words, from the very beginning, America has had a third party which reviews the government/industry decisions and pressure them to take safety seriously. And reading the Wikipedia historical description,

By the early 1970s, anti-nuclear activity had increased dramatically in conjunction with concerns about nuclear safety and criticisms of a policy-making process that allowed little voice for these concerns. Initially scattered and organized at the local level, opposition to nuclear power became a national movement by the mid-1970s when such groups as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Critical Mass became involved.[43] With the rise of environmentalism in the 1970s, the anti-nuclear movement grew substantially:[42]

In 1975–76, ballot initiatives to control or halt the growth of nuclear power were introduced in eight western states. Although they enjoyed little success at the polls, the controls they sought to impose were sometimes adopted in part by state legislature, most notably in California. Interventions in plant licensing proceedings increased, often focusing on technical issues related to safety. This widespread popular ferment kept the issue before the public and contributed to growing public skepticism about nuclear power.[42]

In 1976, four nuclear engineers -three from GE and one from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission- resigned, stating that nuclear power was not as safe as their superiors were claiming.[47][48] These men were engineers who had spent most of their working life building reactors, and their defection galvanized anti-nuclear groups across the country.[49][50]  […] These issues, together with a series of other environmental, technical, and public health questions, made nuclear power the source of acute controversy.

it is striking that every single aspect here—the grassroots organizing, the ballot initiatives, the whistleblowers—would be impossible in the Soviet Union. So according to this story, democracy is not sufficient to create a safe industry, but it is a necessary condition; without it, you can’t get the environmentalist movement.

The U.S. environmentalists got things done. Starting in the mid-1970 there was a dramatic increase in construction costs of nuclear power plants in the U.S., with the capital costs increasing several times over, and in the 1980s companies basically stopped building plants. (You can’t get any safer than that!) Although there are several reasons for the cost increase, the most commonly cited factor is increased safety regulations. Lovering et al. show the following graph, and analyze it as follows:

Between 1967 and 1972, the 48 reactors that were completed before the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 began construction. Their OCC rise from a range of $600–$900/kW to approximately $1800–$2500/kW. These reactors follow a trend of increasing costs by 187%, or an annualized rate of 23%. Phung (1985) attributed these pre-TMI cost increases to emerging safety requirements resulting from pre-TMI incidents at Browns Ferry and Rancho Seco. Two outliers, Diablo Canyon 1 and 2, cost about $4100/kW in overnight construction cost, and were completed 17 and 15 years later, in 1984 and 1985.

A break in construction starts is visible around 1971 and 1972,which is likely attributable to a confluence of events affecting nuclear power construction in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These include the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1971, and the AEC’s gradual loss in public trust and its eventual replacement by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 1975. Golay et al. (1977) determined that 88 reactors in various stages of permitting, construction, and licensing were affected by the 1971 Calvert Cliffs court decision resulting in revised AEC regulations that included back-fit requirements.Finally, the last 51 completed reactors represent a set that began their construction between 1968 and 1978 and were under construction at the time of the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. For these reactors, OCC varies from $1800/kW to $11,000/kW. Thirty-eight of these reactors fall within a mid-range of $3000/kW to $6000/kW, with 11 between $1800 and $3000/kW and 10 between $6000 and $11,000/kW. From the OCC of about $2,000/kW for reactors beginning construction in 1970, OCC increases another 50–200%, or an annual increase of 5–15% between 1970 and 1978.

In particular, the safety factors Phung (1985) highlight for the mid-1970s cost increase were as follows.

Phung also notes that due to new safety regulations, power plants that had already been completed in 1978 then had to be back-fitted to fix issues that had been discovered during the 70s, which increased the cost by 28% on average compared to the original construction cost. This is a rather glaring contrast to the Soviet experience, where reactors were notably not back-fitted to fix the multitude of issues that were discovered. As late as 1983, one Soviet offical boasted that “the evolution in capital cost of Soviet WWERs has no comparison with the increase of pressurized-water reactor costs in the West during the same period.”

Anyway, the environmentalist story seems convincing as long as you only consider the the U.S. and the USSR, but I still kindof doubt it. Environmentalism and the anti-nuclear movement came to the U.S. first, and didn’t really emerge in Europe and Japan until in the first half of the 1970s (with a strong inspiration from America), when it would be too late to have a big effect on the main nuclear build-up. In Sweden, the reactor fleet was designed in the 1960s, by experts who knew best and didn’t particularly talk to outsiders. (Holmberg and Hedberg describe an Edenic state of affairs: “In the beginning of the 1970s all parties in the parliament supported a plan to build eleven nuclear reactors in Sweden. No debate, no conflict, everything calm. At the time energy policies were the topic for experts and a very limited number of politicians. Mass media were silent and the general public ignorant. In this atmosphere, the first Swedish reactor started operations in 1972.”)

Similarly, Lovering et al. notes that the pattern of construction cost increases in the U.S. is somewhat unique, and in other countries you either see more moderate increases (France, Canada), or no clear pattern of increases (Japan). You can see a small increase in French construction costs after the Chernobyl accident, but nothing like the huge jump in American costs after Three Miles Island, so does that mean that the reactor designs also didn’t benefit from the additional democratic scrutiny? By the above logic we would expect the Swedish reactors to be as crappy as the Soviet ones, but as far as I know they are actually perfectly fine…

[distant-rose]

Carousels and Pretzels

Notes: @welllpthisishappening​ is an amazing person and I will never forget the day we met and started chatting and realized we know a lot of the same places. This is a dumb and purely indulgent fic that is full of Albany/Capital Region references most readers might not understand but admittedly, they’re only meant to be understood by one person and that’s Laura. She’s a phenomenal person, literally one of my favorite people and just an all around amazing human being who doesn’t get enough recognition for just how perfect and wonderful she is. Anyway, this was going to be a much longer fic but I kinda ran out of time. Also, Druthers has better pretzels than Brown’s, fight me. Summary: Emma Swan takes a job at Hoffman’s Playland with the hope of not running into anyone she knows from UAlbany. Instead, she runs into Killian Jones, a former lacrosse athlete whose tragic accident she covered as a story back in February. Word Count: 2,000+ Rating: T+

Hoffman’s Playland wasn’t Emma’s first choice of summer employment. If it were up to her, she would have been working for the Troy Record all summer, but their internships weren’t paid, and Emma had to rent to account for and she refused to hike all the way up to Lake George to work the depressing lunch shift at King Neptune’s again. 

It wasn’t the worst place in the world to work. Though she was forced to wear the ugliest combo of a polo and cargo shorts and the staff break room constantly smelled of Subway, her coworkers were pretty okay and was only a thirteen-minute commute from her apartment in Troy. Furthermore, it was monotonous enough that she could spend her days plotting how she was going to run the Inklings magazine this year and whether or not she should apply to grad school or try to apply for a job at the Times Union while she’s finishing up her last year.

Another plus was no one knew her at Hoffman’s aside from Mary-Margaret. It made everything easier, especially after her huge breakup with Neal and the amount of rumors of drug use that circled around afterward. They had broken up not longer after his dorm got raided and he tried to pin his stash of pot on her, nearly getting her expelled from the school. The last month of Spring Term was awful and she was lucky that most of her newspaper and literary magazine friends stood by her or else she wouldn’t still be in school, let alone have made it as the sports editor of the Albany Student Press and Inklings in the fall.

Still, the way things went put a bad taste in her mouth and she hoped that it would too stale for anyone to care about by the time that September rolled around. With most of the clientele of Hoffman’s being families with small children, she’s highly doubted that she would know anyone who went there.

Until she did.

Actually, that wasn’t entirely true.

Emma didn’t know Killian Jones personally, but it was a name and face she’s gotten to know well over the past three years. While she had never truly met the guy, it was imperative that she knew of his existence as a staff writer for the student paper and then later on as the girlfriend of Neal Cassidy, the starting lacrosse goalie.

His name wasn’t one that was said with fondness, but usually disdain. The name Killian Jones was generally premised by the use of the word “fuck”, “screw” or any variety of obscenity. There were three reasons for this hatred: 1) he went to Siena, UAlbany’s cross-town rival, 2) he played lacrosse and 3) he was good at it.

At least he used to be.

In February, he got into a car accident in Troy, a mere three streets away from her apartment. It has been a nasty one, which ended in the loss of not only his girlfriend’s life and his hand, but also his lacrosse career. She remembers quite clearly writing up the article on it for the Albany Student Press and then later on the party that had been thrown by Neal in celebration of his fallen adversary. Neal had hated Killian with a passion and the two of them had gotten in a fight during a game last year, which ended with a picture of Killian punching Neal square in the face on the front page of the Times Union sports section. 

Emma, on the other hand, felt bad for him. Despite the fact she had attended Neal’s horrible party, she had argued that it was in poor taste. Killian might have been “the enemy” but what happened to him was horrible and alongside reading a very sympathetic article on his behalf, she had even sent a condolence card.

Since then, Emma hadn’t so much of heard or seen anything on Killian Jones until he was standing in front of her, wearing a green Siena lacrosse sweatshirt and jeans in the middle of July and holding the hand of a small blonde girl no older than six.

She was so stunned by the fact he was standing in front of her that she did little more than stare at him for a good few seconds. She completely forgot to give her greeting and safety spiel.

Luckily, she was saved by his little companion.

“Hi!”

“Um, hi.”

“You’re pretty.”

“Thank you. You’re pretty too,” she replied, laughing at her awkwardness. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Alice! What’s yours?”

“I’m Emma,” she smiled. “Would you like to go on the ride?”

“Yeah,” Alice beamed before tugging roughly on Killian Jones’s hand. “Uncle Killy, give her a ticket!”

“Right,” he mumbled, fishing through the pockets before handing her a crumbled ticket.

She deposited it in the proper container before starting up the ancient carousel. The old music croaked through the speakers as it slowly started to move, but Alice didn’t seem to mind. It’s obvious to Emma that she’s pretending that the horse she’s riding was real, and the sweetness of the scene filled her made her smile.

Still burning with curiosity, she glanced back at Killian. He was standing a few lengths away and watching his niece with his forearms practically stuffed into the front pocket of his hoodie. As if sensing her glaze, his eyes shifted in her direction. Despite the urge to look away, she often him a small smile instead. He didn’t return the gesture.

When the ride stopped and Alice hopped off, he took her hand and left without a word. Only Alice turned back to give her a wave. Emma returned it tentatively, wondering if she upset him and swallowing her questions.

She didn’t know why she cared so much.

Much to her surprise, they return the next day. This time, he was wearing a pair of khaki shorts and a leather jacket despite the fact was nearing a ninety-degrees. Again, he didn’t speak much, letting Alice do all the talking. They show again the next day and the day after that; each and every time Emma had tapped down her inner journalist to keep from asking questions that were burning in the back of her throat. What happened to you? Why do you wear long-sleeved shirts? Why do you keep coming to this ridiculous 1950s amusement park?

Following Wednesday was a cloudy and humid day and there was only a handful of people in the park and none of them seem interested in riding the carousel. Emma fought the urge to play on her phone. Despite the horrible weather, Killian and Alice showed up yet again. The little precocious girl handed her a fistful of tickets.

This time Killian stood closer to the operator stand, practically hovering over her shoulder. He and Alice had been coming every day for nearly a week and a half now, and never before he had stood so close to her. She did her best to ignore him, focusing all of her attention on the little girl on the painted horse.

“How many times do you think she can ride that thing before she throws up?”

She nearly jumped at the question, turning to face him with surprise. He wasn’t looking at her, his eyes trained on Alice, but Emma could tell he was waiting for a response.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “Depends on how strong her stomach is, I guess?”

He nodded. A few beats passed before he spoke again. “You look tired.”

“I haven’t been sleeping well,” she admitted. “I don’t have any air conditioning and my room in my apartment is kinda like a hot box.”

“That sucks. We don’t have AC either, but we’ve kinda be taking to sleeping on the porch since it’s screened in.”

“I don’t really have the option. I live in Troy.”

“Oh? Where? I’m familiar with it.”

“Let me guess? Bootleggers?” Emma asked sarcastically, without thinking. Bootleggers was a well-known college bar a few blocks away from where she lived and it was known to be frequented by obnoxious underage Siena students with fake IDs. It was constantly being shut down and reopened.

Killian laughed, a loud and boisterous sound that caught Emma by surprise once more. She had never seen him look so animated.

“Maybe, when I was a baby freshman, but I would like to think my taste level has gotten better since then. So, yeah, you located? Lansingburgh? North Central? The Hill? Sycaway? 

“Downtown. Third street.”

“By Brown Bag burger place, right?”

“That’s on Fourth street, but yeah, pretty close. More by the Ruck.”

“I love that bar. They have great wings.”

“They do and they’re less expensive than Brown’s. One of my roommates is a bartender there. David. He may or may not give us free pitchers occasionally.”

“Brown’s is expensive, but it’s good beer. I love their oatmeal stout. Their pretzels with the honey mustard are amazing.”

“They do have good pretzels but the one at Druthers are better.”

“Druthers? Isn’t that in Saratoga? It’s a bit hike, isn’t?”

“No. There’s on in Albany on Broadway,” she responded. “It’s not too far from the Pump Station and Old English.”

She was almost embarrassed about the fact that she often referenced locations by the bars in the neighborhood. In her defense, she had lived in the Albany area for nearly three years and have been involved in more Birthday tours than she could count.

“You’re a bit of a foodie, huh?”

“I used to write for the local eats section of the Albany Student Press my freshman and sophomore year before they switched me over to a different section,” Emma chuckled. “Needless to say, it was a bitch to keep off the freshman fifteen when you’re eating at every cool and exciting places across the Capital Region every week.”

“Sounds like a hardship.”

“For my scale, yes, it was,” she laughed.

When they ran out of tickets, Emma wasn’t sure who was more disappointed, Alice for no longer being able to ride the carousel or Killian for having to end their conversation. He reach forward and gave her shoulder a squeeze.

“You here tomorrow?”

“Same time, every day.”

“Good. I’ll see you then.”

He didn’t disappoint. This time not only bringing his niece, but also a large Dunkin Donuts coffee as well. Emma stood in shock as he handed it to her.

“I figured that you would like this since you’re not sleeping lately.”

“You didn’t have to do this.”

“No, but I wanted to.”

“Why?”

“Because you treated me like a person and not some wounded animal,”

“Oh…” She didn’t know what to say to that. “We just talked about food.”

“And it was the best conversation I’ve had in a long time,” he responded, lifting up his arm, which was once more covered by a Siena lacrosse hoodie. He pulled it back to expose the scarred stump left behind by the accident. “Yesterday was the first time I talked to someone aside from my niece who didn’t mention or talk about my accident. I felt normal again.  Coffee is the least I could do.”

“You’re welcome, I guess. Seriously. Thank you. It’s the nicest,” she said, taking a sip and giving him a small smile.

Growing impatient with the conversation, Alice tugged her uncle’s sweatshirt.

“You didn’t ask her yet,” she told him impatiently, not at all impressed with her uncle. He looked amusingly chastised for someone being told off by a six-year old.

“I was just getting to it.”

“Well, ask her so she’ll let me on the ride.”

“Okay, okay, Miss Pushy,” he responded with a roll of her eyes before giving Emma an apologetic grin.

“Ask me what?” Emma prompted him with a question.

“Well, if you’re not doing anything later, would you mind going to Druthers with me and, you know, having some pretzels and comparing them to Brown’s?”

“Just pretzels?”

“Well, and a beer or two? Perhaps maybe even dinner?”

“He likes you and wants to be your boyfriend,” Alice stated, crossing her arms in front of her chest and huffing at Killian.

“Well, that’s a good thing because I like him too,” Emma laughed. “And, yeah, we can go to Druthers and depending on whether or not, he agrees Druthers has better pretzels, maybe, just maybe, I’ll be his girlfriend.”

[typewriterwitch]

When the Forced Marriage Trope is Given Depth

The forced marriage plot is a venerated tradition in romance novels. So much so that today’s romance writers are twisting plots around like pretzels to try to make this trope plausible—and palatable—for the modern age. Usually, this involves business arrangments and marriages of convenience. The old school romance novels of my adolescence were more about king’s edicts and unbreakable betrothals to the last man on earth the heroine ever wants to marry—but with a sly wink toward lust to undercut her early hate.

The appeal of the forced marriage plot is the belligerent sexual tension for a start. Then it’s the softening. The something there that wasn’t there before. The hero becomes less of an ass. The heroine admits her initial impression was harsh. It’s classic Pride & Prejudiceor Beauty & the Beast. Gold standard stuff. From a practical point of the view, the forced marriage plot is a way for historical romance writers to have their Pride & Prejudice or Beauty & the Beast plot, give a nod toward social norms, and still include sex scenes.

But the forced marriage trope has a crucial difference—in both Pride & Prejudice and Beauty & the Beast examples, the narrative question is, “Will the heroine consent to marry the hero?” Her choice is centered. Elizabeth throwing Darcy’s proposal back in his face is one of the best examples of agency in all of romance (my personal favorite comes from North & South). We want to see the heroine stand up for herself because then it’s crystal clear that, by the end, she’s marrying for love. In the case of the forced marriage trope, the choice has been made for her, so her agency is compromised.

What does that do to the appeal of the trope? It messes it right up, that’s what it does.

For fans of messy romance—romance with stakes and grit and depth—this is can be a very interesting thing. If the author treads carefully. Treading carefully means hitting a few major beats:

Acknowledging the messed up nature of the situation. The hero especially needs to understand how getting a wife against her will is, you know, bad. Even if he starts out conceited or oblivious, it’s crucial that he learns to value consent above all else.

Giving the heroine a free and clear means of escape. Readers seem to swoon over the whole, ‘You’re too good for me! But I’m a selfish bastard so I’ll never let you go’ angle. In this trope, the alpha possessiveness vibe is more uncomfortable than usual. Tone it way down. Even Disney gets it right: When the Beast asks Belle if she can be happy with him in the 2017 version, she responds, “Can anyone be happy if they aren’t free?” The only answer is no and the Beast promptly lets her go.

Making the character change crystal clear. The reason the heroine decides to stay with the hero is make-or-break for this trope. Quivering thighs aren’t enough. Genuine, authentic change in the hero’s actions and the heroine’s understanding is a must. This cannot be lip service. It has to feel authentic and earned.

Why are these three beats so crucial? Because the very last thing we need is forced marriage itself romanticized as an institution. Forced marriage is and has been a source of pervasive evil in the lives of women. Google ‘forced marriage’ without the ‘romance’ at the end and you get a lifeline number to stop human trafficking. This trope emerged from a dark and dangerous place, as a lot of storytelling tropes do. No number of happy fictional endings will change that.

Most premises for this trope I’ve seen skirt the trope’s heart of darkness, ignoring the uncomfortable implications in favor of a few thrills. Which begs the question—does the popularity of the trope mean its readers are regressing or resisting progress? Are readers thinking that choice is too hard and wouldn’t it be nicer if someone chose a husband for them and it all worked out in the happily-ever-after? Maybe. Romance is escapism, after all. This trope and the soulmates trope are like the benevolent dictator theories of romance novels. Easy and unrealistic are what some readers are looking for when they pick up a romance novel.

As a champion for romance with stakes and grit and depth, that’s so not me. I want a happy ending, I do. But I also what to use the forced marriage trope to, like, explore my anxieties about the long line of forced marriages from which I’m likely descended. That’s why I need the heroine to continuously stand up for herself and the hero to completely understand her situation by the end. Those three beats I laid out above allow that arc to happen. They’re a formula for catharsis and that’s damn good drama. But the right to choose one’s life partner is a cornerstone of feminism for a damn good reason. For me, the story isn’t satisfying unless it actively tackles that issue.

One of the best examples of the forced marriage trope given depth comes from a movie almost no one saw called Child 44. Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace star as Leo and Raisa Demidov a married couple in 1950s Russia. Leo is a WWII hero turned Captain in the Ministry of State Security. The plot focuses on Leo searching for a serial killer who targets young boys. His investigation is complicated because he’s going against the will of the government. Leo’s colleagues actively want to silence any evidence that their society—a paradise—could produce a murderer. But, as the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes will tell you, the thriller aspect is a bit of a letdown. The real meaty storyline is the evolving relationship between Leo and Raisa.

The first scene to introduce Leo and Raisa as a couple is a phenomenal piece of character work. Leo is telling the story of how he fell in love and married Raisa at a dinner party. The story is a common one: love at first sight. Leo saw Raisa, waxed poetic, and asked for her name. When he tracks her down again, she admits that she gave him a false one. The two tell the story in tandem, but the audience is clued into the fact that Raisa is telling her parts dutifully. It’s Leo who finds this story romantic as he confesses his devotion to his wife. The women of the group are touched. Raisa is cool and contained. She remains cool and contained when the couple has sex in their apartment. It’s a classic framing of marital discord. Leo is kissing her neck, clearly overcome by passion. And Raisa is turned away from him, frowning into middle-distance. In a few short scenes, the audience comes to understand that Raisa does not share her husband’s blind obedience to the Soviet Union. We wonder if she might be a spy or a traitor in some way. When Leo comes home after a hard day where a subordinate murdered a mother and father in front of their two young children, he seeks comfort from Raisa. She accepts that she should do this for him, but she does not actively comfort him.

The turn comes when Leo is handed a folder and told to investigate his own wife for treason. He knows that no matter what he finds over the course of his investigation there will be no mercy. The implication alone is damning. Leo follows Raisa, seeing her lose a fellow school teacher to soldiers. She seems too close to her principal, but nothing implicates her except that he loses her in the crowd. Leo talks to his adopted father, who cautions him that it’s better to give up his wife than to go down with her. Raisa shows up for dinner then and announces where she’d gone—to the doctor. She’s pregnant. Leo tears apart their apartment but finds nothing damning. Neither do his colleagues. The scene where Leo confronts Raisa about the investigation is heartbreaking. You can see on her face that she expects to be given up. You can see on his face how much this is tearing him up inside. In the end, he submits her innocence knowing that he is dooming them both. Sure enough, they are dragged from their beds. The character work here is that Raisa lets her husband hold her, she screams for him in terror. She clings to him when she thinks they will be killed.

But they are spared somewhat. They are able to leave Moscow with their lives and sent to a village in the middle of nowhere. Gone are the luxuries that her husband’s career afforded them. In exchange for her life, he has to give up everything. Raisa is cooler than ever. It’s fascinating. She tells him that it was all a test of loyalty—he should have denounced because “that’s what wives are for.” His show of love hardens rather than softens her toward him. But she does not betray him, even when his most evil coworker offers for her to return to Moscow as his mistress. She tries to leave him, but Leo stops her and brings her back home. He forbids her from leaving again.

It’s then that we learn that Raisa resents him for how much he loves her because, as we find out, she never had a say in it. That charming story he likes to tell? She remembers it very differently. She “cried for one week” when he proposed and then accepted out fear for what would happen to her if she declined a man of his stature. She was forced into this marriage, and now she’s bound to him even tighter because of his sacrifice. Hearing this breaks Leo’s heart into a million pieces. Honestly, the angst of this scene is everything I want in this trope. Her confession rocks Leo’s world. He has tears in his eyes because he’s realizing how much of a monster he has been in the eyes of the woman he loves but has never known. We also find out that Raisa lied about being pregnant to save her own life. She’s a survivor. She’s a complex thinker and feeler. It’s heartwrenching, deep stuff, people. Sign me the fuck up twice.

That’s the first of the major beats. Acknowledging the messed up nature of the situation.

Then the murder investigation starts in earnest. Leo has to go to Moscow and he’s afraid if he leaves Raisa he won’t be able to protect her. She doesn’t want to go anywhere with him. He tells her that if she comes to Moscow with him, she can stay there. He won’t make her return, and she never has to see him again.

There’s beat number two. Giving the heroine a free and clear means of escape.

But in Moscow, things change for Raisa. She is drawn into the investigation and sees how honorable it is. She comes to realize that the man she assumed to be the honest Russian sticking up for his countrywomen against the brutal government was an ideologue all along. The monsters of her world are becoming much less black and white. By the time we get to the moment when Raisa chooses to come back with Leo, we understand why she’s making that choice.

And then boy are we ever rewarded. We get to see Raisa stand up for her husband, soothe and comfort him. We see her protect him from would-be murdererstwice and Leo turn around and do the same thing for her. She is an equal partner in his investigation and his life. The events of the movie bring them together in a way that their sham marriage never could—and it’s a messy, complicated, harrowing thing to watch. In the end, this is a true romance because the couple gets a happy ending. So happy. I won’t spoil the last bit, but there is definitely a romance novel-worthy moment when Leo turns those puppy dog eyes on Raisa to ask her if she thinks he is a monster. And of course she no longer thinks that. Her understanding of him has changed. And his actions have changed—no longer does he presume her love and ignore her true feelings. No longer does he go along with the state mindlessly and play up the war hero bit. He’s a better man and she loves him for it. That’s a transformational love story.

Final beat nailed. Making the character change crystal clear.

Again, not going to say Child 44 is a perfect movie. But the love story? Is a perfect example of a thoughtful use of the forced marriage trope. More romance novels could stand to use it as a template.

[thelittlepalmtree]

@markkzuccerberg and everyone else who blindly follows capitalism. Let’s have a little chit chat about small government. 

When I said small government was bad and cited Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman I was citing two of the most influential members of the modern conservative party. Milton Friedman’s philosophies Barry Goldwater which was basically the first Trump (the only reason he didn’t win the nomination was because the parties were not quite as democratic in the 70s). Now let’s take these concepts out of the historical context which reveals them to be blatantly anti progress and social justice and examine them as ideas. 

The modern conservative (let’s say libertarian as Rand was pro-union and pro-abortion and Friedman called himself a neo-liberal) believes that small-government is best because when government gets involved it messes things up. Rand would often say something about how it was wrong to force the majority onto the individual (I actually have a lot of complicated feelings for Ayn because her books really did influence me a lot as a writer). What this concept fails to understand is that without regulation there cannot be true competition. 

There’s a good documentary on netflix that explains this called Saving capitalism but I’ll give a brief summary of what I’m talking about. Right now we live in a world where a company cannot outright lie to you, and has to disclose any issues that might arise with their product. But without regulation you’d have companies constantly cutting corners and not telling you about it. “Well we could research our products” someone might argue. The thing is that without government agencies actually doing the research there wouldn’t really be any reliable information to go off of. What we’d have instead would be very similar to the Gilded Age when people were constantly sold faulty products with no accountability. 

I remember when I first read Atlas Shrugged Dagny (the main character) decides to build a transcontinental railroad after her brother and CEO kicked the only competing company out of Colorado. She decides to make it out of this special medal created by her friend and future lover Hank Rearden. People are concerned about the metal which is untested and Dagny says something along the lines of “If you don’t think it’s safe don’t ride our trains.” Even back when I loved those books that bothered the shit out of me. People didn’t have a choice, the Taggart company had kicked out the competition! Of course people were upset! 

Too often a similar situation happens with corporations in our world. Companies like Walmart will use underhanded means of keeping prices low. If you make $11 an hour you can’t be the ethical consumer you want to be (I’ve literally been there). You may be saying “well why were you only making $11 an hour why couldn’t you find a better job there must be something wrong with YOU” actually no, I was getting my degree and literally all the jobs open to me without a degree offered me less than $15/hr and I was looking for a job in child care specifically. I couldn’t find a single place that would hire me and pay more than $12/hr. For watching children. Do you want the person caring for, educating, feeding, and entertaining your child to be paid $12/hr (especially considering tuition at that daycare was $330 a week)? Regardless of your answer, I had no choice but to take a job that did not value the amount of work I was doing. Literally every job in the area was going to pay at the same rate. 

And here’s where I quote Karl Marx who (contrary to popular belief) was not some radical revolutionary but rather an economist who was merely reporting back based on his expertise. This quote is from Wage Labor and Capital. 

But the worker, whose only source of income is the sale of his labour-power, cannot leave the whole class of buyers, i.e., the capitalist class, unless he gives up his own existence. He does not belong to this or that capitalist, but to the capitalist class; and it is for him to find his man – i.e., to find a buyer in this capitalist class.

Marx, Karl. Wage Labour and Capital (Illustrated) (Kindle Locations 312-315). LeoPard Books India. Kindle Edition.

Capitalism was seen as a tool of feudal liberation. No longer did individuals belong to a noble lord. The reality was that nothing really had changed. True it is rare these days that someone can say “I belong to that person who lives in the nice house on the hill.” But the entire lower class does belong to the entire upper class. We may be able to choose who to work for but we can’t choose not to work. 

What does this really mean? It means that people with severe physical or mental disabilities will often live in poverty because they cannot work and cannot support themselves. It means that a woman who is being abused will stay with her abuser because she will be homeless otherwise. It means a child may stay in an abusive household because they will be homeless otherwise. It means people forgo taking their medicine because it has side effects that keep them from being able to work. It means people being stuck with medical bills because they took a job that gave them cancer because they had no other options. It means your kid getting the flu because my coworker couldn’t afford not to come into work. 

But the government does other things too. We think of capitalism as a merit-based system but how can it be that way if the government does not even the playing field? Things like copyright (which, to be fair, Ayn Rand did believe was the job of the government), and intellectual property laws keep people like writers, musicians, artists, etc in business. Regulations on every industry not only protect the consumer but protects people who do try to run ethical businesses and keep shoddy work from being passed off as the real deal (there’s a great episode of Rotten on Netflix about Chinese companies importing some sort of food product that was sub-par and hurting the industry in America) Without government assistance we wouldn’t have things like Railroads which were subsidized by the government. In the great depression agriculture was subsidized by the government in order to preserve the infrastructure (both physical and non-physical) that would develop into our current ability to produce food at an amazing rate. 

I am not saying capitalism is evil. It has given us a lot of great stuff, but it never existed in a laissez faire world. Small government is great when it means the King doesn’t have the right to take your pee for gunpowder (yes this did happen). But it’s not so great when it means Walmart can pay people so little that the town it’s in goes bankrupt because of all the assistance its employees needed. We need to balance government with capitalism. That doesn’t mean seizing the means of production, it means taxing the DeVoss family so we can all have the right to life (aka universal or single payer health insurance). 

I get that this was long and I didn’t cover everything I wanted to, but I urge you to read Wage Labor and Capital by Karl Marx, Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman, and The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. Another great one is  The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist is another great one about Slavery and Capitalism in America. I also urge you to read or watch Freakonomics or listen to their podcast (freakonomics raido). Or the documentary Saving Capitalism on Netflix. You can also look at this site for a little more information about wealth inequality in America. 

[utcampuslifeupdate]

University Honors Outstanding Student Employees

2017-2018 Student Employee of the Year Award Winner and Finalists: (front row) Brianna Barth, Bianca Eubanks, Kacey Davidson and Susan Ward; (back row) Alexander Bruce, Dominykas Bytautas, James Collins (winner), Sarah Ritch, Adrienne Boni Banks and Danny Bacic (Bex Orton not pictured)

As a Campus Environmental Center ambassador, James Collins has helped the university pursue the goal of global environmental sustainability. Today, President Gregory L. Fenves honored him with the Student Employee of the Year Award for his work collaborating with campus partners and student organizations.

As part of National Student Employee Appreciation Week, the Offices of the President and Vice President for Student Affairs, and Human Resources recognized Collins and 10 finalists at today’s ceremony.

“I’ve had opportunities to fine-tune skills such as time management, delegation and professional communication. On-campus jobs in sustainability are equipping environmentally-minded students with the professional experience needed to jump into impactful careers and succeed,” he said.

The environmental science and government major also advocated for environmentalism through Texas State Parks Club, Lions Club and Texas Water Research Network. He’s worked at the UT Microfarm, the university’s first student-run, on-campus farm and a partner of University Housing and Dining’s UT Farm Stand.

These kinds of experiences contribute to Longhorn alumni wellbeing after graduation according to a recent Gallup survey. The survey found that being extremely involved in extracurricular activities strongly correlates to future success.

Hear from this year’s finalists below about how their on-campus employment are getting them ready for a career, graduate or professional school, or other pursuits.

Danny Bacic • Employment: Recreational Sports, Student Assistant • Major: Biomedical Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering, Class of 2018 • Activities: Longhorn Band, UT Student Engineers Educating Kids, Kappa Psi, Intramural Basketball, Dodgeball, Flag Football, Futsal, Soccer, Softball, Ultimate and Volleyball

“The true test of readiness is the ability to adapt to changing situations as they unfold. Recreational Sports has given me invaluable management experience. Leading a team requires confident decision-making, consistent moral standards, effective communication and teamwork.”

Brianna Barth • Employment: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Undergraduate Research Assistant • Major: Chemistry, College of Natural Sciences, Class of 2020 • Activities: Women in Natural Sciences

“Through research, I’ve been able to gain skills in applying what I’ve learned in class to a practical purpose. My supervisors have taught me how to recover from failure and the value of perseverance in solving problems.”

Adrienne Banks • Employment: Texas Performing Arts, Senior Student Associate • Master’s Degree: Social Work (Clinical), Steve Hicks School of Social Work, May 2018 • Activities: Texas Performing Arts Student Employee Advisory Council, Phi Alpha Honor Society

“The energy and spirit of my undergraduate coworkers is contagious and constantly reminds me why I devote time to this school and organization. The experiences, connections and knowledge I gain at UT Austin will inform everything I go out and do when I leave this university.”

Alexander Bruce • Employment: School of Undergraduate Studies, Undergraduate Assistant • Major: Economics, College of Liberal Arts, Class of 2019 • Activities: Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity, Transfer-year Experience Program Mentor, Family Orientation Student Leader

“I firmly believe that here at UT Austin we lay the groundwork for our future success. It gives you great leadership experience and it also connects you even more within the university which can be a great benefit.”

Dominykas Bytautas • Employment: Recreational Sports, Senior Student Associate • Major: English, College of Liberal Arts, Class of 2018 • Activities: University Leadership Network, University Unions Audio/Visual Technician (internship)

“This job has revealed to me that I can adapt and I can problem solve, and in fact that I enjoy solving problems. Life after graduation is a scary thought, but this job has taught me that it can be exciting, too.”

Kacey Davidson • Employment: University Health Services & Recreational Sports, Senior Student Associate • Major: Public Relations and Communication Studies, Moody College of Communications, May 2018 • Activities: Ignite Texas, Texas Darlins, Longhorn Run Committee

“I have learned how to be a leader and specifically lead a team of peers to complete tasks. I am equipped with the ability to anticipate problems and create a plan of action to resolve that issue. I have also learned the importance of building a positive culture.”

Bianca Eubanks • Employment: Texas Interdisciplinary Plan (TIP), Undergraduate Tutor; Biology Instructional Office, Undergraduate Assistant • Major: Biology, College of Natural Sciences, Class of 2018

“I realize that being a good leader requires one to first be a good follower acknowledging that there is always room for improvement. My supervisors and team have helped me develop skills necessary for a future in a medical career where I will be able to work in teams to help people.”

Bex Orton • Employment: Voices Against Violence & Gender and Sexuality Center, Student Technician • Major: Theatre and Dance, College of Fine Arts, Class of 2018

“I try to remind myself to be confident in the skills that I have, honest about how and where I can challenge myself and open to collaboration and new perspectives. I’ve also learned time management, collaboration and project management.”

Sarah Ritch • Employment: University Health Services & Biology Instructional Office, Student Assistant • Major: Biology, College of Natural Sciences, Class of 2018

“In some ways, my experience as a student employee has been more fulfilling than my time in the classroom. Students might be surprised at how many jobs on campus are similar to the jobs they may want to pursue after graduation.”

Susan Ward • Employment: Office of Sustainability, Student Associate • Major: Urban Studies, College of Liberal Arts, Class of 2019 • Activities: Texas Latin Dance, Campus Environmental Center, Texas Squash Box League

“Working on campus has really taught me about the importance of collaboration and communication, which I will take with me regardless of what I do in the future. Being able to impact the community we’re part of is so rewarding.”

Congratulations to all of the student employees recognized this year. Check out past recipients. Stay tuned for profiles on each finalist. 

[easyfoodnetwork]

For Trans People in the Service Industry, Discrimination Is an Unfortunate Reality of the Job

Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

A Supreme Court ruling makes it illegal to discriminate against an employee based on sexual orientation or gender, but that barely begins to address the unique pressures and harassment faced by trans service workers

On June 15, in a historic case, the Supreme Court held that federal law forbids discriminating against an employee solely because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Such an action would be considered discrimination under Title VII, as “an employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” writes Justice Neil Gorsuch. In other words, a workplace couldn’t legally fire a man for having a husband because it wouldn’t fire a woman for having a husband. If “the employer intentionally penalizes a person identified as male at birth for traits or actions that it tolerates in an employee identified as female at birth,” it’s discrimination “because of … sex.”

Much of the praise for the ruling comes from the fact that it’s been a long time coming. Until now, it’s been legal in more than half of U.S. states to fire someone for being gay, bisexual, or trans, even though it’s clearly a discriminatory practice. “The Supreme Court’s decision provides the nation with great news during a time when it is sorely needed. To hear the highest court in the land say LGBTQ people are, and should be, protected from discrimination under federal law is a historic moment,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, in a statement. However, she notes, “we still have more work to do to ensure that transgender people can fully live their lives without fear of discrimination for being who they are.”

The food service industry has often been a place for society’s “outcasts,” including LGBTQ people, to find acceptance and community. But while this ruling is a win for LGBTQ rights in general, trans and nonbinary people in the food service industry are questioning how much of an effect it’ll have on everyday life — and imagining what could be done to effect tangible change.

Niko Prytula, a nonbinary person who lives in Virginia, only recently stopped working in food service after eight years, most recently at a fine dining establishment with extremely formal practices. At most of their jobs, they were never open about their gender identity. “I was always out as queer, and there were not that many places where I was the only queer person on staff,” they say, “but when I was working fine dining, that was the first time where it felt like it would be a genuine obstacle to be out.”

Most of that was not because of the risk of discrimination from management, but rather from customers. Prytula recalls the extraordinarily gendered style of service, which required serving the oldest woman at the table first, referring to coworkers and patrons as “Mister” or “Miss,” and serving mostly older, white customers. “I do think [coming out] would have just made things very complicated,” they say. “I feel like it would have required me to create almost like a flowchart for my coworkers of like, ‘Okay, so I want you guys to use the correct pronouns for me, but you can let the tables misgender me all they want, because I don’t want to get in an argument with some elderly person when it’s literally a matter of my income.’”

Lucky Michaels, a trans rights activist and bartender at Storico at the New York Historical Society, says “as a trans person, job security is huge.” Michaels, a nonbinary trans woman, has been working in hospitality since the late ’90s, and says that because of the need for job security, “most of the trans people that I find [in the industry] are absolutely in the closet, stealth because it’s a really toxic work environment for people in general.” It’s not just discrimination from customers; it’s also the hypermasculine kitchen culture that persists in restaurants to this day.

Having a job is a high bar to clear for many trans people, says Michaels. “If you don’t have a house to go home to, or a place to change your clothes and shower or eat, how are you going to be able to get or sustain a job in the first place?” While the risk of losing a job is worrisome for everyone, unemployment, homelessness, and food insecurity are things that affect trans people more across the board. According to an April 2020 report from the Williams Institute looking at pre-pandemic numbers, “78.1 percent of trans adults are in the workforce, 12.8 percent of whom are unemployed, translating to an estimated 139,700 trans people unemployed (and looking for work) nationwide. In comparison, between 3.9 percent and 4.9 percent of U.S. adults in the labor force are unemployed.”

However, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated those numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the unemployment rate at 13.3 percent for May. And according to the Human Rights Campaign, trans people have been more likely to have lost their jobs during the pandemic and economic crisis: “19 percent of transgender people and 26 percent of transgender people of color have become unemployed due to COVID-19, compared to 17 percent of LGBTQ people and 12 percent of the general population.” The numbers are particularly bad for the food industry. The BLS reports that an additional 1.2 million jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector were lost in May, on top of the 7.4 million lost in April. And HRC reports that LGBTQ people are more likely to work in industries affected by COVID-19, including 2 million (15 percent) who work in restaurants and food services.

The SCOTUS decision sets a precedent, both legal and social, and signals to employers that there are bigger consequences for discrimination, but bigoted employers will always find other ways to alienate and push out trans employees. (The ruling does not apply to contractors, like most delivery drivers or Instacart shoppers.) Both Prytula and Michaels note how rare it would be to have “evidence” of a boss firing someone because they are trans. “I can’t tell you the number of times that people have tried to get rid of me because I’m trans without saying, ‘This is because you’re trans,’” says Michaels. “I’ve had managers and chefs try to get me to quit or leave, that have thrown around really horrible language. They’ll be using ‘faggot,’ I’ll be barred from the restroom of my gender identity, they give you inappropriate schedules, they give you inappropriate uniforms.”

The nature of the ruling also just doesn’t apply when much of working in the food service industry involves interacting with customers, who are essentially your bosses for 90 minutes at a time and are under no legal requirement to treat you fairly. “If you’re no longer allowed to be fired for being queer, but your income depends on whether or not guests find you palatable, or performing the right way, or, god help you, attractive, it doesn’t really help that much,” says Prytula.

Then there’s the issue of at-will employment. If you work without a union that has argued for just-cause termination, in most states, your boss can fire you without reason anyway. “Often the unique circumstances and additional burdens queer, and especially trans folks live with can make them more susceptible to ‘fireable offenses,’” says V Spehar, a nonbinary person who has worked in the hospitality industry for years, and who most recently was the Director of Impact at the James Beard Foundation, focusing on Women’s Leadership & LGBTQ programs. “Being late, having to grin and bear rude customers’ comments, lack of emotional or mental support, lack of secure housing or familial support” are all reasons that an employee could be seen as “not the right fit.”

On an encouraging note, there are other legislative pushes that, while helping all workers, could protect trans people specifically. Prytula says doing away with tipped minimum wage would mean trans food service workers would be more likely to earn a living wage without monitoring their appearance for the sake of transphobic customers. Doing away with at-will employment could do a lot too, as Sarah Jones writes for New York Magazine, as trying to sue your former employers for trans discrimination “can burden workers who don’t have the independent means to hold their former employers accountable.”

Spehar also says more change needs to come from within the industry, and not only from outside legislation. “Without creating a culture of understanding for the out-of-work burdens that disproportionately affect the LGBTQ community, we are all still held to the same ‘professional’ standards and expectations created by cis white culture,” they say. That means restaurant owners and nonprofits prioritizing anti-bias training, putting resources toward helping queer and trans people open their own businesses, and centering the fact that the food industry “is built foundationally on black, queer, women’s, and immigrant’s labor.” And making sure these issues take priority outside of Pride month, when many businesses use the LGBTQ community for marketing gimmicks.

Michaels still sees the food service industry as a place where trans people can thrive. She notes that James Beard was an out gay man at a time when that wasn’t widely accepted, and how restaurants and bars, especially Black- and women-owned restaurants and organizations, are committing themselves to diversity, equity, and inclusion work. But she also notes there’s a bigger picture outside the rights of those who find employment. “I don’t know that it is in legislation,” says Michaels. The SCOTUS ruling is an important piece in the massive, and mostly incomplete, puzzle of legislation and activism that’s needed to truly secure equitable treatment for trans people. “Legislation, as we’ve seen, can be fickle, and driven by administration, politicized,” says Spehar, “and in the end will never do what humanity and compassion from the industry can do.”

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2VwynCf https://ift.tt/3dR4WkV

Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

A Supreme Court ruling makes it illegal to discriminate against an employee based on sexual orientation or gender, but that barely begins to address the unique pressures and harassment faced by trans service workers

On June 15, in a historic case, the Supreme Court held that federal law forbids discriminating against an employee solely because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Such an action would be considered discrimination under Title VII, as “an employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” writes Justice Neil Gorsuch. In other words, a workplace couldn’t legally fire a man for having a husband because it wouldn’t fire a woman for having a husband. If “the employer intentionally penalizes a person identified as male at birth for traits or actions that it tolerates in an employee identified as female at birth,” it’s discrimination “because of … sex.”

Much of the praise for the ruling comes from the fact that it’s been a long time coming. Until now, it’s been legal in more than half of U.S. states to fire someone for being gay, bisexual, or trans, even though it’s clearly a discriminatory practice. “The Supreme Court’s decision provides the nation with great news during a time when it is sorely needed. To hear the highest court in the land say LGBTQ people are, and should be, protected from discrimination under federal law is a historic moment,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, in a statement. However, she notes, “we still have more work to do to ensure that transgender people can fully live their lives without fear of discrimination for being who they are.”

The food service industry has often been a place for society’s “outcasts,” including LGBTQ people, to find acceptance and community. But while this ruling is a win for LGBTQ rights in general, trans and nonbinary people in the food service industry are questioning how much of an effect it’ll have on everyday life — and imagining what could be done to effect tangible change.

Niko Prytula, a nonbinary person who lives in Virginia, only recently stopped working in food service after eight years, most recently at a fine dining establishment with extremely formal practices. At most of their jobs, they were never open about their gender identity. “I was always out as queer, and there were not that many places where I was the only queer person on staff,” they say, “but when I was working fine dining, that was the first time where it felt like it would be a genuine obstacle to be out.”

Most of that was not because of the risk of discrimination from management, but rather from customers. Prytula recalls the extraordinarily gendered style of service, which required serving the oldest woman at the table first, referring to coworkers and patrons as “Mister” or “Miss,” and serving mostly older, white customers. “I do think [coming out] would have just made things very complicated,” they say. “I feel like it would have required me to create almost like a flowchart for my coworkers of like, ‘Okay, so I want you guys to use the correct pronouns for me, but you can let the tables misgender me all they want, because I don’t want to get in an argument with some elderly person when it’s literally a matter of my income.’”

Lucky Michaels, a trans rights activist and bartender at Storico at the New York Historical Society, says “as a trans person, job security is huge.” Michaels, a nonbinary trans woman, has been working in hospitality since the late ’90s, and says that because of the need for job security, “most of the trans people that I find [in the industry] are absolutely in the closet, stealth because it’s a really toxic work environment for people in general.” It’s not just discrimination from customers; it’s also the hypermasculine kitchen culture that persists in restaurants to this day.

Having a job is a high bar to clear for many trans people, says Michaels. “If you don’t have a house to go home to, or a place to change your clothes and shower or eat, how are you going to be able to get or sustain a job in the first place?” While the risk of losing a job is worrisome for everyone, unemployment, homelessness, and food insecurity are things that affect trans people more across the board. According to an April 2020 report from the Williams Institute looking at pre-pandemic numbers, “78.1 percent of trans adults are in the workforce, 12.8 percent of whom are unemployed, translating to an estimated 139,700 trans people unemployed (and looking for work) nationwide. In comparison, between 3.9 percent and 4.9 percent of U.S. adults in the labor force are unemployed.”

However, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated those numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the unemployment rate at 13.3 percent for May. And according to the Human Rights Campaign, trans people have been more likely to have lost their jobs during the pandemic and economic crisis: “19 percent of transgender people and 26 percent of transgender people of color have become unemployed due to COVID-19, compared to 17 percent of LGBTQ people and 12 percent of the general population.” The numbers are particularly bad for the food industry. The BLS reports that an additional 1.2 million jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector were lost in May, on top of the 7.4 million lost in April. And HRC reports that LGBTQ people are more likely to work in industries affected by COVID-19, including 2 million (15 percent) who work in restaurants and food services.

The SCOTUS decision sets a precedent, both legal and social, and signals to employers that there are bigger consequences for discrimination, but bigoted employers will always find other ways to alienate and push out trans employees. (The ruling does not apply to contractors, like most delivery drivers or Instacart shoppers.) Both Prytula and Michaels note how rare it would be to have “evidence” of a boss firing someone because they are trans. “I can’t tell you the number of times that people have tried to get rid of me because I’m trans without saying, ‘This is because you’re trans,’” says Michaels. “I’ve had managers and chefs try to get me to quit or leave, that have thrown around really horrible language. They’ll be using ‘faggot,’ I’ll be barred from the restroom of my gender identity, they give you inappropriate schedules, they give you inappropriate uniforms.”

The nature of the ruling also just doesn’t apply when much of working in the food service industry involves interacting with customers, who are essentially your bosses for 90 minutes at a time and are under no legal requirement to treat you fairly. “If you’re no longer allowed to be fired for being queer, but your income depends on whether or not guests find you palatable, or performing the right way, or, god help you, attractive, it doesn’t really help that much,” says Prytula.

Then there’s the issue of at-will employment. If you work without a union that has argued for just-cause termination, in most states, your boss can fire you without reason anyway. “Often the unique circumstances and additional burdens queer, and especially trans folks live with can make them more susceptible to ‘fireable offenses,’” says V Spehar, a nonbinary person who has worked in the hospitality industry for years, and who most recently was the Director of Impact at the James Beard Foundation, focusing on Women’s Leadership & LGBTQ programs. “Being late, having to grin and bear rude customers’ comments, lack of emotional or mental support, lack of secure housing or familial support” are all reasons that an employee could be seen as “not the right fit.”

On an encouraging note, there are other legislative pushes that, while helping all workers, could protect trans people specifically. Prytula says doing away with tipped minimum wage would mean trans food service workers would be more likely to earn a living wage without monitoring their appearance for the sake of transphobic customers. Doing away with at-will employment could do a lot too, as Sarah Jones writes for New York Magazine, as trying to sue your former employers for trans discrimination “can burden workers who don’t have the independent means to hold their former employers accountable.”

Spehar also says more change needs to come from within the industry, and not only from outside legislation. “Without creating a culture of understanding for the out-of-work burdens that disproportionately affect the LGBTQ community, we are all still held to the same ‘professional’ standards and expectations created by cis white culture,” they say. That means restaurant owners and nonprofits prioritizing anti-bias training, putting resources toward helping queer and trans people open their own businesses, and centering the fact that the food industry “is built foundationally on black, queer, women’s, and immigrant’s labor.” And making sure these issues take priority outside of Pride month, when many businesses use the LGBTQ community for marketing gimmicks.

Michaels still sees the food service industry as a place where trans people can thrive. She notes that James Beard was an out gay man at a time when that wasn’t widely accepted, and how restaurants and bars, especially Black- and women-owned restaurants and organizations, are committing themselves to diversity, equity, and inclusion work. But she also notes there’s a bigger picture outside the rights of those who find employment. “I don’t know that it is in legislation,” says Michaels. The SCOTUS ruling is an important piece in the massive, and mostly incomplete, puzzle of legislation and activism that’s needed to truly secure equitable treatment for trans people. “Legislation, as we’ve seen, can be fickle, and driven by administration, politicized,” says Spehar, “and in the end will never do what humanity and compassion from the industry can do.”

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[shirlleycoyle]

How Uber Turned a Promising Bikeshare Company Into Literal Garbage

One morning at the end of May, Mark Miretsky awoke in his San Francisco apartment and groggily browsed his phone. There was no rush to get up. Just a few weeks earlier, he had been laid off from his job at the bikeshare company JUMP, which was owned by Uber, along with hundreds of other people.

While still lazing in bed, he opened the Slack with more than 400 of JUMP’s laid off staff, and he saw something that hurt him even more than the layoffs. The JUMP bikes were being destroyed by the thousands and someone was posting videos of it on Twitter.

At first, Miretsky couldn’t bring himself to watch. He spent eight years of his life, often working 100-hour weeks to the point of nauseous exhaustion, to get people to ride those bikes. He did this because he believed in bicycles, and that they are worth riding.

Miretsky's family left the Soviet Union while his mother was pregnant with him. They briefly lived in Italy but couldn’t afford any mode of transportation other than a single bike. His dad pedaled, his mom rode side saddle on the rear rack, and his brother, just a toddler at the time, sat in the basket. Miretsky grew up hearing these stories, and even if he didn’t realize it at the time, he said it taught him bicycles are the cheapest, most efficient, and equitable way to get around. He would end up spending most of his adult life working with bicycles, caring about them so much he can’t even bring himself to get rid of any of his seven bikes.

In one of the videos, viewers can hear the claw crunching the frames and baskets while lifting the JUMP bikes. That was enough. Miretsky didn’t need to watch a second time.

“It kind of crushes one’s heart,” Miretsky said. He had difficulty putting into words exactly how he felt, but repeated what one of his former coworkers told him. To the die-hard bike enthusiasts who worked at JUMP, destroying bikes is like burning books. “To me, and to many of us [who worked at JUMP] the bike is not an object to a means of a business. It has a soul.”

Few, if any, of JUMP’s former employees were shocked by the videos. To some, it even felt a fitting, if upsetting, coda to a troubled two years under Uber’s stewardship.

Motherboard spoke to a dozen former JUMP employees about their time at the company, most under the condition of anonymity because they signed non-disclosure agreements in order to receive severance and extended health care during a global pandemic. Former JUMP employees who agreed to speak on the record did so under the condition they not talk about the time the company was owned by Uber. They described remarkably similar experiences, in which JUMP, a previously thrifty company, with a culture that had a deep commitment to a shared sense of purpose gave way to Uber’s scale-obsessed model. The early promises of bikeshare for the world and replacing ridehail trips with bike journeys only partially materialized, but it came with unsustainable inefficiencies and waste. Uber bought JUMP in 2018 and two years later sold it to Lime, a changed and broken company. To these employees, the literal destruction of the bikes was a metaphor for the destruction of the operation they’d worked so hard to build.

Uber’s unrelenting pursuit of scale created all sorts of problems for those working on the bikeshare systems on the ground. In cities with high rates of theft or vandalism, the same people hired to retrieve, charge, and fix bikes were also responsible for recovering stolen ones, an occasionally dicey proposition. To address this, Uber hired private security teams, which three employees referred to as “hired goons,” to assist in getting the stolen bikes back. One employee from Providence, Rhode Island described a scene in which one “hired goon” wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying handcuffs and pepper spray “tackled” a black teenage girl riding a JUMP bike. The employee said it was something he would “never forget” and that “the optics didn’t look good, as people would say.” An Uber spokesperson said the company has no records of such an incident taking place and this account is “wholly inaccurate” because JUMP technicians and the security teams accompanying them were instructed not to forcibly remove anyone from the bikes or “engage in aggressive behavior.”

While hardly typical of JUMP’s operations, the incident—which occurred last year during a rash of thefts enabled by a faulty bike lock design—exemplifies just how far the company strayed from its original mission of getting people of all walks of life onto bikes. JUMP used to be a company that held countless community meetings in low-income neighborhoods prior to launching in a new city to make sure they were addressing everyone’s needs and offered low-income residents virtually unlimited biking for just a few dollars per month.

But JUMP’s rise and fall is not just about Uber—which only owned the company for two out of its 10 years of existence—or even just about bikeshare. It's about the role cities play in determining their futures, how much of that role has been usurped by a handful of people with a lot of money, and the perils of trying to be the good guy.

Even with everything that’s happened, many former JUMP employees still think selling the company to Uber was the right decision. Had it not, one former employee told Motherboard, “the company might have saved its soul, but died much younger.”

*

Ryan Rzepecki became a cycling evangelist when he borrowed his roommate’s bike one summer day in 2005 while living in New York City's East Village. It made getting around the city so much easier and more pleasant, even though at the time New York didn’t have anything resembling safe bike infrastructure.

On a trip to Paris, Rzepecki came across the Velib bikeshare system. Although Velib has had its problems, to Rzepecki’s eyes it was a marvel: tens of thousands of bikes for Parisians to use for a very small fee. No worrying about locking the bike, storing it, maintenance, or repairs. Just unlock it, ride it, dock it, and be on your way.

But Rzepecki had an idea for a different kind of bikeshare system. He wanted one without docks, where people could begin and end their rides anywhere they like. He thought this would be the key to unlocking cycling for the masses. In 2010, he started Social Bicycles.

The original business model of Social Bicycles (SoBi) was different from the one it would adopt after re-branding as JUMP eight years later. Instead of going directly to people, it sold its proprietary bikes and docking stations to cities, who would then contract with another third party to operate the bikeshare system.

The key to this model was SoBi’s quasi-docked model, in which every bike had a GPS unit and a built-in lock. Riders had to lock the bike to something, and were encouraged to lock the bikes to SoBi’s docking stations, but could use regular bike racks if they wanted.

“It’s probably good I didn’t have a technical background,” Rzepecki told Motherboard, “because if I knew how hard it would be I probably never would have attempted it.” It was not a simple or easy business. Back then, cities would put out Requests for Proposals (RFPs) that announced they were interested in a bikeshare system, triggering a two-year process that, if all went well, resulted in a bikeshare system. The RFP process ensured a deep partnership with the city that would minimize long-term uncertainty or community outrage over bike rack locations. For both SoBi and the cities in which they worked, this trade-off was worth it, because they were in it for the long haul.

SoBi hired urban planners to help cities with the expense of figuring out where new bike racks should go. This involved not only painstakingly drawing architectural renderings for hundreds of bike racks, but presenting those drawings to local community groups to hear their feedback. As a general rule, they drew up plans for about three times as many racks as they would ultimately install, knowing local community groups tended to reject about two-thirds of them.

While this approach to a bikeshare system was complicated, time-consuming, and expensive, Rzepecki and his early team thought it was the best way to forge the kind of relationships between the city government, local bike advocates, and casual riders to allow bikesharing to thrive in the long run.

Likewise, Rzepecki wanted SoBi’s bikes to be comfortable and fun to ride. They debated the merits of certain bolts over others, the size of the baskets, and the best distance between the handlebars for the most comfortable ride for the most people. SoBi’s designer, Nick Foley, and the other designers not only took into account the rider experience, but also that of the mechanics charged with fixing and maintaining the bikes. They standardized parts, reduced the number of different bolts and screws as much as possible, and put thought into how to make flat tires easy to replace. The bikes were not to be disposable objects, but permanent, rideable street art.

“Ryan’s goal was the bicycle comes first,” another former employee told Motherboard. “He brings that kind of attitude, that I want to make my city better.”

All that attention to detail notwithstanding, in the early days SoBi’s technology barely worked. One of its first clients in 2012, the San Francisco International Airport, wanted a bikeshare program for employees to use during their lunch breaks. But the bikes barely worked. Miretsky remembers having to run around the airport to reboot the bikes’ onboard computers, which he described as “super 1.0 early beta technology that wasn’t working” in which the GPS and computer unit was attached to the bike with velcro.

There wasn’t very much money in the bikeshare world then. The company was operating hand-to-mouth, people were forgoing paychecks some weeks, and everyone was working on shoestring budgets. One employee recalled the “SoBi flop houses” where six of them would live in a two-bedroom Airbnb to save on costs. The unlucky ones who didn’t get a bedroom would sleep on the floor; more than one former SoBi employee recommended if I ever find myself in a similar situation, I snag the space under the dining room table so that anyone getting up in the middle of the night doesn’t step on me.

With this shared sacrifice came shared responsibility. The company structure was remarkably flat. Once a month, everyone would get on a call and make decisions together by consensus. People’s titles only vaguely aligned with their actual jobs. “Things got done because everyone wanted them to get done, not because someone was assigning them or there were super-clear expectations,” one employee described it. “You just went to wherever you could supply the most-needed help.”

Over time, SoBi worked out the kinks, and each contract got slightly bigger than the last. Its big breakout came in 2016, when 1,000 of its bikes launched in Portland’s Biketown program, sponsored by Nike. It was the company's biggest launch to date and also its most successful. It was also the first year SoBi was profitable. Things were looking up, until the people at SoBi started hearing about these bikeshare companies out of China.

“Here’s where the story changes,” Rzepecki said. “Just as we were figuring out how to do bikeshare and make it work, the entire landscape changed.”

*

Up to that point, the bikeshare world was a small one, an industry of government contractors and their suppliers. Companies couldn’t be neatly divided between partners and competitors. Social Bicycles sold its hardware to Motivate, which operates the biggest docked bikeshare systems around the country, to operate Biketown, even though SoBi and Motivate would compete for contracts elsewhere (to complicate the dynamic, Motivate was purchased by Lyft around the same time JUMP was bought by Uber). It was a small world, in part because it had to be; there wasn’t enough money in bikeshare to make it any bigger.

Which is why when two Beijing-based bikeshare firms, Ofo and Mobike, expanded to the United States right around the same time Biketown launched, it blew up everything the bikeshare world had known.

Rather than work closely with cities over years, Ofo and Mobike parachuted in, got permission to launch a bike share by shoveling money at cities, and then did it. They also introduced a fully dockless model known as “free lock,” in which riders didn’t have to lock their bikes to anything after finishing a ride. They could leave them wherever they wanted, including in the middle of sidewalks and strewn across lawns.

“At least initially, there was this hint of hope that this big dumb app company was actually helping push us towards a more sustainable transportation ecosystem.”

This went against everything SoBi believed in. It not only was a short-sighted strategy that was sure to create conflict with city officials and communities—the very people SoBi felt were integral to any bikeshare systems’s success—but it sent the wrong message about the bikes themselves.

“Freelocking turns the vehicles into trash and blocks the sidewalk,” one former JUMP employee said, “which is both bad for business and bad for cities.” It turns bikes into obstacles for people with mobility issues, the exact opposite of what bikes are supposed to be. And it sends the message that the bikes are disposable, have little value, and belong to no one.

But it was not the free lock element of the Ofo and MoBike model that changed everything, at least not directly. Without the need to go through the lengthy RFP process or site docks, Ofo, Mobike, and their countless imitators could grow as quickly as their bank accounts permitted. It was catnip for the type of venture capital investors who love exponential growth charts.

Suddenly, dockless bikeshare became the trendy investment. From October 2016 through July 2017, Ofo raised $1.28 billion in two funding rounds, according to Crunchbase. Mobike raised more than $800 million. In October 2017, the newly-founded Lime (then called LimeBike) raised $50 million. To Social Bicycles, this was an unimaginable amount of money. Up to 2016, SoBi had raised only a few million dollars.

“It became a feeling of there is no way we can succeed anymore,” Miretsky said. “We were playing checkers and it suddenly became chess.”

“They would go into markets we were just in with RFPs and said ‘we’ll pay you. How many bikes do you need? We’ll give you more,’” Miretsky recalled. “Cities said well great, this is no longer a problem for us to solve, the business community has solved it.”

Almost overnight, Rzepecki said SoBi lost 25 percent of its revenue. For sexy startups like Mobike and Ofo, a 25 percent revenue drop would be a tough pill to swallow. For SoBi, it was poison. Thanks to overseas investors flooding the market with cheap bikes, the time of working closely with cities to build a sustainable bikeshare system was over. The RFP approach, everything SoBi had built its business around, was dead.

SoBi pivoted to be a permit-based dockless bikeshare company like the others. But it resisted what it viewed as an ideological non-starter and it did not succumb to the free lock model. Just as in the SoBi days, riders would still have to end the ride by locking the bike to something.

Moreover, SoBi didn’t need to compromise on its deeper philosophy because Rzepecki had an ace up his sleeve. For two years, SoBi had been secretly developing an electric bike, where a battery-powered motor helps the rider pedal, making bike riding an effortless endeavor even up the steepest of hills and longest of distances. Former employees credited Rzepecki and Foley for having the foresight to know the entire industry would eventually shift to e-bikes, and the only way JUMP could survive was to get there first. And it did.

In the summer of 2017, as JUMP was looking for investors to stay afloat, Uber invited two JUMP employees in to demonstrate the e-bike, sparking conflicted feelings among the JUMP staff. This was right at the height of an Uber public relations disaster, as its co-founder Travis Kalanick floundered in the days leading up to his resignation. At this stage, Uber was virtually synonymous with spoiled rich kids flouting laws and operating solely according to their own internal code. Among the JUMP staff, Uber was regarded as wasteful and environmentally irresponsible at best and downright evil at worst.

Some former employees believe JUMP ultimately took the meeting as an intelligence-gathering operation, others as an implicit admission of JUMP’s precarious condition despite the distasteful prospect of working with the company so many of them loathed.

In any case, two JUMP employees rode the e-bikes to Uber’s headquarters on Market Street, where Dmitry Shevelenko and Jahan Khanna, the duo behind Uber’s micromobility and transit expansion, took them for a test ride.

“This was like the first time using an iPhone.” Shevelenko told Motherboard. “It just feels magical.” He had demo’d other bikeshare e-bikes in recent months, but the JUMP bike was far superior. Instead of having a motor that kicked into gear providing an unwanted jolt, JUMP’s e-bikes sensed how hard a rider pedaled and increased the motor power to match what the rider is doing. It felt like a partnership between human and bike, not a human ceding total control to a machine. “It was almost like a superpower,” Shevelenko recalled, “like this bike is connected to your body.”

Shevelenko and Khanna viewed the e-bike as a perfect complement to Uber’s ridehailing business. Insofar as it would cannibalize Uber trips, it would be shorter city trips that weren’t profitable anyways. The e-bike would not only be cheaper for riders, but also quicker during rush hours in the dense urban areas where Uber is most popular. And Uber wanted JUMP’s superior product. Shevelenko figured JUMP had a year’s head start on every other dockless e-bike. Paired with Uber’s resources, they thought it would be hard for anyone else to catch up.

Image: CHESNOT/GETTY IMAGES

After some brief negotiating, the companies initially formed a partnership and Uber connected JUMP with the venture capital firm Menlo Ventures to keep the company afloat. Starting in January 2018, SoBi officially rebranded as JUMP and its bikes would be shown as a rental option in the Uber app. Four months later, Uber acquired JUMP for close to $200 million.

It was, undoubtedly, an odd pair, not just in mission but in corporate culture. Many of JUMP’s staff were self-described hippies, a far cry from Uber’s bro culture and no-holds-barred approach to business. But, the acquisition made sense as one between two companies struggling to figure out what they were doing at a time when the old way was no longer going to cut it. Uber had to clean up its act and put on a good face for investors in a run up to a public offering, while JUMP had to find a model that worked in the dockless world of VC capital.

On a personal level, eight years of bikeshare startup life had taken its toll on Rzepecki and the original SoBi crew. To illustrate the point, Miretsky said that when he visited the New York office where Rzepecki was based, he had stopped buying breakfast, because he knew Rzepecki would take two bites of a breakfast sandwich, vomit it up from nerves, and then give Miretsky the rest of the sandwich.

When asked about this, Rzepecki confirmed his stress manifested with various physical symptoms around that time, and that “2017 was particularly hard.”

“I think it’s really on the right course now and [Uber’s then-new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi] believes the way we approach working with cities and our vision for partnering with cities” aligns with Uber’s mission, Rzepecki told TechCrunch when the acquisition was announced. “That was important for me and his desire to do things the right way. This is a great outcome and gives me a chance to bring my entire vision to the entire world.”

“At least initially, there was this hint of hope that this big dumb app company was actually helping push us towards a more sustainable transportation ecosystem,” a former JUMP employee said. “And then they fucked it up.”

*

Accounts differ on precisely how long it took Uber to undermine everything JUMP had previously been about. Some former employees said it happened virtually immediately. Others described a more gradual process that took a few weeks. But they unanimously agreed it didn’t take long at all for JUMP to stop being JUMP.

Not only were JUMP employees no longer working on a shoestring budget, they barely had any budgets at all. Sleeping under the dining room table gave way to $400 per night hotel rooms. Like the Ofos and MoBikes they long decried, JUMP was now buying as many bikes it could get its hands on.

For a split second, JUMP was “the hot new thing” at Uber, as one former employee put it. Khosrowshahi talked it up during company all-hands meetings and in the press. He came to the warehouse where JUMP built new prototypes.

"During rush hour, it is very inefficient for a one-ton hulk of metal to take one person 10 blocks," Khosrowshahi said at the time. With JUMP, "we're able to shape behavior in a way that's a win for the user. It's a win for the city. Short-term financially, maybe it's not a win for us, but strategically, long term we think that is exactly where we want to head."

One of the first signs that the acquisition was not going as planned came just two months after the acquisition when Uber put longtime employee Rachael Holt in charge of the New Mobility unit. In one of her first meetings with the JUMP team, Holt made it very clear that she was in charge, as multiple employees recalled. This directly undermined what Rzepecki had publicly said when the acquisition was announced, that JUMP would remain independent of Uber. Now, the employees were being told that wasn’t the case. When asked about this reversal, an Uber spokesperson described Holt as “a longtime Uber executive with experience growing a mobility business.” Holt did not respond to a list of questions sent by Motherboard.

"There was also an awareness that this was no longer some private company, that it was fucking Uber now."

Holt brought an Uber 1.0 approach to bikeshare, one that mimicked what companies like MoBike and Ofo were doing (MoBike co-founder Wang Xiaofeng had previously been general manager of Uber’s Shanghai operations). They flooded the streets with bikes under the philosophy that any second a bike is not on the street, it's losing money. They expanded to new markets and hired so many people so fast some employees spent half their time in hiring meetings and prospective employee interviews. Teams doubled or tripled in size within months, only to find they were now overstaffed. Bike mechanics at the main warehouse would have thousands of bikes to build that were just delivered from China, but local mechanics in the cities where JUMP operated didn’t have spare parts to fix the bikes on the street.

In other words, JUMP employees felt Uber was applying a software business mentality to bikeshare. It was, to JUMP’s longtime employees, a fundamental misunderstanding of what kind of business they were in. Uber was running JUMP with the mindset that anything that’s broken can be patched, but, as one employee put it, “a firmware update can’t fix a bike chain.”

“Like any startup (whether inside of Uber or out), JUMP’s early days can be characterized as scrappy,” an Uber spokesperson said. “JUMP was scaling very quickly. When we bought JUMP they were a very small company with a fleet of only 500 e-bikes in San Francisco. When we merged with Lime a few weeks ago, we had tens of thousands of e-bikes and scooters in 30 cities around the world.”

Otherwise an impressive feat of engineering, the bikes JUMP released in early 2019 under Uber had one critical flaw. JUMP replaced the sturdy if bulky U-lock with a cable lock in order to make the bikes easier to secure. But the cable lock wasn’t robust. It was a critical oversight, one that highlighted how far JUMP had strayed from its roots, since any New York City bicyclist knows a cable lock is an open invitation for theft. All someone had to do was flip the 75-pound bike over and the cable would snap under its own momentum (there was also a method using a hammer that took more finesse). With a few well-placed blows, thieves could easily disable the GPS unit and be on their way with a (very heavy) bike.

While every city experienced some degree of theft, Providence, Rhode Island experienced among the most because, for whatever reason, stealing JUMP bikes became a form of sport for the city’s teens.

“We didn’t understand the magnitude of the problem until it was too late,” one former JUMP employee familiar with the situation told Motherboard. “Hundreds and hundreds of bikes were getting stolen.”

In emails obtained by the Providence Journal, JUMP’s operations manager in Providence, Alex Kreuger, told the city that, in one weekend in July 2019, 150-200 bikes were vandalized out of a fleet of about 1,000 bikes.

“Someone brandished a gun on a field tech, kids tried to steal bikes directly from our warehouse, riders reported attempts by people to steal the bike as they were riding them,” Kreuger wrote.

In another instance, according to a source, an employee trying to retrieve a bike reportedly had to wield a broken kickstand to fend off some kids swinging a 2×4 at him.

In the fall, Uber hired a private security firm to ride along with the field technicians in order to retrieve the stolen bikes. This didn’t strike any of the employees as especially odd, since none of them had signed up to be fighting kids in the streets. One field tech who spoke to Motherboard estimated that "five to 10" instances resulted in private security workers physically restraining people while the bikes were being recovered, as was the case with the bulletproof vest-clad rent-a-cop tackling a kid riding a bike.

Among other things, the vandalism made it impossible for JUMP to have 90 percent of its bikes on the street at all times, as its contract with the city required. Sometimes, one former employee said, they’d have fewer than 300 bikes, or less than 30 percent of the fleet, on the street.

In August, JUMP pulled its bikes off the streets of Providence for what it claimed was a temporary period, but the bikes never returned. In October, the field technicians, who had ridden around with the security guys for weeks, received an email at the end of their shift telling them not to bother coming in anymore; they were all fired. The security guys got an email at the end of the shift, too; their new job was to take over bike retrieval, but their first order of business was to escort the field technicians out of the building.

At least one former Providence employee thinks the vandalism could not be disconnected from the Uber acquisition.

“There was also an awareness that this was no longer some private company, that it was fucking Uber now,” they told Motherboard. “This is owned by a corporation that doesn’t care about bettering anyone’s fucking community or whatever, so people saw an opportunity there.”

Whether or not that was the case, JUMP had bigger problems than just Providence, and Uber had bigger problems than just JUMP. After breakneck growth and an IPO in the spring of 2019, Uber was under more pressure than ever to show it could be profitable. And thanks to its growth-at-all costs approach to bikeshare, JUMP was leaking cash.

But it wasn’t the financial losses that bothered JUMP employees the most. It was the gradual erosion of everything that got them to sacrifice so much for the company in the first place. Morale tanked as people slowly noticed they were busting their asses to hit growth metrics. The joy of cycling and creating a community good was not only secondary to that, it was becoming a memory.

“We went from putting 45-pound steel plates with 35-pound racks down on street corners where we had paid surveyors to stand and count people riding and locking bikes and working very closely with municipal transportation services, universities, and community groups, to, from what I understand, basically offering cities as much money as they needed to launch as quickly as possible and putting as many bikes on the curb as quickly as possible wherever we could,” one former employee said. “That’s the same approach that Bird used for scooters, that Lime used for their bikes, and Ofo used for their bikes in Texas and got in so much trouble for. And that’s why they’re trash. And that’s why JUMP became trash.”

In September 2019, JUMP employees were transferred to a new entity called Sobi LLC, which some employees took as an indication they were being broken off for a sale. An Uber spokesperson said it was because “As JUMP grew its footprint, so did the need for more focused business support for day-to-day operations.”

Four months later, at the beginning of 2020, Rzepecki and a handful of other original Social Bicycle employees left. The following months would result in a cascading series of layoffs in which Uber let 25 percent of its staff go.

At the beginning of last month, The Information reported that Uber was leading a $170 million funding round in Lime in a deal that would involve transferring JUMP to them. This was news to the JUMP staff. In an all-hands call that day, Khosrowshahi refused to directly answer a question about JUMP’s future, which both irked and worried its employees. An Uber spokesperson said, as a public company, Khosrowshahi could not discuss the transaction before it finalized. The next day, Uber laid off nearly everyone at JUMP. Because it was in the middle of the pandemic, the laid off had one hour to say goodbye to their friends over Slack. Then their computers turned off.

*

Whatever comes of JUMP under Lime’s stewardship, it will be without the people who made JUMP what it was. Lime was founded in 2017 by two former venture capital executives who quickly bailed on bikes to hop onto the scooter fad. It even experimented with a carsharing service. Lime obtained the intellectual property rights for the newest versions of the JUMP bikes and scooters, but, as of now, none of the people who designed or built them.

The big question facing the bikeshare industry—and its scooter-share offshoots—is whether the business can ever be profitable. To date, the answer is no. Lime lost some $300 million last year while its major competitor, Bird—founded by a former Lyft and Uber executive—isn't faring much better. While 2020 doesn’t look poised to turn industry fortunes around due to the global pandemic, it is a testament to how poorly managed the micromobility industry has been that ceasing operations may, in fact, be a blessing in disguise for companies that haven’t figured out how to run a service without bleeding cash.

Unlike software, transportation is a deliberate business, sometimes painfully so. To tech executives, this appears to be a flaw, an inefficiency to disrupt. No doubt the RFP process and other regulations around the transportation industry can be improved, but there’s a reason transportation businesses move slowly. It costs too much to screw up, both in money and in reputation. Useful mass transportation doesn’t suddenly appear. It is carefully nurtured from a tiny seedling of a good idea to a fully-formed organism that breathes life into a city. It is a process that takes time and effort and patience as well as money.

For all their shortcomings, this is something the SoBi people knew well. It is also something Uber could never understand, because it has always rejected the premise that it’s in the transportation business. It’s been telling itself and regulators since its inception it is merely a business-to-business software application so it can skirt employment regulations that would force it to make all of its drivers employees. But that deception became so ingrained in company culture that it conducted itself as a software company even when it was purchasing and fixing bicycles by the tens of thousands. On the most basic level, it’s impossible to succeed when you don’t know what line of work you’re in.

On top of that, transportation companies have to work with the cities in which they operate whether they like it or not. To several of the employees Motherboard spoke to, this was the single biggest and most consequential culture shift after the acquisition. Whenever there was a problem with a city, Uber postured for a fight, which went against every instinct JUMP had.

“We wanted to work with [the cities] and build trust,” one former employee summarized. “Uber wanted to steamroll them.”

(“We disagree,” an Uber spokesman said. “JUMP worked diligently to address sidewalk riding and parking clutter through both operational changes and investing in innovative technology.”)

And the whole scheme was built on a faulty premise, that putting more and more bikes on the road in more and more cities would eventually result in profits, even though the company lost money on each ride. They imitated the strategy that MoBike and Ofo used to blow up the bikeshare industry—which itself imitated the strategy Uber used to become a global behemoth—because that’s what investors wanted to see.

But by the end of 2018, the very strategy JUMP would later imitate was clearly not working. MoBike was sold to Chinese neighborhood services company Meituan-Dianping and retreated from foreign markets (its European operations were spun off, so some MoBikes are still on the road there). In June of last year, a Chinese court found Ofo “has basically no assets,” according to Quartz, and couldn’t pay off its debts. Photos of mass bike graves of the erstwhile bikeshare boom went viral.

But the damage was done, because the perception of what bikeshare should be had been irrevocably altered. It was no longer a transportation business; it was a tech business, and everything that brought along with it.

Even at the time Ofo and MoBike were getting handed billions in cash, the JUMP people didn’t know what to think, because they were still thinking like bike people. “We didn't believe the unit economics worked,” Miretsky recalled, “Then we heard the companies said the unit economics worked, and we thought well they couldn't be lying, we wouldn't lie. And then it turned out later they were probably lying.”

*

After the videos of the bikes getting destroyed surfaced, several former JUMP employees wondered if there was something they could do to save as many bikes as they could. They asked that I not disclose who they were so as not to jeopardize the NDA they signed with Uber.

With some help from current Uber employees, they were able to save some. They will get donated to various groups and organizations. The Bike Share Museum in Florida got five, but an Uber spokesperson did not say who got the rest. But multiple sources told Motherboard that, in total, they saved 5,298 bikes. They each knew the exact number.

How Uber Turned a Promising Bikeshare Company Into Literal Garbage syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[lolcat76]

Six Senses prompt: Regina meets Roland

Catching up on prompts. Six Senses is now on AO3.

“I was thinking about this weekend,” Robin says. He pushesher mug toward her, topped off with the last of the coffee and just a splash ofmilk. Just the way she likes it.

She hums as she takes a sip. God, the man makes good coffee.In the three months they’ve been dating, her favorite barista at Starbucks hasbeen completely abandoned. Why pay a stranger to make her coffee, when she canjust roll over in the morning and nudge Robin instead? “What about thisweekend?”

“It’s my weekend with Roland,” he says, “and I thought…maybeit’s time he meets you?”

She stiffens and drops the mug on the counter with enoughforce that a few drops splash over the lip. Where’s the damn napkin? Shescrabbles her fingertips along the counter, only to come into contact withRobin’s hand.

“Relax, Regina. It’s a four-year-old, not the SpanishInquisition.”

She remembers Henry well enough at four years old to knowthat the two are really not thatdifferent.

Deep breaths, deepbreaths, and count to ten. She waits for the sound of her heartbeat to slowin her eardrums. “Are you sure we’re ready for that? Meeting Roland is a bigstep, and it’s not one that we can undo.”

“I thought we were both on the same page about movingforward? Meeting Roland is the next logical step.” She can hear a quick intakeof breath. “Or maybe I’m wrong?”

She laces her fingers through his and gives his hand asqueeze. “No, no, this isn’t about us. Please don’t think this is about us.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s about you, and your son. And your ex-wife. He’s your priority, andshe’s always going to be in your life. She’s always going to want to know thepeople that you introduce to your son. Are you ready for that to be me?”

Am I ready for that tobe me? It’s not about her, not really, but a little part of her is willingto admit that it is. Still, the adult, responsible Regina remembers Emma beingheartbroken over the end of her first serious post-Henry relationship, andHenry asking over and over again what happened to August. Being a sidelinespectator in that drama was hard enough; she doesn’t particularly want to takeon a starring role if it’s going to end badly for another little boy.

Still, she’s heard enough stories about Roland to want tomeet the little boy. She’s heard enough about Marian too, these last fewmonths, that she can’t help but be curious about Roland’s mother. What was itthat drove them apart? How can she not make the same mistakes?

“Yes,” he says, and he’s using his Dr. Locksley voice, calmand reassuring. “Yes, I’m ready for it to be you, and yes, Marian is ready tomeet you and vet you before you even so much as say hello to my son. Regina,this isn’t our first time around the block. Marian is living with someone; doyou think she would have taken that step without involving me as well?”

Given what she knows of Robin’s ex-wife, Regina would guessno, but given what she knows of parents in general (and shitty parents inparticular), she’s not going to volunteer an answer. “I just don’t want this tobe something you’ll regret,” she says.

He tugs her to her feet andwraps his arms around her waist, pulling her so close she can hardly breatheagainst the scent of him, warm and soft and slightly smoky. “Never going tohappen,” he growls, before his lips find hers.

***

In the few months they’d been dating, they’d had more than afew chances to talk about past relationships. She didn’t like to talk aboutDaniel; the pain of losing him in a car accident was still something thatweighed heavily on her chest. Robin, though, had no problems talking about thestart – and end – of his relationship with Marian.

Tell me what made youfall in love with her, she’d asked, and he was only too happy to answer.

“Her voice. She always sounded so decisive, so sure. When Imet her, I had no idea what I was doing with my life, and she always seemed tohave the right answer.”

I can relate, she’dthought.

Now, as she sits in the diner down the block from Robin’sapartment, she can only hope to find some small measure of that tranquility.She has no doubt that if Marian doesn’t like her, her relationship is over.Never mind the fact that the people of Watertown seem to like her just fine,fine enough to keep electing her to office – her entire self-worth rests on herboyfriend’s ex-wife’s opinion of her, and she hates knowing that no speech orcleverly argued union agreement is going to save her now.

Robin is running late, not an unusual occurrence given hiscareer choice, but she could really use a little pep talk right now, or evenjust the familiar weight of his hand on her back. Instead, she’s picking atwhat’s supposed to be a Caesar salad. Whoorders a Caesar salad at a diner, Emma’s voice echoes in her head, andRegina can’t help but acknowledge that Emma might have had a point all these yearsthat they’ve been having this argument.

“Who orders a Caesar salad at a diner,” comes a voice overher shoulder, and Regina can feel the slight shift in the air kicked up by apair of gloves and a purse slapped on the counter. “I’m Marian, by the way. I’mguessing you’re Regina? Robin said to look for someone in a suit eating asalad.”

Great, just great. Robin’s ex-wife is Emma. She holds out her hand in the general direction of the seatnext to her. “Regina Mills.”

The hand that shakes hers is firm and confident. “Marian. I’mordering a burger and fries. You’re welcome to some of the fries.”

They make small talk as Marian waits for her food, and it’snot exactly uncomfortable. Boston traffic, irritating coworkers, and schedulechanges that interfere with lunch. In another life, one where she didn’t feelthat every tiny tic of her muscles was being evaluated and graded, Regina wouldlike Marian. Makes sense, since she likes Emma just fine, and Marian seems tohave the same knack for saying whatever enters her brain at any given time,whether or not it’s appropriate. When her food arrives, Marian shoves half herfries onto Regina’s half-eaten salad, then takes Regina’s hand and guides themto the nice little pile of fries. “Ketchup or ranch?” Marian asks.

“Ketchup,” Regina answers automatically, and she can hearthe telltale squirt of a plastic bottle.

“On your right,” Marian says, and Regina is grateful thatMarian didn’t try to guide her to the plate of ketchup. If Robin’s ex-wife didn’tthink she was capable of finding a plate of ketchup for her fries, how wouldshe ever trust her to spend time with her son?

The fries are good, crispy and salty on the outside, andfluffy on the inside. She digs into them, mirroring Marian’s contented hum asshe works her way through a lunch that would surely send her mother into astroke if she could see it. Nothing unusual about two women having lunchtogether, except that Regina can practically feel the weight of Marian’s starewith every bite she takes, but she squares her shoulders and stabs her friesinto the last remaining bits of ketchup on the plate.

Is she supposed to speak first? Should she tell Marian herintentions? She has no idea what the proper protocol is here.

“You know, Robin and I were friends long before we starteddating,” Marian says, interrupting her train of thought, “and we were friendslong after we split up. It’s not easy, breaking up a marriage when you have ason, but it could be a lot worse.”

“I suppose,” Regina agrees, careful in her tone. Mariancould be giving her an opening or warning her to be on her guard, but since shecan’t read Marian’s expression, she has absolutely no defense here.

“He hates Thai food,” Marian says. “He hates football andHemingway.”

Well, who doesn’t hateHemingway, Regina thinks, but keeps her mouth shut.

“He can’t stand superhero movies because he thinks the plotsare completely implausible,” Marian continues. “I’m not saying that any ofthese things are a deal-breaker, but put together….he drove me nuts. Also, youshould hear him go off if the laundry stays in the dryer for a few days.”

Who leaves theirlaundry in the dryer for a few days?

“Let me guess,” Marian says, “you take the clothes out ofthe dryer and put them away immediately?”

“They get wrinkled,” she protests weakly.

“I guess they do. Well, if your laundry night isn’t Friday,maybe you could spare some time to play host to my son?”

“Maybe I could. And I can promise you, the sheets won’t bewrinkled.”

Marian laughs. “No. No, I don’tthink they will.”

***

It wasn’t much of a fight over the bill; Regina promisedthat Marian’s son would be perfectly safe in her home, wrinkle-free sheets andall, as long as Marian would let her pay for lunch. She’s just tucking her creditcard back into its slot in her wallet when Robin curls his arm around herwaist.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says. “No blood on the walls, so I’mguessing it went well?”

Well enough. “So,this weekend? Maybe we camp out in the living room and roast some marshmallowsover the fire?”

“He’ll love it,” Robin agrees. “His little feet are as coldas yours. A gas fireplace and some roasted marshmallows will be exactly what heneeds.”

A night in her living room with Robin, his son and a plateof chocolate bars, graham crackers and marshmallows. Maybe it’s exactly whatthey all need. If her white furniture gets smeared with little handprints, shehas a cleaner that can handle it.

She’s got experience with littleboys, after all. Tiny handprints are the least of her worries.

***

She worried about having a toddler in her house. Her furniture was all sharp corners and clean lines, just perfect to send a small boy running through the living room to the ER with a busted skull.

He’s a kid, not theMona Lisa, Emma said, perfectly content to let Henry loose in her livingroom and damn the consequences.

Henry managed to send her favorite pair of shoes down thedisposal – what kid does that – and ripher carefully chosen curtains right off the walls before Emma wrangled him intohis pack-and-play. She loved Henry, but she never let him out of her sightagain, not until the day he looked at his mother over Regina’s coffee table andasked her if she was raised in a barn, because only an animal would put herfeet on a table like that.

Roland, bless his heart, seemed much happier to curl intoher side. They’ve just finished Wreck-It Ralph, and she can feel him shiftagainst her as he lets loose a yawn. “Are you tired, sweetie?” she asks,reaching out to run her fingers through his hair. It’s thick and curly – he musthave his mother’s hair. She tugs at a tangle or two with a smile.

“Can I have a bedtime story?”

“Did you mum pack you some books? I’ll read one of them toyou,” his father promises.

“No, Daddy, I want Regina to read to me.” He keeps pleading,his voice trailing away as Regina listens to the stairs creak as Robin carrieshis son upstairs.

She used to love reading to Henry. Back when he was a littleyounger than Roland, reading to him was the way that she finally figured outhow to bond with the little boy, and every time Emma dropped him off at herhouse, he had a bag full of books. Emma was never much of a reader, and Henryused to complain that she didn’t read right. Too many arms being thrown aroundand way too many silly voices, especially right before bed. Somewhere in herguest room, she’s pretty sure she still has a stack of books that Henry hascollected over the years. It’s a damn shame that even the large print meant forlittle eyes is too small for her to read now.

Still, she’s not helpless, she reminds herself. She canstill read, even if it’s just a few words at a time on her iPad. She asks Sirito download one of Henry’s favorites and makes her way up the stairs, one handcradling her iPad and the other guiding her steps along the banister.Ferdinand, the sweet bull who only wants to smell the flowers – the perfectbedtime story for a little boy.

He’s out before she even gets halfway through the book, shecan tell, his breathing even against her skin. She eases him under the coversand tugs them up, then reaches out for Robin’s hand. He helps her off the bedand pulls her close. “See, easy as pie,” he whispers into her ear.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” she chuckles, “but it’s nice toknow I can still do this.”

Robin presses a kiss to her forehead. “I never had anydoubt.” With that, he snaps off the light and leads Regina by the hand down toher bedroom. Not because she needs him to, but because he wants to keep hold ofher as long as possible.

It’s nice to know that she can still do that, too.

[lovehaswonangelnumbers]

New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/the-angels-true-prayer/

The Angels ~ True Prayer

The Angels ~ True Prayer

 message from Ann Albers

Hi Dear Friends!

You can pray weakly or powerfully. The angels and I talk about how to pray with your whole being, not just your words.

Love you all!

♥ Ann

Message from the Angels

My dear friends, we love you so very much,

You have all heard the saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” We would like to give you another one,

“When the heart is ready to receive the answers to your prayers help and guidance appears.”

Your prayers are beautiful to us because we hear the love in each and every one of them. We work very hard to answer the true desires within each and every one, but you – yourself – are in charge of how much you are capable of receiving. You are in charge of how strong a “signal” you send out with your prayers and how much you are able to receive. There are ways to pray that are more powerful than most of you were taught.

First of all, you need not get on your knees – literally or metaphorically. You are not begging a God outside of yourself who needs your subservience and worship. You are, instead, calling upon the very power that gives you life in much the same way as the cell in the body sends the body a signal about what it needs. So, when you pray, remember, you are one with the power that creates universes. You are not simply a child of God; you are an embodiment of God’s love. God wants for you what you want for you, as long as it is loving. Say your prayers with conviction, knowing you are worthy, they are heard, and if you believe – on all levels of your being – you will receive.

It is more powerful to pray for what you deeply, truly want, rather than just what you want to be rid of! Instead of “Dear God please get rid of my horrible coworker,” try, “Dear God, help me find peace with my coworker.” That might involve the coworker leaving, you getting a better job offer, you learning not to take this person personally, or even at times, them having a change of heart!

Rather than praying, “Dear God get rid of this disease,” try “Dear God, I intend to be fully healthy and vital. Boost my faith. Give me courage and confidence to believe so I can receive. Guide me and hold my hand every step of the way.”

Instead of, “Dear God I need help with this debt! I need more money,” try, “Dear God, I want so very much to believe in your abundance and constant supply for me. Boost my faith. Help me feel your constant love. Thank you for all you have given me. I am grateful for all I do have. I am ready to receive more. Open my heart so I may. Help me pay all my bills with grace and ease and be open to receiving my dreams.”

Pray from your heart. Pray for what you really want, not what you think you should want, say, or have. Sincere prayers have more energy!

Lastly, wait for your prayers to be answered in a state of faith and trust. Know that they will be answered in the right way and right time. Rather than worrying about whether or not they will be answered, assume you will get “that or better.” Assume everything that happens is part of the answer. Assume things are going well! Enjoy your life. Wait for guidance.

In truth, every thought, every word, every action emanates an energy from you and that energy is a true “prayer.” When you pray formally, talking to God, you are not handing a petition to an external God. Rather, through the energy generated by your heart and your words, you are sending signals – prayers – out to the universe and awaiting the honest echo in return.

Your prayers dear ones are your emanations. Positive, loving, confident, expectant, grateful emanations are the strongest prayers of all.

God Bless You! We love you so very much. — The Angels

  ~~~~~~~~~

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[justsomebucky]

The Only Exception (Part 6)

Summary: AU. Reader is given the task of running a popular love advice internet show when her coworker is fired. Her cynical attitude toward love makes her offer some harsh advice, and more than a few hearts are caught in the aftermath. Will hers be one of them?

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

Word Count: 2,725

Warnings: language, angst, self-reflection, discomfort, melodrama, mentions of trauma, fire, rescue (of secondary character), sad thoughts. I don’t know. I'm no Shonda Rimes, but, tread lightly.

A/N under the cut.

Part - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10

A/N: Thanks for providing feedback on this story. I love that my writing invokes strong feelings. I haven’t taken anything lightly.

Two weeks later…

“I’m sorry, Miss Y/L/N, but I don’t think you have the right experience for this position. Best of luck to you in your job search.”

You thanked the hiring manager at the second – no, wait, the third – place you’d applied to, and ended the call with a big sigh.

That was your third rejection in a row, and these people hadn’t even waited until you were on the L train home to shoot you down. You shoved your phone in your pocket, glancing around the skyscrapers of Manhattan, ones that used to calm you down.

Now they just reminded you of rejection and failure.

You knew it was because of your meltdown; there was no way that this was going to die down anytime soon. It was still haunting you, from having to avoid googling your own name, to relatives emailing you memes of yourself, with the subject line ‘This one is really funny!’

The one meme of your face photoshopped on Grumpy Cat’s body was especially ridiculous, though it made you want to adopt a cat. Cats wouldn’t laugh or judge you.

Cats were too self-involved to care.

Your heels clicked on the pavement as you hurried to the subway entrance. There was no point on sticking around downtown for rush hour. You were grateful when the train arrived quickly, and you stepped on to find a seat, flopping down beside a man who was reading a newspaper.

Your thoughts drifted back to your YouTube debacle.

The memes weren’t even the worst of it.

The worst bit was that you didn’t have anyone to talk to about it. Your former-assistant-slash-best-friend Natasha and your former cameraman Scott weren’t legally allowed to talk to you about anything work-related until the investigation into the creepy emails finished. To be safe, you’d told them both to just wait until you heard from the company lawyer. No need to get them into a mess, too.

Natasha had made her feelings on the matter pretty clear, anyways, the night you quit your job, before the gag order.

“I know this job was beneath you, Y/N, but you had a chance to impact people’s lives, and you were so…so reckless about it.”

“Here we go. Here comes Saint Natasha, never does anything wrong, won’t even let me talk to her without trying to make me to blame. Don’t take May’s side and Bucky’s side just because you like Steve, Nat, I-“

“I’m not!” She moved to sit down on your couch beside you, her eyes large and pleading. “I promise, this isn’t about me, or Steve, or May, or Bucky. This isn’t about assigning blame. No one won this week...not one of us is squeaky clean here. I’m talking about you, now, Y/N. You’re a trained psychologist. You’re a wonderful, compassionate person. You know the signs of when to get help. You know the impact of words, especially when casually thrown at someone who is knee- or chest-deep in heartache.”

You weren’t ready to hear that yet; the thought made you want to crawl out of your own skin. “They shouldn’t have put me on the show. I shouldn’t be forced to do something I don’t want to do.”

“Everyone goes through that at work, Y/N. It doesn’t make it right, but it’s the way of the world since the markets crashed. There are steps employees can take, though. You could have gone over May’s head, or quit sooner. Instead, you accepted the role, and you hurt people, including yourself.”

You were silent for a moment, feeling the familiar sting of unshed tears in your eyes as you glanced away from her.

“I know it’s scary to quit, or to stand up for yourself, but think about how scary it is to ask for help from a stranger,” she said softly, reaching out to grab your hand. “Think of how those people had to have no one else to ask but you, and then think about what you told them.”

That did it. The tears poured down your cheeks as the stress of the last few weeks finally caught up to you. You were exhausted, physically and emotionally. “What am I going to do now, Nat? No one’s gonna hire me after this.”

“Someone will.” She smiled at you, brushing your hair back gently. “Someone will see your worth, and they will give you a second chance, and everything will be ok.”

As much as you appreciated the sentiment, you were starting to lose hope again. Three rejections in a row – this wasn’t something you were used to. Sure, it had been difficult getting a job in your field as an entry-level person, but now the markets were opening up. You had a good degree, a good bit of training, some…experience…and most of all, you still genuinely wanted to help people.

You sighed as you watched the buildings go by in the train windows.

“Something got you down, Miss?”

The man next to you put his paper down on his lap as you looked over at him. He was really handsome, and right now his eyes were full of concern.

“I, um…” Okay, so maybe Nat had a point about talking to a stranger. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t seem fine.” He nodded his head at you. “I’m Sam.”

“Y/N,” you replied, offering your hand to him, which he shook firmly.

His face scrunched up. “I think I recognize you.”

No no no no no…

“I just have one of those faces.” You looked back to the windows, feeling your face grow warm.

“No, I definitely recognize you. You’re that love doctor from YouTube, aren’t you?”

“Love Therapist,” you mumbled. “And I don’t do that anymore.”

He bit back a grin. “Yeah, no wonder. I saw your last episode. It was pretty friggin’ crazy!”

“What made you want to watch it?” You couldn’t look at him yet, not until you heard his answer.

“Honestly? Curiosity. It was all over the place: Love Guru hates love, has meltdown live!”

You groaned again, covering your face. “I don’t hate love!”

“What was that?”

“I said, I don’t hate love,” you repeated, dropping your hands to your lap. “I just hated that job.”

“Coulda fooled me.”

It sounded like it should be an insult, but his tone was too gentle, and it made you look up at him again in question. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it sounds to me like you were taking your personal feelings out on others. You were hurting, too. But, we all have those days. Most of us just don’t have to show it to so many people.”

You were silent as you contemplated this.

“Anyways, Y/N, where are you working now?” Sam shifted in the tight space so he was facing you a little more.

“I’m not,” you admitted. “I just came from my third job interview, and they rejected me five minutes after I left, via phone. They couldn’t even tell me to my face.”

He hummed. “That’s not right.”

“It’s what I’m facing now that I was the infamous Love Therapist.”

“You don’t have to let that shit own you, Y/N.”

“I’m trying not to, Sam.”

“You’re taking these rejections sitting down with a whimper. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Bad things happen to good people all the time, and they carry on. It’s time to carry on.”

Again, you didn’t have a reply for him, suddenly feeling a little childish.

“Listen,” he began, reaching into his pocket for his wallet. He pulled out a business card, gesturing for you to take it. “I’m actually the head of the Red Wing Foundation, based here in Brooklyn. Have you heard of it?”

You shook your head no, accepting the business card with interest. Sam Wilson, Founder and Executive Director.

“The idea for a foundation formed after my last stint in the Army. I wanted to help veterans, reservists, first responders, even those currently active…anyone who went through some major traumatic events that needed help. It’s based in a community center down on Union Avenue, and it’s got career help, continuing education courses, support groups, even on-site therapy sessions.”

“It sounds wonderful,” you told him, feeling your chest tighten a little. If any city in America needed a center like that, it was New York.

Note to self: keep things in perspective.

“It really is. I’m in meetings all afternoon, but I think you should come by tomorrow, have a look around.” The train slowed to a stop, and Sam stood up. ”If you call my assistant, she’ll schedule a time for you to stop by.”

“Sounds good, Sam. Thank you so much!” You gave him a big smile, grateful for the offer, especially from someone who’d seen your show and still thought you were worthwhile.

With a final nod, Sam left the train, disappearing into the rush of people.

You felt more hopeful than you had in weeks.

True to his word, Sam’s assistant Sharon scheduled a time for you to meet with him the next day. The center was about seven blocks from your apartment, but that was nothing compared to hauling it to Manhattan every day.

Sharon informed you that therapy sessions were held three times a day, in the morning, afternoon, and evening, so that people on shift work could still make it to one if they wanted. The sessions were donation only, meaning that anything you could afford to pay, you were welcome to donate, but if you couldn’t you didn’t have to. The Foundation covered the remaining costs.

It seemed a little too good to be true, and you were a little nervous. You’d never dealt with trauma, PTSD, or anything like that before, but you were willing to learn for those who needed help.

Once again, you didn’t have anyone to talk to about this opportunity. Despite the ups and downs of the last few weeks, you really missed Natasha.

With a big sigh, you took the takeout food you’d ordered over to the couch and turned the TV on. The local news was on, and your favorite weatherman was mentioning how gorgeous and sunny it was going to be tomorrow. That was good news, at least.

The TV kind of became background noise as you concentrated on your dinner.

You looked back up, though, when you heard the reporter mention a fire.

“I’m here on the scene of a two-alarm fire at Japanese restaurant in the heart of Brooklyn, where multiple units have been dispatched to try to contain the blaze. We don’t yet know if anyone is trapped inside. Unofficial sources have told us that it started as a grease fire in the restaurant you’re seeing here.”

The camera zoomed, and you saw the awning of the restaurant that Bucky had taken you to on your date. You sat up, food forgotten, and watched in horror as his surrogate family’s restaurant burned to the ground.

The camera focused back on the reporter, and she held a hand to her earpiece, then nodded. “I’m getting new word in now, that one person – a woman, approximately in her sixties – was rescued from the apartment above the restaurant.”

The anchor at the desk gave a very serious nod. “Do you have any word about her condition, Sheila?”

Sheila shook her head. “Not at this time. I will keep everyone updated as Action News continues to be on the scene. Back to you, Tom.”

Your hands were shaking as you tried to google for any more details about the fire. No matter what had occurred between you and Bucky, you still hated to see that poor woman’s whole life go up in flames.

It was about twenty minutes later that Sheila came back on to report that the fire was contained with minor damage to surrounding buildings, but the restaurant was a total loss.

What you saw next completely shocked you.

Sheila was standing next to a soot-and-sweat-covered Bucky Barnes, in full fireman gear, and looking totally upset and uncomfortable.

“I’m told that you’re the fireman who rescued the woman from the apartment, is that accurate?”

“Yes,” he replied gruffly. “But I’m not going to comment about her identity or current condition.”

“Fair enough. Can you confirm that this fire is contained?”

“It’s about eighty-five percent contained at the moment, with three units assisting.” Bucky wiped the sweat from his brow, then glanced over his shoulder. “Excuse me, ma’am, but I have work to do.”

He turned and left Sheila standing there, a little flustered about his sudden departure.

Despite everything, you had the strongest urge to text him and ask how she was doing. You wanted to make sure he was okay, remembering how he lost his little sister in a fire. You couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind just then.

You didn’t text him that night, knowing that the rift between you was still there.

That didn’t stop your heart from hurting for him, though.

After a restless night’s sleep, you meandered around your apartment, slowly getting ready for your meeting with Sam. There was no saving the puffiness around your eyes, but the rest of you looked pretty good.

Your walk to the community center took you past the charred remains of the Japanese restaurant, now blocked by yellow caution tape. Your heart sank as you wondered what the poor woman would do, now that everything she’d worked for and built with her late husband was gone.

Maybe the foundation could help.

Maybe you’d see about helping them expand to any trauma victim.

That was getting way ahead of yourself, though, since you weren’t even technically offered anything more than a tour of the facilities.

Sam greeted you warmly when you arrived, and you were in awe of the sheer magnitude of what he had designed here. There was so much for someone to partake in for such a little building. Everything was handicap-accessible and user friendly. You could tell Sam really poured his heart into this project.

“So what do you think so far?”

You looked at Sam in awe. “I’m stunned that I didn’t know this was here sooner. I guess I didn’t do my research well enough.”

“It’s a growing project. We aren’t endorsed by a celebrity or anything, though quite a few are generous benefactors. In other words, the work ain’t sexy, but it helps a lot of people.”

“I’m sure.” You took a few steps forward to peer into the window of one of the therapy rooms. It was a closed-door session, but you were still impressed with what you could see. The session was small enough to allow for everyone to get a chance to talk, but big enough to not feel the pressure of talking if you didn’t want to. “Do they have breakout sessions, one-on-one?”

“Some do,” Sam nodded, walking over to you. “Sometimes the heavier cases require a more specific training for recovery.”

You nodded, stepping back from the window. “And what are the stats? Do you have more veterans, or first responders, or…?”

He shrugged. “A mix, I’d say. Not everyone’s a regular. Sometimes they just come back when their problems flare up. But that’s the kind of thing we’re prepared to handle here.”

“Got it.” You looked back at him nervously. “So I guess that concludes the tour?”

“Not exactly.” The corner of his mouth lifted ever-so-slightly. “If the foundation offered you the training to obtain your trauma therapy certifications, would you be willing to come help us out?”

What? Was that even a question? “Of course I would! This is exactly how I always envisioned myself helping others. And you don’t mind…”

He raised an eyebrow at you. “Don’t mind what?”

“You don’t mind my past job experience?”

Sam chuckled, putting a hand on your shoulder. “Y/N, I’m not about to hold your past mistakes against you if you’re sincere about your work here. You aren’t just that show; you had a great column, too. I’ll take a chance on you. I don’t know if you noticed or not, but I’m a big believer in second, third, fourth, however many chances someone needs, as long as they’re trying to be better.”

You could be better.

You could make a positive impact on people here, and you were grateful for the opportunity.

“When do I start?”

Part - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10

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Story Tags (Closed): @mcusebstan @youpocketwitch @universal-glitch @thewinterdorito @aqueenwithoutherkingx @ani808 @themistsofmyavalon @logan8546 @the-renaissance @lostinspace33 @mcsmashdesigns @stormin-thru-glitter @cantchoosejustonefandom @vivianbabz @sociallyimpairedme @pinkleopardss @stomachfilledwithbutterflies @frnkensteingrl @wunnywho @buckys-fossil @mytrueself @tigers-have-teeth @kenobi-and-barnes @with-a-hint-of-pesto-aioli @grumpybeyonce @zxcorra @themanwiththemetalarm @marvelgoateecollection @blueeyedboobear @comicariadne @blue1928 @pixierox101 @wildestdreamsrps @buckybarnesbestbabe @vindictivegrace

[tripstations]

I’m Brian Kelly, the Points Guy, and This Is How I Work

You wouldn’t think a guy who named his whole company after himself would be this nice. But when Brian Kelly started his travel and deals site The Points Guy, he didn’t know he’d be leading a large team writing a multi-section site for over 10 million readers a month. We talked to him about running the company, the gadgets he takes everywhere, and how he uses his travel knowledge to help non-profits.

Name: Brian Kelly Location: New York City Current gig: Founder & CEO, The Points Guy Current computer: iMac Pro 2017 Current mobile device: iPhone 11 One word that best describes how you work: Passionately

First of all, tell us a little about your background and how you got to where you are today.

“The Points Guy” really started in the 90s, when I figured out how to use my dad’s points to get us on a “free” family vacation. While I was working at Morgan Stanley, I ended up traveling a lot and that’s when the points and miles really started racking up. I would use these points to go on cool vacations and fly first class and that got the attention of my coworkers. They started lining up at my desk to ask my advice on managing their miles/points and that’s when I knew I was onto something.

The Points Guy blog started shortly after as a passion project and almost 10 years later, we’ve grown our community to over 10 million strong around the world.

What are your job responsibilities?

As CEO, my main role is to chart the future of the brand. I’m currently working to help us expand from a content platform into a technological solution to help people travel better. We’re currently working towards launching an app and tools on the site that will revolutionize the way people travel.

Take us through a recent workday.

Film a holiday travel segment on LIVE with Kelly and RyanVisit our new office for a walk throughLunch with a Fast Co. reporterDiscuss 2020 partnerships with credit card issuersMeeting with my direct reportsTPG Awards meetingDrinks with Red Ventures CEO Ric Elias, who is visiting NYC

What apps, gadgets, or tools can’t you live without?

Bose headphones QC35iPad Pro: especially when travelingInsight Timer: meditation appSlack: how we communicate as a companyZoom: for company meetingsParse.ly: for TPG traffic statsInstagram: for when I need travel inspiration

What’s your workspace setup like?

Call me old school, but I still value having my own office. My door is always open and usually we have our daily meetings in my office.

My office always has fresh flowers from the Union Square Farmers Market (my favorite part of Monday mornings), healthy snacks (lots of La Croix and cheese for the more stressful times), mementos from my travels around the world, and of course The Points Pups!

What’s your favorite shortcut or hack?

Recording my blog posts via voice notes so that they can be transcribed later.

Take us through an interesting, unusual, or finicky process you have in place at work.

At TPG, we take inclusivity and giving back very seriously. As an out and proud CEO and business founder, I have made it my mission to make sure that I’m always giving back to the LGBTQ community and to make sure that every employee can support issues and foundations important to them.

Giving back is a huge part of my life and is an integral part of The Points Guy. Throughout the year, I have the honor of attending a number of conferences with PeaceJam, a nonprofit that connects Nobel Laureates to youth around the globe, throughout the year with a few of my staff. The TPG team has grown so much over the last few years so traveling with my employees for such an incredible cause allows me to spend quality time with them while doing good in the world.

Who are the people who help you get things done, and how do you rely on them?

Christie, my amazing executive assistant, preps and manages all my meetings. She’s the one who handles my schedule and ensures that I have everything I need when I’m going to back to back meetings.

Our new travel analyst, Zach, is the real points guy at TPG. He’s always doing research and strategizing new ways to maximize points!

Nathan, our new CMO, is crucial in brand/company strategy and is my go-to when I need to bounce ideas off of someone.

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made at work, and how did you deal with it?

I wish we had hired more people earlier on. I never really wanted to run a large company, but TPG grew rapidly and we didn’t expand our team in a way that matched our needs. Over the last year, our staff has doubled in size and now that we are a part of Red Ventures, we have more of a focus on human capital.

How do you keep track of what you have to do?

I never really stop thinking about the key things I have to do and luckily, I have an amazing assistant who helps manage my schedule and to do list when I’m running to meetings or interviews. I still manage my own inbox and go through all my emails, but I have been trying to delegate more. Recently, I’ve been focusing on the highest level and identifying who I need to meet with and learn from.

How do you recharge or take a break?

My getaway is going to my country house in Bucks County and spending quality time with my 11 nieces and nephews. I also make sure to plan one or two solo trips a year, where I take time for myself and reflect—usually while scuba diving.

What’s your favorite side project?

I’m always getting involved with causes I care about. We work closely with Rainbow Railroad (as a result of our fundraising efforts and mile donations, 50 LGBTQ lives have been saved and successfully relocated with asylum). I am the Global Ambassador for PeaceJam where I help advise on travel and raise funds for the organization.

I’m also an advisor to the Morning Brew, and it has been awesome to see how they’ve really taken off.

What are you currently reading, or what do you recommend?

Who else would you like to see answer these questions?

Richard BransonClaudia Oshry (Girl With No Job)Celine Dion

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Don’t feed the trolls! There will always be people whose default is negativity. Early in my career I used to engage with them and they would bring me down, but once you get passed the fact there are negative people you can really free yourself up creatively.

What’s a problem you’re still trying to solve?

We’re working on an app that will really change the game! We’re focused on building a platform where the earning and burning of points will exist in one place.

Our ultimate goal is to provide people with the ability to travel more. I’d like to work with more hotels and airline companies to integrate to help further the mission of getting more people to explore the globe.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

The post I’m Brian Kelly, the Points Guy, and This Is How I Work appeared first on Tripstations.

from Tripstations https://ift.tt/34xWeUj via IFTTT

[ashraya]

Thin Ice

I didn’t anticipate that the ever-present anxiety of this presidency, compounded by the pain of losing a student to suicide and not knowing how to fully support my students through it, would also make me less able to think. I find myself speechless, stuttering, trying again and again to understand a thing. I tweet it out in 140 characters and then again in 280. I delete the draft. I rewrite the draft. I tweet the draft and delete the tweet. I find myself constantly unsure about whether I am responding the right way, afraid that I am going to make an irreversibly damaging decision, whether in politics or in life. I take longer to decide everything. Does this student’s action merit a phone call home? Does it make sense to prosecute someone 35 years after a sexual assault?

With so much uncertainty, I have responded in at least one way that feels right: I have been more involved than ever in creative endeavors — my own and my students’. I’m making music, advising the school newspaper, and even writing (some) fiction.

But I have withdrawn from most of the decision-making structures within my school and within my union because the effort has felt wasted. And whatever other time I have, I fill with distraction: television, romance novels, cooking a meal and eating it alone. I’m not sure I trust myself to make decisions.

All the time, I’m wondering: What if this isn’t the way to fight it? What if we rally around an imperfect candidate? What if I hurt a coworker or a student by lacking patience, foresight, sufficient compassion?

Is this just what happens when you get older or am I right to see this as a direct response to our present condition? I am heartbroken all the time.

If this is how I feel and I’m not even facing the worst of it, how must it feel to try to do anything when your mother is getting deported? How must it feel to be in a war zone?

About a year ago, I overheard a completely expected conversation between two male coworkers about the muddling of consent, about whether it made sense for someone to completely absent themselves from public life in the wake of harassment allegations, and I felt an incandescent rage building, lighting up the filament of my brain that holds my worst memories of men. I kept trying to focus on my work and instead kept clenching my hands too hard on the computer mouse. You have no right, I wanted to scream. You have no right to sit here and make me remember.

I was not fired up and ready to go. I did not resist. Instead, all that adrenalin and noradrenaline released by my sympathetic nervous system made me freeze. That’s how I feel most days: ice, ready to shatter at any time.

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week, and what would make me feel most appreciated is a country that doesn’t force kids who owe lunch money to only eat jelly sandwiches, a president that doesn’t gleefully tweet about his neglect of his citizens, and a world that isn’t hellbent on its own destruction.

[easyfoodnetwork]

Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images A Supreme Court ruling makes it illegal to discriminate against an employee based on sexual orientation or gender, but that barely begins to address the unique pressures and harassment faced by trans service workers On June 15, in a historic case, the Supreme Court held that federal law forbids discriminating against an employee solely because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Such an action would be considered discrimination under Title VII, as “an employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” writes Justice Neil Gorsuch. In other words, a workplace couldn’t legally fire a man for having a husband because it wouldn’t fire a woman for having a husband. If “the employer intentionally penalizes a person identified as male at birth for traits or actions that it tolerates in an employee identified as female at birth,” it’s discrimination “because of … sex.” Much of the praise for the ruling comes from the fact that it’s been a long time coming. Until now, it’s been legal in more than half of U.S. states to fire someone for being gay, bisexual, or trans, even though it’s clearly a discriminatory practice. “The Supreme Court’s decision provides the nation with great news during a time when it is sorely needed. To hear the highest court in the land say LGBTQ people are, and should be, protected from discrimination under federal law is a historic moment,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, in a statement. However, she notes, “we still have more work to do to ensure that transgender people can fully live their lives without fear of discrimination for being who they are.” The food service industry has often been a place for society’s “outcasts,” including LGBTQ people, to find acceptance and community. But while this ruling is a win for LGBTQ rights in general, trans and nonbinary people in the food service industry are questioning how much of an effect it’ll have on everyday life — and imagining what could be done to effect tangible change. Niko Prytula, a nonbinary person who lives in Virginia, only recently stopped working in food service after eight years, most recently at a fine dining establishment with extremely formal practices. At most of their jobs, they were never open about their gender identity. “I was always out as queer, and there were not that many places where I was the only queer person on staff,” they say, “but when I was working fine dining, that was the first time where it felt like it would be a genuine obstacle to be out.” Most of that was not because of the risk of discrimination from management, but rather from customers. Prytula recalls the extraordinarily gendered style of service, which required serving the oldest woman at the table first, referring to coworkers and patrons as “Mister” or “Miss,” and serving mostly older, white customers. “I do think [coming out] would have just made things very complicated,” they say. “I feel like it would have required me to create almost like a flowchart for my coworkers of like, ‘Okay, so I want you guys to use the correct pronouns for me, but you can let the tables misgender me all they want, because I don’t want to get in an argument with some elderly person when it’s literally a matter of my income.’” Lucky Michaels, a trans rights activist and bartender at Storico at the New York Historical Society, says “as a trans person, job security is huge.” Michaels, a nonbinary trans woman, has been working in hospitality since the late ’90s, and says that because of the need for job security, “most of the trans people that I find [in the industry] are absolutely in the closet, stealth because it’s a really toxic work environment for people in general.” It’s not just discrimination from customers; it’s also the hypermasculine kitchen culture that persists in restaurants to this day. Having a job is a high bar to clear for many trans people, says Michaels. “If you don’t have a house to go home to, or a place to change your clothes and shower or eat, how are you going to be able to get or sustain a job in the first place?” While the risk of losing a job is worrisome for everyone, unemployment, homelessness, and food insecurity are things that affect trans people more across the board. According to an April 2020 report from the Williams Institute looking at pre-pandemic numbers, “78.1 percent of trans adults are in the workforce, 12.8 percent of whom are unemployed, translating to an estimated 139,700 trans people unemployed (and looking for work) nationwide. In comparison, between 3.9 percent and 4.9 percent of U.S. adults in the labor force are unemployed.” However, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated those numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the unemployment rate at 13.3 percent for May. And according to the Human Rights Campaign, trans people have been more likely to have lost their jobs during the pandemic and economic crisis: “19 percent of transgender people and 26 percent of transgender people of color have become unemployed due to COVID-19, compared to 17 percent of LGBTQ people and 12 percent of the general population.” The numbers are particularly bad for the food industry. The BLS reports that an additional 1.2 million jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector were lost in May, on top of the 7.4 million lost in April. And HRC reports that LGBTQ people are more likely to work in industries affected by COVID-19, including 2 million (15 percent) who work in restaurants and food services. The SCOTUS decision sets a precedent, both legal and social, and signals to employers that there are bigger consequences for discrimination, but bigoted employers will always find other ways to alienate and push out trans employees. (The ruling does not apply to contractors, like most delivery drivers or Instacart shoppers.) Both Prytula and Michaels note how rare it would be to have “evidence” of a boss firing someone because they are trans. “I can’t tell you the number of times that people have tried to get rid of me because I’m trans without saying, ‘This is because you’re trans,’” says Michaels. “I’ve had managers and chefs try to get me to quit or leave, that have thrown around really horrible language. They’ll be using ‘faggot,’ I’ll be barred from the restroom of my gender identity, they give you inappropriate schedules, they give you inappropriate uniforms.” The nature of the ruling also just doesn’t apply when much of working in the food service industry involves interacting with customers, who are essentially your bosses for 90 minutes at a time and are under no legal requirement to treat you fairly. “If you’re no longer allowed to be fired for being queer, but your income depends on whether or not guests find you palatable, or performing the right way, or, god help you, attractive, it doesn’t really help that much,” says Prytula. Then there’s the issue of at-will employment. If you work without a union that has argued for just-cause termination, in most states, your boss can fire you without reason anyway. “Often the unique circumstances and additional burdens queer, and especially trans folks live with can make them more susceptible to ‘fireable offenses,’” says V Spehar, a nonbinary person who has worked in the hospitality industry for years, and who most recently was the Director of Impact at the James Beard Foundation, focusing on Women’s Leadership & LGBTQ programs. “Being late, having to grin and bear rude customers’ comments, lack of emotional or mental support, lack of secure housing or familial support” are all reasons that an employee could be seen as “not the right fit.” On an encouraging note, there are other legislative pushes that, while helping all workers, could protect trans people specifically. Prytula says doing away with tipped minimum wage would mean trans food service workers would be more likely to earn a living wage without monitoring their appearance for the sake of transphobic customers. Doing away with at-will employment could do a lot too, as Sarah Jones writes for New York Magazine, as trying to sue your former employers for trans discrimination “can burden workers who don’t have the independent means to hold their former employers accountable.” Spehar also says more change needs to come from within the industry, and not only from outside legislation. “Without creating a culture of understanding for the out-of-work burdens that disproportionately affect the LGBTQ community, we are all still held to the same ‘professional’ standards and expectations created by cis white culture,” they say. That means restaurant owners and nonprofits prioritizing anti-bias training, putting resources toward helping queer and trans people open their own businesses, and centering the fact that the food industry “is built foundationally on black, queer, women’s, and immigrant’s labor.” And making sure these issues take priority outside of Pride month, when many businesses use the LGBTQ community for marketing gimmicks. Michaels still sees the food service industry as a place where trans people can thrive. She notes that James Beard was an out gay man at a time when that wasn’t widely accepted, and how restaurants and bars, especially Black- and women-owned restaurants and organizations, are committing themselves to diversity, equity, and inclusion work. But she also notes there’s a bigger picture outside the rights of those who find employment. “I don’t know that it is in legislation,” says Michaels. The SCOTUS ruling is an important piece in the massive, and mostly incomplete, puzzle of legislation and activism that’s needed to truly secure equitable treatment for trans people. “Legislation, as we’ve seen, can be fickle, and driven by administration, politicized,” says Spehar, “and in the end will never do what humanity and compassion from the industry can do.” from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2VwynCf

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/06/for-trans-people-in-service-industry.html