#﹙ sunk - cost fallacy. ﹚ colleague.

[tailoredmarketing]

tag dump.

[bitchesgetriches]

I was in your inbox years ago, freaking out because of job stress. Consider me a cautionary tale.

a) you were right, mental health is so important. I didn't quit because I was worried about letting my colleagues down. I shouldn't have been.

b) I found out that I was doing the work of three people and quit a week later (these facts are related)

It took nearly 3 years and medical intervention to recover from the burnout, and that workplace now has an 80% staff turnover.

Sometimes the bigger, fancy jobs aren't worth it. Sometimes you've just gotta go back to customer service for a bit.

Sunk cost fallacy is a real thing. Don't let it get you.

Oh honey!!!

We're so sorry you had to endure this bullshit. And we're GRATEFUL you lived to tell the tale so that the rest of the baby bitchlings could learn from what you went through. We're proud of you for quitting and getting the help you needed, and we know you're going to be ok. Keep checking in.

For anyone dealing with similar bullshit: YOU CAN GET HELP. We made a whole-ass workshop on surviving, preventing, and recovering from burnout. Check it out here:

The Bitches Get Riches Burnout Workshop

Did we just help you out? Join our Patreon!

[m1lkyw4yw1sh3z]

MAD SCIENTIST SPRUNK IS CRAZYYY AND IM ALL FOR IT!!! I so wanna talk about itttt it’s been on my minddd

Yippee yippee yippee glad you enjoy the AU concept :) !!!

In this AU, Black/Hatter comes from a species of aliens that is known to travel across galaxies researching different forms of intelligent life. In 90% of cases said species' work is entirely benign and non-invasive, just driven by curiosity and a desire to increase their understanding of their universe. They like to observe, not to meddle-

What Hatter ends up putting the Sprunkis through is an EXTREME outlier, very much not the norm. Had his colleagues known what he was planning, he'd have never gotten away with it, even. We cannot emphasize enough that this is not normal for his species.

Hat's just got an incredibly warped view on ethics and a weakness for the sunk cost fallacy :(

Once he really starts making himself at home in the town, we think he'd get along best with Clukr and Garnold, since they're fellow scientists (albeit more so in the engineering/computer science realm).

They swap stories of their respective scientific discoveries, constantly trying to subtly one-up each other lol. It's all in good fun though!! Perhaps if circumstances were different, the three of them could have created great things together...

This post is already getting a bit long lol, putting the rest under the read more-

Warning for slight themes of psychological horror 👍

This version of Hatter does care about the Sprunkis on some level. It unfortunately just happens that his care for them is overshadowed by his desire to go through with his experiments. He's too stubborn to change his plans, too selfish even.

He cares about them, maybe even claims to love some of them (platonically)... but in the end it's more so as a cherished research project than as friends.

This results in his interactions with them being somewhat contradictory. He's manipulating them, but he shows no ill will towards those unwilling to trust him. He's not acting out of malice, after all, and he's perfectly willing to play the long game to ensure things play out as simply and painlessly as possible-

In the meantime, he can enjoy being around them, can enjoy pretending they mean something more to him than just mildly interesting samples on a petri dish.

Befriending them, learning about them on a more personal level, it becomes something of a side project to him.

He never does earn that trust, of course. A shame.

[charmwasjess]

AHEM. Dooku for 2/3 and 18, 25? Or dealer's choice? Anything you like 👀👀👀👀👀

OH HEY FRIEND :D Thank you so much!!! I answered the first two here <3 <3 but I kind of went wide with 25 so I pulled in some dealer's choice. :D Couldn't resist.

18 How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire?

It was so tempting to write you a Sifo-Dyas essay here. Please accept this coupon for one unhinged Sifo-Dyas manifesto, to be redeemed at a time of your choosing. <3

But today, I’m thinking about Mace and Dooku. God, there’s a part in that Shatterpoint novel where Mace obsesses over the fact that he could have killed Dooku on Geonosis - he could have gone for Dooku’s head instead of Jango’s, and how much death and suffering would he have saved? And the fact that he didn’t, he went after Jango, not because he didn’t realize the importance of that decision, but for the plain fact that he didn’t want to kill Dooku.

I think two things are so interesting here - of course, I love the way that Mace vouches so hard for Dooku in AotC, and I love all that implies about the personal relationship and respect as colleagues between them. All that it hints about Dooku's post-exit relationship with the Jedi Order.

I also think it’s interesting that the questions doesn't seem to be if Mace could kill Dooku. 

Here’s the part where I just pornographically imagine the duel between Mace’s Vaapad and Dooku’s Makashi and make uncomfortable noises. Arguably the two most aggressive forms, I think that fight would be insane. Mace is 6’2/1.88m, while Dooku has a few inches on him, Mace is younger and very powerfully built, so Dooku isn’t going to get his usual default “I can just reach further than you” advantages. Also, the way Mace dominates the terrain - I’m thinking of his duel in Sidious’s office - is going to be a big problem for our Count, who thrives on space in a fight and carefully balancing Makashi’s more delicate aspects with his ability to control the environment via the Force - ie, drop pieces of the architecture on his opponents heads. Cool fucking fight, cooler what-if. 

What does the Separatist movement he just started look like if Dooku is captive or martyred?

 25? What was your first impression of [Dooku]? How about now?

Well, my VERY first impression of this character was quite negative. Like many fans, I was enraged to find that we were getting this character and not Sith lady concept art (who would turn out to be future Asajj). Old man Sith?! Who used to be a Jedi? NO WE HAVE OLD MAN SITH WHO USED TO BE A JEDI AT HOME. 

But when I first became a Dooku maniac, I spent a lot of time working backwards trying to find the actual good person the monster used to be. What was the dramatic tipping point, how much was Qui-Gon’s death a factor, how could Dooku’s fall have been stopped or redeemed? 

Now the more fascinating part to me is how an actually good person becomes a monster. To me, that’s actually started to be more interesting than my old fascination with finding some big reason. I love the almost ordinary factors in his slide toward darkness - loneliness, depression, helplessness, the unwanted child compulsive urge to impress the wrong people, plain old sunk cost fallacy. He can be a surprisingly uncommitted Sith. He chains himself to Sidious. 

Someone once summed up my one true fix-it fic, “Five Days to Murder Sifo-Dyas,” as “Sifo-Dyas saves Dooku using only the power of his dick,” and while that's funny, they’re right. I really think any very simple change in Dooku’s story could have got him back on track. The fascinating fact is, it didn’t. Dooku's missed connection with his own humanity and goodness.  

Talking further about impressions of the character, although maybe this gets into 6. What's something you have in common with this character? territory, is that I’ve grown up with Dooku. Getting into Dooku when I was a kid and now liking the character as an adult, I realize I relate to him fundamentally differently now vs then.

Dooku and I don’t share a lot of personality traits, and I’m nowhere near his age in the films, but now I’ve been a teacher, I know how that rewires your brain. I know what it’s like to be a whole ass adult, but still meaningfully reckoning with your own ugly origin story. And god, am I fucking worried about the end of the world. His problems feel so much more real to me now.

I think both he and Sifo-Dyas have a core trait of “oh my god, what’s happening, why doesn’t everyone else SEE this, I have to do SOMETHING” driving their characters’ actions. And while I obviously don’t agree with either of their actions, I think that’s never been more relatable to me than now in 2025.

[bitchslapblastoids]

when in effort to have the ill advised upper hand on mother nature you’ve now sunk cost fallacied your way into tacking an extra day onto your already ill advised trip to iceland and your partner has bailed on you so you’re going alone bc no sane person can swing a last minute trip to iceland in the middle of the work week with you and all your colleagues think you’re attending an icelandic friend’s winter wedding when actually you’re seeing a show you’ve already seen three times that they probably won’t even have the set for and now you’re missing more than the allowed number of days of work in a row to the tune of some unknown future professional consequences and you’re starting to wonder if this whole thing is some sort of manic episode but hey all pleasure now right so hey anyone wanna make out with me on my birthday and/or pray for me that nothing wack happens on my return leg that makes me miss a negligent amount of work and maybe get fired who knows

[sugurushimura]

May I ask why you headcanon Midou as a trans woman? I always headcanonned Higuchi as trans out of all the Yotsubas (FtM though, not MtF) and I'd really like to hear your reasoning!

oh man, this is one of those headcanons that i've had for so long that it's kind of just cemented itself in my brain... the idea was actually my boyfriend @teethrotter's first, so what initially sparked it lies in his mind alone. i'm not sure if he even told me anything specifically other than "hey, i think it'd be neat if mido was a trans woman" so we tried it out for a while and it just stuck... i'm not sure when exactly that was, maybe 2016 or 2017? over 5 years for sure.

by this point, it's not even a decision i actively make, i just see mido and she registers immediately as a woman with my brain. seeing her he/him'd in canon feels wrong... although i am obviously not arguing that trans mido is even vaguely implied, she's just such a minor character that headcanoning her as a closeted trans woman doesn't change literally anything.

the headcanon does play into my own interpretation of mido pretty heavily, and it works well with how i perceive her canon personality. imo, mido is someone who is very resigned with her life. she was born into a high-status family that placed a lot of weight on her shoulders wrt being a Good Member Of Society. she went to an elite college, got a law degree, and went on to become a bigwig at the yotsuba group. she clearly excels at her job, but according to htr, she actually hates the division she works in. she's well-liked amongst her colleagues -- better than any of them except ooi, in fact -- but in turn seems to like very few of them. her social skills are quite good, but she seems... disengaged, to say the least, at the model party.

pretty much every facet of mido's life, except her fencing hobby, is spent doing things she hates and interacting with people that she dislikes. and yet she shows absolutely no signs that she's interested in changing it -- hell, she doesn't even bother speaking out against the kira murders, which seem to weigh on her conscience. of course, there's a real threat of death if she does that, but it isn't as if she simply abstains from the meetings; she's an incredibly active participant!

all this plays into the greater feeling that mido is resigned to her own misery even when she really doesn't have to be. i think she developed this tendency mainly because of her family, but eventually it became such a habit that to change now feels to her like she'd have wasted all that pain and effort. sunk-cost fallacy, you know? at times, too, i think she's prone to romanticizing her own pain in a sort of "oh, woe is me, i'm such a dutiful son and such a productive member of society, look at how much i've sacrificed for the sake of the status quo, how tragic am i..."

her gender identity, too, is a reflection of that. gender is such a fundamental part of how we perceive ourselves and others; i think it ties everything together to have mido, who is really and truly a woman, lock it up inside herself and just go along with the way she was raised to present because, even despite the misery it causes her, it would be troublesome to change it all now and would damage the image she's spent so long cultivating. besides, if she changed this now, that would open a lot of doors. what else about her life would she be happier if she changed?

my own experiences with gender are somewhat similar. there was a time when i was younger where i realized that i was a trans man, but thought it would be too much of a hassle to come out and completely change who i am publicly. i had more or less resigned myself to living the rest of my life that way, and it was only thanks to my boyfriend's encouragement that i changed my mind. i'm very glad i did, and it's probably no coincidence that i also imagined myself getting a business degree at that point in my life...

i love mido and i'd like for her to reach self-actualization, at least to some extent. in most lighthearted AUs, i default to writing her as out of the closet and fully transitioned -- albeit still working a job she hates. it's also very important to me that she comes out to shimura after the kira case. after being put through such a stressful situation and realizing that she really could have been killed (...oops), i think she realizes that, at the end of the day, she needs someone else to know. it might as well be shimura, who shows her so readily that he's been wrestling with the horror of their situation more frantically than any of them, who still shows compassion after everything they've done.

also, mido has the trans haircut. you know, the ambiguous "it's just short enough that mom won't say anything" look.

(as an aside, i think i've heard trans man higuchi brought up before! not for several years, though, and only briefly, unless i'm forgetting something. although it personally isn't a headcanon that i share, he's such an envious person and focuses his own identity so intensely on other men that i could see it being written in a very compelling way. the whole "i want him AND i want to be him" thing, however in denial he is about it, is very real... i would love to see that concept explored more! i am probably not the person to do it, though.)

[midwesternmonsterhunt]

Taxonomy of Bigfoot Hunters

I’ve been watching a lot, and I mean a lot, of monster hunting shows. Prior to this, I mostly divided bigfoot hunters/experts into two camps: true believers and liars. But my recent binge-watching has made me re-think that. So, without further ado, here is Midwestern Monster Hunt’s Guide to Bigfoot Hunters

The True Believer: Honestly and earnestly believes bigfoot is out there. A True Believer may have had an encounter, or they may simply find the anecdotes and extent research convincing. True Believers may be willing to lose money, time, and their reputation in search of the proof that will make believers out of others.

The Charlatan: They don’t think Bigfoot is real, but money sure is. They may be in this for money, fame, or some other reward. Their motives don’t have to be purely self-serving; a Charlatan could cook up or perpetuate a hoax to help money come into their town.

The Jaded: Was a True Believer once, but not anymore. However, the Jaded does not admit their doubts or challenge evidence. They continue to act as if they believe, usually for reasons of pride, income, or just the sunk cost fallacy.

The Coping: Someone who had a traumatic encounter with something in the woods or other outdoor setting.  The event causes them to forgo activities, like hiking or fishing, they previously enjoyed, and they often describe a “freeze” response as happening during the incident. Bigfoot becomes an explanation for a traumatic event they cannot explain, and hunting Bigfoot becomes a means of taking back power and contextualizing what happened.

The Skeptic (useless): Usually one of four team members in Bigfoot hunting shows. They often have some kind of science background, but it’s often not relevant to the actual study and location of a large primate. They may roll their eyes at eccentric colleagues methods, but will back down at the first pseudo-scientific reason for them. Almost never discards evidence, no matter how flimsy.

The Skeptic (useful): Has a background in something like wildlife biology or primatology. Understands the limits of eyewitness accounts. Willing to discard or accept evidence depending on actual quality. Extremely rare.

[isittherightword]

And I lost you

The one I was dancing with

In New York

No shoes

Looked up at the sky and it was

So scarlet it was

I'm awake with your memory over me

That's a real fuckin legacy

To leave

So scarlet it was

Maroon

This morning I was dancing in my kitchen, first to bongos by cardi b and Megan the stallion but something came over me, because I'm hoping to do my application today, or at least make progress and see what's required of me. I turned on maroon and this is what came up.

You know the thing about the career shit is that it really was a heartbreak. I was really close to my friend who was going through a divorce after like 14 years together and it was crazy how much the depth of our grief paralleled each other. My first real, deep earth shattering heartbreak was my divorce from surgery.

I actually really did love it. It was love. I was enamored with everything- the discipline it took to wake up in the morning every day at 4 am. The amount of things we got done before most people even got out of bed. The idea of having to know everything internal medicine doctors know and also know how to cut people open and take out and rearrange their organs. The intimacy of it. The weight of the responsibility of it. The knowing of people in ways they could never know themselves. I also was in love with the rejection, the doubt, the need to prove people wrong who said I couldn't do it. I loved the challenge of it. And until this day when I think about doctors, surgeons always will be my people. The specialty I fit most with. It was a real match. There was real shit behind the decision. It wasn't all a lie as I've told myself all of these years. There was love there. Real, love.

So scarlet it was

maroon.

There was enough love that I was willing to endure abuse, cruelty, racism, gaslighting, neglect, rejection. I wouldn't have put up with all of that pain if there wasn't love there. It was love. It's ok to say that.

The job really was my identity. But it never fit right- like a pair of slacks a size to small that you have to unbutton in the car while you drive. There was always something about it that cut a little to deep- there was a cord that led to somewhere a bit to deep inside my soul that made a lot of the shit that we put ourselves through as surgeons destabilize me in a way that it didn't seem to affect my other colleagues.

I had to pause to think of why.

At the end of the day when all was said and done- I didn't like the actual job of performing surgery. The idea I loved- the concept of the intimacy of it all, the tangibility of healing people and respecting disease and leaving their bodies more whole through the trauma of the process. That idea in theory appealed to me. But the actual action of it wasn't enough to sustain me. I found the OR cold and anxiety provoking and draining. I didn't enjoy the pressure of it, and I never really felt that accomplished. I think if I had been in the right program where the abuse wasn't as severe as the places I ended up I may have finished, but I would have been, underneath it all, unsatisfied with my life and career. It wouldn't have been for anything other than a sunk cost fallacy. I have a lot of friends, who finally, after all of these years are just now finishing or recently finished, and when you ask them if it was worth it they laugh.

I had a patient who had a gastric wedge for a GIST tumor- a benign tumor of the stomach. Literally the surgery is cutting out a piece of the stomach like you would a pie. It's not complicated. It's simple, and usually people only stay one night and just go home. You use what's called a ligasure device which uses sound waves to cauterize (or melt) the tissue together and seal it. And that's it. You cut it out like a pie. Simple.

I got a call that night that he felt like he couldn't breathe. I saw him and a man who was as black as I am turned the color of grey sand, clutching his chest, telling me he couldn't breathe.

I thought he was having a heart attack, or a pulmonary embolism, but wasn't bold enough to bolus the heparin without getting the labs back. I did get him to the ICU. After what felt like hours, but must have been 15-20 minutes the labs came back and his hemaglobin was 4.5. If you don't know, normal is 15.

We called the ACS team and right there at the bedside they sliced open his abdomen. So much blood poured out of his belly- it covered the floor and made it slippery. To add to that one of the transfusion bags burst on the ground as we tried to massively transfuse him. So scarlet it was.

There was so much noise and chaos while the code went in it was deafening. Once the more senior residents arrived I had been tasked with the job of calling the wife. I called and called and called and called and called. Nothing.

Finally after all the blood had drained from his body onto the floor, his heart stopped and we had to pump on his chest as whatever was left squirted and slid out of his abdomen onto the floor, onto our hands, our scrubs, our shoes. It was everywhere. So scarlet it was.

Then the silence came. The code was over. What was a room rancorous with the chaos of trying to save a life fell silent with the failure. I have never heard anything that quiet in my life.

Until the sound of an iPhone pierced the air. When we found the phone, a picture of a beautiful black woman on the screen with the word "Wifey".

My senior resident later told me that the screams she let out would haunt him for the rest of his life.

That was when I knew the job wasn't worth it. I had known before. I had had a suspicion. I felt weary with the exhaustion of waking up at 4 am every single day. I was traumatized by the neglect and isolation in that program. I was isolated, I was deeply lonely. At the time, I had nothing. My immediate family was as toxic as ever and had left me to wither away and die, starved of love or support in a hostile, deserted environment. My friends were also suffering and couldn't take on the weight of my flailing arms, lest they get pulled under and drown as well. I was in love with a man who took pleasure in pretending to pull me out just to hold my head under the water again and again- a sick game of emotional waterboarding. I had nothing. And the love that had driven me to throw everything I was and everything I had into becoming a surgeon, had run dry after years of drought.

But that night, as I sewed a dead man's abdomen closed, and wiped the blood from his cold skin, put my hand on his eyelids to close his empty eyes, I knew. It wasn't worth it.

I didn't want the weight of the responsibility. I didn't want to be haunted by the memory of misfiring a ligasure device, wondering if such a small action took a perfectly healthy father away from his wife and two daughters. As doctors, we see people die all the time. Death is a natural event. Sometimes death is preventable, sometimes it's not. Sometimes the difference between life and death is a misfired ligasure or a misplaced stitch. The OR for me was already a cold, joyless, anxiety provoking place. The gravity of wondering if any move I made would haunt me for the rest of my life, rip a son, daughter, father, friend, away from this world, made it unsustainable. I had already sacrificed so much. My youth, my identity, my body, my mind, my spirit- I knew the weight of the job would eventually snuff out what small light was left of my soul.

So I left.

Pt 1/?

[brawlingdiscontent]

Personal thoughts/advice as a new prof who is/has been highly engaged in grad student peer support:

Do not go to to graduate school if:

You can only see yourself as happy/will only consider the degree worth it if you get an academic job (or a particular field job) - academic work is increasingly rare and precarious. Despite doing all the 'right things' I was very, very lucky to get a job in my field - and other fields are even worse! There are definitely career options outside of the academy, but these often take significant work on your end as you transition out of the degree, and the burden of trying to make this transition while carrying a broken heart of burst academic aspirations is much more difficult.

You will be going into debt. This one sucks as it can be a huge class barrier, but I have friends/colleagues who are up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and are very angry/bitter about the situation - they're forced to pick up low-paying teaching contracts just to get by, and are too busy to finish their PhDs, and even if/when they do will be facing a deeply uphill battle to pay it off. While professional programs are usually quite expensive, research programs often pay you (with sometimes surprising overlap between what each offers), and while many of the stipends are paltry, some are kind of okay. Do your research on these costs, make a budget, and look for any/all scholarship opportunities (some departments will add on a scholarship with their offer of admission if you ask for one).

Do go to grad school if:

You want the space to explore a topic you're passionate about, and are prepared to make some sacrifices (including potential future income) to do so. It can be an exceptional privilege (and I've found it one) but go in with your eyes open - it can also be super isolating, come with toxic work culture, and may have a negative impact on your long-term financial goals.

You are prepared to drop out at any time if your mental health/other factors make it not worth it anymore. There's nothing wrong with not finishing your Masters'/PhD - some of the folks I've seen most burned by academia are those who have held on way longer than they should have for their happiness' sakes in a sunk-cost fallacy.

I let myself rest and now I'm daydreaming about academia and academic research and writing again

[iggy-hands]

The thing with Izzy is that, for most people, the benefits of becoming "friends", or even amicable colleagues, with him do Not out weigh the risks involved.

But it's so difficult to look at him and not see a challenge. He's like a cat who fucking hates everyone for no reason apart from the 1.5 people who it only hisses at 50%~ of the time.

The fact that there are so few people that he tolerates tricks the mind into thinking that being one of those people is special, and so it must be good! If he's so choosy with who he deems worthy of his time, his time is worth more than other people's, in a way that must become obvious once you're in that inner circle.

And the genius of it is that it's not true. Unless you're Ed. And even then the results are mixed. But once you've put the time in it becomes a kind of sunk-cost fallacy where you just have to stick with it.

[sumpix]

Sunk cost fallacy.

In psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking Fast and Slow, he writes about how he and his colleague Amos Tversky through their work in the 1970s and ‘80s uncovered the imbalance between losses and gains in your mind. Kahneman explains that since all decisions involve uncertainty about the future the human brain you use to make decisions has evolved an automatic and unconscious system for judging how to proceed when a potential for loss arises. Kahneman says organisms that placed more urgency on avoiding threats than they did on maximizing opportunities were more likely to pass on their genes. So, over time, the prospect of losses has become a more powerful motivator on your behavior than the promise of gains. Whenever possible, you try to avoid losses of any kind, and when comparing losses to gains you don’t treat them equally. The results of his experiments and the results of many others who’ve replicated and expanded on them have teased out a inborn loss aversion ratio. When offered a chance to accept or reject a gamble, most people refuse to make take a bet unless the possible payoff is around double the potential loss.

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/03/25/the-sunk-cost-fallacy/

[zmediaoutlet]

let your heart be light

I was asked to write a coda for my J2 college AU and I thought, well, why not. Have a seasonal little slice of life, a few years after. Merry Christmas, friends.

(read on AO3)

They have to leave for the party in an hour. Jared took a shower earlier, when he got home from the office, and he’s in jeans and his ratty old UT hoodie and fuzzy socks, idly watching the Bulls struggle to keep up with the 76ers. Jensen, unsurprisingly, is freaking out.

“What could you possibly be doing in there?” he calls.

There’s a clatter of something in the bathroom. “I don’t want to hear it,” Jensen says back, in his ‘stern teacher’ voice, and Jared rolls his eyes. It’s snowing again, outside the window, and Jared leans back against the stack of pillows on their bed, watches it fall. Two years out of Texas and he still can’t get over it. Snow at Christmas. Practically a miracle.

Jensen’s talking to himself in the bathroom, nothing Jared can actually hear but it’s got that sharp quality of a bad day boiling over. Jared sighs, stretches his legs out and crosses them at the ankles. “How’d your students do on their final?” he says.

“Christ, don’t get me started.”

“That bad, huh?” The Sixers draw another foul and he watches them all square up for the free throws. He wishes he had a beer, but they’ve both been too busy to shop for the past few days. “Is this the behavioral class, or the principles kids?”

“Karla hasn’t finished grading the behavioral exams—it’s the principles class that sucks. Of course, it always is.” Jensen comes out of the bathroom, then, just a towel around his waist, and heads over to the big dresser they share to rifle through for underwear or pants or something, who knows. Jared watches his back move, the game completely forgotten. This is a much better show. “I had this girl email me, asking me to please give her a C, because—I don’t even remember, but I looked up her class score and she earned a 42. I don’t get why these kids think they’re gonna be econ majors when they can’t pass the first class.”

“It’s a mystery,” Jared agrees, calmly. Not the first time he’s heard this one. Jensen slants a glance over his shoulder, and Jared shrugs, all innocence, and Jensen rolls his eyes and grabs whatever he was grabbing, goes back into the bathroom.

Halftime on the game and Jared girds himself, heaves off the bed. His hair—well, it looks how it always looks. He pulls on the nice jeans, the ones Jensen got him for Christmas last year, and a dark soft sweater, good belt, dress boots that Leila from the department complimented him on at the new faculty welcome dinner they’d gone to, when they first arrived. “Hey,” he says, zipping them up, “didn’t you say Leila’s pregnant, again? Do they know yet if it’s a girl or a boy?”

“Girl,” Jensen says. When Jared goes into the bathroom Jensen’s frowning at his hair in the mirror, a navy blue button-down hanging open over his pale chest. Jared finds his cologne in the drawer on his side of the sink, watches Jensen fuss. When it’s summer they need to get home to Texas, get a tan back on that skin. He misses the shoulder freckles. Jensen lets out a short frustrated breath and apparently gives up, though his hair looks fine to Jared. “They should name the baby Thank God for the Delay on My Tenure Clock Abramovitz.”

“I don’t think that’ll fit on the birth certificate,” Jared says, and Jensen snorts, leaning in close to the mirror to look at some imaginary spot. His face is still set into grim lines, though, not really laughing, and Jared knows that Jensen actually does like Leila but you couldn’t tell from how he’s acting.

Back in the bedroom, Jared flicks through some playlists on his phone and then sets it in the stereo cradle, presses play. Jensen vocally hates bright poppy Christmas music, and Jared calls him a Grinch for it but secretly agrees. They compromise on this: the hymns they grew up with done in soft instrumentals, cello and piano and harp. No singing, but Jared can hear the words in his head anyway, and he turns the volume up just enough that Jensen should be able to hear it in the bathroom. He goes and leans against the big window, watches the snow fall. His shoulders are starting to feel tight, and he closes his eyes.

“Damn it,” he hears, sharp. Jensen’s nervous for no reason. His colleagues are relatively easy to get along with and this is just a party at the chair’s house, same as last year. Just one difference.

“Do you not want me to come?” Jared says.

There’s a thump, behind him. “No—what?”

Jared takes a deep breath and turns around, sits down on the window seat. Jensen’s dressed, now, neat pressed slacks and the argyle sweater Jared makes fun of pulled over the top of his button-down, his hair perfectly mussed, his eyes startled. “I don’t need to go,” Jared says. “If it’ll be easier for you.”

“What are you—” Jensen starts, shaking his head, and then his expression clears. “Oh—god, are you talking about Walker?”

The particularly crotchety, unfortunately tenured prick who made what Jensen referred to as a comment after the welcome dinner, but Jensen refused to elaborate on what exactly he said. Jared couldn’t make it to last year’s party, since his own at the firm was the same night and he couldn’t miss a major social event in his first year. This is the first time since then he’s coming to a department event, as Jensen’s giant obviously male date. “I’m not trying to be an equality activist here,” Jared says, shrugging. Jensen frowns. “If it’s too much, if you don’t want to be obvious at work, I’m okay with that. If that’s why you’re—”

He waves a hand vaguely, and Jensen’s frown just deepens. “I’m being a prick, is what you’re saying, and you’re trying to give me an out?”

Jared shrugs, jaw set. “Being kind of a bitch, is actually what I’d say.”

He hadn’t quite realized that he was this irritated. The current song ends and his phone starts playing a soft version of I’ll Be Home for Christmas, and Jensen rolls his eyes but also walks straight across the rug in his socked feet and goes to his knees between Jared’s spread legs. Jared blinks, but Jensen only lays his hands on Jared’s knees, slides his hands up to his hips, his elbows resting easy on the tops of Jared’s thighs. When he finally looks up and meets Jared’s eyes, he looks chagrined. “I want you to know something,” he says.

“What,” Jared says. It’s a struggle to be irritated with Jensen in this position—he’s got too many good memories associated with it. Pavlov’s domestic partner.

Jensen squeezes his hips through the layer of his jeans, his tucked-in sweater. “If I ever let my behavior be affected by fucking Walker,” he says, “I have had my brain dissolved by undergraduates and you should just put me out of my misery.” Jared huffs, and Jensen’s eyes crinkle just a bit at the corners. “I’m serious. You know, it’ll have been a good run, but—sunk cost fallacy. It’s not worth going on if I ever actually start paying attention to Captain Homophobe, we’ll just have to cut our losses.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jared says, making his voice serious, and Jensen smiles at him, even though it’s small. Captain Homophobe, he thinks, and tucks that away. It’s the most he’s gotten out of Jensen since the comment and he wants to ask what that means, but he knows he won’t get an answer. Maybe he can find some way to unobtrusively break Walker’s wrist if they have to shake hands at the party. He leans back against the big poofy pillow in the window seat and Jensen pulls back a little, folds his arms over Jared’s thighs. “So. What’s the deal.”

“It’s—” Jensen shakes his head, drops his eyes so he’s looking through Jared’s stomach. He licks his lips. “Nothing. I mean, not one thing. I’ve got that paper to finish with Traeger, and students are annoying, and Karla is a sweet TA but her paper proposal sucks and I don’t know how to help her fix it without just giving her an idea, and it’s Christmas in like ten days and I still don’t have anything for your dad that will magically make him like me, and I can’t crap out a baby to push my tenure clock back and I’m worried I won’t get anything significant published in the next three years and then, god, who knows what.”

Jared wraps a hand around Jensen’s where it’s fisted against his thigh, and Jensen glances up at him, shakes his head again. “I’m just—bitching,” he says, and pinches Jared’s thigh, and Jared obligingly says ow. Jensen smiles, and leans down to kiss the spot he pinched, a little warm press through Jared’s jeans. “Honest. That’s what I mean. It’s not—anything, really. Just a shitty day, and I’m stressed, and I’m taking it out on you, and now I’m going to make you go to my stupid work party with me, and I feel like an asshole.”

“They’ll probably have wine?” Jared tries.

“I’d rather have about a twelve-pack of Shiner right now,” Jensen says, but he’s watching Jared’s face. After a long moment, the stereo pulsing out a slow jazzy version of the chestnuts roasting song, he sits further back on his heels, puts his hands back on Jared’s knees. “Okay?”

It’s a more serious question than it should be. A little lump rises in Jared’s throat, but he swallows it away. “Yeah,” he says, and takes Jensen’s hands in both of his, helps pull him to his feet and then lifts him by the waist, tugs him in quick with a startled oof and gets a lapful of—boyfriend, for lack of a better word, but that doesn’t seem sufficient. Jensen clings to him for a second, startled, and then wriggles his weight into a more comfortable position. Jared hooks his hands behind the small of his back so he doesn’t overbalance and Jensen leans into it, makes enough space between them that he can look down into Jared’s face.

He’s so beautiful. Jared doesn’t say that out loud, much, not least because it makes Jensen flush and then hit him, but it’s true. Almost five years together and he’s still amazed, sometimes. Jensen left his top button undone and Jared carefully brings a hand up, parts the shirt more so he can see the soft hollow of his throat. Leans in and kisses there, and feels Jensen’s heart beat solid and steady under his skin.

A hand cards through his hair, soothing. “I was thinking,” Jensen says, and Jared lays his forehead against his collarbone, hums in response. Jensen’s fingers work against his scalp, long dragging pulls, and it’s draining the tension out of his shoulders. “Maybe, when I get back from the conference in January, we could look into getting a dog.”

Jared pulls back. Jensen lets him, but he keeps his hand in Jared’s hair. “But—” he says, and shakes his head. “We talked, about—how it wasn’t fair, in the apartment, and you had that whole speech about picking up dog shit in the snow.”

“I still think it sounds like hell, yes,” Jensen says. He tucks Jared’s hair behind his ear, drags his thumb over his fresh-shaven jaw. “But then I thought, well. I can deal with hell. And I thought, hey. It’d make you happy.” He shrugs, thumb still moving idly against Jared’s jaw. “Seems like as good a reason as any.”

Jared covers Jensen’s hand, turns his head and presses a kiss into the palm. “Jen,” he says, kind of helpless. “You—really? You’ve been thinking about this?”

“That weird-shaped present under the tree is a leash,” Jensen says, smiling down at him. “So you can stop making filthy guesses about harnesses or whatever, freak.”

“That totally won’t stop the filthy guesses,” Jared promises, and then leans up and kisses him, for real, sliding both hands up his back to keep him in place. Jensen’s mouth parts all startled under his, but he’s as sweet as ever, plush mouth and tender lips, mint on his tongue. Jensen fists both hands into his hair and holds on, lets Jared control the kiss, and Jared wishes very much, just now, that they didn’t have a work function to get to. When he finally pulls back, Jensen’s mouth is a pretty damp red, his cheeks flushed. He runs a thumb over the lovely swell of Jensen’s bottom lip, takes a deep breath. “When we get home,” he says, flicking his eyes up to Jensen’s. “I’m going to lay you out and show you how thankful I am for my present.”

He’s half-hard just imagining it—the snow outside and the two of them warm together, and the half-light from their lamps, Jensen’s skin creamy pale against their dark blue sheets. He’s going to take his time, like they haven’t been able to for weeks and weeks.

Jensen’s eyes are dark, and he kisses the pad of Jared’s thumb—but then he climbs backward off his lap, takes a visible deep breath and glances at his watch. “I’ll hold you to that,” he says, and he’s so flushed and perfect that Jared surges to his feet and kisses him one more time, leaning down and cupping his face between his palms.

The snow’s not too deep, but it’s still freezing, and Jensen tugs on his boots while Jared grabs their coats and scarves. Jensen’s phone beeps just as Jared’s putting on his gloves and that means the cab’s waiting downstairs, and they’re almost out the door when Jared realizes what he’s hearing. “Shit, hang on,” he says, and trots back through the apartment to the bedroom where his phone’s still pumping out music—Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, now, cut off in the middle when he yanks the phone out of the holder and shoves it in his pocket. Jensen’s already called the elevator, and so it’s only a few seconds for Jared to lock the door and then they’re in the car by themselves, sliding down to the snowy Chicago street outside. Jared watches the numbers tick down, like he always does, and so it’s a surprise when Jensen’s gloved hand finds his and squeezes it, briefly. Jensen’s not the hand-holding type.

When he looks over, Jensen’s still just a bit flushed, or maybe he’s flushed for some other reason. He takes his hand away and shoves it into his coat pocket. “Love you,” he says, watching the falling numbers on the display.

Jared looks at his profile for a second, traces the perfect lines of it, and then leans over and kisses his temple, soft, just once. “How much trouble do you think I’d be in if I poured snow down Walker’s pants?” he says, and grins when Jensen lets out a bright startled laugh. “Tis the season, right? Snowball fight at the faculty party?”

“I will actually kill you dead,” Jensen says, smiling, and when the doors open Jared lets Jensen push him out into the lobby but then hooks an arm over his shoulders, tugs him in close, and keeps him tucked there, warm, as they walk together out into the snowy night.

[zorilleerrant]

Okay, I’m going to get it all out here, in the hopes of not starting a fight but also not thinking about it anymore:

it takes a substantially long time for any business to fire an engineer if they’re remotely producing anything - this is something like a minor edit every few weeks - and even years while they’re producing literally nothing for the company, because of sunk cost fallacy and ‘we’re a family!’

people can’t ‘donate’ their sick time/vacation time? that doesn’t make sense for salaried positions

but also the vacation time is frequently like five months a year and by the ‘90s a lot of companies had started moving to ‘unlimited’ vacation

‘time without pay’ for that kind of job is a sabbatical, which can be up to two years with the position held for his return, and probably substantially enough savings to live off of for that time

engineers already work part time; even a brand new, young, inexperienced engineer who has basically no idea what the fuck they’re doing, just that they went to school for it is only working 37 hours a week, and it drops every year they keep doing it. even in a management position, he’d probably only be working 15 hours a week

it’s not like there’s a fixed schedule? come in at midnight, work until 3, go home again - they have their own keycards, it’s not an issue unless there’s a meeting, which they can conference call from home

engineers already just sit in front of their computers in a trance, this is the majority of what they do, like, it’s all false productivity anyway

the fact is, a company is going to do a shitton to work with an engineer, even five or ten years down the line, and nothing to work with a janitor

‘janitor’ is not a fucking low-skill job; it takes an intense amount of physical and emotional labor, specialized knowledge, and fucking practice to be able to do it at all efficiently, and almost all of the skills are ones that an engineer would simply have had no exposure to and no chance to learn

it’s way easier to program/design/debug/proofread/anything else an engineer might conceivably do than clean thoroughly in a dissociative trance, way easier, so much fucking easier

it takes a ton of emotional labor to deal with a job that people think of as worthless, something for stupid and lazy people, disgusting, shameful, etc. and even more emotional labor to deal with that while being a race already associated with a) the job and b) those traits, especially having the racialized burden of setting an example for your kid and not being a stereotype in a majority white neighborhood, regardless of whether you’re dealing with people - and at least you’d have to deal with a manager

once or twice a week a few hours at a time was all he had to work as an engineer doing far easier work

it’s substantially harder to get janitorial work as a Mexican-racialized person, because people think you’re ‘an illegal’, even as compared to other POC, who have very low rates of hiring and extremely high rates of turnover compared to their white colleagues in ‘unskilled’ jobs

regardless of race, no one is going to higher someone with a master’s/PhD to be a janitor, because they’re going to take one look at it and be like, what the fuck is going on, is this a trick

the whole setup is basically a way to write a racist stereotype and then be like ‘oh but not in a racist way, see, he’s smart!! :)’

[sjphotosphere]

(Should Your Child Become A Doctor?) [Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from a Northern California cardiologist who blogs about parenting and personal finance at DadsDollarsDebts.com. This is a great post that explores where medicine and parenting collide. We have no financial relationship. Enjoy!] Raising kids is tough but rewarding work. It is honestly the hardest thing I have done. Harder than being on call. Worse than telling a loved one that their family member has died unexpectedly. Definitely worse than dealing with my dislike of confrontation. [Wait, isn’t that the definition of parenting?-ed] Still it is the most rewarding thing I have ever done. Watching all of those synapses connect and all of the experimentation that goes on in my little ones head. It is quite incredible. As I am raising mini me my biggest thoughts are about how to not screw this up–how to raise a productive member of society instead of a serial killer. Parents and Kids DDD and Mini-DDD It seems that all of our interactions, starting at a very young age shape who we are. Parents are kids biggest influencers. From the time we are 1 day old, we are watching the actions of our parents, learning from their communication styles, and figuring out how important relationships work. We have to watch what we do and say in front of our kids, even when they can’t communicate. For example, Mrs. DDD and I have a pretty solid relationship. It is rare to get in a dispute, but like all relationships it happens occasionally. A few months back, we had a slightly heated conversation in front of our then 18 month old boy. He quickly changed his smiling face and started crying. It was obvious to Mrs. DDD and me that we had screwed up. We quickly changed our tune. That memory sticks in my head going forward every day. How quickly my son absorbed that feeling of conflict and emotionally reacted to it! Now I continue to try and be positive with him about all my daily interactions, including doctoring. Role Modeling Interactions and role modeling also are true for careers. When someone asks me why I became a doctor, I really don’t have a cool answer like “I wanted to help people” or “I really loved science”. Don’t get me wrong, I like helping people. This is a very rewarding job and there are days where I really feel like I have made a difference. There are days too, where I just feel like a customer service rep at your local chain store. With patient satisfaction forms and checkboxes that need to be clicked, it is hard not to get disheartened at times. So why did I become a doctor? Role modeling. My father is a physician and his grandfather was a physician before him. So I became a physician. I really never gave it any thought. It was just what I was going to do. It was expected. I assume that’s why firefighter and policeman families exist. One person does it and the rest follow suit. So I wonder if my kid will want to become a doctor, and if so should I dissuade him? This is a tough topic. When I poll my colleagues, most say they would not want their kids in medicine. We all understand how fortunate we are to be in a high paying job where we are actually helping people. For the most part we are all our own bosses (yes, even the employed physicians maintain some degree of autonomy). I am also in the camp that I hope my son does not choose a career in medicine. It seems sad to say so. I, however, will never tell him this and will try to model the positives in our fields. [Ha ha, wait until he reads this as PGY2!-ed] So how can I go forward and raise a kid who wants to do something else? Supporting Interests My plan is to be supportive of all of my kid’s interests and talents. I say interests AND talents because he may have interest and want to pursue basketball. If he is anything like me, he will lack the LeBron genes and talents. Sorry kid, you will have to go to college! As he grows and his interests change, we will support those too. Hopefully over time he will find what he is interested in and devote a lot of time to it (10,000 hours anyone?) Become talented. Make a living. This is much like the boy who built a nuclear reactor in high school, Taylor Wilson. I will try to not discourage any of his interests until he figures this out. Then if he wants to become a physician, I will support that too. If, however, he wants to become a rockstar, I am ready to buy an RV and travel around the county being his number one fan. Man I hope he becomes a rockstar. 5 Reasons I Do Not Want My Kid To Be a Doctor Emotional fatigue- As a cardiologist there are days when I am dealing with very sick and dying people. There are days people die unexpectedly. This is very trying on the soul and can lead to physician burnout. More importantly, it can lead to emotional fatigue so that when I get home, I do not have the energy to bring it for my wife and kid. I try my best to distance work from home, but some days I am just beat by the time I get home and am not as patient handling my toddler. Sacrifice- Burning his 20s in medical school and residency (minimum 7 years with some people doing up to 12 years). He will be missing out on potential earnings at that point and time with friends. Though residency was quite fun and most residents know how to party. As they say, work hard play hard! Bureaucracy- Medicine is an ever changing field where Congress, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and people with MBAs who have never touched a patient have more control over your practice then you do. Sunk cost fallacy- As I discussed previously, once he has committed 7 to 12 years of life towards a task, it is hard to leave it even if he hates it. [Especially if he owes $500K in student loans.-ed] So once in medicine it is likely he will stay in medicine until he retires. That makes me itch. I like movement, change, and entropy. Other careers may allow for more lateral or upward movement. For instance, leaving a $100K job for another $100K job in a different field is easy. Leaving a $300K job in medicine for a $150K job in tech is hard. Physical fatigue- There are a lot more physically taxing jobs like construction work. Still some of our colleagues, like Orthopedic surgeons, wear body lead for 8 hour surgeries. This takes a toll on the back and knees over time. Not to mention hazards such as radiation exposure, etc. The other side of this equation is that some “non-physician” jobs have you sit at a desk all day which is also harmful. Actually, my job requires me to sit in front of a computer all day. Darn electronic medical records! (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); 5 Reasons Why I Am Okay If My Kid Chooses Medicine Freedom to Choose- It’s his choice. If he wants to pursue medicine, without my pushing, then I am all for it. I will help him to my full abilities, though I may recommend a call-light field like dermatology or allergy. Service-oriented- He can help people. This is a job where every day I go in and know that I am helping at least 1 person. Really making a difference in their lives. That is pretty satisfying. Nice living- He will make a stable living and likely a good income. I think a career in medicine is quite stable with very rare occasions for unexpected job loss. Plus, it is a way to make over $100K and up to $1,000,000 depending on the chosen field. Will it be as lucrative in 26 years when Young DDD is ready to practice? Nobody knows, but I suspect it will still be in the upper middle class range. Great relationships- Training allows for meeting great friends. There is nothing as good for forming friendships as putting people through hardships. Medical school, residency, and fellowship all do that and the relationships built become quite strong. Some of my best friends are from these periods of my life and I am thankful for it. Job mobility- As a physician you can move practically anywhere, especially if you are a generalist. As a general cardiologist I can live in small town America or big city USA. It doesn’t matter. It may take some time to find the job I want in the area I want, but I can do it with patience and perseverance. There are not many jobs that can do that. Going forward we will see where life leads. It is so cool to watch him grow as I continue on my path to financial independence so hopefully by the time he is 10 and I am 45, I can leave work if I want and help him continue to grow into a good human being. What do you think? Would you want your kids in medicine? Why and why not? Comment below! !function()function e()var e=document.createElement("script"),n=document.getElementById("myFinance-widget-script"),a=t+"static/widget/myFinance.js";e.type="text/javascript",e.async=!0,e.src=a,n.parentNode.insertBefore(e,n);var c="myFinance-widget-css";if(!document.getElementById(c))var d=document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0],i=document.createElement("link");i.id=c,i.rel="stylesheet",i.type="text/css",i.href=t+"static/widget/myFinance.css",i.media="all",d.appendChild(i)var t="http://ift.tt/2oFUowK";document.attachEvent?document.attachEvent("onreadystatechange",function()"complete"===document.readyState&&e()):document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",e,!1)(); http://ift.tt/2qH1K3j

[ntrending]

How to deal with a boss who denies reality

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/how-to-deal-with-a-boss-who-denies-reality/

How to deal with a boss who denies reality

‘Tis the season for holiday parties at the office.

While they’re great for building workplace camaraderie and team spirit, when was the last time a colleague—perhaps fueled by too much alcohol—said something so ridiculous that it made your jaw drop? Perhaps a desk mate went into something political, claiming that George Bush is behind 9/11 or that Barack Obama is a Muslim from Kenya? Or maybe your boss voiced science denialism, arguing that the Earth is flat or the Apollo moon landing was faked?

Just as disconcerting as the conspiracy theorist in your midst is hearing a boss or colleague blatantly deny a business reality, such as evidence that a favored product flopped or a decision was absolutely the wrong one.

So what do you do when someone you work with—even the CEO of the company—tells you something that’s demonstrably false?

Dealing with truth denialism—in business, politics and other life areas—is one of my areas of research, and I recently published a book on the topic. Here are some tips to navigate that Christmas office party or one-on-one with a boss in denial.

It begins at the top

The worst-case scenario is when your chief executive is the one in denial.

A four-year study by LeadershipIQ.com, which provides online leadership seminars, interviewed 1,087 board members from 286 organizations of all sorts that forced out their chief executive officers. It found that almost one quarter of CEOs—23 percent—got fired for denying reality, meaning refusing to recognize negative facts about the organization’s performance.

Other research strongly suggests that the behaviors expressed by CEOs “are felt throughout the organization by impacting the norms that sanction or discourage member behavior and decision making, and the patterns of behavior and interaction among members.”

Together, these findings suggest that organizations where CEOs deny negative facts will have a culture of denying reality throughout the hierarchy. Of course, even when the boss lives in the real world, others in the organization may hold false beliefs.

Professionals at all levels can suffer from the tendency to deny uncomfortable facts in business settings. Scholars term this thinking error the ostrich effect, named after the (mythical) notion that ostriches stick their heads into the sand when they see threats.

Forget facts and logic

Our intuition is to confront colleagues suffering from the ostrich effect with the facts.

But research—and common sense, if the colleague is your supervisor—suggests that’s usually the wrong thing to do. That’s because when someone believes something we know to be false, some kind of emotional block is probably at play. A number of factors explain why this happens.

For example, research on confirmation bias shows that we tend to look for and interpret information in ways that conforms to our beliefs. So even if sales are far below expectations, a CEO might reject that information in projecting good financial forecasts on the belief that his actions should lead the company to do well.

In another example at a company where I consulted, a manager refused to acknowledge that a person hired directly by her was a bad fit, despite everyone else in the department telling me that the employee was holding back the team. The manager’s behavior likely resulted from what scholars term the sunk cost fallacy, a tendency to double down on past decisions even when an objective assessment shows the decision to be problematic.

In both cases, facing facts would cause the CEO or the manager to feel bad. We often prefer to stick our heads into the sand rather than acknowledge our fault because of our reluctance to experience negative emotions.

Research on a phenomenon called the backfire effect shows we tend to dig in our heels when we are presented with facts that cause us to feel bad about our identity, self-worth, worldview or group belonging. In some cases, presenting the facts actually backfires, causing people to develop a stronger attachment to incorrect beliefs. Moreover, we express anger at the person bringing us the message, a phenomenon researchers term “shoot the messenger.”

There are many other mental errors that inhibit business professionals from seeing reality clearly and making good decisions.

Modeling emotions and values

This isn’t to say that emotions are the problem. They are not.

Emotions are fundamentally important to the human experience, and we need both reason and emotion to make good decisions.

So rather than offering facts, your goal should be to show emotional leadership and try to figure out what are the emotional blocks inhibiting your colleague from seeing reality clearly. To do so, use curiosity and subtle questioning to figure out their values and goals and how they shape their perception of self-identity. And focus on deploying the emotional intelligence skill of empathy.

Unfortunately, despite extensive research about the importance of emotional intelligence in professional settings, too many organizations still fail to provide such training.

Building trust

Once you understand your colleague’s goals and values, try to show you share them.

Research shows doing so is crucial to conveying knowledge effectively in professional environments. Practice mirroring, or rephrasing in your own words the points made by the other person, which demonstrates you understand how they feel and helps build trust.

With a CEO, you might talk about how both of you share a desire for the executive to be a truly strong leader. Try to connect the traits and emotions identified by the CEO to specific examples of his behavior.

And regarding the manager with the problematic employee, I had a conversation about how she saw her current and potential future employees playing a role in the long-term future of the department she ran. I echoed her anxiety about the company’s financial performance and concerns about getting funding for future hires, which gave me an additional clue into why she might be protecting the incompetent employee.

Unclogging emotional blocks

After placing yourself on the same side, building up trust and establishing an emotional connection, move on to the problem at hand: their emotional block.

The key here is to show them, without arousing a defensive or aggressive response, how their current truth denialism undermines their own goals in the long term. It can help to cite a prominent example of a business leader accepting difficult facts to move forward, such as how former Ford CEO Alan Mulally helped save the company through repeated course corrections. Research shows that offering positive reinforcement, without condescension, can be effective with colleagues and bosses alike.

So when you’re at your next office party and encounter a truth-denying colleague, remember these tips and perhaps you won’t have to spend the evening with your face buried in your hands.

Gleb Tsipursky is an Assistant Professor of History of Behavioral Science at The Ohio State University. This article was originally featured on The Conversation.

Written By Gleb Tsipursky/The Conversation

[almondemotion]

The sunk-cost fallacy and moving jobs

The sunk-cost fallacy and moving jobs

Recently I was discussing with a colleague the merits of moving jobs.

Often, when I talk with people, and, it is almost universally those who work in hospitals, they express their dissatisfaction over their current jobs (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists, receptionists, etc) and consider whether it might be better somewhere else.

Everyone knows the maxim that people don’t leave bad…