Now see folks here’s what we call a McCon-essay, a — a McConaughe-rant, or what have you. Tu comprendo brother? This is just a way to be, a way to be your best self — me — I am your best self. Just believe me when I say that, amigo. But I know what you’re thinking though, aight — you’re thinking “How could Academy Award winning actor, Matthew McConaughey, the living embodiment of McConaissance AND the baby angel plus the alien emoji — have time, have actual time, and not to mention the d e d i c a t i o n for this kind of social enlightenment?” Now, see, there’s a darkness, right? But with all those kinds of dark there comes a light . . . ness.

A reservoir of truth has shot out of me and I shall not betray it, no sir, I am for the people, by the people, I will serve in all my mighty capacity to bring y’all to some good ol’ McConaughey state of livin’ no matter. Let me bring you to that J(ust) K(eep) L(ivin’) kind of goodness, hombre. I am me, but you can be me, too. You and I can both be me, together, in the holy light towards the sunsets of providence (not the city) onwards to the betterment of humanity, to the betterment of us, right on right on to the end goal of real true protruding happiness. I am my own hero in 10 years — so, let me be yours, too. I’ll show you the way, brother.

Alright, alright folks here are some much needed tips to be more like me.

Numero Uno: If you do not have a McConaug-drawl — as in part Texan, part mildly stringed-together Spanish, and part whatever the fuck you want — then what are ya really doing with yo life, brother?

Numero Two: Now, see, I am the epitome of the great Southern American Dream. I am tan enough to look ethnically ambiguous but I am white enough to not make white people uncomfortable. It’s a win-win hombre. So here’s my second Mcconaugh-tip to you — become white and get a tan, it’s just that easy folks.

Three: Now, what you might not know — might not synthesize when you first happen upon my great physique — and now I don’t blame you, no, no, I’m just saying, I’m just saying I wouldn’t blame you for not knowing that I am . . . actually . . . very . . . fun. I am funny, I am fun, you know what I’m saying brother? I’m a funny person. I make jokes, I know how to wield a joke so it creates laughter in the very deep pits of your stomach that’s so real, so intense, so hilarious, ha ha you know what I mean now, don’t you brother?

I’m funny.

Four: I read, you know homie? Like, read. I don’t read that 50 Shades shit, nah — I read like deep shit, you feel me? I read words on the pages, but they also read me, you know? They read me. You ever read Kafka? Kafka writing to Max Brod, ya feel me brother? Talking about death, tuberculosis, and shit. Awww yeah!! That’s the good stuff right there brother. The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann — life changing, man. Read that shit brother, read it.

Five: Now let me tell you a story: okay, okay, it’s the year twenty-oh-nine, you follow me? I’ve just finished the very successful Ghosts of Girlfriends Past with the wonderful Jennifer Garner — hey Jen — and I’m just pondering, you know, I’m feeling the feels, I’m doing the searching of my life, okay, of my l i f e. My wife Camila asks me: “Matthew, are you happy?” And I think to myself, “No, no I’m not.” Now, I couldn’t lie to myself if I wanted to, you know, it’s that good Southern upbringing — shout out to my mother and the great city of Houston — and I think: “What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?” And then it hits me — get your life fucking together, man. And so I do.

Now I’m Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey, chyeah, shit brother!

Six: I used to be a Hollywood joke, okay. There’s just no way around it, and I wanna be real with you, homie: I was a joke. Not just to Hollywood, but to myself, too. I didn’t take roles where I had to take my shirt off — no siree — I added that part right in brother. Did that all by myself, all for myself. But you’re going ask me why, Matthew? Why did you want to take your shirt off, Matthew? And I’ve just got three words for you hombre: I look good. Oof, yah, I look fucking good. And I still do, but that takes discipline, see. It’s true I don’t take my shirt off as much anymo’ — in Dallas Buyers Club nobody wanted to see me with my shirt off, I was n a s t y, fuck, but did you see Rustin Cohle in ‘95 — that hair, that ass — I ain’t gonna deny it — I looked good. So, look good too, I believe in you brother.

Numero Sept: I think on my feet all the time, alright — when I’m at award shows, which is a thing I do a lot, I just gotta think on my feet. I gotta be me, and think. Let me tell you a story, once I was at Buffalo, I wasn’t a buffalo, I was in Buffalo — the state — and I was with my son Levi . . . cute kid . . . we were just hiking up some pretty tall mountains when out of nowhere, and when I say “nowhere” I ain’t kidding — out of nowhere — this mountain goat just appears. Now Levi starts screaming, the goat’s huffing, I’m panicking, what do I do? This animal is looking at me dead on, like I’m one of him and he’s one of me and we’re just looking at each other like we’re carnal animals looking into the depths of each other’s souls, right? And I know what’s going on, I feel it, I know what he’s thinking and that’s when I decide that there’s just no two ways around it: so I throw my son Levi over the mountain and then I scream like a hyena and just jump the fuck right out of there.

So be like me; think on your feet.

Eight: Shit, son, you gotta have chill though. Nobody likes somebody with no chill, mkay? When you’re having a panic attack because, you know, you lost your job, or, or you realize that — that one day you’re going to die, or you’ve just watched Interstellar and you’re like why the fuck would Anne Hathaway wanna live on a planet on her own — think this: chill out homie. And you will. That’s a McConauguarantee.

Nine: Smoke weed, brother. Smoke that goddamn weed. There’s a reason why that shit was put on this beautiful, pristine earth we have here. Weed elucidates, it educates, it elevates — there’s a reason it’s called a high, homie — just think of that.

Ten: JKL. Just. Keep. Living. Don’t stop living, homies. Don’t do it — there will be times that the devil, and I mean metaphorically the devil, it could be you, you could be your own devil, ya feel me? You’re thinking I can’t live another day — no, I can’t do this: but you can. Live. Just keep living, hombre, don’t give up.

That’s it homies. Just some easy tips to live yo life with some McConaugh-ease. Try this shit out, and then thank me later brothers (and sisters, I don’t discriminate). Peace out from the McConau-crib.

Watch a dramatic reading of Matthew McConaughey’s tip-filled McConaughe-rant below!

The brownstone I lived in for eight months in 2009 and 2010 had few amenities — the building often smelled like leaking pipes, the carpets were threadbare in many places, and the steam heater in the corner was completely out of my control, resulting in quite a few freezing mornings and sweltering nights. It did, however, have a gas stove and oven which, the landlord had told me, was pretty new and “worked great.”

Unfortunately, everything else in the unit was electric, which meant that I’d need to set up separate utility accounts and pay for the gas every month just to run the stove and range.

“It’s like $10 to turn it on and then another $20-$30 per month depending on how much you use it,” she explained.

Yeah, I’m just not going to do that, then, I thought, doing the math in my head.

At that point, $30 was just a little bit less than my take-home after a day of making lattes, which is what I was doing every day that I wasn’t at my public radio internship. The rent on the apartment — which was the least expensive I could find in Seattle — was already going to cost well more than half of my monthly income. With student loan payments to top it off, I barely had living expenses to speak of, and the extra money I’d spend on the gas just didn’t seem worth it.

This wasn’t my first go-round with poverty: We grew up without much money, and I supported myself through college. But after graduation — when the student loan envelopes started showing up and I had to move out of my inexpensive college town to a city that actually had jobs — the situation was dire. But I knew how to handle it.

Every month, I’d scrutinize my budget, looking for things to trim or ways to increase my earnings.

I moonlit as a cocktail waitress. I considered selling plasma (again), but the bus ride to the clinic was too long to fit into my days. I didn’t have a car or health care (or a stove). I picked up odd jobs on Craigslist, receiving cash under the table for nights of cocktailing or working as a cater waiter. I visited food banks. I never bought clothing. I stopped shaving to save money on razors.

Eventually, I was able to get a slightly more lucrative job, began piling on freelance work, and basically never looked back.

I am very, very confident that I did everything in my power to provide myself the best life possible as a young adult, and that the choices I made were the correct choices. My life now would indicate that that’s the case. And still, without fail, when I tell someone or write about that time in my life, I’m met with a cascade of advice.

I am very, very confident that I did everything in my power to provide myself the best life possible as a young adult, and that the choices I made were the correct choices.

Well-meaning people who have never been poor are convinced that they know what I should have done. That subtle tweaks to my budget could somehow stretch my $9.50 per hour. I should have gotten a roommate. I should have lived somewhere cheaper. I should have found a better job.

Anyone who’s ever lived in poverty has probably had this experience.

In the U.S., we have become so accepting of the fact that poverty is not a symptom of a grossly unequal economy, or the result of numerous systemic failures, or the product of years of trickle-down economics, but instead, that the only thing standing between a poor person and the life of their dreams is their own decisions, their own choices, and their own failures.

This is why I would advise any person whose immediate reaction upon hearing about a friend, relative, or stranger on the Internet who is living in poverty is to offer unsolicited advice to hold their tongue (or fingers), at least long enough to consider what other forces contribute to poverty and how their “help” may actually be insulting, incorrect, and downright damaging.

In the U.S., we have become so accepting of the fact that poverty is not a symptom … but instead, that the only thing standing between a poor person and the life of their dreams is their own decisions, their own choices, and their own failures.

The Most Common Advice Doesn’t Add Up

The over-simplification of poverty is often apparent in the advice that gets disseminated by people who have money and companies who make money off of other people’s financial predicaments.

Earlier this year, an infographic circled around which underscored this fact. Created by a company called InvestmentZen, the infographic showed how to “build wealth on the minimum wage.”

Aside from the fact that it contained numerous logistical issues — it used the federal minimum wage, which isn’t accurate in most states, either because their wage is higher or lower due to tip-crediting — the graphic also seemed to be concerned about moralizing the decisions of poor people and less about actually helping anyone.

Advice from the graphic included “learning skills on YouTube,” only eating in-season produce, and remembering that “the best things in life are free.”

“You can make excuses, or you can do something about it,” the graphic chided. “It’s your choice to make.”

Twitter instantly took it to task; the response was so heated that it eventually led one of the men responsible for circulating to issue a retraction, calling many of the criticisms “fair.”

I suspect that the graphic was so easily mocked because the advice it selected was familiar. Despite the myriad systemic reasons that many people live in poverty, there are a handful of “tips” that well-meaning (most of the time) folks recycle with alarming regularity.

Despite the myriad systemic reasons that many people live in poverty, there are a handful of “tips” that well-meaning (most of the time) folks recycle with alarming regularity.

Move somewhere cheaper. Buy in bulk. Get rid of your car. Get a roommate. Eat out less.

These changes seem simple — if you just spent less money on groceries, you’d have more money! If you didn’t have a car, you could save hundreds on car insurance! — but they fail to take into account one crucial element of humanity and existence: The dollar amount of a thing doesn’t fully capture the value of it.

Most people who live in poverty are working jobs where their income is determined by how many hours they can spend on the job, which often don’t fall within typical commuting hours, and often run well over forty hours per week.

When you’re poor, your time — especially your free time — is extremely precious. And many of the prescribed tips for saving money cut into that free time, make it less enjoyable, or might even actively cost more money in the short term.

I’ve written before about the actual cost of moving — renting a truck, putting down a deposit, the financial hit of taking time off work to move — but recommending that someone relocate their entire life to save on rent also neglects to account for the real value of living in a place with a support system.

Whether it’s a family by birth or by choice, living near people you know offers a sense of responsibility and place — not to mention a couch to crash on if you get evicted and the potential for free childcare or other assistance.

Whether it’s a family by birth or by choice, living near people you know offers a sense of responsibility and place — not to mention a couch to crash on if you get evicted and the potential for free childcare or other assistance.

To illustrate this point, let’s use another common tip: giving up a car.

Access to transit is one of the single biggest investments that communities can make to help people get out of poverty. But overwhelmingly, transit systems are failing poor people. And for seniors or disabled people, taking the bus may be even more difficult if cities and transit authorities don’t accommodate for various mobility, vision, or hearing impairments.

Which means that the cost (both figurative and literal) of giving up a car might be steeper than keeping it. Which means that even if a person makes the choice to save money by riding the bus, the bus may not be there for them.

There’s also the issue of time and convenience, particularly if you live in a smaller city, which tend to have much spottier bus service.

We can look at it like this: Estimated cost of owning a car over a year: about $725 per month, according to AAA. That’s a lot, but compared to riding the bus (because let’s assume a person doesn’t have the upfront cash for a bike, a lock, and the gear they might need to commute in all weather), it’s not really.

Where I live, it costs about $5 per day to commute via bus, assuming I’m traveling inside the city and just going to work and back using a single method of transit. Multiply that by five days per week (though most people working minimum wage work more than that), and it’s about $100 per month. That’s still less than $725 — until you account for:

Two hours of commuting compared to thirty minutes of commuting (at $13/hour): $19.50/day in lost income, or $390 per month.

Cost of an extra hour of childcare to account for the commute time (at $13/hour, as well): $260 per month

The cost of using the bus for weekly grocery trips (which limit the choices a person has and reduces the ability to buy in bulk, another favorite piece of advice for people with means to give to poor people) and the occasional other appointment: about $50 per month.

Which equals $800 — and doesn’t take into account the fact that grocery shopping by bus is not ideal for someone with kids in tow. Additionally, taking the bus to get groceries makes it less likely that a person can comparison shop, visit multiple stores for ultimate savings, and purchase products that are less easy to carry, like fresh produce or bulk items.

You can also see from this example how interconnected so many of these pieces of advice are.

Get rid of your car” is a fine piece of advice in a vacuum, but when it’s coupled with “drive for Uber to make extra money,” you’ve now prescribed something that’s literally impossible. “Spend less on groceries” is fine on its own, but if you’re also recommending that someone switch to commuting by bike or bus and move to a less dense place with fewer food choices, you’ve now quadrupled the daily difficulty of their life.

And that has a real cost, even if it’s not tangible or numeric.

This, I think, is truly at the heart of the advice we tend to offer poor people: It implicitly says that we believe that they should be willing and able to exchange their own time on earth, comfort, happiness, and even physical health and safety just to scrape by.

Being Poor Is Really Expensive

The assumption that “simple advice” can dramatically change a person’s economic outlook assumes that a person’s poverty is solely the result of personal failings, rather than very real and costly systems of oppression, including legacy poverty, systemic racism, mass incarceration, punitive immigration policies, medical debt, and more.

Regardless of the personal choices a family might make to save money, there are some unavoidable costs that are baked into our financial and social systems.

Overdraft fees, late fees on missed bills, high-interest credit card fees, and payday lenders are just a few ways that poverty begets higher expenses. The average payday loan borrower — who is usually short just a few hundred dollars between paychecks — ends up paying more than 300% interest on their initial amount.

These companies make billions each year by offering people a necessary service that costs them an outrageously inflated price.

Banks also find ways to capitalize on people without money. Many checking accounts require that a person carry a minimum balance — and fine customers for every month that they don’t meet the requirement. And that’s assuming a person even uses a bank! An estimated 8% of Americans don’t use a bank, largely due to their low monthly income. As a result, they pay more money in fees at check cashing businesses or by using prepaid debit cards.

There are hundreds of small ways that being cash-poor can make it harder to save.

In addition to these fees and fines, a lack of funds in-hand can also mean paying more for services and products. Whether it’s putting charges on a credit card and paying interest or buying in smaller denominations (and thus paying more per unit), there are hundreds of small ways that being cash-poor can make it harder to save.

The Washington Post reported on a study on this subject:

When [researchers] compared households with similar consumption rates shopping at comparable stores — and controlling for two-ply TP — they found that the poor were less likely than wealthier households to buy bigger packages, or to time their purchases to take advantage of sales. By failing to do so, they paid about 5.9% more per sheet of toilet paper — a little less than what they saved by buying cheaper brands in the first place (8.8%).

Poor folks don’t buy single-use items because they never thought about buying in bulk — it’s often because they literally don’t have the money to do so, or don’t have a way to get bulk items home.

Our broken immigration system is also responsible for trapping new Americans (and their children) in low-income jobs, substandard housing, and legitimately dangerous transportation and work situations — all of which have a compounding effect on poverty.

Each year, immigrants pay billions into our tax coffers, only to get the short end of the economic stick.

New Americans are less likely to report wage theft, may experience housing discrimination, and of course, often have to pay massive sums of money to travel, bring relatives to the county, and send money back to their nation of origin.

And if you want to begin the process of obtaining citizenship? Expect to cough it up. Just becoming a US citizen can cost up to $900.

Mass incarceration also has a stark economic impact, specifically on the Black community — a population that already sees lower lifetime earnings and increased rates and instances of poverty.

Poor People Deserve To Taste Something Other Than Shame

One in four Black children born in the era of mass incarceration will have a parent who is incarcerated, which will limit that parent’s earning by an average of 40% over their lifetime. The cycle of incarceration is expensive at every single step — from the cost of arrests, legal fees, and fines, parole, and lost jobs and hours on the clock, evictions, and so much more — and effectively traps people in a feedback loop of poverty that’s nearly impossible to break.

Even those who aren’t themselves incarcerated pay for incarceration, though. The cost of visiting a spouse in prison (both in lost time and expenses), inflated commissary bills, prohibitively expensive phone bills, the cost of lost time due to traveling, court dates, and meetings, and legal fees make it impossible for some families to dig out.

Having poor parents also puts in motion a cycle of disadvantage (and not because poor people are just worse at raising their children). The vast majority of people who grow up poor stay poor for a variety of complex reasons — which means no amount of coupon-cutting or Costco shopping can dig some families out of poverty, and to suggest otherwise is just disrespectful.

Personal Choices Don’t Fix a Broken System

The InvestmentZen infographic was roundly mocked because it was a symptom of a larger problem, which is that people with means love to give advice to poor people. This serves two distinct purposes:

1. It makes people with means feel better about their means because they feel like they have wealth as a direct result of their own effort — and not systems and structures that helped them along the way; and
2. It makes people with means feel better about those systems, rather than being forced to confront them or work to dismantle them.

When the infographic said that a person “can’t earn minimum wage and live in an expensive city and be wealthy,” they weren’t telling a lie — but they were accepting implicitly that it’s okay for people who work full-time to live in poverty if they live in large cities.

Imagine if everyone took that advice — if every person working minimum wage up and fled all of the major cities to go live and work in smaller markets with less expensive rent. Cities literally could not function.

Despite the commonly held belief that only teens should or do work for the minimum wage, the fact of the matter is that millions of Americans of all ages, a/genders, and educational levels support their families on hourly low-wage jobs. That includes seniors, disabled people, and women of color.

Millions of Americans of all ages, a/genders, and educational levels support their families on hourly low-wage jobs. That includes seniors, disabled people, and women of color.

The answer, then, is not that poor people live differently, but instead, that we create a society and an economy where people who work full time can live in the community where they work.

No amount of cutting back on luxury spending or driving extra hours for Uber can change the fact that there is literally nowhere in the country where a minimum wage job can support a family, that good union jobs have been in decline for decades, or that housing costs have priced people out of their homes. Cutting coupons, commuting by bike, and enjoying outdoor activities can’t really fix that.

So, instead of telling poor people what they should do to work around a system that’s leaving more and more people behind every year, we need to consider how the system can bend and change to better fit the needs of all people.

Bad Advice On Acting Rude To Bigots And Racists

Welcome to our latest Bad Advice column! Stay tuned every Tuesday for more terrible guidance based on actual letters.

By The Bad Advisor

“I recently called a friend to see whether her college-age daughter, ‘Tiffany,’ could baby-sit for my 1 1/2-year-old granddaughter from 6 to 8 p.m. on a Saturday so I could attend a reception at a local club. I didn’t hear back at first, but three days before the event, I finally talked with Tiffany, and she said that she would be available. We discussed exact times, and I asked what she would charge. She didn’t have a set rate but thought $10 per hour would be fine. Having not paid a baby sitter for many years (I’m a new grandmother), I said that I thought the rate should be $5 per hour but that I would check with my daughter to see what she pays. My daughter confirmed that the average rate today is between $10 and $15 an hour. Thus, I planned to pay the $10 per hour (and thought I would probably give a tip, too), but I did not have a chance to call the sitter back until the morning of the event.

Her mother answered the phone and said that other plans had come up for her daughter, and the mother had told her to go with the ‘other plans’ because I had not gotten back to her on the rate. I was hurt and in total shock, not only because our families are very good friends but also because I did not think that the rate was a deciding factor. My husband is in an assisted living facility, and I spend a great deal of time with him, which ties up most of my days, which they knew. The mother is forever telling me to take time off and have some time to myself, which I thought that I was doing.

My questions to you are: Who is wrong? Should I feel hurt? Was I wrong to not get back to her until the morning of the event about the rate? I was disappointed and hurt that the mother had not advised her daughter to call me, because she is forever saying that she tries to teach her children how to be responsible. I feel that I was let down and can no longer trust this family.”

—From “Heartbroken and Hurt Grandmother” via “Annie’s Mailbox,” Creators.com, 13 July 2017

Dear Heartbroken and Hurt Grandmother,

There’s so much going on here! First there’s this young woman’s bizarre prioritizing of her own social calendar over that of her mom’s friend, then there’s her reluctance to agree to work for literally any rate of pay, plus her failure to wait by the phone for your summons — not to mention the fact that the woman seemed so cavalier about your needs that she failed to telephone you multiple times to ask how she could be of service.

To answer your questions: This young woman is wrong, but more than that, her entire family is wrong and to be frank, everything you ever thought you knew about this clan is wrong. This woman’s behavior has exposed the depravity of every member of this detestable group, none of whom have a reliable bone in their genetically deceitful bodies. Should you feel hurt? Absolutely.

This woman’s behavior has exposed the depravity of every member of this detestable group.

This woman’s belief that you were not in need of her services was based on fragile evidence indeed. Incredibly, this Janus-faced schemer assumed that you were not interested in hiring her only because you dropped off the face of the earth following her request to receive a reasonable rate for work! The only logical conclusion is that her decision not to clear her schedule in perpetuity for the chance to make twenty dollars was a personal slight against you directly.

You did nothing wrong in calling this duplicitous harridan to engage her services mere hours in advance; she is the one who failed to make herself available at your beck and call despite the fact that she is the only babysitter on earth and you the only person in need of her services, and so the need for her immediate availability should have been obvious to all involved. Sadly, it was not, and you should take these scheduling shenanigans in the spirit they were shenanigan’d: as a direct personal slight against you, a reliable and dependable person.

“I don’t appreciate it when you call people ‘bigoted’ or ‘prejudiced.’

I expect more respectful language from you.”

— From “Upset” via “Ask Amy,” Washington Post, 24 June 2017

Dear Upset,

It is the height of disrespect to use words to describe things, and no apology can adequately repair the damage these terms cause to the delicate and important feelings of people who believe others are subhuman piles of garbage bones who should be oppressed and abused on both an interpersonal and systemic level because they failed to have the good sense to be born white, heterosexual, cisgender, English-speaking, able-bodied, male, and American, like all the strong and great members of a master race whose very existence is threatened by the use of adjectives.

Bad Advice On Family Bigots And Ivy League Jerks

“I work in a solo physician’s office — doctor and 12 employees. We have all worked for him a long time and our office is casual, informal, and friendly. We (the staff) are all friendly outside of work as well. The doctor is quite outgoing and friendly, and his wife is more reserved and quiet (though nice enough when you get to know her, but none of us know her very well).

The doctor had us (staff and spouses) over to a casual dinner at his home. During this dinner, I was in the dining room with the boss’s wife and several of my coworkers, including one I’ll call Jane, who is a young woman in her early 20s. The doctor was in the kitchen with the other half of the guests.

In the course of the conversation, the concept of online dating / Tinder came up. Several of us (including the boss’s wife) were curious — we’ve heard of Tinder, but we’re not in the dating scene — how does it work? So Jane pulled out her phone and demonstrated the app — what you see of someone’s profile, how you swipe, etc. As she swiped, she pulled up a young man who was of Chinese descent and said, ‘I’d never go out with him. He’s a f****** (racial slur).’

Boss’s wife instantly turned frosty and said firmly and directly, ‘I’m sorry, but that kind of language is completely unacceptable in my house. Completely. We don’t talk like that about people under my roof.’ Jane seemed kind of taken aback and mumbled what seemed to me a half-hearted apology. Boss’s wife then redirected the conversation to a different topic and we all followed suit, but she was noticeably chilly towards Jane the rest of the evening. Later on, boss’s wife said quietly to me, ‘It is a good thing I don’t work in the office, because Jane is not winning any points with me.’ I could tell she was still steamed.

I am quite sure that she told her husband, but knowing my boss, he’s not the kind to say anything to anybody. Boss’s wife has come into the office a few times (which is standard; sometimes she’ll pick up and drop off something for her husband) and she is always appropriately professionally cordial to all of us, but still a little cool to Jane. Nothing you could really call her on, but she greets Jane more perfunctorily and is a little warmer towards the rest of us.

Should I say something to the doctor that his wife is being cool to an employee (though to be honest, she has limited contact with us)? Should I urge the doctor to address the office generally about inappropriate racial slurs and remind the entire office that it’s not acceptable? Should I say something to the wife that I’ve noticed that she’s being cool? Should I say something to Jane that she might be well served by apologizing again to the wife for her inappropriate behavior? Or should I just keep my nose out of it?”

— Via “Ask A Manager,” 1 June 2017

Dear Reader,

With today’s “PC” culture, it can be so hard to know what action to take when someone is not being unfailingly kind to your local workplace racist in a manner that has absolutely nothing to do with you or your work whatsoever. Everybody makes mistakes, but sooner or later, the boss’s wife’s unfriendly treatment of this racist is going to catch up to her, and only you can save her from the inevitable consequences, such as continuing to not be super warm to this racist.

For the sake of everyone involved, let her know that you’ve picked up on the fact that she seems not to be enthusiastic about building a long-term friendship with her husband’s racist employee; that way she’ll know that you know that she is not 100000% wild about being extra nice to a racist. That’ll go a long way toward the boss’s opinion of you, his office’s lone protector of the fragile social standing of racists.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/bad-advice-on-vengeful-wedding-debauchery-60390df55495/ Tue, 13 Dec 2016 17:44:57 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=6259 Read more]]> Welcome to our latest Bad Advice column! Stay tuned every Tuesday for more terrible guidance based on actual letters.

“I married my husband seven years ago.

A close girlfriend of mine was one of my bridesmaids. She got ridiculously drunk at my wedding. She ran around the dance floor like an idiot. She hit on one of my husband’s married friends in front of his wife. She threw up in the bathroom, and one of my aunts had to take her car keys away.

It makes me sick to watch my wedding video because she is everywhere, acting like an idiot. Now she is engaged and planning her wedding, and I feel like I should get stupid-wasted (or act stupid-wasted) at her wedding so she can feel all the hell she put me through.

My husband is not interested in going to her wedding because of her actions at our wedding. He wants to RSVP that we will not be attending and send a card with money, but if I am going to give her a card with money, then I should go to the reception and act like an a — .

What are your thoughts?”

-From “Disturbed” via Ask Amy, Washington Post, 24 November 2016

Dear Disturbed,

It seems a real waste to hold on to a seven-year grudge about someone else’s decision to make themselves look like a complete tool for nothing. Here you have saved up all of this non-refundable ire toward someone you call a “friend,” building anniversary after anniversary of anger, and for what? Simply to let go the chicanery of yore in favor of freeing yourself from a lifetime of resentment based on a few hours’ worth of bad dancing and failed passes to which you have tied the very ruination of your marital memories? Phooey!

We are all the exact same people we were seven years ago; no one has changed or matured in that time, and the memory of your friend’s performance at your wedding is as fresh in everyone else’s mind as it is in yours, which is why your plan to act like a publicly drunken clod as retribution for one evening of poor decision-making is positively foolproof. Everyone at your friend’s wedding will completely understand that the topless woman throwing champagne glasses at the DJ is simply out for bald revenge, as any reasonable person would be, and not really throwing champagne glasses at the DJ, a thing only unreasonable people would really do, and not just ironically do, as you shall.

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We are all the exact same people we were seven years ago.
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Your brilliant plan will be appreciated by all the guests. They will greatly enjoy the patient explanations you will give to all of them for your behavior, lest they think you’re an actual drunk asshole instead of a sober asshole pretending to be a drunken asshole. Everyone will think you charming and cool and see this decision as a very positive reflection on your excellent character, which they will understand to be superior to the bride’s based on your elaborate act of retaliatory subterfuge, a totally chill and normal thing to do.

“We rarely get a response from grandchildren to whom we send carefully selected gifts. I have concluded that it is mostly due to a pathetic lack of manners.

Children need to be trained to express appreciation for what is given to them, and the irony is that emailing is so quick and easy. The pervasive disappearance of even the most basic manners and consideration for others is cheapening our quality of life and sadly breeding some low-class citizens. Good manners are nothing more than the oil that lubricates human interaction.”

-From “Disgusted in Florida” via “Annie’s Mailbox,” 10 December 2016

Dear Disgusted,

Your awful shitbag grandchildren are the fucking worst. They’re ungrateful assholes who actively choose, day after day, not to teach themselves the basic blasted manners their grandparents want them to have. If they weren’t such low-life scumbags, they’d go right the fuck out and buy a goddamned copy of some Emily Post shit and read the fuck up about how to thank the hell out of their gracious and thoughtful grandparents, who have the nicest manners of any people who ever lived, and definitely nicer manners than the assball progeny of your own children, for whose manner-teaching abilities you bear no responsibility whatsoever.

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Your awful shitbag grandchildren are the fucking worst.
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“My live-in boyfriend has not exactly proposed, but he has been dropping hints about ‘looking at rings,’ etc. So I was surprised when I came home with a few things from a bridal expo and he shouted that I was ‘rushing’ him into marriage. Now I’m considering ending it. Thoughts?”

-From “Wannabe Bride” via “Ask E. Jean,” Elle, 9 December 2016

Dear Wannabe Bride,

Thoughts, indeed, are all one can have in this situation, wherein two people may or may not be willing to marry each other and may or may not be on the same romantic timeline and may or may not be ready to obtain wedding-related purchases in the service of the marriage-slash-wedding they are thinking (maybe) about.

The last thing one wants to do when one is considering hitching up one’s legal, financial, and emotional well-being to another human for the rest of one’s life is to have a frank and honest conversation about what the future holds. Instead, potential spouses must engage (before they are engaged) in the delicate art of hint-dropping, mind-reading, and yelling about coupons for buy one, get-one-free wedding DJ services. Only this way can romance — the classical experience of hoping and assuming your intended feels anything like the way you do, or the way you think they do — truly flourish.

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Potential spouses must engage in the delicate art of hint-dropping.
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No one wants to feed friends and family the unsavory story that mutual agreement and loving consent preceded their nuptials. Imagine, years down the road, the embarrassment of telling one’s children that Mummy and Duds were once young, in love, and capable of discussing their feelings with one another. No, the best you can do, Wannabe Bride, is simply continue to want — or, of course, end the relationship, which is the universe’s only other alternative to desiring to grow old and die with the dude.

I grew up against the sprawling backdrop of the cornfields, in a college town 75 miles west of Chicago. Despite my physical disability, my father made sure that I had a normal childhood — the kind that feels like the perfect home movie when you look back years later as an adult. We chased lightning bugs in the summer and sledded down snow hills in the winter.

Life was simple.

And then my father was diagnosed with sinus cancer and died by suicide about a month after finishing treatment. After that, things weren’t so simple anymore.

People talk about all the things that happened before the suicide . . . what led to it, the warning signs, etc. But what about what happens after? The devastation. The people who are left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of a life they thought they knew. A life they know, down to the very core of their being, will never be the same. Ever again.

How are we supposed to cope? How can survivors even begin to make sense of all the pain and confusion? That gnawing, sinking feeling in your heart? It just won’t go away. Where’s the instruction manual for navigating this dark, unfriendly terrain?

My father’s death wasn’t pretty. His death was ugly, the kind of ugly that makes you just want to run away. It’s the kind of ugly so dark and unimaginable, you never see it coming. The kind that can make you feel like you’ll be lost forever in a sea of grief. It renders you powerless as its tide pulls you out farther and farther, and you begin to wonder if you’ll ever make it back alive.

How are we supposed to cope? How can survivors even begin to make sense of all the pain and confusion? That gnawing, sinking feeling in your heart?
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There were no final days spent sitting by his bedside, where we all were able to say everything we wanted to say to each other. There was no comforting hospice care. Those loose ends left dangling at the end of every life? They weren’t neatly tied up in a pretty box with a bow on top; in fact, many of those loose ends are still dangling more than a decade later, whipping around wildly in the air.

He got to say all his goodbyes in a letter he left us. We didn’t. He got his “closure.” We didn’t. Instead, he left us with open, gaping wounds. People say that with suicide, a letter is helpful. They say that the survivors who get one are lucky, as not everyone leaves their words behind. But my father’s letter just painted a confusing portrait of a man who, it turns out, I didn’t even know — a portrait of a man who wasn’t my father.

His letter left me with more questions than answers, in the end.

More consuming than even my father’s actual death, I’ve come to realize, is processing the way he died. No one wants to feel like their loved one would rather leave than stay; it’s the ultimate heartbreak, the kind that bears down on your shoulders, leaving you unable to breathe. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, he wasn’t supposed to die like that. The superhero doesn’t give up halfway through the movie — he gets up and keeps fighting. Our story, at least the chapters with him, were not supposed to end this way.

Since my father’s death, some friends and family haven’t talked much about him. It’s either because they don’t know what to say, don’t want to upset us, or, perhaps, it’s just too painful for them. But this denial, their failure to speak of him, is something I struggle to accept. How can someone be such an important part of your life and then just vanish from it? People act like my father never existed at all. Sometimes I just want to scream, “CAN’T YOU SEE IT?? HE’S STILL HERE!”

And he is here — in everything I do, in all my little quirks that remind me of him, in my red hair that he passed down to me.

More consuming than even my father’s actual death, I’ve come to realize, is processing the way he died.
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Memories are my way of keeping my father alive. They make the past feel within reach again, a necessary comfort when you feel like your life now and your life with your loved one are two completely separate existences.

The word “suicide” is like a black hole of sorts. It’s expansive, never-ending, and dark; no matter how much you talk about it, there’s always more to say. Always. I wish I could say that I know no one can relate, but unfortunately, I know far too many of you can. Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the United States. We are, in fact, in the middle of an epidemic, with suicide rates at a 30-year high.

So I know that many of you are grappling with what to say, trying to find the words to comfort a family member, a friend — possibly even yourself. It’s been 13 years since my father’s suicide, and I still fumble, every single day, to find the right words. So today, I will write them. Not just for my father. But for me and for you — and for the millions who live with the effect of suicide every day.

Suicide changes you forever.

The idea that a loved one died so unexpectedly and so violently shakes you to the very core of your being, and as much as you may wish to deny it, you’ll never be the same person ever again. I never really understood this until I grieved my father. Slowly, however, I realized that not only was I grieving my father’s death, but I was also grieving the loss of my “old life.”

I think, in the end, the real journey I’m on is learning to say goodbye to my old life, not just learning how to say goodbye to my father. It’s important to remember that sometimes, I — you, we — need to try saying hello to our new lives, if just to see how it feels.

And please, please continue to talk about your loved one. Whether you’re angry or sad or reminiscing about happier times, it’s important to keep your loved one with you. Keeping quiet is akin to letting the suicide win. Don’t let it. You owe it to your loved one — and most importantly, you owe it to yourself.

For the group of us who knows so intimately that life will never be the same, my heart is with you.

I t’s going to be a great year, but your house looks horrible. It’s time to change your lifestyle habits by decluttering! You know what was cluttered? The trenches in World War I. Do you want your house to look like that? I didn’t think so.

My suggestions will help you to transform your home into a tidy space of good luck, well-being, and hashtag gratitude so you can be hashtag blessed. If you don’t throw out at least 20 jumbo trash bags by the end of this process, I have nothing to say to your materialistic ass.

Erroneous conventional approaches have failed you in the past, which is why you’re surrounded by everyday objects that do not spark joy — like your alarm clock and toilet. It’s time for a new take on organizing.

You’re welcome.

Your Porch

Start at the threshold to your home, a space of tranquil tranquility. (If you don’t have a porch, you have obviously not made the right kinds of life decisions.) Porch swings take up a lot of space with their swinging-back-and-forth-ness. Take yours down and hack it up into firewood. If your newspaper has been delivered, throw it away.

Your Backyard

Your garden is the most cluttering feature of your backyard. Examine your plants and cut away any space-hogging flowers. Get rid of leafy greens, which are bloated beyond belief. Is your garden overrun by ladybugs? If so, gather them up and toss them over the fence into your neighbor’s yard.

Your Living Room

This is your social space, so you want it to say: I have control over my home and, by extension, my shaky but alcohol-regulated mental health. Consider swapping out your sofa for a smaller park bench. If you have a fish tank, pour out the water. Water is cluttering. Throw away family photos, especially of anyone who is dead.

Your Bookshelves

Most people’s bookshelves hold countless books that they have not read. Make a pile of these books on your front lawn, and then douse them in gasoline and light them on fire. You’ll find this cleansing in a medieval sort of way.

Your Children (If Relevant)

Children are untidy. Relocate them.

Your Kitchen Cupboards

Ask yourself: do you ever really cook? If not, toss out all your pots and pans and resolve to live on Pad Thai takeout until you die.

Your Freezer

Is your freezer starting to look like Jeffrey Dahmer’s? Time to tidy those frozen peas. Take out that Jolly Green Giant bag, pour the peas onto your kitchen counter, and examine each one carefully, asking yourself: Do I need this particular pea in my life? If not, press it into your ear canal.

Why Should You Become An Establishment Member For $5 A Month?

Your Dining Room

Your dining room is where you host your friends and people you don’t particularly like but are obligated, for professional reasons, to have over. Don’t embarrass yourself with your shameful materialism. Do you have more dishes than you need? Throw them into your fireplace in dramatic fashion and leave them for your invisible maid to clean up.

Your Bedroom

You want your bedroom to be a place of peace and calm — a retreat from the stresses of the outside world, like your boss and ISIS. Pick up each object in this room, and if you do not spontaneously climax while holding it in your hand, throw it out the window.

Your Closet

This is probably the most disorganized space in your disgusting home. Imagine that your house is burning down, and you only have three minutes to save the clothing that is most important to you. Stay focused: you can’t save your family or your cat named Cappuccino. You can only save a few select blouses and perhaps a sensible pair of pumps.

Your Spouse (If Relevant)

Take a long, hard look at him or her and ask yourself: Does this person warrant the space (s)he takes up? Trial separation is the ultimate way to tidy.

Your Home Office

Your office’s clutter culprit is your desk, which is no doubt littered with vile traces of labor. You need a storage solution. Pack up all of your papers and files, drive them to the nearest nature reserve, and dump them in a pristine waterway.

Your Bathroom

Your bathroom is filled with things you don’t need, including soap and your toothbrush. Throw over personal hygiene in favor of a streamlined space. You may offend people with your stench, but then they won’t come over and clutter up your home, so two birds, right?

It’s almost here. It happens every year. And every year it catches me off guard: “New Year, New You!” season . . . more commonly known as the first week of January.

Henceforth known as NYNY season, this not-so-magical time is marked by an onslaught of shaming headlines like:

Discover the Shortcut to Making More Money This Year!
25 Quick Ways To Improve Your Marriage!
Vow To Stick With The Gym!
Five Ways To Get Organized This Year!
Three Things You Should Do Every Day!
How To Finally Lose Those Pesky 10 lbs!
10 Ways To Improve Your Sex Life!
How Yoga Can Help You Finally Achieve Your Goals!
100 Ways To Improve Your Time Management!

Well, this year I’m using the underlying sentiment for good and doing things differently. In short, I have three words for the impending barrage of how-to’s and must-do’s: Fuck That Noise.

Over the past several years, three groups in particular have provided a valuable antidote to the surface-scratching, counter-productive, clickbait listicle genre that defines the dawn of every new year. Those groups? My pragmatic friends with chronic conditions, body acceptance activists, and comics.

I have three words for the impending barrage of how-to’s and must-do’s: Fuck That Noise.
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Thanks to these superior gurus, I am now into the idea of meeting yourself where you are + not having to necessarily LOVE yourself when you’re only at the like or fine with or pretty accepting overall stage + laughing and groaning at the things a lot of us do to sabotage ourselves.

All of these things drastically lessen the self-blame that fuels the NYNY season. And all have helped me fully embrace the fuck that noise sentiment.

On Meeting Yourself Where You Are

We wouldn’t expect someone who just bought their first pair of running shoes to enter a marathon next week; why do we expect to master everything we test out or take on the moment we begin? Meeting yourself where you are is deemed excuse-making in NYNY land, where you can’t ever make adjustments, have setbacks, or measure by sliding scale. Which is, of course, the very reason why so few people stick to new year advice.

My friends suffering from chronic conditions have taught me, thankfully, that I shouldn’t hold myself to impossible expectations — and giving myself a break has become the best anxiety-management strategy I’ve found so far.

“Have you eaten today?” is a question a group of my close girl friends and I drop on each other as a loving check-in. Most of us have anxiety or a condition with anxiety-related manifestations, like the “nervous stomach” that clenches and keeps you from feeling hungry. Because we work from home, we don’t have the reminder to eat that happens at location-centric jobs where you would naturally see co-workers getting up and/or leaving for lunch. So we forget to eat and then crash midday, or have even more trouble focusing than usual.

My friend Amadi Aec Lovelace has perfected the loving, no pressure, self-care/health reminder:

It’s a busy day for many. Time for a #SelfCare check. Have you eaten? Hydrated? Medicated? Need a break? #TakeCareOfYouFirst

???@amaditalks

Thanks to my perfection-required upbringing, I’d prefer to be the kind of person who’s mastered #adulting and doesn’t need friendly check-ins, behavior modification strategies, or reminders to tend my basic needs. But considering that I am learning how to source symptoms, whether or not the current treatment options are helping, and how to coordinate care with multiple doctors — and that I’m also coming out of the most stressful year of my life — I also know that I should take the help and work on getting OK with that.

What I’ve learned, basically, is that I have to meet myself where I am — and that place happens to be very early on in the diagnostic/treatment cycle for a bevy of life-long conditions.

On Being Just OK With Yourself

“We’ve got to help people survive before we can expect them to thrive.”

When I read those words from Melissa A. Fabello earlier this year, it was the start of a revelation. She was writing about a shift for the “body positive” movement, one that could create “an in-between stage for the folks who look at body love and feel daunted by the seemingly insurmountable task.” She called it “body neutrality.” Demanding that people love their bodies sounded unrealistic, “an unfair expectation.”

The parallel for those of us who are dealing with chronic illness or undiagnosed conditions, or who are recovering from abuse/assault — many of us for the first time thanks to finally having comprehensive health care — was striking for me. I can’t expect to love myself every day. I can’t expect anything from myself every day. But finding a way to be OK with myself sounded achievable and anxiety-relieving and a great way to reduce the paralyzing self-blame that I’ve struggled with for almost three decades.

Suddenly, I had a self-talk that allowed me to celebrate something like putting on real clothes and getting to the post office or grocery store. I started giving myself awards for what I allowed our culture to tell me were “the basics” — things any adult should be able to handle. When I forget to do this, I pull up Anna Borges’s list, “19 Small Awards Anyone With Anxiety Deserves To Receive: Some days, you deserve a medal for getting out of bed” and award myself for doing that instead of giving up or checking out.

Fabello’s suggestion may seem narrowly-aimed, but actually hits a very broad target; her hope for creating this “in-between stage” or “base camp” works with nearly any word/issue you swap for “body”:

“And maybe if we propose this to people — if we give them the option to inch toward body love, rather than implying that the only way there is a catapult — they’ll (more comfortably, daringly, courageously!) feel empowered to leave their body hate behind.”

I’m here for it . . . and I’m totally waiting for you at base camp should you want to join me.

On Laughing At Life’s Woes

We are all masters of screwing things up beyond repair — it’s how the colloquialism “you’re only human” came about. The best way I’ve found to date for accepting my failures big and small is to laugh at them, so it’s no surprise that therapy through comedy has been my go-to strategy since I was a kid. Laughing at myself and others constantly gives me perspective and anxiety relief.

The most all-encompassing — and refreshingly cringe-free — source for laughing at life on my current reading/watching list is Josh Gondelman and Joe Berkowitz’s new book You Blew It: An Awkward Look at the Many Ways in Which You’ve Already Ruined Your Life. Because advice books are impossible to write without sounding like a pompous jerk bag, and sincere jerkiness is inherently unfunny and unapproachable, Gondelman and Berkowitz instead tell you how to best and most efficiently wreak havoc on your life.

We are all masters of screwing things up beyond repair.
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Considering I was starting to write the #ItsTotallyMe dating series as I opened You Blew It, it’s little wonder that the “Love and/or Sex” section hit me with full force. Frankly, they had me at the opening line: “It would be nice if you could bypass dating entirely.” Throughout the book, moments like that attributed what I thought were my off-putting idiosyncrasies to the Human Condition, and created a lot of relief laughter.

Amidst all the venting and self-deprecation, the book also delivers some very good life philosophy that’s a perfect combination of 1/ obvious observations we all miss and 2/ silliness.

For example, the authors ask, why do we treat dating so much differently than a burgeoning friendship?

“Remember making friends? It’s what we did when we were frightened children who hadn’t met other people yet. Try more of that . . . [A date is] less about impressing the other person with qualifications and secret clerical superpowers than it is about determining compatibility. It’s a night out. Have some good old-fashioned fun with your new friend.”

Right. Yes. The juxtaposition of admitting dating sucks and that it’s supposed to be fun had me all in.

By the time I finished “Relationships: The Champagne of Compromises,” the 40-page dating section conclusion, I physically felt better about the #adulting activity that has been my biggest source of self-blame and feelings of failure over the past 20 years. Laughing is mad powerful, y’all.

Gondelman and Berkowitz take on your family, your roommate, your boss, your co-workers, and the people you have to deal with when you leave your house: the general public. They also take you on in a way that makes your flaws digestible and, at times, borderline charming. And while I realize their style is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea (though I’m not sure I want to be friends with those people), sailing through a cathartic breakdown of all the major parts of life reminded me to incorporate humor into my day every day.

Laughing at life may not prevent you from crying at life, but it will feel damn good, and it’s something you can do both on your own and with others. The possibilities are endless.

Mark the end of the year in whatever way is satisfying to you — saying thanks or wishing it good riddance.

If you’re a resolution person, make the resolution most on your mind rather than the one that seems popular in listicles or Facebook groups. Tell New Year New You season to take a flying leap. Buy a guilty pleasure novel and put down the “self-help” book your mom proudly and expectantly put under the tree for you. Take up knitting instead of jogging if what you actually need is an excuse to relax.

In short: you do you instead of listening to others try to fix you.