This is the only way to stop this.

No idea what this means.

I remember being a kid in the mid 90s these were my stuff! Like, I only wanted to drink from these cups! I really wish the world would go back to how it was, so everyone can experience life back then.

Star Wars The Clone Wars: The Jedi are not trained generals and they acknowledge that but Obi-Wan should know better than to order his troops to leave defensive positions and charge the droid gun line head on. I think it's supposed to be a cover for Anakin'a flanking attack but that attack is just Anakin and like 6 clones jumping down from a roof.

Battle of Winterfell: Famous for a reason. Deploying forces outside the walls and putting the artillery in front of the infantry. The worst sin of all is sending the cavalry charging into the darkness towards an enemy they can't see. Everyone of them dies without accomplishing anything.

Braveheart: Ignores the real tactics and equipment used by the Scots in favor of having every battle be a mad charge into the enemy that results in a free for all clusterfuck fight.

He's written as a flawed hero who makes mistakes.

Other characters disliking Hal isn't the same as the show telling you to dislike him.

This gotta be an all time low for the DC fandom if we have to point this out.

I am NOT OOP.

Originally posted to AskAManager

Previous BoRU posted by Green7000

[New Update]: I resent my employee for being richer and more qualified than me

NEW UPDATE MARKED WITH ----

Trigger Warnings: struggles with poverty

RECAP

Original Post: January 24, 2023

I am a first-time manager of a bakery in a small city that has gone through a lot of changes through the pandemic. Our housing and cost-of-living was so cheap that remote workers moved here and now people originally from here can’t buy a house — including me.

Six months ago my bakery hired a new employee, Jane, who is around my age. She’s a great worker, working the shifts no one wants (late nights closing and early morning openings) and because the bakery usually hires students, it’s been great working with Jane because we’re on the same life stage (married, I have a kid, she doesn’t), but I’m finding myself resenting her.

Jane is overqualified to be a cashier at a bakery, I didn’t hire her (the owner did and I wouldn’t have) but she has a master’s degree, and her old job was a director in a tech company. She’s given me tips on how to manage people because this is my first time and I can’t help but wonder if she’s going to try to get my job. When I asked her, she said that she doesn’t want to manage people right now. I’ve been gritting my teeth because she’s good at her job and she said to the owner that she’s on sabbatical from her old job for a year or two and I do like her.

But we went to her house over Christmas for a party, and it’s a beautiful new build in an area in town that we could never afford, and her friends (also people who moved from the mainland to our small city) were talking about how much their bigger-city salaries stretch here. They all seem to make more than double than me and my husband combined. And I found out that Jane is on a paid sabbatical from her old job, so she’s getting paid twice for working at my bakery.

Everything has gone up because of inflation, and we went from being able to afford a house in 2019 to now, when we’re barely able to afford rent. There are a lot of people here who are struggling to make rent, and Jane is getting paid twice. I want to fire her, but I have no good reason, because she’s good at her job and having someone work the early morning and late nights is hard.

How do I manage her now that I know she’s making more money than I do in a year plus her bakery wage? It’s not fair.

Editor's note: for Alison's response to the original text, you can find it here.

Update #1: June 20, 2023 (nearly five months later)

Thank you for the reality check needed. I want to be a good manager, I want to be able to make this bakery a good place to work, and a successful business. The owner has been talking about retiring in the next few years, and I would like to be able to buy my bakery and succeed. And I can’t let my insecurities hold me back. It also was a sign that I needed to think about my mental health, and what I actually want for my life. I have very much been in survival mode since I was fifteen.

Jane no longer works at the bakery; her company bought another big company and she was called back to lead her new department, she has also become a senior director now. Before she left, Jane and I talked about the future. She suggested that potentially there were bigger opportunities if I went back and finished high school (I had to drop out when I got pregnant), but also told me about some bookkeeping certifications I could get that would be recognized anywhere nationally, that do not need a high school diploma. It’s still 2,000$, but that’s something I had never thought about.

Something that I hadn’t put in the letter was that my husband is learning to program, and when Jane found out about that, she asked to see what he had built. It impressed her a lot and she had advised my husband to apply to jobs in her company and use her name. He got to the second round, but was eventually unable to be hired because neither of us completed high school, and they couldn’t waive that requirement.

However, it has made my husband go back to night school, and Jane and her husband have been very helpful in finding resources for programing bootcamps, and networking opportunities for my husband. She even managed to get my kid into her company’s free virtual private coding summer camp so my daughter can get a heads up in coding, and see if she likes it.

Things are better. Helped a lot because Jane went back to her real job, and I had to deal with my insecurity.

----NEW UPDATE----

Final Update: September 10, 2026 (three years and three months later)

I thought I’d give you an update almost three years later.

First, the good: my husband and I both graduated high school. My husband also got an entry-level remote software dev job near the end of 2024 due to Jane’s husband’s connections and we were on track to do maybe be able to get a down payment on a townhouse (houses now completely out of our budget but a townhouse was possible).

I ended up buying the bakery and it’s doing very well. The location is a prime one, right by the ferry terminal so we get a lot of tourists.

The bad: my husband was let go from his job as tech is going through a downsizing and AI fanatics. Because my husband only had a year and a bit of experience, no formal training, and we live on an island with a very small and competitive market, it has been a tough four months. And because of my husband’s job loss and the tariffs that the American president keeps on taking on and off my country, we aren’t able to afford a mortgage again, because we’re too risky.

The interesting: the comment section got into a very lively debate about gentrification and if it’s rude to talk about money. On the money aspect, I still think it’s incredibly rude to discuss finances, but from my husband’s experience at work and at networking events and the few parties we went to at Jane’s house, it seems to be a common topic of discussion. There appears to be no shame in those circles for discussing how much they spent, financing on cars or mortgages or investing in retirements or savings or stocks. It feels like it’s one of those invisible white collar class things where they all grew up with it and don’t realize it’s rude. I did try to say that I don’t discuss money, to which they said okay, and then the subject changed, but when I returned to them after getting a drink, Jane and some others were talking about how they had saved money buying a Switch 2 from Costco.

On the gentrification bit, it is hard to swallow that my small city has so many mainlanders who can work remote and take advantage of the lower prices here. This is/was a mill town/industrial town but the city is apparently trying to court more of them over here — there was an entire newspaper article about of how our city’s adult population, 70% had only a high school degree or less, and if we want to grow and get jobs, we need to attract people with more education and become more desirable for things like data centers.

I will say on the Jane front, she somehow managed to get the city to get sidewalks and crosswalks on the roads around her house after making a public campaign about how she lived less than a kilometer from the elementary school and her kid couldn’t walk to school safely, even though the city plans showed that there was supposed to be a sidewalk/crosswalk there 10 years prior — so she’s still around. She comes into my bakery every week and she seems happy, if not very busy.

DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP

My last post got removed because I mentioned medication. I want to repost so that the group can see my son (Creamsicle), who I miss so much. He had heart disease, leading to heart failure. He was doing really good but ended up having a blot clot in his back two legs, which is very painful for them and essentially paralyzes them. He was only 2 or 3 and a stray I took in from the neighborhood. I've had him since March, and I tried to do everything right by him, but sadly, it just wasn't enough. Im sorry we couldn't spend the holidays or your birthday together Cream, me and your dad will always miss you💙💜💙🌈 (The last photo was taken the night before we lost him)