team-building pole dancing

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The following question from Kev wouldn’t be too weird if he worked in a strip joint. But, he doesn’t:

I recently started working at a call centre for a bank. I am nearing the end of my training, and a couple of days ago I met with the team I am to join, and my prospective manager. They all seem perfectly likeable, and my manager – a woman in her mid-forties – is very welcoming. But during this brief meeting she announced that she plans to organise a day of pole dancing for the group, which I do not like the sound of at all.

I realise that in the corporate world this kind of thing is important for team building etc, and as a new member of the team I could perhaps benefit from an event at which I would have a chance to socialise with my future colleagues, but I simply do not want to go. I don’t like doing even vaguely work-related things outside of work as this is not a career I wish to be in for a long time and there are things that I am passionate about that I could be doing with my spare time. I also think that either watching or doing pole dancing sounds completely boring; not because I am a man, but because it’s just not my thing.

I tried to find out when it was to make up a prior engagement, but I was told that the date of the event is yet to be decided based on our schedules.

So, answer me this: What do I do? Do I make up a weak and potentially transparent excuse and not go? Do I go, and have a very uncomfortable, unpaid day constantly thinking about what else I could be doing with my time? Or do I outright and honestly tell my manager that I do not want to go as I don’t think I would enjoy it or get much out of it? Would that result in her making my life at work harder than it needs to be?

Even though we discussed in AMT221 how pole dancing can be an athletic discipline rather than a purely sexy one, this does not seem to be an APPROPRIATE WORK ACTIVITY. Can you suggest an alternative?

If not, and you’re determined not to go, just tell her you have a long-standing spinal or muscular complaint. Pole dancing is physically demanding, and your manager is unlikely to want you to be laid off work with a slipped disc.

Readers, any other ideas? I’m not best placed to help, since I’ve managed to get myself out of all such situations by working on my own since 2005.

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trust

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KLAXON! AMT LISTENER IN DISTRESS! It’s Lachlan, who writes:

I have just been dumped by my girlfriend of one year.

Recently I attended a music festival, where I got very drunk and ended up making out with another girl. Because I was so drunk, I cannot even remember this girl’s name or what she looked like.

As I could never lie to my girlfriend, I told her everything the second I got back. She was obviously extremely saddened by this, and as much as I tried to tell her that it is not something I would ever have done if I was sober, for obvious reasons she says she can never trust me again and she can’t stop thinking about me with the girl.

We have always been very close and I have never lied to her. Answer me this: WHAT THE HELL AM I GOING TO DO TO MAKE HER TRUST ME AGAIN?!?!

Unfortunately, Lachlan, I cannot offer you a quick fix to regain trust. It will take time, and willingness on both sides to overcome this incident. I imagine you have already gone strong on contrition, but you could also demonstrate your commitment to such a thing not happening again by giving up drinking.

Readers, if you have any suggestions for Lachlan convincing his girlfriend to give him a second chance, deliver them in the comments, as well as tips for him avoiding getting himself into similar scrapes again. For instance, wearing a welding mask to music festivals would preclude extra-curricular kissing.

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nuts about Nutella

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Last week, we spoke upon the act of judging one’s neighbours by the contents of their recycling bins. This week, Hattie‘s recycling-judgement-capacity has been completely scrambled by her neighbours:

I recently noticed one of my neighbours had an entire glass recycling box FULL of empty Nutella jars. I had to walk past twice to make sure I wasn’t imagining things…but yes – the box was entirely crammed with empty pots.

So, please answer me this – how on earth can someone eat so much nutty spread? Or, alternatively, what are they doing with it?

Evidence:

Exhibit A: a LOT of Nutella jars

My hunch is that they were making a giant Ferrero Rocher. It’s the only reasonable explanation…OR IS IT? Readers, go to the comments to offer your own hypotheses for the profusion of Nutella. Someone was getting rid of their late grandmother’s lifetime collection of Nutella jars? They bath in it? They’re using it to regrout the bathroom? The floor is yours.

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the best joke

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This question from Margaret in Indiana is the kind that some people spend their whole lives trying to answer*:

I was listening to the lightbulb jokes on last week’s episode, and I had a question:

What is the best joke?

*Not me, though. I am not especially fond of jokes. Therefore I delegate to you, readers, the task of going to the comments and submitting your best joke. The winner gets to be plagiarised by everyone else forever.

Go on, by the end of today I expect the comments section to be like this:

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porn pal

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Joe in Oxford could be getting himself into a sticky situation, in more ways than one:

My wife has a friend, who now does porn.

How annoyed would my wife have the right to be if I watched her friend’s videos, on a scale of 1 – mildly annoyed, to 10 – divorce?

Readers, go to the comments to express Joe’s wife’s annoyance in a number; but you may not want to waste your time, since he’ll have obviously watched the videos by now anyway regardless of the potential spousal fury.

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moving on

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How soon is too soon, wonders Pat from Canada:

My nephew got married last summer to a woman he had lived with for two years.

Four months later he suspected that she was cheating on him and after Christmas we found our that they had separated but were in counseling.

A month ago we were told that they were getting a divorce.

Yesterday I found out that my nephew is already seeing someone.

While I want him to be happy and find a new soul mate, isn’t this all a bit too fast? Answer me this: how long after deciding to divorce should someone wait before starting to date again?

Readers, if you believe there is an appropriate set period of singletude, or if you have designed an equation to calculate that period in proportion to the length of relationship, share in the comments.

Personally, I don’t see the harm if Pat’s nephew is just having a not-to-serious time with a new paramour, moving on with a fun fling, salving the wounds left by his cheating partner.

If, however, he and his ladyfriend are already dressing alike, running non-essential errands to Ikea, making wedding plans or buying adjacent burial plots, I can understand Pat’s concern. But since he’s an adult man with dominion over his own decisions, I’m not sure she can intervene. As an aunt myself, frankly I wouldn’t feel comfortable judging when my nephew was ready to love again, but my nephew is only five and a half years old so I can hazard a guess that he should play the field for another couple of decades at least.

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uninvitation

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I’m guessing from this email that listener Kate won’t be inviting her sister to her 26th birthday party:

In just under a week it’s my 25th birthday. Apart from the inevitable mild existential crisis, this means I’m having a barbecue. I’ve invited friends and I’ve invited my sister. My sister has then invited my mum. Please help me think of a way to un-invite her. I just wanted a nice relaxing afternoon eating meat in my back garden with my friends. I do not want either of my parents there! And if my mum is coming then I am forced to invite my dad and his new wife.

How how HOW can I make sure there are no parents at my barbecue without causing a big family fuss?

Readers, go to the comments and help the lady out. Oh pleeeeeeese. It’s her birthday.

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Eurovision: the aftermath

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Last Saturday’s Eurovision Song Contest has left you with many questions (aside from WHY DIDN’T GREECE WIN?). For instance, this one from Orpon:

This year the Eurovision Song Contest was held in Malmö, Sweden. This happens to be my hometown and I barely made it out of this frenzy alive.

For several weeks every year nothing else matters but the ESC and since it was held in Sweden this year it was much, much worse. Even if our prime minister should be murdered (again) I don’t think it would make the news if it happened during the ESC craze.

Answer me this: when so many European nations succumb to the ESC madness, why don’t the British care at all about it? Are you too good to hang out with the rest of us? Don’t you like feather boas, confetti and crappy music?

Oh, we Brits do like those things – but only through a veil of sneering irony. And it’s inaccurate to say that we don’t care at all – we care very much that the Britain scores as close to nul points as possible.

On to a question from one of the scornful Brits, Paul from Northampton:

I’m watching Eurovision and all the awful acts that are desperately trying to win with this awful Europop. So answer me this: if Britain wants to win so badly, why haven’t they enter One Direction, as everyone seems to love them for some reason?

I take issue with Paul’s assertion that Britain wants to win so badly; see my statement above, along with every British entry since Katrina and the Waves – Daz Sampson? Scooch? Bin Man Andy? Jemini??? These are NOT the entries of a country with victory in the crosshairs.

Plus, I think One Direction are a bit too busy at the moment. But previous experience indicates that in ten years or so, they’ll probably need the gig.

Finally, a question about the scoring system from Rikki from Dunfermline:

Why is there no number 9 or 11 in the Eurovision Song Contest?

Those numbers have been banished from the Eurovisional points allocation since 1975. They got rid of them because Björn Ulvaeus said they were the least poppy numbers under 100. Or maybe there’s a solid mathematical reason, such as it helps avoid tied votes, or something.

Readers, do you have any idea? Go to the comments and inform us all. I lost a large part of my brain during this year’s contest, and it was the part that made me willing to google this sort of shit.

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lookalike

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Here’s a different sort of mistaken identity question from Maria:

Every time my husband Bjorn meets someone new, the person usually says they feel like they have met him before. Men and women actually come up to us in pubs or when we are out shopping asking, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” Numerous folk say, “Oh you remind me of someone I know” but can never seem to absolutely pinpoint who that person is.

He has been likened to Patrick Swayze, Jeff Bridges, Benny from Abba, Brad Pitt, Harrison Ford, Steve Martin – all of whom I personally think look totally different from each other and nothing like him.

Answer me this: how can one person look like so many different people to so many different people? And does he look like anyone you know?

Maybe he just has ‘one of those faces’? Perhaps its planes are arranged in a particular way that chimes with some sort of universal face-recognition. Or possibly his photo was used without his knowledge in a widespread public health advertising campaign, like this.

Readers, below is Bjorn’s face. Go to the comments to name the person of whom he reminds you. Personally I’m seeing the Jeff Bridges resemblance but not the other ones, although maybe the hat is overly influencing my judgement.

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that’s not my name

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Here’s a question from Oliver from Manchester. Not Olly, or Ollie, or Ol, or Ollingtons. OLIVER. Oliver says:

My name is Oliver, and when introducing myself to, lets say, a mutual friend, of a friend, of a friend, I will say ‘hello, I’m Oliver.’ Moments later this practical stranger will refer to me as ‘Olly’ even though I never said that was my name.

So answer me this, who is the toss-face in this scenario – the stranger for giving me a nickname even though the piss-weasel doesn’t know me; or me for going on about it?

You’re a bit of a toss-face for calling a stranger a piss-weasel (as am I, now, for just having done the same); however they are the bigger toss-face for being presumptuous.

We do receive this question a lot, and have encountered it in life as well – eg former AMTflatmate Matthew Crosby is always Matthew, NEVER Matt. Nonetheless, many people are unable to bypass their InstaMatt function.

It’s not a problem I have, because Helen is a name difficult enough to abbreviate that to do so feels too personal for most piss-weasels and toss-faces.

But, readers, if you are a Margaret-never-Maggie, a Ben-never-Benjamin, a Josh-not-Joshua or a Catherine-nary-Cathy, go to the comments and suggest a polite way for Oliver to correct the abbreviators. A cold, unresponsive stare until they give him the right name might work, but also runs the risk of compelling them to keep calling him ‘Oli’ just to piss him off.

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gap year ground rules

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How things have changed since my generation did gap years. Back then, in the late 90s, gap years were supposed to be twelve months of reckless headonism, under the guise of going abroad on a do-gooding expedition.* The new batch of school-leavers, though, are a bunch of SQUARES. Charlotte writes:

My friend has very recently (in the last few months) become (some might say excessively) close to a boy in our year. They are both adamant that their friendship is entirely platonic, despite constant speculation from our school peers. He is a bit of a rogue and has been labelled a ‘manwhore’ by some, while she is highly principled and generally repelled by that sort of behaviour.

They both wanted to take a gap year and, with nobody else to go with, have decided to spend most of the year in Africa together doing charity work. Both my friend and I are more than a little concerned about this plan since:

a) they have only relatively recently become friends and
b) they are generally quite incompatible (she’s extremely mature, him not so much).

Since they are both set on going, I suggested they make some ground rules. So far, I think they have:

1. no sexual tension
2. he can’t take drugs
3. he can’t leave her to go out and get drunk or go off with other girls.

He has agreed, although there was some dispute over the second and she is already being forced to compromise…

So Helen and Olly answer me this:
Do you think such an intense friendship that has developed so quickly between two complete opposites can be genuinely platonic? And if not, do you think their first ‘ground rule’ can actually be implemented?

Also, my friend would like you to suggest any other ground rules you think might help them? She is mostly concerned that his sexual frustration will drive him to come onto her, or abandon her for somebody else…

Erm, your friend can’t have it both ways. IF she – apparently – doesn’t want to have sex with him, she can’t reasonably prevent him having sex with other people. But, as she is trying to, I deduce that this friendship is as platonic as Clinton and Lewinsky, Ross and Rachel, Silvio Berlusconi and a teenage prostitute. They’re obviously going to cop off. Then they’ll spend most of the gap year in a cycle of tension → copping off again → rationalising why they should be ‘just friends’ → being jealous when the other one shows interest in someone else → tension → copping off, etc etc, with the occasional break for a spot of food poisoning.

Even if they don’t, here are the problem with your ground rules so far:

Rule 1. You can’t legislate for that sort of thing. Either it’s there, or it’s not. They can only choose whether or not to act upon it.
Rule 2. If he’s already disputing that before they even go, it may make drug use an even greater temptation, especially as
Rule 3 makes your friend sound like an ABSOLUTE KILLJOY.

She’s being ‘forced to compromise’, whereas he’s being forced to change all of his ways. I don’t think this will work out very happily for your friend, unless she gets a VIP ticket to the drugboozeorgy that his inevitable rebellion will probably result in.

Readers, do go to the comments and add some useful ground rules for Charlotte’s friend and her reformation project. I’d opt for Rule 4: lighten up, kids, and stop making ground rules for everything, because there’ll be plenty of opportunities when you’re older to stop yourselves having any fun.

*Not mine, though. I spent nearly all of it sober, in a long-term relationship, living with my parents and working six days a week for minimum wage in an antiquarian bookshop in Tunbridge Wells. I’ve never been much of a headonist.

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“Jamaica?” “No, she went of her own accord.”

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Here’s quite a tricky question from Damon:

I’m a gay man who lives in a medium-sized midwestern city. My mother lives in a smaller city, and is your typical midwestern housewife type. She is very sweet, moderately conservative and church-going. She’s a bright person, but not very worldly, and has rarely, if ever, travelled outside of her state.

Out of the blue this past year, she called me and said that she has always wanted to go to Jamaica, and that since I’m the only person she knows who has travelled extensively, she’d like me as a travel companion on her “once in a lifetime” trip to Jamaica.

I do not know why the sudden interest in Jamaica. She says it’s the beaches she’s seen in travel brochures and the adorable accents that she finds fascinating.

As a gay man, I have a problem with Jamaica, as it is a homophobic country. I’m not usually very political, but I don’t like the idea of spending tourist dollars in a place that is so culturally backward when it comes to gay rights. That said, my mother insists that she pays for everything, as this is her treat, and as both a birthday gift for me and a thanks for accompanying her, so it’s not really my money.

I asked if she’d like to see any other Caribbean islands, or if it has to be Jamaica, and she simply replied “I want to go to Jamaica.”

So answer me this: do I stick to my political beliefs and refuse to go to Jamaica, even though I’m not paying for it, or do I honor my mother’s wishes, hold my nose, and go anyway? I know that my mother is not aware of the ways GLBT men and women are treated in Jamaica, and isn’t interested in supporting it, but she’s also very fixated on this vacation.

Also, if I do go, is it fair that I talk her into getting cornrows done in her hair, as so many women who visit the islands do, as a wicked revenge?

Readers, help out.

Obviously whichever option you choose, she’ll be having the cornrows as well. Dyed to match the rainbow flag.

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