The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by K. G. Anderson:

My middle-aged lady superpower seems to be invisible email. I have been dealing with a young recruiter at [insert name of major tech company] who sends me email one minute before a scheduled phone meeting that says "Have to cancel our call. Can you talk tomorrow?"

I reply "yes" two minutes later, hit "Send," and two days later she writes "Hey, I didn't read your email, can you talk next week?"

And on we go.

She has been at this through five email exchanges in 14 days and still has not managed to answer a single email in a timely fashion or make a single phone call -- scheduled or unscheduled -- to me.

So today I sent a description of her communications prowess to another member of her HR team, with the note: "I had wanted to find out more about [your company]; this was not what I'd expected to find out."

I'm sure I've scuttled my chances of ever working at that company, but if they treat me that way on the first date, why on earth would I want to get into a relationship with them?

This story brought back a couple of nasty memories of times when I was cornered by a group of people who pressured me into doing what they wanted. As a teenager, I came within inches of being the victim of a gang rape (I managed to outrun two of the very stoned rapists). While doing research for my college senior thesis, I was locked in a room by a group of Synanon grads (my fellow counselors at a juvenile detention facility) who demanded that I admit that I had betrayed the group. After three hours of verbal abuse, they gave up and let me go.

Putting yourself into a situation where someone (a date, an employer, a spiritual guru, or a cult) has power over your physical safety and your life is a thrill for some people. I am grateful that I got over it early in life, and got out without too much damage.

Back in the days of hand-coding HTML, I had to hire a junior-level website programmer for a corporate communications department. I put an ad in the paper and got back two types of responses:

Men who said they had heard about HTML and could easily learn it in a couple of days and women who apologized at length in their cover letters for "only" having two or three years of experience doing HTML and web design.

Sigh.

Patrick's post is the best and most plausible explanation of the Amazon screwup I've read yet.

Patrick's original question was a bit of a trick question because the list didn't include the artist who performed what many people feel is the definitive version of The Dark End of the Street. So, experts, the missing name?

From #21, Greg Ioannou: Languages and travel

It was 1982, and Krakow, Poland, was still under Communist government. The pensione I was staying in with my then-husband and our Italian friend, Piero, was a non-licensed one in a private home. Friends from Warsaw had booked it for us, and the owner, a woman, turned out to be very nervous about having illegal foreigners on the premises. It didn't help that we couldn't speak any Polish, and she didn't know English, Italian, French or German.

I woke up one morning delirious with fever, and Ted and Piero (an MD) were reluctantly considering taking me to a Polish hospital, even though that would have meant waiting a day or two for admission. The pensione owner, realizing that something was wrong, was ready to put us out on the street. When I peered out of bed and said to her "GorÄ…czka," Ted and Piero thought I was babbling nonsense. But the Polish woman hurried off and came back with a thermometer and a glass of water. Somehow, I'd remembered seeing in a guidebook the Polish word for "fever."

From #21, Greg Ioannou: Languages and travel

It's 1982, and Krakow, Poland, was still under Communist government. The pensione I was staying in with my then-husband and our Italian friend, Piero, was a non-licensed one in a private home. Friends from Warsaw had booked it for us, and the owner, a woman, turned out to be very nervous about having illegal foreigners on the premises. It didn't help that we couldn't speak any Polish, and she didn't know English, Italian, French or German.

I woke up one morning delirious with fever, and Ted and Piero (an MD) were reluctantly considering taking me to a Polish hospital, even though that would have meant waiting a day or two for admission. The pensione owner, realizing that something was wrong, was ready to put us out on the street. When I peered out of bed and said to her "GorÄ…czka," Ted and Piero thought I was babbling nonsense. But the Polish woman hurried off and came back with a thermometer and a glass of water. Somehow, I'd remembered seeing in a guidebook the Polish word for "fever."

I'm making beef stew to take to a friend's family tomorrow; she's recovering from neurosurgery and can't cook yet.

The man I'm seeing came over as I was starting the stew. He browned the beef while I peeled and cubed the potatoes. After we got the stew going we mopped up the beef drippings with French bread and snacked on that. Yum.

Much more fun making things with someone you love.

From my grandfather, when I turned 18:

"All you need to know about money is this: If you give 10 people $100 each and put them all on an island, at the end of a year some of them will have lots of money and some of them will have nothing."

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