Advice Columns

Y'all are being harsh. The Letter Writer, not being a Muslim, just wanted the hotline number for "Report a Bad Muslim". I think it's in the phonebook next to "Report a Bad Jew" and "Report a Bad Mormon". LW should report himself to the "Being an Epic Dick" hotline.

If there were really a Report a Bad Jew number I would be fucked. I once ate an entire side order of bacon before I remembered it was the middle of Passover.

How in the hell would it be legal to fire someone for breaking their own fast? And one whole orange between sunup and sundown when the days are long (hell, even during short winter days!) still sounds like fasting. That's not very much food. I strongly suspect the co-worker who wants to report them has never fasted.

(Wouldn't the Report a Bad Jew hotline need some kind of Reform exception?)

Poubelle wrote:How in the hell would it be legal to fire someone for breaking their own fast? And one whole orange between sunup and sundown when the days are long (hell, even during short winter days!) still sounds like fasting. That's not very much food. I strongly suspect the co-worker who wants to report them has never fasted.

(Wouldn't the Report a Bad Jew hotline need some kind of Reform exception?)

Yes. Also a Humanistic Jew exception. And a Cultural Jew exception. And a Conservadox, but fuck it gimme that shelfish exception (I have a coastal Jewish friend to report for that!). My family had french toast the first morning of passover. Maybe trying to get people in professional trouble for how they perform their personal religion is an incredibly shitty idea.

Also, nibbling an orange sounds like among the quickest ways to get some sugar and fluid, deprivation of which can make fasting, you know, incapacitating. My guess is the co-worker was trying to stay functional (and do his work!) while observing to the best of his ability.

My favorite part is how the report-a-Muslim signs him/herself "Don't Want to Get Anyone Fired." No, I can TOTALLY TELL that you don't want to stir any shit AT ALL. Keep it up, you're doing great.

As for the tooth lady, after I read the comment from the person who was like "I just can't believe that someone in a TWO-INCOME HOUSEHOLD can't come up with a measly $7,000 pretty easily" my blood pressure hit critical and I decided I was done for the evening.

Wow, who are these people who have no other obligations that they can come up in 7,000 with a moment's notice because it must be great. And even if you are in a great job where you know you'll have that money in no time, you can at least not be a dick about people who don't.

If there were really a Report a Bad Jew number I would be fucked. I once ate an entire side order of bacon before I remembered it was the middle of Passover.

Well, at least it wasn't Yom Kippur.

I don't think it would be possible to have a Report a Bad Episcopalian hotline. We tend to go with the "All may, some should, none must" attitude.

I can't even with the people who think anyone should be able to come up with a mere $7,000. Must be nice to live in their world.

My favorite part is how the report-a-Muslim signs him/herself "Don't Want to Get Anyone Fired." No, I can TOTALLY TELL that you don't want to stir any shit AT ALL. Keep it up, you're doing great.

Oh yes, "if our client ever found out, I just don't know how they'd react and we can't afford to lose them...but please, please, please, please let me tell them! Oh and yeah, it bothers my co-workers that he gets to take it easy for a month. Not me, of course, but other people. Yeah, um, other people..."

I'm really not on board with a lot of Prudie's answers a lot of the time, but I did like that she pointed out that the guy is not "taking it easy" for a month, with Ramadan falling at the hottest time of the year in the U.S. with the longest daylight hours. I can't even imagine what it must have been like last week when it felt like we were walking on the surface of the sun every day.

The letter about the teeth was so sad. And unlike a lot of these letters where I wonder who the hell does things like that (like the lady who rearranged the girlfriends' house), I can absolutely picture co-workers being cruel about the situation.

QueenSix wrote:Wow, who are these people who have no other obligations that they can come up in 7,000 with a moment's notice because it must be great. And even if you are in a great job where you know you'll have that money in no time, you can at least not be a dick about people who don't.

Not to mention, the letter-writer had JUST FINISHED talking about how she and her husband were coming out of a long period of poverty. So they probably had, I don't know, maybe DEBT to pay off? Hospital bills, just a shot in the dark since the guy lost his job after becoming ill? It's not like you're desperately poor for many months and then suddenly you're making $35,000/year or whatever and MAGICALLY YOU HAVE $7K IN SAVINGS.

I'm getting off on a tangent and I'll stop, but I also love, in general, when clueless people talk about poor people and they're like "well, they should be able to scrape together $[amount] to pay for X!" And it's like, sure, maybe they can, but they don't only have to pay for X, there's also Y, Z, A, B, C...I'm sure the teeth aren't the only thing she's got going on that suddenly needs attention now that they're out of the do-we-eat-or-pay-the-electric-bill phase. Happily there were some other commenters pushing back gently though -- one said something like "the difference between me [a person who had access to frequent dental care] and the guy with the weird teeth who makes you uncomfortable at Wal-Mart is mostly luck and genetics."

Or, maybe she's just a meth head and it's a failure of moral character and since I don't have that failure of moral character I deserve to have perfect teeth and I will never be poor. WHEW.

There are people who will just fundamentally never understand what it is to be poor. When people are like "well, they shouldn't have thrown money away on hotel rooms" or "well, why would people take pay-day loans" without a clue about what it is to have a cheap hotel be the only option when you can't scrape up deposit, or that the pay-day loan, despite the charges, is the difference between having food on the table, or being able to fill the tank to get into work the next day. It infuriates me. I had a facebook fight with someone just today who was basically saying that "poor people can just buckle down and work hard - if they don't escape it, it's because they are lazy". With no clue how much luck and chance in involved in people's ability to do that.

Matinee wrote:With no clue how much luck and chance in involved in people's ability to do that.

I used to work as a supervisor in a young adult homeless shelter. A lot of the people there had graduated out of the foster care system (this was before AB21, that changed the age from 18 to 21) and literally had no where to go but the streets. I used to tell people that the only difference between myself and those kids is that I am very fortunate to have parents who don't care that I moved back home and paid no rent. If not for that luck of having parents who could support me, I could easily have been homeless.

What a shithead. I did enjoy her response, though. Multiple, multiple paragraphs on why he was a dick! But in a fairly balanced way.

Wow. That is the greatest reply to an advice column I have ever read.

Having sex with other women will relieve much of the emotional resentment I have against my wife for her sexual indifference (even though I empathize with her),

I think that was my favourite part "I kindof hate my wife 'cause she won't touch me, but it's all good, I understand where she's coming from". What a twunt.

Not egregious like what we've seen lately, but I had to laugh at the first letter in today's Dear Prudence. Yeah, any 19-year-old girl is going to react great to being taken bra shopping by her boyfriend's mother.

There is also the crazy future m-i-l who thinks that because a woman's parents were adulterous, her marriage won't last.

Mother of the groom thinks the father of the bride shouldn't attend the wedding because he has burn scars.

If groom doesn't tell his mother to STFD and STFU, bride needs to cut him loose, pronto.

As for the tooth lady, after I read the comment from the person who was like "I just can't believe that someone in a TWO-INCOME HOUSEHOLD can't come up with a measly $7,000 pretty easily" my blood pressure hit critical and I decided I was done for the evening.

Gah, that reminds me of when my co-worker kept making fun of me for wearing my hopelessly unfashionable eyeglasses:

Her: Why don't you just replace them?
Me: Because I can't afford to.
Her: Why - how much do glasses cost?
Me: A decent pair would probably cost around $500.
Her: Don't our benefits cover all that?
Me: Nope. Our benefits cover $200 for eyecare every two years, and I've already used that on contact lenses.
Her: Oh. I keep forgetting that not everyone has awesome benefits like my husband. His are so great, sometimes he gets new glasses just for the heck of it!

Ever since we got hitched and I spent a lot of time on wedding forums, I have been astonished at how ridiculous people can get about weddings, how they have to look perfect at all costs, including the cost of people's feelings. Talk about missing the point.

And yeah, the fiance's inability to immediately go OMG MOM YOU ARE AWFUL is a bit scary, though I understand *how* he could be unaware that that is HOLY SHIT NOT OK if he was raised by her. Still gives one pause.

I hope it's a case of he knows she's insane and terrible but she's always been that way and he's got pseudo stockholms or something. Not that that is good but ...

That is just terrible. Her fiance sounds like a doormat, whether it's due to stockholm syndrome or not. If he doesn't choose to stand up for her here, then when the hell will he stand up for her? Never. Ugh, I am so angry on her and her family's behalf. I'd be thinking twice about whether or not to attach myself to this assholes for the rest of my life.

There's just a rather astonishingly casual cruelty to making that request and to not realize how evil and disgusting it is.

No words.  That letter-writer needs to run for the hills NOW.  I'm with Prudie - if the fiance isn't man enough to a: stand up to his mother, and b: at least WARN the bride that his mother is a horrible, horrible person, he is not worth speaking to, much less marrying.