July 7th, 2025

Posted by ephemeralnewyork

The history of New York City’s street corner ice cream vendors goes back at least to the late 19th century, when a man with a pushcart would set himself up and wait for the kids to crowd around.

The driver of this wagon in an 1895 photo isn’t exactly the ice cream man. He’s the ice cream delivery man, a worker who appears to be bringing a haphazard load of barrels of this summertime sweet treat to an unknown location in the city via a Central Park transverse road.

His wagon reads “Kaufold’s Ice Cream.” According to a 1905 Sun article, Kaufold’s was located at 221 East Broadway. A Louis Kaufold, of 202 Clinton Street, is listed in a 1902 city directory under Ice Cream.

The photo caption, from the Museum of the City of New York, notes that “Kaufold’s was a favorite ice cream resort of the 1890s.”

After the early 1900s, the company seemed to have disappeared, replaced by a long list of brands and vendors satisfying New York’s long and deep need for ice cream—from Good Humor to Schrafft’s to Carvel, and of course, everyone’s favorite sing-songy truck, Mister Softee.

[Photo: MCNY, X2010.11.1488]

Posted by ephemeralnewyork

Coming across a ghost sign on a New York City street always sparks curiosity.

You know ghost signs—any kind of signage above a store entrance or affixed to the side of a building marking a business that no longer exists in that space.

But what a treat when the ghost sign is a rare vertical piece of gorgeous neon! Over the years I’d seen this double-sided delicatessen sign many times on the red-brick nexus where Jane and West Fourth Streets collide with Eighth Avenue.

Recently I walked past it and noticed an Italian restaurant has taken over the storefront below the sign. Come to think of it, I can’t recall an actual deli occupying the store space, which on Google maps corresponds to 40 Eighth Avenue.

A search through various photo archives didn’t turn up any evidence. But it did show that back in the 1940s, a similar vertical sign existed where the delicatessen sign hangs today.

This one was for the hardware store at 40 Eighth Avenue at the time. “Paints” nicely sums up the store’s main selling point.

As for the corner right now, there’s actually another neon sign with deep historical cred. That’s the one attached to the Corner Bistro, across the street at 331 West Fourth Street.

I don’t know how old the neon sign is, but the Bistro’s history as a saloon goes all the way back to 1875.

[Third image: NYPL Digital Collections]

Posted by Mike Glyer

By Paul Weimer: Silverlock may be the single most re-read novel-length work of SFF I’ve read, if you count it as a genre novel at all. For this re-read I read the newest ebook edition of the book from NESFA Press. … Continue reading

Posted by Mike Glyer

The unopposed Montréal in 2027 Worldcon bid having hit a rocky patch (“Op-Ed: The Worldcon is in Trouble” and “Op-Ed: Looking Forward to a Great Worldcon 2027 in Montréal”), it seemed a good idea to check on the status of … Continue reading

Posted by ephemeralnewyork

When Father Isaac Hecker began planning a new Catholic church on Columbus Avenue and 60th Street, he imagined a “noble basilica” that would reflect “the artistic ideals of the past, with the American genius of his day,” states the website of that church, St. Paul the Apostle.

Born to German immigrant parents in 1819 and raised Methodist, Father Hecker (below) didn’t fit the typical description of a New York Catholic priest. In his youth he worked as a delivery boy at the bakery founded by his older brothers, which soon became the Hecker Flour Company.

After decades of study, travel, and reflection concerning his true purpose in life, he converted to Catholicism and was ordained into the priesthood in 1849.

He went on to found the Paulist Fathers, the first community of Catholic priests in the U.S.—known as an inclusive, evangelizing community that also took on the social issues of the day.

In the 1860s, Father Hecker and the Paulist Fathers had a small church they eventually outgrew on the site where the new church would be built.

Working with architect Jeremiah O’Rourke, Father Hecker shared his vision of a monumental edifice inspired by the 4th and 5th century Christian basilicas in Ravenna, Italy. He also drew inspiration from 13th century Gothic cathedrals in France and England.

The cornerstone was laid in 1876, just as the Ninth Avenue Elevated spurred a population boom in this developing West Side neighborhood (above).

Nine years later, the new Church of St. Paul the Apostle officially opened—but this rough and austere “spiritual fortress,” as one newspaper put it, was far from complete.

As the sanctuary filled with parishioners each week, Father Hecker—who would pass away from leukemia in 1888—put his visionary plans for the interior in place.

He called upon John LaFarge to craft beautiful stained-glass windows, Frederick MacMonnies to create gilded bronzes of angels, and Stanford White to design the gold and onyx high alter. All three artists finished their work by the close of the century.

Meanwhile, the exterior of St. Paul’s was also getting its finishing touches. For this, Father Hecker and his architectural overseers turned not to artistic geniuses but to salvage.

Though recycled materials from demolished structures likely helped lower costs, “the idea of transforming materials with prosaic origins into ones with a divine purpose parallels the congregation’s reputation for attracting converts to Catholicism,” states the 2013 Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) report.

Where did the salvage come from? The Croton Aqueduct was one source—specifically from a dismantled part of a stone embankment that once carried Croton water from Harlem through an Upper West Side area called Clendening Valley to the receiving reservoir in Central Park.

Father Hecker and his architectural team actually acquired the Croton stonework in the mid-1870s and used the small, rough-cut pieces in a staggering pattern in the facade.

In 1899, the distributing reservoir at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue was decommissioned. St. Paul’s took stones from the demolished reservoir and used them to add several feet to the church’s two front towers, per the LPC Report.

Perhaps the most unusual example of architectural recycling was the salvaging of stone from a fabled Eighth Avenue and 23rd Street theater to build the staircases at the front of the church facing Columbus Avenue.

Booth’s Theater (at right), a grand and flamboyant palace constructed by actor Edwin Booth in 1869, closed its doors in 1883; the hulking structure was to be converted into a department store.

“As part of the renovation, some of the theater’s stonework was apparently removed by the contractor and sold to the church,” states the LPC report.

Like most churches, St. Paul the Apostle has open hours when visitors can wander through.

Take a walk through this art museum of a church, and as you gaze at the facade and ascend the staircases, know that you’re experiencing remnants of 19th century Gotham that could have easily been destroyed rather than recycled into the modern cityscape.

As for Father Hecker, he’s currently a candidate for canonization.

[Second image: Busted Halo; third image: Church of St. Paul the Apostle; fourth image: LOC]

knitmeapony:

orteil42:

everyone needs a creative outlet to stick a creative fork into

a little 3 in by 3 in painting of a person's hand holding a fork extending it towards an outlet in a wall. the text of the post is painted mostly in Black text, though the words creative Outlet are in Rainbow cursive

Just cram it right in there folks.

My concern with nail polish, outside the fumes and toxicity possibly not being the same for birds, is the growth inhibition. nail polish does not expand, and everything about the quail is rapidly expanding.

I would not want someone to encounter the quail equivalent of this:

Which isn't to say it would go that way, but rather that the consequences of not knowing for sure may not be great

kedreeva:

neatandinteresting:

is that ...someone decorated a baby turtle shell and then it couldn't grow normally?!! How is it even alive? It looks squished in half! How horrible!

@geodethecrow asked as well

Yes, this is a (relatively) new "trend" where people are painting (with stuff like paint, glitter, nail polish, and even more pregnant stuff like epoxy/resin) baby turtle shells, and sometimes adult shells. At minimum, this is a huge problem for the turtle in terms of ability to absorb sun for metabolizing vitamins and stuff, and at worst... the harder stuff can actually bond to the shell and lead to the above, where the baby grows and the shell can't, so it develops horrifically deformed.

@aeyriabird sent:

re: toe nail polish on birds - not sure if quail have different sensitivities but i work with seabirds in the US and we use nail polish to distinguish between black guillemot siblings in the field before they're big enough to band; the claw grows out from the base so the paint just sits on the tip while the rest of the nail grows out as normal. you can see in this photo where / how big the nail originally was when we first applied the nail polish, and how it's grown in the 4-5 days between checks. (obligatory disclaimer that i have the appropriate training and authorization to handle these birds, and that the chick is not being squeezed despite what it looks like. they just scream and have a lot of fluff)

And while it's good to know, I also don't know if quail would have different sensitivities or be too small to get it JUST on the nail, so I'm not going to be the one that says yeah sure go for it it's totally fine.

smallerontheoutside:

smallerontheoutside:

jestrogames:

smallerontheoutside:

smallerontheoutside:

btw if you’re on this site it is your duty to reblog any post that has been prophecied to reach 10k notes. let’s all annoy op

#this post deserves #10k notes #perchance.

ehh no actuallly it does not

Unfortunately for you, Tumblr is a site where the opinion least regarded on deserves notes is the original poster, sooo


@walmart-the-official

well. it’s been over a month and we’re not even at 1k yet, so I think I’m safe. perhaps 😌

….nate I’m really sorry I laughed at you for having posts with thousands of notes. don’t do this to me

posted by [syndicated profile] seananmcguire_tumblr_feed at 05:56pm on 06/07/2025

jackironsides:

athelind:

sindri42:

thereadingaddic7:

madame-helen:

secundus-cinaedus:

cure of ra

Now its blessing of Ra

“Sunburn will give you skin cancer”

Ra, God of the Sun

Fungus has done so much for humanity. Penicillin. Radiation cleanup. Delicious mushrooms. Deadly mushrooms. Psychadelic mushrooms. And now my boy RA has chosen the humble mold spores as his vessel through which to cure cancer.

SOURCE

Athelind:

#rah rah RA

thesevenumbrellas:

Tumblr gifmakers are better than $1mil worth of marketing. I’ll see endless ads for a show and be like meh but I’ll see one good gifset and suddenly I’m on s2 ep10 finding blorbo from my gifs

yamino:

“So, she died of shock. What’s the big deal? She was 94, she had a great life, and died doing what she loved: being disappointed in me.”

-Mira, probably

silasplaskett:

i think what i love about the leverage redemption set up is that they decide to do One ☝️ Job for fun for sophie. accidentally adopt a guy whos trying to make up for his asshole ways. get their old hq burned Again. and decide the solution is to move to the asshole guys hometown. harry could not get unadopted even if he wanted to

kaijudove:

happy make a terrible comic day!!! i haven’t stopped thinking about this post since i saw it. in 2018 a common merganser was spotted with 76 (SEVENTY SIX!!!) chicks!! that’s SOOOO many baby. so much success.

xiranjayzhao:

Nessie @raccoonmilf, founder of the original Dashcon (who came up with the idea at 15 and then had the project hijacked by a bunch of adults who exploited her for child labor 😭) in a Marie-Antoinette-inspired Ball Pit Queen outfit constructed by herself + me as Yugioh Robespierre, at the incredible post-cringe redemption that was Dashcon 2.

We did NOT plan this coincidence but once we realized it we did plan that little failed revolution quelled by Sir @strange-aeons at the Closing Ceremony!

posted by [syndicated profile] seananmcguire_tumblr_feed at 05:02pm on 06/07/2025

marzipanandminutiae:

charlesoberonn:

Addams family member concept:

A tree-hugging, nature-loving, hippie aunt. But she loves specifically all of the most disgusting and horrifying things in nature.

She admires the way predators eviscerate their prey. She finds the lethal mating habits of insects romantic. She always offers people fruits and snacks, forgetting that they’re poisonous and most people haven’t developed immunity.

this could be 21st-century Aunt Ophelia but people always forget she exists besides brief background appearances:

Morticia’s twin sister from the 1960s show, she’s the pre-Raphaelite goth botanist character we all deserve

(those flowers literally grow from her head; it’s not a wreath)

rtfics:

dannypinot:

SINNERS (2025) — dir. Ryan Coogler

I’ve loved The Blues since I was a kid, and got to see Buddy Guy perform live. I am SO damn happy he’s in this movie.

Legendary Bluesman Buddy Guy on His Buzzy Movie Role in ‘Sinners’: ‘It’s a Dream Come True, to Be Honest… I Did It to Help the Blues’

Damn right, he’s got the blues… and the scars to show for it. A surprise extended cameo at the end of “Sinners” [spoiler alert!] reveals that Sammie, who is played as a youth in the 1930s by Miles Caton, survived the film’s long night of terror, thanks in part to how a resonator guitar can be used as a weapon. And he has lived on in the form of someone who looks and plays very much like Buddy Guy. It is Buddy Guy, of course, still around and still arguably — no, inarguably — the most legendary blues guitarist walking the planet.

Variety caught up with Guy, 88, on the phone from his native Chicago, where he still plays at his club, much like the aged Sammie in “Sinners” still plays at his. Guy says, “If I could get quite a few more people speaking like you, I might consider myself as a movie actor.” Then, he quickly adds, “No, that’s just a joke coming from me.”

But before we get with Buddy, a few words from the film’s composer and music producer, Ludwig Göransson, who worked with Guy on his performance and on the song the bluesman plays at the end of the film, “Travelin’.” A month before shooting, Göransson went out to Guy’s Chicago club and got to swap not just musical ideas but tales of old bluesmen like Son House, who was one of writer-director Ryan Coogler’s inspirations for the part. Then, in New Orleans, they filmed the all-important epilogue with Guy on the very first day of the shoot.

“He had a long day, on what was actually our production’s day zero,” says Göransson. “There’s quite a lot of dialogue he has, actually, and also, there were a lot of technical things that needed to happen with Michael (B. Jordan) and Hailee (Steinfeld) with her eyes and their vampire teeth. And I was just amazed by how Buddy Guy could withstand this 12-hour workday when he’s 88 years old. I was worried when we finished off with the song, because he has been doing dialogue and acting for eight, maybe 10 hours. But once we did the last scene where he is actually playing guitar, it was such a magical moment. We had a whole crew there on set, but it’s like you could hear a feather drop on the ground. It was very much of a goosebump moment.”

That last sequence has poignance for an audience, certainly, if you know who Buddy Guy is. If you don’t, it still intuitively translates, believes Göransson. “I was wondering, what are kids, our younger demographic, gonna think? But every time we screened the film, no one even asked, ‘Who’s that?’ It’s almost like, even if the people didn’t know who he was, there’s like an instant feeling that this is something else — like, you’re seeing a magician do a magic trick.”

Here’s our conversation with Guy, who will be out on the road this summer doing his “Damn Right Encore” tour, including an L,A.-area date at the Cerritos Center on Aug. 10.

Did you have to sit in the makeup chair for quite a while get those scars applied?

Yeah, and I didn’t know they could do that. I was saying, “What the hell is this?” when they said, “We’re gonna make these scars on your face.”

Movies, man… As a kid, I loved the Westerns, because I grew up riding horses in Louisiana on the plantation, and seeing those old cowboys like Gene Autry, playing the acoustic guitar while riding a horse… I can’t imagine that’s me now. It’s a dream come true, to be honest with you.

This is a long way from a singing-cowboy movie. How did you feel about being in a horror film?

I saw a little something when they was shooting it. This guy (Michael B. Jordan) comes close to me, and I didn’t know he had these vampire teeth, and they got a close-up on him when he smiled. I said, “Oh my God!”

How were you approached to do this?

Well, they came into my club here in Chicago, and I was surprised. They say, “Look, we want you to play this little part that’s called Sammie.” And I’m saying, “Well, let me see”… Because I don’t have a high school education to be reading long scripts. I did learn how to read and write. I’m like BB King: I’m not fast at it, but if you give it to me and give me time, I can memorize it. But the older you get, the less you can memorize. Whatever can help the blues stay alive, I’m all for it, and I will try anything. I said, I don’t know if I’m good enough to do that. But I’ll give it a try, and if it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, at least I’ll say I gave it a try.

You know, I don’t know too much about movies. I made one a little bit with Tommy Lee Jones about 15 years ago (2009’s mystery-thriller “In the Electric Mist”). And when something like this comes along, I do it to help the blues.

It’s a mission, not just a profession, for you.

There’s very few radio stations other than satellite who play blues now. And the older people I learned from is no longer with us. But when I was coming up, on the AM stations everybody’s records were being played. There was gospel, jazz and the blues, and everybody knew who the late Lightnin’ Hopkins was. But nowadays, man, if you don’t tell ’em, they don’t know it. They’re like, “Who is that? Who’s Muddy Waters?” My grandkids don’t know nothing about the blues until they hit 21 and come up in the club while I’m there, and they say, “Granddad, I didn’t know you could do that!” So I’m 100% trying to support it so the next generation of white or Black kids can hear it and know more about the blues that was created way before the British type of (blues-rock) stuff come along and all the different types of music we have now. Muddy Waters and BB King, I knew ’em before they passed away, and they told me, “Man, if you outlive me, just try to keep the blues alive.”

So it just makes me feel good to see something that is letting people know a little more about it.  So when they told me I had an interview with you, I said, “Yeah, I’ll take it.” Because anything we can do to help the blues stay alive, I’m for it. I’m in for it.

This movie seems like it is going to go a long way in furthering your mission of bringing the blues alive for new generations. And you certainly do your part in it well…

That’s the part I love to hear coming from somebody else… when somebody says, “I think it’s pretty good.”

I remember BB King talked about how he made a record with John Lee Hooker, and he said it took one take, and John Lee just jumped up out of the chair and said, “That’s it!” Well, I don’t say that, because I never know if I did a good job. Even when I play for a live audience now, sometimes I tell ’em, “I’m not the best in town, but I’m trying to be the best till the best come around.” But I watch your face. If you got a frown on your face — if whatever I play don’t move you — I say to myself, “I didn’t do a good job.” And sometimes I just do little tricky things and I see a smile, and I think, “I must’ve hit the right note.”

You have a humility about what you do, which is surprising, after you’ve been a guitar hero for so many decades.

I still know a lot of guitar players, man, that is better than me. I’m just being honest with you. Because sometimes I see young people come up now playing a lick, and I’m saying, “I’ve had this guitar in my hands for 70 years. How come I couldn’t find that lick that this young kid, like Kingfish or Johnny Lang, did?” I got it from the people that invented it, from Son House, Fred McDonald, and all those people played that music for the love of music. They wasn’t making a decent living. Some of ’em had day jobs, including me. In 1967, I was driving a tow truck and playing the music here in Chicago at night.

You perform a lot at your club in Chicago, but you wrapped up your farewell tour last year, right?

No, no, no. They put that in: “farewell tour.” I’m having kind of a delayed farewell tour; maybe after this year I might say that. But I’m still playing some of the big festivals. Bobby Rush, Willie Nelson and me, they call us the last of the 89- and 90-year-olds that’s still out there, and that’s kind of kept me to say, “Buddy, you better go back out there and play a little more, because there ain’t nobody left after you of that age that’s still standing around.” Because BB King was in a wheelchair for maybe four or five years before he died, and I’m not on crutches yet. So I want to at least go another year.

We hope to see you when you’re out on the road.

Well, if I’m coming there, I always invite people like you in my dressing room. And I always have a shot of cognac, because I’m still nervous. That’s the only time I take a drink: when I gotta go on the stage. I got whiskey at my house, but you couldn’t find my fingerprints on the bottle, because it never crossed my mind (to take a drink) until I gotta go to the stage. I’m like, I know I can’t please nobody, but lemme get a little shot of cognac so I can hope it’ll make me feel like you’ve given the best that you have.

But with or without that, you have to be confident you can still deliver for an audience.

Age takes effect on your voice, your walk, whatever you do as you get up into your 80s. And damn, I’m near 90 years old, man. You can’t do what you did when you was 25 or 26. But I’m gonna give you the best I got, and that’s all I got.

Are you able to accept that you’re a movie star right now?

I don’t make that kind of comment, that I’m a movie star… but every time I hear something coming from people like you, it makes the goose pimples come up on me.

Posted by Ask a Manager

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My peer keeps acting like my manager or mentor — but I’m better at my job than she is

I’m an attorney for a government agency. I have about six years of legal experience. One of my colleagues, Fergusa, has the same title as me and started around the same time, but came into the role with a few more years of legal experience, so she is in a slightly higher pay band. Other people with our title have anywhere from 1-10 years of experience.

Fergusa and I have a decent relationship, but when she is feeling insecure or having a hard time in either her work or personal life, she takes it out on me. Sometimes, that means she treats me like her legal assistant instead of her peer. I want to be a team player, and I’m happy to put things in the mail or do similar tasks when she needs extra help. But she often does this even when I’m slammed at work and it makes no sense for her to farm it out to me. For example, I recently spent hours in an emergency hearing, and when I got out, she had sent me a long email explaining how I should do a menial task — something that isn’t normally my responsibility and would have been easier and faster for her to handle herself. After a few days or weeks of requests like this, if I push back at all, she’ll take a new tack: she’ll start giving me tons of advice I didn’t ask for, or ask me to take on large and interesting projects with very short notice, under the guise of it being good for my “development” as a “new” lawyer. Sometimes I take on those projects, and sometimes I tell her I can’t do it.

No matter what, the through-line seems to be that she has decided I am her junior, and she flips between seeing herself as a mentor or just as someone who can take the tasks she doesn’t want to do. But she isn’t my supervisor, and I don’t want her to be my mentor. Frankly, I get glowing performance reviews and I’m really good at my job, whereas I know she’s been coached for poor performance. She’s a smart person and a hard worker, but she doesn’t take feedback well and lets her ego get in the way of her work.

I’m not afraid to tell her that I don’t have the bandwidth to take on whatever work she’s decided should be my responsibility. The thing that bothers me is her attitude and continued insistence — even after working together for three years — that she can impose some sort of hierarchical relationship on me when it suits her. My boss knows that there’s been a little tension in the past, but this all feels too unimportant to bring it to him, and anyway, I don’t know what I’d be asking for — “Can you tell Fergusa to think about me differently?” Should I just keep doing what I’m doing and try not to take it personally? Or is there any way to have a bigger conversation about this dynamic without blowing things up?

Would your boss have your back if you started flatly declining all the legal assistant type work Fergusa tries to assign you? If so, I’d stop accepting any of it, even when you have time to do it — since if some of the time you agree to mail things for her or otherwise do her clerical work, you’re reinforcing that it’s appropriate for her to ask. If you think your boss would support you in declining, decline! From now on if she tries to send you that stuff, say, “I know I’ve been willing to help with this sort of thing in the past, but I won’t be able to keep helping with it because of my own workload.” Or just say no every time and see if she eventually gets the point.

It may or may not be worth addressing the larger pattern by saying something like, “I’ve noticed we’ve fallen into a dynamic where you ask me to do admin work or offer mentoring. We’re in the same job and my understanding is that we should be relating as peers, so I’d rather you not assign me work like that.”

2. Marketing team keeps replacing my writing with bad ChatGPT copy

I work at a small-ish nonprofit. My job involves a variety of tasks including research, supporting customers, hosting events, and creating content (articles and promotion). Our marketing department has eyes on any blog posts and anything promotional before it is published.

Lately, they just delete all my copy and replace it with copy that has been “optimized for SEO.” I am almost sure they are just entering my copy into ChatGPT with a prompt about SEO. I frequently have to update the copy to accurately reflect what we are promoting and even what we actually do at the company. I also hate the way this copy reads. It is full of generic and cliche language. You know, the type of writing that really doesn’t say anything and definitely doesn’t sound authentic. I have generally been accepting their edits because I cannot argue the effectiveness of SEO and trying to get clicks as compared to sounding like an actual human.

However, I’m beginning to get irritated because this is a waste of my time. I enjoy writing and spend time trying to find a phrase that captures what I want to convey without sounding too cliche. I hate having my name listed as the author of articles full of bad writing or signing my name to emails so obviously written by AI. I want to push back, but it sounds accusatory since they’ve never told me they’re using ChatGPT and I worry I will come across as naive for not understanding SEO. Is this the world we are in now? Are we all just writing for computers instead of for humans?

No, it’s not the world we’re in now; if they’re replacing good copy with bad copy, they’re just bad at their jobs. Try pointing out that their replacement copy is frequently inaccurate, and point out specific places it’s become less engaging. Tell them you want to produce what they want and ask if they can tell you what you can do differently on your side to produce copy they’ll accept. If that doesn’t move the needle, talk to your own boss, show examples of how Marketing has edited your copy in ways that make it worse, and ask for advice.

3. Company asked if I feel what happens in my life is because of fate

A few years ago, I applied for a technical/professional position at a company with mostly blue-collar, close-to-minimum-wage employees, many of whom have historically been non-native English speakers and ethnic minorities.

The company is Canadian but has expanded rapidly in the U.S. by buying many smaller American companies, which may be why they asked a question I’m not sure is legal in the U.S.

As part of the hiring process, I had to fill out the same application that the hourly workers complete. There were many questions that required answers selected from agree strongly/agree/neither agree nor disagree/disagree/disagree strongly. One of the statements that required agreement/disagreement was “I feel that what happens in my life is because of fate.”

I know that many people in lower socioeconomic strata feel shut out of meaningful participation in systems that affect them and feel that they are not in control of their circumstances and that “fate” rather than self-determination dictates their lives. My question is whether this question is legal, given that it could serve as a proxy for race/class?

Another (American) company in the same industry that lists appearance requirements for employment (hair must be kept above the collar, no visible tattoos, etc.) also indicates that both male and female employees “must have a full set of teeth,” which I cannot imagine can be legal.

I withdrew my candidacy with the Canadian company because I was offered a job in an area I really wanted to work in, but I still wonder about the legality of questions/requirements that screen out anyone who isn’t at least middle class.

That question is legal. In order for it to be illegal, you’d need to show pretty conclusively that people’s answers correlate with race and it has a disparate impact in screening out some races versus others. I’m not sure it does!

The hair length and tattoo policies are also legal, but the requirement for a full set of teeth is not, unless the job was for, like, teeth models or candy apple testers or something where having all your teeth was a bona fide occupational qualification.

Related:
is it OK for job postings to require a “clean-cut appearance”?

4. My employer wouldn’t let me use FMLA leave, even though I qualified for it

This is a situation that happened with a previous employer, but I’ve learned recently that it’s affecting a current employee.

When I was hired, I was told by the recruiter that employees received “four weeks of leave,” which seemed pretty sweet to me. In reality, after I started working, I found out that those four weeks broke down into two weeks of vacation, one week of sick leave, and one week of what the company calls extended sick leave. Extended sick leave was to be used for absences of three days or more and required a doctor’s note. Both forms of sick leave carried over each year, and healthy long-term employees had hefty extended sick leave balances because any illnesses they had were no more than two days.

After several years at this company, I needed surgery that would have me out of the office for four weeks. I knew that FMLA is unpaid leave, but employers can require employees to exhaust any paid leave they have while using FMLA. So, it was reassuring to have enough extended sick leave in the bank to cover my four weeks’ leave and still have my vacation time left. So, I asked the HR department for the paperwork to submit a request for leave under FMLA.

That’s when things got weird. HR refused to provide me with FMLA paperwork, saying I didn’t need FMLA because I would be using extended sick leave. I said that wasn’t how FMLA works. FMLA provides job-protected but unpaid time; sick leave (or any other form of paid leave available to the employee) is how a person can get paid while they are on what would otherwise be unpaid leave. My HR rep and her supervisor both told me that the company considers its extended sick leave to be job-protected and that the company would never terminate anyone for using it. I responded that company policies don’t have the force of law, and I wanted to use FMLA. (Frankly, at that point, with that employer, for a variety of reasons, I wouldn’t have trusted my immediate supervisor as far as I could throw her and wanted to cover myself.)

I ended up downloading standard government FMLA forms online, had my doctor’s office complete them, and handed them to my HR rep. Let’s just say that she did not receive them with grace and commented negatively on my lack of trust for the company and its policies. “Not a team player” was one of the phrases I remember. I never received any acknowledgement or approval of my FMLA application. My surgery and recovery were uneventful, and I returned to work in four weeks. HR, however, never got over this incident and I had some continued challenges dealing with them until I finally left.

Please reassure me that what I experienced was wrong. I’ve heard from someone that HR is continuing to actively and effectively discourage people from applying for leave under FMLA.

You are right and they were wrong.

It’s great that the company considers its extended sick leave to be job-protected but — as you pointed out — that doesn’t have the force of law and FMLA does, and it’s entirely reasonable to want to be sure you have legal protection in place. What’s more, an employer cannot legally stop an eligible employee from using FMLA; it’s illegal to deny it if the person qualifies under the law. The Department of Labor spells that out very clearly.

5. Can you negotiate severance when you’re accepting a job offer?

My husband was let go this week from his salaried job. He was not let go for any ethical or legal reasons, just a lot of restructuring and the company wanting to bring in a high-profile person to take over much of his work, yada yada yada. He had never been on a PIP and his annual reviews were average. I believe his company has been fair but not generous with his severance package; the only time I have ever involuntarily left a job was when my former employer went bankrupt and I showed up to lock doors and an email one day, so I have no frame of reference with what is normal. We are in the U.S. and have filed all the necessary paperwork for assistance.

My question is, is there ever opportunity to negotiate a severance, and when should it be done? Obviously a terminated employee has no power after let go, but would inquiring during the interviewing or onboarding process be sending the wrong message? Or is this just a situation where you should be grateful for anything you receive? Are there specific legal requirements employers have to meet?

You can sometimes negotiate the amount of severance you’re given when you’re let go, but it depends on the circumstances. If the employer is worried you have any kind of cause for legal action (like that they laid you off right after you asked to take FMLA, for example, or they mishandled your sexual harassment complaint last year), they are often willing to negotiate severance, in exchange for you signing a general release of claims. That can be true even if they don’t think you’d win a lawsuit; they may decide it will be easier and faster to pay severance rather than having to fight a legal battle. You might also be able to negotiate more severance in other cases too, like if you moved for the job and they laid you off two months later. But if there’s nothing like that in play, then you don’t really have any leverage.

But negotiating for severance as part of a job offer isn’t a thing for most jobs; that would require an employment contract, and most employees in the U.S. don’t have employment contracts. There are some exceptions to that, and it’s possible that you could negotiate it if you were particularly senior or had particularly in-demand skills (especially as part of agreeing to leave a secure job for a less secure venture), but it’s not something that’s on the table for most people.

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