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Culture

#1076: The Xenophobe In The Group Chat

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February 5, 2018
boundaries, communications, creeps, Culture, Geek Social Fallacies, Manners, Overthinking It, racism, Reader Questions, The Book of the Face
178 Comments

Yo, Captain!

I have a friend who I care about dearly but he keeps sending quite rude (almost downright racist) messages over a group chat I have with all of my friends, often targeted towards me and my heritage. A recent example is that he sent a photo of a map from almost 200 years ago and said “Ha, look, your country isn’t even on this map! It’s not a real country lol.” Another was when he kept trying to explain and then lecture me (quite patronizingly) about this country’s history (with inaccurate information, if I may add that) although I have family from this country and have read books about its history. I have told him that I find this rude and I have heritage from this country but I grew up in the same country he has, so I don’t understand why he can’t accept me as at least both nationalities. I used to be bullied for having “foreigner” relatives and being related to said country and his behaviour is similar to how it started out when I first was bullied (by other people, to clarify) which is making alarm bells ring. As it is on a group chat and I struggle with anxiety and confronting my friends (he knows this), then I find it difficult to call him out on his behaviour and I try to ignore the group chat, however, I feel like if I constantly ignore it every time people accept this behaviour more and it hinders my ability to communicate online to my group of friends (also, they know I get upset about it but I don’t expect them to do anything).

My solution was to block him on Facebook so he can’t directly message me and to avoid him on the group chat, which worked except he found out that I blocked his messages and keeps trying to call me out on the group chat. Other friends keep messaging me saying “why have you blocked him?” and then they post screenshots on the chat (so far I’ve replied with “what? I think my messages are just messed up at the moment”) so I’m afraid to tell them because these kinds of jokes are often made by him so that’s partly why no one goes “hey that’s not cool, friend.” I don’t want to be seen as humourless by telling everyone, because then people treat me like they’re walking on eggshells. Am I being irrational? Are they entitled to an explanation? Are there any scripts you could possibly give me?

Thank you,

from,

I Just Want To Talk To My Friend And Not Get Upset (she/her)

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#1069: “My friends forgot my birthday.”

By
January 16, 2018
communications, Culture, Friendship, Reader Questions, The Book of the Face
254 Comments

Dear Captain Awkward and friends,

Due to frequent moves both by me and by many of them, the seven or so people I consider my closest friends are scattered across three countries on opposite sides of the globe. (And most of them don’t know each other.) Nevertheless, I keep in frequent contact with them – we communicate at least once a week, often more. I’ve known them all for years (several of them for decades), they’re all very important to me, and they’ve been there for me in tough times, so I don’t think this problem indicates a major break in our friendships or anything like that, but. Yesterday was my birthday, and not one of them remembered it.

My birthday isn’t public on Facebook because I never liked the hollow “hbd” posts from people who I don’t really interact with. So the lack of a Facebook reminder is almost certainly a factor here. But I know that these seven friends know when my birthday is, and all of them have sent me birthday messages unprompted in the past. I didn’t even expect messages from all of them this year – it’s just that not receiving even ONE hurt a lot more than I thought it would. Especially because it’s not a secret that my birthday is important to me, moreso now that I have stopped celebrating most major holidays. Maybe it makes sense that more of my friends wished me a merry holiday-they-know-I-don’t-celebrate-anymore than wished me a happy birthday, but it still sucks.

And I don’t think I’m being a hypocrite here! I try hard to remember my friends’ birthdays, whether or not they have them on Facebook, and I make sure to send them birthday greetings. Which was all I wanted in return. One birthday text from a friend and I wouldn’t be writing to you!

Anyway. Any thoughts on how I should handle this? Do I bring it up with them? Do I admit how much it hurt? Should I obnoxiously remind them next year? Or should I focus on the nice messages my family sends me and the kind words from the friends I’m making in my current location, and try not to worry about my friends elsewhere? Do I just need to accept that if I don’t let Facebook announce my birthday, no one will remember it?

Thank you,
Birthday Girl
(she/her)

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#1062: My new coworkers are super-weird about potlucks and I don’t like the patriarchy.”

By
December 14, 2017
boundaries, Culture, manipulation, Manners, Reader Questions, saying no, Work
442 Comments

Dear Captain,

This is a pretty low-stakes question, but I was wondering if you and your lovely commenters could help me out here? I’m a young, disabled woman working in a hyper-competitive, male-dominated, rank-obsessed industry. I recently started a job at a new company, and in my department there’s a potluck every fortnight at one of the senior people’s houses. It’s pretty much expected that you attend — which I have pretty mixed feelings about, because, like, what if you have kids or other home responsibilities? or if you don’t drive and don’t want to have to rely on your possibly-drunk co-workers for rides? — but they do seem to be good fun and are a great networking opportunity.

Because of my disability, I can’t stand up for long periods of time, and I have pretty severe fatigue issues, so cooking is not in the cards for me. So, the night before the potluck, I go to a posh grocery store, buy some super nice potluck-appropriate food in a reasonable quantity, and bring that. Sounds good, right?

Nope. Basically everybody has told me that I should be bringing something home-made, with comments ranging from discreet, well-intentioned warnings to super-aggressive in-your-face attacks.

I have so many issues with this, including: (1) most of the food is made by my co-workers’ stay-at-home wives, not them themselves, grr patriarchy, (2) a lot of the home-cooked food is legitimately terrible, whereas my grocery store stuff is at least tasty and unlikely to give anyone food poisoning.

I don’t want my disability to become general knowledge, I probably shouldn’t rage against the patriarchy, and I don’t want to insult anyone else’s food, but I need a script to get people to stop being weird about this. With the people I outrank I typically make a joke about how all I do is work all the time, but I don’t actually like doing that, because promoting overwork is bad and also I’m female and super-young for my rank so making a big deal out of my job title is a whole new level of awkward. And otherwise I just try to change the subject? But that’s not really working?

Thanks,

Making lasagne is not in my job description

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#1058: It’s that time of year when we need to email professors!

By
December 11, 2017
COMMUNICATION, communications, Culture, Manners, Overthinking It, Reader Questions
101 Comments

Hi Captain!

I’ve been enjoying your blog for a while and it’s really helped me with getting better at Using My Words. This is a pretty low-stakes question but I thought it was definitely one for a university professor. (Sorry if professor isn’t the right term, I’m not American.)

I’ve been doing fine at uni for several years but I’ve recently hit a mental health roadblock. The process of getting (free) therapy is painstaking but I’m finally on a waiting list, so yay! However, it’s greatly impacting my studies. For the first time, I am taking half my classes online, and so I’ve never met my professors and can’t geographically organise to do so.

So my question is, how do I complete procedures like requesting extra time on assignments, when it has to be done entirely via email? I feel so awkward having to explain the “reason for extension” and not sure where the line between TMI and not enough info is.

Some bonus! advice about how to generally communicate with professors via email would also be appreciated. Do I say “hi” or “dear”? Can I ACTUALLY email them if I don’t understand something? Sometimes I wish there was an ettiquete rule book I could follow because I’ve ended up avoiding any communication and struggling in class as a result.

Thanks so much, Captain! And a huge thank you for just running this blog, because I really do love reading it.

Over-thinking Emails

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#1051: “The nightly dinner debate during family visits is making me very cranky indeed.”

By
November 20, 2017
boundaries, Culture, Families, family, Geek Social Fallacies, Parents, Reader Questions

Hi Captain,

I’m such a fan of your kind and logical advice! I’m hoping for scripts to deal with a nasty pattern that my family falls into at mealtimes when we’re visiting my parents and brothers- it’s kind of like the abilene paradox on steroids, but while hungry.

I tell spouse and my parents that I’m going to make salmon and a salad for dinner, and do they want any. Parents counter with a 40 minute discussion of whether I eat fish (only if not baked), whether chicken would be better (Mom is pescetarian) whether we can bake the salmon (yes, but then I won’t eat it). I circle back to what I started with, because I’m hungry and this is what I wanted for dinner.

Spouse then asks why I’m cranky and Dad finishes with the ‘whatever you want dear’.
I start prepping, then deal with another 2 attempts to bring chicken back into the mix and a quick derailment of maybe we should have gotten takeout.

At this point its been over an hr of discussion for dinner, and as far as I can tell, no one is happy with the choice of food. And this sort of nonsense happens every night we visit, and is only amplified when my brothers and their spouses are in the mix.

I’ve tried the escape with spouse for dinner, but then I have to deal with the parental ‘oh can we come with, since we’d like to have dinner with you, but we don’t like any of the restaurants you’d want, but we’ll suck it up since that’s what you want’

How on earth do I avoid this nonsense?

Thanks!

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#1040: “I matched my dysfunctional brother-in-law up with a dysfunctional friend and now they are ruining my holiday plans.”

By
October 25, 2017
Culture, family, invitations, Manners, Overthinking It, Reader Questions
157 Comments

Dear Captain Awkward:

Please help captain! (I really struggled getting my letter to around 400words – there is a lot more detail if you need it 😊)

My brother-in-law ‘Hector’ is 36 and ‘Agnes’ is his first ‘girlfriend’. I’d known Agnes for a few years before setting her up with Hector– she’s now 40 and her only previous relationship was when she was a teenager.

Over the years I’ve known her she had displayed a lot of questionable behaviour e.g. stalking guys she was interested in, obsessively stalking old friends on social media and do things like go through people’s drawers and medicine cabinets and take photos which she’d share with her mother. I’d overlooked these things as she was fun company (apart from the strangeness) and I don’t have that many friends.

So basically I set my dysfunctional brother in law up with my dysfunctional friend and now I’m suffering consequences, and now it’s affecting Christmas.

My husband and I alternated Christmas – one year at my parents and the next at his. Agnes now refuses to spend Christmas day at his parents’ as she ‘has a niece’ (her ‘weapon’) and so spends every Christmas day with her family. She hates my in-laws – she refuses to let them into her house whilst she is there, and sulks whenever she is in a room with them.

So, 2 years ago my husband and I decided to host Christmas, either on Christmas Eve, or Boxing Day (thereby letting her spend Christmas day with her family). This worked well. However, this must have been going too well (as Agnes lives off drama) and so when I asked about Christmas (at this point we were relatively close and messaged each other every day) she told me that it was all arranged and that she and Hector were spending Christmas Eve with her family and that they had made arrangements to go to the in-laws on 23rd December.

I replied saying that I was upset that my husband and I were not asked. Since then I have not heard from her (this was back in August).

My husband and I have since decided to go ahead as we would have done, and are hosting on Christmas Eve –we invited Hector and Agnes, and the invitation was declined. However, I’m still upset and brooding about this. If she’d have just said ‘oh my sister has invited us to a meal on Christmas Eve’ I’d have given options and worked around her on the dates – but the fact that they’d just arranged it all without us… just hurts.

I was hoping for a script or some advice on how to handle this difficult relationship going forward?

Many Thanks

Regretful matchmaker

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#1039: How to deal with people’s interest in my mother’s health?

By
October 24, 2017
COMMUNICATION, communications, Culture, Events, Families, Manners, Reader Questions
94 Comments

Hi,

I’m a 30 year old man with a family of four, and I’m a member of a church community of about 140 people, 80 active members. I’ve been mostly inactive for over 10 years, but go to things occasionally. My parents have been active my whole life, up until five years ago my mother got very ill. My father has kept going to church and doing activities, up until the last year. His reason was that he was sick of people asking how my mother was doing and never asking him how he was doing, and has stopped attending.

Initially, I didn’t think much of this and felt my father’s reasoning sounded a bit selfish. My wife has pointed out that it was our community’s way of indirectly asking how he is doing and showing they care. I had experienced some of the same, but didn’t think much of it, until I started getting active again in the last couple months, and honestly, I’m starting to see what my dad means.

Week to week, my mother’s health does not change. Every couple months she has an episode of some kind and recovers afterwards. But that is the question, every time single time I attend an event, multiple times per event. It is surprisingly grating over time. I feel like it would rude/passive to aggressive to add, “I’m doing fine by the way” or “She’s not getting better, stop asking.” I do think it’s coming from a good place, but I’m seriously thinking about attending a church that doesn’t know my mother.

Thanks,

Random Dude

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