u/goodgreat123

One of my direct reports died unexpectedly a few days ago. She was in her 20s, and I’m having a really hard time processing it while also trying to manage my team. Honestly, it still doesn’t feel real.

I cared about her a lot, although we had more of a manager/mentor relationship than a friendship. She was incredibly hardworking, smart, and genuinely sweet, and I was really proud of how much she had been growing professionally. It was completely unexpected.

My team is struggling too, and I’m trying to give everyone space while also figuring out how much work actually needs to continue. Some people are having a hard time even opening the projects they worked on with her, which I completely understand.

I’m also finding my own grief really unpredictable. Sometimes I feel totally normal and functional, and then suddenly I’m crying and can barely hold it together. I had to keep my camera off during our team meeting today because I’d been crying beforehand, while everyone else seemed relatively okay.

I know everyone processes grief differently, but I’m looking for advice from other managers who have been through something similar. How did you support your team while also giving yourself room to grieve?

How did you handle continuing to work when everything suddenly feels so unimportant?

I think I mostly just need to hear from people who have been through it.

My husband and I want to learn how to dance this summer and have no idea where to start. Coming to Reddit instead of google because the styles of dance we are interested in are bachata, salsa and two-step. Looking for recs for places with free sessions where we can try each style out, studios we can take lessons, and places that are most fun to dance once we know what we’re doing!

I cruised on the MSC Seascape out of Galveston last week and I think it will be my last cruise for a while. Since 2023, my husband and I have been on 8 cruises across RCCL, NCL and this was our first MSC. We were really excited to get an upgrade from the Aurea balcony to a Yacht Club interior.

My biggest concern going into the cruise was the food, but food was great! No complaints there whatsoever. Entertainment was also pretty good and they always had plenty to do.

The Yacht Club experience made me totally uncomfortable and made me completely rethink cruising ever again. Our butler and junior butler were reverent to the point of seeming scared of my husband and I, and we are some of the most laid back, easy going travelers. I felt like I had to manage their emotions on top of my own throughout the trip.

For example, they decorated our room for my birthday (which was sweet), and my husband and I took down the decorations and put them outside the door when it was time for bed (that’s what the junior butler told us to do). A little later they came back visibly upset because they thought we hated the decorations and that their supervisor was angry with them. They even called our room multiple times in the middle of the night afterward.

I just felt bad for them honestly and had trouble enjoying the vacation and the experience. It felt like living in a fishbowl at times because the staff was way too attentive. It felt weirdly transactional and almost dystopian? Like the staff had to perform gratitude and devotion at such an extreme level that it stopped feeling human.

I know people LOVE Yacht Club, so maybe this is a me problem. But it genuinely made me question the entire cruise industry in a way I never had before. I came home feeling guilty instead of relaxed.

My husband (36M) and I (32F) are happily child free and genuinely living our best lives. Throughout my 20s, I felt very much on a similar trajectory as all of my peers, finishing school, starting careers, dating, getting married, buying houses, etc. Apart from one friend, all of my close friends still didn’t have kids in our late 20s. Now, one by one, everyone is getting pregnant and while I’m SO happy for them I also can’t help but mourn that our lives are about to change SO much.

I know friendship doesn’t require everyone to be on the same path but I feel sort of isolated (apart from my husband) in my choice to be child free. I’m at a phase where I want to expand my friendship circle and it’s also sort of intimidating to branch out from befriending people who are so similar to me, odds are that my most compatible friends likely have/want kids.