u/wafflescorpion

I work in an academic research environment. My boss and I agreed on a promotion. The department then agreed on a promotion. It went to HR in March, with a backdate for the salary change. Now we're in July, and nothing has happened since.

What's going on in the backend of things? It just seems odd to me that it would take this long if everyone has agreed on it and the department has sufficient grant funding.

I like to collect autographs of world leaders, heads of government, and heads of state. Sometimes you get a genuine response (my favorite was Kazakhstan), sometimes it's just a preprint, but I'm doing all of this for fun and because I like to get stuff in the mail.

After getting responses from all the EU/NATO countries I've been trying to branch out, but I'm aware that some options are possibly going to raise eyebrows. For instance, I don't think it would look very good to receive a letter from the Taliban government in Afghanistan, assuming it would even go through.

What are some of the other ones that would get me on a watch list?

I'd really love to get some of the actors from back in the day, like Craig and Rick, but I don't want to bug them if they don't do autographs in the mail!

Something that struck me about the Democrat primary for this round was that we had several candidates making progressive noises, but none of them were able to pull ahead and Mikie Sherrill won by default.

Was this because the other choices weren't good candidates, or because voters wanted to play it safe, or because state Democrats just aren't into more leftist politics?

Outside of Trump, who do you admire, and why?

I'm from New Jersey and a coworker of mine was from Cleveland. At one point, she brought her husband to work to meet all of us. His name was Julius, so I jokingly asked him if at any point he'd been called Orange Julius (like the drink), since it's not a name I commonly see. All of the sudden, his expression changed, and he told me not to call him Orange Julius, because that term is racist. For context, I'm white, he's black. I obviously apologized and said I was unaware and would not say it again.

​

All of this was maybe a decade ago at this point. I have never heard of or seen Orange Julius in any sort of racial context. He was not pulling my leg, he was deathly serious. Is this some sort of localized slang to Cleveland? This has haunted me for years and is deeply enigmatic and I have never seen him again so I have had no way to ask him about it.

It's in the 90s, a work day, and we have severe weather advisories, so let's take bets on the notifications we'll see at 5 PM sharp.

Catenary wire failure? Brush fire by the tunnel? Signal problems east or west of Penn Station? Work train stuck? Trespasser fatality?

I ride one of the long haul interstate buses into the city for work. Had a lovely incident this morning where a lady flipped out on me hard after the bus discharged at Port Authority. Earlier, when she got on, she decided to sit right next to me in the back even though the bus was empty, and promptly began having a loud conversation on her phone. I got up with an exasperated sigh and sat somewhere else because I could hear her over my headphones. When we all got off, I noticed her walking right next to me, loudly telling me that I didn't own the bus, and she was following me for several minutes through Port Authority while yelling at the back of my head. People were staring, but at her, not at me. I was not reacting to her at all.

What do you even do in a situation like this? I don't have viable transit alternatives so it's not like I can just take a different route. She looked so generic that I can't tell if she's a regular on the bus or not and I don't know if I'm going to see her again. I'm a jittery person and I seem to attract emotionally volatile people on public transit for some reason.