Hello,

This isn’t so much about food itself but about etiquette about food.Do you professional food people enjoy receiving gifts of homemade food from non-professionals?I’m wondering about the success I’ll have giving a friend who bakes constantly a tin of homemade cookies at Christmas, whether the reception will be similar to the one I give to my three-year-old niece when she gives me a picture she’s drawn of me that looks like a spirograph.Thoughts?Suggestions?

Thanks from a wanna-be baker

Dear Wanna-Be,

Regardless of whether someone is a professional food person or not, receiving a gift that someone has taken the time and energy to personally handcraft should be accepted with appreciation and graciousness. Full stop.

I really feel uncomfortable when I go to friends’ houses and they feel some weird compulsion to apologize for the food they serve. I mean, do they really think I’m the kind of person who would be so hypercritical as a guest? Do they really think I’m so small-souled and bitter? For the record, I’m not, and it’s kind of insulting that they would have such a low opinion of me.

Who cares if your maple-scented Santa Claus cookies with fresh mint and verbena frosting aren’t exactly the way your friend would make them — the point is, the gift is an extension of you, not of them. You are giving them something from the heart, which, in my opinion, is much more precious than anything you can buy in the store, regardless of giant price tags. For me, receiving homemade food from friends around the holidays just means that my personal cooking load got a whole lot lighter.

On the other hand, if you know for a fact that your friend bakes cakes, cakes, and more cakes, you might want to consider giving a homemade food item that isn’t just more of what they could already be sick of. Granola, for instance, makes a beautiful present. Whip up a batch, fill up some glass Ball jars, and tie a ribbon around it. Or a little box of truffles, caramels, and candied orange peel.

The bottom line is, a gift is a gift, and unless you’re planning on lacing a pie with cyanide, the recipient should always be grateful and touched. It’s just a matter of common courtesy.

Hi Sars,

I’ve been reading Tomato Nation for a number of months now, and I love
your advice, so I’m writing to ask for some help on a problem I’m not quite
sure how to handle.I got hired by a large company earlier this year,
essentially doing data entry.A couple months later I got a mini-promotion
to a project within my team that involved some more technical-type things.
It involved no pay increase, though I was really doing more than I was
getting paid for on the new project, but that was okay since I really
enjoyed what I was doing and it was much more interesting than the stuff I
was doing before.

Things were going fine until about mid-February, when the
project sort of exploded.I won’t bore you with the details, but all of a
sudden, my project, that was probably going to take my partner and me two and a
half to three years to complete, needed to be done in 90 days.My partner and I
ended up developing the training for and managing a team of over 40 people,
mostly pulled in from other parts of the company, to get our project done
very, very quickly, under enormous amounts of pressure coming down from the
very top of the company.We attempted to address the issue of increased pay
to match our increase in responsibility, and were pretty much met with
flat-out nos.Well.Fine. Job market’s tight, I’ll just collect my
overtime and deal.After all, it’s only 90 days, right?

Ha.Now they’re
talking about expanding the project, including outsourcing to India and the
Philippines (because of the cheap labor), and so my partner and I are now
set rewriting our training manuals to cover a new broad range of topics for
the project (scenarios that we haven’t even worked with yet — how we’re
going to write training manuals on them, I haven’t a clue, but that’s a
whole other issue), and training a bunch of people overseas to handle this
project.Again, no mention of a pay increase, and since the idea is to do
it cheaply, and we, too, are cheap labor (being a lower pay grade than any
of the people we are supervising currently, including the temps we brought
in).So, I doubt the bigwigs responsible for funding the project would
jump at the chance to pay us what we’re worth.

So, on to my problem.Basically, I’m not sure how best to approach the
issue of due compensation, and, more importantly who to address it to.It’s
a very odd situation.This project is really the first of its kind in the
company, and the funding for it is not coming from my department, so I’m not
sure if I should talk to our department head, the people who are our more
direct supervisors on the project itself (who have stated previously that we
stood no chance of getting paid more, but with the project extension that
may now be negotiable, I don’t know), or just bypass everyone and go
straight to HR.

Nor am I entirely sure what our options are if they say no.
We’re really the only two that know this project well enough to run it, I
don’t know what they’d do if we flatly refused to do it.I’m not sure if
we’d get put back on our old data entry jobs (which, though dull, would be
better than the stress of this project on my current puny salary), or if
there’s a chance we could be fired.Do you have any advice for who would be
the best to go to to address this issue, and how we could best approach it?

Thanks!
Undercompensated

Dear Under,

Before you address it to anyone, figure out what you really want here.Do you want more money, or do you not want to work on the project anymore?Is it a principle-of-the-thing thing?Because it’s one thing to just ask for more money and not get it and go about your day; it’s another if agitating for it could get you fired or demoted.You need to know exactly what you want out of the situation, and you need to know exactly what you don’t want — and what could happen either way.Prepare.Go over all the pros and cons.Formulate a plan.

First, discuss it with your partner.A united front will probably serve you better here, but if your partner isn’t willing to back up the request for a pay bump by walking, you’d better know that before you take a stand of that nature.Talk it over and decide whether you want to work together on getting more money.

The next step is probably to petition your direct supervisors again, and then, if you get another “no,” decide whether to suck it up and treat the project as a low-paying career-builder or to go over their heads to HR or to someone with more responsibility for payroll — which might work, but which might backfire, so, as I said, prepare.Prepare a case for yourself and your partner, the accomplishments and deadlines you’ve achieved; go in with a price in mind, and if it isn’t met, know in advance what you plan to do.Understand that asking again for more money might meet with resistance of the “I don’t need this aggro, you’re fired” variety.Decide ahead of time whether the job or the pay is more important, and stick to that decision.

Sars,

I have a friend who is draining my energy.

K has had a string of jobs in the last few years which she quit unexpectedly because she didn’t like the work.She was fired from her last job for excessive absences, mostly due to her doctor’s appointments. She has been out of work for over a year now.

K is fraught with a pack of non-life-threatening, generally non-permanently-debilitating medical ailments, including (but not limited to): lactose intolerance, migraines, and chronic hiccups (seriously folks, hiccups). Most of our conversations begin with a day-by-day, moment-by-moment update of her medical issues. The last time we saw each other she related a story she had been wanting to tell me.The short version: she had eaten a salad and it upset her stomach.

K is almost forty years old and just recently moved out of her parents’ house.

K has an obsession with a certain mediocre professional sports player that reminds me of my Duran Duran years (the obsession, that is).She told him once at an autograph appearance that she talks about him as if they were married. I was not there to witness it, but I’ve gotten the full recount more than once.

There are several other things that are nagging at me.

I also left my job about a year ago (not so unexpectedly) because I was unhappy.I lucked into some contract work and found I liked the flexibility and have stuck with it.K and I are in the same profession, and met at what was for both of us our first job out of college.We have both worked for and with mutual contacts since that first job.Nobody has offered up help to K since she lost her last job but all of my work has been through mutual friends.

For several years K and I have shared season tickets for our favorite professional sport.I have other people I enjoy going to games with also; she does not.

K’s list of friends is dwindling and I know she is having a tough time lately.

I am single and live in a different state than my family and I appreciate my time commiserating about the trials of life with buddies.

Finally, I have been an incredibly bad friend lately. I am short with K and spend most of my time with her trying to tune her out.I complain a lot about her to my friends and family.Ending the friendship is not really an option. What I am looking for is some advice to help me get past this. I am not comfortable becoming a hag and abusing my friends and friendships.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Trapped

Dear Trapped,

Why isn’t ending the friendship an option?No, seriously.Why not?You just sent me a list of the reasons she sucks; she’s a boring, weird hypochondriac, and you don’t like her.I understand that you don’t want to treat her coldly, which is nice of you, but it’s not really that nice to stay friends with a person you just don’t care for — it’s dishonest, and it’s also kind of patronizing.She’s an adult.She can make other friends.

“But –“No.You haven’t mentioned even one quality about her that you enjoy.She isn’t a friend; she’s a duty.Now, if the two of you have lots of mutual friends, you probably can’t just cut her off, but you can start distancing yourself from her — don’t make plans, don’t spend more than five minutes on the phone, don’t put yourself in the position of having to hear the daily digestive minutiae.

Part of friendship is sticking with people through tough (or annoying) times, but implied in that is the fact that you like said people — that, as selfish as it sounds, you get something out of it.Feeling sorry for K doesn’t really meet that definition.If she bugs you exclusively, enough already.

Heya, Sars!

Two questions. Well, two main questions. My first problem is complex but basic (or something), and somewhat childish:

I get high-school-style crushes too much. Actually, I only get high-school-style crushes. Basically, I start liking X, I lust after them for a while, then I stop. However, when my lusts are not as superficial, they sometimes wind up having turns for the worse. Many of my friends are female, and therefore many of my friends wind up being crushes. Since I’m fairly insecure about me and women, I never work up the courage to say anything to them about it, and then wind up not talking to them at all, in fear that they’ll “find out” about me having a HS-style crush on them.

Now, a lot of times, this happens with fairly good friends, and sometimes the friendship can get somewhat damaged from the fact that I wind up avoiding them. Okay, for my question: any ideas of how I can, well, just stop being so damn scared of revealing a crush? And a second question on the matter…I can’t remember ever liking a girl who hasn’t said anything inadvertent to spark my interest in them. Let me give an example. Me and X are having a conversation. X says something that in some very miniscule way, could mean that she has interest in me (for instance, she’ll say something small, such as “nice shirt”). Sometimes, I’ll take this comment, and then start liking X because for a split second I thought that they might be interested in me. Actually, scratch the “sometimes.” ALL the time. Is there something wrong with me that I can’t seem to like a girl independently?

And now, for my second question, which is much simpler:

I’ll often see people writing “s/he” when referring to someone of an unspecified gender in the third person. A few questions about this. First one: does that even make sense? Wouldn’t that imply that you could use either “se” or “he,” when in reality, you could use “she” or “he,” which would require a “(s)he?” Second one: is using “they” acceptable in a situation such as this? Third, and final: how accepted is the Gender-Neutral Pronoun?

Thanks for listenin’,
A he who has trouble with shes

Dear He,

I…really don’t understand your first question(s).Do you foresee these crushes going anywhere, or is it a completely unrealistic thing that’s just a way for your mind to pass the time?Have you had relationships with women that went beyond the crush stage?Will these women ever express a genuine interest in you romantically beyond “nice shirt,” or is that as far as it goes?I don’t have enough information here to say, but I would guess that 1) you crush on your friends because it’s safe, and because on some level you just assume that you have no chance; and 2) you have a couple of self-esteem issues if you can’t like a girl for herself, but only because you can fantasize that she’s into you first.There’s nothing wrong with liking the fact that another person is into you, by any means — but if it’s the only thing that causes a spark, that’s probably an issue.

My advice is to just start asking these women out, and see what happens.I can’t give you a magic bullet to reduce the fear; you just have to play through the pain.You end up avoiding them anyway, so how much worse could it get, right?

You can find my thoughts on the gender-neutral pronoun here.Short answer: I am not in favor.

Dear Sars,

I was working all summer in a small office of about ten people, and I was
worried that I was going to be out of place because they were all married
and mostly all of them had children. But I became good friends with two of
them, a girl and a guy. The girl, “Jessica,” I especially spent a lot of
time with outside of work, and we were constantly socializing together at
work.

The guy, “Will,” I got along with super-well from day one, even though
he’s twelve years older than me (I’m 22, he’s 34). He’s kind of like the male
version of me, and he’s the only person I’ve met in a long time who shares
the same geeky interests as I do. I didn’t feel ashamed talking to him in
great detail about Star Trek, online RPG, and other geek-like stuff. I spent
the most amount of time with Jessica at work, but I chatted a lot with Will
as well, and I was happy to be have good friends around me since it made
passing the time a lot more pleasant.

Anyhow, I got laid off several weeks ago because of budget cuts. Jessica and
Will were really sad to see me go because we’d really bonded, but I managed
to keep in touch with both of them by email and instant messaging. So fast
forward to last week, when I get this amazingly long email from Will
explaining that he’d had really strong feelings for me all summer, that he
thought I was incredibly beautiful, and that the last few days I was there
he couldn’t sleep at night knowing that I’d be gone, blah blah blah
I-have-feelings-for-you-cakes. He said that he wanted to stop talking to me
because he was afraid it was going to ruin his marriage, and he just
couldn’t stop thinking about me.

I’d had nagging feelings about a month before I left that he might have been
taking things the wrong way. I’m not at all attracted to him, plus he’s twelve
years older than me and married, so there was never any subliminal attempt
to snag him for a boyfriend. I was just happy to have a new friend who had
so much in common with me. I guess I was treating him like I treated
Jessica, and didn’t really think that he could be attracted to me since he’s
married and I’m so much younger than him. I sent him a short email back that
was brutally honest, saying I’d never be interested in a relationship with
him, and that I was really sorry to have caused any problems. I said that
it’d be best if we didn’t talk again, and that was the last time we had any
communication. I was really sad to be losing him as a friend since we’d had
some great conversations and could pretty much talk about anything with each
other.

So was it wrong of me to become close friends with Will in the first place?
Should I have backed off and stopped spending so much time talking to him
when I first realized something might have been up? One of my biggest
problems is that I get really comfortable and more open around guys I’m not
interested in, and I don’t know if I just give off the wrong signals or
what, but a lot of these guys end up expressing a romantic interest in me, I
end up rejecting them, and it ruins our friendship. Should I just stop
trying to be such good friends with guys?

And even better, I got a phone call today from my ex-boss asking me to come
back to work for them for another month because things have been über-busy
lately. I couldn’t say no because I haven’t found a new job yet and I really
need the money, but it means I’ll be seeing Will every day again. I know that
it’s going to be really awkward between us, and it’s not like I can avoid
him since it’s such a small office. I really need your advice on how to
handle this, because I really don’t want to ignore him, but at the same time
I don’t know how to talk to him.

Attracting All The Wrong Men

Dear Wrong,

No, you should not “just stop” making friends with guys.If a guy has feelings for you that you don’t reciprocate, the guy can handle it or not, as he sees fit; it isn’t your responsibility, at least not to the point of modifying your personality to avoid inspiring those feelings.Will is a perfect example.Even if he did “take things the wrong way,” he’s married.And not to you.It’s up to him to manage that, not you.End of story.

I think you handled it well; firmly putting paid to it was the smartest move at the time.Of course, it doesn’t seem that way now, when you have to see him again, but when you get back to the office, take him aside for a quick chat.Tell him that you don’t want to get into it too much, but you hope any outside communication between the two of you will in fact stay outside, and that the two of you can work together professionally.Be pleasant but brief in your interactions with him, and if he’s spazzy or sulky, pretend to ignore it.If he wants to make a big drama out of it, he can do it by himself.

[11/21/03]

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