Salty Ginger Talk Newsletter

November 21st, 2024

Author

SGT
November 21, 2024

Salty Ginger Talk Newsletter

November 21st, 2024

It’s our Thursday newsletter, now buzzing on Beehiv! 🐝 Stay tuned for fresh updates, exclusive content, and more—delivered straight to your inbox.

CURRENT EVENTS

Pennsylvania election official apologizes for openly flouting election law.

Our take: Talk about tone deaf. An election official in Bucks County Pennsylvania openly bragged about ignoring a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling and counting votes for Democrtaic incumbent Senator Bob Casey, who has lost his reelection bid but won’t concede the race. Hoping against hope, Democratic officials are turning over every stone to try and over come a statistically small but clearly insurmountable deficit to his Republican challenger. To that end, there were about 600 ballots missing dates or signatures, a clear violation of Pennsylvania election law. But because their guy is losing, they decided to ignore the law and count them anyway. Not only that - she publicly bragged that “We all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country, and people violate laws anytime they want.”

Conspiracy theories about machines changing votes and mules dumping ballots in remote ballot boxes in the middle of the night aside, millions of people across the country have questioned the validity and process of the 2020 election. This official openly breaking the law without any sense of foul play does nothing but solidifies these thoughts. Maybe there is some fire where this smoke came from. Not a great look.

COURTESY: MSN

Return to office mandates hurt workers pocket books in addition to creating friction with their employer.

Our take: The pandemic ripped the top off an already simmering pot of worker dissatisfaction with the onerous in person scheduling requirements in many businesses. Forced by government decree, many businesses relaxed their requirements around time in office, allowing employees to work from home so long as they accomplished their tasks and hit their deadlines. This opened a whole new world to workers, who could now make doctor appointments, care for sick children when necessary, and reduced the amount of mindless windshield time spent commuting to and from work.

Fast forward to current day and many of these companies have become less flexible on work from home schedules. Amazon notably told people to come back to the office 5 days per week or find a new job. Not only has this reduced flexibility, but it also raises costs for workers. Additional child care costs, eating away from home, and the cost of commuting equate to roughly 1 month of groceries for the average worker in this survey.

In today’s work environment, where almost every business lists finding good help at the top of their problem list, this approach sure looks like an own goal to us. Unless in person collaboration is a core tenant of your business (think research lab, acting, or trade jobs to name a few), companies should not care where the work gets done. Instead, they should care that is gets done correctly, on time, and with the right quality level. Bringing people back to the office simply because you don’t trust them, under the guise of “building company culture” or “fostering team building”, is transparent to workers. The results of the survey in this article show that employees forced back to the office full time without good reason showed higher distrust in the company, as well as a decrease in both productivity and engagement. These seem like negative impacts to any company actually trying to foster a winning culture and retain top talent. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Workers still hate the boss, and the boss still doesn’t trust the workers. And the beat goes on….

COURTESY: MSN

California girls high school volleyball team forfeits playoff game rather than play against team allowing men to participate.

Our take: The girls volleyball team in Stone Ridge Christian High School in Merced, CA played hard all season, and earned a playoff spot by winning their last match of the season. Their reward was to be matched up with a team from San Francisco that allowed men to play on their women’s team. Rather than subject themselves and their teammates to the unfairness and potential injury, SRC decided to forfeit their game, ending their season.

The school joins the growing ranks of women’s teams who have had enough of being marginalized and told they have to allow men to play in their games, lest they be called bigots, transphobes, or a variety of other derogatory names designed to shame and silence anyone who dare question what is obvious: once puberty has happened, men have a decided advantage in athletics in almost every instance over women.

COURTESY: MSN

We like to think that at some point, the majority of people (surveys show roughly 85% of the US population does not agree that men should be allowed to play on women’s teams)will stand up and say enough. We will not allow you to endanger and disnenfranchise our sisters, daughters, nieces, and goddaughters. If men want to play sports, there are plenty of mens teams they can play on. Leave the women’s sports to the women.

TIP OF THE DAY

When trying to break a habit you no longer want, be prepared to replace it with a new habit you want to continue. If you simply try to stop an activity, it leaves a void. Something will fill that void, many times the habit you are trying to break. If you replace the habit instead of just quitting it, your chances of success increase.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

It is better to conquer self than to win a thousand battles. - Buddha

SOURCES: