Yeah, I actually thought the AAM commenters were too quick to dismiss the potential financial aspect (yes, you can get "cheap" professional shoes, but one person's cheap is another person's grocery money, and also if I'd landed a corporate internship in college, I would definitely have had to buy a whole new wardrobe because nothing I had was appropriate). THAT SAID, that's an entirely hypothetical argument, because it's not what happened here.
That's actually a really good lesson for the interns to learn, though - if you see someone with an accommodation (flex schedule, dress code exemption, etc.), your first assumption should be that there's a good reason for it. If someone has an accommodation for a medical issue, they shouldn't have to make that public knowledge so their coworkers will know it's a "legitimate" accommodation.
If you'd like a similar exemption, rather than using that person as an example of why it's not fair that you have to, say, work a non-flexible schedule, you should go to your manager & be like, hey, here are the reasons this would be a good idea for me as well.
haha, right? Oh, humorless pedants of NPR, never change (just kidding, change right now)
I credit the Toast entirely for my ability to publicly call out a (white, male) coworker for fat-shaming Chris Christie, and at least 50% for the fact that I almost never apologize anymore unless I actually did something I'm sorry for.
Okay probably me too. I can put it on the same arm as my impulse Non-Compliant tattoo from last summer, and it will be my Feminism Arm.
I was there! It was great! I want to call out the robot duet as being especially awesome, but I keep coming up with other parts that were also my favorite.
The law firm I work at does what I call "rich people law" (business, estate planning, financial services) and it's a good thing I don't work directly with clients, because I would find it, ahem, difficult to be sympathetic to some of them.
I hope your birthday ends up going exactly how you want it to, and also that your doctors come up with a way to help your disorder, whatever the official diagnosis ends up being.
Your piece on The Road is one of my all-time favorite Toast pieces (really, favorite things on the internet, although that's a bit redundant), and I revisit it at least once every couple of months.
It is so difficult and so important to be able to separate "I am sad because of a thing you did" from "it's your fault I'm sad." Canceling plans to work on a to-do list is a totally reasonable thing (and as I've said, something I do on a regular basis), and so is being sad about that.