Since once in a blue moon I actually discover a decent rule for adulting, and since I know I have followers a few years younger than me who are just entering the workforce, I want to tell you about a very important phrase.
“I won’t be available.”
Imagine you’re at work and your boss asks you to come in on Saturday. Saturday is usually your day off–coming in Saturdays is not an obligation to keep your job. Maybe you were going to watch a movie with a friend, or maybe you were just going to lie in bed and eat ice cream for eight hours, but either way you really, really don’t want to give up your day off.
If you consider yourself a millennial you’ve probably been raised to believe you need to justify not being constantly at work. And if you’re a gen-Z kid you’re likely getting the same toxic messages that we did. So in a situation like that, you might be inclined to do one of three things:
Tell your boss you’d rather not give up your day off. Cave when they pressure you to come in anyway, since you’re not doing anything important.
Tell your boss you’d rather not give up your day off. Over-apologize and worry that you looked bad/unprofessional.
Lie and say you’ve got a doctor’s appointment or some other activity that feels like an adequate justification for not working.
The fact is, it doesn’t matter to your boss whether you’re having open heart surgery or watching anime in your underwear on Saturday. The only thing that affects them is the fact that you won’t be at work. So telling them why you won’t be at work only gives them reason to try and pressure you to come in anyway.
If you say “I won’t be available,” giving no further information, you’d be surprised how often that’s enough. Be polite and sympathetic in your tone, maybe even say “sorry, but I won’t be available.” But don’t make an excuse. If your boss is a professional individual, they’ll accept that as a ‘no’ and try to find someone else.
But bosses aren’t always professional. Sometimes they’re whiny little tyrants. So, what if they pressure you further? The answer is–politely and sympathetically give them no further information.
“Are you sure you’re not available?” “Sorry, but yes.”
“Why won’t you be available?” “I have a prior commitment.” (Which you do, even if it’s only to yourself.)
“What’s your prior commitment?” “Sorry, but that’s kind of personal.”
“Can you reschedule it?” “I’m afraid not. Maybe someone else can come in?”
If you don’t give them anything to work with, they can’t pressure you into going beyond your obligations as an employee. And when they realize that, they’ll also realize they have to find someone else to come in and move on.
Since this post has gained a lot of traction and I’ve been getting some messages about it, (some very polite, some not so much) I’d like to clarify a few things:
There’s a reason I specified in my hypothetical that you’re “not obligated” to come in. This isn’t intended as a guide to get time off from someone who you know won’t give it to you. This is meant for when you’ve already decided to ask for time off, or to say no to a request for you to come in, but you’re intimidated and not sure how to do that.
Again. This is about how to say no when you’ve already decided to.
It’s about dealing with the intense social anxiety that comes from talking to a superior, especially when they’re being pushy. I’d really like to stress that, in case anyone was under any other impression.
Yes, I am aware that at-will firing jobs and tyrannical bosses exist, and yes, I have worked retail along with a number of other shitty jobs. I understand sometimes you just have to deal with a bad situation. Please stop sending me anon messages telling me that I must be so terribly privileged because I think workers should set boundaries with their employers where they can.
Two ways people engaged with TERFs extremely incorrectly
-When TERFs said the labrys flag was their symbol, people just went, oh I guess its a hate symbol now, instead of ignoring that shit and continuing to use it, which would have denied them it, but instead it was just handed to them.
-Letting TERF and radfem become synonymous when they really aren’t and shouldn’t be.
I genuinely did not know that the labrys was used as a strictly-TERF thing. How much of a thing actually is that? I’d had my eye on a labrys necklace for a few weeks now, but that’s not really the vibe I want to give off.
I really don’t know, outside of certain corners of the internet where they have been getting pretty strongly coded for a while now.
This is another of those things that I suspect may be mainly an online thing, but I’m not sure. Probably also depends a lot on where you are, too.
A gorgeous portrait of a blue tit painted in the #UK by @graffoflarge! – Many thanks to the artist for uploading this to our website! Upload your work for a chance to be featured across our social channels! – #globalstreetart #streetart #art #urbanart #outdoorart #wallart #mural #freehand #spraycanart #streetartistry https://www.instagram.com/p/BihHnR2A7HN/
The more I look at it, the more I think one of the worst thing to happen was that people started replacing the concept of solidarity with the concept of allies.
Solidarity was this amazing idea that we’re all getting screwed over by the systems and the way we fight back is by working together. And that means doing work against forms of oppression that you don’t experience and following the lead of people who experience that form of oppression because it’s their struggle. But you’re there as a partner, as a comrade. And you know they’ll be there for you if you need help in your part of the struggle. That’s solidarity.
Allyship has none of that. it’s a one-way relationship that carries in it a form of authority, and where there is authority there is harm. The failures of this system are everywhere.
You have the exploitative savior ally who is always looking to find the most oppressed group to ally themselves for in order too look like the coolest person, pushing themselves into spaces and exploiting people’s struggles for ally points.
You have the perfectionist ally who will only ever do work once they’re sure that they’re found the most perfecrt ‘grassroots’, never problematic in any way movement, rehardless of where their help is actually needed and useful.
You have the drone ally, only ever following directions and wasting all their potential to contribute anything meaningful, terrified of doing any thinking or acting for themselves that may at some point set them ‘called out’.
You have the oppressed person or group who sees allies as convenient punching bad to work out their rage on, piling on them the hatred and contempt they wish they could pile on the system.
You have the oppressed person or group that treats allies as defined entirely by their allyhood, ignoring that they have struggles of their own and treating them as disposable. Shouting ‘allies to the front’ when the police brutality hits without a thought to the previous traumas and vulnerabilities of individual allies.
In all of these ways and more we are hurting each other, feeling unsafe around each other, becoming estranged and embittered with oneanother.
The concept of privilege has brought us some very useful things that help us be better activists and better humans to each other, but when I look at the way that is translated to the concept of allies, I mostly see us being worse activists and worse humans to each other than we are when we act out of the concept of solidarity. Being in this fight together means taking care of each other.
i feel like oscar wilde’s [begins to eat muffins] is just as great a stage direction as [exit, pursued by a bear] tbh and would like to see it enter the cultural lexicon more prominently
i read this as if you were the one doing the stage directions – i.e. as if the brackets were asterisks – and was VERY confused for a good minute there
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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