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yuletideA roundup all the webcomic fandoms in the 2025 tag set (plus all the characters you can request for each one), including links to where you can read them online. Fandoms are in the order/format AO3 puts the tags in.
I tried to flag everything that was (a) NSFW and/or (b) at least partly paywalled. If I missed any examples of that, please let me know!
( Comics, on the web, (mostly) free to get and easy to read )
yourlibrarian posting in tv_talkrachelmanija
askamanager_feedA reader writes:
How far can “other duties as assigned” in a job description stretch?
My company is asking us to do an assignment that is wildly outside our normal job roles. Imagine that we write user manuals for the a vacuum company, and now they’re telling us we have to go out and do 2-5 weeks of door-to-door sales in another city, 12 hours a day, for 6 days a week.
We’re all salaried so the hours are within the legal limits, but the work is nothing like what we were hired to do. We have not been trained in sales and many of us feel very uncomfortable doing this work, especially when it means leaving our lives behind for as much as a month.
When we’ve raised this, management says our job descriptions say “other duties as assigned,” that the main job of the company is to sell vacuums, and since sales are down this is an “all hands on deck” moment.
Does “other duties as assigned” in a job description mean anything goes?
More or less.
Most jobs in the United States are “at will,” meaning that the company can change the terms of your employment at any time. They don’t need to give you a job description at all, and if they do they’re not bound by what it says. Or they could give you a job description with three specific tasks on it and no “other duties as assigned” at all and still randomly require you to do completely different things one day.
Job descriptions do carry legal weight in some circumstances, but not in the way you’re thinking. For example, they come into play if you ask for a medical accommodation and the company says, “Oh, there’s no way we could permit that because doing X is such an essential requirement of your job” and you’re able to argue that X has always been a minor and irregular duty and, look, it’s so unimportant that it has no relation to anything that’s in your written job description. (To be clear, even if it is in your job description, they still might not be able to argue it’s an essential duty of the role; that’s fact-specific. But not having it written down will generally make it harder for them.)
Job descriptions can also matter if you quit because your job changes drastically and then apply for unemployment benefits. You might be more eligible for benefits if you can use the initial job description to show that the change in duties was so significant that it would be intolerable to a reasonable person (although that’s not guaranteed and varies by state).
Job descriptions can also matter a lot if you have a union; your union contract may have rules around what, if anything, you can be asked to do outside of your job description.
But beyond situations like that, job descriptions aren’t legally binding in the way you’re hoping for, whether they say “other duties as assigned” or not.
So where does that leave you and your coworkers?
What your company is asking you to do is ridiculous. They might like for everyone to drop everything and travel around doing door-to-door sales in another city for 12 hours a day, six days a week, but that doesn’t mean it’s reasonable or realistic for them to expect people will do that. You and your coworkers have a lot of room to push back on basic practicality grounds — meaning that all of you should say, “Sorry, I can’t do that — I have family commitments here that mean I can’t be away more than very rarely” and “I’m not available to travel.” It would also be beyond reasonable to say, “I came on board to do X, and while I’m wiling to help out in a pinch, door-to-door sales isn’t something I am willing to do.” But in this case, just presenting the travel as an impossibility may be your strongest framing.
Your company could choose to fire you all if you don’t comply. They probably won’t do that, although you should be prepared for the reality that they could, and you should read the room as much as possible for a sense of how much leverage you have, both as a group and individually, and also about whether this whole situation reflects a company in such financial shambles that you might not have a job for much longer anyway. But there’s power in numbers and if you all flatly refuse — treating it as if of course this is unreasonable and not possible — you have a decent shot of getting them to back down.
The post how far does “other duties as assigned” in a job description go? appeared first on Ask a Manager.
metafilter_feedomens
askamanager_feedA reader writes:
Should you always call to let a candidate know that they won’t be getting a job offer?
Here’s the context: I’ve gotten calls and emails letting me know when I wasn’t accepted for a position. And my colleagues and I all agree that we hate getting phone calls. It’s awkward! If you don’t answer the phone, you’re not going to get a voicemail telling you you didn’t get the job, you’ll get a voicemail asking you to call back. Which means you’ll get excited thinking you’re getting a job offer! And then you’re live on the phone with a hiring manager trying to manage an awkward conversation.
I’ve taken to emailing rejected candidates rather than calling, for these reasons. I take it as a kindness, rather than getting their hopes up for nothing.
But recently, a week after I sent the rejection, a candidate sent me a long email expressing her disappointment having gone through a long hiring process only to receive an email and not a phone call. I haven’t responded yet, but I plan to share why I send emails and thank her again for her time. What’s your opinion on the matter?
I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.
The post should you reject candidates by phone or email? appeared first on Ask a Manager.
metafilter_feedaskamanager_feedGrowing up, we pick up all kinds of lessons from our families about work, often without even realizing it. You might have learned from your parents to view all managers adversarially, or that gumption is essential to getting ahead, or that you should keep your head down and never speak up about problems or to be excessively deferential, or that messing up was unforgivable … or maybe there are things you wish you had learned from your parents but didn’t.
Let’s discuss in the comments. What lessons about work did you learn (or not learn) from your family, and how did those affect your career?
The post what did you learn from your parents about work? appeared first on Ask a Manager.
metafilter_feedglitteryv posting in recthethingmetafilter_feedmetafilter_feedtsuki_no_baraaskamanager_feedIt’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Two of my employees don’t get along
I am a manager of a few different groups, including a group of customer service representatives. This team seems to always have tension between two people. They both feel that the other isn’t doing enough or doing things incorrectly/not up to standard. They get in passive-aggressive arguments on Teams about very minor things like who will do the mail and who highlighted something on a sheet. I had to create a mail schedule and remove their access to items.
Now they are both refusing to speak with each other and continue to complain about each other. I have told them both that I can see what both parties are doing and will address high-priority items. I have asked them what they want the outcome to be when they come to complain to me about these petty minor complaints, and they don’t have an answer. I have explained that even though they don’t like each other, they still have to work together. Now the entire team’s production has gone down and this tension is taking over.
Any advice on how to handle it as a manager? Neither are doing anything outright that I could escalate to HR but this underlying tension is destroying morale, including mine.
You don’t need to escalate things like this to HR, even if it were worse. It’s squarely in your purview to handle as a manager, rather than being something HR should need to intervene on (although you could certainly ask HR for coaching to help you handle it yourself). But it’s definitely at the level where you need to act. Aside from the morale impact, it sounds disruptive and like a huge distraction.
Meet with each of them individually and tell them that they can feel however they want about each other privately, but effective immediately they need to treat each other with respect and professionalism. A good litmus test is that no one else on the team should be able to sense negativity from one of them toward the other. They don’t have the option of not speaking to each other; it’s a requirement of remaining in their jobs that they do not freeze out colleagues and will treat everyone with kindness and respect, period. The complaints about X and Y need to stop (be specific there rather than saying complaints need to stop in general, because at some point something might happen that you need to know about, but you can give examples of the types of petty complaints you don’t want to receive anymore).
And then you need to hold them to that, which means that treating this like a performance issue like any other where they’re held accountable to conduct expectations and there are consequences if they don’t meet them.
More here:
how to solve a conflict on your team
two of my employees won’t speak to each other
how do I manage petty behavior between two employees who dislike each other?
two of my employees don’t get along — is it just a personality conflict?
2. Are gift cards taxable income?
Your recent question about corporate gifts got me thinking … I’m a manager, and my current employer has forbidden me from giving gift cards as corporate gifts because apparently they are taxable income!
I was so surprised, every other place I have worked has given out gift cards freely. Is this a new thing? Does it apply to some places and not others? Do some companies just not care about tax law?
My employees are so disappointed, they love gift cards. :(
It’s not a new thing! Gift cards from employers to employees are indeed taxable income. The IRS considers them cash equivalents, regardless of the amount, and employers are supposed to include them on the tax forms they issue employees.
As far as I understand, this is at least partly because if it weren’t the case, employers could try to restructure how they compensate employees, with a larger piece coming through (untaxed) gift cards. It’s also because it’s your employer essentially giving you cash, gift card or not.
3. People using “rape” metaphorically
Twice in the last six months — and in entirely different and unrelated professional contexts — I’ve had men use “rape” metaphorically. Things like, “XYZ Company is raping me” or “This is exactly how we get raped by ABC client.”
Like many women, I have been sexually assaulted. The man who raped me later spent months stalking me, vandalizing my car, and threatening to kill me. He is the reason I now live in another time zone, far from friends and family. Although it has been many years, the impact of this event is understandably lifelong and significant. I deeply resent being reminded of it in such a casual, thoughtless way, and especially while at work.
Both times, unsure of what to say or how to react, I just pretended it didn’t happen. I was stunned the first time it (in person, talking with someone senior to me), and I honestly cannot believe it has now occurred twice (the second time was over Zoom with a large peer group; I’ve never met the man who said it). How should we handle this if and when it happens?
It can be really hard to know how to respond to something like that on the spot — not only figuring out what to say, but also juggling all the power dynamics and politics that can be in play in a work situation. But if it happens again, it’s perfectly reasonable to say, “I don’t think that’s the right language to use” or “That’s not the right word to use” or “I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by it, but that’s not the right language to use.”
4. How do you learn to manage people?
How do you learn to manage people? My boss and I recently talked about my taking on managing duties as our team expands, but he didn’t have any suggestions when I asked how best to prepare for that. It would be my first time in that role — is it a learn-by-doing kind of thing or can you actually learn in advance? (Or is my anxious perfectionist brain making it out be a bigger adjustment than it really is?)
Ideally from good mentors who can support you and who you can bounce situations off of … but, with or without them, often from messing it up and then learning from your mistakes. The people who go on to become good managers are the ones who know they’re going to mess up but commit to reflecting on the lessons they learn from doing that and incorporate those lessons going forward.
You can learn the basic “what does managing look like day-to-day” and “how should I navigate situation X or situation Y” ahead of time through classes and reading, but nothing comes close to what you learn when you’re actually doing it. (A lot of books and classes on management are more theoretical, so to the extent I could, I tried to make my book for managers focused on the nitty-gritty “here’s what this conversation sounds like” as much as I could, so that could be one place to start. If you happen to be at a nonprofit, the Management Center also runs classes based on the book.)
5. Contacting references if I’m not actively job-searching
I have a question about contacting references and when the appropriate time to do so is. You’ve advised that people should do it before they start a job hunt. However, do you have advice for someone who isn’t actively job hunting? Occasionally I’ll apply for a one-off job or two because it looks like something I would enjoy, but I am not regularly searching or desperate to leave my current job. In this case, is it okay to contact potential references after I’ve received a request for a first interview? Or should I do it on a regular basis (i.e., at the start of each year) just in case I end up needing a reference later?
It would be weird to do it at the start of every year whether you were job hunting or not, but it’s fine to wait until you’ve been invited to interview. The vast majority of the time, employers aren’t going to be contacting references before that.
The post 2 of my employees don’t get along, are gift cards taxable, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.
china_shopchina_shop, and I'll be your host for October Part 2! (Much, much thanks to cornerofmadness for sharing the month with me. ♥)cornerofmadness's posts. Please comment on the most recent post, and specify what day(s) you're checking in for."When you go mountain climbing, the first thing you’re told is not to look at the peak, but to keep your eyes on the ground as you climb. You just keep climbing patiently one step at a time. If you keep looking at the top, you’ll get frustrated.
"I think writing is similar. You need to get used to the task of writing. You must make an effort to learn to regard it not as something painful, but as routine."
–Akira Kurosawa, via The Script Lab
fan_flashworks. I'll finish it tomorrow, and then... has anyone seen Bon Appétit, Your Majesty who'd be willing to beta? :-)guardian_wishlist, sign up for Yuletide, and write something for the next (amnesty) round at fan_flashworks. Other than that, I'll see where the spirit takes me.metafilter_feedmoontyger posting in yuletidelarryhammer posting in yuletidetimeasmymeasure
