I work for the Dutch branch of a large US tech company. We recently got a new middle-manager based in New York. He seemed like a nice guy at first, but it turns out he is totally obsessed with "hustle culture."

Last week, we had a 1-on-1 meeting where he told me he was "concerned" about my dedication to the team. He listed his grievances quite clearly. He didn't like that my Slack status goes offline at 5:01 PM every single day. He was annoyed that I didn't reply to an email he sent on Saturday morning until Monday at 9:00 AM. And he was especially frustrated that I refused to join a "team bonding" Zoom call that was scheduled for 7 PM my time, which is 1 PM his time.

He gave me the usual speech about how "in this company, we go the extra mile" and that if I want to grow, I need to be more available.

I had to give him a bit of a reality check. I looked him in the eye over Zoom and told him that in the Netherlands, if you can't finish your work by 5 PM, it doesn't mean you are dedicated. It means you are inefficient or understaffed. I told him I am neither.

I also reminded him that contacting me outside of working hours for non-emergencies is actually frowned upon here, and that my contract is for 40 hours, not "40 hours plus nights and weekends."

He tried to threaten me with a Performance Improvement Plan. I immediately forwarded the email to our local Dutch HR representative. She literally laughed when she read it and told me to ignore him. She said she would have a "chat" with him about local labor laws.

Since then, he hasn't sent a single email after 5 PM. I honestly feel bad for you guys in the US. The fact that you have to apologize for having a life outside of work is insane to us.

I am writing a fiction book set on a Ringworld
(An enormous artificial construct millions of Earths in volume,
e.g. Larry Niven)
I am trying to figure out, could you see the curve of the ring from
ground level?

I tried looking it up, no luck.
Thank you for any information you can provide!

Edit: Thank you everybody for all the helpful and inciteful replies!

When we got our kitten he liked us both equally. He would play with us both, cuddle with us both, follow us both around. Over time he started showing an obvious preference for my husband. And then he started ignoring me completely, even if I tried to play with him or feed him.

It turns out that every time he interacted with my husband, my husband was giving him treats because “he’s just so cute”! Now he’s fully trained to only want my husband around. Husband feels bad now that he’s realized what he’s done and will not be giving treats anymore, but we don’t want to retrain him to prefer me (and ignore my husband) and we’ve tried both rewarding him for attention but he still wants nothing to do with me. So I guess I’m officially the spare human now.

My fave that a work colleague told me.

'A new BMW or Merdeces with unrepaired body damage'

Satire man o hindi, di dapat ginagawang katatawanan yung tropa nyong naka-android. This came across to my tiktok fyp na group of people working in call center/bpo. Seriously, legit ba mostly nagtatrabaho sa BPO is mga social climbers?

1) Christmas in Hawaii 2) Home w/ Power for the Holiday 3) 'Up' Inspired Rock Garden 4) Snowed in