we say grace at team meals, is it unethical to automate people’s jobs away, and more

by Alison Green on October 14, 2024

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…

1. We’re supposed to say grace at the start of team meals

I work in government. Fairly new to job, first time in government. Been in private sector and higher education before this. Every time my department has a group meal, they say grace. Led by either the director of the department or the staff member who is also a pastor. This is weird, right? I’m an atheist. We have at least one other on staff who practices a religion other than Christianity. In nearly any workplace this would be weird, but again, I work for THE GOVERNMENT, which makes it even more uncomfortable. Having group staff grace where it’s expected everyone is just fine with this is not inclusive, not considerate, and seems highly problematic. If you personally want to say grace over your meal, have at it! But the expectation of everyone participating or acquiescing and it being led by the director?

If I were to report this to HR or even our EEO, I know it’d get traced back to me for pretty obvious reasons (I am definitely the odd one out in the office on any number of things), and I can imagine it becoming something people will “jokingly” comment on … which again, isn’t a welcoming work environment. I don’t know what to do, or if I should do anything, but every time it happens I continue to just think “WTF.”

Yes, this is weird and inappropriate. It’s also not terribly uncommon in some parts of the U.S. Any chance you’re in the south? Surprisingly, it’s not illegal even though this is a government employer; government meetings are permitted to include prayer as long as they don’t force anyone’s participation in it (Supreme Court, Town of Greece v. Galloway, 2014).

Whether or not to say anything is really a personal decision; you need to weigh any likely blow-back and how much you care about that against how much it bothers you, especially as a new person.

If the director and/or pastor seem like decent people, you might have better luck talking with them privately rather than complaining to HR (since it’s not illegal) and asking them to reconsider the practice. A lot of people don’t realize grace isn’t some sort of non-denominational religious practice and think of it as almost secular in nature; it’s possible that by explaining that it’s not, you could get some traction (and even more so if you’re joined by any other coworkers who feel similarly).

Related:
I’m a public employee and the governor pushes religion at work

2. Is it unethical to automate people’s jobs away?

I’ve recently been lucky enough to snag the kind of job I’ve been looking for over months — relatively stable part-time data science work, which is very rare. Currently this is a side hustle, but eventually this could allow me to quit my full-time job and stay at home with my kids more. I am also going to learn a lot on the project that I’ve been assigned to and pick up some very desirable skills.

Here’s the problem. I am certain that the AI project I’m working on will eventually lead to other part-time workers losing their jobs, or at the very least reducing their hours. I am positive that the work people are doing by hand can be done really well by AI, and I’ve been hired to implement it. My project manager isn’t so sure — she said it’s a boring task and that whole “I want AI to do the dishes and not make art” tagline I’ve seen on social media — but she’s older and I worry she’s naive about the impact this can have. But maybe I’m younger and naive about the speed of change in public sector contracting.

I am a religious person, and the idea that I may be taking away part of people’s livelihoods is haunting me. But this work absolutely will be done by somebody eventually, and for me it’s my dream job. Is it unethical to do this kind of work?

I can’t answer that without more details about exactly what you’re going to be working on. But ultimately it doesn’t matter what I think about it anyway; it matters what you think. From the oil and gas industry to law enforcement to lobbying and on and on, people have all kinds of jobs that someone else might not feel ethically comfortable with, and many of our actions (both at work and not) unavoidably leave footprints in the world that we might prefer not be there. At the same time, many types of progress that we generally feel good about mean that some types of jobs are left behind as things evolve. (We don’t have knocker-uppers tapping at windows anymore either, although most of us consider alarm clocks an improvement.) But we all draw our lines in different places. You need to figure out where your lines are and what you will and won’t feel good about. I know that sounds like a cop-out, but it’s really so, so individual.

All that said, though, I’m not sure your project manager’s response quite gets at your concerns. Just because it’s a boring task doesn’t mean that people won’t suffer if they’re displaced from it.

3. How can I find out if my vacation time will be paid out when I leave?

My question is about how to give notice when it’s unclear whether banked PTO will be paid out—and there’s no way of finding that out without giving up the game.

My company is very small (nine employees) and does not conform to a conventional (or, really, any) organizational structure. HR is handled by one of our two owners, and by “HR” I mean stuff like dealing with benefits, payroll, and resources. I have virtually no contact with this guy, so it would be highly irregular for me to ask him anything — and all but an admission that I am looking to skedaddle if I asked about a possible PTO payout. There’s no other person I can ask who (A) would know the answer and/or (B) I can trust. (My state does not require vacation payout, so it’s up to individual companies.)

Normally, I’d not sweat this issue: I’d just give my two weeks and either be pleased that I got a payout or bummed that I didn’t. But — malcontent alert! — I am one of three employees who are still on board after launching this company as a startup 11 years ago, and in that time I’ve had ZERO raises despite the fact that the company has been increasingly profitable. Add to that some other cultural/role issues, and my inclination to be charitable here is … right in line with my raises. I’m not sure I’d be comfortable giving two weeks’ notice, learning that I was not going to get a payout, and then just cashing in (some of) my banked time to serve out those weeks. But I’m not sure I wouldn’t. Do you see some option or alternative I’ve overlooked?

Any chance you’re in touch with anyone who’s left who could tell you how it was handled for them? With such a small company, that might not be an option — but that’s one thing to check if you can.

Otherwise, I’d be inclined to simply ask when you resign whether vacation time is paid out. It they say it’s not, you can say, “Ideally I’d like to set my final day for November 6 (or whatever) but if that means I’ll lose all the vacation time I’ve accrued, I’ll need to take it before I leave since it’s part of my compensation.” Do be aware that some companies have policies against taking vacation time during your notice period (especially a big chunk of it as opposed to a day or two) so it’s possible that could become a point of contention — but it’s a reasonable stance to take, and you can try negotiating from there.

4. Am I cheap for seeking mileage reimbursement for business dinner travel?

I’m wondering about mileage reimbursement. Maybe six or so times a year, I have to drive about 60 miles round-trip for business dinners. These aren’t client meetings, but meetings for my professional organization city group. Very much a networking thing on behalf of my firm. I always put in for mileage reimbursement, and my firm gives it to me without questioning, but I’m wondering if this is a “cheap” thing of me to do. Is the mileage cost something that I should just eat?

Nope, you should continue submitting for it. It’s a business expense, not a personal one, and it’s not cheap to expect your company to cover the costs of business activities, as they’ve been doing.

You may also like:
{ 532 comments }

{ 532 comments… read them below }

  1. MaskedMarvel*

    I work at an AI startup and frequently we hear about removing the need for boring work, allowing people to concentrate on more interesting work.
    Cynically, I think this is disingenuous.
    There may not be that much interesting work to go around, and some people have found their niche doing routine work, and more creative work may not play to their strengths.

    I don’t have a solution, obviously.

    1. Certaintroublemaker*

      Alternately, I work in higher ed, and employees are actively looking at AI and other process automation solutions so that they have time for higher value work. It really depends on the jobs and what all needs doing.

      1. allathian*

        Yes, this. I mean doctors and patients would benefit hugely if they had a genuinely good AI listening in while they talk to and examine the patient and make a diagnosis. I’m in Finland, and medical secretaries have disappeared. Instead, doctors are expected to type up diagnoses and other medical information themselves, and it wastes a lot of time that could be spent seeing patients instead.

        Already AI is better at finding breast cancer from mammograms than human doctors are. I’m all for AI if it genuinely improves people’s lives, but care has to be taken to ensure ethical use.

        1. coffee*

          There was an interesting article published recently about AI assisting radiographers which found that some radiographers did better with AI assistance while others did worse with AI assistance.

            1. Radio Set Jet (Future)*

              Just a note: radiographer and radiologist are different jobs. One is the person who takes the image, the other is the doctor who analyses it.

              In either case, humans will likely still be required to take and analyse the results to ensure it’s done accurately. AI can only automate so much.

              1. marmalade*

                I fell and hurt my arm in August and both the radiologist and ortho disagreed with AI’s assessment it was fractured – lo and behold, on the MRI (to see if I tore anything) the bone was broken. Just one piece of anecdata to support that study!

              2. dulcinea47*

                here’s the thing: they’ll automate it even if it has worse outcomes for humans, if it’s cheaper for them. Capitalism doesn’t care what’s actually wrong or about fixing it.

                1. Reluctant Mezzo*

                  Like Levi’s using fake diverse models to get to their diversity goal–of course they’ll still hire the white models…

              3. M*

                One of the problems with that approach (in pattern-recognition problems) is that what AI is generally better at is the 80-90% easy calls where the problem is “overworked human making rushed assessments”, not the weird edge calls that come from extensive experience. But once you start automating, a) people stop getting the training, practice and experience that’s needed to make those hard calls; and b) companies stop employing people to make them. In the US in particular, it’s very likely that insurance will, increasingly, pay for an AI-radiology appointment, but not the “second opinion” consult that’s actually a *first* human opinion.

                1. Strive to Excel*

                  I have a family member in medicine. She’s been telling me that her current workplace has a huge problem with an influx of new doctors/nurses/PAs who’ve been taught to follow a very basic decision tree. It’s useful for 95% of people that come through the door; obvious injuries, diseases, health conditions, etc, stuff that’s pretty straightforward to spot and treat. But for the remaining 5% they are a disaster, because instead of learning the critical reasoning needed to assess a patient they’re just following a script. They don’t always understand why the script is in place, or what each step is doing.

                  This sounds like it’d be an extension of the same problem. Just much worse.

            2. CorporateDrone*

              There is evidence to suggest that people do better with “bad AI” rather than “good AI”. If the AI is too good, people tend to turn off their brains altogether. AI usually isn’t a good replacement for people; it’s a complement.

              I think that deliberately not advancing technology because of concerns over people keeping jobs is shortsighted. There are far more jobs that need doing around the world than people to do them. Yes, some jobs may vanish altogether; no that doesn’t mean there won’t be jobs! Tons of jobs of the past mostly vanished – think of all the displacement caused by the Industrial Revolution or the shift from horses to cars. It’s not a terrible thing that there is less demand for scullery maids imo, and it won’t be a tragedy when there is less demand for intellectual drudgery either.

              Perhaps there really will be a segment of the population unable to do any of the work that remains (I doubt this personally, and feel it’s a bit of an elitist and paternalistic view). In that case lobbying for UBI rather than not personally working on AI related things will be a more effective solution.

              1. Reluctant Mezzo*

                But the jobs that remain open, like nurse’s aide and welders are harder on people physically. The sit down jobs? AI will take those over. There will be a severe mismatch between people and the open jobs.

              2. MigraineMonth*

                I tend to agree. Technology changes work. A few hundred years ago most of us would have been farmers; now very few people farm, but technology allows those few people to grow all the food needed for the entire world. A lot of people lost their jobs, or weren’t able to do the work their parents and grandparents did, but I don’t think it’s practical to try to go back.

                Rather than try to subsidize old-fashioned small-scale farming, I’d prefer that the government improve the safety net (possibly with UBI) and provide job training for those who need to find a new job.

                That doesn’t mean that we don’t make important moral choices in our own work. I’ve decided not to work on weapons, since it is against my beliefs, even though I know those beliefs are not universal and that others will build those weapons. I also don’t work on AI projects that I believe will fail and harm people, like using any variation of ChatGPT technology to write medical notes (it’s just a terrible, terrible idea).

        2. MaskedMarvel*

          I’m not saying there aren’t benefits to consumers/patients, companies, pr even society as a whole.

          But for some people it will be largely negative (I once worked with someone who had great attention to detail, knew all the procedures, but who was not very good at big picture stuff, and would get visibly frustrated at being asked to think about it.
          AI (at least in the context of her current job) would probably reduce the amount that she would be able to do.

          1. allathian*

            Absolutely.

            I’m a translator, and while my job might be in danger in the long term, I sincerely doubt that there’s any risk that AI will eliminate the need for skilled translators within the foreseeable scope of my career, the next 15 years.

            Sure, I might end up working as a proofreader of translations produced by AI, but they won’t be able to do a decent job without oversight for quite a while yet, if ever.

            1. Testing*

              The problem for translators will be that there are not that many people needed to do those proofreading tasks as there were people doing translation (+ proofreading) before. So there will be many people fighting for those fewer jobs.

              And this in a sector that wasn’t exactly swimming in money and recognition to start with.

            2. Quoth the Raven*

              So, I was a translator, emphasis in WAS. My language pair (English into Spanish) has been severely altered by AI. It’s mostly proofreading now and while there’s nothing wrong with it in theory, in practice the wages have been slashed to a third of what they are for human translation to the point it just wasn’t a liveable wage anymore (I went from something like 1000 dollars a month to like 350 dollars a month) and I changed careers about a year ago.

              Even considering some translations might still need proofreading (and that can be questionable; AI is surprisingly good in my language pair), clients and agencies just don’t want to pay for it, quality be damned. Some language pairs and subjects might be safer than others, but if anyone asked me, at this point, I would strongly advice them to find another career.

              1. Emmy Noether*

                This is unsurprising to me. I read a lot of machine translations (foreign patents – if I need to skim read 50 patents, of which 1 may be relevant, that’s a perfect use case for machine translation. If it wasn’t available, we just wouldn’t read them at all). In the last 5 years, I’ve witnessed f. ex. Chinese -> English go from absolute gibberish to mostly intelligible. Leaps and bounds.

                What did shock me recently is that people are starting to use machine translations proofread by unqualified people for official translations. I shudder, because I don’t want to stake a legal case on that. But it does seem to be the way it’s going. The person who told me about it couldn’t be convinced to see the problem.

                1. bamcheeks*

                  This is a bigger question, but it’s still absolutely wild to me that we have no kind of legal framework for liability when it comes to software. We are handing over ever-increasing matters of health, engineering, law and finance to software without having any equivalent of a registered doctor, chartered engineer, licensed solicitor or accountant to sign off and take responsibility, and it’s absolutely wild that there doesn’t seem to be any serious shift towards it.

                2. Emmy Noether*

                  @bamcheeks

                  Good point. The logical way would be to start requiring a system of insurance for it. After all, those professionals are also usually insured to cover potential mistakes.

                  It would be fascinating to see how an insurance requirement would alter things. First consequence would probably be a step back to more human supervision, since insurance tends to be conservative in what it will cover.

                3. Antilles*

                  @bamcheecks
                  We do have a legal framework; it’s just a very bad one of “let the user beware”. Read the user agreements of software; all of them include various phrases making it clear that the user is expected to review all results and accept all liability.
                  The problem, of course, is that sort of setup only makes sense when it’s a very specialized software exclusively used by people in that field who know what to expect. It falls apart when software gets used by average people for everyday tasks…which of course is what AI is pushing for because that’s where the real market is.

                4. bamcheeks*

                  Right– most of the other examples I mentioned started with the same framework, and then decided they needed something a bit more robust!

                5. General von Klinkerhoffen*

                  @Emmy Noether

                  Patent paralegal checking in to concur that the machine translations of patent documents are very good nowadays particularly for claims, where phrasing is very standardised and structured, and ambiguity is purposely avoided.

                  In my early career it was often my job to gloss foreign language patents well enough to work out whether they were sufficiently concerning to bother instructing a full (human expert) translation. That task has going from being skilled and specialist to being a button on the attorney’s browser window.

                6. anotherfan*

                  We recently had a case where a candidate for public office, during an interview with a radio broadcaster that covered their specific demographic in their native tongue, used an anti-semitic/racial slur. It was unexpected and not what you would think the candidate would say — we had two speakers of the candidate’s native language listen very carefully to the interview to determine whether, indeed, the candidate said what they said. I don’t know how something like that would play out with an AI translator without any human oversight, especially since AI has trouble with cognates and accents and misheard words.

                7. Inkognyto*

                  Also add in human bias to the results and decisions to influence the AI and you have more legal issues where the results always favor a certain way because that’s how it was trained.

                  That’s a problem in medical analysis is you need unbiased results by human’s so you don’t influence the check for something that favors a result that could be wrong or limiting.

              2. hiraeth*

                Same here. I gave up translation a while ago because suddenly all the work consisted of proofreading machine translations. I specialise in creative stuff that machines are still pretty bad at, but tell a client they can have it for cheaper and 9 times out of 10 they will. And that just meant I had to proofread so thoroughly that it took about as long as translating from scratch, for a fraction of the rate. I wouldn’t advise getting into translation now either, sad to say. Interpreters might be ok for a while longer?

            3. rebelwithmouseyhair*

              I’m a translator and I have several friends who are leaving the profession because their work has warped from translating from scratch into proofreading AI- or MT-generated text.
              For the time being my own niche is safe in that a good deal of creativity is required, and the texts I translate are complex, high-brow ruminations that computers don’t understand at least for the moment, but anyone working in more scientific, tech-related fields where language has to be simpler, without any waxing lyrical, will be eliminated well before your 15-year timeline. Maybe if you’re translating into Finnish, the market is more niche and will take slightly longer than for me working with French, but I wouldn’t count on being able to keep working as a translator (rather than proofreader of AI) for more than five years at the most.

              1. Banana Pyjamas*

                Quoth the Raven’s point about language pairs is really important, as is yours about context.

                I casually use Google Translate, mostly for genealogy but also for cultural context. The French to English has improved significantly. For example it can now translate damoiselle (archaic, lady) and cousine germaine (archaic, first cousin) which previously it couldn’t.

                Meanwhile trying to translate plant words from a Polish folk art book, it translated one as mustache, asked if several words were Hungarian or Turkish, and didn’t have any suggestions for several words. Much to my horror Google has added 110 new languages. Like, my guy, you should probably master what you have before you add more.

                I also want to say there’s things that you need cultural context to translate correctly. Like in Polish they describe clockwise and counter clockwise in relation to the direction of the sun. Also some words might be archaic in one dialect but persist in another. I can think of examples in French, Spanish, and English.

                I love having the tools available, but I really don’t think they are well enough developed to replace humans. It’s sad that it’s happening already. I feel like a lot of knowledge and context will be lost from adopting under-developed tools.

        3. Dog momma*

          Good grief, docs already ,in many cases use Dragon to dictate patient notes, instead of a scribe, and the errors I’ve found, if the chart went to court in a malpractice suit, are more than significant. I’d rather have a real doctor make a diagnosis. Bc unless the AI is like the computer on Star Trek right out of the gate, it could be a real nightmare. Then again, I’m old.

          1. No Eye Deer*

            Yes, the transcription errors are sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious. A postpartum depression therapist perusing my chart from intake asked about my two mastiffs. He clearly thought I might have also have postpartum psychosis when I denied having any dogs, much less two mastiffs. Eventually we sorted out that the note was supposed to refer to two rounds of *mastitis*. (Those I did have, alas.)

        4. Thegreatprevaricator*

          I have concerns about data privacy in relation to Ai note taking and summarising. I want to use for my own work, and it would support me with access needs to not have to take notes, do my job and then write them up. My work is very much not life or death but it is public sector and needs to comply with govt policies. So far I haven’t found the exact tool but may end up using something like Teams professional paid for through reasonable adjustments. We used to have assistants who would do this job, but public sector and efficiency savings mean that’s no longer possible. It would be difficult for my organisation to pay for a person, I probably could get a subscription though. For me provided privacy concerns are met either is fine, with occasional instances where I would prefer not to record at all and that’s where a person would be best. But aware this is absolutely a skilled role that I’m looking to AI for. The solution is good enough for the budget that’s available.

        5. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

          It’s important to note that the kind of AI that does image classification is not the kind that most people think of any more – it’s not GenAI or an LLM. (Also, even there you need to be careful. There was a famous case where ML (I’m going to use “machine learning” to refer to non-genAI for clarity) did a great job at identifying skin cancer! Except it turned out it was using the ruler that was present in the training images of melanoma. Nobody measures a benign mole. Fortunately this was caught before it was used in real undiagnosed patients!

          I say this as a data scientist, by the way. Basically the algorithms are lazy and will cheat any way they can.

          1. ASD always*

            There was another I read about for diagnosing TB from x-rays that did a better job than doctors with its test data – because it was using the age of the x-ray machine as one of its factors, and TB is more prevalent in less wealthy countries that tend to be using older machines.

            That’s what makes me wary of “AI” use in life-and-death industries. Machine learning is phenomenal at spotting patterns, but it’s not intelligence, so it doesn’t know which variables to ignore on its own.

          2. Grey Coder*

            There was a ML based “health need” scoring algorithm which systematically discriminated against Black people. The training had used “healthcare spend” as a proxy variable for disease severity — the rookiest of rookie mistakes, but somehow it made it through and was actually in use.

            1. Quill*

              Yeah, that’s one of the many things that happens when your program is trained to take ANY available data and make it the primary deciding factor.

            2. MigraineMonth*

              *Every* ML trained on real-world data has real-world discrimination baked in, even when you think you’ve removed the data.

              Amazon had to trash it’s software developer resume-screening algorithm when it realized it was discriminating against female applicants *even without being told they were female*. The algorithm had learned from the training data that a resume that had the word “women” anywhere on it (e.g. women’s college, women and gender studies, women’s soccer, professional women associations) was more likely to be rejected by a human screener, so it did the same.

              Thankfully, they caught the bug before it was released, so Amazon has gone back to using the biased-against-women human screeners.

          3. MigraineMonth*

            There are so many examples of “specification gaming” in AI (following the letter of the specification rather than the spirit).

            -A claw arm that was told to pick up a ball and instead positioned itself so that it *looked like* it was grabbing the ball from the camera’s point of view.
            -A game-playing AI figured out that a certain illegal move would crash it’s AI opponent and deployed this whenever it was losing.
            -A machine-learning algorithm was 100% accurate classifying photos, but only because the different classifications had different resolutions.

        6. Nightengale*

          So far AI in my field makes the correct diagnosis 60% of the time. I could see that improving

          Helping patients make decisions is so individualized I don’t see AI ever being a safe way to do that.

            1. Boof*

              Considering the amount of money lost to what is essentially confusion and/or medical error, if AI could actually reduce some of that reliably… well I don’t see it replacing dedicated, well trained, experienced, intelligent providers but it theoretically could make delivering care much more efficient, which would be a win for everyone I think.
              Of course, it’s all about how it’s done. I am sus of anything that isn’t open source and very carefully trained + tested + look at what it’s using for its criteria

            2. Nightengale*

              yes and I am going to keep fighting for the need for personalized medicine provided by actual persons

      2. a clockwork lemon*

        Without knowing the kind of data entry I’m not going to say whether it’s better or worse for this sort of thing to be automated. I will say that I spend maybe 30hrs a month manually cleaning up data that was entered by humans working for our data vendor.

        I’m a lawyer in a compliance function, not a data analytics expert, and one well-trained robot would have saved me and several other people probably a thousand hours of combined work over the past calendar year on a project that wouldn’t have been necessary if things had been properly automated from the start.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          At my workplace, getting data transferred from one database to another involves someone manually typing each field, sending it to a second person then that second person manually typing each field again.

          I could easily automate the process, but I’m not sure if that would earn me eternal gratitude or piss everyone off. The office politics here are *dramatic*.

      3. Anon Higher Ed Professional*

        It definitely depends on the job – I also work in higher ed and my entire role is student-facing. Recently the company that designed the platform people in my position use as a regular part of our work launched an AI component and pitched it as “we’ll answer the routine questions so you can focus on what really matters to students.” The problem is that answering those “routine” questions are how I build trust with my students and establish the rapport that helps them feel comfortable bringing me “what really matters,” and some very good, important discussions come out of questions that seem basic. Even though the questions might be repetitive, they’re essential to the work I do. Seeing so many admins (and even some of my colleagues!) try to promote AI as freeing my time for “important” things is really discouraging and devaluing.

        1. rebelwithmouseyhair*

          Yes, as a breastfeeding counsellor I see that a lot of mothers start out asking safe questions, like, what time is the Monday meeting (info that’s clearly visible on the same page where they found my contact details), then launching into the problem they really need help with once they see that I’m gentle and patient in my answer.

        2. bamcheeks*

          OMG same same same. I keep saying this. We’ve been trying to get students to use the knowledge bank and look up their own questions for ten years, but students don’t just want the knowledge, they want An Actual Person who can say, “that’s not a stupid question”, and “don’t worry, this a normal thing to worry about but we can help” and “I’m sorry, that’s really difficult” and “That’s a brilliant idea! I can’t wait to see how it goes!”

          So much of what we do is relationship-based, and you cannot automate a relationship. I do think there are big questions about whether we can provide the service that we provide for the small number of students who come looking for it to the whole population (since they are all paying for it), but the consistency with which people want a person to help is staggering.

          1. Anon Higher Ed Professional*

            Exactly! A lot of the time the actual problem/question isn’t the main motivation behind a student setting an appointment – it’s the need to have someone actively acknowledge their feelings or to tell them that they’re not the only one with that problem/question.

          2. KlayFeetz*

            you. cannot. automate. a. relationship. !!! emphasizing because as chatbots take over therapy because the perceived scope of the problem (not enough therapists) is seen as too large, when we haven’t even tried paying more, valuing the work, and reducing associative stigma…

        3. Hyaline*

          Oh gosh and so often “routine” student questions are anything but, because students just don’t know what they don’t know! Sure, AI can tell them when the deadline to drop a course is or whatever, but it can’t help the student suss out if that’s a good idea or how to weigh the consequences.

    2. DJ*

      > I don’t have a solution, obviously.

      The solution seems obvious to me: allow the job to be automated, tax a portion of the income the business ownership gains from this automation, and fund basic income for everyone.

      1. amoeba*

        I mean, even if it’s not basic income – make it a 35 h or a 4 day week for everybody! It makes zero sense to keep people busy just for the sake of being busy if the work can be done more efficiently. I mean, the 5 day/40 h week is not a god-given standard, it was something people/unions fought for because it used to be much more. I’m sure automation helped a lot to make this possible, and I also think we should try to continue in the same direction, and not “work as many hours as humanly possible because people are lazy”.

        But yeah, that probably doesn’t help the LW, obviously. But it’s absolutely possible that automation and AI do just make everybody’s life less stressful – we just need to fight for that and not let capitalism do its thing of “oh, but then we can just have fewer people working harder!”.

        1. Emmy Noether*

          This is an idea that comes up every time there’s a large automatization push – it has been predicted many times before that humans will just let machines work and be at leisure all the time. And I guess it has partially come to pass – 40 hour work weeks are already less than it was historically.
          It wasn’t as automatic (pun intended) a consequence as some people thought, though. They had to fight for it, and as you say, we’ll have to fight for it too.

        2. Decagon*

          I recommend David Graeber’s book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory for its exploration of why jobs that accomplish nothing exist. It was published in 2018, so before the recent advances in AI, but it’s extra chilling in this context.

          1. Industry Behemoth*

            This brought back a news article I read long ago, I think in the NYT.

            I’ve also forgotten the original topic, but an online commenter was an American living in Germany. They had more paper than would fit in the bin provided by the home pickup recycling service. So they took a load directly to the local recycling facility.

            The local authorities got the person’s address from a magazine label, and paid them an official visit. If the person DIY again, they’d be fined.

            The reason DIY was a sin? If everyone who could took their own recycling to the facility, the only demand for the home pickup service would be from people who were shut- ins. That wouldn’t be enough to justify having the service.

            1. bamcheeks*

              I don’t think this is the same thing at all! It’s way more efficient to have the waste collected than for everyone to do individual trips. If your goal is to get paper recycled as efficiently as possible, then collection makes way more sense.

              1. Industry Behemoth*

                Some people or places need bigger bins. My apartment building had to arrange for a dumpster when our recycling service initially treated all customers alike, and gave everyone a 30-gallon can regardless of actual size.

                1. bamcheeks*

                  OK, but none of this means that running a refuse pick-up service is a bullshit job that doesn’t accomplish anything because people can just take their own?

        3. Blue Pen*

          Yeah, I tend to agree. I don’t know, I understand why people get nervous about getting automated out of their jobs, and I certainly understand why that’s immensely concerning. I’m probably naive, but in the back of my mind, the way I think about it is that if everyone’s job is automated out of existence, then… there’s little room for work. Capitalism only works if people have money to earn and spend, and if we’re all out of a job, then I don’t see how we wouldn’t move to a basic income/reduced work week from that.

          1. Reluctant Mezzo*

            Except that if the adjustment doesn’t include universal health care, in the US people will be automated to death.

      2. bamcheeks*

        Yes! The problem isn’t the technology, it’s a political and economic situation that reserves the benefits of technology for the already-wealthy and the risks for everyone else. And you can’t defeat that by refusing to play: the answer has to be political.

      3. Parenthesis Guy*

        Basic income largely doesn’t work as well as it would seem. Turns out that people get pride and find purpose for working for a living that they don’t get when someone just hands them money.

        Depopulation should help with this though. As the number workers gets lower, we’ll have to find ways of automating some tasks. Especially since some tasks aren’t really meant to be automated. I mean, do you really want a robot watching your kids?

        1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

          “Turns out that people get pride and find purpose for working for a living that they don’t get when someone just hands them money.”

          That’s a feature, not a bug. At scale it means fulfilling jobs become more popular, so unpopular necessary jobs have to be better paid.

        2. sb51*

          But it means people who enjoy jobs that aren’t well-paid can do them without worrying about putting food on the table — a poet who gets huge accolades and pennies for their work, and finds the accolades are enough for their pride, can be a poet, rather than someone squeezing in poetry around their McJob.

        3. Alpacas Are Not Dairy Animals*

          Is that something inherent to human nature, though, or an adaptation to the fact that we’re expected to spend much of our lives working and need that sense of pride from something, and don’t have time to cultivate it through anything else?

          Decoupling the idea of working for a living from the idea of avocation could be really helpful.

          1. unstable marshmallow*

            THIS. I made the mistake of going into social work as a career, but I now realize that I don’t have the mental or emotional stamina to rely on this work for a living. I love my workplace, and would also love my work if I didn’t have to do it for 40 hours a week to pay my bills and qualify for insurance. I can see how people turn around and make this job their main source of pride and purpose as an adaptation. That doesn’t mean the status quo is good, or that UBI wouldn’t be a net benefit for work like mine.

            (For anyone who’s worried: I’m not burnt out yet; just recognizing that it could get there and currently job searching. Our clients deserve a social worker who can keep up with the job long-term.)

        4. Chairman of the Bored*

          “Turns out that people get pride and find purpose for working for a living that they don’t get when someone just hands them money.”

          Any yet nobody supports my idea to require the idle rich to work manual labor jobs in order to help them discover their pride and purpose.

        5. not nice, don't care*

          What a privileged take on the reality of working for a living. Many many folks don’t have agency or autonomy in their jobs, just scraping out a paycheck to hopefully keep food/rent flowing. Many of us would be perfectly happy with a guaranteed basic income. Then we could find pride and purpose in something other than survival and making rich sociopaths richer.

        6. Irish Teacher.*

          People could still work though. Universal basic income is usually suggested as a way to ensure people have the basics and then they are free to work, either for purpose or because they want more than just food, heat, medical care and shelter.

          I also think it’s a bit paternalistic to decide what gives people purpose.

          I’m not sure on a practical level how well universal social income would work, but I don’t think “People won’t feel purpose unless losing their job puts them at risk of homelessness” is really true.

          1. Reluctant Mezzo*

            It’s like Newt Gingrich, who thought poor children needed to be janitors at their schools at the age of 8 to strengthen their characters–somehow, rich children already have good characters! Just like some states now think it’s good for children to clean meatpacking machines all night (it does keep them from doing well in school and competing for the good jobs which should automatically go to the children of rich families, which might be the whole reason for this).

        7. JJGH*

          I’ve only seen studies that say the opposite–that basic income programs work really well! Can you link me to the one you’re talking about? I do end up talking about this a lot so I want to stay well-informed :)

        8. Quill*

          I’ve worked in a lot of jobs that paid peanuts but were interesting and in the public interest. I imagine a lot more people would go into, say, the less glamorous parts of science (lab techs make the world go round) or shortage fields such as teaching and nursing if they didn’t have to worry about whether it would pay enough for them to live on.

        9. unstable marshmallow*

          I work at a volunteer medical clinic mostly “staffed” by retired doctors. Despite the images that may come to mind, we are a full-service primary care facility that, in my opinion, provides better care than my own insurance/PCP – just to make it clear that our providers are doing Actual Work.

          Since most of our providers are retired, they’re getting all their basic needs met without having to work – through retirement funds, social security, etc. Virtually all of them agree that they feel more fulfilled in their work here than they did when their livelihood relied on getting reimbursed by insurance. We don’t actually need the threat of homelessness and starvation looming over us to do work that gives us pride and purpose.

        10. Annie Edison*

          I found a ton of pride and purpose in the job I just left and would have happily done it for the rest of my life if I didn’t have to worry about money, but I had to stop because it was impossible to support myself and I don’t have a higher-earning spouse, which is how most people in my field are able to survive. If UBI were a thing, I would 100% go back to my previous career where I actually felt like I was making a difference and adding good to the world. I think UBI provides more options for pride and purpose in one’s work, not less.

    3. judyjudyjudy*

      I think another thing to consider is the shrinking workforce. Can technology such as AI and robotics fill the gaps? How can we leverage tools that don’t get tired, hungry, or bored?

      I think the question shouldn’t be, “what if AI puts people out work? should we stop developing AI tools?” and ask instead, “what kind of social safety net should be in place in case AI puts some people out of work?”

      But for all those interesting ideas, it’s not much use to the LW. If they live in the US, there’s not much of a social safety net at all, and the LW can’t do anything about that alone. So, for all my yapping, Allison’s answer is actionable. Search your conscience, and decide what to do. Best of luck.

    4. Anon Video Game Industry*

      Sorry, that’s BS for creative jobs (mine) where part of the only way to get good at the job is to do the “boring” work. It’s bs that it’s even useful, but CEOs who can’t write an email to save their life think that AI can create anything and everything. It’s only plagiarizing others’ actual work and reducing diversity in my field and many others in the entertainment industry. And the kicker is that AI isn’t even fast or good at the work! We could do it faster and better on our own (yes, we have the data!). However, a bunch of CEOs and accountants have been blinded by the manifest destiny tripe that AI companies are spouting, and we’ve mostly all been laid off this year and last to “save money.”

      Make no mistake: without solid policy, most of us will be out in the streets while the billionaires hole up in their bunkers.

      Does that sound crazy? Yes. Has it already happened to me and many artists, designers, and writers whose work is deemed as something that “can be done by AI”? Also yes.

      In five to ten years when you start wondering why nothing is any good anymore, it’s all being generated by a few white dudes punching in algorithmic codes instead of the actual, diverse, human creative forces behind great stories and games.

      1. amoeba*

        Eh, I was thinking more of tasks like filling out forms, data entry, whatever. Like, I don’t know, you currently have somebody manually typing out everything from the handwritten forms you get to enter it into the system, and it would now be possible to do all this by handwriting recognition with just a final control by a human at the end.

        This type of task can and (in my opinion) absolutely should be automated, there are so many processes that are just time-consuming grunt work with really zero creative value. AI also isn’t just ChatGPT/LLMs, although that’s of course the first thing that comes to mind for many people!

        1. ND and Tired.*

          hey, some of us neurodivergent folk really love the boring/grindy/repetitive data entry type stuff and are already under employed as a population. I have so many ND friends who are really concerned that they’re going to be forced out of the one source of employment they’ve managed to get/keep that sustains them when AI takes over.

        2. Arrietty*

          But the companies that currently pay people to do that boring grunt work aren’t going to pay those people to do fun creative work once they’ve automated the jobs away, they’re going to bank the profits.

          1. Ann*

            Yeah, in theory automatation should mean people get freed up to do other work or/and just have more free time; in practice it just means whoever has ownership over the technology gets a huge amount of additional money and power that the workers lose. It shouldn, but it’s the situation we have, and I feel like going, it’s not inherent to the technology so the technology is unbiguously a positive thing is kind d of a cop-out.

            1. bamcheeks*

              I think it depends what you do with that. If it’s just, “it’s the system, not the technology”, end of story, yes, that’s a copout. If it’s, “it’s the system, not the technology, and that’s why you should focus your energy on changing the system not the technology”, I don’t think it’s a copout at all. It’s a call to much bigger and more challenging action.

              1. amoeba*

                This!

                (Also, I know quite a lot of jobs – mine, for instance – where “the boring stuff” isn’t a role by itself, it’s something people are expected to do on top of their higher lever duties. Which they/we then never have enough time for, so stuff gets postponed or moves super slowly or never done at all and/or people work unpaid overtime to somehow manage. In those cases, it would definitely be great to get rid of some of it!)

                1. Emmy Noether*

                  I can think of a few tasks I would gladly outsource to automation (and some of them already partially are). It’s mostly the rote data entry tasks.

                  My core and most enjoyable tasks are devising strategy. AI is not replacing me for THAT anytime soon. Can you imagine?

                2. amoeba*

                  I mean, I can certainly see it replacing some of the super-generic stuff we’re paying consultants at McKinsey a lot of money for, haha! (The answer ist probably “layoffs” but wrapped in a lot of fancy language that actually kind of sounds ChatGPT-like…)

                  Actually useful strategy that requires insight and skill… you should be safe for the forseeable future, indeed.

          3. LW #2*

            Bingo. It seems obvious to me, and the fact that it wasn’t to my PM is one of the things that’s making me crazy.

        3. a clockwork lemon*

          It’s death by ten million papercuts having to manually make a spreadsheet combining data sets A and B just so I can get them formatted properly that I can then put them into ticket system Y. The robots should do that! Make them talk to each other! There is no value in multiple humans having to spend time each week emailing spreadsheets back and forth with each other just so that it can all go sit into a different spreadsheet that lives in a shared drive where nobody will ever look at it.

        4. fhqwhgads*

          The task of form-filling-out has largely already been automated. By having WAY fewer opportunities for paper forms, and having the person who woulda coulda handwritten it typing it in themselves in the first place, online.

      2. Suddenly precarized videogame translator*

        THIS!

        I work as a freelance videogame translator. Many of my clients have already had to shut down due to AI, and the few that still remain won’t take long until they are forced to implement it.

        I used to think AI is no good for the creative work I do, and it certainly isn’t there yet. But we have already been replaced because people seem to think (honestly or otherwise) that it saves time. It doesn’t. I’ve yet to find a usable (printing-quality) translation or text made by AI that doesn’t require so much editing that it takes the same amount of time or longer to achieve a worse result than doing it from scratch. Often I’ll erase the AI version and start from scratch. However, using AI is paid at one-third or half my original rate. No can do.

        Once I helped translate a very technical videogame, and AI was not good even for that one, although there was a lot of repetitive content. I still had to change like 98% of the technical names.

        I have also tried to use ChatGPT for language lessons and I am amazed people think this is good. I have asked it to produce a multi-choice quiz for specific language items. The first test is usually good. When I ask for a second one of the same type, it just mangles the questions it used the first time, producing absolutely nonsensical questions.

        I keep trying to use it, and keep marveling that people believe it is THAT useful for creative work. Not to mention the amount of false information it produces (sorry, “hallucinations”).

        I am already trying to change industries.

        1. Katydid*

          I am a person who truly hates unnecessary jargon and fluff words, but my bosses have bought in on AI for certain fields we need to fill out on our clients. I asked straight up “is the fluff required?” And got a wishy washy answer that basically meant yes, please fill these fields out with a bunch of BS. I hate it.

        2. LL*

          I HATE that people are saying AI hallucinates. As if it’s conscious! Also, hallucinations sound benign and uncontrollable and that’s not what’s happening. I prefer to say that AI lies (as long as we’re saying that AI is conscious) because that’s actually what’s happening here. “Produces false information” is better though. It removes the lie that generative AI is actually intelligent in any way and not just a machine.

      3. Hyaline*

        I think the danger in jobs like you describe is exactly this—AI can’t do the job but some cost-saving CEO might think it can, will implement it, disrupt lots of people’s livelihoods, and ultimately produce crap. But not before the aforementioned disruption.

      4. Reluctant Mezzo*

        The gaming industry is already experimenting with firing half their programmers and letting AI do the work (stealing art from actual human artists saves money, who would have thought?).

    5. niknik*

      This is by no means a new discussion, though. And not really related to AI, either.

      Automation has been replacing manual labor since the age of the first mechanical weaving looms, and humanity has been trying to come up with ways to make work easier since the dawn of time.

      Not something that i myself would loose any sleep over.

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        To be fair, automation HAS caused massive problems in the past though. While we often think of the Industrial Revolution as a good thing because it massively increased access to goods and increased the wealth of European countries, many of the working class probably ended up worse off. There was some city in England where I think the average life expectancy was 18, due to accidents in the factories, air pollution, etc.

        Not that being a peasant in pre-Industrial Europe was great either, but the loss of jobs due to the Agricultural Revolution did make it easier for factory owners to exploit workers.

        Now government regulation did follow and improve the situation and I do NOT believe that AI is going to lead to a return of child labour or anything like that but just to point out that while long-term, the issues do tend to get resolved, new technology has always caused significant problems for some people in the short-term. There was a reason for the Luddites.

        1. Emmy Noether*

          Yes, the industrial revolution, viewed from up close, wasn’t particularly nice. Arguably, some of the things it has made possible today, such as the fast fashion industry, also aren’t nice.

          I forget the details, but I read that one of the first people to invent a sewing machine didn’t make it public due to ethical concerns over making jobs redundant. There was also the first sewing machine factory in France that got burned down by angry workers. (Of course it then got re-invented by several other people – the history is quite fascinating)

          So not a new ethical question either.

          1. Banana Pyjamas*

            Abby Cox has a whole video diving into this on YouTube: A Hilarious & Dramatic History of the Sewing Machine.

            She specifically discusses that inventor with the ethical concerns.

      2. Emmy Noether*

        Yes, there are historical precedents we can look to. The industrial revolution, the invention of computers, and many smaller events.

        It does usually put some people out of work for a generation (which we shouldn’t downplay! it’s crappy for those people.), and then humanity adjusts and work is redistributed.

        What does feel different this time is that they’re not coming for our hands, but for our minds. Things we are used to thinking of as uniquely human, such as pattern recognition and creativity. It seems certain AI is really good at pattern recognition. Creativity I don’t think so, but it will be a mess until we figure it out.

      3. Reluctant Mezzo*

        You should. The writers at The Economist are surprisingly optimistic that *their* jobs won’t be automated. Um, yeah, whatever.

    6. nnn*

      I’ve beta-tested AI for my job extensively, and I’ve found that it actually make it way harder than doing the “boring” work myself.

      Upon reflection, I realized that what happens is the “boring” work is what inputs the material into my subconscious mind, thereby setting me up to draw connections and find innovative solutions while working out or gaming or doing housework.

      In contrast, when the AI does the “boring” work for me, I come to the difficult part ignorant, unprepared and devoid of insight, and it’s a struggle to figure out what’s even going on. (An analogy I’ve heard from this struggle is it’s like being teleported into a room full of arguing people you’ve never met and trying to get everyone to agree on a compromise, versus trying to sort out a compromise among people you’ve known intimately for decades)

      2. Kate, short for Bob*

        I saw the perfect description on Bluesky this weekend – Kip Manley –

        “There is no exact version of any work of art ever in any artist’s head
        There is an impulse a drive a kernel a spark
        THE WORK IS DISCOVERED IN THE MAKING OF THE WORK
        The work is constantly rediscovered in the reading of the work
        By everyone for everyone
        Including the artist
        Not AI”

        Capitalisation mine (though the original was all caps) but doesn’t it just get right to the meat?

      3. bamcheeks*

        I used to do this when I was still in academia. I hand wrote notes, and then typed them up, and that was the place where I absorbed them, saw patterns, and figured out my next steps. I hope your company is listening to you when you tell them that can’t be automated!

        1. Reluctant Mezzo*

          Nah, if the company can save money they’ll automate everyone’s jobs except for the bosses (and then *their* bosses will wonder why they can’t automate that, too).

    7. DeskApple*

      I also brought AI into my company and I’ve got the job that on first glance you would think AI can do, but as long as it still makes a relatively large amount of errors (and it still does) or the risk is high that even one error could cause a big problem, I’m still in a job. It’s not as completely cut and dry as most people think, but that of course depends on the purpose.

      1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

        “or the risk is high that even one error could cause a big problem”

        Hard agree. I have something on my desk right now that requires skilled/qualified/experienced human input (even though it’s hideously dull) not least because the “big problem” can easily be a seven-digit problem and has in the past been a “sued to bankruptcy” problem for those less cautious.

        1. Reluctant Mezzo*

          But some companies won’t pay attention to that and will go bankrupt depending on faulty AI.

          Not quite irrelevant note: In one of the Fast and Furious movies, a parking lot floor of autonomous vehicles are hacked and made to flow out the window and on top of a motorcade of a head of state someone didn’t like.

          A competitor who plays rough could hack the AI for a rival and increase the number of hideous mistakes.

    8. DannyG*

      Same story anytime there is a technical advancement: the stocking makers and weavers when mechanical devices took over their jobs. My maternal grandfather was a blacksmith: appreciated to the trade around 1890. By the early 1920’s cars and tractors were taking over. He adapted by doing auto body repair and implement repair. By the time he retired in the early 1940’s the horse work was virtually done with. Change happens.

    9. Scholarly Publisher*

      When I started in my career I was doing boring work — filing, copying, data entry. Thing is, while I was filing the copies of correspondence I was also reading them. While I was printing packets for a meeting I was also reading the discussion. While I was making database records for a new proposal I was also learning what information was important for us to track. That boring work was how I learned about the publishing business, the process of how a book gets from submission to published, how to communicate with authors, what kinds of books we published, etc.

      My concern with using AI to automate all the grunt work is that it removes all the entry-level jobs, and then these careers will have no point of entry.

    10. WillowSunstar*

      As someone’s job who has recently been automated away by AI and now has to look for a new job, I can’t say that I’m all in on it. What happens when AI becomes intelligent enough to do the more interesting office jobs? We would definitely need UBI, as rent and mortgages cost money. Food costs money. Yes, we can do without the fun things, wear only basic clothes, etc. but in the end, the US still has a capitalist economy.

    11. My Useless Two Cents*

      While I don’t see anything wrong in automating boring tasks with AI. A little before my time, it brings to mind the states that fought so hard to keep gas station attendant jobs when self-service pumps came to the market that. All it really did was delay the inevitable as those laws are slowing being reversed.

      I think a lot of the concern about AI automation is overblown at the moment. Though I can see a day where AI automation really could outplace some positions, new positions will be created that are just as mind-numbing and boring to some. Typists positions turned into data entry positions that will turn into something similar to fill the gaps AI will create in the system.

      Also, pie-in-the-sky business futurist often don’t take into account that people are human and can’t work at 100% all day, every day. Personally, I like have some boring, routine busy work in my job for days when when I’m not thinking clearly (horrible seasonal allergies & brain fog due to allergy meds/headaches). But I’m also not crying over no longer having piles of work on my desk that need filed (my go-to mindless, busy work tasks of days gone by) since our office went paper-less.

      1. Reluctant Mezzo*

        None of us in Oregon noticed the gas prices going down with fewer attendants being hired (the usual lie for getting rid of them).

    12. Looper*

      All work that can be done by a non-human will eventually be done by a non-human. Businesses don’t like to pay, insure, or manage people and never have. Any opportunity to remove human workers from the equation will be taken.

    13. LL*

      There isn’t. There really, really isn’t enough interesting work to go around. And it’s really frustrating and automating that type of work doesn’t really help anything.

      1. WillowSunstar*

        Agreed, and there aren’t enough physical labor-type jobs for everyone, whether that includes Blue Collar or Service Industry. We can’t all change oil in cars or cut hair for a living, and we got college degrees for a reason. If AI makes our degrees worthless, the govt. should at least give us our money back so we can cover rent.

    14. JustAnotherCog*

      Having worked on an RPA project designed to automate data entry, the tag line about “removing boring work so people can do more interesting work” is repeated constantly as a rationale for what their real goal was, which was to outsource and eliminate an entire team as a cost savings. It’s really awful to see how enthusiastic senior leadership is about leveraging AI because everyone in the rank and file understands that they only want this tech so they can reduce headcount.

  2. Chad*

    To everyone that reads this – please don’t stay at a job for 11 years without a raise unless you have a really good reason for staying that long.

    Get the heck out of there and on to something better. They don’t value you so don’t waste your time with them. I realize there are some exceptional cases in why people stay under those conditions, but those should truly be the exception.

    1. Seashell*

      That letter made me wonder if the raises were asked for and denied or if they just never asked. Ideally, the company would give some sort of increase occasionally if they want to keep people around, but that clearly didn’t happen.

    2. Alicent*

      Yeah, I’ve worked at two truly abusive, awful workplaces. Even the one that didn’t use coercive control gave me a big raise after a year! I was at the one where “beatings will continue until morale improves” and didn’t get a single raise in 3.5 years and was denied one when I asked. Also the work and clients that paid me the most money (I was on commission) were taken over by my boss so he had an excuse not to pay me and he could fund his insanely overpriced building expansion. He actually threatened to pay us LESS and make us work Saturdays as punishment for complaining about burnout.

      It can take a lot of mental energy you don’t have in those situations to realize you’re slowly being boiled and find a way out. It’s like swimming through pudding, but if you can get a glimpse of the sun at the surface and find something better it’s amazing.

      1. Paint N Drip*

        Ugh this sounds horrible, sorry you went through that. Experiences like that suck your lifeforce but I find even when jobs are “fine” it’s extremely hard to gather the energy and desire to change jobs (I’m a naturally change-avoidant person in case that’s not exceedingly obvious)
        I know the general idea is to change jobs after a few years to keep moving towards the top and/or keep learning/growing but I genuinely don’t understand how people can do that! SO stressful and disruptive, ugh this is why I don’t make any money :P

    3. Kygirl*

      I saw that and just…I can’t imagine staying there. I don’t care how invested I am with a business. Especially given the rate of inflation over the last 4 years. It means the higher-ups aren’t investing in their workers, because they don’t want to share a piece of a (what sounds like) a very large pie. My company does things right-they vest $15k in stocks in the company and after 3 years we get the cash from selling those stocks. In addition to a very generous bonus and a good raise. I never want to leave, and there’s not much turnover in my department.

    4. Smithy*

      Yeah – the one person I’ve known who went 10 years without a pay raise would note that the reason she was ok with it was because one of the job’s perks was that she was essentially given a car with the job. The job paid for the insurance, annual maintenance, and gas and she could use the car for personal travel as well as work related travel.

      While I get in some parts of the US, this type of a perk – and the job covering raising gas prices over time would be significant – this was a city where driving was a bit more similar to New York City vs Los Angeles or more rural locations. It leaned a bit more on the perk/nice to have side compared to paying for a necessary expense for daily life.

      Regardless – while I see that balancing out the “no raise” thing for a few years…..there does come a point where it just doesn’t.

    5. MassMatt*

      Inflation over the past 11 years totals over 33%. $100 today will buy only $64 worth of what it would 11 years ago. I hope LW was getting some sort of COLA at least but I doubt it.

    6. Reluctant Mezzo*

      It depends where they are and if they can move. A six-month gap in health insurance can result in a fatal outcome under the wrong circumstances. And even *having* benefits in a rural town sets you above the rest.

    7. FionasHuman*

      Alison — if they won’t pay out vacation, surely that’s sufficient reason for not providing two weeks’ notice? Just take your vacation and quit when you’re back?

      1. fhqwhgads*

        But the conundrum was no way to know if they’ll pay it out or not until after giving the notice. Or you are suggesting if they pay this badly and don’t make clear their vacay payout policy, just take the vacation assuming they won’t pay it out, return and bail?

    8. Tempest*

      LW#3 – Check your state’s laws as well. In my state, it is a legal requirement for companies to pay out any accrued PTO. A quick google search tells me this is the case in 20 states.

    9. Sam I Am*

      This sounds like a case where there are huge, glaring problems (no raises in 11 years!) and because those problems are *so* big, LW is fixating on one small issue (vacation payout). Not saying the vacation payout doesn’t matter, but I have to assume that stagnant wages have already cost LW far more money than they’re owed for accrued PTO. The priority now should be to get out asap for a better-paying job.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I think the LW has their priorities in the right place (getting the heck out), they just want to know whether to take all their vacation now or if they can get a nice payout when the quit. They admit that it wouldn’t bother them usually, but they’re feeling (justifiably) like getting everything they can out of their current company.

        1. Sam I Am*

          Agreed, but it’s not a big enough deal to risk blowing their cover by asking about the vacation payout. Get a new job, then ask away.

  3. West Coast, Best Coast*

    Yes, this is weird and inappropriate. It’s also not terribly uncommon in some parts of the U.S. Any chance you’re in the south?

    So in other words, you’re from the northeast and are OK imposing your values on another region in a crusade to discontinue a voluntary, legal practice. Nice.

    Incidentally, there is no reason why saying “grace” inherently has to be religious in nature. It’s meant as an acknowledgement of gratitude and thanks. The word “gracias” in Spanish literally means “grace,” and figuratively “thank you.”

    1. Noodles*

      1. Plenty of us who live in the south don’t want to pray before meals.
      2. The type of grace being said before meals usually involves the word God, or other religious language. Is it possible the letter writer could offer to say grace, then give an atheist thanks, a Buddhist thanks, etc? Sure, though I’ll tell you, that doesn’t often go over well! And, they shouldn’t have to. People can say silent grace in public.

      1. Justme, The OG*

        Agree to #1. I live in The US South and don’t ever pray before meals. I fake it in situations like the OP described so that I won’t be singled out.

        1. Successful Birthday Rememberer*

          I would probably do this (although you really, should not have to). I would spend my silently but deliberately time praying that leadership starts operating with a little common sense and professionalism.

        2. RussianInTexas*

          Yes. I am in Texas and I do not ever join in grace. Not even pretending. I will not hold hands either.

      2. rebelwithmouseyhair*

        Yeah, unless you’re actually thanking the cooks, those who ordered the food and the farmers who grew it, grace is a religious thing.
        It’s a subtle form of gaslighting because thanking a deity for the food basically erases those who actually did the hard work involved in producing the food (thanking “god” when your mother has been shopping all day then cooking all evening, really gets my goat honestly!)

        2. Consonance*

          I grew up saying grace before family dinners, and it didn’t include God (intentionally). I still wouldn’t make anyone say grace, even if it’s the same type. It’s just not my place, and it’s wild to me that it’s legal in a public-sector job even if it specifies not forcing anyone to take part. And even my non-deity grace was a religious practice of gratitude.

          (And for those of you looking for a non-deity grace: For food and friends and family, may we always thankful be. Amen.)

          1. No Longer Looking*

            “Amen” is a word used to express agreement, confirmation, or desire in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic worship. I’d prefer rebelwithmouseyhair’s theory of thanking the chefs and/or the people paying for the food.

        3. Jackalope*

          Eh, not really. The idea in Christianity at least is that you’re thanking God for giving you the skills and abilities to get food, for making the land able to grow crops, etc. The idea being that God as an all-powerful deity is generously giving us what we need to live. If you are well-mannered, you then also thank the cook, or whoever helped get the food ready. You don’t have to like that vision of the world, but the purpose isn’t to cut out the appreciation for what the human workers did, just to give an overall sign of thankfulness that food is available at all.

          1. Ali + Nino*

            THANK YOU. I 100% agree that prayer has no place in a government workplace but come on, to call this practice gaslighting is definitely a stretch.

        1. MaskedMarvel*

          because it’s not voluntary if you can expect being singled out, and grace is a religious thing.

          atheists don’t do it spontaneously.

        2. MsM*

          Nobody’s stopping anyone who wants to say grace before their meals from taking a moment of silence or even murmuring their own private benediction. It just shouldn’t be a collective activity unless you’re in a group you know all observes the same way.

          1. Momma Bear*

            This. I will pray silently for my meal wherever, but I don’t impose it on anyone else, especially not my coworkers. For those who think this is no big deal, would you feel the same if the blessing was lead by someone following another faith, or are you only OK because it’s your flavor of religion? Grace is fully intended as religious and IMO has no place at work if it’s a secular company, and even more so if it’s federal work.

            Unfortunately OP is between a rock and a hard place. I’d sit quietly but not participate. If the other coworker is willing to say something, then try speaking up, but I don’t hold much hope of it gaining traction.

            1. No Longer Looking*

              Personally I’d ignore the grace and dig into the meal while the religious sorts were busy doing their religion thing, then once called out I’d look up and say “Oh, I’m sorry, are we enforcing religious practices now?” Then stare them down.

              It’s 100% impossible to not participate in some fashion, even if the participation is “respectful silence,” without being singled out, so might as well go all in.

              3. MigraineMonth*

                I’ve seen this work. I went to public high school at a time when our state was feeling particularly patriotic and mandated that every school day started with the pledge of allegiance. Since it’s pretty hard to get a whole bunch of high schoolers to do something they thought they left behind in elementary school, this kicked off 4 months of gradually escalating protest.

                First we’d stand, but many of us wouldn’t say the pledge. Then several students refused to stand, got in trouble, it went to the school board, lawyers got involved, it was agreed that sitting was an allowed form of speech. After that, students started leaving the classroom when the pledge started and returning afterward. After 4 months, they kind of gave up. They just played the pledge on the intercom and we were expected to get to our classrooms afterwards or be tardy.

              4. PB*

                Love it! I hope to remember to use it if I am ever a work lunch situation.

                I also loved the idea of someone offering a prayer from an uncommon religion when people have been doing prayer from a common (to the area) religion.
                Such as if non-denominational Christian, then offer a Islamic prayer! “As long as we are saying grace I want to add one that speaks to me. ” [Then say that prayer out loud!]

                If US governments can have prayers before lunches (and at other times), then why not add one from another religion. I would offer it sincerely (as my faith tradition includes may faith and agnostics and atheists). And people might really get it that they are indeed offering prayers from a particular religion.

    3. anon24*

      Are you ok?

      It’s not really voluntary if it’s happening at work and employees feel forced to go along or be singled out.

      I’ve never heard a “secular” grace. Sure, it’s possible, but it’s always had a Christian connotation.

      1. Lady Lessa*

        I’m fairly consistent about saying grace when alone, but in a group, count me with the NO WAYS. It is almost never appropriate, unless a church group/function,

        1. Dek*

          I say grace when I’m in a group. I say it quietly or silently, by myself, without expecting anyone around me to stop what they’re doing, be quiet, or join in.

          It gave me the ick when we’d do it before our holiday potluck at work because, like. May be a very Catholic area, but not everyone here is.

        2. General von Klinkerhoffen*

          When I’ve been out for a meal with my church group we haven’t said a collective grace.

          Come to think of it, when I used to attend services that included a shared meal we still didn’t say a collective grace.

          I’ve only known it in very formal settings, eg at college, wearing my gown, probably in Latin and sometimes sung.

        3. many bells down*

          I work for a church, and our minister will say a prayer or give a blessing before a staff meal… and then ask our Muslim co-worker if he’d like to give one, and the Pagans as well.

          1. Zephy*

            Okay, but that’s still asking someone of a different faith to perform a ritual that may or may not exist in their own tradition. Religions other than Christianity aren’t Christianity wearing different hats.

            1. Silver Robin*

              I 100% agree with you on the “Christianity wearing different hats” thing (was just talking about that with family member yesterday). That said, some form of gratitude expressed during a meal is quite widespread. It reads as a kind gesture to me, as a non-Christian.

      2. Katrina*

        FWIW, my school would always have a “moment of silence” right after the morning pledge, with the general understanding that anyone who wanted to pray/meditate/re-focus had time where the room was actually quiet to do that. I think it was only 30 seconds or so, but it was appreciated by most everyone. Probably the teachers more than anyone else. ^_^ (You didn’t have to close your eyes or anything; in fact, I think I was one of the only people in the room who did.)

        To me, that’s the only way you could really do a “secular grace” if you wanted one–it’s a space to pray if desired, but it’s not a burden to anyone who doesn’t want to.

    4. tommy*

      it doesn’t matter what the word means in spanish. what matters is the common cultural understanding of what “grace” — the action taken before meals — is understood to be and to mean. you’re being disingenuous.

      plus, default christianity infuses it with a christian tinge whether or not anyone mentions anything specifically christian during the grace. it’s not friendly to anyone of non-christian religions, anyone of no religion, or anyone who prefers to practice this type of thankfulness privately.

      1. Gilgongo*

        I (an atheist) would fine with grace if the person thanked Mother Earth for her glorious bounty or something like that. Or, like, “I’d like to express gratitude that we’re all together eating this meal.”

        But, generally, grace is religious in nature… and it can make non-Christians very uncomfortable. Like how I imagine a Christian would feel if someone stood up to praise Allah (or, heck, Satan) before each meal.

        1. judyjudyjudy*

          Also, what if I don’t want to thank anyone, including Mother Earth? Why do I have to be pressured into gratefulness (even secular gratefulness)? I don’t care if individuals do it, but don’t make it a team activity.

        2. West Coast, Best Coast*

          Like how I imagine a Christian would feel if someone stood up to praise Allah (or, heck, Satan) before each meal.

          I realize this answer will shock people who confuse freedom *of* religion with freedom *from* religion, or people who forget that the First Amendment has a free exercise clause as well as a no-establishment clause, but:

          1. Interfaith services are a thing. I have no problem with participating in a prayer of gratitude led by an imam, and I have done so.

          2. “Allah” is the same thing as “God.” The theology is different, but the Abrahamic faiths worship the same God. “Allah” simply means “God” in Arabic, just as “Dios” means “God” in Spanish, and indeed Arab Christians use the word, not just Muslims.

          1. judyjudyjudy*

            So, if at every team lunch, you workplace led a prayer to Satan thanking His Infernal Majesty for the day’s bounty — sometimes led by a department head — you would not feel any discomfort and would say nothing about it? What if there was an expectation that you participate, which is how the LW feels?

            Also, this specific situation is not interfaith, and I’m not sure how an atheist participates in an interfaith event.

            Other than being Big Mad, do you have any advice for the LW, as a fierce believer in the “freedom *of* religion”?

            1. Hannah*

              Not to speak for West Coast but have you heard of the Satanic Temple? The only “religion” I’ve ever actually donated funds to. Basically they don’t worship Satan so much as they push the concept of religious freedom to its logical conclusion. For example, Christianity may say that abortion is a sin but the Satanic Temple suggests that it’s a sin to allow government into health care. So the court cases then ask, why does one religion get to set the morals of another? If I sincerely believe that I must follow the orders of my doctor, doesn’t that matter?

              Long way to say, for some people, Satan is still just a Christian religious concept and if you don’t buy into that, the idea that somebody is going to be shocked to hear somebody pray to him falls apart. It’s no different than the rando at the next table praying to the flying spaghetti monster.

              I am in no way saying that anybody should be pressured to pray to anything, in any circumstances!! But I thought West Coast was making an excellent point that when we argue religion in the US, it does have a way of somehow always meaning “Christian” instead of the more generic “religion”.

              1. Observer*

                But I thought West Coast was making an excellent point that when we argue religion in the US, it does have a way of somehow always meaning “Christian” instead of the more generic “religion”

                That’s actually true – and makes their whole argument far uglier than it sounds at first glance. Because these services (and that’s *Coast’s* term) are not even truly non-denominational. That would be bad enough. But in reality, they are almost certainly non-*Christian*-denominational. They are not Baptist, Methodist, Catholic or whatever. But they are still Christian.

              2. Fluff*

                I had no idea the Satanic Temple was what it was until this blog.

                Their research and advocacy is really hopeful for all. They are not religious, they are advocacy, and “Encourage Benevolence And Empathy, Advocate Practical Common Sense, Oppose Injustice, And Undertake Noble Pursuits.” Now that’s actually nice. And their stuff helps me remember to look at my own intolerances. Who knew? (Hannah :-))

          2. Ginger Cat Lady*

            So are you claiming there is no freedom from religion? That it’s okay for the government to require religious observance, just not the flavor of it? Because it sounds like that’s what you’re saying.
            And you’re flat out wrong on that count.

          3. tabloidtained*

            You appear to live in a unique reality because I can say with some confidence that if a Muslim employee suggested that grace be replaced by everyone saying, “Bismillah,” before their meals and “Alhamdullilah” at the end, many folks would lose their minds.

          4. Reluctant Mezzo*

            Yes, because children in schools are forced into Christian prayers, but it never seems to work the other way around. Amazing! /s

          6. Observer*

            <I.I realize this answer will shock people who confuse freedom *of* religion with freedom *from* religion, or people who forget that the First Amendment has a free exercise clause as well as a no-establishment clause, but

            Uh, no. I have not forgotten. But you don’t seem to understand what any of these mean.

            * The Non-establishment clause simply means that the government does not establish a religion or standard of religious practice. Exactly how does that translate into management leading prayers in a workplace setting?

            * freedom *of* religion vs freedom *from* religion is not the issue. The issue is actually freedom OF religion. Because there are people of various religious traditions at these meals. And they are being pressured into religious practices that are not theirs – and may even be *contrary* to their religious belief.

            Interfaith services are a thing

            So you are saying that it’s appropriate to turn workplace gatherings into inter-faith services, regardless of the religious beliefs of the people who are being pressured to join those services. Interesting.

          7. NotAnotherManager!*

            The whole freedom of/from religion is a false dichotomy created by people who wish to impose their religion on others, especially those not of the dominant religion, based on the idea that not being able to do so infringes on their own “religious freedom”. If the founders were so keen on the idea that everyone had to pick a specific religion, they probably should have spent a few more words spelling it out more clearly (same critique on “well-regulated militia”).

            Then again, these are the same people who didn’t consider women full citizens or non-whites as equally human, so I don’t know why we’re going to adhere so literally to 18th century social norms in 2024. Originalism makes no sense in practice unless one is really advocating to roll back rights and protections to the 1790s, which is really only going to be appealing wealthy, white, property-owning males.

            I would also pay money to see LW1’s coworkers be asked to participate in any non-Christian prayer. I’m guessing the vast majority “religious freedom” brigade is not sitting quietly while the imam, rabbi, or Satanic priest leads their prayers. (And, for some religions, observing or participating in interfaith/other religion’s practices is at odds with their own faith’s tenets.) Freedom of religion, in practice, is typically shorthand for normalizing Christian practices in public spaces – see “war on Christmas”, all the bitching and moaning about towns that include menorahs and kinara in winter holiday displays or that have days off for Jewish and Muslim holidays in the school calendar.

        3. Vanamonde von Mekkhan*

          I think the Japanese “Itadakimasu” (literally “to humbly receive”) is the best religion-neutral “grace”. Meant to thank everything that made it possible for me to have the meal I’m currently eating. Including the earth and the people at every stage.

          1. Katrina*

            That’s what I was thinking, too. Translators always seem to have a heck of time coming up with an English equivalent, though, since there really isn’t a good one. Usually I see it as “thanks for the food!” or “let’s eat!” but in practicality, either of those would be rather awkward to suddenly say at a work meal here.

            1. Insufficient Sausage Explainer*

              I just say “itadakimasu” day to day, even now I’m in an English-speaking country, but with my Japanese translator hat on, I’d be tempted to translate it as “Bon appetit” if it wasn’t crucial to the context (and the speaker wasn’t alone – then I’d have to rack my brains a bit more).

          2. RC*

            I might also suggest Robin Wall Kimmerer’s excellent essay on Thanksgiving in Braiding Sweetgrass. Also an excellent articulation of why the pledge of allegiance squicks me out and I won’t say it (although I’m not quite brave enough to not stand up when everyone else does…).

            But yeah neither of those are the context for the current letter.

    5. Michelle*

      that is not the meaning of the word grace that is in play here, and I am pretty sure you know that. Or maybe you think that ~thank you in Spanish~ involves closed eyes, bowed head, a prayer often addressed directly to a second-person god, and an amen?

      Honestly didn’t expect the comments section of this particular blog to be a haven for “failure to tolerate intolerance is intolerant!!!” type pearl-clutching… but here we are.

    6. Min*

      This sort of over the top defensive reaction is precisely what some of us fear when we’re considering whether or not to speak up about default Christian religious practices that make us uncomfortable.

      1. Onomatopoetic*

        This so much. I feel very uncomfortable with many religious practices myself, as a person who many religious people “don’t believe in”. I’m supposed to not “push my agenda” on people, such as mention my partner in a passing conversation. But if I say I don’t believe in any god and could we keep the religion private, I’m suddenly unreasonable.

      4. WillowSunstar*

        Yes. Don’t consider myself Christian, but live in a very Christian area and do not feel free to express my honest views. So I’d feel pressured to at least fake it if I was at work, and the managers did that.

      5. unstable marshmallow*

        Exactly this. Grew up South Asian with Hindu and Buddhist parents. It’s so hard to communicate how othering these practices can be.

    7. LadyAmalthea*

      I’m Jewish. while I personally do say a blessing before eating, the blessing I say is food specific, really short, and doesn’t speak in the future. I wouldn’t say it out loud around people who wouldn’t typically say it.

      If I were to propose a Jewish grace after meals at a business lunch, which, in its full form with lots of singing along and specifically Jewish theology, that would be both inappropriate and not go over at all well.

      It’s not about geography, it’s about being so used to being the default culture/religion that it doesn’t occur to you that other people might think or worship (or not worship) differently.

      1. Silver Robin*

        I am laughing myself silly imagining giving out benchers after the meal and going whole hog (irony intended)

        1. FuzzBunny*

          Especially if you do it like we did at camp, with banging on tables and everything! We did that at my wedding, and I absolutely loved it, but definitely quite a shock for my non-Jewish friends who were not expecting “grace” to sound like a drinking song :)

    8. TheBunny*

      Wow there buddy. Take it down a step. Or 10.

      If the grace being said involves thanking God or saying Amen (and since a pastor is saying I think it’s safe to guess it does) it’s not a secular giving of thanks.

      And it doesn’t sound like OP thinks it’s all that voluntary either.

    9. Bessie C*

      Wednesday and Thursday also honour Nordic gods – that doesn’t mean we all have to start sending nanna off to her funeral in a flaming longboat.

      Religion used to infuse our society and there’s hangovers in all sorts of spaces.

      It’s not appropriate in a secular country for that to be actively imposed in the workplace today.

      1. West Coast, Best Coast*

        Religion used to infuse our society and there’s hangovers in all sorts of spaces.

        Religion remains an important component of our society, and not just to Christians. The fact that you think it’s a “hangover” says a lot about you and suggests you want to impose your values on others, not the other way around.

        It’s not appropriate in a secular country

        There is a difference between being a “secular country” and having a non-establishment clause. Freedom of religion is not the same as freedom from religion. And if we’re talking the UK (“honouring”), there is an established state church and RE is part of the curriculum in public schools.

        1. UKDancer*

          As someone from the UK yes we have an established church but I’ve never worked anywhere with grace before meals and it would be considered very weird. People may say a private prayer discreetly but the only place with grace before meals is a church type setting.

          We just don’t mix work and religion most times. It’s sort of not done.

          1. Heist*

            Grace is said before meals at almost every Oxford and Cambridge college, which is where Britain’s elite is educated. I don’t think saying grace should be treated as completely outlandish when so many members of Parliament, lawyers, civil servants, and doctors regularly did so at university.

            1. Ferret*

              Speaking as someone who attended one of those colleges that is 100% not true at all and is in fact a pretty harmful stereotype given that it piles on top of a lot of other myths that put people who don’t fit the stereotypical Oxbridge image off applying

              1. Heist*

                I don’t think it’s a “harmful stereotype”; it’s a well-recognized fact that anyone could look up. Many college websites have a section dedicated to the history of the grace said at their college and an English translation. There are of course some colleges where it’s no longer said, but to call it “100% not true” that grace is said at all is simply wrong.

              2. Heist*

                I should clarify that I’m only talking about formal meals, which vary in frequency from once each day at the older colleges to just once per month at some of the newer ones. (Most applicants express a strong preference for the older colleges.)

                1. Ferret*

                  I think you are basing your image of Cambridge on the tourist version that gets talked about online. Even at colleges where formals happen every evening (I went to one – at one of the oldest colleges too) please bear in mind most people won’t attend them as their regular meal, and even when they do it is much more of a “cheap meal out where you can bring your own wine and get drunk for less” than the solemn event you are talking about.

                  At these meals the “grace” is mostly not religious but a toast to the monarch (which I also object to but that’s beside the point) and hardly anyone joins in.

                  Also getting really offtopic here but a big reason most applicants might prefer the older colleges is partly because as the wealthiest institutions they can often offer the most support. And also because they are the most well known people pick them by default.

                2. Heist*

                  Thank you for your response. I accept that grace is not said before most “normal” meals, but formals are a big part of being a student at Oxford and Cambridge (I wasn’t one, but I know plenty of people who were) and most students attend them as regularly as their schedules and budgets allow. And although the monarch is mentioned in many graces, as far as I’m aware God is mentioned in all of them.

                  To address your last point, funding is undoubtedly a huge factor when applying to a college, but from what I can tell, and all else being equal, applicants prefer older colleges to newer ones, in large part due to their traditions, of which formals—and the saying of grace in Latin—are a large part.

                1. Heist*

                  A shortened version of grace is still grace (I doubt the letter writer’s objections would cease if grace were shortened to something simple like “thank you, God” before meals).

                2. amoeba*

                  I mean – “Floreat Domus”, from what Google tells me, is absolutely not religious at all though, so I wouldn’t call it “a shortened version of Grace”, definitely not in the same way as “Thank you, God”. It’s a formal ritual to commence a meal, which I assume also LW wouldn’t object to!

                  (A little bit like saying “bon appétit” in French and German, maybe? And there’s also explicitly non-religious versions for little kids hereabouts, just a nice ritual to start the meal – I remember “jeder esse, was er kann, nur nicht seinen Nebenmann” from my childhood. Literally translates to “everybody eat what they can, just not their neighbour, but it rhymes in German, haha!)

                  OK; guess I’ve strayed pretty far from formal dinners at UK universities, but main point: not every ritual at the beginning of a meal has a religious connotation. The ones explicitly mentioning God or saying amen or whatever clearly do, though.

                3. Sharpie*

                  Floreat Domis College Name simply means ‘let the House of College Name flourish’, nothing religious in that at all.

                  Not all Latin is religious, speaking as a Christian Classicist.

            2. Agent Diane*

              Putting this here, since the threads have reached their max.

              People with lived experience of attending some of the highest Oxbridge colleges are responding to you about what actually happens rather than what you have gleaned second or third hand.

              Many other UK people across this thread have commented on the reality of our theoretically Christian culture, pointing out the extent to which it’s just words on paper and not how many people actually live.

              I’m not quite sure why you are so invested in denying the secularisation of the UK on a blog about US workplace norms but I am going to suggest this is probably not the place for it.

              1. amoeba*

                The country is calles the UK though, not (Great) Britain – that’s literally the island, if you’re talking about the country, it’d be either England or the UK (which is indeed a country, but includes Northern Ireland and is not the same as Britain).

            3. Nebula*

              As someone who went to Cambridge, everything about the experience is (rightly imo) considered completely outlandish by most people in the country, including people who went there. UKDancer is absolutely correct that saying grace before meals in the workplace would be considered incredibly weird by almost everyone. I certainly considered it weird when I was *at* Cambridge, and I had been to a Catholic primary school where we did say grace before lunch. But that was understood as a religious environment, whereas university wasn’t.

              Personally, I also find it quite weird that you’re claiming more/equal knowledge on this than people who were actually at Oxbridge.

            4. hiraeth*

              Wait, do you think ‘Britain’s elite’ are actually the main driver of British culture? Specifically the student experiences of said elite? We’re not all out here trying to imitate Oxbridge graduates. I’ve never heard anyone say grace in my life – and if you tried doing it in front of my Cambridge-educated grandfather, he’d have looked at you like you had two heads. (As for outlandish, my acquaintance who went to Oxford came back after half a term speaking a different language. ‘Sweaty bops’? You what?) Oxbridge culture is outlandish on purpose. The whole point is to be an elite in-group. If we all started saying grace they’d probably have to stop.

          2. Ellis Bell*

            As someone who works in a religious school in the UK (which is not the default public school set up btw), we don’t make the kids say grace at meals either.

        2. Nesnay*

          A state church does not mean that religious practises in the workplace are to be expected. We have a state church in my country, and it would be seen as absolutely insane if what the LW is describing happened in a government office here.

        3. ASD always*

          Even though we did things like (unknowingly) sing Christian hymns at state school in England, I’ve still literally never attended a meal where anyone said grace out loud, and would find it incredibly weird if someone did at a work event.

          Not sure what your point is meant to be about RE lessons – they’re for learning about a variety of major world religions (we focused on Buddhism and Islam, with some lessons on Hinduism and Sikhism), it’s not like “Christian studies”.

          1. londonedit*

            Yes; I’d be shocked if RE didn’t include all the major religions. It certainly does here – even 25-odd years ago when I was at school, our RE lessons covered Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism etc, as well as Christianity. The RE curriculum is absolutely about learning about a variety of different religions, and about atheism/agnostic beliefs too. It’s absolutely not some sort of ‘Christian studies’ thing.

            1. Vastator*

              I went to a Roman Catholic school and RE was purely Christian, no mention of other religions at all. And I have to say, people getting wound up on this subject in a country that has “In God We Trust” plastered all over its banknotes is quite comical.

              1. Sutemi*

                In God We Trust was added to US currency during the 1950s Communist Red Scare. It isn’t a legacy from the founding of the US.

                1. MassMatt*

                  “under God” was added to the pledge of allegiance under much the same circumstances but it’s still there, just like “In God We Trust” on the money. And both are extremely unlikely to ever change, though I don’t think kids say the pledge in schools as much anymore.

                2. MigraineMonth*

                  @MassMatt – I learned the pledge in 4th grade or so, and we were never expected to say it again.

                  Except when I was in high school, our state legislature caught patriotic fever (I think this was when the cafeteria renamed French fries “Freedom fries”) and decided that we needed an American flag in every single classroom and needed to start every day with the entire student body reciting the pledge.

                  We learned a great deal that year about how much free speech/protest high school students are allowed. So many students were protesting by standing outside the classroom until after the pledge that within 4 months the pledge was treated as the final morning bell.

              2. metadata minion*

                Many of us would really like to see that removed from our currency as well. But I have almost no ability to make that happen, whereas there’s a chance I can change workplace policy, especially if it’s a problem for my coworkers as well.

          2. bamcheeks*

            I think West Coast Best Coast is mixing up RE with the requirement to begin the school day with ann act of collective worship in schools from the 1944 Education Act, which is still technically law, but if it was ever enforced by local authorities or school inspectors it stopped well before I was at school in the 80s and 90s. I actually think it’s a great example of how we technically have an established church and the the C of E has way more institutionally-mandated involvement in society and government than in the US, but Christian practice is much less visible in daily life.

            1. londonedit*

              Ah, yes. We had assembly every day at primary school, which included the classic Come and Praise songs and the odd visit from the vicar, but it wasn’t really presented as Religious, if you know what I mean. Absolutely none of that at secondary school, no ‘collective worship’ at all, despite what the law might say.

              Also completely agree that we’re hugely secular in this country despite having an established church and supposedly mandated religious involvement in society etc. I think that’s something that’s very hard for American people to grasp – you only really understand it if you live here or grew up here.

              1. Marion Ravenwood*

                I went to a Catholic primary school in the UK in the 90s and we had a similar setup, with assembly most mornings and a very short prayer of thanks at the end of the day. We did also occasionally go to church on feast days, but it was definitely not ‘everyone must go’ even if you didn’t practice. My best friend was among the kids who got to stay behind, and I was very jealous of her not having to go to church which at the time I thought was SO BORING.

                It’s definitely a secular society here and increasingly so – church attendance has been dropping rapidly over the decades, to the extent that most people I know now only really go for big occasions (weddings, christenings, funerals) and a lot of churches are having to merge services together because they don’t have enough people in the regular congregation any more. And although we celebrate Easter and Christmas, as long as I can remember it’s been far more about the aspect of getting together with loved ones (usually with a meal involved) than the religious side of things.

                1. londonedit*

                  Yep, absolutely my experience only with a C of E primary rather than a Catholic one. My family aren’t at all religious and it was never expected that I’d join in with the church stuff if I didn’t want to – I used to schlep along but also found it extremely boring! But the C of E doesn’t really do evangelising so it was all very much ‘Hello, nice to see you, join in with whatever you like, or not, it’s fine’. As a nostalgic thing I do love Christmas carols but we celebrate Christmas and Easter very much as getting together with loved ones and having the excuse to eat and drink nice things.

              2. ASD always*

                Ah, we only had the hymn-singing on wednesday mornings in junior school, and the usual barely-Jesus-flavoured observance of Easter and Christmas. I had no idea it was meant to be a daily thing!

              3. Myrin*

                Regarding your last paragraph, that’s the reason I don’t talk about religion at all, ever, on American internet sites (in my ten years on AAM, I know that I’ve partaken in a thread about it exactly once, although I don’t remember what exactly it was about) – as a German, I’ve found that I know, relate to, and understand exactly what Brits are saying whenever they bring the topic up but Americans grow up in an environment that is so vastly different, religiosity-wise, to what people here grew up with that I feel like you basically can’t talk about it cross-culture-wise because there’s just such an extreme gap that can’t really be bridged.

                1. londonedit*

                  Yep. I’ve stopped trying to participate in the discussions about Christmas here because I’ve come to realise the cultural differences are just too wide for either side to be able to appreciate the other’s point of view.

            2. r..*

              It is a red herring anyway.

              Regardless of what the 1944 Education Act says or doesn’t say, the UK is still a member of the ECHR. Any attempt to actually enforce this provision would necessarily violate Article 9 of the convention.

              Buscarni et al vs. San Marino explicitly re-affirms that forcing any religious act on any citizen by the state, regardless of whether the citizen in question holds the same religion, any religion or no religion, violates Article 9.

              AFAIK there’s no newer judgement either because everyone got the memo … (the opinion is pretty much a long-form “cut it out and get lost” to the government’s case, only in legalese)

              1. londonedit*

                Yep – in my experience secondary schools simply don’t bother, and of course it doesn’t matter whether your primary school is C of E or Catholic or whatever, if you have a reason not to participate in the religious bits then you don’t have to. We had a handful of kids at my small village primary school who didn’t go to assembly and didn’t go to the church for the school Easter/harvest/Christmas services (which were pretty much the only times we went anyway) either because their families practiced a different religion or because their parents were atheists and didn’t want them doing the religious stuff.

                All of this is to say that even in a country with an ‘official church’, saying grace before a meal would be thought of as completely mad unless your employer is literally a religious organisation. We don’t bring religion into the workplace here.

        4. Agent Diane*

          Also UK, and you are talking out of your hat and imposing your beliefs on us.

          1. The UK is predominantly secular. See census 2021.

          2. The only workplaces to have any mention of religion are, well, religious workplaces. Some elected chambers have a daily prayer at the start (eg House of Commons). However, this is before the session starts and people of other religions (or none) are not expected to attend or join in.

          3. Our religious education curriculum covers all the major religions that are popular in the UK not just CoE Christian thought. It also mentions atheism.

          4. I worked in the public sector for two decades: if anyone had tried to lead a team in prayer at a meal there would have been in instant complaint to HR because religion has no place in workplaces. We cannot serve the public without bias if we’re prioritising one religion over others (or none).

          1. Thegreatprevaricator*

            I am a civil servant in the Uk and we are required to abide by Nolan principles. These include integrity which incorporates avoiding placing oneself in a position where you might be inappropriately influenced; objectivity which means acting without discrimination and bias . Saying grace at a work lunch for the whole team would for me raise questions about bias (assuming everyone is of same viewpoint as you, discrimination (through lack of inclusivity for other religious perspectives). Plus, as other commenters have noted it would be *really weird* culturally. I’m kind of wowed it isn’t prohibited tbh

        5. Nina*

          This may shock you but there are places other than the UK that spell honouring with a u.
          I’m from one of them. We’re really, really, really secular here and starting any kind of business event with any kind of prayer would be Not On.

          1. londonedit*

            We’re also really, really, really secular here in the UK and unless your workplace is literally a church starting any kind of business event with any kind of prayer would be very much Not On here, too. Religion is generally one of those things that you keep to yourself.

        6. Aunt Lydia*

          The only place I have ever heard “there is freedom to and freedom from” before is in The Handmaid’s Tale.

          That being said, I’m not from the US or a native English speaker, so maybe there’s some context I’m missing.

          1. Emmy Noether*

            Freedom to and freedom from is an interesting distinction. I just think that there can be no “freedom to” without “freedom from”. If one is free to practice religion A or B or C or…, then the practitioners of B and C have to be free from A as well, otherwise it’s meaningless.

            1. Hornswoggler*

              There is the Freedom From Religion Foundation in the US, a very interesting organisation founded by a former Baptist minister.

            2. Aunt Lydia*

              Of course, I completely agree, and I understand what is meant.

              I was just surprised to find it here when the other only place I’ve heard it is from the original Aunt Lydia, a character that violently imposes her own fundamentalist religion and justifies it using that exact sentence.

              So when I read it here I thought maybe it had some more history to it than I originally thought.

              1. Emmy Noether*

                It does speak volumes about the commenter, doesn’t it? I don’t see how arguing there should be no “freedom from” could be taken any other way.

              2. Parakeet*

                The argument has long been used extensively by the kind of person that The Handmaid’s Tale was trying to satirize. Which I presume is why Atwood invoked it.

          2. Helewise*

            It’s a pretty uncontroversial concept in Christian theology, although probably not mainstream enough to have made its way into pop culture or discourse. The idea is kind of that being freed FROM something leaves a void that may or may not be meaningful, while being free TO something is where good things start.

          3. General von Klinkerhoffen*

            I most often encounter the phrase in online discussions about the second amendment, typically when comparing “Europe” (freedom from gun prevalence, but infringing on individual liberties) and “America” (freedom to possess firearms, but affecting public safety).

        7. HollyTree*

          We do not say grace in the UK, and religious education is about learning about how faith works in various parts of the world. It is not about practicing religion.

          Less than half of the UK population is any kind of Christian at all, less than that is the state church.

          But just because things like primary school hymns or a state church exist, doesn’t mean it’s okay! . Religion has no place in anywhere where a person cannot make a free and equal choice, like school or work.

        8. dontbeadork*

          Freedom of religion also includes freedom FROM religion. I don’t expect you to worship my deities in your daily life — why should I have to worship (or at least pay lip-service) to yours?

        9. Texan*

          You’re right, religion is an important part of society, however I think you’re missing that “freedom of religion” *includes* the option to not practice, much like feminism includes the option to be as much of a 1950s-style tradwife as you like.

          I’m guessing you wouldn’t love someone opening a meal with “God doesn’t exist, let’s eat”? It’s the same as asking people at a non-religious workplace to thank God for their meal. Asking people to behave secularly in a secular workplace is just basic professional courtesy.

          As for OP, this is a sticky one! I think privately talking with the prayer-leaders is probably the way to go, though if this is ingrained office culture, you might be viewed by the prayer-likers the same way people who are allergic to dogs are disliked by the people who used to be able to bring their dogs to work. Be ready to get accused of ‘ruining’ this practice.

        10. Reluctant Mezzo*

          Religion is used as a club to anyone who doesn’t conform. But I guess you would be ok with that.

        11. LL*

          “Freedom of religion is not the same as freedom from religion.” Yes, it is actually. Sounds like you’re the one who wants to impose your values on others.

        12. So I says to Mabel I says*

          In the UK we have a Church of England but we also have equalities laws regarding workplace practices.

          We also are culturally private about religion. Saying at a work event in the vast majority of places would be very strange. People would probably mock a manager who tried to get people doing that. If it was continued people wouldn’t stand for it. No manager would last long doing this.

          The UK is a terrible example! (I’m talking about England, really, because the established church you mention is the Church of England. In Northern Ireland it’s all more complicated and fraught for historical reasons…)

        13. TM*

          That’s great, according to your constitution, you are free to do whatever religion you like. So go ahead, in the privacy of your own churches or with likeminded people in your own space.

          I don’t know if I should have to explain the historical rationale to an American, but the right is there because members of certain sects were prevented from practising their form of Christianity back in England, due to laws denoting only one Established Church. Good news, you still don’t have one of those to worry about in the USA!

          Personally, I don’t get too het up about someone offering grace in their own home or a religious or cultural gathering. I just sit quietly until they’re done. The workplace, however, is not that kind of venue.

    10. MBK*

      I didn’t see any kind of crusade here, just an acknowledgement that practices such as this one are more common (and assumed to be accepted) in the south than in other parts of the country.

      I do love the idea of expressing gratitude for the food. Particularly if that gratitude is expressed through providing living wages, good benefits, and reasonable working conditions to those who produced, prepared, served, and cleaned up after the meal. Thanking a specific religious entity, though? That a nah from me, thanks.

      3. Beany*

        I’ve never encountered a “grace” that didn’t explicitly or implicitly address a supernatural deity.

    11. Quoth the Raven*

      As someone whose native language is Spanish, there is a world of difference between saying gracias as “thank you” and as “saying grace”. Even if the word is the same (and that’s only in theory, since saying grace can also be translated into “bendecir la mesa” or blessing the table) the intention is definitely not the same.

    12. Been There*

      Saying grace is inherently religious, but especially in this context. It’s said by a pastor!

    14. Glen*

      Grace is explicitly an expression of gratitude to a deity – the Christian one, in an American context. It is extremely disingenuous to pretend it’s not religious. Also, we’re not talking about Alison enforcing her own values on another region, we are discussing someone in that region who is being made uncomfortable and unwelcome by a practice in their workplace. It is absolutely reasonable for them to have an opinion on this practice and to want it to stop.

      I am guessing you would have a different opinion if the prayer in question were to Ahura Mazda or Krishna.

    15. Pastor/Caseworker*

      No because using the phrase saying grace is what is called Christian hegemony. It presumes certain things and that is not ok.

    16. Failure to launch detected*

      This comment is disingenuous at best, and appallingly ignorant at worst. If you genuinely believe what you wrote, you have a LOT of learning to do. I’m sorry your upbringing and education has failed you so extensively that you lack both the critical thinking skills to understand this issue and the empathy to reflect meaningfully on the experiences and feelings of others. (And if you don’t? Then you’re just a jerk.)

    17. Pennyworth*

      I have never heard of any version of grace that does not invoke god. That is what the term ‘grace’ means in that context. It acknowledges god as the provider.

      The pastor might be receptive to a request that he rewords his grace to a statement of gratitude for the meal provided, without mentioning god.

    18. Morning Reader*

      I disagree that discontinuing the prayer activity would be imposing the LW’s values on others. It’s similar to saying allowing abortion, or gay marriage, or anything you don’t agree with, is imposing values on others.
      If you want to pray, pray. Nothing stopping you. If you require others to participate, it’s not voluntary and it’s imposing your values on them. If you don’t want an abortion because you believe it’s wrong, don’t have an abortion. It’s called choice for a reason. If you think gay marriage (or actions) are wrong, don’t get married to a person of your gender. Freedom of religion does mean not being forced to participate in others’ religious practices.
      In other words, you shouldn’t, in a secular society, be able to impose your religious values on others. Requiring others to follow your religious beliefs, or restricting them from not following them, is imposing your values. Not doing any of those things but allowing people to follow their own beliefs is not imposing anything.
      How would not having public prayer impose anything on anyone else? You are free to bow your head and mumble something before eating, if that’s your preference.

    19. Seashell*

      I’m from the Northeast, and I have never heard “saying grace” used in reference to a non-religious statement. I have also never seen it happen at work.

      By the way, there are other parts of the country that aren’t excited about forcing religion on people too.

    20. Cat Tree*

      Did someone seriously, presumably with a straight face, just claim that saying gave isn’t religious? It’s explicitly religious AND almost exclusively Christian. How would atheists say grace anyway? Who would we give our thanks too?

      This is almost as ridiculous as “Hanukka balls”.

      1. That Crazy Cat Lady*

        It’s funny you mention that, because I am a Christian-turned-atheist, and while I sometimes say something akin to grace before a meal (purely due to feeling grateful for having food to eat), I often wonder who I am actually thanking. I struggle with that, but I generally try to view it as a general, positive-vibes type thank you to the universe at large.

        (Also, just to be clear, this is a private experience for me and I would not be okay with a mandatory grace at work like LW is experiencing. Nope for me.)

      2. Pennyworth*

        Atheists can just give thanks for a meal, they can’t say grace without being hypocrites. (I am an atheist myself BTW).

    21. HonorBox*

      This response isn’t helpful at all. Just because something is legal doesn’t mean that someone has to sit there and be uncomfortable with the practice. While not the same thing, it is also legal for married owners of a company to engage in a pre-meal smooch voluntarily. It doesn’t make it less uncomfortable for people on staff who have to sit there and witness it.

      If it is important to the people who are saying Grace before the meal to continue the practice, I think it is probably worth suggesting that there’s more of a tone of thanks versus a religious tone taken.

      1. Pyjamas*

        But the reason for saying grace is religious. The feasible alternative is for Christians in the group to pray silently, in which case a bunch of ppl will be bowing their heads and moving their lips before starting to eat, while LW looks on. Will this make LW more comfortable‽

        I wonder if this is the tip of the iceberg for LW’s adjustment to the job and what else is going on. Is everything else about the job peaches and cream? Maybe the prayer at meals is a tangible thing when the underlying problems are amorphous. This is the kind of letter that usually updates with, “I realized there were all sorts of other problems and…”

        1. Potatoes of All Sorts*

          hey hey, LW here! And this is 100% a tip of iceberg thing. There is plenty going on that is fairly run of the mill, “this place is problematic/this work is not a fit for me” – I’ve been at this job for over a year now and I’m actively looking for a new job, out of government (overall just is not a fit for me, at least the type of work this department does). But this group prayer at meals thing was so out of left field in terms of my experiences that I had to write in. Christian hegemony is wild, and obviously has a deep hold on some people as seems to be evidenced by some of these comments.

          When I was thinking of trying to stick out this job, I thought about approaching my director (grandboss) and asking, as a compromise, if they could modify how they introduce it at meals – “For those who are interested, some of us are going to do a Christian prayer of grace before we eat. If you do not wish to participate, please do not feel pressured to do so and enjoy your food.” But a) I’ve realized this work environment would not respond well to even that mild suggestion, it’d still be traced to me, and it’s already made abundantly clear by words/actions I’m an outsider, not that I’m trying to assimilate because b) I’m planning to leave anyway.

          It’s something I might mention on my way out as one issue of many.

          1. Momma Bear*

            I hope you find a better fit job. These kinds of things are rarely singular so I’m not surprised you mention that there are other issues.

          2. Texan*

            Yeah I commented above, but I fear you’ll be seen as “the one who ruined grace for everyone” if you take any action at all, unfortunately, and if you have any aggressive converters on the team, you might get into their crosshairs. Sounds like your workplace is determined to be religious, so maybe just internally roll your eyes (or ‘accidentally’ come to these things late) and focus on getting out of there. Good luck!!

          4. Pyjamas*

            I think you should mention it on your way out!

            It seems to me that had anyone gone out of their way to make sure you were comfortable, you might have been able to shrug it off, just as you probably do when a friend consults her daily horoscope (*). But they didn’t.

            Good luck with the job hunt!

            (*) FWIW my partner and I looked up our relationship in Linda Goodman’s Love Signs (copyright 1978) as a lark and she nailed it. Uncanny.

        2. Observer*

          The feasible alternative is for Christians in the group to pray silently, in which case a bunch of ppl will be bowing their heads and moving their lips before starting to eat, while LW looks on. Will this make LW more comfortable‽

          It would certainly make me more comfortable!

          I’m not uncomfortable with the idea of people praying / saying grace before their meal. I am uncomfortable with essentially having to have some part in it, even if just having to listen “respectfully”.

    22. L-squared*

      Surprisingly, I kind of agree here.

      I’m from a city in the north. And while my mom says grace a lot, and it’s not uncommon to hear at family gatherings, hearing it at work would be odd.

      But, if I were to move to the south, I feel like its just one of those things I’d accept and kind of go along with. I know people from there, and a lot of stuff is just kind of a cultural difference from what I’m used to. Even if I don’t “say grace”, I don’t know that I’d be bothered that other people want to and I can easily sit silently while they do. And knowing that it isn’t illegal, I just don’t think its something I’d bring up.

      1. Parakeet*

        I’m a Jewish atheist who grew up in the South. Religious minorities exist there too (and of course devout Christians exist in the Northeast). I can remember group grace in Girl Scouts, and once I learned what it actually was, it definitely made me uncomfortable. I remember the political fights from my childhood about prayers in public schools, the “moment of silence,” etc, and it was never anything but an attempt to impose and reinforce Christian hegemony.

        I would never be bothered that other people want to, but there is a difference between people individually saying grace, and being a captive audience for what is clearly meant to be a collective activity even if some people stay silent.

      2. Le Sigh*

        I’ve spent a longtime living in the South, as well as elsewhere. Yes, it’s a cultural difference but I think it’s worth thinking about what it means to go along to get along in reality v. what you think you would do.

        A lot of times, in these situations, it’s ostensibly voluntary….but it’s not, really. In a group setting with someone leading grace, the inherent pressure is there and you stick out. Trust me when I say people look at you and treat you differently if you don’t join in. I’ve 100% pretended in order to avoid uncomfortable situations at work or to prevent my colleagues or bosses from judging me. Am I going to lose my job or my home or my life? No, not personally, but I’ve definitely felt professional and personal consequences for not going along with it.

        This sort of thing can really wear on a person. Because it’s not one meal. It’s often before a public meeting or business meal, before a game for the local school sports teams, before a dance recital for your kid, you name it. It adds up. It’s not that I need to scream my atheism from the rooftops — I don’t — or that I want to ruin everyone’s fun (they’re still entitled to say grace quietly to themselves or otherwise practice their religion). It’s that I’d like to be able to eat my meal alongside my colleagues without feeling othered.

        This isn’t something that only happens in the U.S. South (and there are a lot of really inclusive, progressive communities, so I have really, really strong feelings about people treating the South like it’s the only place full of racism and intolerance). But this is a very real cultural issue I ran into for much of my childhood and adult years, and it’s exhausting and it sucks. Sometimes you just go along to get along, but before you say you’d just go along with it, it’s worth thinking about what that means for others.

      3. Cohort1*

        But, if I were to move to the south, I feel like its just one of those things I’d accept and kind of go along with.

        Should one also “go along with” rampant racism (“they know their place”), shunning of atheists, Jews, Muslims, Haitiians, and perhaps Catholics? We usually think of bullies as a couple of kids at school, but mandated public displays of Christianity where one can either “go along with” or be shunned/persecuted is an example of group bullying, as in, “My way or the highway.” I feel that many “Christians” these days have failed to actually read and follow the gospels. Mandatory grace is one of the slippery slopes to our most “devote Christians” who are on the verge of violence because they believe that a politician has been sent by their god and therefore rejection of this cult figure must needs lead to riots, executions, and murders if said cult leader is rejected – all sanctioned by their fervent beliefs. Does the steps from grace to violence sound like a big leap? Not so big as one might hope; one imposition of beliefs leads to the next and the next and here we are. Freedom of religion is great right up to the point that it becomes mandatory and resistance becomes sacrilege.

        1. Reluctant Mezzo*

          And since the current Supreme Court has come down on ‘Christians can discriminate against anyone else, but nobody can discriminate against them’, there really is a coercive element there. After all, if a kid doesn’t pray out loud with the coach on the 50-yard line, is that kid going to get to play? ‘Voluntary’, bah!

      4. Observer*

        I know people from there, and a lot of stuff is just kind of a cultural difference from what I’m used to.

        Well, that’s because you are steeped in the Christian hegemony. To you Christianity is “the way things are” and so something that’s just a different way of “the way things are” (ie Christianity) is not a big deal. But for those of us who are *not* Christians, it’s at best an active negation of our religious identity, and may actually be at odds with our religious requirements.

      5. NotAnotherManager!*

        I’m from the south (born and raised, migrated north as an adult), and I absolutely hate the infusion of Christianity in everyday life. When we visit relatives, there is Christian prayer at damn near everything. The valedictorian at my nephew’s public HS gave their speech on the importance of being saved and knowing Jesus. The equivalent of DC’s “what do you do for work?” is “where do you go to church?” (and there are social and sometimes professional consequences for “oh, we don’t go to church”). There is also a really big difference in experience if you’re culturally Christian and kind of used to it versus atheist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, etc.

        Not all Southerners are OK with casual Christianity and just expect the Yankee transplants to go along to get along. I am tired of hearing about Jesus at every meal, event, and casual meeting that ends with a “have a blessed day!”.

      6. Blue Pen*

        Even if I don’t “say grace”, I don’t know that I’d be bothered that other people want to and I can easily sit silently while they do.

        Right, but you’re assuming that your coworkers (especially leadership) in that workplace wouldn’t hold that against you in some way—whether directly or indirectly. The second someone with authority over you in your workplace has a way to “other” you is when your professional growth, reputation, and livelihood is at risk.

    23. Pyjamas*

      It’s religious but not obligatory to non-adherents of the religion.

      If I understand correctly, one person (the pastor) says a prayer aloud while the other individuals at the meal who wish to join in bow their heads. At the conclusion of the prayer, these individuals say, “Amen.” But does LW have to bow their head? To say, Amen? I’m guessing—from past experience—that they do not.

      LW can’t ask their colleagues not to pray before meals. They have the right to exercise this religious practice. However, LW could ask the pastor if the Christians in the group could say a silent prayer instead. I think this would be more time-consuming and noticeable but it would be pastoral to respond to LW’s feelings.

      Alternatively, LW could decide to exercise their right not to pray. My advice to LW would be to respectfully remain silent during the prayer but not bow their head or say Amen. Frame it as the right of some individuals to practice their religion, and LW’s right not to participate in this practice.

      1. Dek*

        Speaking as a Christian who does say grace before every meal, regardless of who I’m with, there’s a big difference between saying grace silently yourself and having a led group prayer said aloud.

        The latter is very firmly establishing that the workplace is Christian By Default, and those who do not participate are the Other.

        People can say grace for themselves without having to make it a Big Deal for everyone else.

        1. Pyjamas*

          Yes but if 10 out of 12 are silently praying, it’s going to be a pretty noticeable activity, especially since ppl are going to be looking around to see who’s finished. It will also be more obvious who is not praying than during a group prayer. LW says they are new and don’t want to draw attention to themselves in this way

          1. Decagon*

            It’s very easy to pray or give thanks in your mind/heart/soul without calling attention to it. People can start passing food around or eating whenever they’re ready! If everyone is watching and waiting for others to finish their silent Grace, then you’re still making it a group activity.

            1. Texan In Exile*

              Yep. You can pray in your head while other people are already eating. Nobody has to know what you are doing. Like – they’re not even supposed to know.

          2. Dek*

            If you’re doing it for yourself you don’t have to be waiting for everyone else to do it (especially since different people say different kinds of blessings). It doesn’t have to be any more noticeable than just looking down at your plate and not talking for thirty seconds would be.

            When I’ve eaten at work events, we don’t all get our food at the same time, so it’s not like I’d be saying grace at the same time as everyone else anyway.

          3. Cohort1*

            Matthew 6:

            “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.
            But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.

            1. Reluctant Mezzo*

              Yes! I hoped someone would bring that up. But since some churches are literally saying the words of Jesus are ‘liberal talking points’ not sure that appeal to him is actually going to help much.

            2. a trans person*

              The master’s tools will not destroy the master’s house. You can’t argue against Christian privilege and cultural supremacy by citing Christian scripture.

              This kind of shit just makes me, a Jewish-raised Pagan, feel like I don’t even get to participate in the debate about whether I get to participate in public life. Are you going to accuse them of being Pharisees next? Don’t do this.

    25. Dhaskoi*

      >Incidentally, there is no reason why saying “grace” inherently has to be religious in nature.

      Saying grace is an explicitly religious act and I am frankly boggled by the nerve it takes to claim otherwise.

    26. Ginger Cat Lady*

      It’s not secular. Who do you think this gratitude and thanks is going to? Who do they address when they give thanks?
      Yup. God. Saying grace is 100% a religious thing. You’re only okay with it because it aligns with your beliefs. You’d probably have an issue with it if you were being pulled into a religious thing that did not match your own.
      She asked about being in the south because religion is so deeply ingrained into culture there it can be hard to see. Claiming she is saying it’s okay if it’s elsewhere is quite the leap, and quite telling of your own biases.

    27. Jeanine*

      nope nope nope nope. This is the opposite, it’s forcing religion on people that don’t want it, and yes grace is a religious practice. It’s nothing BUT a religious practice. They are imposing their values on others. Period. I would never say grace at a meal, absolutely not.

    28. dontbeadork*

      OK, I’m from the South and I absolutely do NOT want to be forced to participate in someone’s grace saying, nor to sit quietly while some yabbo drones on and on about a deity I may or may not have a belief in.

      My principal would want to say prayers before every damned staff meeting, so she’d ask first, but who’s going to say “No way” to their boss right there. So like it or not, we’d be forced to listen to her prayer.

      It may be kindly meant, but it is also discomforting and goes against the words of the entity she was praying to.

    29. MassMatt*

      “ there is no reason why saying “grace” inherently has to be religious in nature. ”

      Counterpoint—it literally always is.

      This is strongly reminding me of the “Christmas is a secular holiday” argument I hear just about every December. It smacks of religious chauvinism when the dominant religion doesn’t see its own privilege.

      Making religion more prominent in the public sphere (prayer in schools, at work, etc) is seeking not to make space for different faiths, but coerce everyone into following the “one true faith”. We hate this when it’s done by other faiths (i.e. the Taliban) but are expected to turn a blind eye to it for Christianity. No.

    30. NaoNao*

      When one has to use the dictionary definition of the word, stripping out all cultural, situational, and social context, to make the point, the point is weak.

      This isn’t about “gee, I don’t understand the purpose of a quiet personal ‘thank you’ to my Creator before a meal so I’m going to make everyone else uncomfortable”, and pretending that “grace” (meaning a Christian prayer addressed to a Christian God) is merely “thank you” because the word has several meanings both literal and figurative is disingenuous at best and trolling at worst.

    31. Rincewind*

      Every time someone has “said Grace” in my presence, it opens with “Dear God” or “Dear Heavenly Father” or some other form of obvious non-secular reference.
      It makes me uncomfortable in social settings and would go double for if it ever happened at work.
      “Voluntary” is a stretch given that it’s led by a manager and done in front of the group. LW made it pretty clear she doesn’t feel it’s voluntary.

    32. Texan In Exile*

      WTH? How “voluntary” is an action if your boss is leading it?

      And I couldn’t help but notice that this case was decided 5-4, with the majority being the white men. That is, the majority was people who have always been the deciders, not the decided upon. (Also, the case was about board/city council meetings, not about employer-employee relationships. It would be a lot easier to opt out of a prayer in a city council meeting – nobody can fire you except the voters.)

      And yes saying grace is inherently religious, just like Christmas is.

    33. AnotherEmily*

      “So in other words, you’re from the northeast and are OK imposing your values on another region…”

      Feigns indignation at answer raising possibility that Letter Writer lives in a region that culturally is known for being more likely to have outward expressions of Christianity than other regions. Selects user name asserting regional superiority. Sure.

    35. I Have RBF*

      I don’t care where you live, I don’t want to perform your religious ritual with my meals, and I shouldn’t be required to as some sort of sop to your Southern culture. Pray silently, or at home.

    36. MarieInSC*

      I am an atheist, and I work in the Southern US at a private college with a religious affiliation, though it’s no longer a central part of the college’s mission or purpose. However, we have a chaplain on staff and there is frequent prayer before large all-campus meetings and all-employee meals, etc. I bow my head during those times, but I don’t close my eyes or, obviously, pray. I do this out of respect for my colleagues, who believe their god is listening during these times. While I disagree with them about the supernatural, I respect their choice to believe in it. I am also open about my atheism. People who know me understand what my bowed head represents and that I neither agree nor participate.

      I do this now because once I was in your shoes when I was younger, working in a department of a public institution where there was prayer before meetings. I objected to it out of principle, and the director stopped the prayer. I actually felt worse after the prayer stopped. While the prayer meant zero to me, it meant a lot to my colleagues (I found this out later after I’d gotten to know some of them better). So while I scored points for inclusiveness and greater sensitivity, I lost points for mutual respect and tolerance.

      I’m much happier the way I handle things now: open about my own lack of belief, but respectful and tolerant of those around me.

      1. Nah*

        All your colleagues, every single one, wanted the prayer? They could still do it on their own, not led by management. Maybe you provided cover for someone else who didn’t feel comfortable speaking up. I believe that you’re happier, but I’m not so sure being “respectful and tolerant” is some huge moral victory in cases like that.

    37. Kevin Sours*

      Yeah no. It inexplicable that it’s legal to include prayer at a government work gathering. Particularly at a group meal with it’s more “voluntary” participation. I have no doubt that skipping meals would be perceived as “not a team player” in this context and if even if not missing out of free meals/team time is it’s own consequence. A manager imposing their values on their employees is the real problem here.

    39. LL*

      It’s always religious, though. Because who are you giving thanks to? It’s not a person. Even if you don’t us the word “god” you aren’t thanking the person who made the meal or anything.

      Also, even supposedly non-religious graces are generally drawn from Christian ones. The people who want to do this type of stuff at work aren’t saying motzi over their bread or anything.

    40. Dark Macadamia*

      “a voluntary, legal practice.”

      If the best defense you can offer for something is that it’s *technically* not required and *technically* allowed, that’s a pretty weak defense.

    41. Observer*

      So in other words, you’re from the northeast and are OK imposing your values on another region in a crusade to discontinue a voluntary, legal practice

      No.

      What people would like is to stop a practice that is only nominally “voluntary”, and infringes on people’s free practice of religion. I say a blessing before eating anything. I say a blessing (ranging from short to several paragraphs, depending on what I eat) after I eat. I applaud anyone who wants to do the same, regardless of the form their prayers / blessing take. And if you don’t want to? That’s no problem either. You do you, as they say.

      What I do NOT want is to have to participate in the prayers of another religion. And I should not have to “excuse” myself. The “expectation” may not be formally required, but “expectations from management are absolutely a pressure and have no place.

      I’m not sure why I wasted the time on this response. Your framing makes it 100% that you are either not asking in good faith or really believe that any time Christians are not in a position to dominate a space that constitutes “persecution”. Neither of which are amenable to reasonable response.

    42. Love to WFH*

      Saying grace before a meal is a religious practice, and it is “othering” to force people to participate in it at work when they aren’t part of a religion that practices it. You need to do some serious thinking about how you treat people who are different from you.

    43. NotAnotherManager!*

      What if I’m from the South and would love to see less forced Christianity in what are supposed to be secular public settings? The South is not a monolith (nor is the Northeast), and the value of normalized an enforced prayer in public settings is not really OK by me either (especially when there is a significant delta between the words and the actions).

      I have never in my life heard a pre-meal grace that is not religious, even after moving to the Heathen Mid-Atlantic. That’s not a winning argument, and the Spanish etymology of gracias is quite literally the opposite of what you’re asserting.

    44. Starbuck*

      “Incidentally, there is no reason why saying “grace” inherently has to be religious in nature”

      This is a really silly position to take, saying grace is obviously a Christian religious practice. And clearly that’s how it’s being done in LW’s workplace, otherwise it wouldn’t have seemed so alienating to them as an atheist.

  4. yvve*

    some jobs i feel are actively detrimental to society, but automating is not one I’d put in that category. Ideally we would find ways to soften the landing for people who are out of work, but if the job does not need to be done, then it’s wasting both money and the effort and time of the people doing it. It’s just a very inefficient form of charity

    1. Lionheart26*

      Hard agree. we’re entering a difficult transition phase, but the evolution of work is now inevitable. OP I don’t think anyone benefits long term by you stepping out of the loop.
      I have started a business in the last 12 months, and employed 3 part time staff. One is a (short term contract) prompt engineer tasked with figuring out the best way for us all to work efficiently. The other 2 are doing full-time work in part-time hours because of the systems she has set up. You could look at this as taking jobs, but these jobs wouldn’t exist without AI: I simply wouldn’t have started my business because it wouldn’t be viable without the automation. Of my 3 staff, one is doing this as part time side hustle on top of a full time job, one is a student, and one is retired. All 3 are super grateful for the opportunity for flexible work.

      The businesses and employees that are going to thrive in this stage are the ones who adapt. That’s not being callous about people’s livelihoods, that’s supporting people to transition to new ways of working.

      2. Reluctant Mezzo*

        But it’s the low-level jobs normally held by women in offices which are going to go. Where is the entry level? A PhD?

        1. Observer*

          That’s actually not necessarily true.

          And historically, it’s often been well paid people who have lost their jobs. The weavers whose jobs were automated away in the industrial revolution, for instance, were well paid and prosperous.

          On the other hand, in many cases where lower paid and arduous work was automated away, it was still a net benefit to society – and in some cases even for the workers whose jobs disappeared.

          In reality, it makes no sense to refuse to automate jobs. What we *do* need to do is find a way to make the transition better for the people who will be directly hurt regardless of who that cohort is. And we also need to think about how we train the people who are going to do the things that AI (or whatever automation comes into play) cannot do.

    2. FashionablyEvil*

      And also, jobs and economies evolve. For example, if you look at the trend in agriculture, 100 years ago, that sector covered 25% of workers. Now it’s less than 2%. We just have a different mix of jobs.

  5. Patrick*

    Regarding prayer by a government official, I’m sorry to report this because I think it’s appalling, but our Supreme Court has decided any government official can interrupt his duties to lead a prayer, as long as he says the people under him don’t have to participate. Coach Kennedy vs. Bremerton School District 2022.

    1. VP of Monitoring Employees' LinkedIn Profiles*

      So the official states that those under him don’t have to participate. Does that statement absolve him of liability later when he actually punishes the non-participants?

        1. Rainy*

          I’d definitely step up for my turn if I had to endure it from everyone else. Please enjoy this carefully crafted request for the god/s of my choice to bless the repast; buckle up, ’cause I’m about to make it REAL WEIRD.

    3. Texan In Exile*

      Which was also a horrible decision. Your coach is asking you to join a prayer? Did they really think a 15 year old boy could opt out of this without repercussions? We have confident grown adults who know it’s dangerous to cross the boss and yet SCOTUS thought children should Just Say No?

      1. Texan In Exile*

        And I guarantee that if the prayer had been a non-Christian one, the decision would have gone a different way.

        1. JustaTech*

          Seriously. Also, ugh that guy. It was very clear quite early that he wanted to Make A Point and possibly Be A Cause (which he did!), and not actually, you know, coach his team.

          Then he quit and tried to claim he was fired – nope, you didn’t fill out your paperwork and also the team did poorly, so why would the school hire you back?

      2. evens*

        This is actually a great ruling, and I challenge you to find a case where the Supreme Court abridged the freedom of speech of a Muslim, Jew, or other non-Christian in such a way. Do you really want to prohibit speech, especially when it does not harm anyone?

        Remember, if private prayers are suppressed, so too can speech that you might happen to like. Don’t be so eager to give away your rights.

        >Initially, Coach Kennedy prayed quietly and alone. After several games, students took notice of Coach Kennedy’s post-game prayers and asked if they could join him. He told them, “[t]his is a free country” and “[y]ou can do what you want.” Some players elected to gather near Coach Kennedy after games and, on occasion, BHS players would invite players from the opposing team to join them. Sometimes no players gathered and Coach Kennedy prayed alone.

        1. Reluctant Mezzo*

          Yeah, we get it. Christians can discriminate against anyone, but nobody can discriminate against them. Sure a kid is going to go against his coach! You pretending that it’s not coercive doesn’t make it so.

        2. Fluff*

          I disagree. He harmed Christianity’s reputation as a whole. He harmed other religions by using his particular religious group to show boat. And allow his religious actions to interrupt his job and others doing their jobs.

          He made a point to be public, obvious, and he used the USA Supremes to approve his religious showing off. Instead of dancing with a football he did a religious demonstration. Same thing except that a football jig might actually belong in a football game.

          1. He prayed midfield at the 50 yard line. Not on the bleachers, not on the bench. On the performance field.
          2. He declined to pray in a private location and other private areas when offered accommodations.
          3. No change in his behavior once this became public. Instead, he technically made it harder for others to do their jobs (marching bad, coaches).

          “The board negotiated with Kennedy to reduce the public display of the prayer, offering to provide Kennedy with a private location for his prayer or suggesting that he held his prayer after the spectators had left, among other accommodations. Through the athletic director, Kennedy was warned that any such display should be clearly student-led. Kennedy wrote to his Facebook page that he felt he was likely being fired, and a few games later, he continued to pray after the game with additional coverage by the press and local politicians. Spectators knocked over members of the marching band while racing to join the prayer and directed profanity at Bremerton’s head coach, who said he feared being “shot from the crowd.”[2] – wikipedia

        3. Texan In Exile*

          Yes, I want to prohibit speech when it is

          1. From a government employee
          2. On government property
          3. At a government-sponsored event
          4. Used in a situation where there is a power imbalance

          Do you really think that high school boys who want to get playing time would feel no pressure whatsoever to join their coach’s “voluntary” prayer?

          I feel like this SCOTUS is all about trying to do worse than Dred Scott.

          (Not surprisingly, two of the three SCOTUS dissenters were not Christian.)

        4. Cohort1*

          <i?Remember, if private prayers are suppressed, so too can speech that you might happen to like.
          Prayers aren’t private when when all present at a business meeting meal need to wait in silence while grace is “shared” by the boss. It’s not private when practiced on the 50 yd line of the HS playing field and the prayer leader is in charge of who gets to play and who doesn’t. It isn’t private when it’s the first point on the agenda at a school board, city council, or water district meeting and the point of the prayer is to invoke the chosen deity to guide all present in His way.

          1. Cohort1*

            Good grief. Where’s the edit option when you need it? Take 2:

            Remember, if private prayers are suppressed, so too can speech that you might happen to like.

  6. Unkempt Flatware*

    I’ve had luck with group prayer by deliberately doing the opposite with my body. Bowed heads in a circle? I step out as far as I can and keep my hands behind my back. Eyes open but not looking at anyone. Holding hands? Put both hands up with a polite smile while backing away. Or here’s from a recent town council meeting I attended in a conservative area: the mayor tells everyone to rise and bow their heads in prayer for the invocation (?!?!?!), sit and do not bow your head or close your eyes. Wait patiently with eyes open and smile politely but not in a way that welcomes discussion on it.

    1. Unkempt Flatware*

      Note: I welcome invocations of all variety but it was the mayor telling us all to rise like it was church that irked me.

      1. Local Elected Official/Pastor*

        I’ll speak to the prayer as a local elected official in my city council and also a pastor. My advice for LW would be to object, either through passive non-participation or active complaint to your elected body. This is inappropriate completely for a government workplace.

        My first exposure to our city council was as an invited guest to pray before the meeting. I had friends in town who were atheist and other religions and they asked me why that was appropriate. We as a group successfully petitioned the council to allow different kinds of invocations, including a pagan invocation and a Muslim imam leading a prayer. Later, when I was elected to the council, it had been decided to eliminate invocations all together due to a newly elected mayor who thought that they were inappropriate. In the time since then, I’ve come to see that the best way for me to express my faith and my patriotism is to allow folks to come to meetings without having a prayer of any kind.

        Our job as your elected officials is also to look out for our citizens and city staff, both current and future. One of the best things about our government employees is their diversity of experience and thought. It would be important for me to know that a manager in our city was imposing religion.

    2. West Coast, Best Coast*

      in prayer for the invocation (?!?!?!)

      Hoo boy, are you going to have a cow when you realize that the US Congress in Washington, DC, has a chaplain and does a daily opening prayer. This practice goes back to 1789 (and earlier if you count the Continental Congress).

      I realize this argument is a stunner, but hear me out: just maybe consistent practice since the time of the framers, who WROTE the first amendment, means that they viewed an opening prayer as consistent with the no-establishment clause? It has nothing to do with “conservative areas.”

      1. Noodles*

        I personally don’t care what a bunch of men from hundreds of years ago felt about prayer. I’m still not comfortable with it as a public activity, and when this sort of thing is done in public I’ll continue to not participate. If they were generally more of a general non-religious gratitude thing, sure. But bringing God, usually Christian god, into it, isn’t for me.

      2. Seashell*

        According to the framers, I shouldn’t be allowed to vote because I’m not a man. Plenty of them also owned actual human beings.

        Perhaps you would like to go back to those times, but I do not. I’m in favor of progress, and I hope that leads to less religion being forced on people. Pray silently all you want at work.

      3. MsM*

        And you realize the comment you’re replying to didn’t object to the practice itself, just being compelled to take part in it, right?

      6. I Have RBF*

        LOL.

        The framers were mostly Deist, not Christian.

        The (questionable) “fact” that it has been done since the founding means nothing more than the fact that Christianity has a stranglehold on our culture.

        Anyone who argues that there is no freedom from religion implicit in the freedom of religion is not arguing in good faith anyway. Why? Because freedom of religion includes, implicitly, the freedom to practice a religion different from others, or no religion at all. Therefore the person is free from a religion that is not their own.

        Unless the workplace is specifically a religious establishment, religion does not belong in the workplace, especially at a taxpayer funded government job!

        It doesn’t matter that it’s “the south” – just because the dominant culture is coercive Christianity doesn’t make it legal or right.

    3. nnn*

      Building on this, sometimes, in some cases, if you’re asked for an explanation about your physically removing yourself from the prayer, “I don’t want to disrespect your religion with false piety” can be a useful script.

      1. Despachito*

        This is nicely put.

        And it was exactly what I felt when I (an atheist) went with my Christian friends to churches and to their activities (out of curiosity, they invited me but never forced me, and I wanted to know how and why they do some things.)

        This is different from OP’s case because I was by no means captive audience but while I felt comfortable doing some things (getting up when everyone got up) I did not feel comfortable kneeling or saying anything about God, so I sat when they knelt and I felt it was out of respect for their religion that I did not mimic something I did not believe in.

        They were perfectly fine with it, and people in OP’s work should be even more so because she, unlike I, IS a captive audience.

    4. duinath*

      My immediate instinct would be to loudly invoke my own religion at the end of the prayer or grace or whatever, but this is a lot better. Less inflammatory, less revealing, atheist inclusive.

    5. MrsPitts*

      +1

      If asked about it, I respond cheerfully “I don’t pray before a meal, but I respect your right to.”

    6. Bitte Meddler*

      My local Chamber of Commerce was trying to grow its membership and sent me an invitation to a free lunch at a country club. I was the co-owner of a small business and could benefit from expanding my network, so I went.

      Afterward, a group of people from the Membership Committee asked if I’d like to start my membership right then and there. I said, “No, I don’t attend church.” They looked confused, so I clarified, “The prayer to open the meeting? With a preacher leading it? And saying grace before the food was served, thanking God? And the prayer to *close* the meeting? Church. I do not attend church.”

      During all of that… nonsense… I did the opposite of whatever everyone else was doing, like Unkempt Flatware. Bowed head? Nope. Closed eyes? Nope. Reciting The Lord’s Prayer? Oh *hell* no.

      I sincerely wish I knew why, if Christians think their God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, so many of them are afraid of what would happen if they didn’t invoke his name / presence in every public thing they do. Would he disappear?

  7. Christine*

    If my workplace inserted religion into any part of my work, I’d be on the phone to the Freedom From Religion Foundation (https://ffrf.org/) so fast their heads would be spinning.
    Individuals can pray individually. The moment it intrudes on a work event, it’s crossed the line.

    1. Kimchi*

      Yeah, I try to keep my religion out of work unless directly asked about it (or it comes naturally in a conversation).
      I’d feel pretty uncomfortable if my manager decided we all had to say a prayer before work. It feels so… public.

  8. Gilgongo*

    My old company (in Texas) did a saying grace thing once (complete with praising Jesus), and I was intensely uncomfortable. I left that company (for that and a few other reasons) soon after.

    I’m also currently evaluating a tool that will potentially take away people’s jobs. I dont feel too bad about it as a) I’ve been asking for help with the task that AI will now help me with and have not received it, b) You can’t stop progress. Some people will lose their jobs, but you’re much less likely to if you embrace AI instead of fight against it

    1. Jeanine*

      I feel AI is good in medical settings, since it truly is assistive there and works WITH people. But AI in other areas like acting/writing/art is a form of cheating and theft. Period.

      1. Elizabeth West*

        ^^This. It scrapes other people’s work and generates a mishmash of it, with no credit and very little creativity.

      2. a trans person*

        NO NO NO NONONONONONO
        As a trans data scientist I am ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED by generative AI as part of my medical care

        1. Ezra*

          What, the idea of an algorithm determining that your hormones are wrong or your pronouns have to be X/Y rather than A/B doesn’t sound perfect to you? /s

          Seriously, you’re 100% right. Humans are bad enough at trans healthcare as-is, we don’t need computers compounding the problem.

        2. Observer*

          If you really are a data scientist, you should know that the “generative ai” models based on llm’s and the like are *far* from the only AI at play.

          And in fact, some of the most interesting AI work has nothing to do with this cruft, but is heavily involved in scientific stuff. The work done in the medical imaging space is incredible and is already showing potential for literally saving lives by improving diagnosis.

          Similar stuff is happening in pharmacology and boichemistry.

          1. judyjudyjudy*

            In my field it’s being used to design new proteins. I think there are very exciting potential applications!

          2. a trans person*

            I do but my doctors don’t and the executives actively want to use the wrong technologies. Microsoft announced a collaboration with OpenAI LLM tech and MyChart, which my health provider denied was happening despite my sending links and requesting help opting out. Please respect my expertise with respect to my FUCKING DOCTORATE and my OWN LIFE EXPERIENCE OF BEING TRANS.

    1. Artemesia*

      I think we can assume that the OP of that letter will NOT get vacation pay out unless it is legally mandated in their state. A company that doesn’t give a raise in 11 years is not paying out vacation.

      1. Troutwaxer*

        I think the issue is ‘you haven’t gotten a raise in eleven years, get out.’ The question of vacation pay is a side issue, and it’s loss can be regarded as an investment in a job which actually pays current market rates (which will probably be considerably higher than the OP’s current salary.)

        1. MassMatt*

          LW should use up all their vacation pay, or as much as possible) before giving notice, this will minimize the financial loss.

          IMO if there’s sick leave I’d do the same, ordinarily I would not, but no raise after 11 years, especially in the inflationary environment we’ve just been through? Screw ‘em.

          1. Jackalope*

            This is my recommendation, actually. I know it might be tricky, but if the OP can schedule a long vacation, or a handful of shorter vacations, that way they don’t have to worry about losing it.

          2. Slow Gin Lizz*

            I was going to say that the OP should just take a bunch of vacation time now. And I don’t generally agree to abusing sick time, but hey, OP definitely could use some mental health days, don’t you think?

            Of course, if OP needs the money more than they need the time off, this doesn’t solve the problem, but if they’re going to lose it anyway, why not take the time off now?

            And I think AAM’s suggestion to ask former employees is brilliant, especially if some of them are disgruntled and you know word won’t get back to your employer. Of course, be careful who you ask in case they still *are* in touch with your employer, though.

    2. Texan In Exile*

      For the record, Wisconsin does not. I learned to ask in job interviews what happens to unused vacation after I almost lost all of mine.

  10. Junior Dev (now midlevel)*

    To LW 2 (automating jobs) I want to offer a perspective as someone who works in tech and has thought about this sort of thing a lot.

    Years ago I heard a story at church that has stuck with me. The wife of a retired pastor was talking about her relationship with money. She said her husband would always tell churches he would work for the lowest possible salary as a form of altruism. But “he wasn’t the one who had to buy groceries for our three kids.”

    You’re not in a situation where your selfish wants are at odds with your values. You’re in a situation with two competing sets of values—your obligation to colleagues, strangers, and society in general; vs your obligation to yourself and your family.

    I don’t say this with the implication that any one choice is the correct one. Rather, you aren’t being selfish or immoral by putting the need of people close to you first; nobody else is going to prioritize your kids in the way you can. (I suppose my perspective on this is also shaped by growing up with my mom being a doctor and always feeling her career came first; there’s a trend in my extended family of people doing very important, noble work while also not prioritizing time with their family the way they could have otherwise.) It is a moral good for your family to be financially stable, for you to have a career you enjoy, and for your kids to get more time with you.

    I think progressive-leaning people tend to talk about morality and good behavior as though it’s primarily about these abstract obligations to the world as a whole, in a way that can make it feel hard to prioritize your own happiness and stability. I deeply sympathize with the reasons people tend to do this, and I also think it’s counterproductive when trying to figure out what’s right for you as an individual person.

    1. Emmy Noether*

      I think you are getting at an important and nuanced ethical question that underlies a lot of how we choose to live our lives, consciously or not.

      As a progressive who lives a life in comfort and freedom, I do sometimes feel quite a bit of guilt at not giving more of myself for the general good. It’s a balance to strike, and it’s a difficult one.

      1. MsM*

        And there’s a huge debate in philanthropy itself about whether it’s okay to overlook where the money originally comes from and how it was obtained or continues to be accumulated if it’s being used in a good cause. There are no perfect answers, especially when you can’t just shut everything down while you try and hash it out.

    2. Irish Teacher.*

      I read somewhere that Jim Larkin, the Irish trade union leader of the early 20th century, eventually had his salary paid to his wife for much the same reason as what that pastor’s wife was talking about. He felt so strongly about the inequality in Irish society at the time and was so concerned for the plight of the poor that he would give it all away and he came to realise that that was harming his own children and therefore had it paid to his wife so that he couldn’t continue it.

      I don’t know if it’s true or not but if it is then even the leaders of progressive causes had times when they had to prioritise themselves and their own families.

    3. LW #2*

      Thank you so much for this comment. it’s something that comes up often for me. It can be hard to remember that my kids are also people I serve.

    4. Alpacas Are Not Dairy Animals*

      And it’s important to note that it’s not selfish or immoral to lean the other way either; I personally feel that overtly prioritizing one’s family and friends over strangers tends to lead to short-sightedness, nepotism, and a caste-based society, which is one of the reasons I’ve chosen not to have kids at all.

    5. Elephant*

      I so appreciate this comment. I am a teacher and a mom of three, and I constantly struggle with the morality of whose needs come first. Some needs are greater than others at varying times. A struggling student at risk of failing needs my help, and my own kids need their mom to show up for them after school. The only answer I have ever come to is that there is no clear answer, it might be different on different days and in different situations. It’s okay to put the needs of your family first. It’s okay to value your close relationships more than the obligation we have to strangers. And it’s okay to say “actually, this is too far of a bridge for me to cross, even if it costs my family.”

  11. TheBunny*

    AI is coming. Heck it’s already here in a lot of ways.

    I understand the concern about it taking people’s jobs, but cars took jobs from people who worked on trains that took jobs from people in the horse drawn carriage industry.

    Netflix destroyed movie rental stores. Each move to something different leaves a piece of what was behind it.

    We aren’t going to stop it. What we can do is our best to make sure it’s done ethically and responsibly.

    1. Kimchi*

      Yep. We used to have cassettes, and then we had DVDs, and then we had MP3s, and now we have Spotify. Although there aren’t very many jobs for cassette makers now, we have lots of jobs in the music industry. Progress does eliminate some jobs, but good progress opens more job opportunities.

    2. Seal*

      AI research started in the 1950s; ongoing advances in technology and software have allowed AI to evolve and become increasingly sophisticated. These days, AI is more or less ubiquitous and is incorporated into far more things than people realize.

      I’ve been a librarian for many years, long enough to have witnessed the transition from card catalogs to online catalogs. Many of the things I did very early in my career have long since been automated. While this certainly had an impact on job descriptions, it allowed always underfunded and understaffed libraries to work more efficiently. While AI isn’t the answer to everything, it’s definitely here to stay.

    3. Emotional support capybara (he/him)*

      Cool. Start by crediting and compensating the 16000+ artists whose copyrighted works are being remixed by the automated plagiarism machine without their permission.

      And hey, maybe the prompt jockeys wouldn’t be so quick to brag about what they “created” by typing words into a box if they themselves had to pay the real creators for the use of their property.

      1. Kimchi*

        And it is also frustrating to see AI picture books that look HORRIBLE. It’s so unfair that people with money are publishing sucky AI books when true artists can’t!

        I don’t agree with the policies of those who create/regulate AI, but it’s become so entrenched, I don’t know if we can avoid it.

      2. Alpacas Are Not Dairy Animals*

        AI is here, doing a terrible job unethically. But doing a terrible job unethically has been the way to prosperity for hundreds of years so unfortunately I don’t see that changing now.

    4. Filosofickle*

      In economics, this is called creative destruction — older systems/jobs/technologies are made obsolete by new innovations. It’s considered a feature and driving force of capitalism, for better or worse.

  12. Dido*

    Is it unethical to automate people’s jobs away? Of course not. Should we still build manual elevators to employ elevator operators and build houses without central heating dishwashers or washing machine hookups so we can employ domestic servants to stoke the fires and hand wash everything? It’s absurd to think preserving these few obsolete jobs is better than automating things and making life easier for humanity as a whole.

    The idea that we must protect every job at all costs is dangerous and is also frustratingly used to push back against transitioning to renewable energy. Can’t stop using because miners in West Virgina will lose their jobs, etc… the world is vastly different than it was a hundred years ago and a hundreds years before that and it will be vastly different in another hundred years and so on. We must adapt society to the world as we progress and make life EASIER rather than invest effort into futiley trying to stop the progress altogether.

    1. Alpacas Are Not Dairy Animals*

      Hardly anyone objects to AI because it will make some jobs obsolete. We object to AI, on the whole, because it’s being used as a pretext to fire people who *still do a better job than AI* and make those of us who need what they created settle for inaccurate and unfit-for-purpose slop instead.

      1. Parakeet*

        That, plus we object because US society (I don’t want to speak for ones I don’t live in, but I suspect the US is not unique here) is unlikely to ensure that the people displaced from their way of making a living are going to get a just transition to other ways of having a good standard of living and dignified life. There’s no jobs guarantee here, and not everyone can do every job available. This one is somewhat personal to me because my spouse has been out of work for two years, and while GenAI is not why he originally lost his job (that was a business financial problem), it’s why his whole field has essentially collapsed. And his disabilities mean that he can’t do the kinds of jobs that people tend to do as survival jobs. Even if the GenAI were doing as good a job – which it isn’t, as you said – it wouldn’t help those workers.

        Obviously, this is a political/social problem, rather than a tech problem. LW #2, I don’t think you need to quit your job or anything. But if you are so moved, you might consider getting involved in the political/organizing aspect.

      2. Observer*

        We object to AI, on the whole, because it’s being used as a pretext to fire people who *still do a better job than AI* and make those of us who need what they created settle for inaccurate and unfit-for-purpose slop instead.

        Well, then maybe you should find out what AI *really* is, and what it *really* does. The idea that ChatGPT and all of the other LLM based models is the whole of AI is simply nonsense.

        And even the the LLM based stuff does a lot of things really, really well. They are not the things that make waves and news cycles.

        I have no idea what project the LW is working on. But it is *absolutely* possible for this work to be ethical. Note that their objection is not to the way the data has been accumulated etc. but simply that it is automating away people’s jobs.

        This is *explicitly* what the LW says – they are confident that AI can do this work *well* and replace a lot of human work.

  13. BW*

    I once worked for a small company that screwed someone out of their vacation pay when they quit. So everyone after that debacle would take a vacation and THEN quit.

    1. Artemesia*

      This is exactly what the OP should do — vacation then give notice. No way they are paying them.

      1. Emmy Noether*

        I agree. This sounds like the kind of place that wouldn’t pay a cent it doesn’t absolutely have to.

        1. MassMatt*

          I actually think Alison’s advice has a good chance of getting LW fired on the spot with zero vacation pay or notice period.

          Use the vacation pay, THEN give 2 weeks notice. The most they can lose then is 2 weeks of pay.

    2. Quinalla*

      Agreed, if you are in a position to do so, take your vacation ASAP and then quit right after. If you can’t do that, you can try Alison’s advice. I think it is highly likely that places that don’t give an employee any raise over 11 years are also likely to not pay out vacation if not required by the state.

  14. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

    OP2 (automation) progress and change is inevitable – it isn’t unethical in itself to automate work away in my opinion, but the way this is handled at individual company level can be (and society level, but it’s much harder to change that from the ground up rather than by government intervention…).

    The people whose job is being made obsolete by this AI tool – do they know the project is happening? Is it being kept on the down low? Despite the project manager saying we’d rather have AI do the dishes rather than generate art – presumably the company sees some end goal in automating this and that’s why they have hired OP to do the data science part. Someone didn’t just wake up and think “let’s see what this AI is about”. So I think, potentially, the project manager has been fed the “dishes, not art” line by whoever initiated the project in the first place – make of that what you will.

    1. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

      I forgot to add – other ways of handling it more ethically (as well as clear communication) are things like support for re-training, maybe additional severance recognising that it will now be harder to get a comparable job, etc. I am torn on how much of this is individual companies’ responsibility rather than “society’s” (government level) though – curious to hear others’ opinions on that.

  15. Keymaster of Gozer (She/Her)*

    Automation in theory leads to less work. In practice it leads to more work.

    Quite aside from the fact that a machine has not got a mind and can’t feel if something has gone wrong it also requires people to maintain it. Additionally history has shown that the ‘automate something and people have more free time to do whatever they want’ model has never worked.

    There’s always more work to be done. And computers are not intelligent. So I wouldn’t worry.

    1. Quinalla*

      Yes, the more things are automated, the more work is expected to be done. Just looking at my own industry – MEP design for construction – the drawings 50 years ago are much simpler with a lot less detail and information. Sure, we have CAD & Revit & all sorts of other software to automate so much and allow for much more detailed 2D drawings and 3D models, so the expectation of normal has shifted to expect much more detail, etc. It’s not really good or bad, but it didn’t give folks more time, it just moved where they were spending their time. It didn’t eliminate jobs really, but definitely shifted what folks were expected to do in those jobs.

      Or look at housework. Before we all had vacuums and clothes washers/dryers and dishwashers and ovens and so on, the expectation of how clean a house or clothes “should” be was very different. The baseline has changed. Again, not really good or bad, but it doesn’t really save people time on general household chores, just changed expectations and where they spend that time.

      Sometimes this does result in allowing more time for more thinking/vision work, but not always.

    2. Strive to Excel*

      I work in accounting. When I started at my public accounting firm, there were a couple of old-timey partners who still remembered the pre-Excel days. There wasn’t any less demand for accountants when I started than when they started! We were just able to audit significantly more, and much more accurately, than we could 50 years ago. The standards had just increased over time to compensate.

      There are some industries that should be worried, and there’s *absolutely* regulations that need to be put into place regarding learning models, fair use, and private data. But it’s not likely to be the end of all humanity.

      And hey, we could have a solar flare come through and wipe out all computing worldwide! Higher-complexity also means that it’s easier to flatten a system. See: Covid, Cloudstrike, disruptions thereof.

  16. j*

    I went to a work picnic at my husband’s federal government job, and one of his coworkers led a long prayer before we ate, crying tears of joy that people are still allowed to pray in public. He had been drinking. My husband said no one was allowed to bring alcohol to events after that. Even though this is the south, that’s too much for a work prayer!

    1. Pennyworth*

      I would so love to hear that someone stopped him by saying that invoking the lord’s name while drunk was blasphemy.

  17. Limdood*

    LW3

    I’d think real hard about bringing up the question to anyone AT your work. If it gets back to management, you can never be sure that they won’t just say “no, we don’t pay out vacation, and you can clean out your desk now,” or cut your position in response to you trying to take vacation time after giving notice.

    You’ve effectively gotten taken advantage of for 11 years (or 10 years, or however you want to look at it). This isn’t a business that strives to take care of its employees, as evidenced by their actions. Unless you can get a definitive answer on whether or not vacation is paid out WITHOUT it getting back to anyone above you (and that includes asking current or former coworkers who you think might let it slip), then just take your vacation time, THEN give notice.

    1. BellaStella*

      This is spot on. Can you take two days a week off OP until you are out of PTO? Or a week off then every other Friday maybe?

      Use it so you do not lose it.

    2. Lily Potter*

      Came to say this. Unless you’re willing to risk losing your job before you want to leave, do not ask ANYONE about vacation payout. A company that doesn’t give raises in 11 years isn’t going to give you cash when you leave. Your choices are to take the PTO in time off before you leave the company, or kiss it goodbye.

  18. Ferret*

    This is probably pointless and will be too far down the page (and might just get filtered as well) but please everyone, bear in mind the steady stream of trolls and inflammatory comments (one person? a group? who knows?) that the site has gotten in recent weeks and Alison’s request not to engage with them

    1. Unkempt Flatware*

      I thought for sure the comment by West Coast, Best Coast was going to be taken down any second for being a troll but it is still up. I am very guilty of feeding the trolls here but I also think it is hard to tell what would be considered trolling.

      2. Bitte Meddler*

        I posted a comment on that thread that was designed to go to moderation. Hopefully she’ll see it soon.

        And I wonder if she can just block that person’s IP address. Because I’m pretty sure it’s one person, based on writing style.

        1. Unkempt Flatware*

          If I understand correctly, I believe she needs us to create a whole new thread and place a link to the offending comment so it goes to moderation. I don’t know if it is the same if we make the comment within the offending thread, FWIW.

    2. TM*

      Dammit, guilty as charged – will avoid future bait where you know that someone is asserting a position that they will obviously never accept challenges to or even more nuanced ideas.

  19. Alz*

    With the AI question- Like Alison says, ethics are pretty personal but, for my two cents, I like automation. I am really glad I don’t have a someone outside my office whose job is typing up my correspondence and that I can just email people directly. And I am doubly glad that that wasn’t a job that was recommended to me leaving school. Yeah, I am sure it sucked if that was those women who had made 20 year career out of it but, as long as we also re-train and help people who are getting pushed out I don’t think it is a fundamental ethical problem to be involved. There is a responsibility on everyone to be politically active and aware of the loss of jobs but I don’t think tech can (or should) be stopped at this point.

    I get an ick with AI stealing data from artists and contemporary writers so I also want people with ethics to be involved. If everyone with ethics steps aside I still think the tec will be created, it will just be done in a more evil way. I want someone to try and train their model on information is freely available (out of copyright or specifically created to be shared)

    1. JustaTech*

      Yes, I think an important part of the conversation is “what kind of AI, what is it used for?”

      I have automated parts of my data analysis because 1) doing it by hand took forever and 2) doing by hand was less consistent. But it all still has to be reviewed by a human, so no one lost their jobs, and as soon as it was automated, oh look, we can do so many more samples! So work wasn’t even actually reduced (sigh).

      That’s completely different from stealing art because you’re cheap.

      The original Luddites were lace weavers who were being put out of a job (to likely starve to death) by one of the earliest programmable looms. They weren’t angry about the technology, they were angry about going from skilled labor to nothing. As long as people are re-trained to a job of at least the same caliber, then in my mind it is ethical.

      1. Strive to Excel*

        The reality is that there’s likely to be a generation or two whose lives are severely disrupted, which is what we’re living through now. Retraining 20 years of experience isn’t something that can be done easily with any group of people.

        We look at the Industrial Revolution with the remove of multiple generations. Did it improve the world-wide standard of life? Sure, but we can say that from a century later. Possibly in another century the AI revolution will be hailed as the greatest creation of humanity (or the greatest disaster, who knows!) but the growing pains are going to be rough for sure.

  20. A person*

    “A lot of people don’t realize grace isn’t some sort of non-denominational religious practice and think of it as almost secular in nature.”

    IIf it’s the case, it’s very much a US thing, not a Christian country thing. This practice might be so anchored in some US regions that it seems normal and almost secural, but let me stress that it is absolutely not in other parts of the world. Where I’m from – a historically Christian country with its own far-right and religious extremism problems -, it would be perceived as very very traditional if done in a private setting, and completely bonkers in a professional setting. It would absolutely never be perceived as “secular”.

    1. londonedit*

      Yep. The idea that anyone could think saying a prayer – which is what saying grace is – could in any way be ‘secular’ is bizarre to me. Where I live it would be completely bonkers in a professional setting. We were supposed to say grace before lunch at primary school (most primary schools are nominally C of E here) but if you didn’t want to say it, you didn’t have to, and anyway it was less of a serious prayer and more a load of kids going ‘Forwhatweareabouttoreceivemaythelordmakeustrulythankfulaaaaaahmen’ as quickly as possible before tucking in. And that sort of thing stops when you leave primary school. It would be almost unthinkable for anyone to suggest a prayer in a work setting here, unless you literally work for a church or some other sort of very traditional Christian organisation.

      1. Emmy Noether*

        Yes! I had religion lessons and church services in school (Germany – it’s optional, but it exists) and everyone was very clear that it’s not secular. It would also be bonkers at work, unless the workplace is a religious institution of some sort.

        Maybe openly having a state religion makes the whole thing clearer, rather than pretending there isn’t one and then sneaking religious practices in through the back door as “tradition”.

        I can sort of see how one could perceive for example Christmas as secular if one squints REAL hard. Reduced to just the tree, the presents, and the food, one could think the religious aspects had been stripped from it, plus some (culturally Christian) atheists and the like do celebrate it (to be clear, I do not myself think Christmas is secular).

        But grace? GRACE?! It’s literally thanking God! God is often mentioned! It’s adressed to him! It’s a type of prayer! How could this be secular?

        1. Irish Teacher.*

          Yeah, I grew up in 1980s and 1990s Ireland where something like 80% of the population attended Mass on a weekly basis, so as you can imagine, in that society, a lot of Catholic practices came to be seen as default and people didn’t always recognise how religious things were, but even in that world, grace was still most emphatically seen as religious.

          We did have grace before and after lunch in primary school, but we also had morning prayers and the Angelus and evening prayers before going home and yeah, I think the Angelus would have been seen as more secular than grace.

          Our grace was “Bless us, O Lord, as we sit together. Bless the food we eat today. Bless the hands that made this food. Bless us, O Lord. Amen.” So it would have been some stretch to consider it secular.

        2. amoeba*

          Yeah, literally the only place I’ve ever encountered saying grace was my catholic grandparents. Small village, church every week, they were also already in their 70s or so back in the 90s when that happened.

          I even went to a protestant kindergarten, like, literally run by the church, and God was mentioned *very* rarely. We had an actual secular ritual with a funny little poem before meals, where neither God nor Jesus nor anything of the sort was mentioned. (As I already wrote somewhere else – “Jeder esse, was er kann, nur nicht seinen Nebenmann”, haha)

          2. JustaTech*

            My Catholic grandmother’s dinner grace was everyone holding hands and sitting silently with heads bowed for like maybe a minute. She said it was her only minute of quiet in the day (9 kids will do that).

            The only non-church group setting where I ever was expected to say grace before every meal was summer camp in Texas in the 90’s. To me, raised Episcopalian, it was very odd because it was a bunch of silly song-prayers, but you still had to be Super Serious. (I thought you should either be silly or serious, but not both at the same time.) We also had “Sunday Service” that involved singing that Lee Greenwood song and probably some prayers and a sermon, and the only people who didn’t have to do that were the Catholic girls who had Mass down at the river.

          3. Fluff*

            That is the best. I forgot these.

            Translation: “Everyone, eat what you can, but not your neighbor.”

            Now we need find a rhyme for our English speaking diners.
            Eat the food, not the brood.

      2. call me wheels*

        That’s exactly how we said grace at my first primary school haha. My second primary school was an actual CofE school but even then I don’t remember saying grace there. In 6th form my school got a new headteacher who tried to make us all say a prayer in assembly together and everyone thought it was Extremely weird, and he didn’t try again. I’d be so baffled if someone suggested grace together at a job

      3. SarahKay*

        Ha ha, that grace sounds very like the one we said at my C of E primary school 40-odd years ago (we added a ‘forJesusChrist’ssake’ just before the amen). We also had assembly every day, including the lord’s prayer and the more cheerful childhood hymns. to me, at that time, it was totally normal, but none of it was secular.
        And it absolutely all stopped once we went to secondary school

      4. N C Kiddle*

        “For WHAT weareabouttoreceive” ahhh that brings back so many memories. In the Infants, we also had a prayer before putting up our chairs at the end of the day. “Lord, keep us safe this night, secure from all our fears, may angels guard us while we sleep till morning light appears, ahhhhhmen.” These things wear a groove in the brain!

    2. NoMoreFirstTimeCommenter*

      This. In Finnish it’s literally called food prayer so it’s completely obvious that this is a religious thing. It’s a thing that some practicing Christians do, but many don’t. It’s a thing that used to be common in schools but isn’t anymore – sometimes it’s replaced by saying a nursery rhyme like thing about food and good table manners because it’s supposed to help the kids calm down for eating.

    3. Bitte Meddler*

      I’m in the US South and once asked the manager of my bank’s local branch to have the tellers say, “Have a great day!” instead of “Have a blessed day!” because I didn’t think he was doing the bank any favors by mixing religion with business.

      He argued that “Have a blessed day” meant the same thing as “Have a great day” and wasn’t religious in the slightest.

      I asked him who was doing the blessing in “Have a blessed day”. Surely the tellers weren’t bestowing their personal blessings on each customer? No. It’s a phrase invoking a deity and that deity’s blessing.

      It’s bonkers that some people have convinced themselves that these things are secular.

  21. Palmer*

    LW3: I’m going to be honest with you here. If they haven’t given you a raise since you were on the ground floor of the company, I wouldn’t put it past them to claw back any PTO they can nab on your way out. If you don’t know anyone who left enough to ask them, I’d spend all my PTO and then give notice.

    Not giving raises after ELEVEN YEARS in a profitable situation means that they know they can rake you over the coals and that you’ll accept it because really, you should’ve left long ago in my opinion. Don’t risk a few weeks of pay trying to be nice to the folks who have happily given you no raises.

    Now maybe they didn’t give raises because you didn’t ask for them or negotiate, but after 11 years a good company would be giving you cost of living adjustments.

    1. bamcheeks*

      But also, dont get so caught up in your sunk cost fallacy you spend six months longer working for at 2013 rates in order to take four weeks holiday, instead of going straight out and getting a job that pays you 2024 rates and lets you start accruing holiday at 2o24 rates.

      I mean, if you can go and take the four-week holiday of a lifetime and give notice immediately, it’s probably worth it! But if you stay an extra year in order to chip away at your holiday balance just because, you’re almost certainly better off just writing that holiday off and heading off into the sunset to a new and better paid job.

      1. BellaStella*

        This is also a good point to note thanks bamcheeks. OP should do the math and see what is best in terms of salary etc vs loss of pto

        1. bamcheeks*

          Do the maths-maths, but also do the emotional maths. If OP is already malcontent, then even if there is a small financial benefit to staying and using all their annual leave, it can have a high cost in terms of getting more and more angry and fed up — which can also impact your ability to get the next job. Trying to squeeze the last penny out of a miserly employer can cost more than it’s worth.

    2. Kevin Sours*

      One bit of advice I’d give is to check with the company they’re going to to see how flexible they can be with the start date. If they are okay with “immediate on short notice” then you can go into the resignation meeting with: “If you aren’t paying out my vacation then I’m going to need to take it now. Oh you won’t allow that? I guess I’ll just skip the notice. Tootles”.

      Might not work but it gives OP *some* leverage.

  22. Joseph*

    #1 – I have worked at a place that used to manage big meetings and cross-sector conferences and they had a non-religious thank you for the food “Grace” that the said before each meal. It was a cute little rhyme too.

      1. Rincewind*

        Cute but still not secular. :)

        People really do forget that not everyone thanks God or thinks God is good.

      1. Fiorinda*

        Two four six eight, bog in don’t wait?

        (I learned that one from my dad, who unlike me was raised religious.)

    3. The OG Sleepless*

      One of my parents’ friends, if asked to say grace, would give the tiniest little head bow, not even close his eyes, and say, “thank you for dinner.” It was quite funny, nobody could really argue with it, and it could have been directed toward God, Zeus, whoever had cooked the food, or the universe.

  23. ElliottRook*

    LW #2–Your boss is not naïve to say that AI should be doing the dishes! AI will never “make art,” generative AI is just a fancy term for plagiarism software. If the goal is for the AI to generate text, summarize text, generate images, or generate voices, yes, unethical all the way down the line. There’s no ambiguity or wiggle room whatsoever.

    If an AI was truly so advanced as to be capable of true creation without plagiarism, we would all need to fear it, because it would be advanced enough to solve climate change by killing humanity.

    1. Hyaline*

      Alternately, given its obscene energy and water use, it might kill itself if it had been programmed with those ethics instead of self-preservation!

    2. LW #2*

      Definitely not saying that it’s naive to think AI should be doing dishes, but I did (and do) think it’s naive to expect that my employer still be employing the same people with similar hours as they’re currently doing. Basically Alison’s second paragraph.

      1. JustaTech*

        One question to consider is how much review/QA will the AI-completed data entry/analysis require? Since that likely will still need to be done by a human.

        Also, will automating this part of the job significantly increase the volume, and therefore also increase the amount of review/QA?

        My experience with in-process automation of things like data analysis (or the general improvement of assay methods) is that the people generating the data just generate more data, so the total analysis takes the same amount of time even with automation.
        Only you know how likely this is, but it is something to consider.

  24. AImustDominate*

    Job interview with Military contractor coming out of engineering grad school:

    “If you are successful in this position, your product design will kill people. Are you ok with this?”

    Me: Yes, if I accept the position, then I’ve come to terms with that. Does anyone actually say no when you ask that?

    Interviewer: You’d be surprised how many interviews end at the end of that question.

    1. HSE Compliance*

      I think there’s a lot of people who don’t actually stop and think about what their work products actually do out in the real world. It’s also how you have on the other side of the table people being totally okay with cutting a safety corner, because it doesn’t click that Real People will use this item. I think it’s very easy to work in a more or less mental vacuum where once the Work is off of your desk, it no longer truly exists.

      (From a recent argument with an engineer regarding a safety feature not working correctly.)

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        And I also think with war in particular, a lot of people kind of see it as “it’s the other army that kills people. Ours is there to keep us safe.” Not that they necessarily think that in so many words, but well, I guess most of us don’t dwell on the fact that people we see as heroes may have killed other people.

        I actually remember our religion teacher giving us a “moral dilemma” think about should a woman report her husband when she found out he was selling military secrets to the other side, knowing that if she does tell, her husband will be arrested but if she doesn’t, the information he gives could get people killed. And she was utterly confused, genuinely confused, when I, being myself, pointed out that the other side knowing the secrets might also save lives as it would allow them to protect their people against the military he was working for.

        She wasn’t even talking about a war Ireland was involved in (not that there are many that we were) and it was a war where quite frankly, I didn’t consider either side to be without fault, which is why I raised the point I did, but I got the distinct impression it hadn’t even occurred to her that military weapons or whatever that could be used by the other side to kill were actually intended to kill. I think part of it comes from all the hero films where “this could do great harm if it got into the wrong hands!!” As if the scientist’s awesome invention that could blow up the world/create a major pandemic/blast people into outer space is only of risk if “bad guys” get it.

    2. Texan In Exile*

      I had that question in an interview at Tracor in Austin.

      To my shame, I answered yes. I hope that my answer today would be no. (I hope I wouldn’t even apply for such jobs.)

  25. Justin*

    I mean, we’re all going to have to adapt to the new innovations. Whether it’s AI (and most things we’re calling AI are not actually generative but just large language models) or just systems, we gotta upskill. I remember two jobs ago, a nice man simply couldn’t figure out how to use the new system to track a certain type of data we needed to collect. It was far from AI, but we were all doing this stuff by hand before that and he wasn’t able to figure it out.

    Then at my next job, it was my job to train people to use new systems. And again, some people couldn’t really figure it out, though in their case they didn’t lose their jobs, which, I’m not sure is good or bad – these systems impacted peoples’ child support cases, so, it was kind of a problem. (And we were good trainers, but they had pretty bad leadership.)

    And now I train external professionals in… systems and processes they need to understand for their small businesses. Again, it’s not necessarily AI though there’s some light AI involved for nonsense work (like, “hey chatgpt can you turn this list of x into a series of basic questions”), but if they can’t use Quickbooks or whatever, that business is probably going to struggle.

    (Yes basic income etc etc but this is not really just an AI problem. I’m sure we all know it happened when the internet came around, and so forth.)

  26. Alice*

    I think the topic of automating people out of work has been discussed. But I hope OP will also consider – is their implementation of AI actually working? In every situation I’ve considered using (generative) AI, is still required extensive proofreading, and it only saves time if you skip the proofreading stage.
    Here’s a public example (not about my workplace): https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/09/ai-ruling-on-jobless-claims-could-make-mistakes-courts-cant-undo-experts-warn/
    Ok, according to the developers, their AI tool can do a task in five minutes that takes an employee three hours. Great time savings! And their implementation is to have a human check the result of each decision. Ok, sounds reasonable.
    How much time will it take the human to check the results and make sure it’s accurate? As outsiders we don’t know.
    What level of errors remain if you have the human employees spend, say, 15 minutes checking each case? Five minutes? Thirty minutes? Are the errors randomly distributed or do they affected minorities or people with low income more?
    Personally I’d rather be automated out of one job and find a new one (not that that is easy) rather than see my job change to ineffectually rubber stamping flawed and biased decisions, which is a recipe for moral injury.
    Good luck navigating this issue.

    1. Be Audit You Can Be*

      I use ChatGPT to save myself tens of hours of work. I’m an internal auditor and need to write audit plans, audit workpapers, and audit reports. Inventing those out of whole cloth is painful [to me] and time-consuming.

      Instead, I can give ChatGPT an anonymized prompt (“Write an audit plan for a lease management process”) and get back 90% of what I need. Proofreading, editing, and tailoring the output takes maybe 30 minutes, tops.

      During an audit, I take pages and pages of notes, usually in transcript form (I’m a fast typist). I can anonymize my notes (Find-and-Replace key words with generic ones), slap that into ChatGPT and tell it to write a summary in bullet point format. Bam. My language is tidied up and put into business-speak, repetitive things are condensed, and the topics are sorted logically. Again, proofreading, editing, and tailoring takes half an hour.

      At the end of an audit, I can give ChatGPT the prompt “Write an audit report for a lease management process audit with the following findings [Finding1, Finding2, Finding3, etc.], and get back something that only requires that half hour of editing.

  27. Tradd*

    On automation: the US east/gulf coast dockworkers’ union recently went on strike for a few days due to not wanting automation (among other things) as it will mean fewer jobs.
    The union president was all over the media saying “I will cripple you” if they didn’t get their demands. US ports are among the least productive in the developed world.

  28. Hyaline*

    #1, whether or not I (personally) would say anything would probably depend on the nature of the “grace” itself–if it was overtly religious (“Bless us, O Lord, in these thy gifts…”) vs something more neutral (“Let us be truly grateful for what we have been given” or “Let us take a moment of gratitude for this food and those who prepared it” or whatever). I’m not saying it’s appropriate either way, but if it’s a neutral statement of gratitude I wouldn’t spend my political capital on it.

    1. dulcinea47*

      If it’s “grace” its inherently religious. The implication is that you are “truly grateful” to god. Non religious people don’t talk like that before they eat.

    2. Ann O'Nemity*

      I’m an atheist who practices a secular version of ‘grace’ with my family at home. (Yes, I realize I’m being ridiculed in the comments today, and it hurts.) For me, taking a moment to give thanks before a meal is simply an exercise in gratitude, similar to meditation or journaling.

      That said, I don’t believe grace belongs in the workplace, especially when it resembles the religious form. Even without mentioning God, certain elements—like bowing heads or using similar wording—can still make it feel religious.

      1. Hyaline*

        I’m so sorry people are ridiculing you and your practice–I actually think it’s lovely to practice intentional gratitude regardless of religious affiliation, and I commend you for making it part of your family life!

      2. JustaTech*

        I’m sorry you’re being ridiculed, I think that sounds lovely!

        It’s like a daily version of what we do a Thanksgiving: what are we grateful for? (Recent answers have been science, Zoom, family, that kind of thing.) It’s like a verbal version of a gratitude journal.

        (Also an atheist.)

  29. Hyaline*

    LW3, you asked if you missed anything–yes, just take your vacation! Why not whittle down your accrued time by actually using it? It doesn’t sound like you’re actually on the cusp of quitting, like, tomorrow or anything–take vacation! Take days off here and there! Then if you get paid out for the remainder, cool, but you’re not counting on a company that didn’t give you a raise for over a decade to suddenly grow a conscience and pay out your PTO.

    1. amoeba*

      That’s what I thought as well. Although I guess they’d maybe actually prefer the money, in case that’s a possibility? But I probably wouldn’t risk it and end up with nothing, rather take some well-deserved time off now…

  30. Apex Mountain*

    If you have to say grace at the company meals, can you at least lighten the mood and do it like Ben Stiller in Meet the Parents?

  31. DJ Abbott*

    #2, Jobs have always evolved and changed. The industrial revolution moved jobs from farms to factories. The rise of computers and automation moved jobs from factories to tech. More recently the growth in people buying things online caused some stores to close, but more jobs to open in warehousing and shipping.
    It’s true that data entry is very boring. I did it when I was young but when I tried to do it recently, I couldn’t stay awake. It’s generally an entry-level job for young people to get started in office and tech work.
    Is your industry evolving into something where data entry jobs will be less, but another type of job will be more? If so, that’s a natural progression.
    In any case, I don’t think you should damage your own prospects. This is your dream job and you will learn valuable skills. I think you need to put your best interest right up there with the best interests of others. Maybe you can use the skills you get to help others in your industry transition to new types of jobs.

  32. Rosacolleti*

    #3 this info should all be spelt out in your contract. Luckily where I live it’s a statutory requirement that annual leave is paid out but it’s still clearly stated on all employment contracts. Otherwise what’s to stop them choosing who they give payouts too and who they don’t?

    1. HonorBox*

      But if there’s no contract, it may not be as obvious. I don’t have a contract at my workplace. Payout for leave is spelled out in our employee handbook, so perhaps there’s some guidance there that the LW could find. But not everyone has a contract for their work.

      1. doreen*

        There are only nine employees (not sure if that includes the two owners) . I’d be very surprised if they had a employee handbook – it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they don’t even have a policy. It’s entirely possible with such a small company that no one has ever left with banked PTO before.

    3. Paint N Drip*

      By and large, most US-based workers do not have a contract at all. I don’t, and I also work in a very small business – I don’t have a sick bank, but I have no idea what happens to my vaca hours when I leave this job!
      Your concern about fairness or benefits paid out is valid, but honestly that’s the least of it – 49 of the 50 states are ‘at will’ employment states (AKA they can and will fire you whenever they feel like it, hopefully you can get unemployment benefits until you find your next gig) and typically businesses don’t have to offer ANY benefits (including paid sick days or vacation, and retirement savings – some states have laws on this)

  33. HonorBox*

    OP3 – I think your best bet is to go into a resignation assuming that of course they’re going to pay out your PTO. You know how much you have, and when resigning, either in your resignation letter or in a conversation, just indicate how much you have and ask them when to expect that to be paid out. Stating rather than inquiring puts you in a position of a little more power.

    1. MassMatt*

      The best bet is to use the vacation time BEFORE the resignation. You can try to spin that conversation by stating vs: asking but the employer still has all the power, and the fact that they have not given the LW a raise in 11 years indicates bad faith on their part. I would expect no payout at best, and being fired on the spot at worst. Why take that chance?

    2. Texan In Exile*

      No do not do this! I worked at a place that had the policy of not paying out PTO. (Hello QUALITY ORG!) I doubt they would have paid it out had I told them that I expected them to pay it. You do not have any power in this situation. NONE.

      If you can’t find out what the policy is, take your vacation and then put in your notice.

  34. Michelle*

    LW1: I don’t think the fact that you’re religious is relevant here. Religious people can be unethical; non-religious people can be ethical

    I hope that doesn’t come across as petty. As a non-religious person who was subjected to a lot of unethical behavior as a child from the religious people around me (and still am by political leaders stripping my rights in the name of their religion), it’s important to push back on equating these two distinct concepts.

  35. Antilles*

    For OP#4, if they really wanted to save the $360 a year on your mileage to these events or were unsure if it was beneficial, your manager/Department Head would be discussing it with you and asking you to justify the business case for the expense.
    The mileage is part of the cost of attending and built into their budget, just the like sign-up fee to attend.

  36. dulcinea47*

    Everyone missing the point that ai SHOULD be taking our jobs and then we get to relax and do fun stuff. Because this is capitalizm, we’re not going to do that, b/c if you’re not slaving away you don’t deserve to live. we’re just going to make people suffer.

    I don’t want to be a proofreader for an AI – and I don’t believe that will happen. Based on the way most things go, they’ll have AI do the job and they simply won’t proofread it, they’ll decide its good enough. In this way, everything gets worse, and we all get more miserable. I don’t see any way around this until we start talking about universal income.

  37. Chauncy Gardener*

    LW#3
    Why don’t you try to take as much vacation as you can before you give your notice? I’m pretty sure if they haven’t given you a raise in 11 years (!!!), they’re not going to pay out your unused vacation time.

  38. ???*

    LW3
    if you can’t reasonably take all the PTO you accumulated, maybe you could say the following to your boss:
    LW:I noticed I have 100 days of vacation, with my workload, I don’t see how I’m going to be able to take all these vacation days. is there anyway you can compensate me for the vacation days I earned? Or can we talk about adjusting my workload so I can start taking these vacation days?

    that way if doesn’t sound like you’re thinking about quitting; but just trying to use the benefits you’ve earned.

    on another note, some companies will let you cash out your unused PTO time without you having to quit.

  39. Observer*

    #2 – Ethics of AI / automation work.

    You actually have two different questions.

    1. Is it ethical to do work that is problematic if you know that *someone* is going to do it anyway? That’s an excellent question, and I have no idea of a solid answer.

    2. Is it ethical to automate work that will lead to job loss? And my answer is: Why would it be? I’m not being snarky. I get the harm done by job loss and the disappearance of jobs that are not easy to switch out of. (eg See the discussions of how *stupid* all the “plans” to train former miners to be healthcare workers are.) But that’s not a new problem and it’s really hard to make the case that many of the changes (through automation or otherwise) that have led to such job losses are unethical per se. (I’m not talking about how we *handle* those losses. That’s whole different question!)

    So your manager’s point is valid, even if it’s not the whole answer. Because it turns out that the question is not just “corporate profits” vs “job loss”, but long term vs short term issues (both damages and gains) that may be about more than corporate profits.

    So the real ethical question is “what is the long term impact, both positive and negative and how can we mitigate the short term harms that will happen in any case?”

  40. Yes And*

    LW2: If it helps in your moral calculation, studies have demonstrated that technological change tends to add more jobs than it destroys, and that the added jobs tend to be better than the destroyed ones. (Link to follow in reply.)

    That doesn’t mean that the same people are necessarily holding those jobs, and that doesn’t make it suck less for the people caught in the downside of that transition. It’s still a very complicated question you’ve asked. But if you’re approaching moral questions from a utilitarian point of view, it can be helpful to separate the long-term from the short-term.

  41. Good Enough For Government Work*

    LW1, I also work in Government, for a country with an official state religion no less, and every one of us would regard saying grace at meals as one stop short of East Ham.

    (Barking.)

  42. Parenthesis Guy*

    LW #2: I think you also should take into account your environment. In some environments, the goal is to automate away jobs because they want to pay the least amount of money to workers as possible to increase their profits in the short-term. In the long term, however, this strategy may come back to bite them.

    In other environments, the goal is to automate work so that they can increase the amount of work they complete. In those environments, automation is unlikely to lead to firing people but rather training them to do different things. The idea being it’s hard to find good people, so when you find them you want to hold onto them.

    You would have a better understanding of which is more likely to be the case.

    1. Aggretsuko*

      The point of AI is to automate away the need to pay humans.

      However, if you’re not doing that work, someone else will. Nobody can stop the AI takeover, it sounds like.

  43. Bookworm*

    There are many jobs that have gone away simply from technological change. Secretaries/typists, for example. The PC made those jobs go away.

      1. Kevin Sours*

        Yes and no. Personal secretaries evolved into admin roles. But the secretarial pool is just gone.

    2. Rincewind*

      Prior to automated telephone exchanges there was something like 1-3 million women employed on as switchboard operators. That job practically disappeared overnight.

      progress changes the job market

    3. Donn*

      Agree about the jobs evolving.

      A generation of admins ended up retiring when they couldn’t make the transition from typewriters to computers.

      In legal, all federal courts now have electronic court filing. Some long-time litigation legal admins have stubbornly refused to learn how to E-file. All of those remaining should be retired in another 5 years.

  44. TeaCoziesRUs*

    Having grown up in a conservative Christian community, ask for yourself – or your friend practicing a different faith, if they’re willing to put themselves out – to be put on the rotation. I was always amazed how quickly something like grace before meals went from “out loud and proud” to “QUIETLY do your own thing” as soon as anyone not Christian asked to be included. Bonus points if they don’t know you’re atheist or your friend is not Christian until they start thanking their God… or you find a short reflection on gratitude / thankfulness from your favorite philosopher… or an Internet quote website. :)

  45. JeJe*

    LW2 – I’ve worked in automation for more than 20 years, primarily for manufacturing. I manage an R & D team whose work includes both machine learning, computer vision, and motion controls (robot controls). One thing I have learned over the years: Automation rarely replaces human workers the way people think it will.

    People like to image machines running with few or no humans involved in the operations. You will even find some videos that make it look like that is the case. In reality, it takes a lot of people to keep these systems running well. In the case of automating physical labor, it takes a lot people to keep those machines running. We need general mechanics (it has moving parts, it will break), electricians, welders and machinists (because things never seem to fit together quite right). There always a lot that goes on in the back ground to keep an automated system running. Not to mention, when you are producing products faster, you need more ways to deal with that additional product. At a previous job for a firm that built custom systems, we shied away from customers were primarily looking to reduce headcount. Not for moral reasons, just because they weren’t going to get exactly what they want. There is an ROI to automating manual labor, but it usually comes in the form of increased productivity and reduced waste, not in lower labor costs.

    I’m not trying to predict the impact this will have on creative jobs, but based on history, we won’t run out of work for people. We have always made big prediction of where automation will take in near future, fallen short of that, but kept advancing. I do have concerns about using machine learning to automate things, mostly in terms what people try to automate, how they direct people towards it, and how they manage privacy. For example, what if my health insurance provider requires me to see a chat bot rather than a regular doctor? As far as work goes, it will change, change will be harder for some people than others and we should definitely to something to assist those people. Despite that, we’ll still have jobs, some of them will be creative and some will be boring or routine.

  46. AF Vet*

    #2 /AI , I’m a bit of a history nerd, and your question reminded me of the (frankly hilarious) history of the invention of the sewing machine. The messy antics come later, but it was invented about 20 years before it was commercially released. Husband watches his wife and daughters sewing, then creates machine. Wife is very impressed, but worries that it will add to the burden and cheapen the value of their labor, causing a net negative. So husband registered some of his inventions, but otherwise quietly puts it away.

    Abby Cox has a great video on it. I’ll link it below.

    I have no guidance for you. I served in the military, and know that some of the people I ferried about on planes were actively engaged in morally injurious activities. My favorite missions, though, were the aeromedical missions in which we airlifted people the Mercy ships couldn’t help quickly enough in Haiti, ferried wounded soldiers back home, and brought soldiers wounded on battlefields to desperately needed treatments. Overall, my experience was a net positive and I’m proud of my service.

    2. londonedit*

      Ah, that reminds me of the episode of Father Ted where Ted buys their housekeeper, Mrs Doyle, an automated tea-making machine as a present. Ted thinks Mrs Doyle will be thrilled, because she spends about 90% of her time making tea for the priests (and the other 10% of the time asking them whether they’ll have a cup of tea. Ah go on, Father, you’ll have a nice cup of tea? Ah, you will. You will. You will you will you will you will you will…). He thinks she’ll be delighted to be relieved of the drudgery of constant tea-making. But in fact, Mrs Doyle’s entire reason for being revolves around making tea. Without that, she is nothing, and she’s devastated when the tea-making is taken away from her and given to a machine.

  47. AF Vet*

    #3 / leave – If you have more than two weeks, can you figure out ways to burn through that leave discretely? Leave yourself with roughly 6-8 days? That way, if they say they won’t pay out, you’ll lose less time / pay. Or you can pull the Two weeks notice, but I’ll be spending the rest of my leave, so you get 4 business days.

  48. Caramel & Cheddar*

    LW 2: you say your concern is that you’re religious and that the idea of taking people’s jobs away from them is haunting you from an ethics perspective. As lots of people above have noted, jobs have always evolved with technology and the kinds of things we have available to us today often didn’t exist 10/20/50/100 years ago, while many jobs that did exist back then no longer do today.

    So for me, the ethical consideration isn’t really around “will this tech result in job loss.” I think AI has many, many, many other ethical considerations much bigger than “will certain roles cease to exist going forward as a result of this tech.” AI often plagiarizes and trains on content that it didn’t ethically procure, and the environmental impacts of running and cooling the servers necessary to run AI systems is astronomical.

    It’s perfectly natural to be concerned about the people you know personally in the here and now, but I think it’s worth considering the ethics of AI more broadly. After all, how many jobs will be lost when we no longer have a habitable planet?

    1. Kimchi*

      I had no idea there was a huge environmental impact from AI! Surprising how all the companies advertising their new AI features forget to mention that part

    2. Observer*

      environmental impacts of running and cooling the servers necessary to run AI systems is astronomical.

      That depends on the servers and the cooling systems they use. And then there is the question of what they are replacing. Also, last but not least, how can (and is) AI used to reduce environmental impacts of other activities.

      I don’t know if this is considered AI per se, but there are now models used for watering fields that often reduce the over all amount of water used because you don’t water the whole field, but either small pieces of the field, or even each plant. And you can do that with just enough water for each plant / patch, so that spots that need less water use less water.

      All of which is to say that it’s not so simple.

  49. Dawn*

    LW 2: This is not a judgment of you personally, and I’m not telling you what to do. But (so-called) AI technology is unequivocally unethical for too many reasons to go into here. According to Cory Doctorow, it’s also definitely a bubble, and one that will “leave nothing behind but ashes,” and so I think you have to factor all of that into your decision here.

    I also don’t think, for the record, that this is a factor of age: I’m 40 and I’m very concerned about the impact that AI will ultimately have.

    2. tabloidtained*

      Generative AI may be a bubble, but general AI/machine learning probably isn’t, and automation certainly isn’t.

      1. a trans person*

        AI has been nothing BUT bubbles since the phrase was created. Statistics (“ML”) sure, but “general AI” isn’t a *thing* and hasn’t been since the last AI bubble, which in turn was supposed to fix the issues from the GOFAI bubble. I did my doctorate using neural networks of the previous generations. There is nothing new under the sun — not in terms of tech, but in terms of the societal responses to new tech.

  50. Melody*

    Another idea for LW#3 would be to ask for a copy of your employee manual. Review it thoroughly, and see if you can find several different questions that you’d like clarification on. If the question about payout is buried among several other questions it won’t stand out so much. And maybe you’ll discover some other benefits you’ve been missing out on!

    1. Dawn*

      With a company of only 9 people, I strongly doubt that they have an employee manual. Small businesses usually don’t.

  51. Lisa*

    LW4, if you’re representing your company and/or it’s something you wouldn’t do if not for your employment with your company, it’s a business expense and you should be reimbursed. If you’re attending for your own benefit rather than your employer’s, that’s different.

  52. Prudence and Wakeen Snooter Theatre for the Performing Oats*

    LW #1, I worked in state government for two states and my work in the first state did not at all prepare me for the conditions in the second. New state had a reputation for religion permeating many areas of life, but I naively thought government would be different- boy howdy, was I wrong!

    Like you, there was grace before a potluck (I had been wondering why everyone was milling around and not eating. I had almost decided I should be the first to break the ice and start serving myself… I still wonder what would have happened if I had done that!). There was the Christmas cards sent from the department head that were highly religious. Somehow, an awards assembly included mentions of the department heads church and his hope that he’d see us there.

    Grace might just be the tip of the iceberg. “Luckily” for me, there were other issues and I quickly left, but I want to commiserate.

    1. Potatoes of All Sorts*

      hey hey, LW here! And my job is state government too, in the not-quite South. And the religious talk/actions definitely shows up in other places at this job. Including Bible verses quoted at staff retreat.

      And this grace at staff meals is one of many issues, but definitely the one that made me do a double take the most.

      I’m currently job hunting and looking to get out of government. Gov work is not it for me! Nor is compulsory Christianity!

  53. SunnyShine*

    LW2, I work in food safety and quality in manufacturing. Despite it having strick rules, I find my ethics can be challenged. I work in a job that requires a lot of integrity. There are days where I protect the consumer at the cost of people’s livelihoods. I can throw away a lot of bad product to save someone’s life but at the cost of the company.

    What helps is getting clear on your ethics and standards. Think about what you will and won’t do and the stick to it. Wether it’s AI or food safety, it’ll help you navigate your field.

    I, for one, have been immensely grateful for AI as it has helped me with my disabilities. Yet, for others, it signals the end of their career. What helps one person can harm another. It’s in these circumstances that you have to consider where you stand as there isn’t a one right answer.

  54. I should really pick a name*

    #3
    Is there a reason you can’t just start using up your vacation now?

    I don’t recommend letting this decide whether or not you give two weeks note or not. If it’s not required by law, I’d say assume you won’t get a payout.

  55. LW #3*

    Before I say anything else, I want to express my appreciation for the restraint EVERYONE here has shown RE my no-raise-in-11-years situation. I expected (and deserve!) to be pilloried here for allowing my work situation to get to the point it has. Suffice to say, I’m (obviously) a terrible shepherd of my career.

    In my own feeble defense, I’ll just say that I love my field, have always prioritized workplace culture and the “life” side of the work-life equation (things like flexibility), and have an outmoded and (again, obviously) unhealthy sense of loyalty (I’ve worked with some of my coworkers for quite a long time). It’s only now that the workplace culture has eroded so much (or, rather, now that I’ve finally realized how much the culture has eroded) that I am seeing how ridiculous the compensation situation is. I know, I know. I have been revving up the earnestness of my search for a new position.

    There were lots of good suggestions–this community really doesn’t miss a trick. I particularly appreciate the reminder of the importance of actually TAKING my time off.

    To follow up on a couple of points that emerged: I have no employment contract; there is no employee handbook specific to our company (though an old handbook from a related company has occasionally been used for other issues; it does not include anything on vacation payouts); there are no former employees I could safely talk to about their experience.

    The one suggestion that might be workable (thank you, ???) is floating the idea of selling back some of my banked vacation time, a conversation I could see potentially opening the door for getting my original question answered.

    Thank you again to Alison and this wonderful community!

  56. Biff*

    I deeply question whether AI can really do a better job. I’ve seen so many examples of “AI doing the best job!” where, in fact, the job is not all that well done. It may be better than the job not being done at all, but when you are familiar or even good at doing the thing in which AI is supposedly demonstrating proficiency, it falls short.

    And I think that’s where the LW has an opening. She should define a very high standard for AI to achieve, which is AS GOOD as the BEST performer on the team, and say that’s the definition of success/done. It will take a significant amount of time to do.

    1. Nah*

      It’s interesting how many people think AI is a miracle machine, even if it doesn’t know about their personal area of expertise. They don’t generalize to “actually, it’s probably just as bad about everything.” But I suspect the depressing truth is that the people who are most gung-ho about AI simply don’t have high standards. Passable is good enough, no point in wasting money on excellence.

  57. Speak*

    For #2, I program machinery & most of my jobs are to get rid of people in one way or another. If it is a new line & product, then it is to make it as easy and use as few a number of people in the production as possible. If it is updating an existing line it is to do one of 3 things: make it so that the cost of the product is less (less scrap), make it safer for the people working (eliminate repetitive or lifting tasks), or to make it more accurate since humans aren’t making mistakes anymore (cameras to look at the product instead of people). There will always be jobs that people have to do, however the simplest ones to automate will always be the first to be cut, and if you don’t do the work, someone else will. So you need to determine if you can rationalize the logic to yourself that this is your job to do, so you have some control on how it affects other people, or if you want someone else to do it who won’t care about anyone else.

  58. kayakwriter*

    Those claims that saying grace is not inherently religious or that you can have “freedom of religion” without “freedom from religion” are irksomely disingenuous in the same way that (some) Christians claim “Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship (with Christ).”

    1. Ginger Cat Lady*

      Yup. It’s a semantics game they use to justify themselves and we see right through it.

  59. Speak*

    For #1, I would recommend asking if you could say grace at these meals in your religion’s format, either in place of or in addition to the standard grace. Then learn a grace in Hebrew, a grace in Islam, a grace in Buddhism, and any other religion you can find that has blessings, perhaps even a Christian one in Latin, if you think you could get away with it: “Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the Grub”. Each meal change which version you say. If they continue to force grace on everyone, you have show that they really need to be more inclusive, or after several times, they may just have a “moment of silence” so everyone can say their own grace.

    1. Fiorinda*

      Since LW1 stated that they’re an atheist, your first suggestion…probably won’t work. Unless they’re willing to stand up as an adult in the workplace and chant, “Two four six eight, bog in don’t wait”, which to be fair, I’d be tempted to do.

      1. TeaCoziesRUs*

        I’m for finding quotes about gratitude / thankfulness / blessings from their favorite philosophers. Growing up hard-core evangelical… if they can find a quote from Nietzche that’ll go over like a fart in church. :) But, then, I’m a fan of malicious compliance stories and can have a petty streak. :D

  60. Jaya*

    AI right now cannot do a better job in creative fields at least. The problem is that companies who would use people have decided that the machines cost less even with the environmental hazards and the plagiarism.
    Ethics I feel are a personal decision since they are relative along with morality. I admit right now I’m not feeling favorable towards generative AI users, but that is a subjective opinion and not an objective perspective.

  61. carrot cake*

    Why does saying grace/giving thanks/insert phrase here have to be done collectively and out loud? Can’t individuals just say or whisper things to themselves, or even just think their thanks, and be satisfied?

    2. MPerera*

      But if people only say grace to themselves, or think it, how can they push their beliefs on others?

      /s, just in case

    3. Silver Robin*

      the kindest interpretation is that meals and prayer are often communal, so grace also is standard communal. Folks learn it at home where I think most folks do it as a family, so it starts out as a group thing. And most of their community (at least those who say stuff out loud) are like that too. It just feels like not a big deal.

      Then they fail to realize this is not actually at all a benign experience for folks from a different background or of different spiritual beliefs. Nor do they stop to think that such people might exist in their midst.

Comments are closed.