Provides a humorous roadmap for getting through life's most awkward social situations, including dealing with noisy neighbours, asking parents for help, and managing an office affair.
No One Is Safe from Awkward! Ending a first date that falls flat. Drunk-texting your boss. Walking in when your roommate is getting it on. Running into the person you just dumped . . . in the grocery store, an hour after it went down. Awkward bombs can drop anytime, anywhere, and with anyone—people you don’t know, people you see occasionally, and people you see every day. They can sneak up on you and explode in the most unexpected of places, so they’re basically impossible to avoid. The vast majority of us don’t have the wherewithal to gracefully handle the truly and totally awkward as it unfolds. We only realize what we should have said after the fact—when the damage has already been done and we’re a hot mess of embarrassment, red ears, and nervous sweat stains. But author Sam Scholfield has survived more than two decades of embarrassing encounters—and now, in an act of extreme generosity, has set down a wealth of witty comebacks, surefire distraction techniques, and suave evasion strategies so that future generations may take heed and dodge the Awkward Monster before it strikes! So how do you avoid the epic cluster of drama that can result when awkward situations are handled badly? You read this book.
Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri turns her satirical eye on her own life in this hilarious new memoir... Most twentysomethings spend a lot of time avoiding awkwardness. Not Alexandra Petri. Afraid of rejection? Alexandra Petri has auditioned for America’s Next Top Model. Afraid of looking like an idiot? Alexandra Petri lost Jeopardy! by answering “Who is that dude?” on national TV. Afraid of bad jokes? Alexandra Petri won an international pun championship. Petri has been a debutante, reenacted the Civil War, and fended off suitors at a Star Wars convention while wearing a Jabba the Hutt suit. One time, she let some cult members she met on the street baptize her, just to be polite. She’s a connoisseur of the kind of awkwardness that most people spend whole lifetimes trying to avoid. If John Hodgman and Amy Sedaris had a baby…they would never let Petri babysit it. But Petri is here to tell you: Everything you fear is not so bad. Trust her. She’s tried it. And in the course of her misadventures, she’s learned that there are worse things out there than awkwardness—and that interesting things start to happen when you stop caring what people think.
A nationally recognized expert on professional ethics uses pungent real-world examples to help people new to the work world recognize ethical situations that can lead to career-damaging mistakes—and prevent them. Gunsalus offers questions to ask yourself, sample scripts to use on others, and guidance in handling disputes fairly and diplomatically.
The Moderator's Survival Guide is your indispensable resource for navigating the rocky shoals of your one-on-one user research sessions. Inside, you'll find guidance for nearly 100 diverse situations (ranging from business-as-usual to tricky and sticky) that might occur during usability studies, contextual inquiries, or user interviews. As a moderator, you are responsible for the well-being of the participant, your study, and your organization. You must be prepared for anything that may happen, from your technology failing to the participant quailing. Use this guide to identify your best next steps, react appropriately, and survive any challenges that comes your way.
The creator of the award-winning blog Lost GenY Girl offers a business success guide aimed directly at college grads new to office life. Welcome to the corporate world, where things aren’t fair, some people are mean, and if you want to succeed, your boss has to like you. In Corporate Survival Guide for Your Twenties, Kayla Buell helps you prepare for the challenges and opportunities you’ll encounter as you leave college life behind and enter the work force. Navigating a corporate working world filled with pitfalls and traps is not easy – there’s no app for that. Should you speak up in meetings? Should you stay quiet? Should you eat at your desk? What should you wear? And what do you do when someone blasts you via e-mail? In Corporate Survival Guide for Your Twenties, Buell helps the early career professionals get their kick-ass career running!
The Moderator's Survival Guide is your indispensable resource for navigating the rocky shoals of your one-on-one user research sessions. Inside, you'll find guidance for nearly 100 diverse situations (ranging from business-as-usual to tricky and sticky) that might occur during usability studies, contextual inquiries, or user interviews. As a moderator, you are responsible for the well-being of the participant, your study, and your organization. You must be prepared for anything that may happen, from your technology failing to the participant quailing. Use this guide to identify your best next steps, react appropriately, and survive any challenges that comes your way. - Practical, field-tested, and actionable tips for what to do and say—and what NOT to do or say—in each situation. - Key patterns and extensive examples to sharpen your approach to the commonplace and prepare you for the unlikely. - Illustrative "survival stories" contributed by numerous professionals on the front lines of user research.
This enhanced eBook includes video, audio, photographic, and linked content, as well as a bonus short story. Hear TAMMY talk. Learn the origins of Minor Universe 31. See the TM-31. Take a trip in it. Photos and illustrations appear as hyperlinked endnotes. Video and audio are embedded directly in text. *Video and audio may not play on all readers. Check your user manual for details. National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award winner Charles Yu delivers his debut novel, a razor-sharp, ridiculously funny, and utterly touching story of a son searching for his father . . . through quantum space–time. Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician—part counselor, part gadget repair man—steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally. When he’s not taking client calls or consoling his boss, Phil, who could really use an upgrade, Yu visits his mother (stuck in a one-hour cycle of time, she makes dinner over and over and over) and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. Accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and Ed, a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog, Yu sets out, and back, and beyond, in order to find the one day where he and his father can meet in memory. He learns that the key may be found in a book he got from his future self. It’s called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and he’s the author. And somewhere inside it is the information that could help him—in fact it may even save his life. Wildly new and adventurous, Yu’s debut is certain to send shock waves of wonder through literary space–time.
With powerful words and pictures Florida Frenz chronicles her journey figuring out how to read facial expressions, how to make friends, how to juggle all the social cues that make school feel like a complicated maze. Diagnosed with autism as a two-year-old, Florida is now an articulate 15-year-old whose explorations into how kids make friends, what popularity means, how to handle peer pressure will resonate with any preteen. For those wondering what it's like inside an autistic child's head, Florida's book provides amazing insight and understanding. Reading how she learns how to be human makes us all feel a little less alien.
If you are one of the over twenty million Americans who have adopted vegetarianism, you know that living with and eating with meat eaters can present a myriad of difficult issues. Summer barbecues, Thanksgiving dinner, or even a simple business lunch can be cause for discussions questioning vegetarianism as a lifestyle choice—leading at best to awkward situations and at worst to anger and defensiveness. Beyond these often-tense encounters, simple day-to-day tasks such as grocery shopping and preparing the evening meal can be tough, especially when your husband, wife, partner, or child doesn't share your commitment to living as a vegetarian. In this bold and original book, Carol J. Adams offers real-life advice that vegetarians can use to defuse any situation in which their dietary choices may be under attack. She suggests viewing meat eaters as blocked vegetarians. Always insightful, this practical guide is full of self-tests, strategies, meditations on vegetarianism, and tips for dining out and entertaining at home when meat eaters are on the invite list. Offering more than fifty of Carol Adams's favorite vegetarian recipes, Living Among Meat Eaters is sure to become every vegetarian's most trusted source of support and information.