How to announce sweeping policy changes

Firstly, have you considered not making sweeping policy changes?

While I am sure that you think you have considered every aspect of the change, you probably haven't, and may quickly regret and rescind your announcement when your user base is outraged. (I'm looking at you, Patreon, and thanking you for responding to my strident and vitriolic feedback by apologizing and not making the change.)

Secondly, have you considered making your policy change trivial, but having the announcement denigrate your user base?

I don't advise this, either, okcupid. Boo.

Thirdly, you had better grandfather in all your previous users under their former conditions, or I will quit.

I really will.

It's easy.

And then I will take my attention, and my patronage, and my money, and my life, and spend it somewhere else.

To celebrate the end of this offensive, horrible calendar year, during which I nevertheless achieved some life milestones, I am now reviewing my yearly donations and subscriptions, increasing my donations, and mostly cancelling subscriptions --- and adding that money to the donations pile. So my sweeping policy change is that I am donating more money than before, supporting charities and libraries and artists.

Look at me, supporting capitalism by laboring so that I can give my money away!

(A. pointed out that I behave not in my own best interests, economically, but in a socially-justified way. I am duly smug.)


This post's theme word is mammothrept (n), "a spoilt child; a person of immature judgment." Your sweeping policy change satisfies your mammothrept investors and causes a massive exodus of your site's users!

What is the unluckiest thing that ever happened to you?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question.

What is the unluckiest thing that ever happened to you?

Some people referenced the luckiest thing that ever happened or other earlier attendance questions:

• bird
• also existing
• not existing?
• I live next to [student X] -- student Y
• I live next to [student Y] -- student X
• bird?

Should I be worried about the recurring "bird"s?

Others had medical mishaps:

• chipped my front teeth when i fell down laughing 
• a week after getting surgery in preeschool, a kid kicked me in the stomach & I had to have the same surgery again
• deviated septum during a soccer game
• appendicitis is the only time my parents ever visited campus

Some cited student-specific concerns:

• fire alarm night before test
• having all midterms on same day
• exponential runtime
• snapped my oneCard 2 times in 2 days

And then a smorgasbord of miscellaneous bad luck?

• missed 2 straight connecting  flights
• :)
• I got left by my parents in Paris in a train station
• dropping my laptop
• dropping my laptop 3 times
• Hurricane Harvey hit my city on my birthday :(
• I fell over 5 times in 30 minutes wearing the best boots I've ever worn
• i once had to wait at a red light

The award for "Sounds Most Like a Cautionary Tale" goes to "brother pushed me in a well".  The "Technically Unlikely but maybe not UnLUCKy" prize goes to "lost twenty coinflips in a row." The tip-of-the-hat for luck-n-privilege awareness goes to "i once had to wait at a red light."

This post is dedicated to students who are perusing the archive in search of something to brighten a day that feels unlucky.

This post's theme word is contretemps (n), "an unforseen and unfortunate occurrence; a disagreement or dispute." Wednesday's child is full of woe; Grumbleday's child is caught in contretemps.