Hacker News Reader

Comment by cmclaughlin | Hacker News Reader

Here's how my wife does it...

"Do you want to take out the trash?"

My engineer mind interprets it literally every time :)

Usually I don't mind taking out the trash... but occasionally I don't really want to. I have to always translate this to "She wants me to take out the trash".

View on HN

What she truly wants is for you to notice that it’s full and to take it out without being asked.

Upshot: you are supposed to take out the trash using a realtime scheduler, and the common question means you have missed many deadlines!

It's as if you are forcing your spouse to somehow smell a janky web page.

Of course, you only got into the situation where you're supposed to take out the trash with some fancy realtime scheduler because the impulse to spend 6 hours automating a 15 second task was too strong to resist....

You get into the situation because, in a relationship, a stench that lasts past a hard limit will get associated with a lot more than the garbage.

Weird, people usually talk favorably about garbage collection on HN.

As a member of the Rust Evangelism Strike Force, please point me to these people so we can have a, ahem, civil conversation.

/garfield

Well, it's usually something the environment does for us, not that we do for the environment :)

Yeah, sometimes I respond to those like "well, no, I don't want to, but I will if you'd like". haha :)

There’s a funny comedy bit about the passive-aggressive phrasing “we need to <take out the trash, clean up the yard, etc>”. “Is that a _he_ need, or a _she_ need?” Who’s we in this scenario?

“No.”

Is the answer from those not yet brainwashed. Aka kids!

Or. “It’s OK i’ll take out the trash”

That makes me so mad! Just put down a checklist and I'll gladly do it! Not sure why emotional manipulation needs to happen!

In this very specific example, I really don't see why anyone needs a checklist, or to be reminded. It's your household too, you need to know the things that need to be done, and do a reasonable share of them.

In the more general "team at work" case, it's also straightforward, sit together, define the bucket of work that needs doing, distribute it "fairly", and go do it. The team leader's job is to get and communicate outside stakeholders' needs + the wider org context, not to give marching orders.

> In this very specific example, I really don't see why anyone needs a checklist, or to be reminded. It's your household too, you need to know the things that need to be done, and do a reasonable share of them.

Absolutely agree with this but then the adult thing to do is not to attempt to manipulate the partner into doing the work but either a) fix the situation directly if it's a one-off (asking, "would you take out the garbage?" or else just doing it), or b) if there is a pattern of unfair division of labour in the relationship, raise it, discuss it honestly and with intent to find a fair solution, and resolve it.

That's just not how I view it. Here's the rule. Check if the garbage needs to go out every afternoon. Absolutely fine. Vs remember if this matters -> torture! I can work 100% of the time to make sure the clearly set out objectives are met without complaint. Once it becomes subjective, I would rather not be involved.

I think their point was "why does someone else have to make the checklist for you?"

> Once it becomes subjective

Relationships are subjective. It takes a collaborative effort to make them objective. Subjective is the default mode.

The subtext here is probably that the asking person doesn't _want_ to be commanding, much less making checklists. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com