What Should I Do About The Ronald McDonald Statue In My Backyard, And Other Advice Column Questions
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There are too many excellent advice columns to keep up with, so we're committed to bringing you links to the best advice column questions and answers every week. Here's a roundup of the most interesting, thought-provoking and surprising questions that our favorite columnists addressed in recent days.

How Can I Tell My Parents I Want To Get Rid Of The Ronald McDonald Statue In Our Backyard?

My family moved from Shanghai four years ago and have settled in a lovely home in California. I very much enjoy our family lifestyle here and wouldn't trade it for the world.

During the move, however, there was something very unsettling that we brought with us that still plays a role in my nightmares. We have a life-size Ronald McDonald statue sitting on a bench sitting in the middle of our backyard. My dad used to work for McDonalds and took home two statues as a gift from the company. Luckily, we sold one of them before we moved. However, the other one was shipped across the Pacific, despite the effort required to bring it here, and it now scares all of my friends as well as myself.

My parents are very nostalgic people and I have tolerated the 4-foot-tall Kipling monkey statue, the kneeling terra-cotta soldier next to the fireplace and the fake flowers littered on our tables. This Ronald McDonald statue has increasingly become an issue though, and is no longer just a "quirky" thing I want to accept about my family.

My friends don't want to come to the house, and they will frequently lie about their plans for the day so we don't hang out. How do I approach this with my family? I don't want to hurt their feelings but I want to be able to bring my friends over as well.

[Creators]

Annie Lane advises the letter writer to talk to their parents about their discomfort with the statue — and, if that fails, to make peace with it. "Turn your parents' mad menagerie into a selling point," she writes. "Heck, build Ronald his own Instagram account and make him a selfie destination." Read the rest of her answer.

Should I Accept $2,500 From My Friend's Mom In Exchange For Not Going To The Grand Canyon With Her Daughter?

We are three college students living at home for the summer, and we've planned a road trip to the Grand Canyon. One of us has a summer job working for the mother of another of us. The mother told our employee friend that she was uncomfortable with three "wimpy girls" camping alone. (The campsite bills itself as perfect for beginners. Rangers and flush toilets abound!) The mother offered us $2,500 to change plans, but only if we don't tell her daughter where the money came from or why. We don't want to change trips, and we don't want to lie. Can we take the money if we tell our friend the truth?

[The New York Times]

Philip Galanes recommends telling the friend about her mom's offer before making any decisions about whether to take the $2,500. "As soon as you verify that your friend who is employed by the mother can afford to be fired by her (which could happen), convene a meeting for three and tell the daughter what has transpired," he writes. Read the rest of his answer.

Is It My Duty To Tell My Ex-Boyfriend Not To Bring A Date To My Best Friend's Wedding?

I recently broke up with someone I was with for four years. We were supposed to go to my best friend's wedding in October and had RSVP'd as a couple. My friend has told me that my ex has now "updated" his RSVP to be bringing a date. She is upset because they do not have the extra space. I am upset because I don't want to see him with another woman all night. (I will be going solo no matter what. Maid of honor duties and other close friends will keep me occupied.) The problem is she wants me to talk to him and tell him not to bring someone. We are now a little tense about this because I don't feel it's my duty to do so and I really don't want to talk to him and it will seem like I'm just jealous. Tiebreaker vote?

[The Washington Post]

Andrea Bonior rules that it's the bride's duty to tell the ex-boyfriend there's not room for his date. "Sorry to your friend, but she can't just outsource 'bouncer at my wedding' to the ex of the person being problematic," she writes. Read the rest of her answer.

Is It Appropriate To Roast Meat In An Office Kitchen?

Last year, our common lunch area and kitchen (for about 120 people) was refurbished, with an oven put in. Nobody has really used the oven until this week when a group of staff from different teams, who are friends, decided to use it to cook a roast for lunch…

Well, the oven's first ever workout was a bit gross. For the whole cooking time of a few hours, the common space smelled of raw meat and some other weird odor. Apparently a few people commented on the smell — nothing overly malicious, things like "eww" and "ooh, that doesn't smell good!" Some people seemed not to notice, but a number of us found it a really awful smell, to the point that we had to avoid the space. The two or three chefs got defensive ("it smells nice to me!"), complained to our HR department about the way they were treated, and have been cold shouldering a few staff all week as a result.

What do you say? Given that this group probably couldn't have foreseen the roast/oven smelling weird, is this an appropriate use of the common kitchen? Is this just fun for a group of work friends to do, or am I justified in thinking that cooking a roast at work for eight people is a little obnoxiously cliquey?

[Ask A Manager]

Alison Green thinks that it's okay to cook a meal in an office oven but that it would have been more considerate if the cooks had offered to share the roast with everyone. "The weirder part is that they took such offense to people's comments about the smell, to the point of complaining to HR," she writes. Read the rest of her answer.

Should My Partner And I Announce At Our Wedding That We've Actually Been Married For Three Years?

Here's the thing: my "fiancx" and I are planning a wedding… but we're actually already married. Should we announce this surprise at our wedding celebration?

Backstory: We were newly-engaged when we moved to a new city. I was unemployed and uninsured and my fiancé had a job that came along with that sweet, city-job health insurance, so instead of trying to navigate medicaid, we said fuck it, let's get married…

Fast forward two years later, we're in the midst of wedding planning and trying to figure out if this is something we want to keep between us (and the two friends who officiated and were witnesses) or announce it on what will actually be our third-year anniversary on the day of our wedding. We don't want to cause drama or make anyone feel offended, but it'd be great to be honest with everyone about this secret we've been hiding and share with them that they're actually at a kind of "renewal." …

Would you be pissed off or feel disrespected if this was the scenario at a wedding you attended? Or would you think it was a fun surprise?

[A Practical Wedding]

Amy March, who answers this question alongside regular Ask A Practical Wedding columnist Liz Moorhead, argues that this information is likely to be hurtful to some wedding guests. "There are a lot of grandmas thinking that not telling them you've been married for three years is actually lying to them and excluding them from your life," she writes. Read the rest of their answers.

Is It A Violation Of My Principles To Consider Getting Belly Button Surgery?

All my life, I have sworn up and down that I would never have plastic surgery, barring some major medical event (like breast cancer). Fast forward two kids later, and my husband has asked me to get my belly button looked at. Pregnancy and childbirth have left me with a major outie, and his main complaint is that I hate having it touched, which means he can't touch my stomach. We've been together over a decade and he's a wonderful, supportive partner. He loves me without makeup and has never asked me to modify my body in any way. And yet, what would I tell my daughter if I got surgery for the sake of appearances, or let a man tell me to fix my body? Part of me thinks this request isn't unreasonable, and part of me balks at unnecessary surgery. We're done having kids, and it is a pretty crazy belly button.

[Slate]

"You do not ever have to tell your daughter about this, so I don't think you ought to spend much time worrying about how this will affect her," replies Daniel Mallory Ortberg. "(My guess is that it won't.)" Read the rest of his answer.

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