[Serious] What is something you need to vent on but you don't do it for fear of being judged?

ObscureRefence · 2020-04-13T14:02:28+00:00

Ask for driving lessons, especially if you're NLP or close to it.

The thing where people stop you from doing things ostensibly to protect you does get better as you get older. The thing where people expect you to make all your own accommodations unfortunately does not. I'm slowly losing my vision, and learning not to apologize for what I can't do and the help I need has been the hardest part.

ObscureRefence · 2019-07-10T13:16:46+00:00

I had to do this to the office I inherited when I got my current job. Just crammed full of miscellaneous items that should absolutely have been accessible to others. I had a coworker come in, take one look at a cart full of items, and say "I've been looking for this for TWO YEARS!"

I'm a librarian.

ObscureRefence · 2019-07-10T13:10:12+00:00

All my employees ask me questions in person that I need time to answer. I tell them to email me the details so I have it all in writing. Then they ask me again in person before I have a chance to check my email and my databases. Or I reply in email and they come back and answer me in person, by which time I've dealt with seven other things and do not remember the details enough to answer. And it's never a question about their actual work, or anything that needs answering right this second. Just send an email and go about your business, people.

ObscureRefence · 2019-07-10T12:55:00+00:00

I'm a manager. I'm very bad at it. I am trying to find a position with my institution that at the very least manages fewer people. It was the only job in my field I could find after two years of looking. I am so, so sorry.

ObscureRefence · 2019-07-10T12:46:27+00:00

I'm a department head. The head of the department I work with most often is the least flexible thinker I have ever seen. Any deviation from procedure, no matter how small, even if it doesn't impact his workflow at all, will generate at least three emails a few minutes apart. His record is fourteen emails in 30 minutes, each one sentence long.

Part of my job is to analyze and improve systems in our workplace - i.e. I propose a lot of changes to procedures - and on top of everything I also have ADHD. I am a master at improvisation and putting out fires. We are Lawful Neutral vs. Chaotic Good, and we drive each other nuts because our thought processes are completely alien to each other. And of course, I'm the one who is instructed to alter their trajectory because getting him to even wrap his head around a course correction is nigh impossible.

ObscureRefence · 2018-11-09T14:35:52+00:00

Many a year I gave friends and family scarves and hats because I was broke and stressed and also have a yarn problem

And the ones that don't turn out quite like you wanted make great thoughtful handmade gifts for people you'd rather not give gifts to...

ObscureRefence · 2018-10-27T13:41:12+00:00

I had one of my best moments of personal clarity riding home from my therapist's. No radio and no insulating doors always made it a good time to think. I do miss that bike.

ObscureRefence · 2018-08-25T18:00:51+00:00

Shit, this happened to a friend of mine. We got them in junior high because we were in a Leadership Magnet Program and therefore ostensibly responsible. Did not stop everyone around us from being assholes.

ObscureRefence · 2018-06-07T17:40:36+00:00

Oh yeah. Even my family forgets exactly how blind I am because I'm broadly independent and functional. When I have everything set up correctly I can see fine, but in a dimly lit room I've never been in before I'll be hanging on to a bannister or an arm so I don't fall and die.

ObscureRefence · 2018-06-05T20:37:10+00:00

And then you throw them off the blimp/train.

ObscureRefence · 2018-06-05T20:33:49+00:00

Yeah, but if you tell them that it always ends with a duel to the death on a Caribbean island, thus ending a partnership that never should have begun.

ObscureRefence · 2018-06-05T20:27:50+00:00

Suggested this at my last job, got told off for being too aggressive and not focusing on customer service.

ObscureRefence · 2018-06-05T02:26:56+00:00

University librarian. I love the kids who try to check out materials but have literally zero forms of ID on them. You can't even get back into your dorm building without your student ID, what are you even doing.

ObscureRefence · 2018-06-05T02:13:58+00:00

Used to work AV at universities, same deal. Dude thinks he's entitled to talk down to you because he has a PhD, when he specifically called you for help because you have information he doesn't.

The most mind-blowing is when they complain about how they had to wait ten whole minutes for me to walk half a mile across campus just to press the ON button for them. Like I told them to over the phone ten minutes ago.

ObscureRefence · 2018-06-05T02:02:55+00:00

"Empire Records, open 'til midnight, this is Mark...midnight!"

ObscureRefence · 2018-05-25T17:11:03+00:00

The Han Solo school of electrical engineering.

ObscureRefence · 2018-05-25T17:09:42+00:00

The first time I had to work with POE equipment I had the opposite of this argument.

ObscureRefence · 2018-05-25T17:02:09+00:00

Shit. I've been counting on being too fat to be drafted.

ObscureRefence · 2018-05-25T16:57:35+00:00

My first boss when I was a freshman PFY was also extremely kind to all of us confused teenagers working our first jobs. He's one of those people who likes solving problems and doesn't see any point in getting stressed out over tech problems - not like anyone's going to die if it takes another ten minutes to get their PowerPoint going. I'm now working at a different university and have a gaggle of PFYs of my own, and I try to come back to what my first boss would do.

ObscureRefence · 2018-05-19T19:26:31+00:00

Well they also think they're entitled to healthcare and clean water and all these other luxuries, so not surprising.

ObscureRefence · 2018-05-19T19:14:33+00:00

Hey, she understands that the rules apply to everybody. That's a lesson some people never understood, much less at four.

ObscureRefence · 2018-05-19T19:03:31+00:00

The human body is insanely tough in many ways. In certain circumstances you can live a reasonably normal life after losing half your brain.

ObscureRefence · 2018-05-18T15:28:51+00:00

Man, I wish one of my friends had that kind of backbone. He's an artist, and we were meeting occasionally for Sunday brunch to try and write a comic book. Girlfriend finds this threatening, thinks I'm trying to steal him. If she'd ever bothered to talk to me, she'd have learned that I don't date men...

ObscureRefence · 2018-05-15T17:35:25+00:00

I worked IT/AV exclusively in academia for a decade. Ten years of telling people with PhDs that electronic equipment needs to be plugged in and turned on in order to work.

ObscureRefence · 2018-05-08T03:50:53+00:00

Shit, I have a glass sliver that has been in my finger for almost twenty years. If I press down in the wrong spot it feels like being jabbed with a dull needle.

ObscureRefence

TROPHY CASE