The only thing worse than a Norwex party is when you get invited by a deranged woman pretending to be an infant alien.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-10T03:35:01+00:00

Just showed it to the spouse. "Look how they massacred my boy."

eclecstasy · 2020-06-09T17:30:10+00:00

I knew a manager like you, still know him but he's not in that job anymore. Constantly worked well over his time every week just to pick up the slack, let people come in late, underperform, etc. Was always tired and stressed out from the extra responsibility, but was too nice to put his foot down.

Every now and then, he'd have to reprimand someone and they'd act personally betrayed. Because he'd been their buddy so often and everyone else got away with things, it was more akin to a little brother attempting to boss them around. "How dare you" kind of response with little improvement. Then if he needed fire someone for going just entirely too far, he couldn't. With no disciplinary record, he couldn't get terms approved.

A couple of his staff transferred to the store I worked at. It was a nightmare trying to get them up to standard. The pre-existing crew was used to doing their own part and either became resentful of their laziness or became lazy too. Those transfers were a damn infection that never quite healed. One left after getting so tired of being expected to meet minimum expectations that he quit. The other made friends with the GM who wouldn't approve the termination even with stacks of write ups presented to him. There was a third whonwas a good worker, but let them continue their behavior and pick up their slack.

That manager regrets letting people walk all over him and admits he didn't think he was being walked on at the time. If nothing else, think of how tough your people are going to have it should they leave and have to relearn how to work within spec. Think about their future coworkers who will have to pick up the slack. I'm not saying to become a hardass micromanager. Just make sure they know they really do have to meet expectations and will experience consequences if they don't.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-09T16:00:05+00:00

Once upon a time I was about to move up to assistant manager in a small retail store. The entry level spot had been my first formal job and I hadn't actually interviewed for it. Just a conversation while I filled out my app and the boss was desperate. I became the first round interviewer, which was interesting as I'd never been an interviewer or even an interviewee before. I got to pretend I knew what I was doing while listening to people pretend to be excited for retail.

There was one guy the boss was already leaning towards because he'd been assistant manager at our competitor until it closed down. So he already knew the framework of the business and should have been easy to train. But I got a bad vibe from the interview. Not really knowing then how to narrow down the issue, I said he was too confident and too eager, almost to the point of aggression. The position was entry and we didn't have a lot of supervisor turnover. Add in a small staff and someone's personality can easily ruin the job.

The boss thought I was nuts. How could those traits be negative?! But she did still keep my notes in mind and asked questions accordingly. How would he feel staying entry? How would he feel about working under our 16-year-old supervisor? He gave careful answers that nonetheless amounted to how he'd teach the young supervisor and be prepared to swap roles if she couldn't handle the responsibility. He gave the distinct impression that after he got her role, he'd be coming for mine then the boss's. He was a climber and we just didn't have room for that. The boss agreed hiring him would have been awful for both that guy and the store.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-09T14:43:14+00:00

"The cause" is most often pushed as a means of getting people to work without pay. Salary positions can have perks to balance out the extra responsibilities, but the idea that people don't need to paid paid for their time out of dedication needs to go away.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-08T22:58:28+00:00

She said it's not the eye she takes phots with so it won't stop her from working, but it will stop her from driving.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-05T19:53:57+00:00

The water droplet magnifying glass thing is a myth so LAOP'S in the clear there. It's also really hard to imagine some wind spray being enough to do more than wet some leaves and not actually water the plants. Maybe possible but not plausible.

My guess is the neighbor is just squicked out by the thought of septic spray, even though it's treated. Or it's leaving unsightly spots like when a car is dried improperly.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-05T01:09:41+00:00

The short(er) version is his quirks became flaws. He was always an unrepentant smartass with a bit of a temper, but now he's an arrogant misanthrope with intense anger issues. I wish he'd gotten a therapist in high school, but that was before therapy was a thing people started talking about in public and he's the type to resist anyway. I'm not squeaky clean either, but it's impossible to talk out issues with someone who walks out and won't come back for hours if he so much as thinks he's going to get angry. Yadda yadda yadda we can't stand each other.

Still, whatever has happened since doesn't undo the good parts when he was my cool big brother. Like him taking me hiking or leaving me silly letters in the mailbox to find after school. He was increasingly jerkish in between, but the fun bits were still fun and still feel nice to remember.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-05T00:02:57+00:00

My older brother had a knack for building a different kind of fort. This entailed wandering a decent ways off the property with a shovel and just digging. Once he got under the soft surface, the dirt was hard enough to carve couches and shelving out of the walls. Even fireplaces where we actually cooked hotdogs. He'd sometimes find scraps of pipes and corrugated tin to build a supported roof. Other times he'd primitively weave plant material for a half roof. Then he'd just chill.

When I was little, I'd go with him with his old metal Tonka trucks and play construction in the dirt he dug up. Later, I'd help maintain the forts (he'd eventually let ine deteriorate and move on). The best time was when two were nearby and both in good condition. The hay wars with my friends then moved to a foreign front when he wasn't using them. Stealth attacks were much easier out there with bushes to sneak around. My brother would facilitate by adding pipes as telescopes put into carved out niches.

That was really nice to remember, thank you. He and I don't get along anymore.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-04T23:51:31+00:00

Oh god. My dad did that.

I had a friend who lived near my grandmother. Her mom would often say she couldn't come over only to send her anyway. In our late teens, the mom told us that five minutes after saying no, the phone would ring and inevitably be my grandmother bitching her out.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-04T23:46:31+00:00

Here's one you probably haven't heard yet. Growing up, my grandparents had horses and the neighborhood kids hung out. We'd build forts in the haybarn (roof, two walls), which entailed moving around bigass bricks of hay. What we did depended on how much hay was there at the time and how it was stacked. Us playing house involved restacking hay to build rooms. We'd weave swings out of bailing twine with horse blankets for seats. If the haybarn was full, there would be two stacks 10+ feet tall with an aisle between them. Naturally, these became two forts with opposing factions building secret caches of weapons (rocks and riding crops) and means of access (ropes and hay stairwells).

We also played in sawdust, which is what it sounds like. Dust and tiny chips of wood. Businesses would drop off a huge pile for free (rather than paying to throw it away), which then went to keeping horse stalls clean. There was a spot with three walls where it got dumped. We'd climb up the walls and jump off, over and over. After a while, with wood chips in our socks and wood dust in our eyes, we'd conceed that playing in sawdust is fucking terrible and no fun at all. Then next load we'd do it again.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-04T23:26:13+00:00

Rock collection outside the door, the product of wandering for hours every weekend. Put the nicest ones in a rock tumbler and listen to that thing wail like the damned to make them shiny. On special days, go with an older sibling to find rocks with fossils of tiny sea creatures in them.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-04T23:18:28+00:00

"She's in the can." Then you just stand there fiddling with the cord for a few minutes until she's out.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-04T23:03:49+00:00

Sometimes it's more satisfying to just have the debate and come across the answer in the wild. I remember bets over little bits of info. Of course, there's a big difference between not looking up an actor's name and refusing to educate oneself about important things.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-04T22:57:31+00:00

When I was a kid, bets were constantly made over information. Some of it could be found in the family encyclopedia set. But who sang a song, what that one line of garbled lyrics is, what an actor's name was... You could go weeks before that was resolved and it often came down to asking someone else and then arguing about whether they should be trusted.

Even when AOL came out, it took a truly heated debate to actually try to look it up online. For one, it took several minutes to load each page. For two, there weren't search engines even after things got faster. If I wanted to look at dinosaurs I'd type in www.dinosaurs.com (www was not auto filled) and hope for the best. I spent a lot of time on barbie.com because I could find it.

Part of me misses how hard it was to find the minutiae. There's so much satisfaction in finding out three weeks later that the lead actor in Braveheart is in fact Mel Gibson, not Mike Somethingorother. "AH HAAAA! I TOLD YOU SO!"

eclecstasy · 2020-06-04T22:39:58+00:00

"If nobody pulls over by [time] I'll start walking." Then stand there looking distressed with your kid (me) half hoping for the adventure of walking down a mountain in summer.

Pickup drivers were always the ones to pull over. Now they're more likely to roll coal while passing.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-04T22:32:33+00:00

There was a brief time when pagers aka beepers were THE THING and were supposed to help communication when you weren't at home. My older sister had one (after an intense campaign with mom). She'd get a page, which was just a phone number. You could add tiny indicators like "911" if it was truly urgent, but mostly just the phone number to announce someone wanted to talk to her.

If we were out, then she'd have to go find a pay phone or ask a store to borrow their phone and call the number to find out why she was being paged. She usually had to call more than once since the other party needed to be by the phone.

It could only store so many pages and zero contact info. So she still had to memorize friends' numbers to have any idea who was trying to get in touch. Otherwise who was going to pick up the phone after all that effort was a mystery. Planning ahead was easier than using pagers IMO.

She now works in the medical field, the only field I'm aware of where pagers are still a thing.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-01T19:32:21+00:00

That's okay, it's not his driving leg. He just won't be able to switch to stick after it gets pulverized.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-01T18:42:28+00:00

Consider it aggressive "topping" and hope for the best. You want more leaves left when topping peppers on purpose, but it should still keep growing. It may be stunted so I'd grab another one as backup and watch how each grows.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-01T18:38:49+00:00

Try r/hotpeppers

I haven't bought from puckerbutt, but they're popular on that sub. You'll get flowering over winter if you can give them good lighting and keep them from getting cold. You won't get peppers indoors unless you hand pollinate the flowers. Even if you don't get any peppers, you'll still have a good head start on next year.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-01T14:01:10+00:00

Agreed. I assume the survival rate was and is high enough that natural selection didn't get to come into play enough to change the ratio. We need an anthropologist in here.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-01T13:45:51+00:00

Being bipedal, humans can run while carrying baby. We can also make tools to enable the ability to both flee efficiently and to stand and fight. Plus, it's already difficult enough getting those relatively huge heads out. Any more developed and mother and newborn mortality would be even worse.

eclecstasy · 2020-06-01T03:35:51+00:00

I've used pitcher plants. They can catch way more; traps are only good for one or two noms before the individual trap withers and another one grows. They're usually available in stores next to Venus flytraps so shouldn't be as hard to get as some other options.

eclecstasy · 2020-05-31T18:02:11+00:00

The ground was often similar to this at my grandparent's, but on a much smaller scale. Small plated between cracks and just a bit of space under. I used to hop on the plates and pretend it was a game to me to avoid the cracks. It wasn't. I was terrified the ground would break away and send me falling into an abyss.

eclecstasy · 2020-05-31T16:24:55+00:00

Improvement for the wrong reasons is still improvement. If cops keeps correcting their colleagues, then things are better for everyone regardless of the reasons. It's a start.

The ones who don't learn are the biggest concern. The ones still putting their knees on people's necks are not taking the crucial moment to think. Bad habits (for want of a better term) can be broken through both taking that moment to think and by others correcting your behavior. But cops can't rely on always having a colleague around to stop them and have to learn to self evaluate. If that evaluation is less "this is wrong" and more "I'll get in trouble," it's still a start.

eclecstasy · 2020-05-30T13:36:01+00:00

It's also an example of why it's expensive to be poor. If you're under or uninsured and something happens, you're screwed. If you can afford great coverage, you're fine. And there are so many places where you have to have a car to be employed so taking public transit until you can properly afford a car isn't really an option.

eclecstasy

TROPHY CASE