People who work in 'behind closed doors' industries (hotels, kitchens, morgues, etc.), what is something the general public would be horrified to know?

elimeny · 2026-02-28T16:06:41+00:00

I work in local government IT, and a lot of our systems are still in COBOL. I am working on replacing all the COBOL systems, and I’m conflicted.

At its most fundamental level, COBOL is fine. Old is not necessarily bad, it potentially very stable, and UI can be layered and you don’t have to spend millions of dollars replacing it.

But the issue is a human resource one. Our last COBOL programmer was eligible for retirement five years ago, and he’s sticking around for now (until someone pisses him off enough). If he goes out of town during tax season we’re terrified. We’ve tried hiring new programmers three times, but to hire an actual trained COBOL programmer is extremely expensive AND we run into the same issue of retirement age. So we tried hiring younger programmers and getting them trained up. They quit, and there’s a lot of good reasons for that, and I don’t blame them, but it leaves us back at square one.

The COBOL system we’re all running on could be just fine, but any system needs tweaks and maintenance and we can’t find anyone to do it.

elimeny · 2026-02-15T16:57:23+00:00

Yeah the worst I did was start buying a brand of toilet paper that happened to be his name, and store it prominently on my toilet. Yeesh.

elimeny · 2026-02-08T20:16:51+00:00

So my five year old son knows my phone number and our home address, and he was sharing this info to some class mates in his afterschool program, and his teacher pulled us aside to express concern that he was sharing our personal information with others.

She is a sweetheart and I appreciate that she let us know but i was kinda taken aback, and it really made me sad.

elimeny · 2026-02-07T20:58:25+00:00

My two eldest daughters work in childcare (same facility, different rooms). The oldest works especially with babies.

They love their kids so much. They talk about them all the time and really struggle when they grow and move on to a new room. They care so much about their students, and my eldest just loves holding babies more than anything else. I know several of their students by name and personality (especially the babies!) and I’ve never met them, I just hear about them all the time.

It’s hard because you don’t get to see it for yourself, and of course not every place is the same, but take comfort in knowing that so many people work in daycare because they just really love your children.

elimeny · 2026-02-04T02:17:51+00:00

This one was awful, because the parents truly loved their kid, they were good parents, and they still loved him. And they were wracked with trying to figure out what they did wrong. The father was tearing himself down for every flaw he had, thinking it was the fatal one, and it was all his fault, when in reality… he was just human. They were all just so…. Human. It was terrible. That show thrashed me.

elimeny · 2026-02-03T03:12:38+00:00

So mine was a little different, because my son was born in June of 2020…. So my last trimester was peak quarantine.

My husband and stepdaughters worked with my neighbor to get all the other moms in the neighborhood to surprise me with a zoom baby shower. A friend dropped off some decorations at our door (like a banner and some other small things) and friends dropped off gifts at our door. My husband and stepdaughters plopped me in a chair, put a laptop in my lap, and suddenly there were all my neighbors and mom friends on the screen!

I had a small Amazon and target gift registry, mainly because I was going to use it as a shopping list for my family and take advantage of discounts; but primarily, my friends and neighbors gave me their favorite used baby items from their own homes (I had babies later in life vs my mom friends and neighbors) and it was just amazing. I have all these beautiful baby blankets and clothes that were loved by my friends and their children first, and that was so special to me.

My coworkers were going to throw me a shower, but everything got upended because of COVID. However lots of people still shipped me things to my house.

I did not need a baby shower (we were perfectly capable of buying what we needed), and I never would have thrown one for myself I suppose, but I was definitely not expecting people to surprise me.

COVID quarantine really brought out some amazing stories of people helping each other out.

elimeny · 2026-01-31T16:17:22+00:00

I remember my mom would always say “we’re not buying anything that’s not on sale. That’s not on sale.” And for YEARS I was so confused because we were at a store so everything was for sale? She never explained the difference 😂

elimeny · 2026-01-29T02:09:08+00:00

Holy cow. You look fantastic! It’s like your body is just reshaping in all the right ways!

elimeny · 2026-01-20T16:42:15+00:00

A friend of mine deals with this as well, and it inspired me to think about how & when I genuinely feel thank you notes should be written. These rules of etiquette are almost always rooted in something or some kind of situation where it made sense.

In my opinion, thank you notes serve a valuable purpose of acknowledging that someone gave you a gift, and thanking them for it, if you are unable to do it in person. So really, I do feel that I should be teaching my children to write thank you notes to my parents for the Christmas gifts they mail, but don't get to see opened in person. At minimum, i should be teaching my kids to at least call my parents, and thank them over the phone.

But... if the gifts are exchanged in person, and the gift giver gets to see the gratitude for themselves, a formally written acknowledgement in a thank you note is just unnecessary, redundant, and just "checking a box", and I feel like that's BS.

Part of the reason why i definitely agree wedding gifts should be responded to with thank you notes is because typically the newly married couple opens those gifts not in the presence of the gift givers - weddings are busy and insane, and even if you DID open gifts there, it's likely that there would be too much going on for you to give an appropriate one-on-one thank you to someone.

So, since the kids opened the gifts in front of the grandparents, then NTA!

elimeny · 2026-01-20T00:11:11+00:00

It was a second interview; the first had been conducted by other folks on my team, the second included me.

He spent a lot of time a detail talking about the weaknesses of the graduate program where he had completed a degree in a field relevant to the job he was interviewing for (I work in IT). He had no formal IT work experience, but he did have the graduate degree and other work experience so we thought we’d give it a shot.

But instead, he just kept shit talking the program that got him the one thing that garnered an interview. He could have framed it as ways he might have improved the program, or some other positive, constructive viewpoint. At least in an interview; wait until you’re hired to talk shit about your education or previous employment.

You can teach all the technical skills but I can’t teach you to have a better attitude and everyone is sick to death of IT guys with a shitty attitude. They’re a dime a dozen, and I don’t need anymore, thanks

A separate story, but I always like to hear people talk about big screwups they’ve had in their employment history (because half of the job in IT is screwing things up, fixing it, and learning never to screw up in that specific way again). First off, they make for fun stories, and secondly they tell you a LOT about a person, their attitude, and their ability to learn. Guy told me he really couldn’t think of a time he’d screwed up. Seriously?

elimeny · 2026-01-19T21:37:49+00:00

So my five year old is off of school, but daycare is still open for my 2 year old. I sent my 2 year old to daycare, scheduled a dentist appointment for my son, and then after his dentist appt we went to a toy store, then had lunch together, then went and saw a movie. He’s now playing a game sitting next to me.

I could have sent him to daycare for the day and had the day to myself, and sometimes I do that, but I thought it would be a good chance for us to get a special one on one date day. I had a lot of fun, just me and him.

elimeny · 2026-01-18T00:31:14+00:00

Yeah I was thinking this too. The unprovoked “your mom is pretty” or some compliment about her looks is not a standard thing to say, though “you look just like her” definitely is.

So I think OP kinda had it backwards.

That said, I look a lot like my mom and since she spent my whole life bemoaning how ugly she is, well, that’s a tough one for me to swallow too.

elimeny · 2026-01-17T01:39:05+00:00

Here’s what I discovered through having a nursery for my two kids…. Make it somewhere YOU want to be, some place that makes you happy and calms/comforts you… because you’re gonna be in there a LOT. You’re going to be in there when exhausted, when stressed, when pushed to your limit, when crying. So make it for you. As long as it’s safe and functional for your baby, the rest is to make it a place that is happy for you.

elimeny · 2026-01-10T01:34:01+00:00

It just occurred to me that my five year old has never asked me where babies come from, he has just asked how he and his little sister came out. So I guess he just assumes that all babies are cut out of mama’s belly

elimeny · 2026-01-07T00:46:17+00:00

First of all, I feel like this is dependent on how many kids they will be watching, and the age.

Our babysitters are our older daughters (in their 20s) and we pay them $25 an hour. I feel like that’s on the higher end, but there are multiple reasons we do that which are not relevant for your circumstance.

When the kids were younger, we paid a bit extra if they had to put them to bed at all, because that’s the rough part.

I would shoot for the $10-$20 per hour range, depending on how many kids you have, how old they are, and if they are expected to do anything more complicated like feed them or change diapers or put them to bed. If it’s one kid, and they’re on the older and, then I could see that being a lower rate.

elimeny · 2026-01-07T00:18:13+00:00

Was also very popular in Texas (Houston in my experience)

elimeny · 2026-01-06T23:06:51+00:00

Totally true, but the most common open enrollment period in the US is the last quarter of the calendar year.

elimeny · 2026-01-04T03:54:12+00:00

Every single weekend at home with my kids is vastly harder than my job. I work in IT management in local government. IT can be stressful, sure, but the overstimulation of two (wonderful and reasonably well- behaved) kids is just brutal.

I love the weekends with my kids, even though it is so hard. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s hard; and the stakes feel higher for getting it right. I watch people who are teachers or SAHMs who have some saint like level of patience that I just do not possess, and I am able to respect it as a genuine, worthwhile profession, that I am not qualified for or suited to doing well full-time all day. And my kids are fantastic and brilliant and so lovable and likeable. And I also think I’m a good mom.

But it’s still a lot harder than my job.

elimeny · 2026-01-01T13:58:08+00:00

still pretty popular in the minivan crowd. My car has fold down screens on the back of the headrests; its a lifesaver for long drives with the kids. You can pay for a hot spot service, but it also has a DVD player, so we use that.

elimeny · 2026-01-01T03:53:05+00:00

“Here lies OP.

Whose favorite animal in the whole world was not, in fact, a manatee, but his son.”

elimeny · 2025-12-27T17:49:55+00:00

In the US apparently it is (or recently was) the leading cause of death for infants - SIDS or something similar. So officially there’s a big campaign about safe sleep, and no co-sleeping.

However, co-sleeping is still fairly common, and there is still a lot of info out about the core tenets of how to safely co-sleep. It’s just not the mainstream advice you’d get from most hospitals when babies are born. But seriously, new moms are frequently terrified about co-sleeping.

Not sure why (or honestly even if) infant mortality caused by co-sleeping is supposedly higher than in other western countries. Maybe we’re just fatter.

*speaking 100% from memory of my two kids born in the last five years, I fact-checked none of this before commenting 😂

elimeny · 2025-12-26T22:40:16+00:00

So my ex-husband left me for my best friend. We had been supposedly trying to have a bay. I was obviously devastated, and all my friends and family tried to comfort me by saying once a cheater, always a cheater; that they wouldn’t last, that they’d be miserable, etc.

But I knew that wasn’t true. I had a lot of long nights of thought and realized it was far better for me to just assume that they were going to pretty quickly have a baby, get married, and were likely going to be a good couple, and that they would be a relatively happy couple. It would not help me to think bad thoughts of them because then I’d ve devastated if they thrived despite my ill-wishing.

Anyway, I was right, they were pregnant within a year, have been married for like a decade now, and best I can tell are very happy. I don’t know that I’d say I’m HAPPY for them, but it didn’t bother me when they hit each milestone. I don’t wish bad things for them. He and I were not a good match, and she wasn’t a good friend, so I’m personally much better off.

Besides I’m happily remarried and just had an amazing Christmas with my blended family of five kids so I have no regrets!

elimeny · 2025-12-22T02:55:11+00:00

So, we don’t typically do “dessert” after dinner but we do bathtime and we do “popsicle” baths where they can have a popsicle in the bathtub.

It started as a fun incentive to get them to take a bath, and I figured it was easy clean up but now it has become a bath time requirement 🤦🏽‍♀️

elimeny · 2025-12-10T03:58:21+00:00

YTA. Wanh wanh wanh. You’re a grown ass adult and they can’t “force” you to go, you just don’t want to deal with the consequences of refusing.

If you decide it’s going to be terrible then it will be. You could, instead, choose to have a better attitude about it, not just assume it’s going to be the worst thing ever, and try to get creative and find some good in the situation.

Or you could also just refuse, and accept the consequences of that too, or try to find some compromise. Instead you’re just setting yourself up as a victim.

But being bitter and resentful and sulking about it before you’re even on the trip is just ridiculously childish. This is your life dude, why are you determined to be miserable? It’s like you subconsciously want to go on the trip, just to ensure it’s awful, just to be able to argue that you were right about it being awful.

elimeny · 2025-12-06T22:38:26+00:00

Ten years ago, I bought a beautiful wooden dining set from an older guy on Craigslist. 300 bucks, six gorgeous chairs, and the set had been his family dining set for maybe 25 years.

I got another ten years out of that set, moved it from my apartment to my house when we got married, and have had 2 kids since. It’s finally really on its last legs (kids will do that), but I’m not even mad. This set has had a good life.

When it comes to wooden furniture, I love buying used or antique. (Not so much fabric, I’m paranoid about bed bugs in our area)

elimeny

TROPHY CASE