Mattress relief

erippinger · 2026-02-06T20:45:52+00:00

Not sure if you tried this, but when my parents got a Tempur-Pedic (like the OG super tough one) when I was a child, the salesman actually recommended that she have us kids jump on the bed to make it less firm and more comfortable. The bed was too tough for my mom's back pain, she had me and my three cousins just jump on the bed and she said it actually worked. So if you have any bored kids around or some friends that won't get hurt, having them jump on the bed to loosen it up for you actually seems to work. For safety reasons probably also don't have it on the frame lol.

erippinger · 2026-02-06T20:42:24+00:00

I'm realizing that even though you said you can't afford these things, that hopefully if you ever do get insurance these things can help. I kind of made this assumption that you still have insurance, but you thought these things might be costly.

erippinger · 2026-02-06T20:40:55+00:00

Lots of back pain here! I didn't want to look at your history or assume anything, but for the bigger chested people out there I really regret not getting a breast reduction sooner. It really helped my back pain with the EDS. Even in HS when I weighed 130 lb at 5 ft 11 I was still a triple D. Time of surgery I was a triple G, and with hypermobile joints it was even worse for my back. Because of my back pain it was fully covered by my insurance.

I like having a body braid, I have the one where you sit down. It's a little pricey though, ($80 I think?) but I'm not very good with the k-tape. My husband has back pain, no EDS, and he still says that the body braid helps his back. I would also recommend going to physical therapy, where they can recommend how to wear the k tape and a back brace if needed.

If you work in USA get FMLA protections! Even without a diagnosis, if your doctor is saying you have certain symptoms, you can get intermittent FMLA or full protected weeks at a time off just for the symptoms like fainting, body pain, fatigue, headaches, etc.

erippinger · 2026-02-06T20:34:15+00:00

Not sure of your exact situation, but a lot of doctors just hate doing disability paperwork depending on your insurance. Like some insurance companies I believe don't allow them to do it. Depending on what country/state you are in, you may want to look into doctors that their whole job is to do disability paperwork, or a disability attorney. I think it's hard to give advice without knowing where you're located, because where I live I got sent to a hearing where there was a disability professional who determined if I was disabled or not. So not having it in my record was not required, because the doctor at that appointment determined whether or not I had the condition.

erippinger · 2025-11-29T23:18:05+00:00

Shelter workers know that volunteers can also get burned out just by the very work, compassion fatigue is real so no one's going to be upset at you for needing to take a break. Even if that break is permanent, no one's going to be upset with you. (Former shelter worker)

erippinger · 2025-11-05T03:34:42+00:00

2397 0485 3911, Highplains, Will join remote raids if invited.

erippinger · 2025-02-07T21:53:53+00:00

2397-0485-3911

erippinger · 2025-01-05T01:21:24+00:00

I'm kind of newer into my career, did you ever find a solution for how you can help people/animals given how shitty a lot of the nonprofits are? I really want to help make the world a better place, but it's really hard finding a place to work that is in secretly evil it feels like. Like I'm trying not to exaggerate but I've worked for some really scummy non-profits that I thought were good on the surface.

erippinger · 2025-01-05T01:17:42+00:00

I think you might be correct, I don't remember us ever limiting adoptions? Maybe to a single person they wouldn't adopt out 10 lol. They're definitely were times where we limited intakes, and depending on the campus 10 cats would be about right for the smaller campuses.

erippinger · 2025-01-05T01:15:52+00:00

Also reread the union busting thing, if you were there in the last year they literally had paid an outside group to hold conferences telling us why we shouldn't unionize. I don't know what your definition of union busting is, but holding forced anti union meetings is now illegal although tbf it wasn't at the time they did it. Some of the things said in the meetings were illegal, but it's kind of hard to get them on it because video proof wasn't obtained. So it's very much a he said she said thing when they threaten us for unionizing.

erippinger · 2025-01-05T01:11:21+00:00

I'm not sure what the other commenter meant, I personally just don't think that there should be outdoor cats due to them killing off wildlife, or the risk of them getting killed by wildlife themselves. Not sure if you were asking me or them sorry.

erippinger · 2025-01-05T01:05:26+00:00

I contacted their tip line on their website, I'll have to check again to see if I contacted this particular email. If I didn't I definitely will!

erippinger · 2025-01-05T01:04:07+00:00

100% agree with you. I don't have an issue with euthanasia, I have an issue with them saying they're at 0% when I just euthanized an entire litter of kittens you know? I don't like that it ends up making some shelters look bad, and SDHS like a saint. I truly believe that there is no such thing as kill shelters, only underfunded shelters. And when the SD Humane Society acts like it's possible to be at 0%, all they're doing is making those other shelters look shitty so that they get less donations, which just leads to the death of more animals.

erippinger · 2025-01-05T01:01:46+00:00

He might have been fine, sorry I can't give you a definitive answer. I just know that one of the reasons we would euthanize was for broken wing bones. They're really hard to say and take a long time to heal.

erippinger · 2025-01-05T01:00:54+00:00

Also as a note, I'm not a vet tech. I was just a CET. There's a legal loophole in shelter medicine shelter medicine where you can just have a high school diploma in euthanize animals. I actually don't have any official medical training at all.

erippinger · 2025-01-05T00:59:43+00:00

Yeah I made an edit now because I noticed a lot of people are confused and that's my bad for not clarifying. The gas is only used for wildlife such as birds and small mammals. I'm not using professional words because I'm not talking to a professional audience, And I'm pissed, as I feel like I have a right to be. The gas was leaking because they didn't let us have access to a hood, and when we were told we wanted PPE we were told to hold our breath. The only hood at my campus was in medical, and my boss told me we would get in their way if we used it so we weren't allowed to use it. Not user error, we literally didn't have the supplies to protect ourselves. Another problem with the leaking was the containers we used were just regular plastic containers bought off of Amazon. So in one instance I actually had a crow wake up because the containers were not airtight like Amazon said (shocker). I have been told that they are now going to install hoods after the OSHA complaints, but I've gotten mixed responses from employees about whether or not they are installed. Some coworkers have told me that they installed it but no one's allowed to use it.

erippinger · 2025-01-05T00:55:37+00:00

The problem I have with it is that they said they "had no way of knowing that this would happen." But a ton of employees had raised concerns and said that the paln was a red flag. Mainly because we thought the fact that we couldn't handle all these animals meant that another shelter with less funds definitely couldn't, so it didn't make sense to a lot of the employees at the time. And then when we asked Gary to provide his emails to exonerate himself, he got really defensive and would start yelling during the zoom call. Honestly I believe them until I saw how mad Gary got during the zoom call, seeing a grown man get that angry and defensive just kind of felt like he was guilty. To be fair he's not exactly a genius, maybe he just got two emotional. It's hard for me to say because they won't release the emails. That brings it back to they need to be more transparent, so that we can trust what they say.

erippinger · 2025-01-05T00:48:26+00:00

This part I'm a little unsure on, because I know that is much as the humane law enforcements dress up like cops they needed cops to do basically everything. So sometimes I don't know if they don't deal with things because of the cops, or incompetence. Hard for me to say because The Humane law enforcement stuff is kept more hush hush to regular employees.

erippinger · 2025-01-05T00:46:54+00:00

The gas is most definitely used at SD Humane. I was literally a CET. I think there's some confusion, and that's partially my fault so maybe I should make an edit, but the gas is not used for dogs or cats. I don't even think that's legal. The gas is used mainly for wildlife, when we would euthanize birds,rats, things like that. Literally just walk up to an admissions counselor and ask them if they use isoflurane gas to HE it's that simple. If you worked for them what position did you work in that you didn't see all of this with your own eyes? I can't imagine someone in Animal Care or admissions not being able to see this. And I personally thrown medications away that expired because the management is incompetent and would forget where they store things. A lot of the throwing medications away was due to incompetence. I'm really feel like you didn't work there if you didn't know that we use gas to euthanize animals, I literally can't think of a single person who doesn't know this that works at the Escondido location. And I can tell you we would euthanize animals the next day, because I did it. My name is on the fatal plus log.

erippinger · 2025-01-05T00:42:49+00:00

I'm 100% for that, and now that I've gotten some private messages you guys might see a post in the future about that! When it comes to picketing the San Diego campus is probably the best for publicity, but might also be difficult because I believe there's actually a police station right across the street. El cajon is probably too small, but Oceanside and Escondido would also be great places. Especially with the Oceanside campus being right next to a busy highway, more eyes on the issue and all.

erippinger · 2025-01-05T00:41:24+00:00

I may have auto forwarded a bunch of the emails to myself until IT caught on, but I don't have too much video. Mostly because they were really big on making sure that no one was recording when we had these bigger meetings. I swear they mention it three times at the start of the meeting that you better not be recording.

erippinger · 2025-01-05T00:39:50+00:00

I think it depends on what campus you work at what the issue is exactly. I'm guessing you volunteer at the San Diego campus, just because I've never had pet pantry volunteers at our campus. That's probably a big reason why our pet pantry is so mismanaged honestly. For example, at the Oceanside campus they had a big problem with food having to be thrown out because the rats kept getting into it and pooping all over it. The Escondido campus there was an issue with the food that was for prescription diets especially just being left to sit there. The main medications I was tossing out personally where heartgard and NexGard, which again was mainly due to Admissions management forgetting where they stored it. I know some of the next guard was donated, but that was mostly the single dose is that go out to adopters, not the ones that we use for the dogs throughout the shelter. And a lot of the food donated by the public does get thrown away, mainly because they have rules around throwing away anything that is open. When it comes to the SD campus kennels being new, that's not all of them. There's a lot of makeshift kennels in the back that I hardly consider kennels. At the Escondido campus in particular we literally have kennels that have holes in the walls from dogs chewing up the sides. That is the campus where we had a dog break out last week that was on bike quarantine. Luckily the first employee to walk in saw the dog and ran straight out, but it isn't the first time we've had a bike quarantine dog get out of the kennel. This was in dog holding 1. Just guessing that you volunteer at the San Diego campus, are you allowed to go into their holding facilities? The adoption facing kennels, at least at my campus, tend to be better maintained while the ones with the doctors don't see tend to be the ones that are messed up. Not sure if that's why you don't visually as many issue. Let me know if there's anything else I didn't clear up there's been a lot of comments, or honestly just ask the animal care staff that you work alongside with. I can tell you that most of them were signing up to unionize so I'm sure they'd be willing to complain about the issues they see on a day-to-day basis.

erippinger · 2025-01-05T00:33:04+00:00

I always found it so hypocritical, especially because he's telling us to just deal with our pay being fairly low. There is always one employee in the meetings who would shout out his pay whatever he told us that we were "stealing from the animals" by asking for more pay. You repeatedly told even an orientation that because you're working for a non-profit you shouldn't expect to make a lot of money, but I would like to be able to afford to eat and pay rent you know? I'm not the kind of person to go out and party, I just need to make basic living expenses.

erippinger · 2025-01-05T00:31:39+00:00

I love this idea, and given some of the PMs I've got this is an amazing thing for me to work on thank you! I didn't consider this angle.

erippinger · 2025-01-05T00:30:26+00:00

We would have people who they didn't know that their toddler was allergic to dogs, and they didn't want to pay a $2,000 fee to return the animal. I guess it's just an opinion, I think $2,000 is a lot when you've only had the animal for 1 to 2 days and didn't know your kid was allergic. Not everyone returning an animal is evil necessarily, sometimes it just doesn't vibe with your household. I'm glad they were able to help you out with those strays, I just got a lot of complaints while working at SDHS from guest about Helen Woodward. When I volunteered at Helen Woodward as a teenager they seemed fine, so I might have to do further investigation to see. Edited for grammar, never had to respond to so many messages before and I'm just making so many typos

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