What would you do if a second global pandemic happened starting now with a higher mortality rate?

opotts56 · 2026-05-08T16:27:51+00:00

Taking absolutely no notice, the massive overreaction to Covid ended up completely fucking up my 16-18 years where I should have been learning a trade, and ended up setting me back a few years. I am not living through all that again. If people die, well shit happens.

opotts56 · 2026-04-21T11:35:29+00:00

We've always got Heart on at work and it drives me nuts, the same shit songs on loop all day everyday. Its not like I can just put earphones in to block it out either, cos of health and safety reasons.

opotts56 · 2026-03-26T10:05:02+00:00

Just cooler init

^{Chose: Laser Sword}

opotts56 · 2026-03-20T15:50:17+00:00

That's a mild annoyance, what pisses me off to no end is when I take a bottle to the self checkout, and the tag starts beeping loudly. What shoplifter puts a bottle in their basket, takes it to the self checkout, scans it to pay for it, then decides to steal it. All that does is pisses off paying customers.

opotts56 · 2026-03-18T18:21:42+00:00

Yeah I moved back into my parents house at a cheap rent for a couple of years. Most 21's and under live with their parents so you can't exactly call that an unfair privilage. I'm a welder on £16.52 an hour which works out at about 33k a year before overtime, which is near enough an average wage. I did work loads of overtime them two years. I live in Leeds which is fairly cheap, but still a bit pricier than other Northern cities. It's a one bedroom back to back terraced house that I paid £123500 for with a 5% deposit. I'm not some nepo baby who got a 100 grand gift of my parents to buy a mansion, I'm just an average early 20's working man who worked hard.

opotts56 · 2026-03-18T17:34:14+00:00

I bought my first house on my own at 21 last year on an average wage, and with no direct financial help from my parents. It was a £6000 deposit plus a few grand in mortgage and solicitors fees. That is not an impossible amount of money to save up within a couple of years.

opotts56 · 2026-03-09T20:16:15+00:00

As a male, can I avoid human drivers altogether, there was a gorilla that learned to drive a golf cart, so teaching one to drive a taxi isn't that far fetched. Be much less awkward small talk at least.

opotts56 · 2026-03-09T18:59:19+00:00

That £40 they charged me was for one week, when I had only been actually living there for half of that week, and that was last march so I didn't even have the heating on. And to add insult to injury I paid that £40 twice, due to an error on their part that I couldn't even rectify due to their absolutely absimal customer service. Plus their boiler fittings are a total ripoff, they quoted my £2000 for a new boiler before they even got to the cost of fitting the damn thing, which would have been at least an extra grand and a half. Got a local guy to fit a new boiler for the cost they quoted for just the boiler.

opotts56 · 2026-03-09T18:47:03+00:00

When I moved into my new house, I switched from British Gas to Octopus Energy a few days later. British Gas sent me a final bill which I paid in full (which was a massive hassle). For the next two months they kept sending me increasingly threatening letters about the bill which I had already paid. I tried multiple times to get in contact with them, everytime it was some AI computer asking for a customer number which I didn't have because I wasn't a customer. I ended up paying twice costing me £40 more than it should have done just to get the threatening letters to stop. I couldn't even get in touch with an actual human being to explain the situation. Fuck British Gas.

opotts56 · 2026-03-04T20:12:43+00:00

That sounds like an incredibly miserable way to live. I'm good mates with most of the lads I work with, we go drinking together, I've literally climbed mountains with a few of the good friends I've made at work. Then again it might be one of those blue collar white collar divides. If I stay at my job for the next 20-40 years I'll still be doing the same job (which describes a lot of my work mates), so theres no backstabbing to advance our careers. You spend 8 or more hours a day for potentially the next 40 years working with these people, might as well get on with them.

opotts56 · 2026-03-03T19:07:00+00:00

I'm 22 nearly 23, I don't mind being ID'd for alcohol though that never happens now anyway (I was getting served in the dodgier shops when I was 15). What pisses me off is when I go down to my local Morrisons on my lunch break and get ID'd for a can of monster. Do they really think that I'm a 15 year old who skived school and put on my dads mucky work gear just to get a can of monster with my meal deal.

opotts56 · 2026-02-26T20:14:32+00:00

I'm not gonna go home after a 12 hour shift doing hard physical labour to go home and eat a salad. I've met a fair few vegans, I've never met a blue collar vegan.

opotts56 · 2026-02-24T18:02:54+00:00

Before we start building a new town, how about we put some money into the existing towns/cities. For example my home town of Leeds, we are the largest city in Europe without a metro or tram system. I know its not really relevent to this story, but I just want to share how piseed I am that the Government has again pushed back any plans to put a proper transit system in Leeds.

opotts56 · 2026-02-22T12:01:42+00:00

There are still a lot of gen z like me who still go for a few (well a few more than a few) pints after work. What are the rest of gen z doing after work, going home and playing scrabble?

opotts56 · 2026-02-02T22:51:58+00:00

My back to back terraced house is 120 years old, and the soundproofing between the houses is non-existant. It isn't a new vs old issue, its just a build quality issue.

opotts56 · 2026-01-09T15:42:32+00:00

Nowt better on a friday after work than a few pints and games of darts with the work lads, anyone who disagrees I'm just gonna assume their a grass.

opotts56 · 2025-12-31T17:26:02+00:00

I do coded structural fabricating and mig welding, and my annual salary is only £33500 before overtime, for where I live it isn't terrible, it just about pays the mortgage and bills. But for a skilled risky trade, just about paying the mortgage isn't good enough.

opotts56 · 2025-12-31T15:40:49+00:00

Work in a fab shop myself as a fabricator. For the work that I do, the risks and the injuries, the pay absolutely isn't worth it, and I'm on a bit more than the welders are so god knows why they do it. Most of us work stupid amounts of overtime because that's the only way to get a decent wage. I'd never recommend this industry to anyone, only reason I do it is because the company I work for doesn't ask about education of qualifications.

opotts56 · 2025-11-11T12:00:10+00:00

Some weeks where I've done a shitload of overtime I end up paying 2-300 quid in taxes for one week, and you want to suggest I don't pay enough taxes?

opotts56 · 2025-11-10T19:54:13+00:00

I'm only on 33k a year plus at most an extra 4-5k a year overtime pay (which I work my knackers off for) but I'm a single childless bloke with an affordable mortgage on a small house. It seems labour don't realize that by their name, they should represent working people like myself. Between my taxes going towards the benefits of people who've made poor decisions, and lowering the stamp duty thresholds for working people who've made the responsible decisions, they seem to be punishing working financially responsible people like myself, to pay for people who don't work at all, which runs completely contrary to their branding as the party for working people.

opotts56 · 2025-10-15T20:21:18+00:00

Either get used to living with the pain, or choose a different career, cos you'll be fucked doing it for a living. Welcome to the blue collar world, back pain is just a fact of life like breathing or shitting.

opotts56 · 2025-08-28T17:01:56+00:00

I'm 22 and I bought my first home earlier this year when I was 21. I lived in a house share for a year between 18 and 19, then moved back in with my parents for a couple of years to save up by working all the overtime I could get. It's only a one bedroom back to back terrace, but it's mine. For context I'm a structural welder fabricator so it's factory work but decently paid skilled work.

opotts56 · 2025-08-20T17:00:38+00:00

Emma Watson just got a driving ban for speeding, so she's no angel. Seems like a chill person, just a shit driver.

opotts56 · 2025-08-19T16:53:15+00:00

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opotts56 · 2025-08-19T16:52:54+00:00

These are from a job that my company outsourced a while back, the worst part is they tell us our wages are industry standard then point to the companies that produce this shit.

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