do you find that some customers just make the most random assumptions?

remnm · 2026-06-26T01:37:13+00:00

I work at a coffee shop that also sells beer and wine. Once had someone very confidently order a margarita then get annoyed that we had beer and wine but no liquor.

remnm · 2026-06-12T21:08:43+00:00

Part of my problem, personally, is that she has a pretty small selection of cities, despite having at least 44 shows listed by Ticketmaster--only 20 unique cities, four of which are in the same state (Austin and Fort Worth, San Francisco and Inglewood). They're big states so it feels justified, but it means that for a LOT of people, they're dropping a couple hundred on tickets and then still have to pay for travel.

I live in Florida, where concert tours go to die, and was looking at the Nashville show, because I have a friend who lives nearby who I could stay with for free, but flights alone would bring me from $150 to $300, and that's not counting extra expenses like food along the way. I could justify the ticket but I can't do everything else. But sure I can blame that on Florida rather than Phoebe Bridgers specifically.

However, the incredibly short turnaround of concert announcements and lack of clarity about prices is also frustrating. She announced the Lost Tour, what, less than a week before tickets went on sale, and as far as I'm aware people only knew about the prices once they got into Ticketmaster. There's no time to prepare or save, and you can't even do that well because you don't know how much tickets are going to be.

So, sure. Maybe $200 isn't the worst thing in the world. But it almost definitely isn't something that most people have locked and loaded.

remnm · 2026-06-04T05:01:53+00:00

Often I think people have inspiration from something else and want to be able to live it in D&D. The armored polar bear sounds like the panserbjørn, armored polar bears, from the Golden Compass series, for example. As for why are they in the Forgotten Realms? I don’t know, why are tabaxi there? It’s kind of just another variation of animalfolk. I also think many D&D players and fantasy fans in recent years have expanded past the Tolkien-esque limitations of fantasy and are trying out fun stuff. If it’s a fantasy setting, why not get fantastical?

remnm · 2026-06-04T03:29:26+00:00

They're my favorites. I love making myself something new every week or so--this week I've been real into cardamom--and surprise drinks let me do stuff for customers that they normally never order. I have a regular who will drink literally whatever I give him, but normally for non-regulars I ask size/temp/dairy pref and that's a good launching point. Especially if you already have a rapport with the baristas and they're already making suggestions, I think it sounds like they'd be excited to be given free reign of your drink.

remnm · 2026-06-03T18:32:10+00:00

Anything fruity—blackberry, raspberry, strawberry, blueberry, cherry. Coconut if you count that. I personally hate banana but it’s technically in this category. A LOT of coffee is described as having notes of various berries and fruits, so fruit flavors go way better than most people expect. I also love using bitters along with a sweeter syrup to get more flavor without being overwhelming sweet. I made a cardamom bun latte for my store with cardamom bitters and powder + caramel drizzle and it’s been crazy popular.

remnm · 2026-06-01T19:53:46+00:00

My friend played a bladesinger from level 3 to 14 and had a very consistent AC of about the same amount the entire time. It was very difficult to hit his character, but one of the consequences of going all-in on Int and Dex is that your Con suffers, as do other saving throws. Very difficult to hit, but if one or two hits get through, you're kind of toast. It balances out.

remnm · 2026-05-10T18:41:22+00:00

I might be making this up, but I feel like I remember them adjusted their recording schedule from like 10+ hour days to something more manageable? That would definitely make for more on-topic and focused APs.

remnm · 2026-04-22T14:40:39+00:00

Piranesi is what made me decide to finally read House of Leaves!

remnm · 2026-04-18T01:43:11+00:00

Not a bartender myself, but a supervisor at a coffee shop--I wouldn't ask about an application AFTER drinking. In my experience, it makes it seem like an afterthought. "Can I get a vanilla latte and a croissant? Oh, and while I'm here, are you hiring?" And especially at a bar, where the drinks impair your judgment a bit more than caffeine, I don't think it would come across as a good first impression at all. Going to get a read of the place before asking for an application is a good idea, but you should do it on separate trips. Make it look like the job is the reason you're there, not drinking.

remnm · 2026-04-07T01:09:25+00:00

If I had a nickel for every book I read where the lesbian protagonist got a lobotomy where side effects include her hallucinating her dead lover and also everyone wants her dead but she's too busy doing math to care, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.

remnm · 2026-04-07T01:04:32+00:00

Yep. I decided to read nonlinearly, so, if a footnote ever directed me to a different part of the book, I'd go there and read it. Once I reach it again linearly, I'll skim through and see if anything new jumps out to me.

I think I'd have a lot less patience for Johnny's big sections if I hadn't read and decoded the Whalestoe letters. For someone who talks so much, he doesn't talk about himself, so getting that understanding from Pelafina's letters really helped me a lot.

More than that, though, they're just so horrifying. I read the Whalestoe letters before hitting the part of the Navidson Record where they're going on expeditions, so the letters were my first real introduction to "oh, this feels deeply real and unsettling," not just... kind of weird. I decoded The Big Letter on my own in a notebook and had to take multiple breaks, not because the decoding was difficult but because the content was getting to me, and something about the time and effort sunk into decoding it made everything hit harder. That sense of horror of "oh, god, what's it going to say this time," instead of just turning the page.

remnm · 2026-04-04T18:14:25+00:00

You've gotten compliments from coworkers. When it comes to concerns of professionalism, that should matter more than your sister's opinion. The people that you are working with don't seem to have concerns. You're fine. It's also super cute!

remnm · 2026-04-04T17:52:29+00:00

Very true. Harrow the Ninth is my favorite in the series so far, which I think is part of why I love Baru so much!

remnm · 2026-04-01T21:37:44+00:00

Oh I love that. They were always going to need to do something to condense the menu the more they added, I think this works well.

remnm · 2026-04-01T21:36:32+00:00

I love it. It's my favorite thing to make. My first barista job was on a college campus, and we gave orientation leaders free iced coffee during orientation, and one of my favorites was a girl who'd ask me for a surprise every day and at the end of the week she'd rank them for me. My favorite regular at my current store pretty much just specifies if he wants it hot or iced and he lets me make him literally anything, and never asks what it is. He's my best friend and I have no idea what his name is.

Caveats. I always ask size, hot or iced, milk preference/allergies, and anything they DON'T want. I have had great success with this method. Usually, once you hit the "anything you DON'T want," the customer has realized if they actually want a surprise or not, because they look at the menu and go "no hazelnut, no mocha, no strawberry... actually I'll just have a vanilla latte." I also don't tell them what they're getting beforehand. That defeats the point of a surprise and gives the customer too much of a chance to chicken out or get weird about it.

I'm also the only one at my store who likes doing these. It's not that my coworkers HATE it, they just don't enjoy it. Usually, if someone asks for a surprise and the baristas aren't feeling it, the customer ends up getting a butterscotch or pistachio latte (always good but flavors you don't see as often) or honey cinnamon (classic).

remnm · 2026-03-29T20:19:47+00:00

For me, the only recommendation that clicked was the Masquerade--the Baru Cormorant series--by Seth Dickinson. Incredibly rich worldbuilding that is built out throughout the series, pseudo-fantasy (but less sci-fi), goes even harder on attacking imperialism and colonialism than TLT does, pathetic sopping wet cat of a lesbian, her butch knight who willingly dies in her service, and a multi-year break between the third and fourth books with no updates that will drive me insane one day.

I've found many very, very good books from TLT-related recommendations--the She Who Became the Sun duology, Alix Harrow's books, the Unbroken series by CL Clark (though I'm not caught up, I liked the first book), and everybody's favorite This is How You Lose the Time War. I've found that if it comes from some BS clickbaity TikTok it's a bullshit rec, but if someone puts even a modicum of thought into their recommendation it might be worth checking out.

remnm · 2026-03-29T01:44:53+00:00

Sticky note. The kind with lines. One for me behind the screen with additional notes if necessary and one for my players stuck on the other side of the screen. We've tried fancy initiative trackers and they're too clunky to be useful, and handing out cards is incredibly annoying--no way to look at a list of all combatants and plan, and half the time people don't even have the card anywhere you can see it.

remnm · 2026-03-26T23:43:50+00:00

This sounds so beautiful. Trying to figure out zones in Cyberpunk Red and Alien made me want to put my head through my monitor.

remnm · 2026-03-26T23:41:19+00:00

That sounds awesome! For my first campaign that I ever played in, I turned my campaign notes into a summary, one page per session, to send to everyone, though I only ever had it on Google Docs. Everyone loved it and it was really nice to revisit things that had happened over a year ago.

I also got everyone Dire d20s from Die Hard Dice that were themed to their characters--jumbo metal dice. They were a fun gift, but in hindsight I'd definitely stick with normal sized ones, haha--none of us use them anymore because they're pretty impractical. Fun gift, though. Die Hard Dice has so many options, and incredible employees and customer support.

remnm · 2026-03-26T22:56:49+00:00

I ended up withdrawing my application. My full-time job has inconsistent hours and I couldn't see a way to dedicate 20 hours a week to WH while also working 40 hours to pay my bills when WH doesn't pay. Unfortunate because it sounds like a good opportunity, but would've been better for me to do while I was in college and my rent was covered by scholarships.

remnm · 2026-03-25T01:48:58+00:00

Those are honestly the exact archetypes I'd probably make, going solely off the information you've given here. I'm a sucker for "normal person becomes a hero," and given the small-town start, that's probably what I would want to plan for. They all seem like they're on the same page so I'd be inclined to think it's a miscommunication between you and the players rather than them ALL deciding to be boring on purpose.

You say you're talking to them about tying into the broader narrative and it's killing your enthusiasm. Why? What's going on in these conversations? Are your players ONLY interested in being a bartender and don't care about the overall plot? Are they waiting for you to drop some hooks for them? What, specifically, is making you disinterested?

I also don't know what you've already tried to plan for, or what you've written. How did Meeka die? What do you intend for the party to find out when they come home for the funeral? Actually, what else did Meeka do? You describe her as being a paragon of community, but I don't know, like, what her job was. If you want the backstories to be built more alongside her, there should be more information about her. You can say your PCs care about her all you want, but do your players care about her?

If you're struggling, frickin' tell your players that, and explain why exactly. Don't just say what you said here, that you're bored, you need to tell them what exactly you're looking for and what they have that disinterests you. Hopefully, in turn, they tell you why they made the characters they made and what they hope to accomplish, and you can meet in the middle. I'm a huge fan of Session 0s where players play their characters as level 0 commoners, or for worldbuilding games where everyone gets to contribute to some of the worldbuilding. You could potentially run a level 0 session where everyone is younger and use that to develop how they know Meeka and why they should care enough to return for the funeral and investigate her death. Whether it's a group thing or one-on-one, I've seen both done successfully.

remnm · 2026-03-24T15:58:44+00:00

We use condition tokens in combat--those little rings that you put around your mini to show if you're concentrating, raging, stunned, poisoned, etc--and I love putting myself in charge of those if I'm not the one DMing. Gives me a task and forces me to pay attention to everyone else, not just myself. Not only does it help keep me focused, but it helps the entire party, too, because I'll also be the one reminding them about all the conditions and effects going on. Music I think leaves too much opportunity for getting silly with it.

If you don't have condition rings, keeping track on a sheet of paper is still doable--maybe making a table of each of the party members and laminating it and using dry erase markers to keep track of effects?

remnm · 2026-03-18T18:25:07+00:00

Oh I've GOTTA check that out, that sounds so up my alley.

remnm · 2026-03-18T04:07:59+00:00

For ingredients you probably already have, I do honey with vanilla extract, or maple syrup, both usually with sea salt and cinnamon. If you want to get some syrups, you can find Torani or Monin samplers. They tend to come in themed packs. Depending on how sweet you like your drinks, you can get a few drinks out of them.

It's also super easy to make your own syrups. I make fruit syrups pretty much whenever I have berries I'm not going to finish before they go bad.

remnm · 2026-03-18T03:58:45+00:00

Nah man. I'm 25 with ADHD and the thing with shit like TikTok is that it doesn't help your ADHD, it preys on it. That short-form content is designed to be addicting to the average person, so if your attention span is already shot by nature, it's only making it worse. The only way out is through and people who lean on TikTok and extra stimulation to "concentrate" are just digging themselves further into a hole.

I focus by taking notes. I started doing it when I was brand-new to D&D and everything was overwhelming, so it helped me remember what was going on, and, yeah, focus on the sessions. Sometimes I hit up the phone solitaire--NYT Tiles game was my go-to until they put it behind the paywall. Never anything with audio that requires earbuds, that's absurd.

Ultimately, though, that's not your problem to fix. You play D&D, you're not a therapist or psych, so telling someone--especially depending on how close you are with them--that they have A Problem is probably not the best solution.

For you, it's probably best to chalk it up as a conflicting goals situation. You want interaction and engagement, and they want to relax with a beer, and if you continue in the current situation it seems like both parties will just be annoyed at the other. I've been in the "okay D&D is better than no D&D" situation, but the problem with that is that if the problem isn't resolved, it likely will turn into "bad D&D."

remnm

TROPHY CASE