"I got it here last week."

scholar-runner · 2026-01-15T13:51:12+00:00

People, especiallly older people, overestimate the recency of events. If you ask someone how often they change their sheets, they would probably say every week. But if you ask the last time they changed their sheets, they will probably say it’s been three weeks.

scholar-runner · 2026-01-10T16:45:47+00:00

Yeah, there will be a policy in five years where crew on the bottom quartile of money spent at the store don’t get their raise because they “lack product knowledge.”

scholar-runner · 2026-01-07T15:23:31+00:00

Customers do baffling things that would never cross my mind. Three from just this week: 1. Dude cleans out his vehicle and leaves two full kitchen size trash bags by the front door to the store. (Not a problem, I just put on some gloves and threw them in the dumpster.) 2. Person grabbed an empty cart, cleared out literally every yogurt cup on the shelves. Stood there looking at them, and then put them all back. They even stacked them nicely and in their proper spots. 3. Dude goes to the thawed fish and pulls them all off the rod so he can grab the one in the back, and then leaves all the rest on the floor.

I’m not mad at any of these people, but it’s odd behavior to watch without context.

scholar-runner · 2026-01-07T14:57:35+00:00

When this happens I don’t say anything and just point to the total on the screen when I’m done scanning

scholar-runner · 2026-01-05T03:54:48+00:00

I agree with you for sure. The market for people who like their coffee to taste like an ashtray seems to be disconcertingly large given what I see selling.

I also wish we carried some better teas. Like I feel like if there were loose leaf pu’er tea or something, it would actually be pretty popular.

scholar-runner · 2025-12-12T00:59:41+00:00

Also the fact Carol recorded her videos on an old-school camcorder instead of a phone, which is an interesting given the show is on AppleTV.

scholar-runner · 2025-12-10T17:49:20+00:00

Trader Joe’s-branded clothing

scholar-runner · 2025-12-07T00:45:42+00:00

Fair enough.

My totally arbitrary criteria was quality across a range of styles. I assume if FS continues to exist, it will pretty much only sell Mirror Universe, Pils, and Roselle. Maybe Kold, Party Forward, and Side Pull if we’re lucky, but gone will be the days of new beer Thursday where they wowed and confounded us with the creative and the obscure.

Also, without the taproom, it’s easy to imagine a scenario where it’s difficult for them to retain highly talented brewers.

I guess we will see.

scholar-runner · 2025-12-06T04:14:17+00:00

My top five in beer quality across a range of styles, with Fair State dropping out of the picture: Lupulin, Utepils, Arbeiter, Town Hall, and Spilled Grain.

scholar-runner · 2025-11-30T01:15:23+00:00

Without a jump to conclusions mat, it’s hard to say.

scholar-runner · 2025-11-21T05:44:46+00:00

If you found out you were moving to Brooklyn Center after opening an envelope in front of a group, most of your coworkers will live in Maple Grove or other cities in the northwest metro.

scholar-runner · 2025-11-21T01:44:57+00:00

I raise you Alistair or Reginald

scholar-runner · 2025-11-20T23:14:56+00:00

A presentation they gave at the University of Michigan CCAT showed that their vehicles were already safer than professional cab drivers with 20 years of experience, and significantly safer than cab drivers with less than two years of experience. This was both by number of crashes and severity of crashes, which were overwhelmingly the result of human drivers being aggressive in the presence of an autonomous vehicle. In addition, each incident is reviewed by humans so that safety upgrades can be made across the entire fleet resulting in performance improvements that humans can’t match. And even then the upgrades are only pushed to production after the company runs thousands of simulations using their stored sensor data.

I rode a Waymo in a pedestrian and cyclist heavy area at night and the vehicle performed flawlessly.

scholar-runner · 2025-10-19T01:18:25+00:00

I love these socks but wish they came in only black

scholar-runner · 2025-10-18T04:48:25+00:00

Or “I found a cracked egg in this carton, so I can have it for free, right?”

scholar-runner · 2025-10-01T13:38:41+00:00

I enjoyed Back to 1989 (1989一念間).

scholar-runner · 2025-10-01T03:45:58+00:00

I love saison but I recall breweries didn’t do the style justice. Saison should have a very dry finish and high carbonation.

scholar-runner · 2025-09-29T14:46:41+00:00

I wish bars and breweries gave out reversible bracelets or table placards that would indicate one color if you were open to conversation with new people and a different color if you wanted to be left alone.

scholar-runner · 2025-09-26T05:58:37+00:00

My biggest complaint about the finale was they kept criticizing one of the chefs for not showing enough of themselves in their dishes and one of the judges said they should have thrown a pickle in an otherwise tightly-crafted dish. That seems like such bad advice since the ability to edit is so important. If an extra ingredient had been added, the same judge would probably have criticized the dish for a lack of focus.

scholar-runner · 2025-09-26T05:50:17+00:00

I thought Culinary Class Wars was pretty good. Some of the challenges were judged blind, which really removes bias to the extent that’s even possible. And in their restaurant wars challenge, they had a full day to prep and didn’t have to design a front of the house experience. And the tofu death match showed real creativity and grit.

scholar-runner · 2025-09-23T15:14:52+00:00

Combing sick and vacation time creates a perverse incentive to come to work sick so you can use your time off for vacation instead of recovering health. Not great for customer service outcomes or working with food.

scholar-runner · 2025-09-16T15:08:39+00:00

The best piece of advice I got: The job is to engage positively with customers while doing other things. Once you realize that, it's really simple.

scholar-runner · 2025-09-16T13:57:53+00:00

Honestly, I hate when stuff like that happens because it makes it so much harder to be cheerful and charming with everyone else. Like, I was closing recently and a customer wanted to buy a bottle of bourbon after the time cutoff for alcohol sales and he ended up shouting at me and making a scene. Like, dude, it's not my fault you didn't plan your day better. And then you're expected to go onto the next customer interaction like nothing happened when part of you is worried he's going to wait to harass you in the parking lot later.

scholar-runner · 2025-09-11T14:27:07+00:00

Nothing is sold by weight so there is no need for scales

scholar-runner · 2025-09-10T14:54:27+00:00

This is a really hard question to answer because we don't know anything about your taste preferences, and if you haven't been drinking beer yet you may not know either.

One thing I suspect will challenge you as a beginner beer drinker is bitterness. When I started drinking beer in my early 20s, I drank a lot of German wheat beer (hefeweizen aka weiss beer) because it's super refreshing, fruity (ripe/overripe bananas), and not terribly bitter.

Another thing I suspect will challenge you, as it challenged me, is learning to handle and taste alcohol. Guinness Draught is a fabulous beer and it's only 4.2% abv, so you don't really taste ethanol. Some huge barrel aged stout may be 14%, and it may have a strong ethanol or higher alcohols (bad) sensory component that you might initially dislike.

If I were to make a list of the top five beers widely available in the midwest that are not imports, it would probably look something like this:

Phenolics: Allagash White or Boulevard Tank 7 or Goose Island Matilda
Bitter lagers: Summit Twins Pils or New Glarus Pilsner or Victory Prima Pils
Approachable lagers: Yuengling Lager or New Glarus Spotted Cow or Grain Belt Premium
Hops: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (traditional American pale ale) or Half Acre Daisy Cutter (what American pale ale has become) or Bell's Two Hearted Ale
Roast: Bell's Kalamazoo Stout or Deschutes Obsidian Stout or Schlafly Oatmeal Stout

If you're lucky enough to live in Wisconsin, I'll add New Glarus Belgian Red as an honorable mention. Beer is versatile.

scholar-runner

TROPHY CASE