Story Time:

Working in retail is really fun, and the times when major fuck-ups happen, they can be either anxiety-attack inducing, or make it possible to get through the rest of your god-awful shift with a smile depending on the customer. My all-time favorite absolute fuck-up is as follows:

This kind woman is just doing her thing. She scans her membership card from her keychain. The register beeps to acknowledge the scan. We continue as usual. Neither of us notice right away, but after I’ve scanned a few more items, I hear a very quiet, “Um,” from the lady, very polite. I look at her. She is looking at the screen of my register, blinking. I, too, look.

And lo and behold. There is a charge of over four-thousand dollars ($4,000) worth of garlic bread staring us in the face. There are no words for a minute. We’re just… in awe. How did this happen? How the hell did this happen?

She didn’t even have garlic bread in her cart.

I sputter a partial apology - I was incapable of forming actual sentences in the moment - and try to void the garlic bread. Since there was no garlic bread to scan, I try to manually remove $4,000-some from this transaction.

Well, the registers don’t like it when you try to void off more than five dollars ($5) from a transaction, so naturally it pings my manager for confirmation, but she’s not by her pager.

At this point, both myself and the lady are just… dumbfounded. She’s not even mad. I’m not even all that embarrassed. Both of us are just looking at the screen. There’s a bit of laughter, but it’s mostly just… confusion.

I have to call through the whole store for my manager on the intercom because she’s not answering. She shows up, ready to override and void it, when she too, sees what exactly is being voided.

“What… did you do?”

“I genuinely. Have literally. No. Idea.”

She voids it, and I go to finish the transaction and tell the woman her total (minus the garlic bread). My register pings. It tells me that she hasn’t scanned her membership card. Odd. I distinctly remember her doing that. The woman goes to scan her card again, and I notice that her library card is stuck to her membership card. I tell her gently, and she separates the two and scans her card.

My manager, hovering nearby still, sees this and says, “I think it mistook the barcode of her other card for garlic bread, and the remaining digits were read as the price.”

And that’s when the laughter really came over us. There were no hard feelings at all. In fact, the woman was incredibly glad that the receipt still showed the garlic bread and the voiding of. I will remember it until the end of time, my only regret in the entire situation being that I didn’t take a damn picture, because she has proof and I don’t. But I swear to God it happened.

TDLR; Library Card Charged $4,000 of Garlic Bread.

that’s just how valuable library cards are. each one is worth at least $4000 of garlic bread

A picture is worth a thousand words, a library card is worth $4000 worth of garlic bread, if we can figure out how many words the average library card can check out at once, we can probably work out a picture-to-garlic bread conversion here, too.

I am the harbinger of good vibes and nice times

not really!

I am the horseman of the chillpocalypse

not really!

I sow seeds of trust and friendship

JAR (Joel Arthur Rosenthal) sheep head hair clip

Pearl, sapphire, aluminum, silver, gold

i want to go to everywhere and see everything. 0 dollars please

theres probably types of rocks ive never seen before on other continents. styles of architecture we dont have where i live. i've never seen a volcano before i've never been to a rainforest. i want to go to the mariana trench. at least 10 years of human history and ive only gotten to see tiny remnants of it in person. i want to meet the humble snow mountain robin. is the pacific ocean a different color than the atlantic? what about the indian and arctic and antarctic oceans? theres 8 billion people on earth and i have not met very many of them. i want to see everything in the world

i want to see everything in the world and i cant because among other reasons its expensive and not physically possible and sometimes its rude to show up places and poke around and sometimes im just not allowed to (snow mountain robin i respect your hyperspecific range of certain mountain peaks in a restricted area in indonesia. but youre so so so cute. i wish i could deliver this message to you. i love you.) i want to see the midnight sun in the arctic circle and the different angles of the moon at different latitudes i want to see the trees in the tropics and subtropics i want to see the desert wildlife i want to see all the mountains and canyons i want to see the varying architecture of different regions and i especially want to see the birds everywhere and i CAAANNNTTTT!!!!!!! :(

sometimes i really feel like i can "outsmart" being autistic and insane via my powers of reason and rationality. like sweetie that's like thinking the oregano in your pasta sauce can outsmart the basil. IT'S THE SAME FUCKING SAUCE!!!!!!

i call myself out in the OP and then you call me out EVEN MORE In the tags snjdkfhakjJKFHJKFDJSJFDSK

Marcel Baschet

I know I already made a post to this effect but it's so baffling to me when someone defends the fact that headphone jacks are slowly but surely getting phased out by smartphone manufacturers with some variations of "wireless headphones are more convenient anyway" bc like. If we're talking about convenience what I like about wired headphones is that they conveniently have a single plug that makes the same damn pair of headphones universally compatible with every single audio-output-capable device I own, from my phone and my computer to my fucking gameboy and my casette player, it doesn't get any more convenient than that.

All this discourse over who does "painting with light"

Hiroshi Nagai's paintings need sunglasses to look at.

They look like how it feels to walk across a parking lot on a 98° summer day without a speck of shade in sight.

They look like heaven but also like you'd burn your bare feet on the ground.

Even when you can see shade you know it's not enough and the minute you step out you'll be burnt to a crisp like a vampire.

And it's BEAUTIFUL

I'll throw in the wonderful Eizin Suzuki into this ring too, a man whose work just breathes light without actually using dynamic lighting in the usual way. It's no surprise both Nagai and Suzuki are both considered prolific in art pertaining to the city pop genre because they're able to paint these kinds of scenes with a delicate touch.

This feels like I could trip on that radio and fall right into that water, feeling the crystal waves as I drop in.

And this, a nice stroll down a resort strip, where my sunscreened skin could literally feel cooked if I leaned too close to the tiling.

And then a nice stretch of summer street, wherein you could see your face in the flushed red of that car provided it didn't blind you from its sunny reflections.

I don't think I even need to say anything more, Suzuki's a massive influence in how he even places colours so warmly in such unorthodox manner. It's a naturally sunkissed talent~ 🌊

following my recent vow to "look things up" when i want more information on something, i looked this the fuck up and am SO glad i did because there is so much delightful information about this cat out there:

Really funny one two punch on my dash this morning

Sorry to get preachy outta nowhere but if you are a person who's never had a phobia PLEASE don't say shit like "it's not dangerous" or whatever because phobias, especially IRRATIONAL phobias, don't fucking work like that.

I personally have a specific phobia that, when triggered, used to make me spasm and hyperventilate and cry, and it was super embarrassing because I was fully aware that there was nothing really wrong. You can experience the effects of a phobia while objectively knowing you're safe! And STILL I would get people telling me to chill out cause I was fine.

I've gotten better at managing it. I can thing straight and control my breathing and not feel *emotional* fear, but my body still locks up and my heart still goes crazy and I still have to focus on breathing.

I am aware that it doesn't make sense. I am aware that I am not in danger. I'm practiced enough that I can sit still and have a conversation through the experience now. But it's still a phobia and no amount of reminding me how irrational my body is being is going to fix that- it's just gonna piss me off on top of it.

and you know what, I'm gonna add on the same thing I tell everyone who DOES tell me I overreact to my phobias: what are YOU scared of? Spiders? Snakes? Dirty needles? What makes YOUR body heave? Is it cold vomit? Spoiled meat? Dead skin?

When IM experiencing the effects of an irrational fear, imagine putting whatever awful or dangerous or nasty thing disgusts you in your mouth. Imagine experiencing a RATIONAL fear. Because it doesn't matter what I know is true, the effects of rational fear and irrational fear make your body do the same things.

Nausea, locking up, inability to make yourself move, panic, denial, refusal, shaking, disgust, revulsion, anger, fear, outrage, humiliation, vulnerability.

If my phobia is, say, walking past a 2002 Toyota Prius, then making myself do that FEELS just as difficult and horrific to me as licking broken glass off a gas station bathroom floor does to YOU. The only difference is *I* might have to do the thing ANYWAYS, while people make fun of me an I know that I look ridiculous, whereas YOU would at least know that your feelings are normal and your experience will be taken seriously.

WE KNOW OUR PHOBIAS DON'T ALWAYS MAKE SENSE. IT DOESN'T MAKE THEM STOP. Its why they're called "irrational phobias"

Hot damn this is an old post

But anyhow, today I encountered one of my phobias and was able to react to it calmly and rationally while my brain screamed instead of physically locking up and doing the screaming out loud, so here's to gradual progress

Also, figured out a better analogy over the years:

If Fear is like disgust, think of a Phobia as an allergy

I'm not DISGUSTED by the thing. Telling me you have a better recipe is not helpful. My throat is closing up and I need an epipen

stay vigilant. there are still people out there who will try to convince you that eating fruit is somehow bad for your body

my interpretations of bw1 and bw2 protags..

some hyper famous artists like Van Gogh transcend overratedness and become underrated because they're so normalized. Like I'll look at a van Gogh and I'm like wait this really is amazing you guys don't get it

Shakespeare is like this

Every time I see a Van Gogh that’s not one of his better known pieces it absolutely blows me away

Have you seen this shit my liege? smh unreal

THE ORANGES