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i've been out of the industry for nearly 7 MONTHS now (amazing) and i can finally find my experiences funny again. ask me absolutely anything; stupid stories, genuine sexual advice, i'm happy to share any and all information i can about spending my time in one of the final bastions of sexual degeneracy
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Oct 16, 2023 00:49
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how did you have sex with the bricks
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Oct 16, 2023 08:35
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How do such shops still exist, with the internet providing endless porn and discreet, usually free shipping of sex toys?
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Oct 16, 2023 18:13
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PokeJoe posted:how did you have sex with the bricks wouldn't you like to know Domus posted:How do such shops still exist, with the internet providing endless porn and discreet, usually free shipping of sex toys? i have many theories! a lot of our clientele were older folk, and so i presume the internet just isn't super accessible for people like them who weren't raised using it. the majority of our shops were based in touristy areas, so we'd get a ton of drunk people buying stuff after nights out - it was always super fun on a sunday morning waiting by the phone for people to call in and ask for refunds for stuff they'd bought while off their face the night before. some people also just prefer asking professionals in person, rather than relying on online advice from dubious sources. there's also something very glamorous, at least to me, about porn magazines. in theory, you can't really get more erotic than glossy pages and actually having to go into the store and essentially confess to the cashier that you're a sexual being. it's a ritual and i can absolutely understand the appeal
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Oct 17, 2023 23:07
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What's the wackiest thing you sell? Except balldo if you even have those
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Oct 18, 2023 08:02
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Is this one of the porno shops with a bunch of semi-public sex going on in nudie booths, or is it one of those boring ones where it's mostly just bachelorette party gifts? Or maybe is it one of the rare ones with a bunch of bachelorettes having sex in nudie booths?
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Oct 18, 2023 08:05
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RapturesoftheDeep posted:Is this one of the porno shops with a bunch of semi-public sex going on in nudie booths, or is it one of those boring ones where it's mostly just bachelorette party gifts? Or maybe is it one of the rare ones with a bunch of bachelorettes having sex in nudie booths? it's one of those ones where you can have sex with a real life goo n
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Oct 18, 2023 08:07
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Sekenr posted:What's the wackiest thing you sell? Except balldo if you even have those i did sell several balldos! they are smaller than you would think part of the reason that i think i always did so well in every shop i worked at (for a lot of my career i was the number one sex toy salesperson full stop in the whole of the uk) was that i just don't find anything really weird. sometimes i'd get a little freaked out late at night if the blow up dolls looked at me too hard, but i always tried to be nice to them like they were real people; the way people treat sex toys tends to be how they treat actual human beings, i've found. men who would act violently towards our display dolls and fleshlights were oftentimes the rudest to my female colleagues, and i don't think that's a coincidence RapturesoftheDeep posted:Is this one of the porno shops with a bunch of semi-public sex going on in nudie booths, or is it one of those boring ones where it's mostly just bachelorette party gifts? Or maybe is it one of the rare ones with a bunch of bachelorettes having sex in nudie booths? there are no porno shops with sex going on in them. my manager was once propositioned (sp?) for a threesome and he got scared and screamed we had an extensive dvd section and toys, but we also sold penis shaped pasta, so there's that. bachelorette parties could be incredibly disrespectful; i once had to kick a few women out for USING THE DISPLAY TOYS ON THEMSELVES IN THE AISLES PokeJoe posted:it's one of those ones where you can have sex with a real life goo n we had roaches i didn't want them up in my bussy
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Oct 18, 2023 21:50
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What were your best sellers, your bread and butter? Did you ever sell stuff that just wasn't fit for use? What are porn DVD buying habits like, did you have some classics that always moved or did people always prefer newer stuff? What about animated/foreign porn? Did you sell supplements/poppers? Who buys that stuff?
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Oct 20, 2023 13:12
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Decoy Badger posted:What were your best sellers, your bread and butter? Did you ever sell stuff that just wasn't fit for use? about 50% of our sales were dvds, the other 50% was made up pretty evenly of toys, essentials (lube/boner pills/condoms etc), and lingerie. i used to set myself little projects where i'd make a specific item the best seller in our store; my all time favourite, and the most successful of my projects, was the bamboo by rocks-off - google it if you're brave, it's a cheap little vibrator with a funky shape. i have one on my bedside table reminding me that i made a £15 vibrator the best selling item in our store's 40+ year history! i hate to say it but a lot of sex toys on the market aren't fit for use. people like cheap toys, and most people, even when fully informed on the matter, will choose a £10 toy made of phthalates that is actively leaking over a £60 medical grade silicone toy. if you ever see a sex toy made with jelly rubber, tpr/tpe, or most kinds of stone, they're unsafe to use, but yet many people bought lovely jelly dildos even when the risks were explained to them. even the safest of toys can become unsafe with poor care, and you'd be shocked at how unwilling people are to care for their toys. we sold barely any toy disinfectant, and if i had money for all the times people asked about silicone lube with silicone toys, i'd be upsettingly rich! porn dvd habits are what you'd expect; it's mostly older gentleman buying them, the categories that are popular on dvd are pretty much the same categories that are popular online. the guys who'd come in for dvds were almost always completely silent, and would browse as quietly as possible. saying hi or asking if they needed help was a waste of time, they'd just go bright red and walk out. we didn't get new dvds in very often, it was usually the same old selection of classics, but the store i primarily worked at had a HUGE dvd selection so this was probably because we had a massive variety anyway. after closing up sometimes i'd walk around and look for funny titles. favourites include 'he shoulda said NO!' and 'i hosed my probation officer volume 3'. we very rarely stocked porn not distributed from america or the uk, just because of the strict regulations regarding porn dvd sales over here, and as far as i can recall we never had any animated stuff on offer (thought one or two people asked!) we sold herbal viagra, delay sprays and creams, and poppers. i'll talk you through them, in as little detail as possible, so you don't have to read a big block of text: herbal viagra is mostly made up of ginseng and gingko biloba, and occasionally you'll see goji berry extract in them, too. i'm of the firm opinion that most commercially available herbal viagra contains other unlisted ingredients, because that stuff will give you migraines that no goji berry has ever given me since. people of all genders and ages buy it, everybody's curious about aphrodisiacs, but it was mostly older gentlemen who bought large quantities of it. one of my colleagues once crushed a pill and snorted it, apparently it burned a ton and nobody got horny so nothing good came of it. spanish fly was also very popular and had a ton of good reviews, so make of that what you will! delay sprays are lidocaine that you spray onto your weenie so you don't get overstimulated. they work, but it's up to you if you want to sacrifice sensation for duration. guys of all ages bought this stuff, no particular demographic was more into it than others. poppers were my favourite. most poppers you get are isopentyl nitrite; your rush, your liquid gold, your tnt, all your standard stuff is in this category, and because these are the cheapest they're the most popular. they can give you a slight headache, and burn your nose a little, but it's only a temporary thing so most young clubgoers would buy these. we also sold pentyl nitrite, which is slightly stronger and does not give you the headache, and is a lot more popular with older folk. just before i quit my main shop job we began selling hexyl nitrites, which were allegedly the strongest on the market, smelled better, and again did not give you the headache, but personally i found these claims to be a marketing ploy, that stuff was majorly overpriced and felt the same as the pentyl. the fact that it was new on the market meant that gay fetishists who followed poppers news were the only people really looking to buy it. my all-time favourite poppers are sadly not manufactured anymore, it was blue boy pentyl, it made you feel like hot jelly and was popular with partners and people i ran into at raves alike. you'll notice that i've dipped in and out of what was popular with customers and what i liked, and that's part of why i quit. i felt that there was no esotericism in my private life anymore, and i couldn't help but draw on my own experiences and begin to share aspects of my life that i liked to keep private with the public just to make a little more commission. now i only talk about my sex life online, with all of you on here
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Oct 20, 2023 23:16
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what was the customer ratio of creepy pervs vs normal-ish people
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Oct 21, 2023 01:07
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Did you ever have to kick kids out of the store? Was it an 18+ (or whatever age) place?
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Oct 21, 2023 14:55
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:what was the customer ratio of creepy pervs vs normal-ish people there were very few creepy pervs, but when we had them it always really, really skeeved me out. we had a guy who'd repeatedly call the store until my female coworker picked up the phone and then he'd begin very loudly pleasuring himself. a guy once came in who seemed pretty normal, and we were speaking a little bit about drug use in the local club scene (i'm still very much a raver, but at the time i was using substances a lot more than i do now), and mid sentence he casually dropped that he found tv portrayals of ghb to all be pretty inaccurate based on his experiences mixing it into girls' drinks. it took me a minute to realise what he'd said and my blood just ran cold - my initial instinct was just to kick him out so i could feel less dirty about having treated this guy like a normal person, but looking back on it, what i wouldn't give to just beat the poo poo out of him, if i could go back and do things differently. the thing that really pushed me over the edge was that over the last few weeks of my time at my main shop i got flashed a number of times, and my boss wouldn't let me press the panic alarm button to notify local security, because the alarm would scare customers. if you're reading this tom choke on a panic alarm button Eeyo posted:Did you ever have to kick kids out of the store? Was it an 18+ (or whatever age) place? all the time! if you're ever in a pissy mood, try taking up id verification; it's a ton of fun getting to kick every third person out of the store. my least favourite issue was that lots of parents don't really think of their babies as people, and they'll bring strollers into the store. sorry bud, you're 4 months old, you've still got a little while before you can come it here! back in 2021 i had an incident where a group of children, around 11-13 year olds, came in. i told them to leave, one of them began asking super transphobic questions about my genitals and calling me slurs (i'm a dude with long hair) and when i wouldn't tell this LITERAL CHILD about my body he pulled a six inch kitchen knife out on me. i almost wish he'd used it - what a way to go, in a blaze of glory in the dildo store, bleeding out on the floor of a sex shop. i couldn't think of a more fitting exit for a life such as my own. w4ddl3d33 fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Oct 22, 2023 |
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Oct 22, 2023 00:32
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w4ddl3d33 posted:back in 2021 i had an incident where a group of children, around 11-13 year olds, came in. i told them to leave, one of them began asking super transphobic questions about my genitals and calling me slurs (i'm a dude with long hair) and when i wouldn't tell this LITERAL CHILD about my body he pulled a six inch kitchen knife out on me. i almost wish he'd used it - what a way to go, in a blaze of glory in the dildo store, bleeding out on the floor of a sex shop. i couldn't think of a more fitting exit for a life such as my own. The correct move in this situation is to pull out one of the 2' monster dildos and go "You call that a knife? Now THIS is a knife!"
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Oct 22, 2023 06:31
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w4ddl3d33 posted:we sold herbal viagra, delay sprays and creams, and poppers. i'll talk you through them, in as little detail as possible, so you don't have to read a big block of text: Herbal aphrodesiac or dick pill ingredients don't work, so for them to work, yeah, they're spiked with drugs, usually something analogous to sildenafil (viagra). Some portion of men develop what's essentially a substance abuse disorder relationship with drug-spiked dick pill products, consuming them in ever-greater doses. It kills some number of people a year, and it's a reliable moneymaker for one of the organized crime models prevalent in the dietary supplement scene.
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Oct 23, 2023 17:12
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Discendo Vox posted:Herbal aphrodesiac or dick pill ingredients don't work, so for them to work, yeah, they're spiked with drugs, usually something analogous to sildenafil (viagra). Some portion of men develop what's essentially a substance abuse disorder relationship with drug-spiked dick pill products, consuming them in ever-greater doses. It kills some number of people a year, and it's a reliable moneymaker for one of the organized crime models prevalent in the dietary supplement scene. you are absolutely correct. we had regulars who'd come in and buy £500 worth of dick pills every two weeks. that's probably not all that great for your heart the shop would get super empty on weeknights, so i'd read about the societal factors that lead to men feeling some type of way about their sexual abilities, and there's a really interesting study that focused on elderly men in mexico and found that they felt their quality of life was better after developing erectile dysfunction as it left them with more time to do other meaningful things besides sex. speaking from personal experience, nobody i've spoken to who likes penises finds premature ejaculation to be a turn-off; a lot of the people i know actually find it pretty complimentary. all things considered, it's my belief that the thing that leads men to come to sex shops and buy weird sketchy pills isn't because their sexual dysfunction is having a quantifiably negative impact on their quality of life, or because they're not satisfying their partners, it's because they've been convinced by porn and the media that sex has to be long to be good. viagra is available over the counter in the uk so i could never figure out why they didn't just buy viagra instead but some questions aren't made to be answered
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Oct 23, 2023 23:09
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People pursue the grey market dick pills over lawful ones in part because the doses are higher and include other active ingredients or impurities. Sex is barely involved; the direct effects are a high of sorts unto itself, even negative side effects are interpreted as a sign that a product is stronger or "better." The market should be understood as functioning similarly to addictive drugs of abuse; attribution and context effects cause users to fixate on some products and also chase novelty as their tolerance builds. There's a whole subculture with these things, similar to bodybuilding products; incredibly depressing forums exist where these men share information about sourcing dick pills and getting access to less safe products.
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Oct 24, 2023 00:23
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Did you have any people who wanted to hang out and BS with you? Did you care for them at all?
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Oct 24, 2023 19:30
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OP, sorry if this is too personal, but did you ever assist any former (or future?) romantic partners at the shop? I feel like that could make for an awkward experience.
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Oct 24, 2023 20:05
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Ever had anybody try to return used merchandise? I'd hope people would shy back from that but you never know.
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Oct 24, 2023 21:53
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Hotel Kpro posted:Did you have any people who wanted to hang out and BS with you? Did you care for them at all? all the time! we had a number of regulars who could just talk your ear off, and how long i could bear chatting with them depended on my mood. we had a sex worker named tina who worked the streets around the store and who would come in all the time to charge her phone behind the register or to use the staff bathroom and i could talk with her for hours; she was a trans woman, whose twin was a trans man, who'd moved over here from the us after a murder in the family, and she was just drop-dead beautiful. i often wonder what became of her. YoursTruly posted:OP, sorry if this is too personal, but did you ever assist any former (or future?) romantic partners at the shop? I feel like that could make for an awkward experience. yeah, this happened a few times, and it never bothered me. part of why i worked the job is because i'm not at all phased by sexual discussions, so by the time somebody had established themselves as a potential partner, we'd already been through both my job and our...inclinations, shall we say. what would happen more often were the following scenarios: 1) i'd serve a customer only to run into them at a fetish or play party wearing or using what i'd sold them 2) i'd match with customers on dating apps after serving them neither were anything other than fun. working with sexuality, you get to know people in a different order to how others might approach it; while some people might leave sex until later on in the relationship, it's how i started a lot of interactions, and that meant actually getting to know people was less of a hassle because we'd already done the awkward stuff. it might've been awkward had i served an ex, but that never happened (and i would've served bashar al-assad with a smile on my face, we got paid commission, for that extra £1 per sale i would've kissed anybody's rear end) Perestroika posted:Ever had anybody try to return used merchandise? I'd hope people would shy back from that but you never know. all the time. my colleague once washed a used cock ring in the sink and sold it to somebody else. it was funny while it was happening, but i would HATE to be the poor soul who owns it now we had a dvd exchange program and those would often come back crusty, or with cases just straight-up full of jizz. that happened more often that i care to think about
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Oct 24, 2023 23:27
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What separated you from other sex shop workers? Like you said you were number one in the UK, what made you better than all the other sex toy shop experts?
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Nov 11, 2023 00:09
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how did you handle the boredom?
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Nov 11, 2023 04:01
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I’m very grateful for a sex shop employee who recommended one of the best received (and still enjoyed) presents I’ve ever given somebody. With that in mind, how much of the merchandise did you ‘sample’? Is it just drawing on your own past experience and feedback from customers or did you put effort into testing new products to check if they were worth recommending?
Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Nov 13, 2023 |
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Nov 13, 2023 22:36
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How did you come to be ( ) working in a sex shop in the first place? Had you held other retail jobs first? Knew the owner?
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Nov 14, 2023 21:40
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Fruits of the sea posted:I’m very grateful for a sex shop employee who recommended one of the best received (and still enjoyed) presents I’ve ever given somebody. With that in mind, how much of the merchandise did you ‘sample’? Is it just drawing on your own past experience and feedback from customers or did you put effort into testing new products to check if they were worth recommending? I gave someone a dental dam once too
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Nov 15, 2023 08:41
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Do you have a pet rat? That sounds random, but I've known a number of people who work or worked at sex shops, and it seemed to be a consistent thing, so I am just wondering how universal it is.
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Nov 17, 2023 10:36
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Do you have a sex doll that looks like Margot Robbie?, asking for a friend.
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Nov 18, 2023 07:01
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Hotel Kpro posted:What separated you from other sex shop workers? Like you said you were number one in the UK, what made you better than all the other sex toy shop experts? i cared so, so much. that sounds both self-aggrandising and pathetic, but i just couldn't morally bring myself to lie about something that would have such a deeply personal impact on a person's life. i wanted to know as much as possible, to have a genuine opinion on everything that i could share, and i think that sort of attitude just radiates outwards, you know? i have a background (i use that word VERY loosely, i was involved in a few related university societies) in pharmacology so i knew an awful lot about the enhancements and lubricants we used, i would read the ingredients of anything new we got and make notes on it all. my colleagues thought it was overkill, but i dunno, i know that i'd want to be informed about what's going into my butt, so it was always important to me that other people could make informed choices, too also i was getting paid commission and would have quite literally grovelled on my knees if it made me a little extra beer money 111023_5 posted:how did you handle the boredom? we would get paid by the minute, we had a clock-in code that managers wouldn't really monitor the usage of, so i'd often deliberately find tasks for myself to keep myself in the store as long as possible, and my favourite of those tasks was wiping down the floor by hand using bleach and a cloth. sometimes i would also eat the sample Male Enhancements. towards the end of my career i went through a bit of a rough patch, and because of the location of my workplace in a nightlife hub and the antisocial hours i worked i had pretty easy access to drugs, so once or twice i dabbled in some miscellaneous powders when it was super quiet (not a high point i'll tell you that much) Fruits of the sea posted:I’m very grateful for a sex shop employee who recommended one of the best received (and still enjoyed) presents I’ve ever given somebody. With that in mind, how much of the merchandise did you ‘sample’? Is it just drawing on your own past experience and feedback from customers or did you put effort into testing new products to check if they were worth recommending? we had a HUGE discount on products and would often get them as gifts or incentives for certain sales programs specifically to get us to try them and form opinions on them, and as i mentioned earlier i wanted to know as much as possible, so yes, i tried lots of stuff!! nothing i ever said to a customer was pulled out of thin air, all of my information came from reading and hearing reviews and actually trying stuff. i still use stuff that i was given to test out at my old job!! i always said that if i ever wanted to jump ship to another adult sales gig, i'd want to work for rocks-off. they're a uk based company that makes some nifty budget items - their bamboo toy, which isn't my favourite for personal use but has a very cool concept, was our best selling item of all time for about a year, until the cheapest cock pill we sold overtook it. lube wise i loved me you us natural slix, but they're godawful to their employees so i ended up switching to id free and that suits me just fine. every single one of my female coworkers tried and swore by squeeze-it toys, they're thermoreactive so they mould for a comfortable fit. the only thing i distinctly remember not liking was super dragon 6000 delay spray (burned my weenie) and the lola marshmallow fleshlight (not super tight, probably would've worked for somebody, just not me) Chewbecca posted:How did you come to be ( i've worked in retail since i was 16, and at the time i applied for my first job i was very unhappily working in a department store where the owner didn't like me and would set arbitrary rules just for me. an example was that i'm quite significantly tattooed, as were some of my coworkers, but she insisted that i cover up, whereas the others could wear what they liked. we had no air con and i worked in the basement so that summer i was in a turtleneck and i got very lightheaded and left to go home because of it. there was a sex shop a few streets away, in the direction of the train station, and i noticed a hiring poster and just walked on in and asked if they'd take me - they told me they would the very same day. i'm very lucky that the manager was working that day. i'm lucky that i found that job; it was the first time i'd ever really had fun working, and the first time i'd ever been properly, tangibly good at something profitable. the manager was an older guy who, in his youth, had been pretty homophobic, before deciding that it was none of his business, and i've never seen somebody go so hard repaying their debt to a community they'd once judged. i hope he's doing alright. syntaxfunction posted:Do you have a pet rat? That sounds random, but I've known a number of people who work or worked at sex shops, and it seemed to be a consistent thing, so I am just wondering how universal it is. i kept degus while i was working at the shop  this was tealeaf, my little old man; i got him when i was 14 and he passed when i was 20
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Nov 20, 2023 01:16
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How many people bought stuff "for a friend, yeah, that's it"?
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Dec 2, 2023 19:08
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Mister Kingdom posted:How many people bought stuff "for a friend, yeah, that's it"? i would...not infrequently serve a very famous very beloved actor who was constantly buying things for friends. he made his career by being a heartthrob in 90s movies and as much as i pride myself on not feeding into celebrity culture i'm still a flagrant homosexual and i would just turn into a puddle of sticky goop every time he came in
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Dec 3, 2023 23:17
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How long were you in the uhhhh business for?
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Dec 4, 2023 00:43
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wesleywillis posted:How long were you in the uhhhh business for? two years!! i played wesley willis over the speakers a lot. cuuuuut the mullllllet
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Dec 23, 2023 00:05
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Hell yeah!!
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Dec 23, 2023 01:56
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