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Cowslip, please tell me that you're writing a memoir. Every time I run across a shred of your personal history on this forum, it at once fills me with a deep and abiding sympathetic horror, and reminds me that if you can be as interesting and sane and human as you are with all that behind you, I have no excuse for giving up on anything for the rest of my life. It seems like a lot of family-related what-the-christ moments are those flashes of insight you get once you've survived the blind pragmatism of childhood and the angry recriminations of adolescence and young adulthood, when you suddenly realize the gravity and absurdity of things you always took for normal, or at least for granted. I'll never forget the night my sister and I finally sat down to drink and reminisce about our childhood. "Oh man," she said, "that was about halfway through the year Mom went to bed," and I understood this to be late 1995 and then it hit me that my mother stayed in bed for a year when I was nine, and a whole lot of things about my childhood made more sense. My sister realized it at the same time, and we stopped talking and drank a lot more. I think that was the first time that we realized, as adults, that there was a bottomless pit of filth and terror and neglect and shame behind us, and we'd only narrowly escaped it by virtue of scrambling so hard for sunlight we didn't spare time to look back. We've talked about it from time to time since then, and we're always stunned that we made it. Especially since my clueless, know-it-all, overbearing rear end was riding point as the oldest. Occasionally I get bogged down in the moments of what the gently caress was even happening to us and start feeling all self-pitying and martyred, and then I read stuff like what Cowslips and others in this thread went through growing up and I am just staggered. I guess my biggest  is that so many people somehow grew up and are okay.
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Aug 11, 2012 08:34
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Fascinator posted:Nerdy and Cowslip, your stories were worse than Corpse Tetris. Cowslip's, definately. Mine? Not so much. I've been through some poo poo but honestly it wasn't that bad in the scheme of things and I'm doing pretty well now. 
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Aug 11, 2012 08:51
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elise the great posted:my mother stayed in bed for a year when I was nine Depression?
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Aug 11, 2012 19:34
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Depression, hoarding, severe emotional abuse by my even crazier dad. She's come a long way since then.
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Aug 11, 2012 19:59
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FrancisYorkPatty posted:...completely unrelated to yesterday, today while moving I got hit on by and old blind woman. Probably just years of experience there.
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Aug 12, 2012 00:33
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If it makes it sound less creepy I was legally an adult. Then again the fucker also told me not to kiss his cheek but his mouth. Yeah. That didn't last long. Thankfully he's an ex-stepdad now. Aha, here, a funny one. Not in a 'oh god someone call CPS' funny. I used to work at a privately owned zoo as a part-time zookeeper, and when a fulltime position of food prep/janitor came up, I jumped at the chance for more hours. Janitor was an overnight position and I started about 2am, driving around the zoo in a lovely old pickup truck to clean the bathrooms and not get shot by any thieves. Because we had plenty of those. But the story goes, I drive maybe 5 miles a hour max, because there are no loving lights save for the old cracked headlights and it is loving dark. So I'm turning around a corner, I see something in the dirt road, and figure if it's a duck or free-roaming peacock, it'll move. The drat loose birds know what trucks are. He didn't move. I heard a thump, the wheels bounced, and I hit the brakes in shock. I'd rolled a bit away and after parking the truck, ran back to the body. Oh gently caress. Oh gently caress. OH gently caress I RAN OVER A PEACOCK HOLY poo poo THEY ARE GONNA FIRE ME. But then deviousness crept to my mind. It's 3am, Cowslips, you goddamn moron, calm down. NO ONE else is on grounds. NO ONE will know. Grab the body and throw it in the trash! But what if someone finds the body in the dump covered in trash and holy poo poo they run fingerprints and I'm on it! Then wear gloves! No no where the gently caress do I get gloves at 3am! Okay fine, leave the goddamn bird and tell the owner you loving killed it! Oh God oh God I'm gonna get fired for killing a peacoooooooooooock!  The internal fight ran for a while, and then I realized I had to get back to work. And to preserve the scene, I left the body where it was, drove to the food prep area, and did the rest of the work because the other animals had to eat. The entire time I was torn between crying and writing a resignation letter because I knew I'd be fired. I only had to wait till 7am for other people to come on grounds. And when I stepped out to do the trash run...the body was gone. No peacock. There were tire marks all over the place but no blood. And no peacock. I decided the best thing to do was to pretend nothing ever happened. Smart me. And later on, so petrified someone would drag me aside and hiss that they knew I killed the peacock, I saw another keeper with a huge stack of peacock feathers. Like over twenty of them, all over three feet long. I asked where she'd gotten all the drat nice feathers. "Oh, some peacock died a few days ago. Since I found him, I got to keep what I plucked and the rest got thrown in the dump. Peacocks die, it's no big deal. Some of the other keepers keep asking for some feathers but gently caress em, I found them first." I don't know if the WTC moment was more that there was no investigation into the death...or my realization that I could have had an entire armful of full feathers and bought a ton of friends with them.
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Aug 12, 2012 09:54
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This isn't the most extreme story, but hearing it sure did make me cringe at the time. When my brother was 16 he was taking a shower when he managed to get shampoo in his eye, and worse he had forgotten to take out his contacts. He tried to remove it but it seemed the shampoo had made it stick to his eyeball and he got into a bit of a panic. After a few frantic minutes he finally managed to get the drat thing out of his eye, at which point he realised that he had remembered to remove his contacts. He'd spent a few minutes removing his cornea with his fingernail. The nurse he saw said it wasn't the first time.
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Aug 13, 2012 11:03
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Juche Couture posted:This isn't the most extreme story, but hearing it sure did make me cringe at the time. I didn't want to know this was possible. This is horrible, how can multiple people end up in the same hospital for this?
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Aug 13, 2012 11:32
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Scratching your cornea is pretty easy. Removing a chunk of it takes some work. Edit: vvv Yeah, it took quite a while but it healed up fine eventually. Juche Couture has a new favorite as of 13:47 on Aug 13, 2012 |
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Aug 13, 2012 11:39
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Juche Couture posted:This isn't the most extreme story, but hearing it sure did make me cringe at the time. Thank you for giving me nightmares  The worst thing I ever did with my contacts was have one slip halfway past my eyeball, but after some groping I managed to get it out. I can't even imagine digging out part of your cornea with your fingernail. That's just..... wow Did your brother's eye ever recover?
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Aug 13, 2012 13:44
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Juche Couture posted:This isn't the most extreme story, but hearing it sure did make me cringe at the time. Was he not in extreme pain while he was ripping a chunk of his loving eye out?
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Aug 13, 2012 13:59
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Dauntasa posted:Was he not in extreme pain while he was ripping a chunk of his loving eye out? The way he explained it to me was that he got it into his head that maybe the shampoo had reacted with the contact lens and caused it to melt and stick to his eye, and that was why it hurt so much. It was not his smartest moment.
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Aug 13, 2012 15:13
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Juche Couture posted:The way he explained it to me was that he got it into his head that maybe the shampoo had reacted with the contact lens and caused it to melt and stick to his eye, and that was why it hurt so much. It was not his smartest moment. Oh Jesus why. I'm suddenly very thankful that I went back to glasses, and that I don't especially need to sleep tonight... Something about contacts leads to the most incredible brain farts. It's really hard to remember if you have one in even though the criteria is so simple (can I see poo poo? y/n). I was prone to putting them both in one eye, then cursing myself and flailing around trying to take them out again with one over-corrected eye and one regular lovely eye.
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Aug 13, 2012 15:30
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Juche Couture posted:This isn't the most extreme story, but hearing it sure did make me cringe at the time. As someone who has had PRK surgery this story literally gave me a wave of nausea and chills.
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Aug 13, 2012 15:49
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Dauntasa posted:Was he not in extreme pain while he was ripping a chunk of his loving eye out? I've heard that eyes themselves have no pain receptors (like the cornea etc) but the eye sockets have a ton. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong though. WTC moment: on second thought, a bit too e/n
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Aug 13, 2012 15:57
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I work at a hemodialysis clinic as their inventory control staff. Computers are limited at our clinic, so I have to grab whatever's available to update my spreadsheets and order forms. Our secretary had gone home for the day last week, so I used the opportunity to use her computer to send some e-mails. The front door opened up, and a large, bearded man walked in. I figured that he probably had an appointment with one of the kidney docs, but I took a break from what I was doing and asked him how I could help him. "Are you in the FBI?" he asked. "Uh . . . no?" "So this isn't the FBI building?" "I'm afraid not . . . this is a dialysis clinic." "Are you sure?" "Pretty sure." At this point, the man became semi-hysterical. "Do you know where the FBI is, then?" "Uh . . . you might try the government building across town?" The man then sank, like a deflated balloon. "I can't find the FBI," he mumbled as he left. A lot of the patients I work with are essentially terminal cases. They're far too old or sick to have a new transplant, so basically they get dialysis to keep them alive until they're not. A lot of the patients are mentally ill, suffering from dementia, or are simply hyper emotional. I've been told that our clinic is terrible, that we do a bad job, when a patient comes in with over five kilograms of excess body fluid. I've had a little old woman suffering from Alzheimer's threaten to shoot me with a machine gun and chop off my head. We've had to call the EMTs numerous times due to patients having debilitating panic attacks in the middle of treatment. That's just a sad part of my job. But this was the first time that insanity came in through the door on its own, absolutely unbidden.
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Aug 13, 2012 16:03
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To add the current eye injuries theme: My brother is a very bright man, but not terribly good at self-preservation. A couple of years ago he was working his kit car with an angle grinder - and no safety glasses. The angle grinder disc shattered, and he felt something hit his eye, so he immediately put his hand up - and realised something was terribly wrong when the fluid that ran down felt thinner than blood. Yep, he'd sliced his eyeball open. Did he ring for an ambulance? No, he first had a wash, then went down to his doctor's and nearly caused the receptionist to faint. He's now had the eyeball stitched back together, but he has very little sight in that eye. Moral of the story is: Wear safety glasses, kids.
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Aug 13, 2012 16:50
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 This is part of why I refuse to wear contacts, and why I'm religious about safety glasses at work.Not that it helped me when a single drop of hot (170F) caustic dribbled on my forehead and made its way into my right eye, mind you. Brewing can be dangerous stuff. The most ridiculous thing I've ever seen at my job is the steam valve for the CIP (tank cleaning/sanitation) system, which is located directly above the hot caustic tank and requires teetering on a small ledge and leaning way the gently caress over to turn it. The caustic tank has a lid, but the whole thing is still wildly unnerving. I can think of worse ways to die than falling headfirst into hot caustic and simultaneously drowning and burning to death, but not very many.  I don't get how an inspector could glance at that and not immediately bust out laughing.
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Aug 13, 2012 21:50
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Juche Couture posted:This isn't the most extreme story, but hearing it sure did make me cringe at the time. I actually did a similar thing a few months ago when my eyes were itching so I had been rubbing them over the course of the afternoon. Come nighttime, I took my contacts out but saw a clear film on the corner of my eye. I swear it looked just like a contact, so I figured I forgot to take out the one from yesterday and it had slipped to the side of my eye. I pulled on it for a bit but it wouldn't come out, and then my eye started watering like crazy and it hurt really bad. About an hour later, my eye had swollen and it looked like there was a yellow bubble sticking out of it, which I could feel when I blinked. The doctor pretty much said "I don't know what the gently caress" and told me to just let it rest a few days. I later figured that I must've torn my cornea in the corner of my eye from rubbing them. Oops. Everything is fine now though!
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Aug 14, 2012 01:17
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This thread has dredged up some heretofore apparently repressed memories that I am not entirely sure I would have liked to remember. When I was about six or sevenish, my brother (who is two years older than me) and I used to go over to a neighbor friend’s to play. He lived on the corner of our cul-de-sac, and the road that went past it wasn’t extremely busy, but was a pretty well-traveled street, long and straight for about 800 yards. It’s kind of important to note that the speed limit was around 15 mph in a decidedly suburban neighborhood with plenty of small kids (like us). One day, we were futzing around in his yard when we heard incessant beeping, like a car horn beeping, coming from the very end of this road. And it’s getting closer and louder, and fast. Curious, the three of us head to the corner right as this middle aged lady comes speeding by in her old, yellow VW Bug, her hand hammering away on the horn, the biggest, happiest grin on her face, staring right at us. It was a moment straight out of the movies, where a split-second moment is slowed down to a few frames and it’s ingrained into your mind presumably forever. Then it was over, and my brother, our friend, and I were left with an ethereal, lingering sense of, “Well that was weird,” and that was the end of that. Many years later, while walking home from the bus stop after college down that same street, two guys in a large pickup pull up next to me and the guy in the passenger seat dangles out of his window, a camera in hand, and asks me, “Can I take your picture?” Naturally, my mind screams that this must be the guy that my parents and elementary teachers have warned me about all these years, and I politely decline. They drove off, but I spent a good half hour walking in circles around my cul-de-sac, desperately trying to throw them off in a paranoid bid to remain un-raped and not dead in pieces. I realize now I probably should have reported them and their license plate, but such incidents are entirely uncommon where I grew up and I was so sheltered, I had never before been solicited in that manner. I was flustered and scared. And this story brought to you by my sister’s friend, who for context, is black. This man, who I’ll call J, was taking a piss at a urinal one day, when he suddenly becomes aware of a skinny white boy a couple urinals down just staring at him with the intensity of Marty McFly at his young father at the Soda Shoppe. J shrugs it off and continues his business, but this dude is relentless. Finally, it becomes too much. “What?” No reply; staaaare. ”What?” “Are…are you black?” Balk. “Excuse me?” “Are you black?” This time with a kind of hushed reverence. “…Yyyes?” The way my sister related this story to me, the white dude gets this look of total excitement on his face, like Christmas came exceptionally early. “Can I see your tail?” And there is Total Silence, both between my family and my sister, and J and Honky Boy. Now J is a reasonable, well-liked person. I’ve met him, and loved the little time we shared together. He later inferred that this person grew up in a place with no African Americans, and that the people who raised him were racist fuckwits, because this young man, with genuine, sincere curiosity and absolutely zero ill-intent, had just asked a black man if he had a tail. J took him aside and gently explained that no African Americans had tails, no human race had tails, and that he should probably never ask anyone that question ever again. They parted on friendly terms. This took place while all persons involved were in their latter years of post graduate school, so around their early thirties. This poor, misinformed boy had lived over thirty years of his life under the impression that all black people had tails.
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Aug 14, 2012 18:04
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kinmik posted:This poor, misinformed boy had lived over thirty years of his life under the impression that all black people had tails. My Grandpa was in the hospital in the 70s and his roommate came over to him while he was sleeping and started touching his head. Grandpa woke up, asked the guy what he was doing and the guy only responds with "Where do you hide them?" After some more questions like that, my Grandpa realizes that the guy was looking for his horns. This 60-something year old guy lived his whole like believing that Jews had horns and thought my Grandpa hid them somehow because he couldn't see them.
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Aug 14, 2012 18:16
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ilysespieces posted:My Grandpa was in the hospital in the 70s and his roommate came over to him while he was sleeping and started touching his head. Grandpa woke up, asked the guy what he was doing and the guy only responds with "Where do you hide them?" "I know you people don't believe in god, but my son tells me that this is the holiday where you worship the devil. Is that true?"  My mom was so shocked she can't even remember what the hell she said to get out of the conversation. It's sad how many people get these bizarre notions about other creeds and races. Seriously, horns? Tails on black people?
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Aug 14, 2012 18:44
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sudonim posted:My mom is Jewish. For a while she was the special education coordinator at a local school, and the school staff that worked with her knew she was Jewish. During a Jewish festival holiday, Passover I think, a low-level school admin came over and asked my mom a question. Holy poo poo, my mom had her head felt for horns too. This was about 20 years ago in a scary part of rural North Carolina. What the gently caress.
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Aug 14, 2012 20:25
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kinmik posted:The way my sister related this story to me, the white dude gets this look of total excitement on his face, like Christmas came exceptionally early. Even though I think it's horrible that he actually thought black people had tails...it's still almost sad because now his world is a little less exciting and magical.
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Aug 14, 2012 22:10
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A bit of a WTC from two days ago; I was on the highway in the right lane about 500 yards from my exit, doing 75. It was mostly empty highway in the later afternoon. I put on my blinker and am about to get on my exit. Then tunk-tunk-tunk-tunk-tunk, I look left and a car passes me taking out those reflective metal poles, it hits something and the rear of the car bumps and lifts a few feet in the air before the car slams to a stop, dust everywhere. Stopped on the exit and called the cops, got a hold message. Some other people pulled over and sort of milled around the crash, shaken looking young blonde girl gets out of the car. Ambulance showed up about 2 minutes later and I took off. I think she might have fallen asleep or something because there definitely wasn't anyone else anywhere near her on the road, other than me who was exiting. emmetsprogress posted:To add the current eye injuries theme:
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Aug 14, 2012 23:37
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It's not really very WTC?, but seeing as we're sharing HORRIBLE, DISTURBING STORIES ABOUT OCULAR TRAUMA, I figured it was worth mentioning that once I got a papercut on my eyeball. It was in primary school, just standing talking to a friend, who was, for whatever reason, waving a piece of paper around. Suddenly I feel an incredibly sharp pain in my eye. The pain really was the worst thing ever. I had to go home early as I couldn't focus on anything else. I didn't sleep that night, and got very little sleep the next night. It was over 24 hours of intense, perpetual agony, in the loving EYE. You know how much ordinary papercuts suck? Yeah, I needn't say more. I also stabbed myself in the eye with a pencil once (don't ask). It didn't hurt, but I did burst a blood vessel in my eye. Looked kinda badass actually. It will surprise no one that I am now a glasses wearer.
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Aug 15, 2012 00:29
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ilysespieces posted:My Grandpa was in the hospital in the 70s and his roommate came over to him while he was sleeping and started touching his head. Grandpa woke up, asked the guy what he was doing and the guy only responds with "Where do you hide them?" Great Green Auk posted:Holy poo poo, my mom had her head felt for horns too. This was about 20 years ago in a scary part of rural North Carolina. This might have something to do with the fact that there's a line in the Bible that was frequently mistranslated as Moses having horns, when it actually meant his face was glowing because he had seen God. Michelangelo even sculpted his famous Moses with horns. Not defending it though, because Jesus Christ how ignorant do you have to be to think a human being has horns.
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Aug 15, 2012 00:45
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degauss posted:It's not really very WTC?, but seeing as we're sharing HORRIBLE, DISTURBING STORIES ABOUT OCULAR TRAUMA, I figured it was worth mentioning that once I got a papercut on my eyeball. It was in primary school, just standing talking to a friend, who was, for whatever reason, waving a piece of paper around. Suddenly I feel an incredibly sharp pain in my eye. The pain really was the worst thing ever. I had to go home early as I couldn't focus on anything else. I didn't sleep that night, and got very little sleep the next night. It was over 24 hours of intense, perpetual agony, in the loving EYE. You know how much ordinary papercuts suck? Yeah, I needn't say more. 6 years ago I was walking through some bushes with my friends at night and a branch or something swung back and barely tagged my eye. I didn't really notice anything immediately, but the next morning any light at all that hit my eye was just the worst pain ever, I had slept in my contacts and immediately took them out. Went to urgent care and they said I scratched my pupil pretty bad. Had to wear a eye patch for like 3 days. The doctor who did all the work on my eye was working his last day before retirement, so he was pretty much a rear end in a top hat. Really thankful I didn't lose any vision, its pretty bad as is.
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Aug 15, 2012 01:39
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Great Green Auk posted:Holy poo poo, my mom had her head felt for horns too. This was about 20 years ago in a scary part of rural North Carolina. Mine was in some part of Brooklyn or some hospital in Manhattan, which might make a little less sense. Before he died a couple of years ago he told us that this wasn't just a one-off occurence, but that was just the most memorable time.
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Aug 15, 2012 02:55
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empty sea posted:Even though I think it's horrible that he actually thought black people had tails...it's still almost sad because now his world is a little less exciting and magical. If I had actual real-time wit and humor (as opposed to thinking up things after the fact), I'd have told J to tell the guy that not all people of his race had tails, but that he'd had his cut off at birth like Son Goku. Then Honky Boy could have gone home and disproved his parents, but then say that he'd also met a Super Saiyan!
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Aug 15, 2012 03:24
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Bertrand Hustle posted:It's good to know our departed loved ones are being handled with dignity and respect. I'm a bit late replying to this one but if that story bothered you never, never talk to someone who works in a morgue. A friend of mine used to work the night shift as a private security officer at a local hospital chain and overnight security ran the morgue (or they might have run it all the time) and from what he told me you basically have to disassociate any humanity from the bodies or you won't be able to do your job - apparently they referred to the corpses as "meat bags." They also had a rite of passage for new guys that IIRC involved a corpse that had had vigorous CPR performed on it by EMTs resulting in broken/cracked ribs, a breathing tube inserted and the head turned sideways, blocking the breathing passage. Apparently they'd get the new guy to help out and would make a comment along the lines of "oh turn the head so its straight" at which point the breathing passage would open back up. A side effect of the vigorous CPR is trauma to the lung tissue, resulting in blood seeping in post-mortem, as well as gas building up pressure as it exits the blood but is unable to go anywhere due to the obstructed breathing passage. When the new guy turned the head all of the blood and other fluid would be violently discharged through the breathing tube, often spraying the new guy in the process.
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Aug 16, 2012 04:03
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My WTC involves my girlfriend and her family. When we first started dating, I got the sense that they were into new-agey stuff which is fine, and doesn't bother me in the slightest. Fast forward a few months and I've been introduced to the wonderful world of JZ Knight and her army of Ramtha. Please note, we're South Africans, so where they first got involved escapes me. I have no objection to people choosing their own religions (although they will firmly deny that Ramtha is a religion) and their views are their own, but the true WTC nature of this is how hosed up their lives are as a result of their beliefs. They have stockpiles of canned and preserved food, toiletries, medical supplies and so on all kept for "days", Because at some point in the future, something BAD is going to happen. They're desperately trying to buy a secluded piece of land, while barely making ends meet, so that they can sink containers to hide out in because the sun is going to unleash a massive solar flare and the emf will kill everyone who isn't in a Faraday cage. They spend $1000 a person to attend seminars by Ramtha every 2 or 3 months and that's a lot of money for a family who are barely making ends meet. I don't know if in the rest of the world spending 2 or 3 or even 4 thousand dollars on a religious get together is feasible but to my eyes it surely can't be. They obsessively follow websites like the extinction protocol, watching for signs of imminent doom. It's completely batshit insane, and the nail in the coffin is that they are well educated, middle class in their outlook and otherwise normal. They own a small business, have raised 6 kids through high school, on the surface, they could be anyone. It staggers me to hear a 45+ year old talking about doing disciplines to learn to teleport his body to safety when doomsday hits, to a GROUP of other 45+ year olds, and all of them nodding sagely and agreeing and hoping that they, one day, too will be able to astral travel or translocate when they need to. It boggles the mind, really. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Z._Knight for anyone curious, know that they really exist, and they are truly trying to mobilise against a generic perceived threat that they plan to combat by "studying" quantum physics through a process of wibbly disciplines, some involving walking around blindfolded and staring at a flashlight.
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Aug 20, 2012 16:00
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sildargod posted:It staggers me to hear a 45+ year old talking about doing disciplines to learn to teleport his body to safety when doomsday hits, to a GROUP of other 45+ year olds, and all of them nodding sagely and agreeing and hoping that they, one day, too will be able to astral travel or translocate when they need to. It's like Scientology's claim to be able to levitate, use telekinesis and telepathy at certain OT levels. If that's true: show us! No quicker way of gaining new believers as by showing these claims, you'd think. That they don't should be enough for anyone - even if they are of limited intellect - to know that they are full of poo poo. Amazingly even intelligent people fall for it. I guess there's nothing more powerful then the power of self denial. After all you can't admit that it's bullshit after investing these amounts of money into it.
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Aug 20, 2012 16:26
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I was a short order cook at Kelsey's for 3 of the worst years of my life. We ran through a whole gamut of morons and assholes in that place. One cook, Paul, was in and out of jail on pot dealing charges so often we stopped scheduling him. Then he'd get out and come back to work like it was no big deal. Small Paul, the other one, had a "bladder infection" that had him running to the washroom every 20 minutes or so, and I guess his medicine was a white, nasally applied powder? Our day manager hired only, in his words, "Hotties and easy marks" and eventually got dismissed after harassing our 17 year old greeter to the point that she quit/got a restraining order. We had an illiterate 400lb dishwasher named Sparrow. Sparrow did not like me at all - disliked me so much, in fact, that she once through an empty keg at me, Donkey Kong over the head style, for "talkin' bad 'bout her childrens!" (she did not have kids). 20 minutes later she was asking me if I could drive her downtown to the bar after work, like she hadn't just tried to commit murder at me. Our other dishwasher, Sam, was a mid 60s retired welder. He was not quite right in the head, and once told me that I would "Bring the dark seed to life" if I continued sleeping with one of our waitresses. He also talked to the pots constantly, and would get very upset if you moved them from their labeled hooks above the sink. To you know, cook with. But the best/worst thing that ever happened to me happened about a month before I left. Sparrow had taken up residence in the employee washroom singing "POOP AND FLOWERS POOP AND FLOWERS" at the top of her lungs. She had this wildflower bathroom spray, and she was very proud of the fact that she had sounded out "wildflower" earlier in the evening. I had to take a poo poo, on account of the fact that working in a restaurant, especially a low/mid class shithole like Kelsey's, gave you ample opportunity to snag free food. I decided to break the rules and use the customer washroom. So I wander in to the washroom and start my business. I hear the door open and then the stall next to me. And then "Uuughhhh *splash* *grunt* uuuuuu *splash* ahhhhhh".... silence. Dead silence, if you'll pardon the expression. "You ok in there?" asks I. Silence continues. I figure the guy is just embarrassed and needs to wipe in peace, or say a little prayer to the poo poo gods or whatever, so I finish up, wash my hands (company protocol, 30 seconds of soap and warm water!) and head out. I'm stopped by a 40 something gentlemen on the way out. "Was there anyone else in there?" He asks. "I heard a guy," says I, "but I don't know if he was done or what" A couple minutes pass. I'm back in the kitchen and I hear the door to the customer washroom bang open and someone yell "CALL 911!" Place goes into panic mode. 911 gets called, and the bus shows up, and about 20 minutes later they're wheeling a body out of the washroom. 90 year old man had gathered his family around himself for his birthday, eaten a generous helping of Smothered Chicken and a pint of Budweiser, then gone into the washroom, had a massive coronary and died on the throne. In the end we ended up comping the entire family's bill, which came to a couple hundred but hey, they lost pop-pop so it's the least we could do. It sticks with me to today that I not only addressed a dead man in the washroom, but spent at least a couple minutes in there between wiping, washing my hands, and getting all presentable again.
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Aug 21, 2012 03:13
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Aug 21, 2012 03:31
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When I was 4 or 5 I was friends with the neighbor's son, Nick. Everything was totally normal, we played and watched TV like normal kids. Usually at my apartment because my mom was always sick and wouldn't bother us. But one day I remember leaving my bedroom for a few minutes and coming back to him sitting with a tupperware container next to him on my bed. It was full of piss. He then proceeded to try to get me to drink his piss. "Come on, it's good!" This went on for a while, him following me around my house with his piss in loving tupperware. He even took a good swig once, to prove that he wasn't joking but I wouldn't drink it. I don't even know where he got the tupperware. Or how he managed to get that, come back to my room and piss in it all in a minute or so. So yeah. Not that crazy but still. I had a 5 year old boy try to explain the joys of piss drinking to me. "It's warm!"
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Aug 21, 2012 03:48
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The other day I saw a woman parked on the side of a busy 4 lane road and she was on the other side trying to lure a tortoise to safety by dangling her keys in front of it.
loud dildo has a new favorite as of 04:38 on Aug 22, 2012 |
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Aug 22, 2012 04:28
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I just finished five months working at a McDonald's near the Vancouver Downtown Eastside. For those of you that aren't Vancouver natives (I.e. Everyone), the DTES is Vancouver's lovely downtown hoboghetto - Druggies and hobos on the street, crossing at random intervals, burned out street lights, lock your doors(!), don't be outside at night, watch out don't step on a used needle/condom, five dollar crackwhores, hobo street merchants with sidewalks full of probably-stolen t-shirts, needle exchange and safe injection sites, that sort of area. Vancouver's a wonderful city, and you should definitely come here if you're in the area, but stay the hell out of the DTES, especially at night. But I digress. I worked at a McDonald's about 3 blocks south of the DTES. I also worked the lobby (It's a big McDonald's), and worked night-shifts (5-midnight) exclusively. Now, I saw some pretty crazy poo poo working there, but I also met some nice folks. We got a lot of street people in there, and a lot of beggars, and quite a few every-nighters - Enough so that I had a "Regular" bunch that I knew by sight - The Scruffy Guy who asks people for popcups for free pop, The Skateboard Guy who roots around in the trash compactors for half-eaten burgers, The Nice Beggar who hangs out by the rear door and opens it for people, The Old Couple who come in every night and hang around till about 11 reading the paper, chatting, and generally being the epitome of Nice Old Folks, The Two Old Gamers, who play facebook games and WoW on the free wi-fi, The Movie Guy, who comes in and watches movies on his laptop internet, The Suit - an older sixty-something who definitely had some combination of Chief, Executive, Senior, Vice, Director, and President in his title, The Black Guy who has perpetual short sideburns, The Lions Guy - a big guy who comes in a BC Lions jersey and cheers the team (Go Lions!) or talks with The Regular Gang - a bunch of about 10 guys in varying states of post-middle-age who come in and watch sports and talk and hang out... Then there were the not-so-normals. There was this one lady who'd come in once every couple of weeks or so around 10pm in tight sweatpants, and she'd start washing her hair in the women's washroom sink, and got on my case and insisted that she was washing her hands and getting makeup off (Thefuck?) if I so much as poked my head in to see if the floor was covered in toilet paper again. Seriously, what is it with women and not flushing their TP? There was this one autistic guy who came in a few times, stood in line, and just kept repeating "FRENCH FRIES" - When our cash girl asked him what size, he just repeated "FRENCH FRIES". Okay, *Small Fries, $1.39*, is that all? "FRENCH FRIES" Okay, *Small Fries, $1.39*, is that all? etc. He eventually got his FRENCH FRIES, about 5 of them, all smalls, then proceeded to smear his tray with ketchup (instead of using the little cups, I hate it when people do that), and then go outside, rock back and forth (Hence, autism), eat his FRENCH FRIES, while occasionally happily yelling FRENCH FRIES! with a giant loving grin on his face. Hey, he's happy. That's more than you can say about a lot of the other people we get in here, eh? There was this one time that my co-worker during the dinner rush let someone he shouldn't have into the family/handicapped washroom. Now, normally S is a pretty good guy - not much to talk to, just a "Yep", "Nope", "Sure", but good at his job, which is more than I can say for half the scrubs we got rotating through the lobby. So, S let a druggie into the handicapped washroom, which defaults to "Locked". Now, druggies being druggies, the guy proceeded to shoot up, smoke up, and generally gently caress up the washroom with smoke and used needles, then pass out on the floor with soiled trousers. Bad trip I guess. I was ignorant of the entire situation, and the dinner rush proceeded business as normal, until someone needed to change their baby. "One sec, lemme get the key." So I open the family washroom, and am immediately assaulted with a used needle, cut rubber band, and some blood on the baby changing table, a hand-rolled not-pot cig lying in a makeshift tinfoil ashtray on the sink counter, the smell of hours-old-poo and stale smoke, and a dirty hobo lying facedown on the floor. So I emit a choice few (german) swears, because my night had just become interesting, and in my (previous) line of work, an interesting night is never a good thing. I turn to the woman, with a dead serious look on my face, point to my right, and say "Sorry, washroom's closed. Please use the women's over there" Customer taken care of, it's time to once again be wrist-deep in cleaning supplies in completely non-effective and one-size-fits-none gloves. A rough outline of what I did - Get manager, call 911, take care of needle (I'm terrified of needles, so Fun), haul hobo off to ER, clean up aidsblood, sanitize hands, mop poop, mop piss, mop floor clean, then sanitize all surfaces of the bathroom. All told, about an hour and a half of work. And there's safe injection sites all over the DTES - He could've gone to one of those, but instead he walked at least 3 blocks to shoot up in a McDonalds. This one time someone had to clean poo off the ceiling of the men's washroom. It was before my time, but seriously. The loving ceiling? What. It gets weirder - June 6th, 2012 - the one night I drew the shortstraw and worked The Other nine-to-five. Midnight. We get a cult coming in. Not Scientology. Not Snuggie-Wearers-Club. A full blown satanic deathcult - blood-red hooded robes, non-visible faces, black candles, latin-sounding chanting, the works. In the middle of the group was a hobo, looking seriously out of it, and sticking out like a sore thumb. One person comes to the front of the group, takes out a notepad and golf pencil, flips it open, and starts asking everyone what they want. Big Mac meals, Quarter Cheeses, Nuggets, et cetera. The rest of them start chanting, draw a pentagram on the table in salt, place black candles at the points and corners, and move to light them. I step in. I, the lowly McDonald's Janitor, with the biggest poo poo-eating-grin on my face, step in and say "Sorry, no lit flames inside", and point to the no smoking sign. They all turn to me, all at once, creepily-syncronized (They must've practiced this), and I swear I could feel their death-stares. Meanwhile, the hobo is starting to freak the gently caress out, and starts asking about "the goods", and tugging on robes. The cultists ignore him, as if he's not even there, talking only to give Orderguy their order, then resuming their deathstare. I chuckle quietly to myself. I am not intimidated by this. Not at all. I continue on with my job, and resume pushing a mop around, all the way being followed by deathstares. The hobo is increasingly freaking the gently caress out, being ignored, and they keep staring at me. When I went back to my closet to re-wet the mop, they stared at me until I went out of line of sight, then I heard them resume chanting. When I emerge from my closet, they immediately stop chanting, and syncronized-turn to face me and resume deathstaring. So, Orderguy comes back with a bunch of food, they all get their burgers n nuggets, and leave, all the while staring at me. One of them flashes a metal something at me on the way out, and given that they're cultists, I'd bet that shift's pay that it was a ceremonial dagger. I never saw them again, and I never saw that hobo again either. Then this one time I found a pair of beers and 8 tittymags sitting on a table. Just sitting there. Abandoned. I wait five minutes, more than long enough for someone to come out of the bathroom, and come by again - Standard practice for left-there items. Still there. So, not being one to pass up free beer and tittymags, I stash that poo poo. End of my shift rolls around, midnight, and I inspect my haul - Two bottles of Budweiser, seven tittymags ranging from '05-'07 in good condition, and a copy of Muffler Weekly, still in it's plastic sleeve, from '05, postmarked to an auto repair shop nearby. I'm waiting for the bus to take me home, and I crack open the Bud - My friends are beersnobs, and introduced me to beer with Granville Island Brewery, a local microbrew that makes some drat good beer. I take my first sip of Bud, and am immediately displeased with it. It doesn't taste as bad as I've been led to believe, it just doesn't taste. At all. Now, I'm saying this as someone used to flavorful microbrew ales, so forgive me if I just insulted your favorite beer, and by extension, you. I polish off the beers despite their lack of taste, because hey! Free beer!, and I begin to peruse the tittymags, fully expecting to run into sticky pages. None were encountered - I guess whoever it was took good care of their high class literature periodicals. I keep them, but I didn't get much use out of them, I mean there's not even any tentacles! I wind up passing them off to my friend, who winds up passing them off to his cousin, and after that I have no idea where they are now. Sitting under the cousin's bed, encrusted with sticky filth? Passed on to someone else? Seven degrees of seperation: Tittymag edition? I don't know. What I do know is that Muffler Weekly ended up back where it belonged, 7 years late, the delay being chalked up to Canada Post. Yes, it's that bad. Radio Free Kobold has a new favorite as of 08:21 on Sep 20, 2012 |
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Aug 22, 2012 07:56
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Red Bart posted:It's like Scientology's claim to be able to levitate, use telekinesis and telepathy at certain OT levels. If that's true: show us! No quicker way of gaining new believers as by showing these claims, you'd think. That they don't should be enough for anyone - even if they are of limited intellect - to know that they are full of poo poo. Amazingly even intelligent people fall for it. I guess there's nothing more powerful then the power of self denial. After all you can't admit that it's bullshit after investing these amounts of money into it. In their defense, practical teleportation and arm-strength TK would be so amazingly handy. Think about it - No commute to work, just teleport. The laziness applications of TK are boundless - fetching the remote, getting a cold beer from the fridge while watching TV on the couch in the other room, then flipping your steak and taking it off, putting it on a plate, fetching the salt and pepper, knife and fork, and then bringing your dinner to you, on the couch the whole time. Then you don't even move your arms, you just TK feed yourself. And that's just cooking dinner.
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Aug 22, 2012 08:00
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 22:32 |
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Radio Free Kobold posted:In their defense, practical teleportation and arm-strength TK would be so amazingly handy. Think about it - No commute to work, just teleport. The laziness applications of TK are boundless - fetching the remote, getting a cold beer from the fridge while watching TV on the couch in the other room, then flipping your steak and taking it off, putting it on a plate, fetching the salt and pepper, knife and fork, and then bringing your dinner to you, on the couch the whole time. Then you don't even move your arms, you just TK feed yourself. And that's just cooking dinner. That sounds like a lot of work. Can't you just walk over and do those things you fat slob?
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Aug 22, 2012 15:50
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