More restaurateurs need to be on the side of their staff, and refuse service to awful people.
A lady came into the high end restaurant where I worked at 730pm on a Saturday night. Naturally, it was packed. It was a party of 10 and she was told that she would be waiting for at least an hour. She starts throwing a tantrum, crying over it. Then she starts going to tables and asking them to leave so that she can be seated. At either of those turns, I'd have told her that she needed to eat somewhere else. Instead, they comped about $100 of food for her once they got her in. If people didn't reward shitty behavior, there would be a lot less of it.
For servers and bartenders, its an hours long exercise in service, patience, and compassion every work day. However, I went too far down that road, and my patience becomes a fault at some point. Hard to tell when being kind crosses over into self sacrifice until hindsight.
And its not just food service. Our culture is all about egoism. Even non profits are created for the purpose of extracting riches. A balance has to be struck between the individual, and the collective, or its bad for everyone. Rewarding single egos that seek to have their unhealthy "needs" met by dishonest tactics over and over again is why so many of us are so isolated.
Serious question: Does your company need a copywriter/marketer? I just lost two clients. Happens every winter, then gets back to normal in May.
Yeah, I had a reaction yesterday to someone trying to mine attention out of me in a dishonest, harmful way. "I just want to heeeeelp." How is trying to force help down someones throat helpful exactly? But I get it. You got rewarded for these mental gymnastics and stuck with them long after they stopped working. Im going to offer to sit and chat with her after Im done in exchange for not having to parry her trying to force "help" upon me every 90 seconds. God I hope it works. Im still all twisted up over it. Im happy to give someone attention or validation as long as they come at me in an authentic way. But when someone comes at me with bullshit, hard pass.
What's the subject matter? If its stuff I can churn out mindlessly, that may be doable.
If they didnt use black lights, thered have already been semen everywhere. Remember the Dateline episodes where they took blacklights into hotel rooms?
Nora Ephron wrote about how she'd only told one person her sexual fantasy, her shrink, and she was overjoyed when she saw in the newspaper that he'd died.
Aww man, they deleted their confession. Speaking of fantasies, has anyone read My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday? It's basically a collection of transgressive fantasies of women based on letters and tapes and interviews. I have yet to read it myself.
Hah! I remember you talked about it on the Joe Rogan. How you will never have to worry about mom going in and out of consciousness and seeing her fall and break something. And how you thought it made you a bad person.
And also the thing about your dad, where you found out he died, you were off the hook with that Winona Ryder thing.
I think folks dealing with a very sick parent often feel relief and then tremendous guilt at that feeling. 19 years later and I still occasionally become frozen by the memory.
Spending many years in therapy has left me with very few unspoken confessions, but if I dig deep I may be able to find one I'm willing to share here. I'll come back to this.
Ohhh, that's the pill you were talking about on This is Horror that forces you to stop drinking because the combination will make you very sick. Thank god. Sandwiches are now safe to walk the streets without a wild Chuck eating their meat out.
Chuck's sandwich story really hit home for me. I am a chronic sleep walker and can relate to that feeling of not being in control of yourself. I wake up with scrapes bruises, things in the house misplaced. What the hell was my unconscious self up to?
People have such great Ambien stories. A good friend of mine woke up one morning feeling like shit and thinking she had contracted a horrible stomach flu. She called in sick to work then went downstairs to her kitchen where she found a sink full of empty mini-margarita bottles. It was only then that she realized she wasn't sick -- she was hungover from a party of one she didn't remember having.
I actually was kidnapped. Unfortunately it wasn't by strangers, it was my own father. I was reunited with my mom after spending over a year in another country.
I hate the world. I hate the Universe. I hate everything to an extent that even if I had everything, all pleasures, all revenge and all the riches, even if I became emperor, and could commit every atrocity, even then, I wouldn't feel justified. It's a grudge that I believe I will carry to the grave and beyond.
makes me wonder what previous lives you lived. or what happened in this one. that's quite a burden you are carrying and it must be lightened a little by sharing it here?
It is quite a burden. The problem is that the cause is really a lot of stuff that was being accumulated. But the trigger, the thing that made me snap, was being falsely accused of rape, while having my best friend being actually raped and not wanting to call the police. Nothing happened to me, the woman who accused me had no proofs and I proved that she lied many times. But this broke my heart in a level that I could not imagine. However this is more than two years ago. It hurts less. Tried some therapy three times, but it only made it worse for me and for the therapist who did not know what to say.
Anyway I hung onto this hatred and used it to make me stronger and more aware of how rough can this world be. Sometimes though I get myself into a spiral of rage, but marijuana works most of the time in the hardest times.
In this time I met someone who I deeply fell in love but due to my anxiety (which could be considered a symtom of PTSD) I lost her. Of course this made my anger grow even more. But as much as I feel rage, I don't hate specifically these people, I hate God, I hate whoever made this crap. The only thing that gave me comfort was Albert Camus' The Rebel, where it speaks of existential revolt. This is exactly what I feel.
It is pretty much a revolt against the lack of meaning of this universe. It is the revolt against the feeling that after all everything that we make is meaningless and will disappear. Someone who fully lives this, someone who see the meaninglessness of the universe and still insists to live and make something out of life instead of commiting suicide or choosing to drug him/herself to death is someone who revolts against the absurd.
I've got a warm up confession which is so ick to me lol. As an addict spent every dime of my savings of 45,000 dollars on opiates and heroin. That doesn't include the weekly paychecks.
That's worse than me, though I did spend fifteen thousand in six months, at least. I only know that number because that was how much I had in my savings at the time, so it doesn't include my checking account and all the nights I left work and spent $300, all my tips from the night.
I live witha man, my children's father, he's going through hard time now, having therapy...when I look at him I know that everything is over and I will leave him as soon as he will be better. I don't want suicide on my hands and he is a good father after all. But I might as well destroy him and tell him a truth that I slept with his stepfather when we started dating.
Many years ago while hitchiking from New Mexico to San Francisco I was picked up by a trucker hauling some war machinery I cant recall. The trucker had a tatto of the confederate flag with the word "Cracker" written underneath. Of course, this was something of a red flag but when hitchiking through the desert, beggars cannot always be chosers.
The length of my ride with this trucker consisted of me kindly rejecting his propositions to smoke meth with him and fuck him.
We stopped at a rest stop and I got out to stretch and piss. Upon coming out of the rest area, I saw to my horror the nefarious trucker speeding off and into the sunset with my belongings. I called the cops and we tracked him down. I did retrieve my things and did not press charges in hopes that this incedent may serve as a lesson to him.
Of a long list of odd human intetactions that was by far the most surreal.
More restaurateurs need to be on the side of their staff, and refuse service to awful people.
A lady came into the high end restaurant where I worked at 730pm on a Saturday night. Naturally, it was packed. It was a party of 10 and she was told that she would be waiting for at least an hour. She starts throwing a tantrum, crying over it. Then she starts going to tables and asking them to leave so that she can be seated. At either of those turns, I'd have told her that she needed to eat somewhere else. Instead, they comped about $100 of food for her once they got her in. If people didn't reward shitty behavior, there would be a lot less of it.
For servers and bartenders, its an hours long exercise in service, patience, and compassion every work day. However, I went too far down that road, and my patience becomes a fault at some point. Hard to tell when being kind crosses over into self sacrifice until hindsight.
And its not just food service. Our culture is all about egoism. Even non profits are created for the purpose of extracting riches. A balance has to be struck between the individual, and the collective, or its bad for everyone. Rewarding single egos that seek to have their unhealthy "needs" met by dishonest tactics over and over again is why so many of us are so isolated.
Serious question: Does your company need a copywriter/marketer? I just lost two clients. Happens every winter, then gets back to normal in May.
Yeah, I had a reaction yesterday to someone trying to mine attention out of me in a dishonest, harmful way. "I just want to heeeeelp." How is trying to force help down someones throat helpful exactly? But I get it. You got rewarded for these mental gymnastics and stuck with them long after they stopped working. Im going to offer to sit and chat with her after Im done in exchange for not having to parry her trying to force "help" upon me every 90 seconds. God I hope it works. Im still all twisted up over it. Im happy to give someone attention or validation as long as they come at me in an authentic way. But when someone comes at me with bullshit, hard pass.
What's the subject matter? If its stuff I can churn out mindlessly, that may be doable.
My email is in the email notification from following you, if you wouldn't mind sending me details, a link, or connecting me to the right person.
A different version of this story is Reddit famous, but it was semen on the kids floor discovered with a blacklight, then blamed on the dog.
If they didnt use black lights, thered have already been semen everywhere. Remember the Dateline episodes where they took blacklights into hotel rooms?
Liquid soap looks like semen or other fluids under UV-lamp too. Hydrogen peroxide or bleach can make anything clean.
Laundry detergent shows up under black light similar to semen? Thank you. I got a new excuse.
Nora Ephron wrote about how she'd only told one person her sexual fantasy, her shrink, and she was overjoyed when she saw in the newspaper that he'd died.
Maybe this wasn't such a great idea. There's plenty of less incriminating stuff I've never told anyone. What was I thinking?
She told the shrink the fantasy, or wanted to have sex with the shrink?
She'd told him the fantasy.
Aww man, they deleted their confession. Speaking of fantasies, has anyone read My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday? It's basically a collection of transgressive fantasies of women based on letters and tapes and interviews. I have yet to read it myself.
This book was my earliest sex ed. I hid in my mom’s closet to read it. 🤯
I've read half of this and it's a crazy book. It's laid out as an imaginary brothel for women and each chapter is letters with a similar fantasy theme
That's par for the course on the road to being a non profit executive.
Nice. An excellent answer.
This one took the wind outta me. Too real.
Right? The morning my mother died my grief was tempered (a mite) by the knowledge that I'd only suffer her death once in life.
Hah! I remember you talked about it on the Joe Rogan. How you will never have to worry about mom going in and out of consciousness and seeing her fall and break something. And how you thought it made you a bad person.
And also the thing about your dad, where you found out he died, you were off the hook with that Winona Ryder thing.
I was ashamed to realize I cried more for my cat dying then I did for my grandparents. My grandparents were awesome too.
I think folks dealing with a very sick parent often feel relief and then tremendous guilt at that feeling. 19 years later and I still occasionally become frozen by the memory.
Are we meant to pour out the raw content at this stage? Or are we meant to produce a first draft of a story? Ready to crucify self.
Don't overthink this, Randy. It's a sentence at most.
Yikes, Chuck! There isn't a thing I haven't told my husband. Gimme a little time to think about this.
I second this motion. lol I have to put my thinking cap on.
What did Wilde write in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'? "A happy marriage makes deception essential."
Hmm. I think I’ve got it. But no one’s gonna like it. lol
Being "liked" is not the point of the exercise. Take your time. I'll move the "reveal" up to Wednesday of this next week.
How could I forget, “you don’t write to make friends.”
Already posted.
As my four-year-old stepson once said: my heart is beeping so fast.
Okay. I'm thinking.
Spending many years in therapy has left me with very few unspoken confessions, but if I dig deep I may be able to find one I'm willing to share here. I'll come back to this.
No hurry.
Got one....
I poisoned my (then) best friend's boyfriend. (Also posting this as a separate comment.)
.reknird gib a ecno saw I
You had to type THAT backwards? But you get the idea.
You were a big brinker?
Were? WERE? Happy to say I'm back on The Pill.
Chuck, I know you're referring to Ambien but my mind wants to go to birth control lol
Antabuse. When you drink your entire digestive tract turns inside out.
Ohhh, that's the pill you were talking about on This is Horror that forces you to stop drinking because the combination will make you very sick. Thank god. Sandwiches are now safe to walk the streets without a wild Chuck eating their meat out.
Chuck's sandwich story really hit home for me. I am a chronic sleep walker and can relate to that feeling of not being in control of yourself. I wake up with scrapes bruises, things in the house misplaced. What the hell was my unconscious self up to?
People have such great Ambien stories. A good friend of mine woke up one morning feeling like shit and thinking she had contracted a horrible stomach flu. She called in sick to work then went downstairs to her kitchen where she found a sink full of empty mini-margarita bottles. It was only then that she realized she wasn't sick -- she was hungover from a party of one she didn't remember having.
I can't believe I'm giggling my ass off over this. Slave to John Barleycorn for years, and no one knew.
As a child I daydreamed about being kidnapped because in my mind, being stolen away by strangers was more peaceful than being at home.
Me too.
Yall have some beautifully devastating lines.
I actually was kidnapped. Unfortunately it wasn't by strangers, it was my own father. I was reunited with my mom after spending over a year in another country.
I was kidnapped by my father too, who was awarded custody a few weeks later.
Same, but it lasted one night, there were five children at that time. We had fish and chips, and played Mouse Trap.
Alright. *sigh*
In my 20’s I used to drink my own urine because I thought it was healthy.
I expected to be ostracized.
Tom did that for a time in the early 90s! It was a popular trend, and I applaud you for the Comment.
Oh I can’t wait to see the reveal.
Atticus, you're safe no matter how much forbidden lemonade you drank. You're okay in my book.
Forbidden lemonade!!!
Bear Grylls has done it, and he is pretty badass. #Survival
I hate the world. I hate the Universe. I hate everything to an extent that even if I had everything, all pleasures, all revenge and all the riches, even if I became emperor, and could commit every atrocity, even then, I wouldn't feel justified. It's a grudge that I believe I will carry to the grave and beyond.
makes me wonder what previous lives you lived. or what happened in this one. that's quite a burden you are carrying and it must be lightened a little by sharing it here?
It is quite a burden. The problem is that the cause is really a lot of stuff that was being accumulated. But the trigger, the thing that made me snap, was being falsely accused of rape, while having my best friend being actually raped and not wanting to call the police. Nothing happened to me, the woman who accused me had no proofs and I proved that she lied many times. But this broke my heart in a level that I could not imagine. However this is more than two years ago. It hurts less. Tried some therapy three times, but it only made it worse for me and for the therapist who did not know what to say.
Anyway I hung onto this hatred and used it to make me stronger and more aware of how rough can this world be. Sometimes though I get myself into a spiral of rage, but marijuana works most of the time in the hardest times.
In this time I met someone who I deeply fell in love but due to my anxiety (which could be considered a symtom of PTSD) I lost her. Of course this made my anger grow even more. But as much as I feel rage, I don't hate specifically these people, I hate God, I hate whoever made this crap. The only thing that gave me comfort was Albert Camus' The Rebel, where it speaks of existential revolt. This is exactly what I feel.
Haven't read The Rebel but read The Stranger many moons ago. Not sure what existential revolt is?
It is pretty much a revolt against the lack of meaning of this universe. It is the revolt against the feeling that after all everything that we make is meaningless and will disappear. Someone who fully lives this, someone who see the meaninglessness of the universe and still insists to live and make something out of life instead of commiting suicide or choosing to drug him/herself to death is someone who revolts against the absurd.
I've got a warm up confession which is so ick to me lol. As an addict spent every dime of my savings of 45,000 dollars on opiates and heroin. That doesn't include the weekly paychecks.
Holy moly that's a lot of money coursing through your bloodstream. Somebody drain Cheap's blood we need that 45K back lol
lolol. It was a lesson learned. I'm doing much better now.
Good
That's worse than me, though I did spend fifteen thousand in six months, at least. I only know that number because that was how much I had in my savings at the time, so it doesn't include my checking account and all the nights I left work and spent $300, all my tips from the night.
Yep. Lolol
Thank God I didnt have access to that much money in those days. I would have died for sure.
I live witha man, my children's father, he's going through hard time now, having therapy...when I look at him I know that everything is over and I will leave him as soon as he will be better. I don't want suicide on my hands and he is a good father after all. But I might as well destroy him and tell him a truth that I slept with his stepfather when we started dating.
!!!!!
Godspeed
Eh, who cares.
Many years ago while hitchiking from New Mexico to San Francisco I was picked up by a trucker hauling some war machinery I cant recall. The trucker had a tatto of the confederate flag with the word "Cracker" written underneath. Of course, this was something of a red flag but when hitchiking through the desert, beggars cannot always be chosers.
The length of my ride with this trucker consisted of me kindly rejecting his propositions to smoke meth with him and fuck him.
We stopped at a rest stop and I got out to stretch and piss. Upon coming out of the rest area, I saw to my horror the nefarious trucker speeding off and into the sunset with my belongings. I called the cops and we tracked him down. I did retrieve my things and did not press charges in hopes that this incedent may serve as a lesson to him.
Of a long list of odd human intetactions that was by far the most surreal.
-Joe DeVita