start a victory garden and ration your IRRATIONALLY ANGRY feelings, part 3

Yeah, but it still blows.

agreed. capitalism is death by a thousand cuts.

My Walmart has tons of baskets but the lazy/not paid enough to give a fuck employees seem to be incapable of putting them back up by the entrances after people check out. I usually have to walk by the checkout lanes to scavenge one.

I walked the front of the store to see if that was the case here; no baskets.

someone keeps microwaving fish in the break room at work. well, not someone, a person who I can identify. she does it multiple times per week.

not a person, a savage

otm, she's also irritated the hell out of a couple coworkers for other reasons, including being mean

I know it's probably nothing she can help, but she had the most cringe-inducing giant cold sore breakout a couple weeks ago when I passed her in the hall. Like a giant red blotch that covered half her lower lip. I kind of wanted to leave a giant variety pack of medicated lip stuff on her desk.

someone at my job loves to put broccoli in the toaster oven at different times during the day but never at lunch time

when i try to hang up my iphone but my hand somehow blocks the sensor that alerts the little bastard to the presence of a yakking face, triggering it to turn off the screen (power saving feature, i presume). result is that i keep trying to tap the disconnect icon, but the screen keeps going black at the last second, over and over again. angry making.

xp maybe they just love to fart and are crazy

ia: hyperactive/screaming children out in public (ia because i was that kid myself once, and also bc if you're childless you're not ever allowed to criticize children or their shitty parents because you're obv an unfeeling monster who's just selfishly letting tumbleweed pass through your ovaries instead of helping repopulate the earth with more special snowflakes)

cosine jb. also cosine the part where it's unloving and uncharitable to ever be annoyed by kids ever when when people you like keep having them and that's their whole world now but jesus christ how can a 3yo even MAKE that much noise on the floor, he weighs less than my bike and he's made of subcutaneous fat and soft squishy cartilage instead of steel tubing.

not that irrational, child screams are specially designed by our creator to be one of the most unpleasant sounds and He forgives u

ia at parents who are ia at people who don't like child screams though

amen

Today his mom stood in the hallway and yelled back at him about the consequences of his actions if he didn't stop screaming. I'm sorry for her, I really am, but I do wonder where they lived before....

If the parent doesn't even seem to gaf about the screams then I sympathize. People sometimes assume children (at least toddlers) are more controllable than they are though, such as my neighbor who banged on his ceiling when my daughter was throwing a tantrum, as though I somehow needed to be put on notice that the meltdown going on in my apartment was loud and irritating because I had otherwise been rather enjoying it.

But yes toddler screams are IA making.

i have more of a problem with older toddlers and young children than with babies, actually. babies are supposed to cry. but if you let your five-year-old loose in a store, and the kid is a holy terror, do not make it my problem if the kid gets hurt because i couldn't get out of the way fast enough, or if i'm visibly wincing because of the piercing screams of a kid who's had too much sugar.

(actually, it was trader joe's i was just in, so the kids probably had too much yerba mate)

Have you tried sidling up to the child and screaming along in the same pitch? It's bound to put the little bastard off his or her stride.

do not make it my problem if the kid gets hurt because i couldn't get out of the way fast enough
yeah it's really great to work in a place where they get mad if you can't teleport from one end of the store to the other and save the kid from crashing into a customer (or the store), and neither can any other worker, especially during bigass holiday sales (should be fellow workers on every aisle, but retail=small a payroll as possible/allowed).
Parents trying to deal with their kids' melt-downs get all my sympathy, but some are oblivious at best. Which is also great when you can barely save your 88-year-old Mother from getting run down, and then somebody else says something to one of the oblivious Daddies, who follows us out of the restaurant arguing (if that's what you call it when he keeps jabbering while we're ignoring him(, and then another Daddy runs up as his reinforcement etc

"oblivious at best': heh I mentioned this on a thread about psychopaths, and got reprimanded

and that's their whole world now

part of the "it's selfish not to have kids" argument is that if you want a life of your own outside of the bubble of parenting, you're putting your own desires first, not being a real grownup and taking a backseat role to the very important duty of making children your whole reason for living. and i have philosophical problems with that -- the idea of a mother being a passive vessel who lives to serve -- no, just no. even people who do have kids and try to live somewhat balanced lives get guilted into this line of thinking.

I know it's silly to push back on an IA thread post, but I think the typical argument (without endorsing said argument) against people without children judging people with children is simply that they "don't understand what it's like to try to get a rev'd up little ball of pure id through the cookie aisle of a supermarket without violent conflict," not that they are "selfish and useless people who are not contributing to the world."

Like I don't think the typical toddler parent is thinking "JEEZ WHY HASN'T THIS PARASITE PROCREATED YET" it's more like "I AM SO TIRED PLEASE JUST CUT ME SOME SLACK"

"it's selfish not to have kids" is a real dumbass reductive perspective on parenting. they're just jealous of all us free spirits who don't give a fuck.

"don't understand what it's like to try to get a rev'd up little ball of pure id through the cookie aisle of a supermarket without violent conflict,"

this whole "you have to actually experience this terrible thing i do every day rather than read about it" is bullshit too

we understand, it's why we don't have kids

all the people who have kids used to not have kids, and hence are well positioned to judge whether people without kids understand what it's like

I totally sympathize, but: getting back to people who are seemingly oblivious at best--and who don't seem tired, but are chatting up a storm with friends, some of whose own kids are helling around too, getting that playground energy going, in a crowded indoor space....

I'm with you on that, I cringe too

I think the typical argument (without endorsing said argument) against people without children judging people with children is simply that they "don't understand what it's like to try to get a rev'd up little ball of pure id through the cookie aisle of a supermarket without violent conflict,"

yes, but on the other hand, i made a decision, a well-informed and careful one, not to put myself into a situation where i would have to get a revved-up ball of id through a cookie aisle. if you're the parent of this ball of id, that's the decision you made, and you're stuck with it for the next few years, and if i'm judging it's because you're expecting a store full of strangers to be patient and understanding when their own lives are stressful enough already. that's a lot of charity to ask for.

Well I see that side of it and I fully respect people who choose not to have kids. I don't think there's anything more or less "selfish" about having vs not having kids. But I also think it's unreasonable to expect to live in a child-free world, as though the people who are "stuck with" their decision should just avoid buying groceries for a few years. I try to do my part to avoid creating greater inconvenience by only shopping in already-noisy madhouses like Costco rather than quiet, boutique organic groceries, and by removing K from any indoor space as quickly as possible (if possible) when she starts screaming, best I can do.

i mean you don't fucking have to have kids. you don't. not unless someone is threatening your life and saying "bear my child or i'll fucking kill you." it's a decision what you bring into the world and it's not other people's problem.

sorry, it's other people's problem. People are all other people's problem.

i have empathy for a lot of people and consider myself one of those dreaded SJWs but i get real tired of people not taking accountability for things that they can realistically do something about.

All I'm saying is how long is this going to go on for? I probably can't hope they'll just break the lease and move out, so that leaves...when he goes to pre-school?

regarding small kids, i got in an almost-argument with my friend for "not knowing" about how it is, instigated by me commenting that his in-home communication wasn't optimal. he'd showed me how hard it was to go out, and it was this bizarrely passive-aggressive half-jokey text exchange with his wife, which was beyond the point.

here's the thing -- I have a lot of friends with children. small children. it's not foreign! if you say "i may be free saturday afternoon" and i have yet to make plans, i will hold it open. if you tell me on saturday afternoon that the kids won't nap and you have to stay home, then that's fine! if you want me to come over and bring a pizza and chill with your kid for a bit, that's cool most of the time, too. but if you let a couple of us know you're down for going to X restaurant and a couple people are en route and you can't be bothered to text all of us to say it's not gonna happen, then wtf! if you are not amazing at communication, you need to get a lot better if you have small kids and want to keep doing stuff with friends,

i mean, your kid was shooting the angry birds in the wrong direction until i told him how that shit works, i deserve some credit, here

Oh flaky parent friends suck for sure, we have those even as parents -- couple who lives half a block away and like barely communicates, cancels out of everything for any possible child-related excuse with no notice whatsoever.

Skips friends' bdays because mom has a headache, they have to be back in their home like 2 hours before bedtime without exception, etc.

bleh, some people live their lives really rubbery, constantly trying to reach out but getting slapped back into that home

Parents with kids are terrible but even worse are the old people who don't commit suicide when they turn 55! Get out of my way with your slowass walker, gramps! Go wander into the desert without water.

we have another thread for that

When you are out with someone and they run into someone they know and start talking and don't introduce you...

I do that sometimes, usually because i can't actually remember the name of the person, and am hoping desperately that it'll somehow come up in the conversation

I commend anyone who doesn't breed in this anthropocene era of unsustainable plenty as opposed to the happy fucking biological fly tippers and their ever increasing broods of yet more shitting arseholes in cars.

My kid was quite a public menace in his younger days (autism,ADHD and tourettes) and my response has not always been considered and calm towards rude, disapproving voices. I think sometimes it was justifiable counter-aggression and at other times I was going into precious, sanctimonious parent-arsehole territory myself.

xp I have a good arrangement with one of my friends that if she starts talking to someone and doesn't introduce me, I know it's because she's forgotten their name. So I wait for a lull and introduce myself and then they tell me their name! It works great. She can give a pleasant little apology, like, "Oh, sorry, yes, this is my friend In Orbit! Did you meet at the--no? Oh well, anyway, Susan, you make the best lasagna, In Orbit, you have to try the recipe...." and it's all smoothed out. Genius. You do need a partner for that one though.

i mean you don't fucking have to have kids. you don't. not unless someone is threatening your life and saying "bear my child or i'll fucking kill you." it's a decision what you bring into the world and it's not other people's problem.

I know a couple of people who have kids but only because they fought to get custody instead of leaving them with drug addict siblings who can't be bothered to do things like "purchase food instead of meth" or "have a place to live" or "bring the child to school". Not super common obviously but not unheard of.