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

shopping carts just floating around the parking lot seems so foreign to me, partly because most places near me where you'd conceivably take the cart to your car have the cart corrals throughout the parking lot, and it's incredibly rare that people don't return them

it's some weird regional cultural thing, though, because when I was visiting a friend in another state there were carts all over the place in the grocery store parking lot!

thames water:

"Please would you rate our service on a scale of 1-5 (where 5 is great)?"

your service? it was an online form - *I* did all the work.

I answer my grocery store's surveys to get the bonus gas points.

The questions are always Did you interact with anyone in the meat department? Did you interact with anyone in the bakery? Did you interact with anyone in the dairy department? Was your cashier courteous and friendly?

Did I interact with anyone in the dairy department? What, the shadowy figures that lurk behind the gallons of milk and the containers of cream? Are they supposed to greet me? Am I supposed to offer them a confession of my sins? Those guys?

I also didn't interact with anyone in the canned goods. Maybe I'll come back at 4:30 tomorrow morning while they're stocking the shelves.

Unless, of course, it was the web server that was asking me how it was doing...

Supermarkets sometimes have cheese counters where you can buy posh cheese. Would that count as dairy dept?

It would be awesome to be greeted by the guy behind the milk jugs.

ppl who are not news ppl who post BREAKING when reposting breaking news on social media platforms

BREAKING: wind

Did I interact with anyone in the dairy department? What, the shadowy figures that lurk behind the gallons of milk and the containers of cream? Are they supposed to greet me? Am I supposed to offer them a confession of my sins? Those guys?

i've definitely been startled by a presence behind the milk more than once

Can I help you find anything, sir?

https://d2w9rnfcy7mm78.cloudfront.net/989448/large_9af265f85ba382837cbb9bfb9109d541.jpg

Our dairy department guys are always shooting the shit about video games and frantically trying to restock the yogurt. People eat so much yogurt.

I hate those surveys that everyone asks you to do on their receipts these days. It's like "hey, you look like a rat. would you rat out the produce guy for a chance to win a $500 gift card? we KNOW the baby spinach leaves aren't fresh. all you have to do is say it and he's gone."

When I worked at the liquor store, the keg boys would stand in the coolers and look for shoplifters through the Zima.

Did you interact with anyone in the meat department?

My new fave sexual euphemism, thankx

btw your mom and I interacted in the meat department, ifyouknowwhatimeanandithinkyoudo

Meat

Sandwich

hickory dickory dock etc

thrift

not 'not being able to afford things' but thrift, the at times compulsive desire to save, to cut out unnecessary expenditure, to make a nest egg, the pride in being financially sensible, comparing prices to get the best deal, the satisfaction in getting a lower price. money sends ppl insane and this is self-centred control freakery

damn, I would have you in a constant rage

my parents are thrifty (w/ ascetic sympathies) and distrustful of money, and I fight the former tendency in myself but I share the distrust of money and it makes me distrustful of the saving mentality, the fuss and the caution and the inhibition

I don't understand what "distrust of money" means. It sounds like being distrustful of a screwdriver or a frying pan or something.

I can think of some things that it might mean, but I'm definitely curious how it could propel different people in opposite directions, thrifty vs distrustful of thrifty.

well as I say they have ascetic tendencies (religious ofc), extol the simple life, and see money, like power, as potentially dangerous and best managed collectively rather than hoarded individually

I was on an expensive vacation last week, and my mother-in-law kept steering the conversation to things she had coupons for. Look! five dollars off! I guess theoretically it could add up, but honestly it just made me think "You know what's an even better deal? staying home and not doing any of this shit in the first place."

I won't speak for my wife, but we've had some disagreements over this. And I see her point? (Even if I disagree for the most part.)

She said recently, "Can we stop worrying about the Discover bill for a moment?" As in, years from now when the kids are grown and there are more memories than future between us, will I really spend time in the rocking chair, going Goddam, wish I could've paid that Discover bill off faster. Boy, had I only been able to qualify for a better interest rate on that Lowe's card....

She's right, to a point, but I'll also add that I hope I can afford a goddamm rocking chair in the year 2038.

There are lots of factors.

A certain measure of comfort and ease (not luxury, necessarily) helps me cope with the day-to-day anxieties and pressures and bullshit inherent in my life. It serves as a sort of padding. When there's some padding around me, I feel I can perform better as a father, husband, friend, son, brother, employee, and citizen.

Now I know I don't "deserve" comfort. But I like it and I can afford it. (Now. I spent plenty of my childhood and young adulthood being very close to the bone by necessity, not choice.)

Doubtless there are people out there living in an ascetic Thoureauesque fashion who are happy with very little and find it liberating. However. The way some people in my personal orbit practice thrift seems to be the antithesis of comfort and ease. It seems like more of a crusade, hairshirt, or addiction. Personally I don't want to always be looking for a slightly better deal on a $2 box of pasta; that sounds exhausting and anxiety-inducing.

Further, there is macro-thrift and micro-thrift. Buying a mcmansion in the middle of nowhere and then filling it with shit that was 20% off at Wal-Mart is not thrift. Driving a big honkin SUV, but going 10 miles our of your way to find gas that is three cents cheaper isn't thrift either.

Deciding on a modest overall lifestyle (which includes occasional splurges) might look thrifty in comparison.

Yus - one thing (basically the only thing) that money is good for is not worrying about things.

Puffin otm

I need to be thriftier in general, but there's a big difference between not owning lots of crap you don't need and refusing to invest in things that would easily prove their value, even if it's over time.

There's definitely a thing where some people value money more than time which I am sometimes guilty of. Way too much time spent spent searching various websites or holding off on purchases just to ultimately save 10$ or so. There's always this feeling like you don't want to be ripped off, even if you have enough money to live comfortably, so you end up over-researching every purchase.

Valuing money more than other considerations (including time) also comes out in more abstract ways. I had an old boss who counted how many post-its we were using. I think we would all have been better at our jobs (and made him more money) if we had been permitted to relax about the damn post-its. He had salespeople sharing hotel rooms; he scrutinized their 7-11 receipts. They groused about it all the time, and I'm sure it put them in a headspace that wasn't great for job performance.

One sometimes sees one of those Extreme Couponing show thingies where the family has a storage closet with 19 jugs of Drano and Rice-a-Roni and mouthwash - it was 75% off! - and I get sad, because either it will never be used, or those kids are going to be so fucking sick of Rice-a-Roni that they'll willingly drink the Drano.

Not to disparage anyone itt who practices austerity with good sense and perspective.

probably rational but my buddy never cleans up his trash when he leaves. i've told him multiple times as well, almost considering a ban

people that drive purely via memory. like roads/routes aren't going to change over time.

they just added a bike lane to the street outside my house (considering how many cyclists like to bike in the area, a noble idea). so they spent about a week or two converting the right lanes to bike lanes, with the protective poles and all, and then painted a huge-assed "right turn only" logo in the right lane at the intersection prior.

and already this morning, already saw two people who were going from muscle memory and not paying attention continue to go straight and plow right into the bike lane, and continue to keep driving as if they didn't notice the lane was too tiny to hold their car cos IT WAS A FUCKING BIKE LANE.

thinking our cyclists should give this one 6 months before they try it.

we have signs saying 'NEW ROAD LAYOUT AHEAD' but then they stay up for like two years and you're not sure if they've changed again

RELATED: The signs at this intersection.

https://i.imgur.com/NqpIZLb.jpg

The one-way ends across the intersection from that car. I get what the city engineers are trying to point out to motorists, but clearly, the north side of Scott & Sixth is not a one-way.

Oo, the things I get so irrationally angry about.

yeah that's mega confusing!

O_o

non traffic related

i have a highschool friend who constantly posts landscape photos in portrait orientation on facebook so they’re always sideways.
if it’s my inlaws, or elderly relatives, i’ll cut them some slack.
but if you are under 45 there is no excuse for this kind of nonsense.

people that still open 17 individual browsers instead of different tabs in one browser

Who does that!?! I constantly wow coworkers who have no clue you can open multiple excel worksheets in one frame.

I only know of about six or eight browsers!

Ha, you laugh but at work I use Firefox out of preference, chrome because a bunch of the work sites don't work in Firefox and SeaMonkey because it has (had) a built in irc client and we use irc for chat because it is still the 80s where I work.

(Also handy if you need to access more than one aws account at a time)

https://n11scdn.akamaized.net/a1/450/spor-outdoor/karistiricilar/nike-genis-agizli-suluk__0175671955267281.jpg

Beverage bottles that have squirt tops that require sucking at a teat: NO, FUCK YOU.

otm

Hate those things too, but always thought they were for people who had no time for sipping, like boxers or bicylists.

i carry around a bucket with a ladle

Disco nozzles!

websites that give you the first 3.5 sentences of an article and then present a button that gives you the option to "continue reading"

Doesn't stop them filling the test of the page with "more popular articles" though

Rest of the page, goddamn autocorrect.