I was working at a greenhouse that stored tropical plants over the winter for wealthy clients and someone's "man" -- I don't know what his actual job or relation to this client was and only ever heard him described as this -- was due to bring a delivery truck with 6 or so 10 foot tall lemon trees in pots. This was the day that only me and another small non-man employee were in the building, but we were told he had a handcart and we weren't expected to move anything. But then he did, I fear, drive the truck into the building for a little kiss because he didn't know that the height of the truck was several feet taller than our garage door. And then as me and my coworker were jogging up to the door yelling for him to stop, he did of course repeat this for some reason. And then he was so rattled he basically begged us for help moving the delivery down from the truck onto the floor of the greenhouse.
For reference if you've never seen a lemon tree they get BIG ASS villainously sharp spines on the branches that are spaced out just enough they're difficult to spot, so moving them is harrowing. Especially when they're so tall that the person navigating the handcart has the branches directly in their face once the cart is at an angle sufficient to push it and you have to 100% rely on a buddy to direct you forward. And even moreso! When you're looking at your coworker like is this guy tweaking!! Is he going to drop this big honking spiked tree on us or himself!!
Anyways we all lived and we didn't drop the trees and later he explained he was just a little eepy so it's fine!
Apr 26, 2024
Related Recs
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small boy put a plastic roach under some packaged sliced ham on the grocery store conveyor belt. i jumped
Apr 2, 2024
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when a 40 something man called and screamed at the top of his lungs at me , the type of scream Iāve only received before from my mother, because I told him we were booked and he would have to take his dog to the emergency vet (Iām a vet tech) and he was screaming threats at me and said his whole family goes to my hospital and theyāll never go again blah blah blah. but he didnāt know his mom LOVED ME. and she made him call back and apologize the next day.
ALSO. one time this guy came in and was like. can you scan this dog for a microchip, I took my dog to a board and train facility and when I went to pick him up they gave me this dog , and this is NOT my dogā¦ and he tried to tell the place that but they gaslit him and he was hours from home and it was getting late and he had to work in the morning so he took the dog, and it wasnāt his dog , they sent his dog home with someone else. Dogs were swapped back it all ended well
my job is always crazy, crazy clients, crazy animals, dealing with euthanasias everyday, and when I have to cut animals or pets heads off to send them out for rabies testing
Apr 19, 2024
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I was sitting on the steps to my house with my friend Evan. We were about 2 or 3. There were hundreds of ants on the sidewalk below us. Evan reached down and started smushing them. I turned to him and told him to stop: āHow would YOU feel if you were an ant and someone smushed YOU?ā A patronizing lesson in empathyā¦ Interestingly, I had open heart surgery around the same time and spent days in the hospital, but this memory is much more visceral. Love this question.
Apr 2, 2024
Top Recs from @bumbythefool
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Iām sick of feeling powerless so my new coping strategy is to not let a stupid system bully me into quiet despair. Iām learning how to use my stateās General Assemblyās online bill tracker and Iām subscribing to email updates for the agendas and the public hearings of the legislative committees Iām most concerned about. Iām memorizing all my legislatorsā names and emailing and calling regularly.
Also: Check to see if your stateās Legislative Library has Libguides that explain in laymanās terms what bills are passing in your state and other educational/legislative resources you have freely available to you!!!
Nov 20, 2024
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You will make about 60k if you're lucky unless you become a manager, and you will have 35k of debt or more from grad school (online grad school is cheaper sometimes and no one cares where you get the degree anyways). And sometimes you work for a university (which is essentially a corporation) or the government. But in general everyone in your field will believe in a code of ethics that raises the dignity of humanity above the mire of misinformation and censorship. And you help empower people with the information literacy to move through the world as confident capable individuals/professionals/scholars. Community college libraries are my favorite environment I've worked in so far because the students are cool, driven, and diverse in age and background. Public libraries also do amazing social work in 2025 to provide services to their communities like harm reduction, networks of resources for unhoused people, language teaching, professional development, basic technology training, literally just being a third space, I could go on forever. It definitely is a career that exists because of neoliberalism I'm not going to lie, like American public libraries only exist because robber barons in the 1900s donated a mind boggling amount of grants to towns across the country to build them (not sure about other countries' history with this to be fair). All that being said I decided I wanted to be a librarian when I was 16 and I've been committed to that path for 11 years with no regret.
To add a personal note to this rec and emphasize how meaningful this work really is, I'm going to indulge in a story because I could genuinely cry thinking about all the kind, interesting people I've met who have chosen to be vulnerable with me about their needs and goals. A couple years ago I helped an older man for multiple hours to remember his email login so he could get a copy of his birth certificate from his son-in-law who had emailed a scan of the physical copy which was in another country. The stakes were incredibly high and the task seemed virtually impossible because we didn't even have an email address to start. He was having trouble reaching his son-in-law to ask for help because of the time difference, and he needed the scan ASAP. We were together for so long I learned a lot about him. He talked to me about Islam and Christianity and angels. And then we got it! It's probably one of the defining moments of my career and to me is one of the most impactful things I've ever done.
So there's my job rec lol!
Mar 13, 2025
Apr 16, 2025