My b*ss said since our section of the m****m is going to be closed for a while even when we start reopening so he was going to find us new things to do like line management 🤢🤢 we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it i guess… i said sure bc my c*ntract is up for renewal but guess what i am not risking my parents lives to edutain some tourists!!!!!
Anyone else have this like weird anxiety about people questioning your actions? So much so that even when you’re just doing completely innocuous and normal things that nobody would ever ask you about or even take note of, you imagine having to explain and justify why you’re doing it to someone else?
One of the first books I read in English as a kid, maybe 1 year after I started learning English, was a booklet with a title like, How to Have a Great Time at Summer Camp. I don’t remember the exact title and I know I only picked it up because the other books in English in my school’s library looked way beyond my level, stuff like Austen and Dickens. The summer camp booklet didn’t look too interesting but it was small with simple sentences. I ended up being fascinated with it because it was the most American thing I had ever got my hands on and it felt impossibly exotic
all the kids had cool American names like Jill and Mike. One of them at one point talked about the “chipmunks” in the woods near the camp, a mysterious word that didn’t exist in my tiny English dictionary, and for some reason I pictured them as scrawny wolves. I had read Little House on the Prairie so I knew wolves were a major concern for Americans
camp “counsellors” were often mentioned, and my pocket English dictionary only defined that word as “psychologue”. I thought it was weird how American summer camps had dozens of psychologists roaming the premises, one for every 5 to 10 kids. That felt like a lot of psychologists
I had no idea that the word “pet” could mean “favourite”. When the booklet said one kid might become “the camp counsellor’s pet”, my dictionary helpfully led me to believe it meant that a psychologist would pick one unfortunate kid to be his domestic animal for the summer. Slightly disturbing. I moved on
the kids slept in “bunks” and my stupid dictionary only defined this word as “couche”. Which is not wrong, but we would probably say couchette instead, or better yet lits superposés, and couche is also our word for diaper so you can see why I continued being deeply intrigued by every new detail I learnt in this booklet. American kids are excited about camp because they get to sleep in diapers
I had never encountered the word “baseball” before but managed to guess it was some kind of sport, but when the booklet mentioned the “baseball diamond” (in the context of a kid saying the baseball diamond was big) I of course assumed it was an actual diamond that you could win if you won a game of baseball at camp. For some reason I had a debate with a classmate over the plausibility of this. I say for some reason because I didn’t really question the diapers or the wolves or the psychologists with their human pets. A diamond though? Doubt. I just remember that we were queueing up for lunch and I was like “What do you think?” and my friend said hesitantly, “Maybe if it’s a small diamond?” and I insisted “No! The book says it’s big!”
among the basic items the book said every kid should bring to camp were “batteries”. I didn’t bother looking up that word in my dictionary seeing as it’s the same in French. I didn’t know it was a false friend, and I was impressed to learn that most American kids own a drum set and bring it to camp as an essential item
on the same page, in the list of things every kid should put in their suitcase for summer camp, another item was “comic books”. I wasn’t sure what those were since in French we call them BD, but basing myself on the word “comic” I assumed they were books of jokes and puns. I loved learning that in the US all kids bring humour anthologies to summer camp, presumably because they worry about running out of funny things to say. I thought American kids sounded nervous and sweet. But also really cool, because of all the drums
[Image ID: on a white background, there are three pink and insect-like creatures in an upside down triangle formation. The two at the top have translucent skin, allowing you to see their intestines. The one at the bottom has a white halo. They are flying above a hazy depiction of a rainbow, with soft yellow and green lights behind them. There is hot pink text at the bottom, written in all caps in a wavering light pink box. The text reads:
For a long time everything was hard and many of us died. This image is not one of rejoicing or hope but of harrowing and bedraggled survival. My mom knows I’m not straight now. My friends’ loved ones keep getting sick and dying. I like to talk to them about it because my father died in front of me. It’s good to talk. We are talkative creatures with soft bodies. I like to think that thoughtforms make the lights flicker around me and that they are also softbodied and talkative and fallible and warm. Believing I am connecting to other dimensions that speak to me with benign intent is one of an ever narrowing body of threads that keep me optimistic. My headlight has been stolen three times in as many months. Someone on my street knows I am stupid enough to keep replacing it. They must not see me as a person. To them, I am a shitty silver Volkswagen Beetle. They aren’t far from wrong. I have it easier than most people, I really do though I don’t let on, and I still slip into a poisonous delusion that I am in hell now. I am not. If you’re reading this, neither are you. Some things still may taste good. If not, there is at least one one that still works. Hell would never. /End ID.]
heads up ive seen a bunch of people reposting this conspiracy theory from reddit that wayfair is using unusually expensive furniture listings to traffick children and… it’s complete misinfo with zero evidence behind it, please stop spreading it.
if you’re not a coder you have no idea how easy it is to fuck things up. industrial grade cabinets priced at 14k that wayfair have stated is the correct price due to the specialized materials are accurate. shower curtains priced at literally “$9999” is obviously an error.
the “the names match missing girls!” thing is complete bs because… these are all just regular female first names… and if they were actual traffickers they’d probably use different names than the girls’ real ones, as to you know, not get caught?
THE LISTINGS WITH THE MISSING GIRLS’ NAMES HAVE LITERALLY BEEN UP LONGER THAN THE GIRLS HAVE BEEN MISSING. companies use female names to name entire collections of furniture, many items under $100, not just one very expensive cabinet. you’ll find “yaritza”, “isabella”, etc items of all varieties, and from other furniture stores besides wayfair.
doing any sort of illegal trading this way (trafficking, drugs, etc) is insanely risky and super traceable. anyone doing this would get caught immediately. this is why they use the dark web instead.
this whole thing is just a dumb reddit conspiracy theory drenched in confirmation bias. please stop using real missing children as fodder for it, and focus on actual issues that need attention right now. and for the love of god don’t make child trafficking jokes.
