Liberal Hippie Trash

SO COLORFUL

Here is an adult :)

The black-backed dwarf kingfisher is also very pretty!

I used to work at McDonalds (I know). Opening usually involved me at the front counter with a headset on so I could do drive-through orders and handle making coffee / putting orders together / taking money at the front from the little old people that came in at the crack of dawn every morning. We would also have a manager who was there to be important and one person in the kitchen. We’re a small rural town so usually this is fine but we were on kind of a major highway so sometimes it would get busy out of nowhere.

Depending on the manager the amount of help we had would vary wildly. One morning we got super busy and I started cracking under the pressure. I’m a fantastic multi-tasker but my drive-through line was backing up since I was trying to juggle them and all the walk-in folks from my front registers and when it gets packed…well, it’s fun. I glance around trying to find my manager for help. I see him on one of our cameras – he’s outside smoking a cigarette around the side of the building. Mind you, this is like his third trip out to smoke this morning. I’m absolutely dying trying to get caught up. Customers are being passive aggressive saying they will come behind the counter and get their own coffee and stuff. I have people yelling at me in my headset from the drive through. I end up having to remove the headset just to try to get the frontline sorted. I start making progress with the front but I basically had to sacrifice the drive-through customers for two minutes.

Apparently the cars outside start yelling at my manager and interrupt his smoke break so he comes in, sees me with my headset off and goes berserk. He’s like “WHOS TAKING THE DRIVE-THRU ORDERS?” I’m in the middle of trying to get a fresh pot of coffee going so I sort of auto-respond “No one. Hang on.” as I continue to dash around behind our counter to grab a fruit & yogurt parfait for an order. He basically gets in my way and starts giving me shit. Loudly, talking to me like I’m a dog. I point to the camera and yell, loudly enough to disrupt the entire inside of the restaurant. “I’m these two registers, first window, second window, and I’m bagging. I’m like FOUR PEOPLE and you’re out behind the building not doing SHIT!”

His eyes go wide. I can tell he knows I’m holding on by my last thread. He’s sighs. And he’s like “You’re in a ton of trouble but we can talk about this later.” No. Fuck him. I’m done. I’m all riled up from random customers yelling at me. I toss him the headset. “You want to give me shit for not being able to run like four stations with no support? Run five. I’ll watch.” I remove my name badge.

He went to say something to me. I turn away, facing the one girl working in the kitchen who is watching this all play out. I remember telling her “I’m so sorry.” and then I dropped my name badge, toss my hat on the counter, grab a water cup, put on (and zip) my jacket so my uniform is covered up. I go to the drink fountain, fill my water cup, and then I go sit on the far side of the seating area and watch him go down in flames. He ends up ALSO taking off the headset and picking up the phone so he can spam call the whole workforce one by one trying to call for help. It’s like 5AM so no one is going to accept a call from their work number. About ten minutes into his struggle he ends up very loudly pleading with me to come back from behind the counter. I can’t even see him on the other side of the sea of people swarming the counter at this point.

I call back “I need a smoke first!” and I go outside.

I don’t smoke. I’ve never smoked. I drive home.

Or at least that’s always how it’s been phrased for me, by others. Now I realize that my interest for the old thing didn’t fade so much as my interest for something new outshined it, and that’s vastly different. 

I was always made to feel bad about it, with every abandoned endeavour I was told I needed to stop starting things if I wasn’t going to stick with them. I was told I was wasting time and money picking up these random interests and abandoning them after a year. 

So eventually, I stopped picking things up. I told myself “what’s the point, I’m going to give up in a year anyway”. Even worse, I started dismissing every new interest, because I had no way of knowing if my interest was “real” enough or just another passing phase. I stopped trying new things, I stopped looking up stuff that piqued my curiosity, and having chronic depression made it really easy to leave everything on the dirty floor of neglected ideas. The more they piled up, the more depressing it was. All these things that could be nice, but I just can’t take care of them. 

I realize now how bullshit that kind of thinking is. So what if I stopped doing karate after a year? That’s one more year of karate than most people I know. And in that year I learned discipline, I learned to listen to a teacher, something I had never done before in all my years of private education. I learned the true meaning of respect, that it’s something you do out of faith at first and maintain as it’s reciprocated, not something you do blindly and regardless of how you’re treated. 

It gave me the foundation for the determination and grounding I needed to practice yoga. Another year. Not enough to be good at it maybe, but again a year more than most people I know and a year that is not lost, but gained. I learned balance, I learned to listen to my body, I learned how to let go of emotional tightness through physical stretching. 

And then iaido, only a few weeks because I couldn’t afford to keep going. The year of yoga I had done a couple years previous had given me a better starting point than the other newcomers to the class. I already had balance, I had strength in my legs and I had better posture. In those months I learned the importance of precision, the true definition of efficacy, the zen state that is incessant repetition. 

Did I practice long enough to get good at iaido, and yoga, and karate? No. Of course not. It takes years to become proficient and decades to master any of those things, but I learned other skills and those skills were an invaluable part of my growth both spiritually and emotionally. Likewise for my forays into painting, sewing, graphic design, film. I’m a photography student now heading into my second year of school, and every single second of practice I have in those other disciplines has given me more experience in those areas and made learning easier. 

it’s the fact that she wanted to go into her isolated car instead of into the public building. going to her car gets her alone, where as going inside the well lit building with other people gets her around people who could protect both of them from the people she’s claiming are after her.

any actual victim will go straight for a well populated area. they may want you  to come with them for help, but they would never try and get you away from a populated area and into an isolated car unless the car was the only option, because a dark car late at night is a fantastic way to isolate and capture a mark without anyone’s notice.

other tactics often used include:

1) pretending to be a heavily pregnant woman stuck out in bad weather she’s not dressed for and asking a good samaritan who asked her if she’s ok to buy her some coffee. if the woman refuses money and wants you to go with her specifically, becoming agitated when you don’t agree and only offer her cash, this is a trick. the person who found this out managed to follow a woman doing this and saw her arguing with another woman and two men. the men insisted she needed to be more convincing so people would be more sympathetic, and she watched her tell him to be the one out in the snow in the thin hoodie and fake belly, and she watched her take off a fake baby bump.

(someone taking the money can still be a scam, but it’s a scam for money, and not to traffic you. traffickers want to get you to leave a populated area, so refusing to go with them will upset them, and that’s the biggest reveal of their true intentions.)

2) a woman banging on your door screaming that a man is chasing her and begging you to let her in, saying he’s going to rape her if you don’t let her in. this was brought to everyone’s attention by a teenager who shared his story about it. his mother wanted to help her, but her husband had grown up in a ‘bad part of town’ and wasn’t so trusting. he unlocked the door but not the chain lock and handed her a brick, telling her his family was calling the police and he would stay with her at the door. if the person did show up she could use the brick to defend herself and he would come out with his..I think it  was a baseball bat and help her fight him off. she became very angry, asking what was wrong with them and demanding they let her in. his only response was to close and lock the door again. she got quiet and when the police got there, she was gone but the brick was just sitting on one of their steps.

the next night the police were back, as the woman showed up again at someone else’s doorstep doing the exact same thing, only this time an officer was basically already there. that family had let her in, and she in turn let her partner in who proceeded to murder the entire family before being caught by the officer.

3) similarly, men have been known to use a recording of a baby crying playing at womens’ doorsteps in order to entice them into opening the door, this giveaway being that A) it’s recorded and that’s usually fairly obvious, but also that after a little while, the sound will move, typically under windows around the front of the house, something an actual baby clearly can’t do on its own, and is clearly someone attempting to get closer to the presumed sleeping women in the hopes of getting her attention, since she seemingly can’t hear it from the front door.

this was caught when a woman noticed this ‘baby’ moving and the cry looping and called the police. again an officer was nearby and found two men hiding in bushes around her house.

4)more of an example of something very common, a young woman shared a story of when she was little many years ago. she and a friend were going to some sort of event (she was into something. she was ether part of a sports team or dance team or something to that affect, something done by her school as she was around 6-7 at the time) her mother stopped off at a grocery store real quick and left her and her sleeping friend in the car. another little girl looking to be about 4 was in a car nearby with what this girl assumed was his father. he too got out of the car and left her there, going into the store. the girl was all smiles with him, even waving to our storyteller and smiling, until the man left. once he was inside suddenly she looked scared, and was acting like she wanted her to get out of the car and come to her. she tried waking her sleeping friend to tell her about this, thinking now the man wasn’t her father but someone who was a danger to her, but her friend gave her the dirtiest look, demanded she shut up and let her sleep, and rolled over. she looked back up at the 4 year old who was now looking at the store. she too looked over and saw the man just standing right at the window smiling and encouraging her. she smiled at him and then looked back to our storyteller, with her face instantly dropping back into that scared look on her face. she refused to get out of her car, and when the  4 year old looked back at the store, the man came back out, without having bought anything, gave the girl a smile and a pat and driving off, with the little girl waving at her as he drove away. after seeing this, she was convinced he was coaching her and using her to lure other children out to abduct them.

5)another example of something very common, a woman who was moving to another state and was by herself, as her fiance had gone ahead a month earlier to get things set up in the new place while she tied up the loose ends at the old one. on her way back to her car, she was stopped by a man in his truck, his passenger side between them, and asked her if she knew where a grocery store was. she said she didn’t know, as she was just stopping through on her way to a new place. he then said something along the lines that this was a nice place to stop on a trip with the family, and she admitted she was alone. it was then when he said it was nice to meet her and reached out his hand to shake hers, but did nothing to lean out, meaning she would have to reach in the car to reach him. it was here where she realized his questions confirmed that she was alone, far from home, and unfamiliar with the area, meaning if she vanished no one would know when she vanished or where on her long trip alone, and it would be a good while before anyone expected to see her, meaning by the time anyone realized she was gone she’d be long gone.

she refused to shake his hand, stating that she was going to go, and he sped off, far too fast for her to read the license plate.

the one thing all these stories have in common, the thing that’s kept people alive, was their refusal to give in to social expectations and protecting themselves as well as the person supposedly in need. by refusing to get into her car, the op story woman saved herself from being abducted and trafficked, as did my last story’s woman, by refusing to be polite and shaking the stranger’s hand.

Op’s woman still attempted to help her, so you absolutely can still help someone in need, but you have to do so safely and logically, without putting yourself at risk, which is exactly what these people need you to do. while it’s true a real potential victim could be screaming at your door for help or a real baby left on your doorstep that’s crying, you still have to be cautious because traffickers have no morals. there is no low they won’t stoop to if it means catching another person.