A Collection of Things

FD: We can see the cat. Do you have an ETA on animal control?

Dispatch: Twenty minutes.

FD: Alright, we think we can get the cat.

Dispatch: Copy, we'll let animal control know.

FD several minutes later: We've got the cat.

Dispatch: Copy, do you still want--

FD, interrupting: Update, the cat DOES NOT like us.

Dispatch: ...so you do still want animal control, then?"

FD: Yes. Tell them the cat is in the engine.

Dispatch: ...are you also in the engine?

agott would actually like to deal with these coco feelings in less than 2 decades, preferably

odyssey dashboard simulator

🚣‍♂️ captain.odysseus

to be so honest neither are looking great but sometimes u gotta make tough decisions. nobody tell my crew about this btw

65 notes

⬜ crewmate-238-deactivated12109

the sirens are dangerous to YOU. i understand them though. we are holding hands and singing and they're not even eating me

🧜‍♀️ siren.girl.40 Follow

no we’re not

⚔️ 0restes

OP being deactivated really adds something here

🎵 demodocus.sings.a.lot Follow

the sirens killed him

🐅 circe.without.mercy

62,234 notes

🤴 telemakhos.of.ithaka

just fucked up so bad i met queen helen from sparta and called her "helen of troy" in front of her husband who literally spent ten years fighting a war to get her back FROM TROY. about to throw myself into the sea

💅 face.that.launched.1000.ships Follow

omg no worries babygirl come back anytime :))) happens to everyone

🤴 telemakhos.of.ithaka

was no one going to tell me helen of troy had a tumblr

🤴 telemakhos.of.ithaka

FUCK i did it again

56,329 notes

⬜ crewmate-24-deactivated9823

for real though has anyone seen elpenor

#i could have sworn he was with us when we were at circes??

4 notes

⬜ crewmate-438-deactivated5764

dreaming of burger made of helios' cattle rn. mmm

⛰️ oracle-at-delphi Follow

it is actually insane that people are reblogging this. do you know how disrespectful this is to helios and to all of the gods?? those are literally sacred cattle, i shouldn't be seeing odysseus' crew blogging about how they want to make them into burgers. it's not funny and it's not a joke.

⬜ crewmate-438-deactivated5764

#it was gonna be such a perfect day for a bbq but its stormy all the sudden #:( #oh well i guess we will just eat our burgers inside

20,572 notes

🐗 antinous420

how long could it possibly take to weave a fucking shroud

📷 ithaca-fact-checker Follow

fun fact! it can actually take 1,543 years to weave a burial shroud for one’s father in law, depending on the materials, style, and craftsman!

🤴 telemakhos.of.ithaka

ayyy ithaca fact checker i missed you

🐗 antinous420

who the hell is running this account

#that has to be a joke right #otherwise that would mean that like only an immortal could weave these #ik athena is goddess of weaving but she cant be the only one doing it #right???

322 notes

🏐 what.up.its.nausica

not the random naked man i found on my shore who i almost got betrothed to being odysseus king of ithaca are you KIDDING me

🏄 pisistratus-son-of-nestor

i thought he was dead???

🚣‍♂️ captain.odysseus

im not

🏄 pisistratus-son-of-nestor

@ telemakhos.of.ithaca @ queen-penelope-official HELLO???

23,753 notes

🐅 circe.without.mercy

actually disgusting that people are still following @/calyps0 when she literally kept odysseus captive on her island for seven years. yes odysseus is incredibly problematic and he should be held accountable for actions. yes i dont support what he did to polyphemus and i will block anyone who said that was deserved. but he literally has a wife and son he needs to get back to and it's disgusting that she tried to impede him like this

🏖️ calyps0 Follow

hey what was going on when he stayed at your place for a year

🏖️ calyps0 Follow

lmfao she blocked me

#girl this situation is messyyyy

16,422 notes

🦉 goddess-of-wisdom

why is everyone so mad at odysseus. he’s just a silly little guy. my silly little mortal. he does tricks. free him

🔱 earthshaker Follow

he blinded my son

🦉 goddess-of-wisdom

ok??? have you considered that maybe your son was being a little bitch

45,890 notes

🚣‍♂️ captain.odysseus

lmfaoooo ive been sending anon hate to polyphemus and he still doesn’t know it was me, odysseus, son of laertes sacker of cities king of ithaca who lives at ithaca palace and is currently sailing home on the aegean sea. click the read more to track my voyage home

Read more

#what are you gonna do about it big guy #nobody cares

5,738 notes

👁️pol.y.phe.mus Follow

when i find whoever it is that is sending me these you are going to be so sorry

3 notes

👑 queen-penelope-official

like this post if you want to be included in the archery contest tomorrow!

#may the best shot win!

108 likes

🍽️ suitor-37

anyone noticed the quality of penelope’s wines at ithaca palace has kind of sucked lately

🕶️ ordinary.beggar.dont.worry Follow

i have a strong feeling that you won’t have to worry about this for much longer :)

17 notes

He answers: I believe that whoever created the concept of soulmates should be taken into the town square and beaten to death. Or you should tell me who they are so I can send them a check for a couple of hundred thousand dollars, because they have done more to facilitate the demise of happy marriages than I could ever aspire to doing.

The concept of a soulmate to me is absolutely bizarre. To suggest that out of eight billion other people in the world, that there's just this one person, and they happen by the way to live within like the same town as you, where they went to the same university as you - what were the odds of that? And that's the only person you could ever have a happy, fulfilling relationship with. That's insane, folks. It's insane. And by the way, it's toxic. Because here's the thing: when you get married, society essentially tells you, this person, they're supposed to be your best friend, best lover, best roommate, best travel companion, best co-parent - that's a hell of a resume, guy. Like, it'd be shocking to find someone who fits all three of those things.

So what happens when you have this concept of a soulmate? And my partner, you know, they're the best co-parent, they're the best roommate, the best travel companion, but you know, they're not the best lover I ever had. Well, they mustn't be your soulmate then. That means that there's somebody out there in the eight billion people, that they would be the perfect one. And that's what the horizon that just forever recedes and keeps people constantly craving the next thing that might check all of the boxes. It's dangerous.

When i started as a dishwasher, i was trained by an old career dish pit man named Claudio. He'd spent his whole life washing dishes. It allowed him to move to just about any city in the world that he wanted to and get a job without having to deal with complex hiring processes or strict resumé requirements. Which was the main thing he wanted out of a career. I still think about him.

He'd seen a lot of people come through that station who either didn't consider it a real job or thought it was beneath them, on their way to "better" or "more important" things. And, in retrospect, those first two days he was sort of doing the minimum with me that he could do and still respect himself when he told the manager he'd trained me.

But, maybe it was because i was really interested in learning all the positions there were in a restaurant because i knew they were ALL important, or because i was a hard worker, or maybe it was because i tried to have real conversations with him in my broken spanish and did my best to not make him speak any english unless he wanted to, but after a couple days there was a big shift in the way he and i worked together, and he started to really teach me.

That place ran the dish pit with one dishwasher, so when he was done training me I was going to be doing the job on my own.

The thing that stuck with me the most, for the rest of my restaurant career, was this... and it wasn't just the actual things he was saying, but a completely new way of looking at what i was doing within the context of how the restaurant ran. I came in for my 3rd day and he said

"When you work alone, you want to go home by midnight?"

we clocked on at 3:30 and took a half hour lunch break and usually skipped our tens, so, yeah i absolutely did want to get off work by midnight

Then, even tho i already knew where most of everything was by that time, he took me around and showed me all the dishes, cups, pots and pans, spatulas, silverware, had me look at all of it. Then he told me to remember that almost every one of the dishes I was looking at would be used more than once by the end of our shift- we were clocking on to wash the entire building full of dishes multiple times.

Then he led me back over to the industrial dishwasher most restaurants have, which looks like this:

and then this 60 year old career dishwasher from Mexico City said the thing that changed how I looked at restaurant jobs forever

"This machine takes two full minutes to run a cycle. We are on the clock for 8 hours. That means we have a maximum of 240 times we can run this machine. If you want to wash all those dishes, clean your station, mop, and clock off by midnight? This machine has to be on and running every second of the shift.

If you don't have a full load of dishes collected, scraped, rinsed, stacked, and ready to go into the dishwasher the second it's done every single time? You can't do it. If, over the course of 8 hours, you let this machine lay idle for just one minute in between finishing each load and being turned on again? Instead of 240 loads, you'll do 160 loads.

[like, literally, he had done this math, he had these exact figures]

160 loads instead of 240 loads means you are doing 20 loads in an hour instead of 30 loads. That means the dishes are going to pile up. The cooks will run out of pots and pans and will have to stop and wait for you, the servers will run out of plates and cups and have to stop and wait for you, and your night is going to SUCK. Every part of how this restaurant works can grind to a halt because of that idle minute between dish loads, and if it does you'll have an entire building of people in a hurry and all waiting on you.

And it means you're going to be here until 2 am doing the 200+ loads of dishes this restaurant goes through every night.

For this to work, you MUST have this dishwasher on and running every minute of the shift. As soon as you turn it on you have two minutes to have the next load ready. See these large items i put to the side down here? One or two of them takes up all the space in the machine. I keep them here so that if the machine finishes and shuts off before i'm ready for it i can stick one of these in there and turn it on again immediately. You have to think like that to do this job without stress."

The way he was looking at how the whole restaurant ran, the way he was looking at how he'd spend each minute of the entire shift, the way he broke down what the physical limits were and how to max them out so he could do his job and go home on time without stressing out... The way this 60 year old guy, who had never had professional ambitions beyond being a dishwasher, was still such a competent and brilliant expert in his field.

It was all such an important lesson, and one that stayed with me through every position i went on to work in restaurants, dish pit, busser, server, cook, all the way up through manager before I finally got out of my restaurant career

Claudio never wanted to be anything but a dishwasher who didn't stay any later than he had to.

But he knew how that restaurant ran better than most of the other people in it. I never had a chance to truly thank him for the specific lesson he taught me, because while it had an immediate impact, I didn't really understand how valuable a lesson it was until much later.

In my younger years I worked at a medical office that managed both mental health and addiction recovery. The company had purchased an empty lot down the road from the building we rented to build a better facility with larger capacity. The CEO worked for months with the architect, and just as they were finalizing everything they happened to let me - who was the receptionist at that time - take a gander at the blueprints. It took all of three seconds for two major issues to jump out at me.

“The receptionist can’t see the waiting room from her desk with this layout.” I said. “It’s around the corner and blocked by a wall.”

“Is that important?” They asked.

“Do you want me to be able to keep track of the patients who are waiting?” I asked.

“Isn’t that what the sign-in sheet is for?” They asked me.

“Not everyone who comes here is signing in for an appointment, some are coming to check in, some people are here for the group therapy and need to be directed to the other side of the building, some people are painfully shy and if I don’t appear warm and inviting they won’t approach.” I explain.

“How often does that even happen?” They asked.

“Every day.” I explain.

“Bullshit.” They said.

“I’m not joking at all. Also, where is the chart room?” I asked.

“Oh, over here.” They said, pointing to a tiny closet on the far side of the building from the receptionist and check out desks. It was tucked neatly beside the CEO’s office. To get there the secretaries would have to go through two sets of security doors and it would be a five minute walk each way.

“Why isn’t it next to the front office, since that’s where the people who use it are?” I asked.

“We had concerns about people just going into the chart room to goof off and not do their work. It takes them away from their desks too much. You should only go in the chart room twice a day - once in the morning to pull the charts for the day, and once in the evening to put way the charts. It would remain locked and the CEO would have the key and let you in to supervise.” They said.

“We pull charts the day before so everything is ready to go and we can alert staff if a patient with additional needs is coming in. We have to go in the chart room every time a patient calls in that’s having a problem with their meds or is in crisis or otherwise has a question for the nurse. We have to go in there every time someone cancels and we are able to fit a waitlisted patient in. We go in there 20 - 30 times a day for legitimate reasons. The only reason any of us has ever gone in there to take a minute was when we got news that a patient had died and we were crying. And even then, we filed charts as we sobbed because no one in this office has free time.”

They stared at me.

“Sit with me for an hour and see what happens up here.” I said.

They took the blueprints away from me before I could keep looking at them, but they took me up on sitting with me. They didn’t last an hour. They changed the blueprints to fix both things I’d pointed out.

Unfortunately, they didn’t let me keep looking at it and they never asked the janitor what he thought, so no one caught the final fatal flaw in the design.

There were no closets in the entire building. Nowhere to put our supplies. And I’m not talking just a place for stationary and pens. I mean no janitorial closet. Nowhere to put paper towels and toilet paper or cleaning products. Nowhere to put holiday decorations or anything at all. They completely forgot about storage of any kind and immediately started eyeballing my hard-won chart room for it.

On Friday, I got a notification that I had a package. My apartment has package lockers that FedEx/UPS/USPS/DHL/etc. deliver int and when they register a package to me, I get a code emailed/texted to me that I can use to pop the locker open.

I didn’t remember getting a package, but that happens sometimes. I preorder a lot of things and Bookshop doesn’t always let you know when they’ve finally shipped something, or a friend surprises me, or whatever. So I put some clothes and shoes on and went over to the leasing office building to get the package.

It was not for me. FedEx is gonna FedEx.

So I picked it up out of the locker and went to the leasing office staff to hand it to them. They were kind of closed for lunch, so I was contemplating what to do if they weren’t in. It had the address. I could walk over there and deliver it maybe?

‘Cause see. A lot of people apparently just shut the locker and are done with it. But if I did that...how would this person know they had a package or where it was? How would anyone get the package back out of the locker, now that the system registered it as retrieved? They don’t have the code, and the code is expired anyway.

I could just leave it in the locker. Or take it out of the locker and dump it to the side where it could be pilfered; the exact function the package lockers exist to prevent. It’s not my package. Not my problem.

But it costs me a tiny bit of inconvenience and time to place it in the hands of and appropriate custodian and save a bunch of other people a lot of inconvenience and time. I live in a society. Society is designed to save everyone across the society as much time and effort as possible cumulatively.

Sure, it’s easier and faster to just shove your shopping cart out of the way and pull out. Not your problem. You don’t need the cart anymore. Except now the cart is blocking other people’s cars and other parking spots and can ram into cars and people and some poor worker is going to have to go track it down. You have saved yourself a tiny amount of time and inconvenience and in doing so wasted everyone around you’s time and convenience.

Sure, you could put your neighbor’s mail from a government agency with an URGENT stamp in your mailbox and mark it “NOT AT THIS ADDRESS.” Or you could. Just. Pop it in their mailbox or slip it under their door (I’ve been having mail problems recently okay. Give the USPS more money).

You don’t have to wait an extra 5 seconds to hold the door for someone just behind you. But. Like. Come on, man, really? (Unless you're entering a secured area with restricted access, because that causes a separate cache of problems)

Weighing how much time and effort something is going to cost you compared to how much time and effort it will save everyone else around you cumulatively is...well...pro-social way to think. There are obviously always going to be exceptions and a balance to things, especially if the cost to you is much, much higher proportionally.

We live in a society. We live in many societies.

You can leave your dishes all around your house. But whoever has to do the dishes later (even if it’s you!) is then going to have to remember or know this happened, figure out where they all are, pick them up, deal with any spills/etc. that incurred, and return them to the kitchen and then was them. Was that really worth just putting them in the kitchen earlier? Maybe. But probably not.

“But what do I get out of that?” Firstly, you’re a tarpit. Secondly, you get all of the time and energy everyone around you has saved you by also being a functioning member of a society.

Societies work because we’re all contributing so the burned is distributed, just the way people can walk over a bed of nails but not an individual nail. We all take up a small part of people’s burdens that aren’t necessarily ours so we all have better lives.

Consider: how pro-social is your behavior? Sometimes pro-social behavior is a huge undertaking for massive gains elsewhere. But so much of the time it takes an extra 30 seconds, an extra minute.

(There are)

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