sofa king happy

so what happens is that i place jesus in our living room, and my grandma smiles and asks me if i don’t want to decorate my room with him instead. i ask her in return if she thinks my jesus figure is ugly (which he is), but she reassures me that this is not the case. however, a couple of days later jesus mysteriously disappears from our living room, and appear in my room instead

now, the real jesus christ might have been able to perform a miracle like this, but please remember that the jesus in our story is only a figure made out of wood. he can not move on his own, so i think we can safely say that my grandma is the prime suspect here

the first year i would often confront my grandma about this, but she would always make up an excuse and never straight up tell me she moved him because he’s so ugly it’s an embarrassment to the family

The interior of the store looks like this so they save money on the annoying shelf restocking. Products remain in their boxes until being removed by customers.  No unboxing and putting stuff on shelves, and constantly having to rearrange it. Also, the boxes make inventory a breeze as a sealed box has a defined number of items in it. 

Typical American grocery stores have shelves like this

Every item has to be unboxed and neatly stacked on the shelves. If they get messed up by the customers, everything has to be rearranged back to specific rigid order. When you have to verify the inventory, every item has to be removed from the shelves to be counted and put back. Aldi’s also do not have plastic bags. You can buy reusable bags or simply use the empty cardboard boxes that are available.

Last is the carts. Most grocery stores have their carts strewn across the parking lots, rolling around and hitting cars until a store employee is sent out to collect them, after being yelled at by the manager when they were told to do other tasks in the meantime. Aldi’s chains those carts together and you have to put a Quarter in to release it. When you are done, you plug the chain back in and get your Quarter back. If others are lazy, you can collect and return the loose carts and collect the Quarters. 

It stops this…

Then the employees have to do this

For example, in the UK your employer legally has to provide you with a comfortable seat if you do work that can be done while seating. In the Netherlands you have to be provided a seat if you work at a cash register for more than 4 hours a day or for more than 1 hour uninterrupted.

It is actually workers doing a major service to their employers by not unionizing and not starting a revolution, since literally the only thing workers need to do to grind the entire economy to a halt is put their hands behind their back and stop working. That is it. Workers could crash the entire machine in one moment if they wanted.

i understand wanting to save electricity but the result is that many people are going to make decisions like “i guess i can push this door open or use the stairs, even if it will contribute to my pain flare-up” and feel really shitty about pushing the button or using the elevator even if they do absolutely need it.

One as excuse for the other, but any penny they don’t have to spend they won’t. A lot of building owners and business owners begrudge having to “spend more money than they have to”. It’s less about cutting down on electricity to be green and more cutting electricity and required maintenance to help their bottom line as much as possible.

They are saying “if we didn’t have to have this, by law, we wouldn’t.”

use them every time all the time every day you see them

because if YOU use them, and they DONT work, it’s a minor inconvenience, that you can take 10 seconds out of your day to report to the building manager, or accessibility coordinator or whoever.  Best case scenario they get fixed right away, worst case scenario they can’t claim they didn’t kno it was broken if someone who needs to use the button reports they’re not working

but if someone who NEEDS to use them, even a little, finds they don’t work, that’s a much BIGGER inconvenience. The people in charge of maintaining those things can’t fix what they don’t know is broken, and the more people looking out for it, the more likely it will be fixed before it can provide a barrier to access to someone who really needs it

even if the button still works but you notice it’s inconvenient to get to report it. one of the buttons at my school was situated behind a trash can, and while you could still get to it to push it, it was gross and like just plain not cool. so i notified campus accessibility and the trashcan was moved within a few hours, after having been in front of the button for WEEKS