Mellonballer

-the room he is in has a door to the outside but there's no way to close the room off from the rest of the house

-animal control opens 8am monday. for out of hours emergencies it says to call the cops. I'm not calling the cops on a sleepy raccoon

unlike rabbits, a baby hare can run, fight, or flee almost immediately after birth.

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@unaenanasinamor

“People lie about being sick” is practically verbatim what the management at my old factory job told me when I expressed concern back at the start of the COVID pandemic, that their staunch refusal to change or allow leniency to their attendance policy was going to result in a lot of people getting sick because it would make people still come into work while symptomatic and then start passing the virus around like a damn football. And these were concerned expressed right after we had made it through a flu season where that very thing fucking happened.

So I quit that job because I wasn’t going to get sick off of their refusal to grant any wiggle room for employees that started showing symptoms, and you know what happened?

A month later, they shut down, because they were overrun with positive cases, and one of their employees fucking died.

So. Your comment may be 4 years old and predate COVID by 2 years but uhhhh. Shut the fuck up, actually. Even prior to COVID I suffered every time I had to spend nearly an entire check just to get the proof I needed to not be fired. I never earned that money back. I missed a week of work due to a massive STAPH infection and came back to a boss desperate to push me out of the job because it was her shitty working conditions that made me sick in the first place.

I’m sick and the entire process to taking a week off was canceling a bunch of meetings and chatting my boss, “I’m sick, I’ll be out.” His entire response? “Rest up! :)”

My father is a retired doctor of internal medicine, and he hates that shit so much. For one thing, it means some shitty manager has turned my dad into his student hall monitor, handing out passes instead of helping heal people. It’s a waste of time and resources, and it’s insulting.

But the main thing is, a policy like that endangers people.

Say you have the flu. Fever, cough, sore throat. First of all, he can’t help you. The doctor is just going to tell you to drink a lot of fluids and sleep and stay home. Many many illnesses are like that, all you can really do is stay hydrated and let your body do its thing. But you knew to do that already. 

Since you’re there already, he’s going to recommend some over the counter medicine, and if you are a loud enough asshole and your doctor works for a shitty enough hospital, he’ll cave and prescribe you antibiotics that won’t work because the flu is a virus not a bacteria, but that’s a whole other post. 

The thing is, he has other patients. And some of them are immuno-compromised, and some of them have conditions that make lung illnesses or fevers particularly risky for them, and you just brought your extra-contagious self into the same waiting room they sit in. Touched a bunch of doorknobs, rode the elevator with a couple nurses, leaned in to hear what the receptionist was saying… all so that he can tell you the best thing you can do is not leave your house for any reason, which you knew already but your fucking job made you do it.

my father was so angry about it he used to offer any amount of time for any reason. Like, you’d come in and say, like, my shoulder is too sore to lift things at my lifting job, note for two days please, and my dad would literally just say “how long do you actually want off work?” as in, if you had the money to take six months off and wanted to, he’d write the note for six months. As far as he was concerned, the more it screwed over the business making both of you do this bullshit, the better.

anyways, this woman called and without even saying hello after i said the usual “public library, how can i help you?” spiel, she said, “i have a very important question: when you shelve books, do you push them all to the front of the shelf or all the way back?”

it took me a second to process the question and then i answered that, at the library, we always shelve them so that they are even with the front edge so they’re easier to grab and see. she was obviously delighted by this answer and then, as if an afterthought, she asked, “okay, what about you? what do you do at home with your books?” i said i did the same thing. she hummed in obvious agreement and then just like that she said “thank you!” and hung up.

so i had been having a string of very time-consuming, draining calls. my line rings again, i steel myself for another angry caller, and i pick up. “[redacted] roadside assistance, how can i help you?” i chirp, in my Customer Service Voice.

“yeah, hi,” a gentleman with a thick southern accent responds. “my motorcycle won’t start.”

i brace immediately for another long call. motorcycles were notoriously difficult to work with - a lot of insurance companies wouldn’t insure them, and a lot of tow companies refused to pick them up because they require a specific sort of trailer.

“i’m sorry to hear that, sir. what’s your current location?”

“oh, i’m just at my house. i was wondering if it would be okay for me to just load it into my trailer and take it to my buddy’s shop. would that interfere with my insurance?”

i click through his account and am Relieved to discover he’s in the clear. “No sir, it looks like you’re good to go. Can I help you with anything else?”

A pause. “Have you heard the good news?”

My Anxiety, which had been receding, suddenly spikes into the fucking stratosphere. I live in the rural south. The “good news” usually means “Jesus” and i was in no mood to be proselytized to for god knows how long.

i steel myself for the Religious Talk. “What news, sir?”

“McDonald’s is now serving breakfast all day!”

the many eyed creature living in my basement: YOUR LAUNDRY IN THE WASHING MACHINE. IT WAS DONE CYCLING 4 HOURS AGO