Random thing you loathe right now.

I've recently switched from a mix of dry and canned foods to dry and "fresh" food from fresh pet. It's like soft kibble made from real food rather than byproducts. Drawback is it has to be refrigerated, but haven't had a pile of throw up since the change.

A_Unicycle wrote:

Vet bills.

Our darling cat has a bad habit of throwing up a little too often. She eats very slowly, and her vomit usually shows unchewed pieces of food. She's otherwise clean, happy, frisky, and doesn't really show signs of illness. We figured she might have a rotten tooth or something, so my partner took her to the vet for a checkup.

Nothing was really wrong, she's very jumpy and the vet mentioned we might want to keep an eye on her heart because of it. Otherwise, a little bit of gingivitis which can be fixed with chews and some light brushing. She's healthy and happy.

Somehow my partner (or the vet? I'm not quite sure here) wanted her to get a blood check just to be sure.

$200 later, the vet confirmed nothing was wrong. I knew that, I would have declined the blood check, especially at that price, but my partner wanted to be 100% sure. So all up, we are out of pocket $350 for no real reason. I'm a little annoyed at her for opting for the expensive tests when our cat showed no real signs of illness, but any mention of it gets her very defensive.

Understandably I'm very grumpy, and it feels like we just burned a huge amount of money for no reason. With Christmas, bills, and us both working less shifts, it stings a lot.

Anyway, here's a picture of her all tuckered out, after knocking over my piles of cards.

IMAGE(http://78.media.tumblr.com/2fa50abcabde911ab8e01c89990c8b75/tumblr_p192he7VOH1qbkkdso1_500.jpg)

I know it feels like it sucks , and your kitty is super adorable but... well i had a pukey kitty, but it turns out she was pukey because she had a big tumor pressing on her liver. By the time i took her to the vet there wasn't anything to be done, she declined so fast i only really found out what happened from the necropsy. she was an older kitty, but... If i had had blood tests done sooner, or opted to pay for the ultrasound a month or two earlier when she first started having sporadic pukes, would the outcome have been different? I'll never know.

I'm so sorry to hear that Thrawn. I hear what your saying, and now that it's been a few days I do feel good knowing she's safe and happy. Money comes and goes, but kitty friends are more important <3

Sorry to hear Unicycle. 5 years ago had to save our sick cat. $2K later and a special expensive f*cking cat food for the rest of his life, we had our happy cat back. Worth it as he had lots of life left. It's a hard choice but like you say money comes and goes these cats make memories for life. Enjoy your fluff ball!

Ugh. I think I mentioned here, but the company I work for is being bought. I compared the benefits and handbook today, and it's a solid downgrade. No more short/long term disability, health insurance still isn't good enough to leave my fiancee's plan, other fringe benefits are also gone. 401K match is 1.5% after I put in 6% (current job simply matched 3%.) Next year I would be getting 25 days of PTO/year, but now that's going to be just 15. Breaks went from 15 minutes to 10 minutes, and lunches are mandatory (I'd usually just eat at my desk since I just get bored on lunch.) Their internet policies allow zero personal use (no more GWJ forum at work.) So I'm looking at losing 220 hours of free time next year with no salary increase or other benefits to make up for it. I guess it's good my company isn't spiraling to bankruptcy anymore?

Delbin wrote:

Ugh. I think I mentioned here, but the company I work for is being bought. I compared the benefits and handbook today, and it's a solid downgrade. No more short/long term disability, health insurance still isn't good enough to leave my fiancee's plan, other fringe benefits are also gone. 401K match is 1.5% after I put in 6% (current job simply matched 3%.) Next year I would be getting 25 days of PTO/year, but now that's going to be just 15. Breaks went from 15 minutes to 10 minutes, and lunches are mandatory (I'd usually just eat at my desk since I just get bored on lunch.) Their internet policies allow zero personal use (no more GWJ forum at work.) So I'm looking at losing 220 hours of free time next year with no salary increase or other benefits to make up for it. I guess it's good my company isn't spiraling to bankruptcy anymore?

That is tough and really sh*ts on anything good your company had going. I'm so sorry to hear. Sounds like it's job hunting time?

Hobear wrote:
Delbin wrote:

Ugh. I think I mentioned here, but the company I work for is being bought. I compared the benefits and handbook today, and it's a solid downgrade. No more short/long term disability, health insurance still isn't good enough to leave my fiancee's plan, other fringe benefits are also gone. 401K match is 1.5% after I put in 6% (current job simply matched 3%.) Next year I would be getting 25 days of PTO/year, but now that's going to be just 15. Breaks went from 15 minutes to 10 minutes, and lunches are mandatory (I'd usually just eat at my desk since I just get bored on lunch.) Their internet policies allow zero personal use (no more GWJ forum at work.) So I'm looking at losing 220 hours of free time next year with no salary increase or other benefits to make up for it. I guess it's good my company isn't spiraling to bankruptcy anymore?

That is tough and really sh*ts on anything good your company had going. I'm so sorry to hear. Sounds like it's job hunting time?

Soon™. They're offering a bonus if I stick around till May and the transition is complete. It's not guaranteed, of course. There are other complications that would make it expensive to leave early, so I'd have to find a pretty good job to jump ship before then.

Delbin wrote:
Hobear wrote:
Delbin wrote:

Ugh. I think I mentioned here, but the company I work for is being bought. I compared the benefits and handbook today, and it's a solid downgrade. No more short/long term disability, health insurance still isn't good enough to leave my fiancee's plan, other fringe benefits are also gone. 401K match is 1.5% after I put in 6% (current job simply matched 3%.) Next year I would be getting 25 days of PTO/year, but now that's going to be just 15. Breaks went from 15 minutes to 10 minutes, and lunches are mandatory (I'd usually just eat at my desk since I just get bored on lunch.) Their internet policies allow zero personal use (no more GWJ forum at work.) So I'm looking at losing 220 hours of free time next year with no salary increase or other benefits to make up for it. I guess it's good my company isn't spiraling to bankruptcy anymore?

That is tough and really sh*ts on anything good your company had going. I'm so sorry to hear. Sounds like it's job hunting time?

Soon™. They're offering a bonus if I stick around till May and the transition is complete. It's not guaranteed, of course. There are other complications that would make it expensive to leave early, so I'd have to find a pretty good job to jump ship before then.

For a company purchase willing to slash benefits like that? Having worked for that kind of corporation in the past, I hate to sound like a cynic, but regarding the retention bonus: if it's not guaranteed on paper it is a lie, definitely don't plan around it.

That situation sucks, I'm sorry man.

Ask them for the retention bonus in writing.

Yeah I was promised a bonus once. Almost stayed in a horrible job and not take the next opportunity for it. I decided it wasn't worth staying. Final bonus wasn't the % promised for bringing on the company's largest client ever. Nope I got a pizza party to share with the company. I took all the leftovers home.

Mostly still sorry to hear you're in the sh*tty situation to begin with. Any company willing to treat you the way they have won't ever treat you right.

Thank you for the support, all. The offer is in writing, but it's not a straightforward "stay for 5 months and get a bonus." It's more like they know they need me to make a smooth transition to thew new company, and if it gets all done by June, I'll get a bonus. If it doesn't, then I get nothing. It's pretty sketch, and I'm not putting much stock in it.

I think I'll start looking for work after the holidays, and I'll be far less picky after May.

Delbin wrote:

Thank you for the support, all. The offer is in writing, but it's not a straightforward "stay for 5 months and get a bonus." It's more like they know they need me to make a smooth transition to thew new company, and if it gets all done by June, I'll get a bonus. If it doesn't, then I get nothing. It's pretty sketch, and I'm not putting much stock in it.

I think I'll start looking for work after the holidays, and I'll be far less picky after May.

I'd just make sure that 'all gets done' is a quantitative metric. Good luck!

Gravey wrote:

damn lazy millennials think they're entitled to everything HEY COACH IF YOU DON'T GIVE MY KID A TROPHY I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/sxM1OQ2.gif)

That's a good point. Who created and handed out all those participation trophies? It sure as f*ck wasn't the kids.

I'm loathing heading out into the shops tomorrow morning (Christmas Eve).

I meticulously planned and had EVERYTHING bought that we needed, but my wife has now thought of "a few more things"...

I so didn't want that level of crazy in my life.

IMAGE(https://media.giphy.com/media/JTmgzdBfeknHq/source.gif)

Oh yeah. I tried to take my daughter (12) to the mall today to get gifts for a couple of her friends. After an hour of patrolling the parking lot we just gave up and left. Luckily she was ok with going to Newbury Comics on the way home and getting random geek stuff. Funko Pops for everyone, I guess.

I think I see the early stages of going bald. So that’s fun.

Merry Christmas someone hacked your steam account. Thankfully not past verification code but it means I get to spend Christmas changing passwords.

Flew my paraglider into a forest instead of above a forest.

Need to get a paraglider repaired. But hey, could have been worse.

Boudreaux wrote:

A loathe on behalf of my 8-year-old son, for his basketball team's struggles. They played YMCA ball the last couple of years, but this year their coach (who is awesome) moved them to a bigger, more competitive league. It was for the right reasons - better competition and challenge, more realistic game rules, etc. They're 2nd graders and the league is really aimed at 3rd grade and up, but they let 2nd grade teams compete with the lowest-tier 3rd grade teams.

The loathe comes from the way this league is run, which lets team self-rate their skill. This is supposed to pair teams with similar skill levels so the games are competitive and fun. In practice, there are teams that clearly play way down. Yesterday they faced a team that has no business being at the bottom of the 3rd grade league playing with 2nd graders. My son's team is still learning things like rebounding, how free throws work, and what the different positions mean. The team they played yesterday was calling plays, setting picks, getting double team traps in the corner, it was ridiculous. The score was 24-2 at the half, and it ended 40-4.

The worst part is that my son takes it really hard. He's gone from a pretty good soccer team that loses 1 or 2 games a season and a last-year basketball team that was something like 9-1 or 10-1 to a team this year that is 0-4 and getting embarrassed on the court because jackhole coaches apparently want their team to play nothing but cupcake competition all season. Youth sports would be great, if it weren't for all the adults.

We had this really uncomfortable moment during our daughter's YMCA basketball league. She was not only the only girl on the team, but the only white kid, too. It was pretty amusing, but the kids and coach were great with her. And she's not a great athlete, but she wanted to give it a go. Also, the team was absolutely brutally bad. Most of their games were at our home Y in the city. We saw scores like 30-2.

But the coach was pretty good, and we really saw a lot of improvement. I didn't coach, but helped out. It was fun seeing the kids figure out stuff. One of the bigger boys started figuring out how to use his advantages, and they started getting him the ball down low. Pretty soon, they wereplaying pretty decent. They still couldn't win or score more than 10 or 12 points, but it was progress.

Then, they played a county team at their Y. This was an all-white team, in the lily white St. Louis suburbs. So there was already uncomfortable feeling when a large contingent of black parents came in. There was a little tension, nothing verbal, but you could see it and feel it.

Then the game started. That's when it got really uncomfortable. My daughter's team had flipped a switch. They figured out how to score. And in this game, they scored. They scored a lot. I'm thinking they ended up winning 65-15 or something. It was a rout. But the problem was, as parents, this was the first time we saw our kids competing and winning. And we cheered and laughed and celebrated. It was so much fun seeing the fruits of all the hard work of the coach and these kids. And yes, we all really started to understand how bad this was looking.

To the other parents, this was a group of thugs that came in and whipped their precious children's team's butt up and down the court. And these thuggish parents from the city were rubbing it in, cheering like they had never seen their kids win a game before.

But we hadn't. These were the same parents I sat with and joked with as we watched these kids lose game after game, barely being able to score. There was no incident. There were no altercations. But you could see it in the faces of those parents. They hated us, and the game only served to confirm their worst thoughts about people living in the city.

What made it worse? I couldn't even try to explain why to the parents of the other team I talked to. Am I supposed to stay, that normally these kids can't even score and lose all their games. There was nothing to do. We just had the best post-game pizza party ever.

It was not a good day in terms of bridging the racial divide in our city. But it was an awesome day seeing kids finally seeing some results from all of their hard work.

Jayhawker wrote:
Boudreaux wrote:

A loathe on behalf of my 8-year-old son, for his basketball team's struggles. They played YMCA ball the last couple of years, but this year their coach (who is awesome) moved them to a bigger, more competitive league. It was for the right reasons - better competition and challenge, more realistic game rules, etc. They're 2nd graders and the league is really aimed at 3rd grade and up, but they let 2nd grade teams compete with the lowest-tier 3rd grade teams.

The loathe comes from the way this league is run, which lets team self-rate their skill. This is supposed to pair teams with similar skill levels so the games are competitive and fun. In practice, there are teams that clearly play way down. Yesterday they faced a team that has no business being at the bottom of the 3rd grade league playing with 2nd graders. My son's team is still learning things like rebounding, how free throws work, and what the different positions mean. The team they played yesterday was calling plays, setting picks, getting double team traps in the corner, it was ridiculous. The score was 24-2 at the half, and it ended 40-4.

The worst part is that my son takes it really hard. He's gone from a pretty good soccer team that loses 1 or 2 games a season and a last-year basketball team that was something like 9-1 or 10-1 to a team this year that is 0-4 and getting embarrassed on the court because jackhole coaches apparently want their team to play nothing but cupcake competition all season. Youth sports would be great, if it weren't for all the adults.

We had this really uncomfortable moment during our daughter's YMCA basketball league. She was not only the only girl on the team, but the only white kid, too. It was pretty amusing, but the kids and coach were great with her. And she's not a great athlete, but she wanted to give it a go. Also, the team was absolutely brutally bad. Most of their games were at ur ho,e Y in the city. We saw scores like 30-2.

But the coach was pretty good, and we really saw a lot of improvement. I didn't coach, but helped out. It was fun seeing the kids figure out stuff. One of the bigger boys started figuring out how to use his advantages, and they started getting him the ball down low. Pretty soon, they playing pretty decent. They still could win or score more than 10 or 12 points, but it was progress.

Then, they played a county team at their Y. This was an all-white team, in the lily white St. Louis suburbs. So there was already uncomfortable feeling when a large contingent of black parents come in. There was a little tension. Nothing verbal, but you could see it and feel it.

Then the game started. That's when it got really uncomfortable. My daughter's team had flipped a switch. They figured out how to score. And in this game, they score. They score a lot. I'm thinking they ended up winning 65-15 or something. It was a rout. But the problem was, as parents, this was the first time was saw court kids competing and winning. And we cheered and laughed and celebrated. It was so much fun seeing the fruits of all the hard work of the coach and these kids. And yes, we all really started to understand how bad this was looking.

To the other parents, this was a group fo thugs that came in and whipped their precious children's team's butt up and down the court. And these thuggish parents from the city were rubbing it in, cheering like they had never seen their kids win a game before.

But we hadn't. Theses were the same parents I sat with and joked with as we watched these kids lose game after game, barely being able to score. There was no incident. There were no altercations. But you could see it in the faces of those parents. They hated us, and the game only served to confirm their worst thoughts about people living in the city.

What made it worse? I couldn't even try to explain why to the parents of the other team I talked to. Am I supposed to stay, that normally these kids can't even score and lose all their games. There was nothing to do. We just had the best post-game pizza party ever.

It was not a good day in terms of bridging the racial divide in our city. But it was an awesome day seeing kids finally seeing some results from all of their hard work.

I've got $10 on it being Chesterfield parents.

Oakville. I take PayPal.

I really have a bone to pick with idiots using SJW as a slur.
We should all be Social Justice Warriors. And in fact, people in the military that we all revere so much are SJW's. So are police and pastors, priests or deacons. Lady Liberty is a SJW. America at its core is rooting for the underdog and looking out for the downtrodden.

This past weekend sucked and the next two weekends will also suck. No Christmas found.

For some reason IMDb has decided to make the actor pages on their Android app completely useless (the iOS app might be the same, I don't know).

They now consist of a headshot, a "personal details" button that does nothing when you hit it, and then the rest of the page is unrelated "featured on IMDb" content.

To get any of the information that used to be there, and which is the whole point of having the actor pages at all (like, say, filmography), you have to scroll to the bottom and find the "More on IMDb.com" link, which opens the page in a browser.

Interesting story and perspective, Jayhawker. Thanks.

blue shells

First day back at work after Christmas and boxing day was predictably busy. My co-worker and I were trying to serve all customers in a reasonable timeframe, because they just kept lining up. It was one of our busiest days, and we could barely leave the counter.

Cue loud crash. Eh, someone probably picked up one of the tools and placed it down a bit heavy on the steel racks. It happens a bit, we didn't think much of it, and the shop was full of people so no big deal? Surely someone would say something it there was actually a problem.

Once things slowed down a bit, I walked to the back of the shop to see what had happened. The jewellery cabinet's door was on the floor, and our most expensive piece (about $2600) was missing. No wonder that guy who walked out looked at me funny, no wonder he had some weird mannerisms.

Called the boss, boss was pissed off. On the camera footage, you see him clearly walking behind the desk, grabbing our keys (the green cross in the below image), fiddling with them, then eventually just removing the panel completely. Boss laid into us both for letting it happen while we were in the same room, for leaving the keys there (that's where they always stay, btw, even when he's working in the shop), and in general made us feel like sh*t, like we were the criminals.

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://78.media.tumblr.com/a290e3aa789fa6d40c04a89dfad43074/tumblr_p1m022bwWY1qbkkdso1_r1_400.jpg)

Purple areas are blindspots, red areas are what we can see from the computers, pink is where he stole from. We had that many customers in the shop, we seriously couldn't leave our desks to help/keep an eye on things. I feel like a complete idiot for letting this happen, but at the same time I'm trying to remind myself that I'm not the bad guy. I wasn't the one who stole the jewellery, it would have happened regardless of who was there. I just feel so guilty, angry, confused. The whole lot.

BUT. The guy looked directly at the camera, we know exactly who he is. He even went to our other store to try and sell it! They hadn't heard of the event yet and just turned him away because he seemed shady (at least our co-workers can spot a thief), but not before he gave us complete ID. The police have his name, they have his license plate, and they have a string of other reports from stolen items plus the camera footage from each other shop he visited.

So wish me luck GWJers. I really, really hope we get this back.

And... what were you supposed to do even if you had seem him stealing it?

You're not about the tackle the guy, you're paid to work the store not bodily restrain someone and possibly put your life on the line. You'd have called someone sooner, sure, but it's not like he wouldn't have stolen the thing because you said "Hey, cut it out!"

Good question, I really don't know what I could have done.

Thanks, that does help put my mind at ease. Ugh, just wish the boss didn't put ALL the blame on us.

Edit: The floor manager sent me a text message asking if I was ok, which was super nice of her. She knows how the bosses can be about this sort of thing, so the support is nice. I also had some words of encouragement from a co-worker who heard about it. I think my cat knows I'm a bit upset, since he's cuddling up with me a lot too. I'm feeling a bit better.

It might be a bit passive aggressive but I'd ask your bosses that question. What's the official company policy on smash and grabs? Because I'll bet you dollars to donuts that it doesn't involve y'all doing anything beyond calling someone.

Plus, if you aren't sure what you could or should do I doubt others are either, so additional training across all the stores would probably be a good idea.