*banging my fists on a table* LET CASHIERS HAVE CHAIRS
Every time I see a cashier with a chair I’m like “I support this business”, no joke. That shit shows me that a company actually CARES about it’s employees. Quit making people stand on their feet for 8 hours straight that shit is torture.
Wait, do cashiers not have chairs in the US?
No, we don’t. At least not where I’m at. We need to stand on our feet so we don’t look “lazy” to the customer
Okay, this might be a stupid question but how do checkouts in big grocery stores and such work in the US? In Germany they look like this:
you put your stuff on the belt thing and the cashier checks it but that doesn’t really work when they’re standing - at least it wouldn’t be as comfortable for the cashier or the customer
It’s just like that, except the cashier is standing
sure, peaceontheplanet. i mean i can’t promise it’s gonna be as funny as the internet apparently found the porn thing but like, HERE’S A STORY ABOUT THE TIME I GOT MUGGED AT KNIFEPOINT (BUT BY A GENTLEMAN).
so when i was studying in argentina, it was like a thursday, and they were having what’s called a “feria” which is kind a holiday?? in argentina sometimes they decide to CANCEL EVERYTHING, ostensibly to celebrate things like books and students but i suspect really so that nobody has to go to work.
argentina gets me.
ANYWAY, i decided that day to go the gym! this was new and different for me, a person who considers “intense chewing” to be exercise.
BIKINI BOD: ON TRACK.
so i went to the gym. it went the way that trips to the gym usually do for 5'8" girls with severe pigeon toes and a total lack of all motivation.
badly.
as i’m walking home, past the college of dentistry, i was fussing with a lighter that i had in my pocket because i was also, at that time, dealing with my fear of intimacy by smoking. so this guy comes up to me and is like, “hey, can i borrow a light?”
here’s a list of things i should have said:
“sorry, no.”
“ahhhhhh you know what, i would, but i’m super busy right now??? i actually have a dentist’s appointment, as evidenced by this College of Dentistry that i’m standing outside??”
“NO HABLO ESPAÑOL.”
“don’t you know that smoking gives you cancer? let’s commit to quitting, right now, to each other. bring it in. go team. together we can.”
here’s what i did say:
“claro que sí, amigo.”
he’s trying to light his cigarette, and his hands are shaking a little? so he can’t. and i’m like, dude, calm down, it’s okay. what is this, your first cigarette or something? lol.
after a few seconds, he kind of goes, “fuck it,” and drops the lighter into his pocket. and i’m like, “excuse me??? that’s my lighter?? also you didn’t even manage to light your cigarette???” but before i can vocalize these protests, he gets rEALLY close to me and pulls out a knife. then he goes, “you have three seconds.”
what i should have said:
“okay. you can have whatever you want.”
“here’s my wallet.”
“wow, what a very sharp-looking knife, in what way can i avoid being stabbed with it today??”
what i actually said:
“haha, uhhhhh, until what?”
UNTIL WHAT. “UNTIL WHAT, MR. SIR WITH THE KNIFE? LIKE, WHAT’S ON THE MENU HERE????”
BUT HE DIDN’T SAY DEATH!!! it turns out that the gentleman attempting to rob me was like, maybe a rookie? it’s possible that he had never robbed anybody at knife-point, before. this as an experience that we were going through together for the first time.
because what he said was: “….i have a knife.”
i said, “yes. i can see that. it’s very nice.”
IN MY DEFENSE: IF YOU ARE GOING TO ROB SOMEONE, THE ONUS IS ON YOU TO GIVE CLEAR DIRECTIONS.
“i have a knife”??? come on, buddy. be better prepared. come with a to-do list. practice in a mirror.
“then i’m going to pull out the knife and say: give me _____.”
clear, concise, quick. that should be your motto, buddy. it is not MY JOB, as the ROBBEE, to read your goddamn mind. I AM NOT DRIVING THIS SHIP. IF YOU ALSO AREN’T DRIVING IT, WE ARE IN TITANIC-LEVEL TROUBLE.
at this point, clearly realizing that he had gotten in tOO DEEP with this dumbass tourist who didn’t even know how to get robbed properly, he blurted out, “uhhhhh, do you have a phone?”
i did have a phone! i had a broken claro go-phone that i had purchased upon entering the country which had 2 argentine pesos worth of text messages left in it and a inbox message from a boy name juan that said, “you like me a LOT.”
i had responded, “actually, i just like you the normal amount.”
i felt bad about that when i realized that he was trying to say, “i like YOU a lot,” but feelings verbs in spanish are mostly reflexive.
SORRY JUAN.
i handed the man with the knife my phone. he looked at it. looked back up at me. “r u srs?” his face seemed to say. “this is what you’re giving me right now? a janky ass claro go-phone that is CLEARLY MISSING THE NUMBER 7 KEY????”
look, the shoddy workmanship is a source of frustration to you and me BOTH, okay. we’re BOTH victims here.
but the beautiful thing about this story is that HE TOOK IT! he looked at me, looked down at his knife, sighed, and put the phone in his pocket. THEN HE REACHED BACK INTO HIS POCKET AND RETURNED MY LIGHTER TO ME.
we looked at each other.
here’s the thing that no one tells you about daylight robbery: there’s like. an afterbeat.
there is a moment in between “robbery-in-progress” and “going home to your homestay and explaining that you can’t answer phone calls anymore” where you and your robber have to look at one another and figure out HOW TO WALK AWAY.
listen, friends: in robberies, as everywhere, goodbyes are never easy.
“thank you,” he said.
“you’re welcome,” i answered.
he hesitated. “have a good day,” he said.
“………….okay,” i answered. “you too. enjoy the phone.”
ENJOY THE PHONE?????
IT WAS BROKEN. IT WAS CLEARLY BROKEN. WE BOTH KNEW THAT NOTHING BUT HEARTACHE WAS GOING TO COME FROM THAT PHONE.
i think about this a lot, and i wonder if he ever thinks about me. i wonder if he ever thinks, “that goddamn asshole knew i was going to have to press the 7 key four hundred times before it registered anything.“
i’m sorry, man with the knife. i panicked. in the heat of the moment, we all say things we don’t mean.
oh my god i was going through my facebook last night and LOOK WHAT I FOUND
I’ve got to believe that the Resistance’s intelligence officers are just. constantly Done. With everyone.
Rey’s understanding of aurebesh is more functional than formal, which isn’t a problem until the Resistance starts asking her to submit mission reports—she rarely spells anything the same way twice (”even her name!” the intelligence officer moans) and her sentence structure is….not so much a structure as “a loose grouping of things that might be parts of speech”
“…..I don’t understand, what’s the problem?” Finn asks because Finn’s grammar is impeccable, once you decipher the dense nest of abbreviations, First Order codes, and trooper slang that fill his reports. (This does not save any more time.)
“If you could maybe…..not? wax lyrical about the TIE fighter?” the intelligence officer tells Poe, when he finally gets around to submitting his report on the escape from the Finalizer. “Not that understanding enemy technology isn’t a vital contribution to intelligence, but we don’t need 500 polysyllabic words about how the sun glinted off the casing.”
General Organa still submits reports like they used to in the Rebellion (her battle damage assessment style is about thirty years out of date, and she calculates galactic coordinates like it’s the late republic) but everyone in intel is fucking terrified of bringing this up to her. Instead, they have a designated officer who deals exclusively with translating General Organa’s reports into more modern New Republic standards,so they can be processed.
(At least yours actually submits reports, their counterparts in the First Order would say, if they all got together in a bar somewhere to commiserate about how hard soldiers make military intelligence. Kylo Ren has submitted exactly one misrep in the last 15 years. Thirty-two people died and it just said ‘it was the Force’.)
1.) It’s not hard to figure out what to do, there are plenty of resources.
People say you have to get it right, do your research, but … what else are you supposed to research? It’s not like people with more pigment in their skin have completely different personalities than those with less, any more than any individual. It’s frustrating when I can’t even figure out what the heck people are talking about.
Bam. Research step one done for you.
2.) Writing characters of color/minorities is a good thing.
I don’t like the notion that fantasy authors are under some kind of obligation to present ethnically diverse worlds. I’m English, and a fair sized part of English history consists of unwashed beardy white people in mead halls. If I’m inspired by my own history and cultural heritage, then that’s what I’m damn well going to write about. I’m not writing about some other culture just to appease the people who think there aren’t enough black characters in fantasy, or whatever. You want it, you write it. Nothing to do with me.
You’re wrong.
3.) Your all White Fantasy Land Didn’t Exist in Real Life:
…the rather medieval one has more diversity than real medieval Germany probably had […] In a world with medieval means of transport, it just doesn’t seem natural to me to mix dark-skinned people with blue-eyed blondes in one setting. I just try to give the people a colour that fits the place where they live.
You mean like the people from Africa and the Middle east who began to take over Southern Spain, as well as the Jews who were pretty well spread out throughout Europe, the Middle Easterners they would have met on the Crusades, and the incoming Mongol Hordes who spread to the very edges of Eastern Europe before the empire finally collapsed? Don’t forget that Turkey is right there, and the silk road would have gone from Song Dynasty China, through India, and ended in Turkey before moving further westwards into places like Germany. Also the attempts at the Franco-Mongol alliance would have been pretty interesting. (That’s about the 13th century - arguably smack dab in Middle Ages Europe and definite contact between France/Christian Europe and the Mongolian Empire.)
Unless you’re writing everything in the far reaches of Denmark or something, historically speaking, I call bullshit on people who have societies that are only all white ever, because it’s just inaccurate. Consider the relative closeness of Northern Africa to Spain, or Turkey to the rest of Europe, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Crusades, Slavery existing in Europe, including England, the slave trade, imperialism, Pax Mongolica, The Silk Road, Jewish Diaspora, the Islamic Empire vs The Holy Roman Empire, Egypt, Algeria, China’s sailing across the world, The Maruyan/Gupta Empires of India, tea trades, Columbus sailing in hopes of finding China, etc, etc, etc.
4.) I mean I just don’t believe you anymore. It’s unrealistic. Seriously guys.
You’d think I’d just denied the holocaust or something. Get a grip. All I said was that I’m going to write about my own cultural experience and anyone who thinks I should do otherwise for the sake of political correctness can bugger off.
This isn’t even about being PC this is just not being wrong about everything.
So back in the eighth grade (a good eight years ago) I thought of this scenario where the Marauders wanted to find a loophole for the ‘No students out of bed at night” rule. And I came to the conclusion that they would absolutely sit on their beds and levitate them throughout the corridors so that they were never actually technically out of bed. And it’s been eight years and I just remembered this headcanon and I still think that they absolutely would have done this.
someone please write a fic where they debate the technicalities of this with McGonagall
I respect joss whedon’s right to write the equivalent of a 250,000 word 89/? chapter fic posted on ff.net with the description “EVERYONE IS OOC…DONT LIKE DONT READ!!!! I UPDATE FOR EVERY 50 REVIEWS!!! NO FLAMES OR I DELETE” but that doesn’t mean I have to accept it as canon lol
