• 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • In Australia it’s customary to thank the staff members attending your table. So when they top up your water, or lay out cutlery for the next course, or clear plates, you say ‘thanks/thank you’. Same for people clearing glasses in bars. It’s like a millisecond pause in your conversation to thank the staff member; it’s basically cell memory, you don’t think about it. They may or may not acknowledge it with a smile or ‘you’re welcome/no worries’. . It’s just a basic manners thing.

    I and my partner were doing it in the states and it was clearly unnerving the staff. Lots of puzzled looks or ‘thats ok hun’ like they had to reassure me that it was part of the service.

    Do people just ignore staff there? Is paying a tip at the end the only acknowledgment that they exist?




  • Sportsball is kinda a shit term - you don’t have to like sports and yes society venerates it over far more important achievements/pursuits, but it’s a bit childish to refer to it in that way.

    My theory is that a lot of that kind of poor behaviour is generally from men who have grown up with the toxic masculinity traits of believing that sad is bad, angry is manly. I’ve seen people openly weep over the outcomes of a game - I think these people are feeling the same emotions but haven’t been given the societal permission to express it in its true form. So they do angry instead. It’s not acceptable at all but that’s what I think the reason is.





  • I’ve heard this phenomenon. That us Aussies go over there, especially to the south and are shocked at how cheerful ppl are with their small chat and how you goings as compared to here where we’re less inclined to strike up a conversation with a random.

    But then I’ve had American friends explain that it’s all surface. That smiling yank agrees with Trump or reports their neighbours to the HOA for having grass over a centimetre high, or wants to go back to the good old days when the blacks knew their place.

    Half the country wants Trump back. Fuck that.




  • Wounds heal poorly for smokers. People who smoke after getting a tooth extraction can get dry socket.

    I know someone who ate some rancid food, and was subsequently very, very unwell because they literally couldn’t taste or smell that it was off.

    It affects your cardiovascular health so good luck outrunning danger.

    Everything is worse if you smoke, in real time and in terms of what it does to your body’s ability to heal or respond to trauma.

    Don’t smoke. And if you do, try and quit.







  • I’m no expert on the technology but God I love our battery powered lawn mower. Our lawn, front and back is mostly temporally embarrassed grass (weeds) but keeping it down is critical in Australian snake season. Plan is to get rid of most of it and do the native plants and minimal grass thing.

    In the meantime, no fumes, no refueling, the dog isn’t scared of the noise, and it works a treat. The batteries and how to recycle them in the future is certainly something to worry about, but in the meantime it’s vastly superior to our old stinky, do a rotator cuff turning it on, 2 stroke option.


  • Our phones are such amazing pieces of mobile, personal technology. We’re using them for all the most mundane details though and they’re detracting from some of the better things we could be doing with our time and intellects.

    I feel it’s a problem for all of us but as an elder millennial at least I have experienced a world without them. I feel for the younger generations - they’re all consuming for them.

    When I noticed it encroached on something I enjoy - trying to guess or remember a bit of trivia - my partner and I now have a rule that we must spend at least 5 minutes trying to guess who that actor is from, or who sings this song before we look it up. The technology was robbing us of imagination and rifling through the mental files.

    I don’t disagree with you at all though - we’re using star trek tech and it’s fucking cool.



  • Yes. They started the rudeness and I was done being the polite one. It was clearly a misunderstanding that led to a mistake on their part but once I made that obvious to them, they doubled down.

    I was getting more and more blunt, think ‘so what you’re telling me…’ type tone. And then I heard myself and internally cringed.

    Yes the fuck up was theirs alone. But having worked in a similar role 20 years prior, I remembered how one interaction like the one we were having would completely ruin your day.

    She was flushed red in the face and neck and I remembered being young and making the (wrong) decision to double down when I’m caught out in a fuck up rather than admitting fault and working on a remedy. It’s a lesson only learnt in time and humiliation.

    I think she’d learnt it at that point but it was too late. And an angry middle aged woman ranting at her was not going to do anything.

    So I stopped and said ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be speaking to you like this. I’ve already had a bad day and this has made it so much worse. But that’s got nothing to do with you and you don’t deserve to be spoken like that by customers. When’s the next available appointment?’

    She gave me a curt ‘that’s ok’ - and believe me that almost made me snap again, but we sorted it out.

    I noted the next time I got a confirmation for my appointment that they’d included my suburb in my surname - I think to differentiate between me and another customer (the reason for the crossed wires). That’s a win. But I hope she learnt a lesson about seeking truth rather than victory and I hope she wasn’t too upset.