Found a package of ground beef randomly hidden in the very back of the milk cooler. Thankfully kept fairly cool, and still in date, but a customer had stuck it there because he wanted to come back later. He came back the next day and tried to file a complaint because it wasn’t there.

Fish left in the bathroom. Like, straight up a pack of salmon fillets, just left there on the top of the toilet tank. Our best guess was that someone wanted to steal it, but either couldn’t fit it or got spooked and just abandoned it. It was in a far corner, barely used bathroom, too.

Half eaten fruit or candy thats been shoved to the back of a low shelf. You know a kid did it, there’s massive mess back there, and depending on what aisle they hid it in, it might have been there for a couple days to a week. Once found a bell pepper some kid had chomped into.

This is more just “general trash”, but still not uncommon if your store has a hotbar: Stolen food containers. People grab their dinner, eat it throughout the store, and then just put the trash wherever. If you’re lucky, they leave it somewhere obvious. If you’re unlucky, you find an open container of half-eaten rotisserie chicken shoved into a vent after they turned the heat on for the winter. Going past the deli in my store has triggered minor PTSD at times. That smell… Just… Hot rot. That’s the only way to describe it. Rotting garbage, oven warmed.

You can and will find terrifying things working in grocery.

I once found a pack of beef jerky that had become 90% mold. It was tucked all the way towards the back of the shelves, partially shoved into the crack between two of them. We had no clue how long it had been sitting back there, because jerky rarely needed a full teardown.

Leaving things they decided they don’t want just wherever in a store. It’s annoying as a customer, because now I have to dig through their mess to get the product I actually wanted, and even moreso as an employee.

At least put it back in the right department. The underpaid employees who have been there since before the store opened for the day really don’t want to have to play the game of “How long has this ground beef been sitting in a produce basket, and how much product did we just lose?”

They can SIIIIINNNNGGGGG!

That’s why they changed over to Pibb Xtra.

Mr. Pibb was going through his midlife crisis, and in a fit, returned to his teenager state of mind. Dr. Pepper keeps hoping he’ll break out of it, return to his old self, but she’s so wrapped up in her career she can’t take the time to be there, and doesn’t see the one who’s really fueling it.

That filthy whore R.C Cherry.

But he has so many eyes! Surely he can come to a consensus on beauty.

“Call my dick a sling, cause it’s throwin’ stones”.

Imma go bury myself, now.

I like it, in the box. I want to live… In the box.

(That entire conversation felt like it had the strangest pacing, even for MGS).

Howling, generally.

Good place for it.

For me, the biggest first step was recognizing my habits in letting it start and pushing myself to not let it. I had to look at my own habits, learn to recognize when they were starting, and actually push myself to get up and do.

With that last bit, though, came the why I was struggling to do in the first place. Sometimes it can be that it’s something we don’t enjoy, and with that, it helped to remind myself that just getting it done meant it was over with. I can get back to whatever comfort I was in when it’s done, and make myself do it.

Sometimes it’s more, though. My depression and anxiety heavily fed into my lack of motivation and energy, and even the perfectionism I struggled with was fueled by anxiety that I’d somehow get it wrong.

That took getting help, medication, and changing a lot of my own thought process. Making a schedule definitely helped me with feeling like I wasn’t getting done “on time” or early enough. If I know something takes me 30 minutes, I schedule it out for 45 so if I take longer, I’m still not “behind”, and if I get done quicker, hey, I got some free time!

Learning to give myself some slack really helped, too. I had to tell myself it was okay if everything wasn’t perfect, if something came up, because we can’t plan for everything. The only thing we can do is try. Sometimes we give it our all, but something outside of our control goes wrong.

Learn to recognize and break negative thought processes. Don’t ignore mistakes or accidents, and don’t just bottle up negative emotion, but recognize when the thoughts are becoming a block.

Find what motivates you. Sometimes it’s easier to get through the rough when you know there’s something worth it at the end.

Why are you sharing my Saturday night plans?

Dammit, now everyone is gonna be down in the bog, and there’s never any room for shrieking in the swamp.

Hey, so, not a licensed professional, but deal with something just like that(screaming in sleep).

Go talk to a professional. Mine was PTSD-related night terrors, and once I got on Miratazapine with therapy, they actually went away. Been something I’ve dealt with since my early teens, and I’ve not had an episode in months.

Great, now I want to dye some Rice Krispie treats the NB colors.

You have nostrils. Learn to inhale and exhale at the same time. Become the master of your own body. Defy your limitations. You’re playing the flute, goddammit! Give it the respect it deserves, and transcend beyond your mortal limitations and grasp the freedom of the ethereal.

Eh. I have thing going on that I’m looking forward to, trying to keep my head up with things, but right now there’s this issue that’s putting a shadow over everything.

I try to talk to the person involved, but they’ve kept at it to this point where I don’t want to be around them. I’ve tried to be gentle about it, but it’s like everything I said gets forgotten in a week and I’m the bad person for putting my foot down after.

I think it feels worse because I know what I need to do, but it’s going to make a lot of things very difficult, and it’s going to take accepting that someone who was very important in my life isn’t the person I knew when we reached that point. That neither of us are.

If only the sequel kept to the same idea…

“Dude, This Book Is Full of Spiders”? THEN WHY WAS MINE FULL OF SCORPIONS‽

The only place where if you’re offered uncut coke, you have to ask which kind.

It kinda varies, for me.

My biological grandfather and step-grandmother were my closest, but it was mainly with her, and I didn’t realize it until she passed. I could tell so many stories about that woman, both from after my birth and well before it. Honestly, the further I accept myself, the more I realize she has always been my go-to for the woman I aspire to be.

My biological grandmother is a narcissistic piece of shit who I will never speak to again, if I can help it, and my step-grandfather along with her. When I was younger, I thought it was healthy, until I realized that what was happening was I was getting toys and shinies shoved at me so I’d look to her as a provider and ignore her shitty comments towards everyone else.

He’s not much better. He can’t handle not having control, but also hates showing it, so he acts like a passive-aggresive bully until he gets his way and when confronted on it shrugs and goes “Who I am. Don’t like it, go” then throws a tantrum when you do.

I have dead. Gimme a moment, I’ll bring him out.

Sleep doesn’t mean leaving us. We can be with you in your dreams. We can be with you in every thought.

There is no leaving. You are one of us.