#come to think of it...

[volosdarling]

Got sidetracked, and suddenly there is live Cyrus reaction on my yumeship art

[my-animeandmanga-journey]

Can you imagine being a ghost stuck in limbo, not because of any trauma or desire for vengeance, but because you were trapped in an overwhelming desire to thank the person who had to die to save your life?

[atwas-gaming]

Ah! I just realized why this line works so well. Because she's the only one of these 3 that can't fly.

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

(anon from just now) but like fr they could have at least given us angst? like, at least give me lena subtly manipulating things to get james to leave town so she doesn't have to see his face/watch him pick their friends over her when shit hits the fan and she clashes outright with kara or something equally half-assed and upsetting instead of NOTHING

Or what if he was the one person who was like “yeah what she did was technically wrong, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Lena, it’s the fact she does things for good reasons.” Like, just some character development and some kind of lingering impact of their time together. That would have been so beautiful, and so, so touching.

[tenaflyviper]

I’d like to get some opinions here, if I may, about a situation that occurred at work today (there’s a lot to explain, so please bear with me--this might be a long post).  I’ll put it under a “read more” just in case.

For some background information, I work at a not-for-profit thrift store that cycles everything earned that isn’t needed to run the store and pay the employees back into the community (via vouchers for clothing and other essentials for people and families in need, shelters, housing assistance, etc.).  It’s a really great place, and the people that work there share a common bond of knowing what it’s like to live on the edge of poverty (some of our volunteers...not so much.  We seem to be having issues with how the elderly volunteers from local churches disrespect our paid employees.  The kids and teens that volunteer are great, though).

Since we have a lot of families with small children in the store most of the time, we have a policy about children staying near their parents while in the store.  There’s even an automated announcement that goes over the speakers at least twice an hour about this.  Basically, we don’t want people leaving their kids unattended (you wouldn’t believe how big of an issue this is, including two different families that leave their little girls with Down Syndrome all alone while they’re at the other side of the store!!!), letting them jump on furniture, having them ride bikes or scooters in the store, etc.--for their safety.  If a child is injured in our store because their parents weren’t watching them, we’re not liable.  Our store has everything from electrical equipment, knives and tools to a metric fuckton of glassware (something glass is broken at least once every single day.  Often by us.  Usually by me).

So, here’s what occurred:  Two brothers were with--I assume--their aunt.  One of the boys (well old enough to know better) decided to ride a scooter around in the men’s clothing area, which has extremely narrow aisles defined by only metal clothing racks.  There’s the potential there not only for him to get hurt, but for him to run into others.  The woman that works in the clothing area is a quiet, very meek older lady that gets along with absolutely everyone.  She politely asked the boy to not ride a scooter in the store--something we all do if it occurs in our areas.  The aunt(?) replied that even she had told him this.

A little later, the aunt(?) said something to our clothing lady along the lines of “Why are you following us around the store?”.  See, they never left the clothing area.  That’s where she works.  And in our given areas, we are often buzzing about to different sections to put things away.  It is by sheer coincidence that she was anywhere near them at any moment, and it’s not a particularly large area.  Our clothing lady didn’t respond, as she wasn’t even sure she was being spoken to at the time.

Jump ahead to almost two hours later.  The mother of the two boys comes storming in, and starts rapid-fire screaming in our clothing lady’s face, and then at our supervisor.  You see, the boy that decided to ride the scooter around is black, while his brother is Caucasian (this is their appearance, anyway.  Their mother appeared to be neither Caucasian nor black).  Now, a large percentage of the children in general in our store are rowdy and excitable (boys and girls pretty much equally), so ethnicity really means nothing here.  Anyone that’s worked retail knows that this is just how kids are sometimes.  She accused our clothing lady of “hating her son because of the color of his skin”, and “targeting” him, as well as allegedly following them around the store.  The mother claimed (I’m guessing she was either told by the aunt(?) or by her son) that he stayed in the area where the bikes and scooters are.  There is nowhere to ride there.  It’s an area literally the size of the bike rack holding the bikes, and it’s surrounded by the ends of aisles, furniture, and large children’s playsets.  I also saw the boy take the scooter directly into the clothing area (this was about the fourth or fifth time someone decided to ride a bike or scooter in the store today--including two grown damn adults--and it was very crowded).  She kept making a point of mentioning that nothing was said to the other boy (who, mind you, had not been riding a scooter, or really doing anything but minding his P’s and Q’s).  After refusing to let our clothing lady speak, and failing to get whatever reaction she wanted from our stone-cold supervisor, she stormed out with her son in tow.

Every employee that was present--myself included--agrees that our clothing lady was simply doing her job, and politely enforcing the store’s policy for the safety of the boy, and other customers.  We know her--we work with her every single day.  We have a very diverse group of employees: Black, white, Native American, Hispanic, Asian; young, old, able-bodied, disabled, etc., and it genuinely feels like a family (we all have issues with how the store manager is running things, and I had considered transferring to our other store where the previous manager now works, but I realized I’d miss everyone so much that the idea brought me to tears).  Of the people present and in agreement (not including clothing lady): A mostly Caucasian woman with a bit of Native American heritage, myself (half French, half Lebanese), a Hispanic girl, a Hispanic man in a wheelchair, and a black man (the other person currently working in the clothing section).  I’m sure some of you think I’m just making up a diverse cast of characters for some typical made-up tumblr story, but no--these are the people I work with every day, and they’re the sweetest, funniest bunch I know.  The mother is also not a strawman out of my imagination, but a woman of indeterminate heritage that didn’t witness any of what went on firsthand, and whose anger over what she genuinely believes happened is 100% understandable (what decent human being wouldn’t be angry if they thought their child was the target of racial discrimination?).

So, I ask for your commentary--your opinions.  Is there a better way the situation could have been handled?  What can we do about this kind of a misunderstanding?  Is this kind of situation just an unfortunate, unavoidable byproduct of the problems inherent in our culture?  I’m at a loss.

[thegodthief]

I FOUND THE DIFFERENCE!

Because the user agent had been spoofed so goddamn bad a few years ago, I had blacklisted any user agent starting with the name of the SSL provider. The legit SSL updater service uses the company name as the beginning of the user agent with a unique identifier further in the string. Removing that user agent block restores service.

[sublucidity]

with reference to ruby's post: i *do* have my own stake in this. when she took over and took us out on the light rail, i felt so jealous of how easily she could just roll with things. thinking about it further made me realize how obsolete my thinking is.