One of the worst parts of current internet culture is that it makes good old fashioned complaining so difficult. I don’t wanna cancel anyone or bully anyone, I’m not trying to form a hate mob I’m not calling anyone out, i just wanna bitch about something. Because complaining is fun, good for you, even. Is that too much to ask? Where is the room for shooting the shit?
Ive said this before but swear the biggest skill to learn as an adult is how to resist high-pressure sales tactics. You do NOT have to answer questions with anything other than “Sorry I’m not interested.” No matter how nice they are or no matter how many follow up questions they ask or even how agitated they get when you stand your ground. Just keep saying I’m not interested. Don’t answer their questions. Don’t give them an opening to try to push back on your reasons. Be a fucking brick wall of I’m not interested.
When we bought our car, I told Sean to let me handle it. I walked in and said “We have X for a down payment and cannot pay more than Y in monthly payments.” My Y number had some leeway, but I didn’t mention that.
First thing the sales guy did after I laid down the rules was turn to Sean and go, “What’s your number?” And Sean said. “Oh, no, you negotiate with Gayle.”
So, strike one for the sales guy. Could not divide and conquer us by implying THE MAN would not surprised at what I laid down.
Sales guy then had to confer with his manager and left us at his desk for several minutes. I have a vague recollection (this was 16 years ago) of Sean and I amusing ourselves doing bits about the other people there to look at cars. I am sure we did not give off the stressed or nervous energy they were hoping for.
Guy comes back. His first offer is fifty dollars a month more than I told him we could pay. I looked at him and said “I gave you our upper limit.”
“Well, but what’s another 50 bucks a month?”
“Something I can’t afford.”
He didn’t know what to do with my open and unashamed admittal that I had a budget because my money was finite.
He went back to talk to the manager again.
It took two more rounds of “I told you what I can afford” before he finally came back 20 bucks under what I’d stated as my max.
The trick to resisting high-stress sales tactics is doing the math at home, knowing exactly what you can afford, and then walking into the room and stating that number minus 15%. Then refusing to budge from that number. Never, ever, meet then where they want. Always meet them where you want. Because at the end of the day, you can walk away and go somewhere else and say “I told the people at Z what my terms were, and they refused to work with me. Here are my terms. Meet them, and you make a sale today.”
Apples are so fucked up you can get two from the same pile ans one tastes more like an apple than anything youve ever eaten and the other tastes like water poisoned by pharaohs
i learned about Tim Wong who successfully and singlehandedly repopulated the rare California Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly in San Francisco. In the past few years, he’s cultivated more than 200 pipevine plants (their only food source) and gives thousands of caterpillars to his local Botanical Garden (x)
Sometimes, people are really great.
This is also an example of picking One Thing and putting most of your Better The World efforts there. We have so many different important issues to care about and act toward, and it’s tempting to try and do a Little for Many Things - and I’m not saying that little bits of effort don’t add up! They do. But often you’ll make a bigger impact (and possibly have less compassion/activist fatigue) if you direct the majority of your efforts toward one or two things.
having an oc you havent drawn / written about publicly yet that only exist as a concept is so funny. i have special access to this limited edition guy from my brain
i think we should remind musicians they can absolutely make up little stories for their songs btw. it doesn’t have to be about them at all. you can invent a guy and put him in situations to music. time honoured tradition in fact.
