I was a Teamster when I worked for Sygma, and out of all the unions I’ve been a member of (four, now), the Teamsters were the motherfucking worst. If they were actively trying to take a revolving door of 18- and 19-year-olds just getting their first big-boy jobs and turn them into all into die-hard anti-union voters for life, they couldn’t do a better job than they’re doing right now, and I told my steward that before I quit.

They designed the whole contract specifically to offload all the real work onto the new guys, protect the older guys when they decided to throw hands on the loading dock, and give as much overtime as possible to the ancient, divorced boomers with no family to go home to, that they could spend pretending to sweep the floors while the trainees finished the actual loading. Guys would bid order picking, then use seniority to bump bid loads/receivers off their jobs and wouldn’t pick a single case for the whole contract, while getting paid picker bonuses and shift differentials.

And just to rub salt into the wound, those perks (bumping lower guys off their bid jobs and “sweeping the floor” during overtime) were specifically written out of the latest contract, so only the guys hired under the previous contract would ever get to do them. They straight robbed those kids of even anything to look forward to if they toughed out the low-seniority years. They also negotiated a different pay scale for under 5 years, 5-10 years, and 10 years in, and you can guess which end of that they weighted the raises toward. It was a complete shitshow, and when kids would quit, the Teamsters would keep their initiation fee (taken out of the first three paychecks). You could call to try to get it back, but the best they’d do would be to put it towards your initiation fee for your next Teamster job, as if any of those kids would ever willingly subject themselves to that shit ever again.

AND THERE’S MORE. I just don’t feel like typing up a fucking novel on it. Don’t even get me started on the shady shit they did during the contract negotiations I was actually present for. It was worse than maddening; it felt like it was specifically crafted by the senior guys to make sure that ladder was pulled up as high as they could behind them, while not actually making any waves for the company. And the safety issues they ignored and covered up, and the fancy fucking “union meetings” they never told anyone about so that they were only attended by the office reps, because they were being held at the most expensive restaurants in the city, on the union’s dime, and the number of stewards who were literally fucking floor supervisors, and on, and on, and on…

UIW was kind of spineless and milquetoast, but they took care of us. The Teamsters are fucking old-school mob racket motherfuckers who are single-handedly responsible for an entire generation of workers who think all unions are a scam.

Right? “Go outside!” AND THEN DO WHAT, MOTHERFUCKER? Just be depressed outside??

Old Reddit is Reddit. If they get rid of it, I’m sure as fuck not sticking around for this new site. It looks like Bing and Youtube had a deformed little monster-child.

I’m glad you are very considerate and have never made a mistake when excited about something before. Good for you friend.

I’m serious, though. How do you make that “mistake”? How do you get so excited that you completely tunnel-vision out the simultaneous existence of hundreds of people? That’s absolutely in no way neurotypical.

It’s news that occurred somewhere in the world, I guess. That’s what all the “US news is world news!” people were saying in the meta thread.

This is Ohio. The Republicans will just keep calling referendums on the same thing over and over again until they get the results they want. They don’t care. They literally use dirty tricks to circumvent what the citizens want every year. Just look at how medical marijuana played out.

First try: The governor gets the bank to cancel the account of the pro-weed side, because the organization had the word “marijuana” in its name. No bank account, can’t be a real group, can’t put something on the ballot. Sucks to be you.

Second try: The legislature tried and failed to keep the legal weed issue off the ballot. So instead, they put their own weed issue on the ballot that would forever prevent legal weed in Ohio (even if the first issue passed), and then gave it a name that was almost identical to the pro-weed issue. I seem to remember that neither ended up passing because voters were, as intended, confused, and just having the second issue on the ballot split the vote.

Third try: The issue got on the ballot, the polls were high, everyone in the state basically was ready to stand out in the rain and vote in favor of medical marijuana. So the legislature called a special session and passed their own legal medical marijuana law, and then convinced the courts that their law made the ballot issue obsolete, so it was thrown out.

BUT, the legislature’s version was a clusterfuck in that the legislature had to personally approve applications for grow ops and dispensaries. A few hundred businesses applied for the permit, and, last I checked, 0 were approved. This led to a situation where it was legal to have medical marijuana, but not legal to buy or grow it, or bring it in from out of state. Which means if you get caught with weed, the cops couldn’t cite you for having weed (if you had your med card), but they could site you for buying or transporting that weed, because there’s no way to legally get it in the state.

That was like six or seven years ago, and I haven’t kept up with it, but if there’s a single legal dispensary in Ohio, I will be incredibly surprised. The whole point was to not approve any.

It’s not just me. If I was literally the only other person in the store, sure, I could understand that, they thought they were alone, they weren’t expecting to encounter anyone else.

How the fuck do you just stop being aware of an entire seething mass of other humans flowing around you?

Yes, I am incredibly unfriendly when I’m trying to get my shit done. I want to be out of that place as fast as fucking possible. I don’t want to linger, I don’t want to chat, and I sure as fuck have never in my life been so distracted that a hundred other moving, talking people just vanished completely from my awareness. Is that some kind of ADHD thing? Some manifestation of executive dysfunction, like always being late and never letting anyone else talk in a conversation if they can’t actively shout over you?

What mental disorder does this fall into?

This is totally bouncing off of me. How can a person, in a public space, surrounded at all times by other people, just forget they exist for any amount of time, for any reason? They’re fucking everywhere. They’re breathing, they’re talking, their cart wheels are squeaking, the footsteps from their rubber-soled shoes are echoing off the hard tile floors, how do your senses just stop registering any of that?

Hey man if you want to read every interaction in the worst possible light that’s on you.

Please suggest to me a better way to read an interaction in which someone in a very crowded public place just happens to forget that the possibility exists that another human might also need to get down that aisle. “Oopsie doodle! I forgot I was surrounded by a hundred people who would really rather get this chore done as fast as possible! Again! Silly me!”

Give me a charitable interpretation of that person who doesn’t take even a split second to consider anyone else in their environment without having to be verbally admonished.

I believe the lack of charges for lying to Congress does lend a little credibility to the story he tells.

The tobacco execs who testified to Congress that nicotine was harmless and non-addictive didn’t get charges, either. Does that lend credibility to the claim that cigarettes are good for you?

Fuck no, it doesn’t. Because nobody has ever been charged for lying to Congress. Even when they’ve been bald-faced directly lying to Congress.

What’s the metric unit for depression?

but most of us will also correct our mistake if it’s brought to our attention

Most of us will literally never make that “mistake” because we’re aware that other people exist, even when nobody’s standing next to us screaming “HEY, I EXIST! CAN YOU TAKE THAT INTO ACCOUNT PLEASE?”

People aren’t mind readers and they aren’t purposely trying to make your life harder.

Oh, now I get it. They just don’t even notice or acknowledge the existence of other people unless someone reminds them that such mythical beings exist.

Yeah, you’re right, I’m much more sympathetic to them now. They’re not mean, they’re just amazingly self-centered and oblivious!

a handful of times at most

You must have Shaq’s hands, because I’ve experienced this literally every time I’ve gone to a grocery store throughout my entire adult life.

Get the fuck out of the way or someone less hinged than I am is going to move you.

You’re totally right, that makes me feel so much better about having to wait idly for the next 19 minutes rather than get my shopping done. They’re not in my way, they’re connecting! I should try to connect with them, too!

Wow, they left. Why don’t they want to connect anymore?

I’m 6’5". I’d love to hear your suggestions for what I should do with my legs when you recline your seat. Do you think I can just take them off? Am I supposed to sit sideways with my legs in the lap of the person next to me? Am I supposed to do Yoga for a year before I get on a plane, so I can spread my knees out 180 degrees from each other and you can lay your head on my dick?

I’m not “slamming my knees into the back of your seat”. They simply exist where you’re trying to be, and the fundamental properties of matter are causing them to collide. You can be as pissed about your comfort as you want to be, but it’s not going to change my knees into ethereal ghost knees so your seat can lean back.

And from images of ice cascading into the sea, you genuinely drew the conclusion that Antarctica would be completely ice-free in less than 12 years?

So, nobody actually told you that, you just decided it was true after seeing video of ice falling into the sea. But that decision was firm enough in your mind to cause you to believe that, since there is still some ice in 2023, the doom-sayers of the Discovery channel were wrong and we had nothing to worry about?

Fascinating. I wish I had the ability to make those kinds of amazing leaps of reasoning on subjects I know absolutely nothing about and then believe them hard enough to post snarky shit in public.

What was the name of that program?

The “far right” is growing because the left keeps moving further left, and normal people realize they’re now considered conservative.

I guess there really is no floor for how simple an idea can be when it’s not beholden to reality. Thanks for the example.