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  65. <header>
  66. <h1>A confusing tip</h1>
  67. <p>Day 00727: Friday, 2017 March 03</p>
  68. </header>
  69. <section id="general">
  70. <h2>General news</h2>
  71. <p>
  72. I ... feel so strange not using names to refer to my coworkers in my journal.
  73. Lately, I&apos;ve been discussing my coworkers a lot, but for their privacy, I&apos;ve not been mentioning them by name.
  74. The privacy shall continue though.
  75. </p>
  76. <p>
  77. The coworker that offered to check over my essays wrote back today about <a href="https://y.st./en/coursework/PHIL1404/Artificial_value.xhtml">last week&apos;s essay</a>.
  78. Apparently, they couldn&apos;t figure out how to turn on email notifications, so they missed my email and didn&apos;t see it until the essay was past due.
  79. Hmm.
  80. I wonder it would be easier for them if I used the <abbr title="Short Message Service">SMS</abbr> gateways.
  81. </p>
  82. <p>
  83. I wrote to my mother this morning.
  84. I&apos;ve been dreading doing that, but I knew I needed to initiate communication at some point to keep us from falling into a permanent radio silence.
  85. Ideally, I&apos;d wait long enough for my mother to cool down, but not too long as to make my mother think I&apos;m avoiding them.
  86. I can&apos;t see my mother though, I don&apos;t know if they&apos;ve cooled down yet or not.
  87. Today though, I had a perfect and time-sensitive excuse: the Value Village sale.
  88. I&apos;ve now been invited over to keep the cat company for the weekend, and Vanessa and our mother will be away.
  89. I don&apos;t really want to go over there, but I&apos;ll have to anyway at some point to take care of the restroom and finish the dishes.
  90. It might as well be this weekend, as long as I can keep up with coursework as well.
  91. </p>
  92. <p>
  93. I briefly considered making my mother&apos;s house my base of operations for the weekend.
  94. That&apos;d get me closer to the Dollar Tree to pick up oven mitts.
  95. That&apos;d be a <strong>*very*</strong> bad idea though.
  96. Even if I bring laundry such as work uniforms, I&apos;m not effective there because of the toxic atmosphere.
  97. Furthermore, there&apos;s no food!
  98. I&apos;m not going to perform well in my studies without decent nutrition.
  99. Even the thought of going over there made me unproductive even here at home.
  100. Hopefully though, I&apos;ll finish up my reading assignment and learning journal assignment tomorrow.
  101. </p>
  102. <p>
  103. I was gypped for hours this coming work week, it seems.
  104. Also, my days off have shifted and my one morning shift has been switched to an evening shift.
  105. In general, I&apos;d rather work all morning shifts or all night shifts, but I had plans for this Sunday.
  106. Oh well, I&apos;ll just have to shift stuff a bit.
  107. The work week after this coming work week though ...
  108. If I don&apos;t have that evening free, I won&apos;t be able to go to the Value Village sale with my friends from work.
  109. Oh well, there&apos;s nothing I can do if that happens.
  110. I mean, I could get someone to cover my shift or something, but I can&apos;t afford to lose the hours.
  111. </p>
  112. <p>
  113. Lately, I&apos;ve been taking a different approach to dealing with customers that can&apos;t read signs and refuse to listen to directions.
  114. Previously, if they skipped the menu board and waited by the window, which our signs tell them not to do, I&apos;d politely ask them to use the menu board next time, then I&apos;d take their order at the window.
  115. Now, I&apos;ve been ignoring them until they either read the sign on the window telling them to place orders at the menu board or they figure out by other means that they need to go back to the menu board.
  116. Is it less efficient?
  117. Very much so.
  118. However, customers no longer complain.
  119. It takes them longer to get their food, but they understand that they&apos;re the ones doing it wrong and they don&apos;t blame me for their own failure to figure out how to use a restaurant drive-through.
  120. When I ask customers at the menu board to wait there for a bit and they refuse, I no longer confront them about it.
  121. It&apos;s not worth it.
  122. They&apos;re being incredibly rude by refusing to follow basic drive-through etiquette.
  123. They&apos;re slowing down the processing of their own order by refusing to follow directions so I have to run back and forth between the window and where I&apos;m working.
  124. However, they&apos;ve made it clear that they <strong>*want*</strong> to be a pain in the neck, so I haven&apos;t been giving them a chance to be an even bigger pain; especially because my boss, the one who gave me the instructions to get customers to order/wait at the menu board won&apos;t even back me up.
  125. </p>
  126. <p>
  127. That one moronic customer that threatened to get me fired for doing my job came through tonight.
  128. As I said though, I&apos;m no longer confronting customers and trying to get them to follow basic drive-through etiquette or basic drive-through protocol, so they didn&apos;t have anything to complain about.
  129. Apparently, they didn&apos;t recognize my voice through the menu board; I don&apos;t blame them, I didn&apos;t recognize them either.
  130. They had order money and tip money pulled out, but when they saw may face, I saw them recognize me; they had a look of distaste once they knew who I was.
  131. They removed the tip money and just paid for their food.
  132. I didn&apos;t mind, as long as they weren&apos;t going to try something nasty, but strangely, they gave me the tip a bit later.
  133. They seemed to debate a bit before doing so, but why would they choose to give it to me?
  134. Why would they be debating at all instead of just keeping it?
  135. They don&apos;t like me; they want me gone.
  136. Why would they be giving me extra money?
  137. I certainly won&apos;t complain about getting an extra dollar for the day, but I&apos;m very confused as to what they were thinking.
  138. </p>
  139. <p>
  140. My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
  141. </p>
  142. </section>
  143. <section id="dreams">
  144. <h2>Dream journal</h2>
  145. <p>
  146. I don&apos;t recall much of my dream last night, but what I remember is strange.
  147. I was in a retail store.
  148. I saw a camera flash, and turned around.
  149. There was a giant mobile device screen at one point overlayed on reality; it showed a camera application and represented the fact that someone was taking a photograph from that direction, even though the giant device was flipped the wrong direction for that.
  150. At that point, I started trying to be covert for some reason, and started moving some strange contraption.
  151. I don&apos;t even recall what it looked like, but it had some of those curly telephone cords on it.
  152. Unfortunately, one of my real-life shift leaders came over and started talking to me while I was trying to be sneaky, so I had to get out of there quickly.
  153. I&apos;m not sure if I recognized them as a shift leader in the dream, but I recognized them as someone I knew by name, face, and voice.
  154. I made a bad turn, not keeping far away enough from a shelf, and the curly telephone wires got snagged on the shelf.
  155. I&apos;m not sure why, but there wasn&apos;t time.
  156. I couldn&apos;t stop to properly detangle the device from the shelf, so I had to leave it behind.
  157. I was a bit frustrated with my shift leader for that.
  158. It wasn&apos;t my shift leader that I was trying to evade, but I now tried to escape my shift leader as well simply because they wanted to talk.
  159. I couldn&apos;t be covert with someone making noise and drawing attention to my location.
  160. As I made my way through the store, I noticed that I was wearing the drive-through headset, though I&apos;m not sure why.
  161. Fairly soon though, I stumbled upon a reflective surface; I think it was a hard-cover book, but I don&apos;t recall.
  162. My headset&apos;s lights were green; I could see the one on the microphone sticking out in front of me.
  163. However, the light reflecting off the reflective surface was red.
  164. </p>
  165. <p>
  166. At that point, I knew I was dreaming.
  167. My shift leader caught up with me, but it no longer mattered.
  168. Nothing was real.
  169. I told my shift leader that I was only dreaming, but they didn&apos;t know what I meant.
  170. I was lucid, so I tried to figure out something I could do with the dream, but I was at a loss for ideas.
  171. Soon after, I just decided to wake up because I couldn&apos;t think of anything else to do and was kind of bored.
  172. </p>
  173. </section>
  174. <section id="university">
  175. <h2>University life</h2>
  176. <p>
  177. I&apos;m not going to repeat myself here, as I&apos;ve already gone over the details in my <a href="/en/coursework/PHIL1404/#Unit6">learning journal</a>.
  178. This week&apos;s assignment is an assessment of the reading material (listed yesterday) in our learning journals.
  179. One section of the reading in particular caught my attention: a section on the effects on the victims of bullying at work.
  180. I show so many symptoms, it&apos;s not even funny.
  181. Except ... I&apos;ve never felt bullied at work.
  182. Sure, the head manager calls me a hippie and says that my music isn&apos;t very manly, but I don&apos;t personally take either as an insult.
  183. I actually care about the planet, unlike most people, and if that makes me a hippie, so be it.
  184. The boss even asked me on one occasion if I mind being called a hippie; the implication being that they&apos;d stop if I actually cared.
  185. As for listening to manly music, I don&apos;t consider myself masculine, so I don&apos;t need to pretend to be.
  186. I&apos;m agendered; I can listen to whatever I want and dress however I want.
  187. However, I was bullied at home until recently.
  188. For decades, my mother&apos;s been doing nothing but tearing apart my ego.
  189. It shows too, apparently.
  190. It seems that my ... cynical view of the world very much could be a symptom of abuse and not simply be me being able to see what most people choose to ignore.
  191. That said, perhaps it&apos;s there for any who choose to see, but the unabused have the luxury of being capable of ignoring it.
  192. </p>
  193. <p>
  194. Tomorrow, I choose my courses for the coming term.
  195. I went over my <a href="/en/weblog/2017/01-January/02.xhtml#university">course requirement/prerequisite tree</a> to start thinking about what courses to take.
  196. CS 1102: Programming 1 is a given.
  197. I need that course to unlock CS 1103: Programming 2, which itself will unlock several branches of my tree, so I need to get that out of the way as soon as possible; if CS 1102 weren&apos;t offered in a given term, and I waited until that term to take it, I&apos;d be stuck in my progress for at least a term.
  198. Even more likely, if I wait to take this, I won&apos;t have a second course to take alongside it.
  199. I started looking at my requirements that can be filled by multiple courses as well.
  200. After trying to decide which requirements to choose, I remembered that I&apos;d already chosen.
  201. There&apos;s room to change my mind, but there&apos;s no need to stress over this now, especially for courses I don&apos;t plan to take this term anyway.
  202. As one of my courses next term won&apos;t be proctored, I don&apos;t want the other to be either.
  203. I&apos;d rather condense my proctored courses into fewer terms, so I have less proctored terms to worry about.
  204. HIST 1421: Greek and Roman Civilization is my only other available, non-optional, unproctored course, so I&apos;ll probably try to take that one.
  205. </p>
  206. <p>
  207. I finally mailed my tuition payment to University of the People.
  208. It costs an extra forty-nine cents to do this by mail instead of through an electronic payment, but it&apos;s well worth it for a number of reasons.
  209. First, I don&apos;t have to deal with PayPal&apos;s garbage.
  210. Second, the university doesn&apos;t have to pay PayPal&apos;s fee; that is to say, the university gets to keep more of the money.
  211. Third, PayPal <strong>*doesn&apos;t*</strong> get a cut.
  212. They&apos;re a horrid company and don&apos;t deserve any of it.
  213. They do nothing but hassle me and make everything they touch difficult.
  214. </p>
  215. </section>
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  220. If for some reason you would prefer to modify and/or distribute this document under other free copyleft terms, please ask me via email.
  221. My address is in the source comments near the top of this document.
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