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#that would be like... becoming a customer service employee but. as your self
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The moral injury of having your work enshittified
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This Monday (November 27), I'm appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.
On November 29, I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."
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This week, I wrote about how the Great Enshittening – in which all the digital services we rely on become unusable, extractive piles of shit – did not result from the decay of the morals of tech company leadership, but rather, from the collapse of the forces that discipline corporate wrongdoing:
https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/
The failure to enforce competition law allowed a few companies to buy out their rivals, or sell goods below cost until their rivals collapsed, or bribe key parts of their supply chain not to allow rivals to participate:
https://www.engadget.com/google-reportedly-pays-apple-36-percent-of-ad-search-revenues-from-safari-191730783.html
The resulting concentration of the tech sector meant that the surviving firms were stupendously wealthy, and cozy enough that they could agree on a common legislative agenda. That regulatory capture has allowed tech companies to violate labor, privacy and consumer protection laws by arguing that the law doesn't apply when you use an app to violate it:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
But the regulatory capture isn't just about preventing regulation: it's also about creating regulation – laws that make it illegal to reverse-engineer, scrape, and otherwise mod, hack or reconfigure existing services to claw back value that has been taken away from users and business customers. This gives rise to Jay Freeman's perfectly named doctrine of "felony contempt of business-model," in which it is illegal to use your own property in ways that anger the shareholders of the company that sold it to you:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain
Undisciplined by the threat of competition, regulation, or unilateral modification by users, companies are free to enshittify their products. But what does that actually look like? I say that enshittification is always precipitated by a lost argument.
It starts when someone around a board-room table proposes doing something that's bad for users but good for the company. If the company faces the discipline of competition, regulation or self-help measures, then the workers who are disgusted by this course of action can say, "I think doing this would be gross, and what's more, it's going to make the company poorer," and so they win the argument.
But when you take away that discipline, the argument gets reduced to, "Don't do this because it would make me ashamed to work here, even though it will make the company richer." Money talks, bullshit walks. Let the enshittification begin!
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/22/who-wins-the-argument/#corporations-are-people-my-friend
But why do workers care at all? That's where phrases like "don't be evil" come into the picture. Until very recently, tech workers participated in one of history's tightest labor markets, in which multiple companies with gigantic war-chests bid on their labor. Even low-level employees routinely fielded calls from recruiters who dangled offers of higher salaries and larger stock grants if they would jump ship for a company's rival.
Employers built "campuses" filled with lavish perks: massages, sports facilities, daycare, gourmet cafeterias. They offered workers generous benefit packages, including exotic health benefits like having your eggs frozen so you could delay fertility while offsetting the risks normally associated with conceiving at a later age.
But all of this was a transparent ruse: the business-case for free meals, gyms, dry-cleaning, catering and massages was to keep workers at their laptops for 10, 12, or even 16 hours per day. That egg-freezing perk wasn't about helping workers plan their families: it was about thumbing the scales in favor of working through your entire twenties and thirties without taking any parental leave.
In other words, tech employers valued their employees as a means to an end: they wanted to get the best geeks on the payroll and then work them like government mules. The perks and pay weren't the result of comradeship between management and labor: they were the result of the discipline of competition for labor.
This wasn't really a secret, of course. Big Tech workers are split into two camps: blue badges (salaried employees) and green badges (contractors). Whenever there is a slack labor market for a specific job or skill, it is converted from a blue badge job to a green badge job. Green badges don't get the food or the massages or the kombucha. They don't get stock or daycare. They don't get to freeze their eggs. They also work long hours, but they are incentivized by the fear of poverty.
Tech giants went to great lengths to shield blue badges from green badges – at some Google campuses, these workforces actually used different entrances and worked in different facilities or on different floors. Sometimes, green badge working hours would be staggered so that the armies of ragged clickworkers would not be lined up to badge in when their social betters swanned off the luxury bus and into their airy adult kindergartens.
But Big Tech worked hard to convince those blue badges that they were truly valued. Companies hosted regular town halls where employees could ask impertinent questions of their CEOs. They maintained freewheeling internal social media sites where techies could rail against corporate foolishness and make Dilbert references.
And they came up with mottoes.
Apple told its employees it was a sound environmental steward that cared about privacy. Apple also deliberately turned old devices into e-waste by shredding them to ensure that they wouldn't be repaired and compete with new devices:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently
And even as they were blocking Facebook's surveillance tools, they quietly built their own nonconsensual mass surveillance program and lied to customers about it:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar
Facebook told employees they were on a "mission to connect every person in the world," but instead deliberately sowed discontent among its users and trapped them in silos that meant that anyone who left Facebook lost all their friends:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs
And Google promised its employees that they would not "be evil" if they worked at Google. For many googlers, that mattered. They wanted to do something good with their lives, and they had a choice about who they would work for. What's more, they did make things that were good. At their high points, Google Maps, Google Mail, and of course, Google Search were incredible.
My own life was totally transformed by Maps: I have very poor spatial sense, need to actually stop and think to tell my right from my left, and I spent more of my life at least a little lost and often very lost. Google Maps is the cognitive prosthesis I needed to become someone who can go anywhere. I'm profoundly grateful to the people who built that service.
There's a name for phenomenon in which you care so much about your job that you endure poor conditions and abuse: it's called "vocational awe," as coined by Fobazi Ettarh:
https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/
Ettarh uses the term to apply to traditionally low-waged workers like librarians, teachers and nurses. In our book Chokepoint Capitalism, Rebecca Giblin and I talked about how it applies to artists and other creative workers, too:
https://chokepointcapitalism.com/
But vocational awe is also omnipresent in tech. The grandiose claims to be on a mission to make the world a better place are not just puffery – they're a vital means of motivating workers who can easily quit their jobs and find a new one to put in 16-hour days. The massages and kombucha and egg-freezing are not framed as perks, but as logistical supports, provided so that techies on an important mission can pursue a shared social goal without being distracted by their balky, inconvenient meatsuits.
Steve Jobs was a master of instilling vocational awe. He was full of aphorisms like "we're here to make a dent in the universe, otherwise why even be here?" Or his infamous line to John Sculley, whom he lured away from Pepsi: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?"
Vocational awe cuts both ways. If your workforce actually believes in all that high-minded stuff, if they actually sacrifice their health, family lives and self-care to further the mission, they will defend it. That brings me back to enshittification, and the argument: "If we do this bad thing to the product I work on, it will make me hate myself."
The decline in market discipline for large tech companies has been accompanied by a decline in labor discipline, as the market for technical work grew less and less competitive. Since the dotcom collapse, the ability of tech giants to starve new entrants of market oxygen has shrunk techies' dreams.
Tech workers once dreamed of working for a big, unwieldy firm for a few years before setting out on their own to topple it with a startup. Then, the dream shrank: work for that big, clumsy firm for a few years, then do a fake startup that makes a fake product that is acquihired by your old employer, as an incredibly inefficient and roundabout way to get a raise and a bonus.
Then the dream shrank again: work for a big, ugly firm for life, but get those perks, the massages and the kombucha and the stock options and the gourmet cafeteria and the egg-freezing. Then it shrank again: work for Google for a while, but then get laid off along with 12,000 co-workers, just months after the company does a stock buyback that would cover all those salaries for the next 27 years:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/
Tech workers' power was fundamentally individual. In a tight labor market, tech workers could personally stand up to their bosses. They got "workplace democracy" by mouthing off at town hall meetings. They didn't have a union, and they thought they didn't need one. Of course, they did need one, because there were limits to individual power, even for the most in-demand workers, especially when it came to ghastly, long-running sexual abuse from high-ranking executives:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-harassment-andy-rubin.html
Today, atomized tech workers who are ordered to enshittify the products they take pride in are losing the argument. Workers who put in long hours, missed funerals and school plays and little league games and anniversaries and family vacations are being ordered to flush that sacrifice down the toilet to grind out a few basis points towards a KPI.
It's a form of moral injury, and it's palpable in the first-person accounts of former workers who've exited these large firms or the entire field. The viral "Reflecting on 18 years at Google," written by Ian Hixie, vibrates with it:
https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373
Hixie describes the sense of mission he brought to his job, the workplace democracy he experienced as employees' views were both solicited and heeded. He describes the positive contributions he was able to make to a commons of technical standards that rippled out beyond Google – and then, he says, "Google's culture eroded":
Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision.
In other words, techies started losing the argument. Layoffs weakened worker power – not just to defend their own interest, but to defend the users interests. Worker power is always about more than workers – think of how the 2019 LA teachers' strike won greenspace for every school, a ban on immigration sweeps of students' parents at the school gates and other community benefits:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/
Hixie attributes the changes to a change in leadership, but I respectfully disagree. Hixie points to the original shareholder letter from the Google founders, in which they informed investors contemplating their IPO that they were retaining a controlling interest in the company's governance so that they could ignore their shareholders' priorities in favor of a vision of Google as a positive force in the world:
https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/
Hixie says that the leadership that succeeded the founders lost sight of this vision – but the whole point of that letter is that the founders never fully ceded control to subsequent executive teams. Yes, those executive teams were accountable to the shareholders, but the largest block of voting shares were retained by the founders.
I don't think the enshittification of Google was due to a change in leadership – I think it was due to a change in discipline, the discipline imposed by competition, regulation and the threat of self-help measures. Take ads: when Google had to contend with one-click adblocker installation, it had to constantly balance the risk of making users so fed up that they googled "how do I block ads?" and then never saw another ad ever again.
But once Google seized the majority of the mobile market, it was able to funnel users into apps, and reverse-engineering an app is a felony (felony contempt of business-model) under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to install an ad-blocker.
And as Google acquired control over the browser market, it was likewise able to reduce the self-help measures available to browser users who found ads sufficiently obnoxious to trigger googling "how do I block ads?" The apotheosis of this is the yearslong campaign to block adblockers in Chrome, which the company has sworn it will finally do this coming June:
https://www.tumblr.com/tevruden/734352367416410112/you-have-until-june-to-dump-chrome
My contention here is not that Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in personnel via the promotion of managers who have shitty ideas. Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in discipline, as the negative consequences of heeding those shitty ideas were abolished thanks to monopoly.
This is bad news for people like me, who rely on services like Google Maps as cognitive prostheses. Elizabeth Laraki, one of the original Google Maps designers, has published a scorching critique of the latest GMaps design:
https://twitter.com/elizlaraki/status/1727351922254852182
Laraki calls out numerous enshittificatory design-choices that have left Maps screens covered in "crud" – multiple revenue-maximizing elements that come at the expense of usability, shifting value from users to Google.
What Laraki doesn't say is that these UI elements are auctioned off to merchants, which means that the business that gives Google the most money gets the greatest prominence in Maps, even if it's not the best merchant. That's a recurring motif in enshittified tech platforms, most notoriously Amazon, which makes $31b/year auctioning off top search placement to companies whose products aren't relevant enough to your query to command that position on their own:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos
Enshittification begets enshittification. To succeed on Amazon, you must divert funds from product quality to auction placement, which means that the top results are the worst products:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens
The exception is searches for Apple products: Apple and Amazon have a cozy arrangement that means that searches for Apple products are a timewarp back to the pre-enshittification Amazon, when the company worried enough about losing your business to heed the employees who objected to sacrificing search quality as part of a merchant extortion racket:
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-gives-apple-special-treatment-while-others-suffer-junk-ads-2023-11
Not every tech worker is a tech bro, in other words. Many workers care deeply about making your life better. But the microeconomics of the boardroom in a monopolized tech sector rewards the worst people and continuously promotes them. Forget the Peter Principle: tech is ruled by the Sam Principle.
As OpenAI went through four CEOs in a single week, lots of commentators remarked on Sam Altman's rise and fall and rise, but I only found one commentator who really had Altman's number. Writing in Today in Tabs, Rusty Foster nailed Altman to the wall:
https://www.todayintabs.com/p/defective-accelerationism
Altman's history goes like this: first, he founded a useless startup that raised $30m, only to be acquired and shuttered. Then Altman got a job running Y Combinator, where he somehow failed at taking huge tranches of equity from "every Stanford dropout with an idea for software to replace something Mommy used to do." After that, he founded OpenAI, a company that he claims to believe presents an existential risk to the entire human risk – which he structured so incompetently that he was then forced out of it.
His reward for this string of farcical, mounting failures? He was put back in charge of the company he mis-structured despite his claimed belief that it will destroy the human race if not properly managed.
Altman's been around for a long time. He founded his startup in 2005. There've always been Sams – of both the Bankman-Fried varietal and the Altman genus – in tech. But they didn't get to run amok. They were disciplined by their competitors, regulators, users and workers. The collapse of competition led to an across-the-board collapse in all of those forms of discipline, revealing the executives for the mediocre sociopaths they always were, and exposing tech workers' vocational awe for the shabby trick it was from the start.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification
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farfromstrange · 1 year
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Customer Service | Matt Murdock
Pairing: Matt Murdock x afab!reader
Summary: After a particularly rough week, all you want to do is cry. It has you on edge and makes you say things you don’t mean. After letting out your anger on your boyfriend, he makes it his mission to take care of you for a change.
Warnings: SMUT, 18+ MINORS DNI, oral (f receiving), Matt Murdock eats pussy like a champ, fingering, squirting (I feel filthy), emotional hurt/comfort, no use of y/n, no pronouns, reader has female body parts, 1st person pov (?)
a/n: As someone who quit their job in customer service for the exact same reasons I have stated in this fic, this is very personal to me and self-indulgent, again. I wrote this after a particularly bad day. Sometimes I wish Matt were real so he could actually do this to me.
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There is nothing in all of existence that I loathe more than people. Why I chose to work in customer service in the first place has become more and more of a mystery to me. I could have quit after the first week, I should have, but whenever the thought crosses my mind, I tell myself: ‘It’s going to get better. You will get used to it.’ I did not, in fact, get used to it. Or, I did, I just started to hate myself even more. Every day I get home from an eight-hour shift, I’m tired, I’m exhausted and I feel the desperate need to throw myself off a cliff. 
There are days when it’s easier. The elderly couple who comes in every Sunday, for example, to drink their coffee and have a lengthy conversation over a piece of cake, never fails to make me smile. They’re always kind, and forthcoming and they tip, even though I know they don’t have the money to.
Or the woman who likes to pick up lunch for her husband, she always calls me sweetheart, and she’s never bothered if her order takes just a little too long. The regulars chat me up and I like it because it makes me feel less alone behind the counter, as life passes me by and I can’t help to stare at the clock every five minutes to calculate how many hours of the day are left. They make it easier to forget about the overtime I inevitably have to put in every night. They know I don’t eat enough or smile enough or drink enough, and so they make me smile because they’re good people. 
But some continuously want to tell me how to do my job, the one I’ve given blood and sweat for to master down to the smallest detail, and those who treat me like I’m responsible for their bad days and those who don’t care that I’m human, I just have to serve.
It’s so exhausting that some people don’t care about the workers behind the counter. I hate that my boss doesn’t seem to care either, that we don’t get paid enough, and that I’m expected to jump whenever they want me to. I got a life too, but that doesn’t matter because I’m cheap and they love to use those who never learned how to say no.
I physically can’t tell them I can’t work whenever I’m asked to pick up an extra shift, or when I’m sick or have to do anything else. It’s not even my main occupation and yet, here I am! Every day, I tell myself, I should just quit. It’s not my responsibility if they can’t treat their employees right. It’s not my responsibility they’re understaffed. I’m a student, I go to college, and I’m working hard on my degree - why should I prioritize my job over the thing that will determine the rest of my life? 
And yet, every day, I go back. I go back and I work until my feet hurt and I’m sick and I’m tired and all I want to do is just cry. I go back because I, for the life of me, can’t say no. I can’t quit. I want to, but I can’t, and it’s killing me inside that I can’t talk about it the way I want to. In the end, I will always feel like everything is my fault and that I messed up, even though all I did was show up to work and turn into everyone’s punching bag. 
My stupidity is what got me here. Usually, I would be home now, studying, but they asked me to pick up a late shift at the cafè again, and I worked for seven hours with only a fifteen-minute break in between - I look horrible, I smell of coffee and cake, and my body is hurting in all the wrong places. The weight is heavy in my stomach. I’m nauseous. I ate, but not enough. I’m hungry. I feel sick. Even the smallest sounds make me want to jump up the wall, kill someone, or perhaps even both. I’m angry, and I don’t even fucking know why because nothing happened. Other than a rather messy day with too much to do and too few people to do the work, the people weren’t even rude and I’ve had worse days - still, I feel everything at once and it’s ridiculous, really, because I’m an adult and I should know better than to let a rough day affect me. I don’t. 
When he called and asked if I wanted to come over, I said yes. I didn’t want to, but saying no? Not something I would do, especially not to him. I walked into his apartment with a lump already in my stomach. The door creaked - God, I told him to oil it - and that was the first strike. I tossed my key into the bowl and it promptly fell back out. Second strike. My coat slipped from the hanger the second I hung it up. Third strike. I breathed, I had to, then went to the kitchen to make some dinner. Cooking usually works, usually, but the day must have gotten to me because the fourth strike - the fucking milk being expired - happened way too soon and it hit me, hard. After that, I was pretty much done for, and I knew, I just chose to ignore it. 
Of course, I should have known I would screw up everything else, too.
“Hey, sweetheart,” his voice is kind and soft in my ear as he presses a kiss to my cheek. His stubble has never been something to bother me before until that very moment. I flinch away, not sure why. If he realized it - which I’m sure he did - he doesn’t show. 
“Smells good,” he says. 
I put the garlic into the pan. It smells too much like garlic and I hate it. 
“What you making?”
“Pasta,” I tell him. 
He kisses me again. “Mh-hm. How was your day?” the question is stupid, but it’s normal and he always asks. He gets himself a beer - only himself - removes the cap with his mouth and then leans against the counter. 
He shouldn’t infuriate me. He shouldn’t make me angry just by standing there and asking me questions couples ask themselves, but inevitably, he does. And I hate myself all the more for the way my voice sounds when I answer him. 
“Fine,” I say. 
“Fine?” he asks. “How was work?” I feel like he’s getting suspicious. “You only had two lectures today, right? English lit and what was the other one?”
“Linguistics.”
“Ah, yes. Your least favorite.”
Perhaps that’s why I’m angry. 
“You know,” he says and the tangent he goes on after revolves around him and only him, and while I don’t like talking about myself, that doesn’t mean he has to unload all of his stress on me - I don’t know why I think that way and it’s scaring me because I don’t actually feel that way, but at that moment I do and it’s all very confusing.
I just want to lock myself in his bedroom and cry. He looks so good with the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up. He’s wearing his glasses, still, but his tie is loosened and he smiles because he knows I love that smile. I should love it. I should love the way his muscles tense underneath his shirt or the way his dress pants hang impossibly low on his hips, but for the first time, I don’t. I don’t love anything, I just feel anger, which makes me hate everything, but mostly myself. 
I must have zoned out. Suddenly, he’s calling my name and he’s calling me sweetheart and he’s poking me with his hands - no, he’s stroking my hips, hugging me from behind, and it’s all too much. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I lie. He knows I’m lying. He can hear it in my heartbeat. He can feel it in the way I move away from him to rinse the now-empty pan in the sink. 
How is the food already finished?
“You didn’t listen to a word I just said,” he dares to sound offended. 
“No, I did.”
“Really, what did I say?”
“You and Foggy had a case, didn’t go well, bla bla bla. Same as every day.”
He sets the bottle down. “Alright, sweetheart, what’s wrong? I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Oh, so just because I don’t care about hearing the same story repeat itself every day and you whining about it means there’s something wrong with me?”
He’s taken aback. Quite frankly, I’ve never snapped at him before, not like this, not out of nowhere, and we’ve been dating for over a year. With his super senses, there is little that eludes the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, especially when it comes to his girlfriend. I hate that it’s like this. I hate not having any privacy, even when I try to. But I don’t want to be alone, I don’t want privacy. Or, I think. I don’t even know what I want. I know I want to be around him, but at the same time, it hurts because the anger is too damn hot to swallow, and his concern doesn’t make it any better. It should be, but it’s not. I’m a lost cause. 
“I was just telling you about my day,” he says. I would yell back at myself if I were him, but he knows me. He knows yelling doesn’t help. He knows I’d cry, but maybe that’s what I want. Maybe I want him to yell just so I have a valid reason to cry, to be angry. 
I want him to hate me the way I hate myself. 
That’s why I can’t help it anymore. “Maybe I don’t want to hear about your day.”
“What?”
“The world doesn’t revolve around you, Matthew!”
He’s confused. I don’t blame him. The second the words left my mouth, I regret them. They make me sound like the most selfish person on the whole planet. I can’t take them back though. If I did, he’d know something is wrong and then he’d worry, he’d pity me and no, I don’t want that. I want to rile him up. I’m not sure why, but it makes me so angry that he’s so calm and I’m… well, I’m me, but I’m also not me. I’m a stranger in my own body. 
I put the pasta in a bowl. It stinks of alcohol and tomatoes and garlic, too much of it. I wonder how anyone could eat that. 
“Here,” I shove it into his hand, “You’ve been served. I’m gonna take a shower.”
I’m a bad person. I’m pretty sure I am. Who yells at their boyfriend because they can’t deal with their own problems? Who makes the person they love more than life itself feel like shit on purpose for no reason whatsoever? A sane person wouldn’t. We have never been a normal couple, Matthew and I, but we’re trying. Turns out, I suck much more than I thought I would.
It’s not the age gap, I’m sure of it. I’m in my last year as an English Major and he’s a defense attorney. Somehow, we make it work. He loves me, I know he does. He’s afraid of rejection - he thinks everyone he loves will leave him, which is why it took us a while to find together. I should have known my words were going to hurt him unimaginably. He thinks he did something wrong, but it’s not him. It’s never him. He’s damaged, but he’s nothing if not perfect to me, most of the time. 
I’m heavily crying at this point, trying to conceal my sobs, but it’s not working. The water is loud, not loud enough to fool Matt’s hearing, but even if he were to hear it, he knows better than to provoke me any further. He doesn’t know what’s going on and neither do I, so it’s just the two of us silently waiting for the other to come around. He shouldn’t have to feel that way. And so I cry more because God, I do not deserve that man. I don’t deserve his kindness or his love. I don’t. I really, really don’t. 
And once I’m out of the bathroom, I remember why I don’t deserve him. 
The table is set for two. Candles substitute for the harsh ceiling light. He knows it gives me headaches sometimes. He put a bowl out for me and a glass of wine. White wine. The sweet kind. The kind he hates but keeps around in case I ever need a glass. He’s drinking red wine. It’s cheap, but it looks expensive and he likes to feel special from time to time. 
I hug my arms around my body. He has his back turned to me, fixing a salad in the kitchen - I must have forgotten it. The way he moves is almost angelic. He moves as if nothing happened, as if I didn’t just treat him like a bitch. He’s singing my favorite song or humming it, anyway. The room smells of him and me and the food I loathed before, but watching him do all of this for me, even now, is sucking the air out of my lungs and suddenly, I don’t mind the thought of eating with him.
I only want one thing. I don’t want to ask for it and he’s not going to do anything unless I talk. We agreed on that from the beginning, no matter what kind of intimacy it involves. Without consent or a proper conversation, nothing will happen. And I curse myself for not being able to speak without the tears blocking my view again. 
“There’s a sweater on the couch,” he states. He knows I’m cold. “And some fuzzy socks, if you want.”
The clothes smell like him. 
“I put some more salt in the pasta. I think you forgot to salt the water, so I took it upon myself. I hope you don’t mind. Also, I tried to make your favorite salad dressing, but I’m not sure if I managed to get it right this time.”
He smiles and then his glasses are gone and he has an apron on and he looks like he loves me, really loves me, and that’s it. I pull my legs up to my chest, falling deep into the couch and I cry. All the pain just comes exploding out of me like an active volcano. 
The leather dents next to me. “Comfort or solution?” he asks. It’s so casual, I get the feeling he’s not mad at me. 
“I don’t know,” it sounds so broken.
His arm finds around my shoulder. “Is this okay?” I can only nod. Yes.
He moves me gently so I’m in his lap and he can rock me like a baby. It feels good to be loved like this, but it’s also suffocating. Still, I can’t help but fall deeper into his hold because this is, in fact, all I needed. Too stubborn to ask for it, I almost ruined something good. I know I did. He knows, too, but unlike me, he knows the difference between me being mad at him and being mad at the world. He knows I don’t mean what I say unless we’re fighting, and this isn’t it. We’re not fighting. I’m just angry and I want to cry, even while crying, and that makes me cry even more. 
“You want to talk about it?” he asks once I can finally breathe again. 
I blow my nose like a disgusting person and say, “Yes. No. I don’t know. Maybe.” And that about sums up all of my life. 
“Is it school?”
I shake my head. If it’s not school, it can only be one other thing. 
“Work?”
I nod. 
“Anything happen or just a bad day?”
“Bad day.”
“That’s why you yelled at me? I didn’t do anything wrong?”
“No,” I say truthfully for the first time. “I’m just angry. I don’t know, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Maybe next time try telling me though. I was actually scared I did something until I heard you cry in the shower.”
I don’t know what’s wrong with me and I tell him that, to which he only chuckles. 
“You know how many times I acted hostile towards you after a long day?” he says. “It happens. It’s okay.”
“I just… I’m so stressed all the time. I hate work and I hate people and I hate not getting paid enough or on time, but I can’t quit because you know, I’m me and they know that, so they take advantage of my inability to say no, and it sucks because I’m so tired of working more than I go to school, but I need the money, and so I can’t leave until I’ve found another job, but no one else wants me, so now I’m here, trying to see the good in this stupid job, but I don’t. I can’t. I hate it. I hate everything and everyone and I hate myself and I think I’ll get my period soon because this should not be upsetting me this much.”
His hand on my back manages to soothe me. 
“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it.
He smiles down at me, all loopy, and his sightless eyes are focused somewhere on my forehead, which makes everything so much better. 
“I love you.”
And yes, I love him too. I love him so fucking much, it hurts. 
“I love you too, Matty.”
As soon as I say his name, he knows what I want. He knows I need to destress. He knows I can’t eat until I can forget. 
“Is there something I can do?” he asks, but damn him, he already knows. 
“Can you…” no, I can’t ask him for that.
“Yes?”
“Matt, can…” No. “You know what, never mind.”
“No, sweetheart. Tell me. What do you need?”
“I just…” my chest heaves a frustrated groan. “IneedyoutoeatmeoutuntilIcantremembermyname.”
He enjoys it. He gets off on it, my desperation. “Sorry, what?”
“You heard me.”
“I don’t think I did. Can you repeat that?”
“God.” My face is burning. 
“I’m sorry, it’s just, this is the first time you actually asked me and I love hearing you ask for the things you want. It’s sexy.” 
Somehow, that’s even worse. My thighs clench like I’m some pathetic little schoolgirl with a crush on her teacher. 
“You know, maybe you can ask for a raise tomorrow, or quit altogether,” he says. “But for that to work, you have to tell me what you want right now.”
“I asked you to eat me out until I can’t remember my fucking name!”
“Thank you. Wasn’t so hard, was it?”
If there is one thing Matt Murdock is incredibly skilled with, it’s his mouth. And I don’t just mean the words that come out. Essentially, it’s all in his tongue. He’s managed to render me speechless on more than one occasion, and he knows. He knows I love when he touches me, but there are times when it has to be about me, and only me, and he’d gladly suffocate between my thighs. He’s told me that time and time again.
He keeps telling me to ask him if I want something. I never do. I hate asking for it because it’s embarrassing. It’s good that he knows what he’s doing, that bastard because if he didn’t, I wouldn’t be cumming and I wouldn’t tell him. Somehow he always gets the job done, no matter how stressed I am. 
That’s why I need it so badly. I need him to take care of me, no matter how long it takes. I know it might take a while because I’m tense and he knows too. He reads my body like an open book. That’s how he knows I’m horny before I even do. 
He doesn’t move for another minute. He just stares at me. “You want me to take care of you?” he asks.
“Please,” I beg. 
“Guess I’ll have dessert before dinner today then.”
He lifts my head and then he’s suddenly on top of me. He’s sliding me up the couch so he can fit in between my legs. I’m dressed in shorts, a t-shirt, and his sweater and for a second I wonder if it’s even worth it. I’m ovulating, I’m bloated. I feel like shit. My hormones are all messed up. I can feel the weight of my boobs tear on my back and I’m pretty sure the hairs on my legs prickle his cheek as he kisses them. It’s making me want to take back everything I asked of him. 
My confidence has taken a low blow this past week. 
Though Matt doesn’t care, he never does. He digs his nose between my thighs and takes the longest whiff I’ve seen him take in a while. To be fair, the last time we saw each other, he was busy with work. We didn’t have time for intimacy, which hardly ever happens. He moans. 
Smug bastard.
“You’re so beautiful,” he tells me. It melts my heart. The compliment means so much more knowing he can’t physically see me. To him, I’m beautiful. He couldn’t care less about what I looked like. Although sometimes I wonder what picture he has made up of me in his mind. 
His lips are on mine fast. I can’t help but sigh. They’re so soft. He doesn’t rush, he just kisses me and then kisses me some more. I tangle my hands in his hair. I’m sure, this is what heaven must be like.
“Let’s take this off.” His sweater joins my shorts on the floor. “May I?” He hooks his fingers underneath the waistband of my panties. “Or do you want me to keep them on?”
I have no doubt he could do it with five layers in between and still make me cum.
“Off,” I say. I want this. I have to remind myself that my insecurities mean nothing – he loves me. He wants to do this for me. He wants to do this because he likes it, or else he would say it. 
Matt is vocal, but I’m not. If he doesn’t want to do something, he’ll say. Can’t say the same about me, which is why he asks repeatedly, even after I already told him it’s okay. He wants to make sure I’m on board, that I don’t feel pressured and can pull out any time I want, but I don’t, because the second the cold air hits my bare cunt, all I want is him. 
I can feel his eyes searching for me. “Hey,” he says my name. “We’re not playing this time, okay? You can cum when you need to and how many times you want to. You just have to lay back and relax. I’ll take care of you.” 
He intertwines our fingers on either side of my spread thighs before he dives into me. It’s slow and steady. He doesn’t care about fucking me with his tongue like he usually does. He licks and bites, but mostly, his tongue and lips stay around my clit and they suck. They suck so good, I see stars behind my eyes. His touch sends shocks down my spine. My sensitive walls clench around thin air, but his head is so far between my thighs, I still manage to feel full. 
But no matter how hard I try, I can’t focus. It feels so good, way too good, and on any other day, I would’ve come by now. His beard burns into the inside of my thigh as I rock against him. I try to, but it’s exhausting. I can feel the coil in my lower belly clear as day, and yet it’s too far out of reach. I need it, I crave it. 
I can hear myself saying, “This could take a while.” And he laughs because he finds it funny. It’s not funny though, it’s serious. I hate the fact that he makes me feel so good and I can’t find it in myself to enjoy. 
“Close your eyes,” his breath fans hot against my folds. “And just stop thinking.” 
He makes it his mission to ruin me. I close my eyes and as soon as I do, he’s on me. It’s not just his mouth. One of our joined hands reaches up to touch my breast – he twists my nipple through the shirt until it’s hard and has his attention. The other reaches behind me and lifts my hips. The next thing I know, he has me propped up on a pillow. The muscles in my lower back relax. I sigh. It’s so good. 
He’s given up on slow and steady. His head moves in circles as he abuses – I don’t have another word for it – my clit and eats the rest of me like a man starved. I realize I need it fast and I need it hard. He knows it before I do. His tongue expertly parts my wet folds, a mix of arousal and spit trickling down my thighs, but I could care less. He’s inside of me and then his thumb is there and it’s rubbing and rubbing and rubbing and I’m so fucking close, the knot in my stomach feels like it weighs a hundred pounds, and it’s applying sweet, sweet pressure on cunt. 
“Fuck!” I throw my head back into the leather. My back arches impossibly high, and his head squished tightly between my thighs. I need him closer. His hair is so soft, it makes me want to cry, and I do. I cry, but not in a sad way. I cry out because yes, God yes! and then I’m cumming, suddenly and without warning, hard, all over his face, and it doesn’t stop. He doesn’t stop.
The growl is animalistic. It vibrates perfectly through my pussy and I can’t help it – it barely takes two minutes until his lips start hurting so good as they keep sucking my clit, a series of ‘one more’ leaves his lips in a plea, and I’m rocking against him hard. I’m begging him, “Matt,” but I’m not sure what for. 
“C’mon,” he says, “you can give me one more.”
He’s right. God, I hate when he’s right. My toes curl and I push his face so deep into me, I’m convinced he’s running out of air, but that’s what makes him moan and it sends me over the edge.
I’m pretty sure I passed out. The pleasure is so intense, my stomach feels like it’s being torn apart and then put back together. The world is dark and for the first time today, quiet. 
Something nudges my cheek softly. It’s his hand. Matt kisses me and I can taste myself on his lips. “Hey,” he coaxes me back into lucidity. “There you are. Are you okay?”
I nod.
“You need anything?”
It’s a reflex, reaching for him. He gasps slightly when my hand touches between his thighs, expecting to find a visible bulge, but there is none. I’m not sure if it’s my mind playing tricks on me, but there is a visible wet spot where his dick is supposed to be. 
“Did you-“ I finally open my eyes. He looks so drunk in the candlelight. I realize then that he is drunk on me. 
He buries his head in my neck. “You’re not the only one who’s been worked up all week,” he says. 
“You just- oh, my God.” I never thought it possible that it could be enough for him. “Thank you.” 
“No, thank you. You’re always so good to me. Good girl. But I think-“ his finger steals my breath as it circles my entrance and promptly slips it inside of me. “You can cum for me again.” 
I arch into him. My chest brushes against his. Our shirts suddenly feel like too much clothing and I’m desperate, so I tear at the buttons until they come apart. He has his arm back underneath me, holding me flush against him as if he’s afraid I might slip away. 
A wanton moan escapes me. “That’s it,” and his praise is even better. “Think you can take another one?”
He adds a second finger. It burns but only because even after a year, I’m still struggling to take any part of him. His fingers are thick and they’re rough and they’re scratching my inside walls just right. They massage the flesh. He’s pumping his fingers in and out and in and out, and he adds his thumb back on my clit because he knows I won’t be able to cum without it.
All of the stress falls off my shoulders. I feel him everywhere, his kisses, his touch, his hard nipples against mine. He’s hard again, poking against my thigh. I reach for him and he whines, he whines into my mouth. I’m not sure which one of us will come first. I suppose it’s me, it’s always me. He makes sure it will be me.
He hits as deep as he possibly could. His fingers curl inside of me and then, “There it is!” Is so victorious, it makes my eyes roll back. He keeps hitting that particular spot over and over again. My hand clutches his shoulder. I want to scream, but all that comes out is a series of whined and pathetic moans. I can’t help it, my muscles contract around him. 
“Damn, you’re gonna break my fingers,” he says. His chuckle is breathless. “You close?”
I hum.
“Do me a favor,” and I expect him to tell me anything but what he requests, “Don’t cum.” 
It’s rude. It’s cruel and it’s vile and I want to murder him because just as he says it, the coil tightens impossibly tight and I need to let go. It’s painful to hold it in, especially now. But I do as he tells me nonetheless. I want to please him. 
“Matt,” I moan. He’s so unfair and he knows it.
He smirks. “Just hold on a little longer.”
“I can’t!”
“Yes, you can. I know you can.”
“St- oh, fuck!” He hits my sweet spot with twice the intensity. I almost cum, but only almost. I keep it together, no matter how much it hurts, and it’s making tears prick at my eyes. “Please, just let me cum,” I hate begging him. “Please, Matty.”
“Shhh. We’re almost there.”
His thumb speeds up. I can see heaven. God is reaching his hand out for me. My stomach is in a tight knot, so tight, the silk might rip any second. The pressure is unreal. My muscles have been trained by him, I admit, but nothing can prepare you for this. Nothing can prepare you for the times when Matt has his mind set on something and he’s going to take it. He’s going to take you. 
I can’t think. It’s too much. I know I’m going to disappoint him. The animal inside of me is beyond satisfied and she wants out. She wants to let go. She loves the feeling of his fingers buried to the hilt inside of her. She loves him, and loving him tends to turn into sweet, sweet torture.
I moan his name again. His cock twitches underneath his dress pants, hot against my fingertips. 
“Almost,” he promises. “I just want to try something.”
What could he possibly want to-
“Cum.”
I’m flying. My back lifts off the couch and if it wasn’t for him, I would be dead by now. My body is shaking. It’s earth-shattering and it’s wet and it’s everywhere. I can feel the orgasm tearing me apart from the inside, blood rushing in my ears. My senses go black. I can’t see, feel or breathe. Everything is too much. It’s burning, it’s heavy, but it’s amazing.
His fingers don’t stop until he has milked the last drop of me until even the last ounce of stress has left my body and I’m limp. I’m a corpse. I’m barely breathing, a wet sack of potatoes in his arms. 
God, the look on his face. He’s cumming too. The wet patch on his pants has doubled. It’s not from me, although I’m suddenly very aware of the fact of what he just made me do.
“Oh.”
“Fuck,” he growls. “That was amazing.”
I never expected to have it in myself. “Oh, Jesus.” My words are highly blasphemous but I don’t care. I’m not even sure how to feel. The blush creeps up my cheeks and I close my legs a little. Everything is so wet. It’s all me and some of him, but mostly me. Just spurts of cum all over his hand and his couch.
He clicks his tongue, shoving my thighs apart. “Don’t go shy on me now,” he says.
“No, it’s embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing? Sweetheart, I’ve never felt more proud of myself.”
“I just- your couch. Oh, God.”
“I’m pretty sure the couch will survive it. Leather is easier to clean. How do you feel?”
I sigh, snuggling against his chest. “Better,” I have to admit. “Much, much better.”
“Good.” He kisses my neck. “Can I have my fingers back now?”
“No.” I like the feeling of him inside of me, even if it’s just his fingers. It makes me feel complete, almost. 
“Okay.” 
“Just gonna rest my eyes now.”
“You do that, sweetie. I’ll be here.” 
And he is. He always is. I wake up, and he’s there, and he always will be because he promised me this is forever. Us. Me and him. And I realize then that I’ve never been more in love with another person than I am in love with Matt Murdock.
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ceexb · 9 months
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Errand runs with Hobie head canons
Summary:random head cannons of how I think it would be to run errands with hobie.
Pairing:Hobie x black girl friend
Words:740
Disclaimer:this is my personal view on how I think he would act. Also never claimed to be a writer
For songs sometimes i just put wtv song matches the story vibe.
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-As the significant other of Hobie, whether it be as his girlfriend, wife, or best friend (since he's not one for labels, you take all three roles), but today you become his passenger princess during errands.
-I could see Hobie driving a van instead of a car,and I feel like the van would look so cool. something spray painted or what not.
-with tinted windows to hide from the pigs,12,or the ops (depending on what you guys call the cops.)And for when you guys wanna get nasty in the back.
-the back would maybe have like
A comfy setup of blankets and pillows.
-You don't even need to drive or do anything, to be honest. Your only task is to sit there, and look pretty. You have the privilege of adjusting the air conditioning or changing the radio station to any song you desire and readjusting your seat.
-I can just picture you and Hobie making stops at gas stations for snacks. You would keep an eye out while he discreetly takes some snacks and slips them into his pocket. You would engage in conversations with customers at the front as a distraction and politely hold doors open for people.
-The first time you both attempted this, you were frightened of getting caught, so he had to reassure you.
"Hobs, wait. I'm scared. What if we get caught? What if I mess up?"
"You won't, I promise," he replied, placing both his arms on your shoulders and looking down at you through his mask.
"Just do what you do best ...”
“Oh yeah ? and what is that” you curiously asked
“chat."
"Excuse me, sir... How's your day going? Isn't it a beautiful day?"
-Your voice trembles with nervousness, beads of sweat forming as you nervously adjust your collar.
-You engage in conversations with the employees at the front, discussing the weather or bringing up random topics to create a delay.
-Once Hobie has gathered all the drinks and snacks, he walks up to you near the door, tilting his head and signaling for both of you to leave.
-Before the employee even realizes what just happened, you two are already driving off, snacks piled up in the backseat.
-I imagine he would surprise you with a cute stuffed animal he found on one of the shelves and two large frosty drinks.
-You sit in the passenger seat, sipping your drink while he occasionally glances over at you, his attention mostly focused on the road. He smiles, and you feel happy and content, your tongue turning blue from slurping your drink.
"Blue raspberry and cherry, quite a crazy mix,innit ?"
"Just don't drink too fast, or your brain will..."
-Too late.you’re already gripping your throbbing head in pain from the cold shock of the ice slurpy.
-Hell just be laughing out his damm draws cause he thinks it's the most funniest thing.
-One of the initial stops you two would make is at the car wash because Hobie's van is in desperate need of a wash and is practically begging for it.
-Hobie is a very clean person, and his van is usually in good condition, but he has been occupied with other things in the past few days.
-Instead of opting for the drive-through car washes, you both prefer to go to the self-service car wash because he believes the drive-through ones are a bit of a scam.
-He would lean against his van, watching you in your cute shorts and top outfit as you adjust and switch the settings on the hose.
"Shouldn't you be scrubbing?" You ask.
"I'd rather just watch you," he replies mischievously.
-Suddenly, an idea pops into your head—to playfully spray him with the hose.
-In an instant, he becomes soaked, water dripping from his wicks, and his shirt becoming soaked, with water falling from his face.
"Oh, so you want to be cheeky, huh?" he responds.
"No, Hobie, I was just playing," you say, knowing he's enjoys playing rough.
-Little did you know what you were getting yourself into.
-Before you know it, he retaliates by spraying the hose at you, water splashing everywhere, even making its way into your nose.
-From that point on, it becomes a playful water fight between the two of you, acting like big kids on a hot summer day.
-soaking and playing with the water not fully conscious of how much money it’ll be and the fact the vans bearly getting cleaned.
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really think your fauxrries are cool! can i ask if there's any lore as to how they're created in-universe? are they treated just like regular flesh and blood employees?
They're "robots who are furries", hence, faux-furry. Some are pre-designed mascots, but most start as something mass-produced and even faceless. As a sense of self develops, they self-modify to their own liking. Many robots in this setting prefer cartoon media featuring non-humans over human media, as cartoons are often easier for them to relate with, hence usually becoming some kind of animal.
"Ruppets" are the most-common variant, due to being low-cost, and usually more than enough for most robots to feel comfortable with. Maude is one of the first ruppets I've made, and may have started the trend in-universe.
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So to be clear: it's actually a self-expression sort of thing! You know how people in cyberpunk settings get like, crazy weird tattoos or modifications?
Robots in my setting just.
. .they usually become furries
They're treated decently on average, though it greatly depends on culture. These robots are usually sentient or "close enough" to begin with, so humans have a hard time not empathizing with them at least a little. Granted, this also means that humans, even when not hateful, may infantilize them and treat them more literally like "animals that happen to be smart enough to talk".
You'd think that such robots would be inclined to try and appear visually more human instead, but for many, appearing specifically human is both an othering and expensive prospect. It takes a lot of fine-tuning to even appear as a human, and it's usually only done to blend-in rather than actually express who you are. Being a funny muppet-thing though? Often something robots voluntarily choose. Not every robot, mind you, but with a remarkable frequency.
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This all seems kinda contrived at first-glance, but consider:
There's a financial incentive to make robots more effective at solving complex problems than simple drones. Hence why anyone would make smart-enough robots in the first place.
Customer service bots and office workers need to also be visually appealing and friendly to customers and coworkers, and strong social literacy is kinda a necessity for doing good work in-general. This justifies social awareness, having senses of self, and wanting to express this "self" to others.
The ""cheapest"" way to achieve all of this is to just take human behavior and model the synthetic thing as close as you can to it. If you also want your robots to have good problem solving, they kinda need to have the capacity to be creative, and not always follow programming rigidly. Hence, why the robots are so "people-like", and are able to actually do odd things on their own.
Finally, such robots would likely have emotions to help regulate mental states, and would have a need to express these emotions and personality quirks somehow. If passing as a human feels alienating, you're gonna need some other option.
Hope this at least, sort of answered your question? ha ha this is long
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pinksparkl · 5 months
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TRICK OR TREATTTTR
Hey Zozo~~ 👀🎃
Lookit, it's almost Hallowe'en!! Here's some candy 🍭🍬 and a WIP for you~~
(Fanfic trick or treat explanation)
This is from an AU where the Solitaires didn't break Vega free from his cell. He has completed his rehabilitation and is "behaving". Admittedly, this was written waaay before the reveal of his plan, etc, so let's pretend that he wouldn't just run off to complete his self-assigned mission the second he was set free~ 😁
He fed like this for a number of weeks, selfish, hateful, human vitriol satiating his hunger. It was easy enough to find someone with particularly violent thoughts, feeding then leaving. Like a good, little demon.
Until he found one particular human. They were full of knots. He very much enjoyed this term used by his more empathic kin. Their thoughts swirled with anger and murderous rage.
But quickly they were swallowed down and replaced with a smile and gentle eyes. Vega was shocked. He had lived for millennia, and hadn't seen such outright deception, especially not done so well.
Of course, he had seen humans lie to each other and to themselves about their emotions, bottle it up inside until it tore out of them like a wild beast screaming to be set free.
But they were different. They continued to feel the hate simmering underneath their skin, despite their bubbly exterior. At times they even stroked at the dark emotions as one would a soft animal.
Hello, my Pet.
“What in the nine rings of Hell is going on? Am I finally going crazy? I'm hearing voices in my head, now.”
I assure you aren't going crazy. I'm quite real. See for yourself.
Vega allowed his form to become physical. He towered over them, tall horns almost touching the ceiling.
You are filled with hate, yet you don't act on any of it as it eats you up inside to this extent.
“It's called “working in customer service for any length of time", if you must know,” they snarked back, trying to put up a front of bluster to hide the fear running down their spine.
I've seen more than my fair share of customer service employees, and they are incapable of erasing or even concealing such vitriolic feelings from me.
“So? I think mean thoughts about certain customers, act nice on the outside, then beat myself up for thinking those mean things in the first place, what's the problem?”
I haven't seen such strong emotions swirling inside someone not partaking in delicious acts of sadism, pet. And there is no problem here. I was just... curious as to your situation, seeing as I have now taken you as my charge.
“As your “what" now?”
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whilomm · 1 year
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i work in a grocery store bakery and one of the things about this type of customer service is that you sorta need to make the assumption that customers will be grimy ass toddlers and if you dont watch them like a hawk they will pull some ridiculously uncommon sense bullshit
like of course i can handle the customers who just ask me where everything is instead of just Looking Down or walking 5 feet to the correct table, or people who ask questions that may seem a little silly, but god the people who just. assume. dont ask.
for instance we have to be very careful about leaving product on the counter, even though thats where stuff like damages/scan outs tend to go. when im here i always try and make sure damages are put BEHIND the counter, out of sight, but my coworkers (both in bakery and those from other departments dropping damages off) will just leave it on the counter sometimes.
which SOME customers will interpret as "free samples!!!". now personally i would think any reasonable person will know that free samples are generally clearly communicated (at a sample stand, has signs, has someone serving it/ways to serve yourself like tongs, etc), but apparently to some people "a closed box of product that happens to be sitting on the counter" is indication enough. such as the man who saw a box of brownie bites on the counter in a CLOSED BOX, and without asking he opened the box (by knocking the lid onto the floor), reached his dirty customer hands in and grabbed a brownie himself, and only asked "are these for customers?" when i was startled by the lid dropping and looked up to stare at him.
(i of course told him "NO, NO THEY ARE NOT, THOSE ARE DAMAGED" and moved them BEHIND the counter like they shoulda been in the first place,)
or! you know those self service cases lotsa places have? the ones that are usually clearly labeled with instructions on how to serve yourself, visible ways to open them, tissues/tongs, boxes to hold your stuff in, etc? we have one thats a donut case, fairly standard. well, we also have FULL SERVICE cases, which are. not self service. you (the customer) arent supposed to Fucking Touch Them. this is one of the reasons why the way you open it is not obvious and theres no handles, so that customers dont think its self service. ours is the cake display case :)
anyway sometimes customers will learn the Secret™ of how to open the cases from the outside (such as if they see one of us lift it open it to grab a cake), and they will think ah! the only thing that prevented me from serving myself was knowledge, now i know, i have the power to grab my OWN cake! and they then proceed to reach their DIRTY, GRIMY CUSTOMER HANDS into the CAKE CASE, and pull one out, before becoming confused because. oh, where are the boxes? (answer: behind the counter. BECAUSE WE ARE SUPPOSED TO GRAB CAKES. NOT YOU.)
sometimes you will catch a customer before they finish their deed, mayhaps because of the glint of the glass as its raised, and you can yell at them to stop (NOTE: i now pretty much always look up when i see the glint to make sure its someone who works here because of How Many Times this has happened :)
other times you will turn around to see a customer holding a fucking cake in their hand and theyre asking you "uhm excuse me where do i get a box :/", at which point you get the joy of trying to explain to a grown fucking adult that the reason why the way the case is opened is a "secret" and that theres no boxes is that THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO GRAB CAKES OUT OF THE CAKE CASE.
oh or the other fun one when you turn around and there is a customer. in the bakery. INSIDE the bakery. well past the BIG SIGNS that say "EMPLOYEES ONLY NO HAIRNET NO ENTRY NO EXCEPTIONS" (they are also not wearing hairnets). and, once again, you need to explain to a grown ass adult what "EMPLOYEES ONLY" means.
...somehow, i have never seen actual toddlers do any of these! not one single toddler has ever run into the bakery!! MANY Grown Adults have though. grown adults who, when faced with a situation that they are unsure as to the proper etiquette, rather than asking a single question or reading a large sign, simply decide that obviously they are allowed. obviously :)
anyway point is if you dont watch customers like hawks and keep no touchy things out of reach sometimes they will commit healthcode violations and i hate them i hate them so much
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mbti-notes · 1 year
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I am an ESTP and I want to know whether it is possible/healthy to eschew certain societal values that don't match my own. For example, I don't value or care to dress up or wear makeup, I like a clean simple look that is low fuss/effort. However, I see others put more effort into their appearance and be rewarded for this, and this makes me want to do so as well, even though deep down I really don't care. I also find I respect myself less for giving in to societal pressures at the expense of myown
How old are you? It is normal for people in adolescence and young adulthood to struggle with issues of personal identity. Specifically, it is not always easy to find the right balance between staying true to oneself and meeting the expectations of others. Some people get trapped in either/or thinking that easily becomes too extreme.
ESTPs who only care about what they want and never think about what larger negative effect they're producing are unhealthy ESTPs, misusing their judging functions in service of a shallow, lazy, or careless Se approach to life. If you truly care about yourself and hope to feel some pride in who you are, you wouldn't want to be a negative version of yourself, and you wouldn't want to present a negative image of yourself to the world.
Ideally, ESTPs should use their powers of reason to establish the right balance between self and others, which is related to proper Ti and Fe development. In order for ESTPs to genuinely "care" about doing something, they have to understand the reasoning behind it and agree with it - this is how one arrives at better Ti-Fe balance. Sometimes, when a situation is complex, you might have to take extra steps to truly understand it. You would have to consider all the different factors and all the different ways of looking at the situation - this requires Ni big-picture visualization powers.
Taking your example of dress: On one hand, as an individual, you ought to be free to choose your own style and wear what is in accordance with your comfort, beliefs, and values. On the other hand, you are a participant in relationships with others and what you do has a larger effect, even when you don't realize it. The way you dress projects an image and that image influences how people evaluate and relate to you. Of course, how people evaluate you matters much more in some situations than others, so it's not just "to care or not to care", as though the complexity of life can be distilled into one rule. Remember: Ti values the process of coming to a rational judgment, which requires deliberation and some nuance. To develop mature use of Ti requires you to use your reasoning skills more carefully to determine the best judgment based on the situation at hand.
Imagine going to an office job interview in a swimsuit. Imagine what society would look and feel like if everyone wandered around in their pajamas all day. There is a social element of dress because the way you present yourself contributes to the overall vibe of a social environment. The vibe is real because it has a very tangible effect on how people think, feel, and behave. People dress professionally at the office because employers want to encourage professional behavior, employees want to maximize their chances of making a good impression, and clients/customers want to be assured of professional conduct. People dress casually at the neighborhood restaurant because they want everyone to feel at ease and enjoy themselves. People dress in dark shades at a funeral in order to express their sadness/grief on a somber occasion. People dress up for their dates to show that they care enough to make an effort for love.
While dress is largely a personal choice, if you understand that there is an element of dress that extends beyond you and impacts others, then a reasonable person would try to find the appropriate middle ground, wouldn't they?
To reconcile self with others isn't about "me vs them" (oversimplistic either/or thinking). It's about choosing the most constructive ways of being yourself (maximizing the benefits).
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mysterypond · 1 year
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Get to know your fic writer! 2, 18, 26, 31, 55, 58, 74
2. Do you plan each chapter ahead or write as you go?
Yes and no... A lot of my planning process is super vague because I'm a pantser, so I rely more on what I call "key events"
Like for the Pariging coffeeshop au my outline was honestly just
Chapter 1: problem customer
Chapter 2: chess
Chapter 3: date
Chapter 4: Pariston kidnaps Gon
Chapter 5: jail
And that was pretty much it, because I kind of come up with most of the stuff I write while I'm actually physically writing it. Sometimes I will spontaneously merge / create new chapters too. It just depends on the vibes.
18. Do you title your fics before, during, or after the writing process? How do you come up with titles?
So funny story, a lot of my fics have what I call "working titles" which is a silly thing I'll use as a placeholder that often times ends up becoming the actual title. For humor fics I like to have funnier titles, and for more serious fics I try to keep the titles more serious. It just depends on the vibes. I'm honestly not the best at titling things, however I feel like I have a lot of really good titles and then a bunch of mediocre ones.
Some of my favorite titles and their meanings
Five x Star x Service - the whole thing centers around Ging and Pariston's employee-customer food over Pariston rating the coffee shop poorly out of 5 stars, and what Ging does to bring the rating up. Pretty self explanatory but I like it.
From Me x To You - the whole fic is written in the form of letters, so it's a play off the writing on the envelopes.
Re x Do - A timeloop fic
Baked x Beans - this one is super stupid but Beans is high during the events of the fic so
Let x Go - It's a play off "allow to proceed" and "give up" based on how exactly you interpret the dynamics between Mito and Ging during the fic.
26. Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?
Five x Star x Service - I know I talk about this fic a lot but it's pretty tame up until chapter 4, which turns the goofy stakes serious.
Double x Date - it's double fake dating where no one is satisfied (Ging/Beans + Pariston/Piyon where Pariston and Ging are trying to play mind games for each other)
when the world sleeps it dreams - honestly anything I say about this fic is a spoiler
Bringing x The x Milk x Myself - Mizai milk. Enough said.
Name x Game - dwun's payback for ging legally changing his name... it's short but the gag at the end is fun.
AITA for assuming the bounty hunter out to kill me was a woman? - the only AITA to make this list just bc it has chrollo as the narrator
I'd say pretty much all of these are "wild rides" in their own ways
31. Do you start with the characters or the plot when writing?
A bit of both. A lot of times it starts with a "what if X character did Y thing?" For original stories, I always start with plot first and then create a character to navigate it.
55. Of the characters you write for, which is your favorite? Has that choice been swayed at all by your followers/readers’ reactions to certain ones?
I would say my favorite character to write would have to be Ging but specifically because I've used him as a rp character for so long that I've delved into my headcanons for how he thinks and the justifications for his actions that I think I have a really strong grasp on how I write him. Which is kind of funny in that part of the way I characterize him is like "me, but if I were more of a jackass" especially since the way I have him swear in fics is a 1-1 ratio of the swearing style I use when I speak.
I don't actually know if people like the way I write Ging or not, I don't really get compliments on my characterization of him compared to other characters but also I don't really care. People have different ways they view the characters, and the way I write him is my personal interpretation so if people don't agree it's not my problem.
58. What part of the writing process do you enjoy the most? (Brainstorming, outlining, writing, editing, etc) 
Writing for sure!
74. You’ve posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you’d written it?
Haha this is pretty funny because there's a few surefire tells if you know me well enough.
a) There are certain words I misspell very frequently but also consistently without catching it. The most common giveaway is that i write "uhg" instead of "ugh" because phonetically "uhg" makes more sense for how I pronounce it.
b) sense of humor. I feel like the humor fics I write balance a fine line between "lol random xD crack" and "this has like, structured jokes". I like to write a lot of situational humor, and sometimes I'll choose certain funny words in the prose to deal extra psychic damage, so I think someone would have a hard time replicting my style of humor.
c) there's a few phrases that are similar to things I say irl which I feel are less common to use in fics, because a lot of times my prose is written in a similar way to how I speak. I've had friends who know me irl comment that my writing SOUNDS like I'm reading it to them in their heads, just because I have a very particular and unique cadence to my voice (I blame living in 3 different areas with 3 distinct regional accents for that one). I think people who have heard me speak either irl or over voice chat would have a much easier time if I gave them a passage from a few fics and asked them to identify which one is mine.
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nickgerlich · 2 years
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In And Out
Resistance to change is an interesting phenomenon. I suppose it is human nature for people to get accustomed to their daily drill, and whenever things change, life can be unsettling. You have to figure out how to adopt a new way of doing old things, or adopt a new thing that has equally new ways. Either way, it can help explain why some people become grumpy.
I have been entertained in recent days watching Facebook discussions on the All Things Canyon page, following the local United supermarket’s installation of four self-check lanes. The store removed two staffed Express Lanes, but kept the other full-service lanes intact.
You would have thought the end of the world was nigh, that Jesus was coming, and all the apocalyptic imagery you have ever seen was unfolding before your very eyes.
Of course, self-check is not a new thing. Well, except for the United in sleepy Canyon America. I have used it for years at the local Walmart. COVID caused me to go exclusive self-check, and I have never looked back. I don’t go shopping for the chit-chat and human interaction. But that’s just me.
The first self-check was introduced in an Atlanta-area Kroger in 1986. This isn’t exactly new, folks. But rather than embrace the change, or at least open their minds to learning how to do this themselves, many people diverted attention by relying on a straw man: they were concerned about all of the jobs that would be lost in the process.
Never mind that, just like they usually had one Express Lane staffed all the time, they still have one person monitoring the four self-checks.
But self-check is just the tip of the DIY revolution happening in retail. Amazon’s Just Walk Out has been used with great success, either in its own stores, or licensed to others, like the Hudson News sundries shop in Dallas Love Field.
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And it has attracted competitors, all swinging the big stick of AI to craft frictionless stores like the Zippin Lane at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium. Zippin, Amazon, and others are in process of deploying similar offerings at other sports arenas.
Oh, the jobs that will be lost. And that sky…it looks like it is falling! The goal of these stores is to make shopping as unencumbered and fast as possible. Whereas self-check is usually fast, it still has some friction. Customers must scan and bag, then insert a payment method. These new platforms, though, cut to the chase and allow you to grab and go. Literally.
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There are four such Zippin Lane shops at Allegiant Stadium, but when there are 65,000 fans all in one place, and many wanting to buy souvenirs, I can see them needing many more installations.
It may take a while for frictionless shopping to become the norm, but we have seen the future of retail, and it is right here, right now. That said, I do not expect friction-based retail to ever go away. As hard as it may be to find a clerk at Home Depot or Lowe’s, they will forever need to have at least a few people on staff in the event someone has a question. That would be me.
There will also be employees at frictionless stores, as well as those with self-check. There may not be as many people employed there, but there will still be some. And given the dearth of people willing to work these days, I dare say there are plenty of unfilled jobs waiting for someone to claim them.
As for those waving the I’m-saving-your-job flag, let me remind them to ponder that the next time they pump their own gas, shop online, bank online, purchase airline tickets online, stream a movie, and so forth. We have a way of creating new ways to do old things, and it is our job to adapt. You can try to cling to the past, but you do so at your own peril.
Because in the end, resistance is futile.
Dr “Let’s Go Shopping!“ Gerlich
Audio Blog
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concubuck · 2 years
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Is it the money in exchange for a service that bothers Alastor? Or that it's not what his role is? What about it causes that no, out of a genuine interest?
((Sugaring involves:
- a long-term committed relationship between the sugar parent & sugar baby—it's essentially a form of dating
- lots of the emotional labor you'd expect in a dating relationship—doing a LOT of listening to the sugar parent's problems & thoughts & emotions and all that, what you'd expect to do for a partner
- on the other hand, at it's heart it's essentially a super involved customer service job: the sugar baby is an employee who's paid not to present their true authentic self to the relationship, but rather to bring an interesting, attractive, problem-free version of themself—a version worth paying for the time of.
- getting paid money in exchange for pleasing this one person and meeting this one person's specific tastes.
It's basically a job. It's a whole-ass job. It might be a part-time job depending on any given parent & baby's time and relationship, but it is a job. A job where oftentimes your pay isn't even dependent upon a set schedule—unless the couple works out a regular allowance—but rather on how much you please this one specific person.
It would require Alastor to spend a whole lot of time catering exclusively to one person, and he hardly even gets sex. (It's possible for a sugar relationship to have no sex.)
Alastor doesn't like people that much. He fucks an endless string of strangers because he prefers that to cultivating intimate ongoing sexual relationships with a dozen folks he can fuck a couple times a week. He doesn't want to know the people he fucks. The better he knows them, the more disgusting and intolerable the sex becomes. Sugaring would involve getting to know somebody EXTREMELY well.
And in return, what does he get? Money? That's it? All that hard work and drugery and boredom and pretending to care about somebody else's dull life and the mortifying ordeal of knowing someone, and the only damn benefit he gets is money?
He doesn't need money. He has a job.
Like that's something that's easy to forget, since he doesn't talk about it on the blog much, since he does his work EXCLUSIVELY on Earth, not in Hell: but he does have a job. He doesn't need another one. Especially such a miserable one.
Now, disclaimer that sugaring isn't inherently miserable. There's massive room for variation in sugaring relationships, in terms of time & effort they take and what they involve. They can be mutually satisfying & mutually beneficial, and really social folks who like acting romantically caring in exchange for money can certainly thrive at sugaring.
It would just be miserable for Alastor. It requires him doing stuff he'd hate to do and is bad at, in exchange for something he doesn't need.)
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azdrycleanersuk · 2 months
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lunaprincipessa · 3 months
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ENTRY FIFTY-NINE
It's always interesting when someone asks me what it's like working in the cannabis industry.
The first thing I mention is being at the age of 41 and never thinking it would be possible back in the day. If I could go back in time and tell my younger self that someday I'd be selling legal weed, I probably wouldn't have believed it! I'm still adjusting to the legality somewhat, but it has been so exciting not only interviewing for cannabis jobs but working them as well.
The interviews are awesome because instead of hiding it and hoping they never find out, you get to talk to the employer about your passion for cannabis and cannabis products. I've been in the cannabis industry for 3 years. I've done multiple interviews for cannabis jobs and they're always fun and exciting.
Working the job has been an amazing experience for the most part. Most of the clientele is pretty chill but every now and then you get a Karen or two. It is still customer service and retail after all. However, knowing the medicinal patient successfully treated their pain and stress, knowing the recreational patient had a safe and fun-filled evening makes it beyond worth it.
Then there's this little part...
😱 Being middle-aged and going back to retail (yes it's medical but a dispensary is still like a store in the way that you have similar responsibilities like cleaning and making sales for example). 😱
My first career path was to become a forensic psychologist. Long story short, I got screwed over by student loans and couldn't continue my education beyond my Masters of Science in Psychology, which merely provided a foundation for the ultimate goal I was attempting to work toward.
Once I knew I was officially done, that there were no more classes, no way to afford to keep going in college, no way to achieve what I already worked so hard for, I wanted a job I'd enjoy to ease the sting of dead dreams and crippling debt.
I wanted a job that would be good for the mind, heart, and soul even if it wasn't good for the wallet. I'm just so done with working my ass off at jobs that make me miserable on a daily basis.
Can I enjoy at least one thing in life? Can I at least start to live MY life for ME a little bit?
My only other occupational interest besides forensic psychology was cannabis. I have been using cannabis medicinally to help with my ADHD and C-PTSD. I also use it to help with redecoration, art projects, lots of other things aside from medical treatment. I thought, "I can still help other people, just in a different way now."
So that's why I am a middle-aged woman working in retail. My original plan didn't pan out and I wanted to do something I'd enjoy. We can't all be doctors, lawyers, famous actresses, or heirs to huge fortunes. Some of us are worker bees that need to find a job. And if I am going to be stuck working for the rest of my days, especially since my generation may not have anything to retire on, then I am going to need to be in a place that I don't dread for the sake of sanity.
And so, here we are! I'm a budtender. This is the career path I chose after the first one didn't work out. It's been quite an experience so far. Entering the industry, meeting all the characters in it, sampling different kinds of products, it's been fun! And currently, I am learning and sharpening my skills as a purchasing manager to my favorite dispensary in town of all places!
However, I have complaints. Two of them.
Complaint One:
We all want to hire the right people. We all want to bring on people that will be honest, reliable, and who will take the job seriously. Totally get that. BUT that won't be achieved through making the industry impossible to get into. It took me over a year to get my foot in the door! It is a little disappointing if the person doesn't have experience but how are they supposed to gain experience if no one gives them a chance to do so? Be willing to train! You might be turning away a great potential employee for a completely fixable reason!
Complaint Two:
I wish when legalization hit that the hippies had the money to invest. This is cannabis, weed, ganja, tree, Mary Jane! This should be a hippie industry with good vibes but it's not. Who did get to invest? Fucking car salesmen that made the cannabis industry horribly competitive and cut-throat.
My POV: I don't see other budtenders and dispensaries as competition. I see us all as cannabis enthusiasts trying to get the people some damn good weed. There's no place here for spitefulness and making moves against one another to cost people their jobs or companies.
On another note, talk to some women working in the cannabis industry about the ample amounts of sexual harassment they've dealt with and we can take this little convo into a whole new direction! There just shouldn't be any place in the cannabis industry for that type of stuff, but there is unfortunately.
That's pretty much the industry in its entirety and I hope it changes someday.
More thoughts later.
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recentlyheardcom · 5 months
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Read More: 6 Steps to Get More Traffic to Your Business Website via Social Media Marketing
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nocturnal-necromancer · 9 months
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Hi friends…so I wanted to let y’all know about my whole job search deal and a new development from today:
I had 2 job “interviews” today, despite neither of them were actually interviews lol (one was a zoom call that was more like a lecture w the hiring person talking about the job while we all had mics muted and cameras disabled, and the other was one of those self interviews where you record yourself on video answering interview questions, and move onto actual interviews with a human if they like you) and while the latter was cool and prob went well, the first one that was like a “lecture” was the biggest fucking scam, holy shit 🙃
Like every single job I’ve applied to on LinkedIn has been some sort of customer service job that’s work from home only, but I have long since decided I will never work a sales job again (or at least a job where sales is the main thing…I am at least open to jobs where it’s like, a side thing you do with low stakes/no pressure and sometimes get commission/bonuses if you get lucky and happen to sell something…like my last job at Farmers!) and I ESPECIALLY refuse to ever even breathe in the direction of a job where commission is anything more important than like, a nice little bonus you get sometimes if you luck out and a customer buys from you. So. You can imagine my dismay when I get maybe 5-10min in with this interview lecture, which was listed as a “customer service” booking agent for a travel agency, and they’re saying that the pay is 100% commission based. Alarm bell #1, for false/misleading advertising on the job listing. I have already decided that there’s no way I will take this job, but I stay in the zoom call bc I’m bored and have nothing better to do while I knit…and I also wanna be polite. But then we get into how the commission breaks down, and how we get x% commission for whatever we book, while our “trainer” gets y%…and I think some shit about how they ALSO have to give y% to THEIR trainers, but we can become trainers too!! Alarm bell #2, for pyramid scheme vibes. I have decided 100% that I would politely decline, but I’d stick around to the end of the call to be polite…and after all, it was only gonna be an hour!
Moving on, we are told that we can earn opportunities to travel ourselves, isn’t that great!! Especially the fact that if you complete a certain round of training of some sort, you earn a cruise trip for FREE (just pay taxes and port fees of course, but frankly I don’t know shit about cruises to know if that would be an actual good deal if it were legit) isn’t that amazing!! You’ll get to go on a free vacation, along w other employees, and learn some tricks of the trade!!! Alarm bell #3, again for pyramid scheme. I am now counting down the minutes, wondering to myself if I would face any form of consequences for ending the call early. But don’t worry, you don’t HAVE to go on these FREE CRUISE VACATION… but they are definitely encouraged, bc why would you NOT wanna go on a FREE CRUISE???? It’s FUN!!! Do you HATE FUN??? Alarm bell #4, for “you don’t HAVE to do this thing, but you WILL be peer pressured into it” which was reminiscent of the insurance brokerage I worked at for 2 days when the owner told me to also use my personal cell phone to harass potential leads during cold calling (immediately after calling on the office phone 😬). I am now thinking of some excuse to make in chat before dipping out of there. And then…the grand finale:
This fucking scammer starts going on about “investing in your career” and I KNEW where it was going—I just wasn’t expecting the full extent. She talks about ways we invest in our futures, with emphasis on student loans…we put a lot of money into education, which helps us get amazing high paying jobs!!! Here it comes…
…….in order to work there, you have to pay $360 up front for some “certification” that wasn’t described or elaborated on in any way….and then you have to KEEP paying $70 EVERY FUCKING MONTH just to work there. Alarm bell #5 goes off, along with the cacophony of the others…5 terribly mismatched sounding bells screaming in my head that didn’t let up until I left the call, reported the listing, replied to their emails (3 of the same confirmation of them saying I signed up for the zoom call in a row, mind you) saying I would NOT be working for them at all, ever. Shit, those fucking bells were so atonal and dissonant, my head is STILL ringing with them, christ alive. I have never metaphorically (or literally) run from an employment (if you could call this that) situation in my life and I am still reeling from the concept of PAYING a COMPANY to work for THEM…EVERY FUCKING MONTH. Like, HELLO?!! Do people actually fall for this shit?? Well, I should specify, do people who don’t fall for pyramid schemes in general actually fall for this shit?!!
So yeah, I am going to avoid this fucking scam like Covid, anthrax, and rabies combined, and I am going to be looking at every job listing with a magnifying glass and a fine-toothed comb from now on…no, scratch that, a microscope and acoustic tweezers. But hey, I think I might have a shot with the other one with the recording responses to interview questions 🫠
Also, just so everyone can stay safe and avoid these scams, this travel agency was called “Travel by Tilly” and the agency, or at least this specific branch of it, is run by Crista Wylie, and her husband Ben was also listed in the email re: the “interview” so you know what to look out for. This was a listing I found on LinkedIn, that I applied to less than 24 hours before I got their invitation to this “interview” yesterday…but they very well could be on indeed or other job posting sites, or ANYWHERE on the internet where people go looking for jobs. Pls be safe out there, friends!!!!
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insurancepolicyuae · 11 months
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Understanding the Dangers of Being Uninsured
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Introduction
Health insurance is a type of insurance designed to cover the costs associated with medical care. It helps protect individuals and their families from financial hardship that may arise due to unexpected medical expenses. Health insurance plans typically provide coverage for doctor visits, hospital stays, prescription medications, and other healthcare-related services. Having health insurance can provide peace of mind, knowing that if an emergency occurs, quality healthcare is available instantly.
Impact on Health
Without access to health insurance, many individuals are at risk of incurring medical debt due to unexpected medical expenses. These costs can quickly add up and become overwhelming for those who do not have the means to pay them off, as this can lead to financial hardship since bills pile up and debts start accumulating interest. Furthermore, those with no health insurance coverage often delay preventative treatments that would otherwise keep them healthy and reduce their chance of developing chronic conditions later in life which could prove costly both medically and financially.
Impact on Families
The impact of not having health insurance coverage on families can be both emotionally and financially devastating. Without a reliable health plan in place, families face uncertainty about how they will pay for costly medical procedures or treatments that may arise due to illness or injury. This can lead to immense stress as bills start piling up without any clear resolution in sight. In addition, those with no health insurance are likely unable to purchase prescription medications needed for their treatment as out-of-pocket costs become too much of a burden. Ultimately, the financial hardship caused by not having health insurance coverage has far-reaching consequences that could affect all members within a family unit.
How to Obtain Health Insurance
Finding affordable health insurance can be a daunting task, especially for those who are low-income or self-employed. Fortunately, there are many resources available to help individuals obtain coverage that fits their budget.
Without insurance, we understand how difficult things can be. At InsurancePolicy.ae, we make it easy for you to compare different insurance companies and policies to find the most affordable option that meets your needs.
Another way of obtaining health insurance is through employer sponsored plans if an individual has access to one through their place of work or a family member’s job. Employer sponsored plans typically provide comprehensive coverage at discounted prices due to group discounts given by insurers when multiple people sign up together under the same plan from the same company. Furthermore, employees may also have access to additional benefits offered by the company such as vision and dental care which could further lower overall costs associated with medical expenses throughout the year.
Conclusion
Having access to affordable health insurance is essential for ensuring individuals and their families have the resources they need to stay healthy and financially secure. While there are many factors that can make finding an appropriate plan difficult, there are also a number of options available to help those in need obtain quality coverage at rates that fit within their budget. Ultimately, having access to reliable health insurance provides peace of mind for both individuals and families alike in knowing that no matter what life throws at them medically speaking, they have the support needed to get through it with minimal financial burden.
Insurancepolicy.ae as Your Partner for Insurance
Insurancepolicy.ae is a trusted partner for individuals and families looking to purchase insurance in the UAE. The company offers comprehensive services that make it easy for customers to compare quotes, receive secure advice, and complete their policy purchases hassle-free.
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When searching for the right insurance policy, insurancepolicy.ae makes it simple to compare quotes from multiple providers quickly and without any pressure or commitment. The website provides an overview of different plans, so customers can easily find what they’re looking for without having to spend time researching each insurer individually. Once a customer has selected their desired plan, they are then able to finalize the details with one of insurance policy’s experienced advisors who will provide tailored advice based on their individual needs — ensuring they get the best possible coverage at a price that fits within their budget!
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For anyone looking for reliable insurance solutions in UAE look no further than insurancepolicy.ae — your trusted partner providing quality service and expert guidance every step along the way!
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landstaronline · 1 year
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LandstarOnline
Landstaronline is a virtual platform that provides customers with various services on its official platform. The essential services it provides are the movement of the vehicle it monitors. The loaded goods remain only the ones. LandstarOnline belongs to a US-based company, namely Landstar System, and it is based in Jacksonville, Florida, which was initially inaugurated in 1968. 
Know More About LandstarOnline
LandstarOnline portal is owned by The Landster company, located in the United States of America. 
With an experience for more than 50 years in the task of loading and unloading Landstaronline still continues to provide its services first-class services. 
Due to this, the company has sustained and also been able to maintain a fairly good reputation worldwide.
While shifting from one place to the other, it becomes messed up. And, here, you require help from the load diagram company surely. 
And being an employee of the same company, the information will be quite useful for you. 
To solve any of your problems, you can easily log in on the official website of LandstarOnline.
Landstar System is a global provider which manages integrated transportation management solutions with the help of every asset.  
Moreover, LandstarOnline also has a mobile application that gives access to the operator owned to perform various functions such as verifying, recording, and booking the freight. 
The portal, as well as the mobile application, is designed for the users, so it has features that make it more accessible.
How To get access to LandstarOnline
To get access to LandstarOnline, you have to register yourself on the official Portal. You’ll have to create a New Employee Account if you don’t have one. 
You can follow the steps given below in a sequence to login onto LandstarOnline’s official portal:
Begin with visiting the official website of Landstaronline, i.e., https://www.landstar.com/, and the login page will appear.
You can spot the icon with creating an account option under the login icon. Tap on it.
Clicking on the login icon will redirect you to an account creation page. Note that this page is a self-registration page.
Enter the required information, like your username, first name, and last name. Also, please provide your email address in the given section.
Next, confirm your email id and recheck it.
Moreover, you will also have to answer a security question. Keep a note to provide a correct answer.
Once you have completed all the above steps, tap on Submit.
Now, after you click the send symbol, you will receive a temporary password on the registered email ID. 
This password would further help you while you try to log in to the Landstaronline website. 
Benefits of Using LandstarOnline
With the official website of LandstarOnline, you can access various advantages. Some of the benefits are also stated below:
1-User-friendly and secure platform
The online platform of LandstarOnline is very easy to access, and also it is very easy and made for the users specifically. Your data on the portal remains completely secure, and your data is never given to any third party.
2-Get updates through the portal
On LandstarOnline’s portal, the employees can keep themselves updated with all kinds of events planned for the future. Therefore, you will keep receiving all the updates through the portal.
3-Verify your attendance
One of the best features of LandstarOnline is that all its employees of LandstarOnline can check their attendance virtually without any hassle.
4-Great help for employees
The LandstarOnline portal is quite a helping hand for the employees as they can easily look at their timesheets. And the employees can directly get in touch with the employers with its help by using the LandstarOnline login portal.
Conclusion
LandstarOnline is the portal of Landstar System, a transport services organization specializing in logistics and mainly in third-party logistics. Landstar System was established in 1968 and was primarily based in Jacksonville, Florida, United States. 
The services provided by Landstaronline are mainly in the United States of America and, to some extent, in Canada and between the United States, Canada, Mexico, and various other nations worldwide. Not only can you take the benefits of LandstarOnline through its official website, but it has also launched a free mobile application for your Android. It will be included in the Office Suites and tools applications part Business.
The virtual platform of Landstar System, i.e., Landstaronline, is a very convenient and user-friendly portal. With the kinds of services it provides, it becomes very useful for employees and employers. It further extends its help to reduce the cost of creating and delivering paychecks, etc. Along with all these facilities, this platform also provides great aid by lowering employee inquiries about payroll, career paths, payroll,  and many more.
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