Just read this. Trust me here

[ergophobe]

This made my morning. It takes a few paragraphs but at some point you will start laughing. Trust me

https://open.substack.com/pub/deletethislater/p/the-worst-people-alive-are-always

[rcjordan]

I may have mentioned it here, but I'm having some success using Amz, CookUnity, and the nearby mega farm's tiny convenience market & deli-restaurant to significantly reduce LPJ's trips to the grocery store. I've gotten it to 3-4 weeks with maybe a quick stop or two in less-busy days & time of day. The goal is 6 weeks.

"I am here to quickly remove myself from the retail battlefield" whatever I'm in.  Seriously, when the clerk or waitress inevitably asks How are you doing? my stock answer is I'll be better if you can get me out of here.  Most of the time they chuckle and get busy getting this jerk out of here.

+
forwarded the link and the contents of this post to the fam.

[Brad]

My goal is to be in and out of the grocery store in max. 30 minutes.  I know the layout, I know what I'm going to buy, get in, check the use by dates, duck and weave, chaff and flares and get out. Rarely ever goes that way for the reasons outlines in that article.

[rcjordan]

When you have 5 kids there are 2 things that have to happen;

Laundry: Washer & dryer with the absolute largest capacity you can buy. AND a spare set.

Groceries: In the 70s bought LPJ a pre-printed grocery list that looked like a checkbook. Good, but not good enough, so I ported our personalized version to my company's IBM small mainframe, sorted it in picking order, and printed it on the line printer.  Now, we use OurGroceries app but still sorted in picking order.

[ergophobe]

Funny... my reason for recommending it had nothing to do with my feelings about the supermarket. I actually like the supermarket and *would* go more than every three weeks if it weren't an hour away.

I just like her writing style. A lot of humor depends on being both more specific and more over the top than the reader expects. I think she is a master of that with lines like this

"But there is a specific breed of coupon person who acts like the register is a courtroom and they are defending the last innocent man in America."

Of, in the other piece I read, "I Was Born in the Wrong Century and My Body Type Agrees"
https://deletethislater.substack.com/p/i-was-born-in-the-wrong-century-and

"I started falling down this thought-spiral (a productive one, for once) and looked up Renaissance portraits online. And every single woman in every single painting looked like she had just eaten an entire wheel of cheese and felt fantastic about it."

Maybe I'm just being taken in by a very good chatbot, but my experience with chatbots is they simply cannot do this yet.

Her writing just feels fundamentally unlike the 370,000 college essays researchers analyzed.
https://th3core.com/chat/index.php?topic=14683.0

[rcjordan]

From the math teacher daughter (whose personality & patience is the closest match to mine. Evie is graduating from HS the weekend, so 18-1sh.)

This was really well written and hilarious. Evie and I just recently experienced the pleasure of an elderly woman paying by check at our Walgreens. Evie didn't even know you could do that or what was happening. It was educational, to say the least. The cashier didn't know what to do either, so the manager had to come. I almost offered to pay for it but it was $50.

[ergophobe]

Yay! I'm glad she liked it.

[rcjordan]

What struck me was that an 18yo didn't know you could write a check at checkout.

[ergophobe]

I would think that for 18yo, checks are things your grandparents send on your birthday. Like greeting cards, they have very specific uses.

Their "paycheck" has as much connection to a piece of paper as "dialing" the phone has to a dial.

If they have ever seen a rotary dial, it was probably in the home of the couple of people in their life who write checks.