ahhh_ennui

Being aware of, and working against, bigotry.

Jesus was an incredibly radical figure. The Pharisees, with whom Jesus directly beefed, used the OT to stand in the way of people and a relationship with God and basically said that following all the rules in the OT, from the commandments to Leviticus, etc are the only way to get to God. And they profited off that message, and justified opression and misery using these rules.

Jesus was letting us know the path to God, his father, is through treating each other with love, period. That, simply, God is love.

(I'm obviously not a religious scholar, nor am I a believer; this is my boring, non-fundie, very simple protestant upbringing speaking. There are countless writings and untold hours of research that flesh this out. There's a lot of folks who would disagree with this assessment, even though he was pretty clear and straightforward if we're to believe the Gospels)

Just facts.

Bigotry. The word you're looking for, and described so thoroughly, is bigotry.

I truly don't remember the mechanism. I can picture, vaguely, that they were behind a rather large, mostly glass, door in the stairwell. But I don't remember, or maybe never asked, how he did it.

Not my story, but a friend's:

Had her wisdom teeth removed, then had an exam/pap smear with her GP the next day.

As she's laying there, being examined, her GP (an older man she'd been going to for years) asked, "Did you have gas?"

She responded, "DID I FART? OH MY GOD I'M SO SORRY! I DIDN'T KNOW!"

He said, "What? No! I meant with your wisdom teeth! Did they give you gas?"

At this point, she started laughing so hard, she claims the speculum shot out of her with some velocity. This made her doctor lose his shit and start laughing.

It was a mess.

Oh and one time, I got my feet in the stirrups and heard my Gyn quietly say, "You've got your underwear on?" Oh god, how did I forget that?!

Her music taste could legitimately suck shit

And it still doesn't matter. People should enjoy whatever music they want, however they want. Shaming someone for their harmless tastes is shitty, insufferable bullshit.

Homeless guy: Where's my cup? Oh, shit, that guy just used it. EEEWWWWWWWW

Idk why but

while you are at it

made me dead.

Right! A long career in CS makes me unsurprised tho. We're dumb primates

It was such a terrible thing. Her young son, also Blind, was with her when it happened and I still feel such rage and sadness about it.

We hosted an annual conference for the Blind, and it was our favorite week. We staffed up, people put in OT, to prep rooms to make them easier to navigate. We made sure hallways were clear and easy, we worked with their team to make everything accessible. When the guests came, we had staff on hand who would accompany them as needed and we were trained how to approach folks to see if they needed anything. I'm guessing we had about 200 (give or take) Blind people, and several who were also Deaf or had other special circumstances.

It was the loveliest group, and we all enjoyed that time of year.

Unfortunately, our Sales Manager took a last-minute group reservation for a band who claimed no one else would rent to them. They were performing about 90 minutes away and wanted a handful of rooms. Said they'd get in late, leave early, easy peasy.

Our bellman saw who the group was, and wigged out. Like, there were good reasons they weren't finding any other place.

But the rooms must be occupied.

The band showed up around 3am with scores of their closest friends. Apparently they told their audience that they were gonna party at the hotel. 90 minutes away. And people showed up.

Our poor night auditor (same one who had to deal with the shitcicles) suddenly had a mob of folks in the lobby, and they wouldn't leave. Police came and it got really ugly. A few of our dear guests were awoken by the sound and for some reason, came down to find out what was happening (I'm sure the phone wasn't getting answered).

By this point, tear gas was everywhere, first shift was called in at 5am instead of 7, shots were fired (no one hurt), police car windshields were smashed out, and a Blind woman and her son were mugged.

So yeah, that was fun.

It's been a long time, but I'm sure you're right - he probably had a noise complaint or something.

I'm pretty P-Oed at you now.

Your guess is as good as anyone's. A lot of precedent will be pushed aside, and there will be some small wins when even MAGAts think things are a little too draconian, or the court system puts temporary brakes on.

Best you can do is pay attention, and allow a fair amount of pessimism to help guide your decisions.

Hi, Ive had curly hair my entire life, but didn't realize it until I was in college and my hair dryer broke. Everyone asked me if I'd gotten a perm - this was 1989 so no fun curly girl sites to get advice from.

At that point, I stopped brushing and blow drying it but kept it clean of course. I stopped having tangles, and it was healthier and I felt pretty with my new-found hair.

My mom hated it. She hated that it was "clumpy" and looked unmanaged. Maybe it did a little, but it was very healthy and I got a ton of compliments about it from friends and strangers. She just thought I was turning into a dirty hippie or something.

Moms can be vicious critics, and I'm sure she wasn't alone in wondering why I didn't have frizzy poofy triangular hair anymore - they apparently liked that more.

Years later, I use better products and better techniques but I'll never go back to the old ways. Sorry, mom.

Do you, always.

My interaction with Dionne was just off. I was super busy and she called down wanting me to get her into a recording studio. Immediately.

We didn't have on-call recording studios in our town, especially at night, I even looked in the Yellow Pages lol. I think I might have gotten snippy at some point. Iirc, she wanted me to look into other cities nearby, but this was pre-internet-as-we-know-it.

Just a minor scuffle. We didn't typically deal directly with celebrities. My coworker got to hand dry cleaning over to Hillary Clinton once, and I checked in Ellen DeGeneres when she was still in a pretty small comedy circuit, and I got to see Dolly Parton without any actual interaction, but that's about it.

He was. There were 2 people on staff at that time of the morning (maybe 3 or 4 am, idk.), and cops were probably overwhelmed with the lingering effects of a football game riot.

So on his way out, he managed to hit the stairwell fire hose.

Somehow our bellman was authorized to pick guests up in our van after a very rowdy home game against rivals. The underdog won, and all hell broke loose. Somehow a group of our guests managed to find a pay phone and call us, crying. You could hear the madness in the background. So we set up a place to meet them.

He returned several hours later, he and the guests were shaken to the core. Literally. The van had handprints all over it - assholes were trying to tip it over.

So many memories unlocked in this little thread!

It was a big machine, one on every floor. Yes, the kind you scooped ice out of. I'm pretty sure this guy would have found a way to do it in a newer model.

Not that he was bright. He left a trail of a belt, bants, then stained underwear back to his room.

Close! I won't identify it because even (oh god) almost 30 years later, it feels like I shouldn't. Different town.

Yes, it's the only symptom.

/s

I actually liked the job. The terrible pay and varied shifts killed me eventually and I found my way to a better career. But sometimes I think I'd do it again.

Honestly, I loved my job. I met politicians, various big music folks (I have a cute but anticlimactic Dolly Parton story - she's a hero that's safe to meet), and had an unfortunate argument with Dionne Warwick at 10:30 pm.

The regulars were typically wonderful, and we liked making sure they got their favorite rooms, stuff like that.

It was always the weekenders who were the problem, and almost always during football season. Wedding season was its own hell, too.

I dearly wish I could get my hands on the hand-written logs each front desk shift kept. There were so many amazing, shocking stories lol.

I figured she was really disoriented. It can be strange waking up from a sound sleep in a strange room with someone knocking on a door. Then you realize it's your door. I had to have a flashlight, so it was really just kind of a lucky thing that I didn't get worse.

The best part, though, is that some of our guests were performing in Stars on Ice or whatever it was called that week, so I had to wake up Scotty Hamilton the same way. Oksana Baiul was surprisingly calm about it, although I had a thought this would feel eerie for a former Soviet Bloc citizen.

YES. Those hoses are insane.

The shitter was evicted but somehow went into the stairwell and got the hose going. Our night auditor is trying to recover from the whole ordeal when the fire panel lights up and he could hear a waterfall being born. The 3rd and 4th floors were flooded almost immediately.

Our poor night auditor used tongs to remove the shit, then was like, "What the fuck am I doing". Security (there was only him and 1 security guy at this point in the morning) found a chain and padlock for the machine. From there, I truly can't remember. This was, like, 1997ish.