Maritza bang bus

Hello, meron ba ditong may experience pano pumuntang MOA from Laiya?
So far ang naresearch ko is may ALPS Bus Terminal daw sa San Juan bayan tapos may schedule na papuntang PITX.
Meron bang better options or yun na ba ang pinaka simple? Saturday morning yung target kong byahe kasi kailangan kong makarating ng MOA by 5 pm.
If via ALPS, pano yung system dun? Kailangan ba mag book ng ticket in advance or parang normal bus lang ba yun na pipila lang sa terminal tapos yung konduktor mangongolekta ng bayad habang bumabyahe? Magkano pamasahe pag ganun? Gano katagal usually byahe?
Maraming salamat sa makakatulong.

THE WRETCHES
A novel by Curtis Millwall

Chapter One
Ms Veronica Van Zyl was a slight woman who favoured sharp collars. Her black hair was always pulled back tightly into a short ponytail which never seemed to grow.
She walked very upright, defensively and inquiringly simultaneously. It may be noted that even while she was seated, this paradox of characteristics was apparent in her demeanour.
She would try the police station. Maybe they had Liesel’s address on file.
A Police Sergeant leaned lazily on his elbow, scribbling a report when she came in. He knew her. Child Services.
“I hear you are the new boss?” the policeman teased, not looking up from his writings. Veronica smiled openly and placed her purse on the counter.
“Yes”, she said, “since last week”.
The officer let out a sound of congratulations and shut the report book with a bang.
“So, Kruger is really gone?” he asked, incredulous.
“Retired “, Veronica answered.
“How long was he there?”
“Nearly fifteen years”, replied Veronica .
Similarly punctuated conversation speckled with intervals of light laughter ensued. It was eventually arrived at that Veronica was looking for the whereabouts of a person. A case she was working on, she said, and any help would be appreciated.
The Sergeant produced a large book with cardboard top and a red spine.
Veronica spelt out the name of Liesel Hart and the Sergeant scrolled through its contents, to no avail.
He checked again. No Liesel Hart.
“Do you think you can call Jepson District?” Veronica asked.
The Sergeant would usually have broken out into a soft chuckle at such an assuming request but found himself suddenly checked, remembering that Veronica’s new appointment gave her a certain rank within the force, even if she was just a Child Services Inspector.
“Is this how it’s going to be from now on?” he thought as he picked up the receiver and churned out the number for the Jepson PD. “Extra work for nothing”, he thought resentfully, smiling at Veronica while the phone rang in his ear.
When the call was answered the Sargent spoke at length to his counterpart at the Jepson Police Department about sundry matters, none of which had anything at all to do with Veronica’s request. When he finally did broach the subject, it was in such a way as to make it seem like an afterthought and not the primary reason for his call.
He relayed the name Veronica had supplied and to his visible surprise, there was a hit on a case file active with the Jepson PD.
Liesel Hart had lodged a restraining order just two days ago at the station in Jepson District against a Mr Clyde Jerry.
Her current address is listed as 12 Holloway Lane, Jepson.
The Sergeant was secretly dismayed when the information was relayed. Veronica was openly pleased.
The long serving policeman usually celebrated using state resources to such purpose but he regarded this last piece of success as a foreboding omen. Veronica would surely use the police’s personnel for more favours of this kind in the future, he prophesied.
He scribbled the address on a sticky yellow note and pasted it with his thumb on the station’s wooden counter, for Veronica’s convenience.
Veronica wished she had come here first, instead of the airport and bus station. She immediately resolved to make the police station her first point of call for similar cases.
Peeling the note from the counter, Veronica thanked the Sergeant ‘so much’ and left.
Pleasant goodbyes from the Sargent followed her along with another congratulations on her new appointment.
“Trouble”, said the Sergeant rather loudly when Veronica had just exited.
“She is flying”, said a hidden Constable, from nowhere.
“She’s not like Kruger, this one”, scowled the Sergeant –
“Kruger never came here!’’
“And she is coming after her first week “added the Constable humorously, finally revealing himself by poking his neck around a corner.
The Sergeant clapped his hands together with a crack. He let out a worrisome drone which resonated throughout the lobby of the grey police station. The Constable joined in from his hideout, offering a wail of regretful lamentation that harmonised surprisingly sweetly with his superior’s.
“What’s the matter with you two? Shut up!” barked a prisoner from a cell down a nearby passage.
The prisoner added that they “should not quit their day jobs” and laughed heartily.
The two officers unanimously descended upon the haughty inmate in a chorus of terrible insults, a bombardment of verbal abuse so dreadful and relentless, that the prisoner retreated into the corner of his cell, mumbling.
The Constable performed the obligatory ceremony of running of his baton across the cell bars and the police station returned to its’ usual grim quietude, the Sergeant, to his paperwork.
“Trouble”, he muttered once more, scribbling.
The hidden Constable concurred with a sound which was not a word.

Chapter Two


Veronica thought she recognised the address on the paper the Sargent had given her. “Why did it look so familiar? she wondered “I’m sure I’ve seen this address written down somewhere before…” she thought to herself.
A large sign on the wall when she arrived jogged her memory. “Of course’, she thought.
The New Hope Women’s Shelter.
A facility which was directly under her departments jurisdiction. She recognized the address because it was a beneficiary of The Child Welfare Program.
Veronica entered the Shelter with an officious air and expected to be met with a reception area of some kind. Instead, she immediately found herself in what seemed to be a dining hall.
A dozen steel tables imposed themselves on the room and dozens more miscellaneous chairs of odd variety were stationed around them.
A large television perched on the wall, leaning more forward than what would ordinarily be considered ideal.
Several tattered posters curled up their corners on the walls, some depicting angels, others, cats.
The most prominent characteristic of the room however was how impossibly close and crammed together the furniture was. There seemed to be no visible path one could take to the other side of it.
“Hello?”, Veronica called out.
The only response she received was from a man on the television, who softly suggested that she might consider purchasing funeral insurance and began expounding upon the many benefits she might accrue if she were to purchase such a policy from Doves Funerals.
Perhaps she had taken the wrong door, she thought and went outside to seek an alternative entrance. There was none. A locked gate guarded the perimeter of the building.
She called out again from the doorway and when nobody answered, began calculating a path through the wilderness of mismatched dining room furniture.
An assorted array of swivel office chairs guarded the edges of the room, rendering circumnavigation impossible, or at the very least, ridiculous.
A baby cried in the distance and Veronica imagined it was probably the very child she had been looking for all afternoon.
In her efforts to advance by first moving an entire table from her path, she caused a particularly uncooperative plastic cup to topple to the floor several times.
A resident or possible employee of the Woman’s Shelter thrust her head in through the open window at the other end of the room, as a means to investigate the reason for the bouncing cup. She took a long look at Veronica, who was at that moment engaged in wrestling a large swivel chair.
Before Veronica could utter a greeting, the person disappeared with a muffled scowl.
The chair dispatched with, Veronica ventured down a rather narrow hallway and found a door labelled “Manager’’. It was ajar and she rapped on it smartly with a bony knuckle, “Hello?”, she asked through the gap, a little breathless.
“Come in”, said a man seated at his desk within, who without being seen, could be guessed to be one of substantial physical proportions, not muscular.
Veronica pushed the door.
It scraped horribly upon the floor as she did so occasioning an awful scratching sound. The more she pushed it, the more it chalkily scratched the tiles beneath it.
Somebody in an office nearby pleaded for the perpetrator of this audial assault to “Come on”.
Veronica opted to “Come in” instead.
“There’s a trick to it, you have to pull it up while you push it” the large man said knowingly as Veronica entered his office.
Veronica looked back at the door with disapproval and noted the extreme lack of skill of whoever it was that painted it.
It was done in a rich sky blue, which in and of itself is a fine colour for a door. It looked however, as if this particular door had been painted in less than a minute.

“Good afternoon”, she said archly.
She gripped her purse and approached his desk in her upright manner “My name is Veronica Van Zyl.
A nameplate on the Manager’s desk introduced him as Pastor John Lemmings and the man himself kindly asked what he could do for Mrs Van Zyl today.
Pastor John Lemmings was no stranger to being petitioned for assistance and he wrongly assumed Veronica was there to make arrangements for a relative to be sheltered.
“I’m with the Child Welfare Regional Office” Veronica stated coolly.
The effect of this announcement on this Shelter Manager was so pronounced that he produced an unpleasant screech of his own upon that unlucky floor when he pushed his chair back and rose to greet her.
He motioned for her to have a seat in a most gentlemanly manner and was rather abashed when she declined.
“How is Mr Kruger these days?” he said half stood behind his desk.
“He’s no longer with the department”, Veronica snapped, a little harshly, as if she was tired of hearing the question.
“Oh! is that so?”, said the large pastor, trying to be pleasant but clearly disturbed by the news. “You know Kruger used to come check on us every now and then to see how we were getting along. I assume you would like to see our bookkeeping? I have all the ledgers here.”
Pastor Lemmings sauntered over to a grey filing cabinet and opened the bottom drawer.
Veronica interjected, “No, I don’t need to see your books right now. This isn’t an audit.”
The shelter manger hunched over the half - opened drawer and looked at Veronica, puzzled.
“I understand you have somebody by the name of Liesel Hart in your shelter, Veronica explained.
She has a baby with her, a six- month old boy, is that correct?”
Veronica asked these questions in quick succession but did not wait for a reply. She had already gleaned the name of Liesel Hart in the admissions register which lay open on the manager’s desk. It was the latest entry.
Liesel Hart and her child, Clive Jnr were here.
“When did she arrive?” Veronica asked, choosing to wait for an answer this time.
The shelter manager seemed to still be contemplating Veronica’s first question and did not appear certain if there even was such a person under that roof at all. He decided it best to consult the admissions register, and began running his finger down the pages.
Veronica leaned in and tapped on the name at the bottom of the list.
“There she is”, she said “Liesel Hart”.
And there she was. Liesel Hart. Arrived yesterday. With Baby.
The Pastor suddenly exclaimed that he just remembered exactly the person Veronica was looking for. Her name was Liesel, she arrived yesterday and she had a small baby with her! A feisty woman, he said. Won’t let anybody touch the baby.
Veronica looked unimpressed that the manager could forget such a thing as the latest admission to his facility. The manager, noticing this, offered consolation in the fact that he was helping so many people that it was often hard to keep track of all their names.
It was at this point in their discussion that the two welfare workers were interrupted by the shelter’s cleaning lady, Agnus.
Agnus had overheard the conversation while she was mopping the doorway and she loudly announced that she too knew the precise person in question, the one Veronica was seeking – this person had a small baby with her and had arrived “the day before today”.
“Thank you, Agnus,” said Pastor Lemmings and bestowed a benign smile upon the informed Agnus.
Agnus returned it, clutching her mop and beaming at her reverend employer.
“Is she here now? “asked Veronica, addressing Agnus.
“Excuse me, sorry?” replied Agnus, turning sharply in Veronica’s direction with a start, as if by fright.
“Is she here now?”, Veronica inquired loudly and pointed down at the floor with her forefinger for emphasis.
“I don’t know”, replied Agnus softly, leaning on her mop and gazing vacantly at the spot on the floor where Veronica had pointed.
Agnus seemed perplexed that Veronica would think somebody could be therenow. The area she had pointed to was clearly devoid of humanity.
While she meditated on this, streams of grey liquid from the mop she leaned on began to seep onto the floor. Veronica recoiled at the sight and turned to the shelter manager impatiently.
“Call her”, Pastor John instructed

My family and I just got back from our trip and I always see recaps so here's mine!
We booked a Cabana Bay pool view family suite package via Costco Travel and the price was a pretty great deal. I enjoyed working with Costco Travel immensely!
SUNDAY
We arrived to the resort via the SuperStar Shuttle around 2pm. The SuperStar Shuttle wasn't anything exciting. The tvs didn't turn on and the driver didn't speak to the passengers. I thought it'd be like Disney's shuttles but alas. No biggie, though.
We checked in, zero wait there. We were assigned a room immediately in the Continental building, first section closest to the lobby on the 6th floor. We went to our room and it was fine. It felt dated, but the beds were soft and it was clean. There was an outside speaker directly below by the doors to Bayliner that was blaring music and it was loud in our room. Since it was only on during pool hours we sucked it up. We were barely going to be in the room anyway.We tried to take a quick nap since we had been up since 6am, but the music couldn't be drowned out via white noise. Thankfully in the couch area once we pulled the divider shut, it was barely noticeable and our 4 year old napped fine. Once she was awake, we headed to the pool. The pool was fun. Not super crowded, and we loved the lazy river. For dinner we ate at Hard Rock in CityWalk. Then we went to bed around 9:30. I learned the pullout couch my daughter was on was AWFUL. It was like sitting on 2x4s. However my 4 year old just slept on the extra pillows from the 2nd queen bed and she was perfectly fine.
MONDAY
We headed to the parks! We are not rope droppers at Disney nor here. We had breakfast at Bayliner Diner (mediocre) and left. We started in Seuss Landing where we rode everything. The longest wait was for the sneetches high in the sky ride and it was only 15 mins. We watched the live book show which was super cute.
Next was Jurassic Park. My 4 year old is only 40" so no rides here, but she thoroughly enjoyed Camp Jurassic. We stopped by the Discovery Center where my kiddo was chosen to name a baby trex. This put her on cloud 9. The discovery center was a lot of fun in itself!
We ate at Thunder Falls Terrance. The chicken was dry as chickenly possible. The corn on the cob and milkshakes were good though.
Next was Hogsmeade...something I was excited about. We first did the wand experience and then afterwards my daughter became hot mess express. She was not interested in WWoHP (how dare she.) So we took a break and relaxed a bit in some AC. After about an hour, we walked over to Universal Studios. We did the Minions ride then Villain Con. Loved both of them! When we left the minions ride, gru and 2 of his daughters were at the exit for meet and greets. When we left villain con and turned the corner, Kevin and Stuart were out for meet and greets. Universal doesn't disappoint with seeing characters! Next was Jimmy Fallon. It was alright.
We walked some circles, then our last ride was Kang and Kodos. On our way out, we saw the Animal Actors show started in 5 minutes so we grabbed a seat. The show was a lot of fun! Back at Cabana Bay we grabbed dinner at the Bayliner. The food was nothing to wrote home about as usual.
TUESDAY
Volcano Bay Day! Breakfast again at Bayliner. Still not great food, but whatever. We walked the short path over to the water park. My daughter is essentially a fish so she had a blast here. We've been to a lot of water parks and this is definitely one of the best, if not thee best. I like the condensed layout. We couldn't ride anything due to our shortie, but we had a blast. There was a severe t-storm that hit about 2 hours after we arrived. We were going to try and make it back to Cabana Bay, but the torrential downpour hit as soon as we exited. We sheltered under the entrance and after the storm passed (45min) we re-entered to a fairly empty park. Ate lunch there, swam, had a good time. We stayed until close and loved every minute. My in laws arrived this evening and checked into their (very quiet) room I. 1 section down from us. I was shocked they couldn't hear the music we could. We ate dinner at NBC bar at CityWalk which was delicious. That night we got some loud neighbors next to us, banging around and talking loudly. Sounded like a group of 20-somethings. They finally quieted down around 11.
WEDNESDAY
Back to the parks, but my kiddo spent the morning with her grandparents. My husband and I got to enjoy the rides. I LOVED the Jurassic River Adventure ride. However the long neck dino at the beginning might want to see a chiropractor for his messed up neck. We popped on over to Hogsmeade and took the train to Diagon Alley. There we grabbed lunch at The Leaky Cauldron - fish and chips. Delicious! We walked around Diagon Alley taking in the sights. It was not busy at all. We watched Celestina Warbeck sing and then I spent too much money on merch. We rode Escape from Gringotts and it was my favorite ride of the trip. We met back up with my in laws and headed back to the resort around 4. I cannot remember what we ate for dinner this evening. We had some pretty intense noise issues from our neighbors. Woke us up twice and my kid once. I have no idea what they were doing but I utilized the text service to which they responded they'd send a security officer to the room. They finally quieted down around 12:30am.
THURSDAY
I was done with the neighbors by this point so walked up to the front desk to see if we could switch rooms. She said yep, just need to pack up. Back to the room i walked. We left our kid at the pool with her grandparents and we packed up. Finally at 11:30 we were in a new room. It was completely quiet. No pool music noise at all. It was the furtherst building in the continental next to the tower, poolside. After getting settled again, back to Volcano Bay. I think our kid was absolutely whooped at this point. We should have done a no parks, rest at the resort day. It ended up being a bust since she cried and fussed most of the time. We came back to Cabana Bay around 3pm. We cleaned up and headed to CityWalk. We had dinner reservations at Toothsome and it was fabulous. Everything we ate was delicious. We spent the evening walking around CityWalk and shopping. That night we had no noise issues in our room, but the pool was packed since Gradventure had started. Middle schoolers everywhere!
FRIDAY
Last parks day. Mid-breakfast at Bayliner. We began the morning in Universal Studios where we met everyone. Betty Boop, Scooby-Doo Gang, Marilyn Monroe, Marge and Bart, Beetelgeuse. We did ET which I ADORED. I didn't expect to enjoy it so much. Then we went to the Bourne Stuntacular and it was mind blowing. My mouth was open the whole time. It ended up being our favorite show. Again, didn't expect to love it since I haven't seen a Bourne movie in ages but it was extremely well done. Next up we rode Transformers... no one was a fan of that one. We ate lunch at the Irish pub (can't remember the name). Service was bad. I think she forgot we existed, but food was food. Upon leaving we saw the Blues Bros show and took some pictures with the stilt walkers in front of the mummy ride. We met up with my in laws upon their exit from the horror makeup show and they took our kiddo back to Cabana Bay to swim around 330. My husband and I went to Kings Cross, waited about an hour with hordes of middle schoolers, then in Hogsmeade we grabbed some butterbeer. We rode flight of the hippogriff and trekked over to Jurassic Park again. We rode Kong after a 25 minute technical delay. We both didn't think it was worth the wait. By then the park was closing so we headed out. We picked up our daughter and went to Aventura across the street. Dinner there was delicious! Back at Cabana Bay we swam then fell asleep.
SATURDAY
check out day. Check out was easy. We had a late afternoon flight delayed by 4 hours due to storms but made it home around 10pm. SuperStar Shuttle was great. Our driver told us jokes and they played Rise of Gru on the tv. I'm now in post vacation blues mode :(
SUMMARY
I felt it hard to not compare to Disney since we've done Disney a lot minus COVID years. Disney's resorts were all cleaner, food was all better quality, and the overall atmosphere is more magical. We've stayed at 4 Disney resorts from economy to luxury and all were stellar. I found Cabana Bay to be lower quality than Pop Century at Disney.
Cons about Cabana Bay: The grounds were not well kept...cigarette butts everywhere. The pool area was trashed. I hate to say it but it was like the caliber of people in the resort just didnt care about litter or cleanliness. I watched families toss their trash in the sand and leave wet, used towels on the ground (towel returns were readily available.) When the pool closed, there were families that were literally arguing with the lifeguards because their watch said they still had 3 minutes. 2 families just berating the lifeguards!? Awkward. The Bayliner constantly had drink machines down and the food was blegh except for a few things. The pool was great but for some reason had no small youth life vests? Super weird. That would seem like the size you most need. The noise problems with room #1 put a damper on our nights, but the new room was great so that was just poor luck initially. More than once we entered an elevator that reeked of weed. I smoke weed, but it was a turn off to be in a hot elevator with it. Sofa beds are bad. I saw other people talk about this, too. Buy a topper!
Pros about Cabana Bay: transportation. Literally never waited longer than 5-10 min. Bus drivers were all so nice. The gift shop employees were delightful and the arcade and bowling alley were clean and an added bonus. The milkshakes from the malt shop were AMAZING!! The main pool was large and the slide and splash pad was great. Check in and ticket pick up was a breeze. The middle schoolers packed the resort beginning on Thursday, but the chaperones kept them in check so we were never bothered.
Final note... Going from CB to Aventura and Sapphire Falls across the street was like daylight and dark. Those 2 resorts were quiet and felt way more like Disney's moderate or luxury resorts: clean, peaceful, modern. I'd definitely stay in one of those next time.

May nadaan bang bus sa may premier plaza Silang cavite that stops at pitx and if may mga jeep going Baltao sa pitx MISMO? Ty sa sasagot

Hello! May nasasakyan po bang bus or jeep around 1-3am papuntang Sta. Rosa exit from Sta. Cruz, Laguna? Saka nagbababa po ba sila don? Thank you.

hi po, i just need some opinions kasi i honestly don't know what to do T__T
naka-enroll po ako now sa f2f ng pioneer but byahe ko pa is all the way from laguna. i know na may online option pero my parents insisted na f2f since hindi ko talaga style ang online class. the thing is, nakakapagod talaga bumiyahe 😭 i can do it noong internship since di naman araw araw / consecutive days pasok ko pero i don't know with this one. napaisip lang talaga ako kasi parang they expect na after class, rest ka saglit, then study ganun.
kaso in my case, i have to wake up at 4 am and leave at 5 am then arrive around 6:30-ish am (kasi if later than 5 am ako umalis, di ko mapredict yung traffic at pagka-late ko). then, after class (usually 5pm), i would get home around 8 pm tapos ayun lang... pagod kahit natulog na ako at lahat sa bus...
so ayun. di ko alam pano ko ba gagawin review schedule ko kung pagdating sa bahay gusto ko na lang matulog :') hindi rin kami mayaman so magtitipid matindi kung magdorm ako eh 1 month lang naman.
i really need some opinions po :(( kaya bang tiisin ko na lang for a month, like literal na review ko lang ay during class? then yung 1 month na self-paced, dun na ako bumawi? what are your suggestions po?
thank you so much sa sasagot :')

Hey guys,
About one month ago, I shared the plot of my story, felony school. Here's what I've written so far.
It was around 7:15 in the bustling city of Seoul. The sun was shining brightly, making the sleeping citizens realize that its time for them to get off their beds and get back to work. Among the many buses navigating through the morning traffic, one was making its way towards the prestigious Sejong High School. Inside, the air was filled with the excited chatter of students eager to begin a new academic year. Laughter and lively conversations echoed through the bus, as friends reunited after the long session break.
However, amidst the noisy crowd, Chaeyoung, Ji-hee and Yeji were three girls who sat quietly, lost in their own thoughts. They were seemingly waiting for someone to come and enlighten their moods.
But, this silence couldn't stand the power of Choi Mi-cha, known to many as 'Miss Sejong' due to her promising appearance, which was characterised by a slim body dark brown eyes, long and banged hair which were often tied into a high ponytail and beautiful spectacles which did a little to enhance her beauty. Apart from this, her remarkable ability to uncover secrets wherever she went, earned her the title of 'info bank'.
"Mi-chaaaaaaaaaaaa..." yelled Chaeyoung as soon as she saw her, "We were waiting for you since so long. Come, join us!" Mi-cha quickly, sat behind them. However, this time, she wasn't alone. She was accompanied by her new friend, who sat beside her. "Hi, Ms. Choi." said Yeji, "Hope you had good hols! Well, may I know, who's she?" Mi-cha giggled and said, "She's Anhjong, my new friend. I met her during final examinations. Say hello, Jongie. They're all my friends." Ahnjong hesitated for a moment and shyly waved at the girls.
"Well, guys, you're ought to be known, I am not a lil girl anymore. Now, I am a high schooler." said Mi-cha, making the girls giggle. Ahnjong and Mi-cha were enjoying in the bus, but there was a terrible surprise waiting for them at school.

Hey stories,
It's me, Vividnarrator. Many of you might have seen my post titled as 'exciting new story: felony school', which was all bout the plot of the story. Lately, I decided to start sharing what I've written so far. Here's a small part of it.
It was around 7:15 in the bustling city of Seoul. The sun was shining brightly, making the sleeping citizens realize that its time for them to get off their beds and get back to work. Among the many buses navigating through the morning traffic, one was making its way towards the prestigious Sejong High School. Inside, the air was filled with the excited chatter of students eager to begin a new academic year. Laughter and lively conversations echoed through the bus, as friends reunited after the long session break.
However, amidst the noisy crowd, Chaeyoung, Ji-hee and Yeji were three girls who sat quietly, lost in their own thoughts. They were seemingly waiting for someone to come and enlighten their moods.
But, this silence couldn't stand the power of Choi Mi-cha, known to many as 'Miss Sejong' due to her promising appearance, which was characterised by a slim body dark brown eyes, long and banged hair which were often tied into a high ponytail and beautiful spectacles which did a little to enhance her beauty. Apart from this, her remarkable ability to uncover secrets wherever she went, earned her the title of 'info bank'.
"Mi-chaaaaaaaaaaaa..." yelled Chaeyoung as soon as she saw her, "We were waiting for you since so long. Come, join us!" Mi-cha quickly, sat behind them. However, this time, she wasn't alone. She was accompanied by her new friend, who sat beside her. "Hi, Ms. Choi." said Yeji, "Hope you had good hols! Well, may I know, who's she?" Mi-cha giggled and said, "She's Anhjong, my new friend. I met her during final examinations. Say hello, Jongie. They're all my friends." Ahnjong hesitated for a moment and shyly waved at the girls.
"Well, guys, you're ought to be known, I am not a lil girl anymore. Now, I am a high schooler." said Mi-cha, making the girls giggle. Ahnjong and Mi-cha were enjoying in the bus, but there was a terrible surprise waiting for them at school.

this is gonna be a long one. okay so im new to reddit and i honestly mainly signed up because i just need some answers. this question sounds stupid but please just hear me out, do i have daddy issues and are my feelings fair. idek if this is the right subreddit tbh but i felt like the situation/question fit this one more than most other ones. okay okay so basically i just need some help and some closure if thats the right word and this is probably going to sound kinda stupid but idk. Theres a little backstory for this and its honestly just, my dad got my mom pregnant when he was like 20-21 and my mom was 17. my dad had a hard childhood and struggled with substance abuse and mental health issues alot from as early as age 12. he started with his dads pain pills and weed then it turned to stealing alcohol and by like 14-15 he was a hard drug user, coke, meth (mainly meth), crack, those types mainly. he had a hard childhood and i understand that. he got my half sisters mom pregnant and left her a few months into her pregnancy, he had already been with my mom at that point for a while (me and her are 7 months apart). he wasnt there when she was born as he was with my mom, he even refused to take any responsibility for her and claimed he wasnt even har father when she was first born. now to my part, he was with my mom when i was born and they were still in a relationship, but he was in active addiction during that time. him and my mom had issues, and he ended up leaving me a few days after my first birthday. I obviously dont remember that, as i didnt really gain consciousness until around 2.5 years old. I do however remember things after that, i remember him yelling at my mom on the phone demanding to let me see him because in his words, "I havent been high in over 2 days, my dealer bailed out on me and i wanna be involved now that im doing better!" i remember him banging on our door when i was around 3 in the middle of the night, pleading with her to see me, i had stood behind the kitchen counter so neither of them could see me, but i could hear and see it all. i saw him fall to his knees with tears down his face begging to see his baby girl, and saying how he cant stand seeing me grow up through Facebook but not actually see me. i remember my old stepdad at that time (he was an abusive sack of shit and he was strong as hell), had grabbed my dad-it was fairly easy as he was skin and bones due to the drug use-and took him somewhere, i think i remember him telling my mom he dropped him off at a bus stop but i cant quite be sure. i had always known my stepdad wasnt my real dad, and i knew some things about my dad leaving because i had picked up on it from all the stories id heard my mom talk about. i vividly remember being around 3.5 years old asking my mom why "daddy didnt love me enough to be with me." she didnt give me an answer and i think that little me had taken it as i wasnt good enough, and ive held onto that notion all my life no matter what others say. my dad got into recovery when i was 4 something years old and hes been clean ever since. my sisters mom was quick to give him visitation, and she would often go with him to n/a meetings, she grew up in those walls and those rooms and i would always hear my mom and my grandma (his mom, she kept-and still keeps-a strong relationship with my mom) always talk about it. i was so jealous because to me it was just "why am i still not good enough for daddys love, why doesnt he love me like he loves sissy." (my grandma had actually reached out to my sisters mom when we were around 2-3 and we had a relationship outside of my dad, thats how i knew about her because we would occasionally see each other.) when i was turning 5, my mom still hadnt let me see him and on my birthday he had called begging to see me because he was 6 months (i think) clean. she had said no and that i already had a father figure and i didnt need him. i remember hearing him speak at his meetings about how that was one of the hardest nights of his life, how he had to lock himself in a motel room and barricade the door with the dresser of the room looking at the lock until it hit 12:01 just so that he wouldnt get high. eventually my mom thankfully divorced my old stepdad, he was a horrible person and he also caused me alot of issues when i was little that still affect me even now. because of that divorce i had noone to drive me to and from school/sports so my mom asked him. he was around 9 months clean at this point. he gladly agreed and so two days a week he would pick me up from school and take me to the library for an hour and read with me (he always brought me homemade food too) for a little while before driving me to my sport. he did that for a few months before i was able to sleep over at his house recovery house (for anyone that doesnt know what that is its a house full of a few people all in recovery and all roommating together where they stay for the first time after getting out of the immediate rehab program) for the very first time. hes been an involved dad ever since and i see him every weekend. him and my stepmom and my mom and my current stepdad are good coparents and work well to make sure im cared for properly. hes been clean for 10ish years and hes been a present father since i was 5. i dont know why but i still always go back to those memories and even though everyone tells me its not my fault, i still cant help but wonder why i wasnt enough to make him stay and why i wasnt enough to make him get clean and why i wasnt enough to make him love me when i needed him. (he got clean because of a nudge from the judge) i also have alot of issues from my old stepdad. ive had conversations with my dad and he always tells me that my feelings are valid and he put me through so much shit as a child and he wishes he could do things differently, and how he knows hes the reason for my abandonment issues, attachment issues, self sabotaging, and ones such as those which i will not be getting into for personal preservation reasons. i still havent recovered from the issues even after all these years, i didnt grow up with a stable father figure (even after e came into my life he still wasnt always the best and i dont blame him for that i know he was struggling) and i didnt grow up with the stability i needed. i grew up couch surfing with my mom sometimes and getting constantly lashed out at from my old stepdad. i gew up feeling like i wasnt enough for my dads love and i still am affected by it. i dont know if it even counts as having "daddy issues" or if im being dramatic. i just need some closure and reassurance i guess that what i went through, have felt, and am still feeling is valid. alot of people have it worse than me and my dad is now a present father and does his best. i dont know if what i went through is even a big thing and i dont know what to do. one thing that stuck with me due to feeling like i wasnt enough for him is needing validation, and this situation is probably an example of that. i need validation to know that what i went though isnt me being dramatic. i know i have issues from it but just the main reason i dont know if it counts as that is because hes back now. even tho his past actions hurt me and still continue to affect me constantly even in my every day life, it still hurts me and my relationships. i dont know what to do and i just need someone to answer my question please. sorry this was long i just needed story for it to all make sense. please someone lmk.

Laging nababanggit sa internet yung "Cavite moments" everytime we see something bizzare HAHA either krimen man yan o something na nakakatawa/kakaiba/pambaihira, and it got me thinking ano nga bang experience ang naranasan ko na masasabi kong "certified cavite moment"
Ako personally, may nakatabi akong tindero ng pusit sa baby bus na nagyoyosi. Tapos yung driver nagyoyosi din. Konti na lang hihingi na ako eh kung hindi lang ako nagququit HAHA
Kayo, anong sa inyo?

I am obsessed with modern producers of drum and bass who opt for more 'natural' sounding drums, giving an emphasis to the raw, warm sounds of classical breakbeats. Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynzawXXUtzA
Comparing a mix like this though, to a late 90's jungle record, and there are major differences, two of the biggest I identified being the depth of the sound in the drums, aswell as the overall loudness of the track. For obtaining drums like this, I was wondering if anyone had any tips?
I found using just layered breakbeats did not create a heavy or punchy enough sound, aswell as sounding messy when being pushed to high volumes. Due to this, I opted for layering one shot snares, hats and kicks ontop of some EQ'd breakbeats. Despite them adding punch, I can't find a one shot snare that doesn't also seem to alter the natural sound of the breakbeat, making it sound like a 'breakbeat with a one shot layered' as opposed to just a fortified version of a classic breakbeat. Quick, synthetic snares were clean, yet added a pokiness, one which made the sample clearly audible as seperate from the breakbeat, and more raw, sustained snares would be more natural, but their sustain would muddy up the snare hits.
I also tried drum bus compression to 'glue', with an API2500 plugin, but the attack either feels too slow, making layered drum transients feel poky, or too fast, squashing them and removing the added punch.
I am assuming compression is heavily used in modern productions of this genre of music, but most compression tutorials focus more on your classic -3 LUFS banging Jump Up Drum and Bass, compression which I would assume would be amiss on a record like the one above. I was wondering if anyone had any tips for compressing in this particular style, and ways to give the drums punch and cohesion, while mantaining a raw sound.

I toured some parts of manhattan and I wanna do that cheesy red tour bus, but everyone I met has given me a different price, does anyone know where I can get the best price or the most bang for my buck? So far Ive gotten a $51/per person ticket for tour bus, a day, get in/get out anytime the day. Then I have a $88/ per person ticket for tour bus a day, includes a tour bus to statue of liberty (not the ferry) get in/get out anytime the day + night tour of the city
Has anyone gotten a better offer?

Hi!. My name is stef 35 yr old , I have this male friend na sobrang loyal talaga sa asawa niya he's ofw and may dalawa na silang anak pero di pa naman sila kasal. Citizen na ko dito sa Japan. Gusto ko siya kasi bihira kana lang talaga this day makakakita ng lalaking loyal kahit nasa malayo. Una ko siyang nakilala sinasabi niya na talaga na mahal na mahal niya daw asawa niya tapos friend lng talaga turing niya sakin hanggang don lang daw yun. Gusto ko siya kasi ang pag nag uusap kami ang ganda ng mga wisdom niya. Matagal na siya dito sa Japan pero never talaga siya nag cheat yan ang gusto kong lalaki ung loyal mahal na mahal ka talaga kahit malayo ka. Hawak nga ng asawa niya lahat ng social media accounts niya kaya tine-text ko nalang siya.
Binigyan niya ko ng gift last december pinasama ko siya sa sasakyan kasi doon ko bubuksan kaso di siya tumabi sakin nag video ako nong binubuksan ko gift niya. Binigyan niya ko ng hoody favorite color ko😍 Tinanong ko siya kng nakita niya ba akong nagsusukat ng damit kasi parang alam na alam niya kng anong kulay ang ibibigay niya sa akin, Sabi niya hindi naman raw na pansin niya lang talaga na ganyang mga kulay ang gusto ko and then biniro ko siya ng wala bang kiss diyan tumawa lang siya.And then nag bar kami one time marami naman kami first time kng pumasak sa bar non at nahihiya akong sumayaw pero hinawakan niya kamay ko tsaka pinasayaw niya 'ko.
Minsan pinupuntahan ko siya sa apartment niya pinapalabas ko siya at nag-uusap kmi sa sasakyan ko nag sha-share ako ng mga probmela ko sa kanya and nakikinig namn sya at nag aadvice. And then recently nag chat sa sakin na baka di na daw siya makakasabay samin kasi pinagbawalan na daw siya ng asawa niya at ayaw din niya ma stress asawa niya. Medyo na inis ako at nalungkot nong sinabi niya yun at doon ko na realise na parang na fafall na pala ako sa kanya😔.
And then na isip ko na pag awayin sila ng asawa niya may tour kami last week nag text ako sa kanya na tabi kami sa bus sabi niya ako daw bahala pero di naman siya tumabi sa akin. At habang nasa tour kami sinusubukan kong lumapit sa kanya kasi feeling ko umiiwas siya sakin at noong na abutan ko siya humahawak ako sa braso at kamay niya kaso tinatanggal niya sinasabihan niya ako na wag daw ako dikit ng dikit kasi baka ma issue kami at baka mat magsumbong daw sa asawa niya. Kaso di ako nakinig humahawak pa din ako and tapos iniwan niya ako na una siyang maglakad nainis siya siguro sakin kasi pinipilit kong humawak sa braso niya.
Feeling ko may gusto din siya sakin pinipigilan niya lang. Minsan kasi binabanatan niya ako ng pick up lines tapos gentleman siya, caring,masaya kasama at napapangiti niya ako. Pero ngayon hindi na sya nag cocoment sa mga post ko hindi na sya nag he-heart sa mga stories ko 'di na niya ako kinukulit, iniiwasan niya na ako. Siguro pinagsabihan siya ng asawa niya na iwasan ako.
ABYG kung bigyan ko magkahulugan ang mga gesture niya sakin. At na fall ako sa kanya kaya ngayon naiisip ko na pag awayin sila mag asawa at agawin ko siya.

Author's Note: Welp, I'm back. I'm going to be doing these super-short stories from now on instead of the multi-paged short stories that took several days to write. I tend to lose motivation in writing when I have long, drawn out stories. I just want to write these stories about my characters and focus on their character beats and emotions, rather than one long drawn out plot. I do intend on making an overarcing plot with these stories, but told over many, smaller instances.
This story introduces a new character that will not be recieving a character concept page. The reason why is because I simply am not interested in making game concepts and I'm not interested in Overwatch (The Game) anymore. I just want to focus on the stories of my characters.
Harvey King, the handsome, smooth-talking, knuckle-bruiser of Overwatch, now reduced to another ruffian locked behind steel bars. The once highly-esteemed son of New York Cities biggest tech conglomerate entrepenuer, Leonhard King, now another criminal locked away for life for the high crime of terrorism. Not only that, but he was thrown under the bus, used as a scapegoat to get pressure off of King Enterprises, the company that dad always loved more than his own son. His own son, dammit!
"I'm tellin you Harv," Sean muttered on from the top bunk. "you've gotta cool off or you'll get yourself killed!"
"Shut up!" Kingbursted out at his insolent cell mate. The New Worker was a fairly handsome man with a sharp jawline and beautiful nose, but his charcoal black hair had become ragged due to a profound lack of hair gel in prison. Harvey was looking into a glass shiv that he had stolen from the one-eyed punk down the isle, desperately trying to get the angle just right so that he could see his reflection in it. He ran is his fingers down his jaw line, feeling the creases and folds that had been left by Winston's Tesla Cannon. His perfect face, the face who's nose had never once been broken in all of Harvey's days of brawling, was now left with an electrical scar that he would have to live with for the foreseeable future, at least until he can break out of this hole and get it fixed with a healthy dosage of surgury. "That damn monkey, he ruined my face!" He turned to Sean. "Look at this, he ruined my face!"
"Yeah, I've been looking at it for the past month or so." Sean snickered.
"You realize I already have a life sentence?" King snarled, his tone had grew contempted.
"Yeah, so? Most people here d-"
"'That means it won't matter if I use your teeth for golf balls!"
"Oh please kid, you ain't the first young punk to threaten me li-"
"I'll be the first one to go through with it," King yelled at Sean. grabbing him by the collar and dragging him down from the top bunk. "If you don't shut your fu-"
"Shut up in there!" A guard banged his baton against the bars, interrupting King. "And get your hands off your cellmate!"
"Sorry officer," King put on a happy, personable tone of voice for the gaurd. He obediently dropped Sean. "Won't happen again, I promise."
"Yeah, yeah." The guard walked off, uninterested in King's crocodile smile.
The moment the guard turned his back, King's face switched like a lightbulb, going from bright and charismatic to dark and irritated in a mere moment. He turned back to his stupid cellmate and lashed out at him, grabbing his collar and pulling him in close. "I think we need to come to an understanding, you and I," Harvey spoke menacingly. "Look pal, I've already had to put up with a lotta bull lately. I do not need a dishevelled, ugly piece of crap, such as you, giving me more bull. So if you continue to irritate me, I'm gonna make you choke on your teeth. You get me?"
Sean, at a lost for words, simply nodded out of fear. Sean was ugly and dishevelled, Harvey was truthful when he said that, but he was also much smaller than Harvey and wouldn't be able to defend himself.
"Good." Harvey gave Sean a toothy grin. Even in the dimly lit, murkey prison cell, Harvey's teeth still glistened. He dropped Sean, who immediately crawled back onto the top bunk, hugging the wall this time as to avoid being pulled down again, and sat down on his cold, hard matress. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to think of how to get out of this situation. Only he couldn't think of an escape plan, he had too much on his mind. He was trying to make sense of everything that's happened, the mistakes he made that lead to this point. He had everyone at Overwatch wrapped around his fingers like marionettes, his facade was perfectly crafted. He couldn't help but reminisce about when he first started, the conversation he had with his father to get the whole thing set up, the developing of squeaky-clean persona that would be irresistable to Winston and Sojourn, the persona that landed him a spot on Overwatch's small roster of agents and made everyone fall in love with him. Well, not literally fall in love with him, but he was a natural smooth talker and very easy to like upon first meeting.
He remembered the conversation with his father that got him introduced to the likes of Winston in the first place, the conversation between his father and the leaders of Overwatch. King Enterprises had promised to provide Overwatch with funding, but only so Harvey could get a chance within their ranks. Leonhard King, father of Harvey King, was the CEO of King Enterprises. The old man was an idealist, and so was his only son. They wanted to leave a good impact on the world, with King Enterprises having been nicknamed "The Company of the People"; at least, that's what the public saw. No, the real Leonhard King was a tyranical capitalist who valued money over human rights, a greedy old man who was born into a mafia family, but being the the second-born meant he never got a chance to take over the family when his father died. Instead, it was his elder brother, Everett King II, named after his and Leonhard's father, who got to take over the family. Unsatisfied with being second fiddle, Leonhard left the family completely to become an entrepanuer, and now, 50 years later, he was on top of New York's social hierarchy with the biggest tech conglomerate in New England. King Enterprises was built into many facets of life in America, they built all sorts of cars, home appliances, home security systems, but that's only what the media saw.
Of course, Leonhard never shook off his knack for crime. He was a King, and criminality flowed through the King Bloodline; taking money out of decent folks pockets was in their blood. The horrible truth of the matter was that King Enterprises, "The Company of the People", got into all sorts of shady business, such as illegally shipping arms overseas, racketeering, maintaining ties in the black market, and lobbying shady politicians. On top of that, King Enterprises was a major player in the Military Industrial Complex, producing all sorts of weapons for the government, and shipping all the surplus over seas to other countries; a good chunk of all equipment used by the U.S. military was manufactored by King Enterprises. And it is because of this influence on the Military Industrial Complex that Leonhard King also provides funding to terrorist organizations such as Talon, organizations who are keen on creating conflict and pushing the world to the edge of war. Corporate corruption ran through every level of King Enterprises, and everyone outside of the corporation was none the wiser.
It was yard time, and King was hanging out alone. He hadn't made any attempts to socialize with any of the other ruffians the populate the prison, for he isn't planning on staying very long, but he did intend on working out as much as he could while he was there. A long time ago, when King was a kid hanging out in the slums of New York, he had a buddy called Twig. He was called Twig because he was very skinny, but mostly because King wasn't a very imaginitive nicknamer. He got sent to prison at the age of 16 for accidentally killing a guy while trying to jack his car, and came out a few years later completely jacked. King ended up shooting and killing him a while after he got outta prison, mostly because Twig blamed King for getting locked up and wanted revenge, but King still remembered in high regards.
King was readying himself for the bench press, stretching and giving himself a mental preptalk, thinking along the lines of "just cuz you're in prison doesn't mean ain't King no more," and the like. While he was getting ready, a loud, gruff voice cut off his train of thought. "Hey, punk!" King swung his head around to see who was yelling at him, and beheld a man who was around his same height, but very, very prison-jacked. Not as prison-jacked as Twig was, but still very prison-jacked. "Your daddy wanted to give you a message." This man didn't seem particularly friendly.
"My daddy?" King was not happy about this. A message from his father? Really? That old bastard wanted nothing to do with his son, and if he wanted to send him a message, he could visit him on every other thursday! "The hell's the meaning of this?"
"He said you couldn't be naming any name, kid. Said you'd understand." The big man pulled out a shiv, swinging his arm forward while rushing at King.
"The hell!?" King exclaimed, caught off guard by the sudden attack. He managed to catch the man's wrist, stopping the shiv from plunging right into his guts. He had to act quickly, he wouldn't be able to hold this man's arm for very long before he got overpowered, so he had to resort to some dirty tactics. Spitting in the man's eyes then kicking him in the shin did the trick, causing the jacked man to faulter and drop his shiv. Harvey had been in many a street fight during his life, and with the shiv out of the equation he would be also to out-box this man. King was an experienced brawler, he learned how to tussle on the streets of New York City, and was once mentored by a prize-fighter how to box. If not for his father's interference, King would've spent his entire life living in slums, hanging around his Uncle's turf, instead of in the King's Estate with his father.
With his attacker instinctually wiping spit out from his eyes, King had the perfect opportunity to land his signature KO'ing right hook right into the man's dome. King wasn't the biggest, most intimidating fella on the block, but he knew how to throw a punch with a surprising amount of power. King threw several more punches, beating the man senseless with merciless intensity, just to let off some steam that he's been holding in since his incarceration. He would've beaten that man to death if he hadn't been hit in the shoulder by a gaurd's heavy baton from behind. King fell down and got tackled by a gaurd, ending the fight.
Thursday rolled around, and it was the other thursday. King, of course, didn't have any visitors, but he did have a phone call. King impatiently tapped on the tabletop, eagerly waiting for someone to pick up the phone. A wide, sparkling smile stretched across his face as the wheezy voice of an elderly smoker come out the phone. "Who is this?" The voice calmly asked.
"Hey, Uncle."

I am totally at a loss and could really use some advice here. For some background: I (32F) married my husband (33M) almost two years ago. He has split custody of his son (10M) with his ex-wife (29ish?F). We will call her mom. Note: this is quite long, but I can't figure out a good way to shorten it. Questions are welcome. I will try to answer as best as I can.
A couple of years ago, my stepson got in trouble for showing his private parts to another child. I didn't think to ask back then, but I am under the impression the child was the same age as he was at the time (8 or so). At this time, my stepson was spending the school year mostly with his mom as we lived on the other side of the state from them. From what I gather, mom flipped out. My husband and I chalked it up as the normal part of being a child when you get curious about bodies. My husband talked to him about how it was not appropriate to show a part of his body to another person without consent and we took it as our cue to start talking to him about puberty/bodily changes etc. I was not very involved at this time as we were not married yet so this information is pretty limited to me.
Last week, we got a call from mom absolutely beside herself. Her neighbors (two of their kids are involved 5F and 7M) came over banging on her door saying that my stepson was showing his privates to their 7yo and the 7yo was showing his privates to my stepson as well. They alluded to the fact that they could call the police. Mom was shocked and didn't really handle it well. They came back maybe 15 minutes later with more information--not only was there showing, but one of the boys had put their mouth on the other boy's penis. Mom had totally flipped out on my stepson (took away all of his electronics privileges, and literally broke his laptop in front of him) and so we came to talk to him and give her a break to calm down. Before we were able to talk to my stepson, mom recounted an incident that happened about a week ago with the same kids. "They were dry-humping each other and I went out there and just handled it. They stopped." It should be noted, she did not tell the other parents about this until they came knocking about the current incident.
My stepson reported that the showing of their privates stopped about a year ago because the 5F caught them in the act and threatened to tell their parents. She agreed not to tell as long as my stepson "did things for her and was nice to her." Apparently that day, he upset her and she told her parents that he and 7M were showing each other their penises. My stepson leaned in on the fact that they both participated (stating 7M actually started the behavior.) He also didn't talk about the dry humping incident until we asked directly about it and then he said 5F was the one who started that. When we asked where he learned about putting mouths on other people's privates he said people on his bus talk about doing it all the time and he wanted to try it. He reported both boys participated in this behavior as well. We asked him directly about if anyone has shown him their privates before-he denied any other instances. We talked about consent again-they are all too young to consent and since he was the older party he has more responsibility in this. We reiterated that this behavior is not okay and could actually get him in a lot of real trouble. We also brought up that he can explore his own body and this is the only acceptable way to explore at this age.
I am fully aware that my stepson is probably not giving us the whole truth. He is also clearly trying to point blame away from himself. I am also fully aware that it is very possible the other kids felt coerced into this behavior while it is also possible they started the behavior. We just don't know. We plan on getting him into therapy more regularly. My real question is how bad is this? I'm worried about those kids and I'm worried that this behavior is becoming a pattern for my stepson. What boundaries can we put in place to keep him from repeating this behavior? We have already discussed not allowing him to play with younger kids, but that doesn't feel like enough. Also his mom is never on board with our parenting strategies so consistency is that much harder.
Not sure if this is super important, but my husband went to talk to neighbor mom on that night after we talked to my stepson. The talk went well enough that they exchanged numbers because neighbor mom doesn't want to deal with my stepsons mom anymore. We got a text from neighbor mom the other day asking for help because my stepson was playing in front of their house-she had specifically requested he stay away from their house and her children. We tried to deal with this by calling my stepson. He ended up complaining to his mom who called to tell us off about trying to respect the other parent's wishes and essentially stepping in on her parenting. Long story short here is mom has no intention of trying to play nice with the other parents or understand/address their concerns and is making navigating this situation so much more difficult.
TLDR: My 10M stepson is showing an escalating pattern of inappropriate sexual behavior with other children. I am looking for advice on how to handle it.

Oh, boy, Charlotte, do I have a doozy for you. It’s such a doozy that it comes in 2 parts. I guess it would qualify as petty revenge, since that’s the only flair that fit, but it’s more of an entitled Karen story.
For the sake of telling the story a little smoother, I'm going to explain some things up front. I (female, early 30s; let's call me Molly) am the manager in the accounting office of a very small loan company. Like, really small. We have less than 30 offices with only 2 employees at each office. For this reason, we are kind of low-tech, old-fashioned. I'm talking paper timesheets that get faxed to our office (we're also the corporate office that handles the payroll). Our office hours are 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with a half-hour lunch. Me & my employee (who we'll call Sally) work this shift. Our boss (who we'll call Greg) is the owner & CEO. He works in the office starting at 9:00 a.m. till whenever he leaves for the day. Most of the time, that's around the time we leave, sometimes it's earlier due to errands he needs to run.
So, in Oct 2022, Sally (female, early 30s) gave us a note that her doctor wants to have daily appointments with her indefinitely. She let us know she would need to leave at 3:30 every day. Greg granted that request & even gave her the opportunity to come in early so she didn't miss any of her 8 hours each day. So, she began coming to work between 6:45 & 7:00 & would take however long of a lunch she needed to so she would have an 8-hour day.
Due to a combination of our fiscal year-end work in Oct & Nov 2022, playing catch-up from Dec 2022 to Feb 2023, & the other coworker (who we'll call Irene) leaving the company in Feb 2023 so we had to play catch-up again for several months before we got used to the bigger workload, I hadn't been able to pay too close attention to Sally's work. But in the middle of Aug 2023, I began to suspect her. I realized that the tasks Sally had in the morning would usually take me an hour & a half to do, which meant I would be relatively finished by the time I would arrive at 8:30. Sally, on the other hand, would only have stuff halfway done. Now, I knew Sally worked slower than me since I knew the job better than she did, but this still seemed very slow. I began to suspect Sally was either not arriving as early as she said she was (she was the only one in the office before 8:30) or she was arriving on time but wasn't working.
On Aug 21 (Monday), I decided to come in early to the office since I had to make up time due to a doctor appointment later in the week. So, I arrived at work at 6:40. 6:45 rolled around...no Sally. 6:50...no Sally. 7:00...same thing. Sally arrived at 7:20. Now, ok, maybe she ran into traffic. However, that's a bit of a coincidence that the one day I show up early unannounced is also the day she happens to be late. But I waited to see what time Sally would write down on the timesheet. However, she didn't write down her time until Tuesday right before she left. She had written down that she had arrived at 7:05. I asked her about it, and her response was "I must have copied it down wrong from my spreadsheet." That's strange, 'cause you hadn't arrived at 7:05 any other day that week. Just where did you copy it down from?
Now, I am curious as to what time Sally puts down when she believes no one has seen what time she arrives. So, for Sept 4-15, I would arrive in the parking lot across the street & read a book & eat breakfast while I wait to see what time Sally would arrive. Every single day, she would arrive around 7:15 or 7:20, but would write down 6:45 or 6:50, a half hour discrepancy every single day. & we have no way of knowing how long she's been stealing a half hour every day. She could have been doing this for the past year since her schedule changed.
On Sept 18, I write down Sally's actual times from these 2 weeks on a paper & tell her to correct all the times I indicated. Sally says that she will use the office clock to write down her times from now on. Wait a minute, you're saying that your phone is a half hour earlier than the rest of the world? But only when you arrive at work. When you go to lunch & leave work, it matches the rest of the clocks. & then switches during the night so your arrival time can be wrong again the next day? Wow, that's a pretty glitchy phone you got there.
On Sept 20 after Sally left, I installed a camera that connects to an app in my phone. I put the camera in a place where it wouldn't be able to see any computers/paperwork & turned off the microphone (I didn't want to risk any company info being seen/heard). I only needed to see when Sally arrived. Where I ended up placing it, I was able to see Sally where she sat at her desk.
On three of the following days, Sally would arrive 10 to 15 minutes after the time she would write down. I speak with Greg about this, & we decide to write her up. By the way, usually when an employee is caught forging the timesheet like this, it's an immediate termination. At any other office, she would have gotten fired in the beginning of Sept after I first discovered the half hour forgery. I am deciding to give her a chance to make this whole thing right.
On Sept 26 (Tuesday), I give Sally the write up when she arrives.
Sally: I'll sign it, but I don't know why. I mean, I get here at 7:00. (Ok, there's a sign right there. Who signs an official write up when their employer is lying or setting them up?)
Me: I've observed you arriving between 7:10 & 7:15.
Sally reads the write up & then keeps it at her desk for a bit after signing it. After plenty of time, I ask for it back. She grabs it, so I lean forward & hold my hand out (our desks are right next to each other), but Sally flings it at my desk. The whole thing is made better by the fact that Greg is out of town Tuesday thru Thursday. So, Sally proceeds to be angry & have an attitude all the way through Thursday. She refuses to talk or answer the phones. She does that tossing/flicking-papers-around, aggressive-typing, heavily-setting-things-down thing people do when they're frustrated or angry (which she did all...day...long). She sped out of the parking lot & down the street so fast that I could hear her engine rev & tires squeal from inside the building.
On Sept 27 (Wednesday), Sally is still doing that slamming things thing. I enjoy not responding to her whatsoever. I could see out of the corner of my eye that she would slam something down & look at me. I wouldn't give any kind of reaction, wouldn't look at her, & it would piss her off. Sally would then start slamming things around again. I admit, that was fun.
On Sept 28 (Thursday), I see on the camera that Sally arrives at 7:00, but then I watch her sit on her phone for 45 minutes! She is still having attitude issues, &—unbelievably—is still slamming things. After she leaves for the day, I then see the calendar that Sally keeps on her desk as I was passing by. On the box for Sept 26 (the day she was written up), she had written the words "F***ING JOKE!". The audacity of her to write that in plain view of everyone in the office & think she wouldn't get in trouble for it.
On Sept 29 (Friday), Sally arrives at 7:00 but sits on her phone for 30 minutes WHILE VAPING! (Not sure about other cities or states, but it's illegal to smoke or vape inside a building in the city where our office is.) But Greg is back this day, & I had been texting him what's been going on. He had texted back he wanted to do a meeting on Friday. So, the 3 of us go into the breakroom for a meeting.
Greg: So, Sally, what's been going on with this timesheet thing?
Sally: I just, I forget to write down the time when I arrive.
Greg: Ok, well, whether it's done on purpose or through negligence, we can't have wrong times on the timesheet. So, from now on, you won't be able to come to work before Molly gets here at 8:30. Now, are there any other problems you'd like to discuss with us?
Sally: (begins getting worked up) I just, I feel like I can't talk to her. She creates such a hostile work environment.
Now, I am blown away. Me? Hostile? I'm autistic, so I'm naturally shy & hate socializing, so I usually don't talk to anyone very much. Everyone I tell this story to, their eyes widen when I mention this, 'cause there's no way anyone would ever describe me as hostile.
Luckily, Greg interrupts her to defend me: This isn't a hostile work environment.
Sally: (backpedaling) Well, I mean, she gets mad at her printer & bangs on it, & that just flashes me back to stuff. I mean, I'm trying to work on myself & the anxiety, & she just sends me back.
Oh, so now, we're claiming we have PTSD & that my "violent" actions are giving her flashbacks? Um, who is it laughing right along with me every time my printer jams? (By the way, I know she's lying about the PTSD, 'cause I have a couple friends with PTSD & recognize the signs. Sally doesn't show any sign of fear or panic or shrinking away from things, nothing like that. There are no signs whatsoever of her being alarmed by anything I do.) Oh, not to mention the double standards. You're allowed to slam things around (for 3 straight days, by the way), but I'm not?
Anyway, we wrap up the meeting after Greg underlines (for Sally's benefit) that everyone in the office needs to get along.
On Oct 2 (the next Monday), I had a good drive & happened to get there at 8:20. Sally arrives at 8:25 & comes in, stopping at my desk.
Sally: (annoyed) Are you gonna be early all week?
Me: (frowning & caught off-guard) Um, I don't know. It just depends how long my drive takes.
Sally: (with a snarky attitude) 'Cause I had to keep driving around waiting for you, so if you're gonna be early, I'd like to know.
Ok, first of all, no one is forcing you to drive around. You can park your car in the parking lot. Do you really think we're gonna fire you for sitting in the parking lot while you wait for me? We only said you couldn't come in & work before I do. & second, it's none of your business when I get to work. My shift starts at 8:30, therefore, you should aim for 8:30, just like Greg told you to do. How am I supposed to predict the exact minute I get to work? & you're gonna get angry at me 'cause I didn't show up before my shift starts? Since when is it a requirement of mine to come into work before I start working?
Well, a bit of malicious compliance in this entitled story: if I can see I'm going to arrive at work more than 5 minutes early, I stop at the store just down the road & shop until 8:30. 'Cause guess what? Sally gets there who knows how early & sits in the gas station across the street, waiting for me. Fine, you wanna be that way? I can be petty, too.
By the way, Sally has a radio talk show she listens to from before I get to work until it ends at 10:00. I'm not into talk shows, but it wasn't too annoying (most of the time), so I didn't say anything about it. The reason why I started having a problem listening to it was that they would get into inappropriate things (s** toy review, for example). It made me super uncomfortable when they did segments like this. From the moment Sally was written up, she started only listening to the show on her headphones, thinking she was punishing me by me not getting to hear the show. Joke's on her. Sally did me a favor by not having to listen to that thing.
Sally was also told that she is no longer allowed to take smoke breaks on the clock. As no one else in the office takes breaks but chooses to work through them, this change would be made so all employees were equal now. But here’s the interesting thing: Sally suddenly stopped taking smoke breaks at all, but her bathroom breaks grew more numerous & longer. When she had been taking smoke breaks, the alarm on her phone would go off at specific times, such as 2:00. She would then go outside to take her smoke break. After the on-the-clock-smoke-break privilege was taken away, the same alarms would go off, such as 2:00. She would then disappear to the bathroom for 15 minutes. & I even smelled smoke in there when I went in there right after one of these long bathroom breaks.
Ever since the write up, there’s been attitude every once in a while. Most of the time, I have no idea what it is I did that could possibly have set her off that day. All I know is that Sally’s suddenly slamming things around again (hmm, PTSD cured now, is it?). & she’s still constantly making mistakes (like she’s always done).
On Nov 27, Sally is working on the Funding (loan proceeds funded onto a customer’s debit card). What we do is get the list of customers, determine how much the office funded that customer, transfer the money from the office’s bank account to the holding account, & then transfer the total from the holding account to the account that directly funds the debit cards to replenish the money. We had two customers with similar names (say, John Smith & Jack Smith). Sally hadn’t paid attention to the whole name & had applied John’s $0 funding to Jack. However, Jack had been funded $250. So, that money was missed, & I had to make a separate transfer for it.
On Dec 4, Sally is working on the Funding & writes down $0 for a customer. But the report from the office says he actually got $96.
On Dec 8 & 9, we discovered 2 checks that were supposed to be sent to our office (one from Oct, one from Sept). Neither had been cashed, & neither had ever reached us, even though we had the rest of the paperwork that would have come with those checks. Due to the dots I had connected, I had a pretty strong hunch that Sally wasn’t thoroughly checking the mail envelopes to make sure they’d been completely emptied before they got thrown away. I believed these checks were still in some envelopes that were then thrown away by Sally.
On Dec 11, on the bank reconciliation sheets we work at the end of the month (like balancing a checkbook), one of Sally’s offices was out of balance by $68, & she couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find it, either. I pulled out the one done for the month before. I couldn’t find it there, either. But I did notice one thing. The checks that hadn’t cleared the bank yet didn’t add up to the total amount of outstanding checks Sally had written down. By $68. I go back to the month before that one. There were a total of $68 in old checks that never got cashed & therefore should have gotten written off on the fiscal year-end at the end of Oct. But she hadn’t transferred them to the new month’s sheet. So, now, we have to hold onto them for a whole year to write off next Oct.
The same day, I went through all the offices to double check the GL codes that we post the expense checks to (GL codes determine where an expense gets coded, e.g., post an electricity payment to the GL code for utilities). The day previously, Sally had gotten several GL codes incorrect in the Miller office. She had forgotten to change the codes from the one for the Checkbook to the ones for the expense account. She had caught those ones since it affected the balance of the Checkbook, so I had helped her fix those properly. However, there were expense checks sent to a GL code that wasn’t the right one that Sally hadn’t caught.
I talk with Greg, as I feel that every time I turn around, I am either retraining Sally on stuff I’ve trained her on multiple times, I’m correcting mistakes on stuff Sally should know how to do by now (‘cause again, I’ve trained her multiple times), or I’m disciplining Sally about stuff she’s doing wrong. Greg asks how many mistakes due to carelessness she’s made in the last 2 weeks. I check my notes & tell him 4. He says that’s too excessive for an accounting office. We need to write her up.
So, I made the write up, but I just know I’m going to be dealing with the same attitude as the last time I had to write her up. & guess what? Greg’s out of town till Thursday again. I used my phone this time to record the audio of the interaction. That way, if Sally has attitude towards me again, I’m able to play the recording to Greg so he can hear what Sally’s like when he’s not here (which is why the following conversation is pretty much word for word).
On Dec 12 (Tuesday), I sat her down first thing.
Me: So, in the past couple weeks, I’ve noticed some errors happening due to carelessness, & they’ve become a bit excessive for an accounting office. The most important thing in an accounting office is accuracy. That’s why we focus so much on thoroughness & attention to detail. So, whatever needs to happen to lessen those errors, whether it’s slowing the pace of the work itself or double & triple-checking the work before it’s finished, it needs to happen. For example, when I work the payroll, after I get the total for all the offices, I then subtract each person’s individual hours to double check my entries. That way, if there is an error, at least I know it wasn’t ‘cause I was going too fast or not paying attention or something. So, whatever you need to do to decrease the mistakes, please—
Sally: What errors are we talking about?
Me: I have a page here with the items from the last couple weeks. (hand her the write up)
Sally: (reads the pages for a minute) Ok…
Me: So, whatever you need to do to—
Sally: (talking quickly ‘cause she’s pissed now) I’m gonna need more time & focus strictly on Funding. I don’t wanna touch mail, I don’t wanna touch anything else. I wanna focus strictly on that. ‘Cause I’m getting 80 plus a day (which was a lie, we never get nearly that much), & now, I’m gonna start getting in trouble if it’s not 110%. I am human. I will make mistakes. So, if that’s not allowed, then…(shrugs) let me know, I guess. I’ll talk to Greg & I guess figure something out. I am human, & I am gonna make mistakes, A. B, I feel like crap. He (Greg) has been in here sick the last week. I caught whatever he has. I’ve been hacking. I’ve been sicker than sh** the last week. I am trying. You guys usually have until the 12th to close the month. Since I’ve worked here, I’ve closed before the 8th. Yeah, I made mistakes. I told you I made a mistake on the Miller office. I knew what happened. So, to throw it in my face again that I already made that mistake is kinda rude, but…(shrugs) I’m actually kinda shocked to see that on there.
Me: Well, you did catch the errors involving the Checkbook, but there were other mistakes on that office that you didn’t catch, & that’s the reason that was listed on there.
Sally goes back to her work, & I decide to not ask her to sign the write up I had given her right away since she was diving right into the Funding. She had expressed she wanted to focus solely on it to minimize mistakes. I wanted to use positive reinforcement to convey that this was good behavior & good thinking, so I decided to wait for her to finish before asking her to sign & return the write up.
Now, here’s the issues with her little outburst above.

1. Sally is complaining that she’s human & makes mistakes & we’re not allowing mistakes. We’re not saying that she can’t make mistakes, ‘cause she’s right. Everyone makes mistakes; I make mistakes. What we’re saying is that she’s making mistakes much too often.
   
2. Sally says the reason for these mistakes the last 2 weeks is ‘cause she’s been sick the last week or so ‘cause she caught what Greg had (do you see the timing problem there?). Also, these kinds of mistakes have been happening for months & months. I only brought these examples up ‘cause they were recent.
   
3. Sally pointed out the fact that she closes each month really quick. We don’t care how fast things get done. Our goal isn’t to get things done quickly but to get things done accurately. If we happen to get it done quickly, that’s just a bonus. We would rather things go slow than to have errors causing problems or costing us money ‘cause we didn’t take the time to make sure it was correct.
   
4. Sally states it’s rude that I’m throwing her error back in her face (you already know my reaction to that). She obviously doesn’t know how a job works. Just ‘cause we discussed this error already doesn’t mean it can’t go on the write up. This is just one of the examples that required us to do a write up. We’re not doing this ‘cause we want to write you up or that we’re looking for excuses to get you in trouble. We’re doing our job. If a situation needs correcting, we have to correct it. We can’t just ignore it. & obviously, me talking about your errors all these months hasn’t helped. You’re still making the same mistakes. So, now, we’ve had to escalate to a write up on paper.
   

Sally doesn’t say another word. She, as expected, starts doing her tossing-things-‘cause-I’m-pissed-off thing. I just go back to my work. I’ve said my piece, now we can put it behind us & move on.
Now, we have until 10:30 to make the transfers for this Funding program in order to get the money back to the account the same day. We are still missing the paperwork for 2 customers from an office. (FYI, when we’re missing paperwork, we call the office & ask them to fax it. If we still don’t get it when it gets close to the transfer deadline, we call again & just ask for the amount to get it done.) So, at 10:20, Sally turns to me.
Sally: What do I do for these 2 customers? Do I just skip them?
Me: (frowning) Do what you usually do when you don’t have the paperwork in time. Call the office—
Sally: (in a sharp tone) I did. (she’s assuming I mean call the office to tell them to fax it)
Me: (ignoring her attitude outburst) Call up the office & ask for the dollar amounts.
Sally: But I don’t want to write down the amount without seeing the actual paperwork. If I’m gonna get in trouble for errors now, I don’t want to take down what could be the wrong dollar amount over the phone. I mean, I think that’s only fair to me.
Me: In the instances that were mentioned, they weren’t cases of taking down an amount over the phone. They were instances where we had paperwork or a report to see the amount. We would never write you up if there was a possibility that the office gave you the wrong amount over the phone.
Sally stares at me for a second & turns back to her desk. I turn back to my own work as Sally then calls up the office. I had to deal with her attitude the rest of the day: throwing mail into the mailbox, throwing open the letter folding machine so it made a big bang on the table. I was trying to still be the usual friendly, professional person I am at work; I told her “See you tomorrow” & everything. Sally wouldn’t talk to me unless she had to.
This is when I discovered that Sally has a habit of lashing out at me when she gets in trouble. The first write up involved her trying to drag me under the bus by claiming I’m hostile. This time, it was more personal. See, we do a Christmas gift exchange at the office; we each buy each other a gift. I had searched over & over trying to find something Sally would like. I finally found this desk calendar with gnomes on it (she likes both of these things), so I got it & a couple small items. I open my gift from Sally, & among a few cheap little things, I found…Sally’s own nearly empty bottle of nail polish remover. Wow, this is the thanks I get for not firing you back in Sept with the whole timesheet forgery thing?
& this is where I leave you until Part 2, the conclusion.

I never thought I would have a story to share in one of these threads, but it finally happened. I apologize for the length (so long it has to be split into 2 parts), but this one is a doozy.
For the sake of telling the story a little smoother, I'm going to explain some things up front. I (female, early 30s; let's call me Molly) am the manager in the accounting office of a very small loan company. Like, really small. We have less than 30 offices with only 2 employees at each office. For this reason, we are kind of low-tech, old-fashioned. I'm talking paper timesheets that get faxed to our office (we're also the corporate office that handles the payroll). Our office hours are 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with a half-hour lunch. Me & my employee (who we'll call Sally) work this shift. Our boss (who we'll call Greg) is the owner & CEO. He works in the office starting at 9:00 a.m. till whenever he leaves for the day. Most of the time, that's around the time we leave, sometimes it's earlier due to errands he needs to run.
So, in Oct 2022, Sally (female, early 30s) gave us a note that her doctor wants to have daily appointments with her indefinitely. She let us know she would need to leave at 3:30 every day. Greg granted that request & even gave her the opportunity to come in early so she didn't miss any of her 8 hours each day. So, she began coming to work between 6:45 & 7:00 & would take however long of a lunch she needed to so she would have an 8-hour day.
Due to a combination of our fiscal year-end work in Oct & Nov 2022, playing catch-up from Dec 2022 to Feb 2023, & the other coworker (who we'll call Irene) leaving the company in Feb 2023 so we had to play catch-up again for several months before we got used to the bigger workload, I hadn't been able to pay too close attention to Sally's work. But in the middle of Aug 2023, I began to suspect her. I realized that the tasks Sally had in the morning would usually take me an hour & a half to do, which meant I would be relatively finished by the time I would arrive at 8:30. Sally, on the other hand, would only have stuff halfway done. Now, I knew Sally worked slower than me since I knew the job better than she did, but this still seemed very slow. I began to suspect Sally was either not arriving as early as she said she was (she was the only one in the office before 8:30) or she was arriving on time but wasn't working.
On Aug 21 (Monday), I decided to come in early to the office since I had to make up time due to a doctor appointment later in the week. So, I arrived at work at 6:40. 6:45 rolled around...no Sally. 6:50...no Sally. 7:00...same thing. Sally arrived at 7:20. Now, ok, maybe she ran into traffic. However, that's a bit of a coincidence that the one day I show up early unannounced is also the day she happens to be late. But I waited to see what time Sally would write down on the timesheet. However, she didn't write down her time until Tuesday right before she left. She had written down that she had arrived at 7:05. I asked her about it, and her response was "I must have copied it down wrong from my spreadsheet." That's strange, 'cause you hadn't arrived at 7:05 any other day that week. Just where did you copy it down from?
Now, I am curious as to what time Sally puts down when she believes no one has seen what time she arrives. So, for Sept 4-15, I would arrive in the parking lot across the street & read a book & eat breakfast while I wait to see what time Sally would arrive. Every single day, she would arrive around 7:15 or 7:20, but would write down 6:45 or 6:50, a half hour discrepancy every single day. & we have no way of knowing how long she's been stealing a half hour every day. She could have been doing this for the past year since her schedule changed.
On Sept 18, I write down Sally's actual times from these 2 weeks on a paper & tell her to correct all the times I indicated. Sally says that she will use the office clock to write down her times from now on. Wait a minute, you're saying that your phone is a half hour earlier than the rest of the world? But only when you arrive at work. When you go to lunch & leave work, it matches the rest of the clocks. & then switches during the night so your arrival time can be wrong again the next day? Wow, that's a pretty glitchy phone you got there.
On Sept 20 after Sally left, I installed a camera that connects to an app in my phone. I put the camera in a place where it wouldn't be able to see any computers/paperwork & turned off the microphone (I didn't want to risk any company info being seen/heard). I only needed to see when Sally arrived. Where I ended up placing it, I was able to see Sally where she sat at her desk.
On three of the following days, Sally would arrive 10 to 15 minutes after the time she would write down. I speak with Greg about this, & we decide to write her up. By the way, usually when an employee is caught forging the timesheet like this, it's an immediate termination. At any other office, she would have gotten fired in the beginning of Sept after I first discovered the half hour forgery. I am deciding to give her a chance to make this whole thing right.
On Sept 26 (Tuesday), I give Sally the write up when she arrives.
Sally: I'll sign it, but I don't know why. I mean, I get here at 7:00. (Ok, there's a sign right there. Who signs an official write up when their employer is lying or setting them up?)
Me: I've observed you arriving between 7:10 & 7:15.
Sally reads the write up & then keeps it at her desk for a bit after signing it. After plenty of time, I ask for it back. She grabs it, so I lean forward & hold my hand out (our desks are right next to each other), but Sally flings it at my desk. The whole thing is made better by the fact that Greg is out of town Tuesday thru Thursday. So, Sally proceeds to be angry & have an attitude all the way through Thursday. She refuses to talk or answer the phones. She does that tossing/flicking-papers-around, aggressive-typing, heavily-setting-things-down thing people do when they're frustrated or angry (which she did all...day...long). She sped out of the parking lot & down the street so fast that I could hear her engine rev & tires squeal from inside the building.
On Sept 27 (Wednesday), Sally is still doing that slamming things thing. I enjoy not responding to her whatsoever. I could see out of the corner of my eye that she would slam something down & look at me. I wouldn't give any kind of reaction, wouldn't look at her, & it would piss her off. Sally would then start slamming things around again. I admit, that was fun.
On Sept 28 (Thursday), I see on the camera that Sally arrives at 7:00, but then I watch her sit on her phone for 45 minutes! She is still having attitude issues, &—unbelievably—is still slamming things. After she leaves for the day, I then see the calendar that Sally keeps on her desk as I was passing by. On the box for Sept 26 (the day she was written up), she had written the words "F***ING JOKE!". The audacity of her to write that in plain view of everyone in the office & think she wouldn't get in trouble for it.
On Sept 29 (Friday), Sally arrives at 7:00 but sits on her phone for 30 minutes WHILE VAPING! (Not sure about other cities or states, but it's illegal to smoke or vape inside a building in the city where our office is.) But Greg is back this day, & I had been texting him what's been going on. He had texted back he wanted to do a meeting on Friday. So, the 3 of us go into the breakroom for a meeting.
Greg: So, Sally, what's been going on with this timesheet thing?
Sally: I just, I forget to write down the time when I arrive.
Greg: Ok, well, whether it's done on purpose or through negligence, we can't have wrong times on the timesheet. So, from now on, you won't be able to come to work before Molly gets here at 8:30. Now, are there any other problems you'd like to discuss with us?
Sally: (begins getting worked up) I just, I feel like I can't talk to her. She creates such a hostile work environment.
Now, I am blown away. Me? Hostile? I'm autistic, so I'm naturally shy & hate socializing, so I usually don't talk to anyone very much. Everyone I tell this story to, their eyes widen when I mention this, 'cause there's no way anyone would ever describe me as hostile.
Luckily, Greg interrupts her to defend me: This isn't a hostile work environment.
Sally: (backpedaling) Well, I mean, she gets mad at her printer & bangs on it, & that just flashes me back to stuff. I mean, I'm trying to work on myself & the anxiety, & she just sends me back.
Oh, so now, we're claiming we have PTSD & that my "violent" actions are giving her flashbacks? Um, who is it laughing right along with me every time my printer jams? (By the way, I know she's lying about the PTSD, 'cause I have a couple friends with PTSD & recognize the signs. Sally doesn't show any sign of fear or panic or shrinking away from things, nothing like that. There are no signs whatsoever of her being alarmed by anything I do.) Oh, not to mention the double standards. You're allowed to slam things around (for 3 straight days, by the way), but I'm not?
Anyway, we wrap up the meeting after Greg underlines (for Sally's benefit) that everyone in the office needs to get along.
On Oct 2 (the next Monday), I had a good drive & happened to get there at 8:20. Sally arrives at 8:25 & comes in, stopping at my desk.
Sally: (annoyed) Are you gonna be early all week?
Me: (frowning & caught off-guard) Um, I don't know. It just depends how long my drive takes.
Sally: (with a snarky attitude) 'Cause I had to keep driving around waiting for you, so if you're gonna be early, I'd like to know.
Ok, first of all, no one is forcing you to drive around. You can park your car in the parking lot. Do you really think we're gonna fire you for sitting in the parking lot while you wait for me? We only said you couldn't come in & work before I do. & second, it's none of your business when I get to work. My shift starts at 8:30, therefore, you should aim for 8:30, just like Greg told you to do. How am I supposed to predict the exact minute I get to work? & you're gonna get angry at me 'cause I didn't show up before my shift starts? Since when is it a requirement of mine to come into work before I start working?
Well, a bit of malicious compliance in this entitled story: if I can see I'm going to arrive at work more than 5 minutes early, I stop at the store just down the road & shop until 8:30. 'Cause guess what? Sally gets there who knows how early & sits in the gas station across the street, waiting for me. Fine, you wanna be that way? I can be petty, too.
By the way, Sally has a radio talk show she listens to from before I get to work until it ends at 10:00. I'm not into talk shows, but it wasn't too annoying (most of the time), so I didn't say anything about it. The reason why I started having a problem listening to it was that they would get into inappropriate things (s** toy review, for example). It made me super uncomfortable when they did segments like this. From the moment Sally was written up, she started only listening to the show on her headphones, thinking she was punishing me by me not getting to hear the show. Joke's on her. Sally did me a favor by not having to listen to that thing.
Sally was also told that she is no longer allowed to take smoke breaks on the clock. As no one else in the office takes breaks but chooses to work through them, this change would be made so all employees were equal now. But here’s the interesting thing: Sally suddenly stopped taking smoke breaks at all, but her bathroom breaks grew more numerous & longer. When she had been taking smoke breaks, the alarm on her phone would go off at specific times, such as 2:00. She would then go outside to take her smoke break. After the on-the-clock-smoke-break privilege was taken away, the same alarms would go off, such as 2:00. She would then disappear to the bathroom for 15 minutes. & I even smelled smoke in there when I went in there right after one of these long bathroom breaks.
Ever since the write up, there’s been attitude every once in a while. Most of the time, I have no idea what it is I did that could possibly have set her off that day. All I know is that Sally’s suddenly slamming things around again (hmm, PTSD cured now, is it?). & she’s still constantly making mistakes (like she’s always done).
On Nov 27, Sally is working on the Funding (loan proceeds funded onto a customer’s debit card). What we do is get the list of customers, determine how much the office funded that customer, transfer the money from the office’s bank account to the holding account, & then transfer the total from the holding account to the account that directly funds the debit cards to replenish the money. We had two customers with similar names (say, John Smith & Jack Smith). Sally hadn’t paid attention to the whole name & had applied John’s $0 funding to Jack. However, Jack had been funded $250. So, that money was missed, & I had to make a separate transfer for it.
On Dec 4, Sally is working on the Funding & writes down $0 for a customer. But the report from the office says he actually got $96.
On Dec 8 & 9, we discovered 2 checks that were supposed to be sent to our office (one from Oct, one from Sept). Neither had been cashed, & neither had ever reached us, even though we had the rest of the paperwork that would have come with those checks. Due to the dots I had connected, I had a pretty strong hunch that Sally wasn’t thoroughly checking the mail envelopes to make sure they’d been completely emptied before they got thrown away. I believed these checks were still in some envelopes that were then thrown away by Sally.
On Dec 11, on the bank reconciliation sheets we work at the end of the month (like balancing a checkbook), one of Sally’s offices was out of balance by $68, & she couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find it, either. I pulled out the one done for the month before. I couldn’t find it there, either. But I did notice one thing. The checks that hadn’t cleared the bank yet didn’t add up to the total amount of outstanding checks Sally had written down. By $68. I go back to the month before that one. There were a total of $68 in old checks that never got cashed & therefore should have gotten written off on the fiscal year-end at the end of Oct. But she hadn’t transferred them to the new month’s sheet. So, now, we have to hold onto them for a whole year to write off next Oct.
The same day, I went through all the offices to double check the GL codes that we post the expense checks to (GL codes determine where an expense gets coded, e.g., post an electricity payment to the GL code for utilities). The day previously, Sally had gotten several GL codes incorrect in the Miller office. She had forgotten to change the codes from the one for the Checkbook to the ones for the expense account. She had caught those ones since it affected the balance of the Checkbook, so I had helped her fix those properly. However, there were expense checks sent to a GL code that wasn’t the right one that Sally hadn’t caught.
I talk with Greg, as I feel that every time I turn around, I am either retraining Sally on stuff I’ve trained her on multiple times, I’m correcting mistakes on stuff Sally should know how to do by now (‘cause again, I’ve trained her multiple times), or I’m disciplining Sally about stuff she’s doing wrong. Greg asks how many mistakes due to carelessness she’s made in the last 2 weeks. I check my notes & tell him 4. He says that’s too excessive for an accounting office. We need to write her up.
So, I made the write up, but I just know I’m going to be dealing with the same attitude as the last time I had to write her up. & guess what? Greg’s out of town till Thursday again. I used my phone this time to record the audio of the interaction. That way, if Sally has attitude towards me again, I’m able to play the recording to Greg so he can hear what Sally’s like when he’s not here (which is why the following conversation is pretty much word for word).
On Dec 12 (Tuesday), I sat her down first thing.
Me: So, in the past couple weeks, I’ve noticed some errors happening due to carelessness, & they’ve become a bit excessive for an accounting office. The most important thing in an accounting office is accuracy. That’s why we focus so much on thoroughness & attention to detail. So, whatever needs to happen to lessen those errors, whether it’s slowing the pace of the work itself or double & triple-checking the work before it’s finished, it needs to happen. For example, when I work the payroll, after I get the total for all the offices, I then subtract each person’s individual hours to double check my entries. That way, if there is an error, at least I know it wasn’t ‘cause I was going too fast or not paying attention or something. So, whatever you need to do to decrease the mistakes, please—
Sally: What errors are we talking about?
Me: I have a page here with the items from the last couple weeks. (hand her the write up)
Sally: (reads the pages for a minute) Ok…
Me: So, whatever you need to do to—
Sally: (talking quickly ‘cause she’s pissed now) I’m gonna need more time & focus strictly on Funding. I don’t wanna touch mail, I don’t wanna touch anything else. I wanna focus strictly on that. ‘Cause I’m getting 80 plus a day (which was a lie, we never get nearly that much), & now, I’m gonna start getting in trouble if it’s not 110%. I am human. I will make mistakes. So, if that’s not allowed, then…(shrugs) let me know, I guess. I’ll talk to Greg & I guess figure something out. I am human, & I am gonna make mistakes, A. B, I feel like crap. He (Greg) has been in here sick the last week. I caught whatever he has. I’ve been hacking. I’ve been sicker than sh** the last week. I am trying. You guys usually have until the 12th to close the month. Since I’ve worked here, I’ve closed before the 8th. Yeah, I made mistakes. I told you I made a mistake on the Miller office. I knew what happened. So, to throw it in my face again that I already made that mistake is kinda rude, but…(shrugs) I’m actually kinda shocked to see that on there.
Me: Well, you did catch the errors involving the Checkbook, but there were other mistakes on that office that you didn’t catch, & that’s the reason that was listed on there.
Sally goes back to her work, & I decide to not ask her to sign the write up I had given her right away since she was diving right into the Funding. She had expressed she wanted to focus solely on it to minimize mistakes. I wanted to use positive reinforcement to convey that this was good behavior & good thinking, so I decided to wait for her to finish before asking her to sign & return the write up.
Now, here’s the issues with her little outburst above.

1. Sally is complaining that she’s human & makes mistakes & we’re not allowing mistakes. We’re not saying that she can’t make mistakes, ‘cause she’s right. Everyone makes mistakes; I make mistakes. What we’re saying is that she’s making mistakes much too often.
   
2. Sally says the reason for these mistakes the last 2 weeks is ‘cause she’s been sick the last week or so ‘cause she caught what Greg had (do you see the timing problem there?). Also, these kinds of mistakes have been happening for months & months. I only brought these examples up ‘cause they were recent.
   
3. Sally pointed out the fact that she closes each month really quick. We don’t care how fast things get done. Our goal isn’t to get things done quickly but to get things done accurately. If we happen to get it done quickly, that’s just a bonus. We would rather things go slow than to have errors causing problems or costing us money ‘cause we didn’t take the time to make sure it was correct.
   
4. Sally states it’s rude that I’m throwing her error back in her face (you already know my reaction to that). She obviously doesn’t know how a job works. Just ‘cause we discussed this error already doesn’t mean it can’t go on the write up. This is just one of the examples that required us to do a write up. We’re not doing this ‘cause we want to write you up or that we’re looking for excuses to get you in trouble. We’re doing our job. If a situation needs correcting, we have to correct it. We can’t just ignore it. & obviously, me talking about your errors all these months hasn’t helped. You’re still making the same mistakes. So, now, we’ve had to escalate to a write up on paper.
   

Sally doesn’t say another word. She, as expected, starts doing her tossing-things-‘cause-I’m-pissed-off thing. I just go back to my work. I’ve said my piece, now we can put it behind us & move on.
Now, we have until 10:30 to make the transfers for this Funding program in order to get the money back to the account the same day. We are still missing the paperwork for 2 customers from an office. (FYI, when we’re missing paperwork, we call the office & ask them to fax it. If we still don’t get it when it gets close to the transfer deadline, we call again & just ask for the amount to get it done.) So, at 10:20, Sally turns to me.
Sally: What do I do for these 2 customers? Do I just skip them?
Me: (frowning) Do what you usually do when you don’t have the paperwork in time. Call the office—
Sally: (in a sharp tone) I did. (she’s assuming I mean call the office to tell them to fax it)
Me: (ignoring her attitude outburst) Call up the office & ask for the dollar amounts.
Sally: But I don’t want to write down the amount without seeing the actual paperwork. If I’m gonna get in trouble for errors now, I don’t want to take down what could be the wrong dollar amount over the phone. I mean, I think that’s only fair to me.
Me: In the instances that were mentioned, they weren’t cases of taking down an amount over the phone. They were instances where we had paperwork or a report to see the amount. We would never write you up if there was a possibility that the office gave you the wrong amount over the phone.
Sally stares at me for a second & turns back to her desk. I turn back to my own work as Sally then calls up the office. I had to deal with her attitude the rest of the day: throwing mail into the mailbox, throwing open the letter folding machine so it made a big bang on the table. I was trying to still be the usual friendly, professional person I am at work; I told her “See you tomorrow” & everything. Sally wouldn’t talk to me unless she had to.
This is when I discovered that Sally has a habit of lashing out at me when she gets in trouble. The first write up involved her trying to drag me under the bus by claiming I’m hostile. This time, it was more personal. See, we do a Christmas gift exchange at the office; we each buy each other a gift. I had searched over & over trying to find something Sally would like. I finally found this desk calendar with gnomes on it (she likes both of these things), so I got it & a couple small items. I open my gift from Sally, & among a few cheap little things, I found…Sally’s own nearly empty bottle of nail polish remover. Wow, this is the thanks I get for not firing you back in Sept with the whole timesheet forgery thing?
& this is where I leave you until Part 2, the conclusion.

I'll be landing in Dublin Monday morning and I'll have a few hours to kill before I hop on a bus to Cork. I'm trying to find a good spot for brekkie and to kill time before my bus ride, the challenge is I'll have my suitcase with me so I'm trying to find a spot that won't mind me having luggage on me. Last time I was in Dublin I had breakfast at KC Peaches Cafe on Dame and it was a bit of a challenge as it was quite narrow. Long story short I'm looking for a spot that is:

• has a banging breakfast
  
• close to the Aston Quay bus stop
  
• has space for me to sit around with my luggage
  

Thanks!
Edit: I'll be in Dublin for 6:00am and my bus is leaving at 11:00am)

Back in 2016, I was working at a roadside diner west of St. Cloud, Minnesota. Neat little place, had a bit of a 60’s vibe to it, but without the hairdo. On the slow hours of the day, or whenever we just had locals around, I’d be humming along with the chefs playing radio out of the kitchen. It wasn’t an exciting time, but it was nice to have a workplace that felt like a second home.
A couple of weekends a month, we had an all-night crew to serve passing truckers. You usually never had to do more than one shift though, and we got to make own schedules. Our boss was pretty hands-off. It was during one of those shifts, at the first week of early summer, that my life took a turn for the worse – and I didn’t even realize it.

We were used to having the occasional odd customer during those hours of the day. When this guy walked in, I didn’t know what to think. He was about 6’2, bald, and pale as chalk. He wore this worn-out t-shirt that looked like it’d been on fire. With every step, he dragged his feet, and collapsed in one of our booths, seemingly exhausted.
I looked back at the chef, and he just shrugged. Guy wasn’t hurting anyone, but he didn’t look like he was all there. But a job’s a job, so I went up to him.
“You alright there?” I asked.
He looked up at me like I was speaking a foreign language, then sunk his head back down, gently shaking it.
“Nah,” he said. “I, uh… I don’t think I am.”
He had this voice on the knife’s edge between a hysterical laugh and a howling cry. He was trembling.
“You need me to call someone?”
“Call?”
“Yeah, call someone.”
“How?”

I didn’t understand the question. I figured he was coming down from some kind of binge, and I wasn’t about to take any chances. I asked the chef to get me a side of bacon to keep the guy calm while I called the police.
As I slid the plate over to him, he sunk his face into his hands, sobbing.
“T-thank you,” he cried. “I-I’m… please…”
I sat down across from him, instinctively reaching out to grab his hand. He let me. Even at a light touch, I could feel the scars on his palm and fingertips. Whatever’d happened to him, it must’ve been awful.
“I can’t go back,” he sniffled. “Don’t make me go back. I can’t. Please, I can’t.”
“You’re not going anywhere. It’s okay,” I smiled. “You’re safe here.”
“Can you help me?” he asked. “Can you keep him out?”
“I’m sure we can figure it out,” I nodded. “Just eat up. It’s okay.”

His fingers trembled as he tentatively bit off a piece of bacon. His teeth were black, and he flinched.
“I need time,” he said. “I need time to run.”
“Don’t worry,” I assured him. “We’ve called for help.”
“I just… I just need time.”
We just sat there for a while. He calmed his breathing but kept staring out the window. I could tell he was looking for something – or someone. All I could see was a road and a handful of moths. We sat there for some time, in silence, as he carefully nibbled on the slices of maple bacon.
As two police officers entered the diner, he got up from his seat. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bundle of scrunched-up trash. A couple of singles, a plastic card, dirt, and something resembling animal bones. He tried to straighten out the bills, pushing them into my hands along with the laminated card.
“Just… I need time. I’ll come back. Please.”
I didn’t understand. I just nodded and accepted it. Seconds later, the officers asked him to step outside and explain the situation. I got busy taking orders from a couple of passing truckers, watching glimpses of the scene through the window. A couple of minutes later, the strange man was taken away.

My shift ended at sunrise. I dragged myself to my car with a yawn, shuffling around my pockets for the keys. I hadn’t thought much about the items he’d handed me, but I took a closer look. I’d thrown away the animal bones and dirt, but there were a couple of dollar bills and that laminated card left. I checked the card first.
It looked like some kind of bookmark. On one side it was completely white, and on the other side there were dried blue flower petals arranged in a spiral. Kinda reminded me of a sunflower. And finally, there were the dollar bills.
I didn’t pay much attention to these at first. Just a couple of singles. But after a closer look, I noticed something unusual. There was a man on the bill that I didn’t recognize. It took me a couple of google searches to realize that this man was Walter Mondale – the man who’d lost to Ronald Reagan’s second run for president back in ’84. Why was this man on a one-dollar bill?

Before heading to bed, I put the items down on my nightstand. In a moment of silent wonder, I looked out the window. What had that man been looking for? What’d he been running from?
There was nothing out there.
Just a couple of moths.

Waking up the next morning, I had a full day off. I spent it cleaning my apartment, watching movies, having dinner with a couple of friends, and ending the night with a couple of drinks at the pub down on the corner. No binge or anything, just got a bit boozy. I was still gonna be in bed by midnight.
I took the scenic route home; a long walk. All the way down main street, past the lake. I took a shortcut through the park by the final stretch, speeding up a bit. That place was trouble.
As I hurried by the fountain, I spotted someone in the distance. A shrouded figure at the edge of the streetlights. I stopped to observe for a second, but as I did, the lights flickered. Coming back on, the figure was gone.
I chalked it up to imagination. I was a bit drunk, after all. Besides – it was small, like a child. What the hell would a kid be doing out at this hour?

A couple of days passed. I didn’t notice anything unusual, but I kept coming back to that distressing feeling of missing something important. Looking back at it now, I just feel dumb. He was there all along. Outside the supermarket. In the parking lot. Off the highway. Hell, he was outside my window at night sometimes, but just too short for me to spot.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
It wasn’t until one morning when I was driving to work that I got a clear view of him. I was crossing a four-way street, taking a sharp left turn, when I had to throw myself on the breaks. There was a kid in the middle of the street.
I hadn’t seen him that clearly before. He was probably around 6, maybe 7 years old. Wearing a plain black shirt and a pair of light blue canvas pants. Short black hair, dark eyes, and no shoes. That particular detail stuck with me. No shoes? Why?
I almost lost control, but I was lucky. There wasn’t much traffic, and I managed to stop further down the road. There were black lines in the pavement from my screeching tires swerving back and forth. Regaining my composure, I looked in the rear-view mirror.
The kid was gone.

But that was just the start.
I’d spot him every now and then. Looking out the window at work. At the gas station. A passing face in the crowd when shopping for groceries. Every now and then, something would pull on my attention, forcing me to whip my head around, looking for the source of that ill feeling crawling up my spine. Sometimes I saw him. And even worse – sometimes I didn’t.
I remember lying awake at night, hearing moths tap against my window. There was nothing else. Nothing outside. I patrolled my apartment six times, checking every window. I’d looked everywhere, and there was no reason for me to feel the way I did. I was growing paranoid.
And yet, in the morning, my front door was unlocked, and slightly open.

It all came to a head one afternoon when I was out on my smoke break. I’d barely slept for the past three nights, and you could kinda tell I was having a bad day. As I stood there, leaning against the side door of the diner, I see the kid again. This time just across the road, maybe 50 feet or so away. I’d had enough. This had to end.
I was furious. I stormed forward, calling him out with every slur and curse I could think of. I was psyching myself up. I was in the right, and I refused to be harassed anymore – kid or not. Didn’t matter. I crossed the road, barely dodging a speeding jeep, and met him face-to-face.
“What the hell do you want?!” I’d yell. “Why are you following me?!”
He was completely expressionless. He didn’t even flinch, no matter how much I pointed or screamed. I snapped my fingers in front of his eyes, and he didn’t even blink. He just stared at me, like a porcelain doll head on a swivel.

I wasn’t thinking about the bystanders though. A couple of middle-aged men stepped up, asking in no kind terms what the hell was wrong with me. I was held back and restrained. Someone called the police. Someone else called my manager – I’d forgotten to take off my apron, so they could see the diner logo. A couple of people filmed it. One of the videos got like 120k views in a day before it fell off the map. I still see it as a react gif sometimes.
It was a disaster. After a couple of officers came by to talk to me, he’d just disappeared into thin air. The officers took me down to the station – not to detain me, but to get me away from the heated crowd. That car ride downtown sobered me up to what the hell was going on. I was being stalked by this kid, but there wasn’t a living soul out there that would believe me.
Well, maybe one.
Maybe.

I was asked a couple of questions and released within about half an hour. They told me to go home and sleep this whole thing off. That wouldn’t be a problem. I didn’t have a job to go back to anyway, according to the (many) texts I’d gotten. I had all the goddamn time in the world.
I was just about to leave when something came to mind. The two officers who’d picked me up were still waiting by their car when I turned back to them.
“Sorry, you picked up the guy I called in about at the diner, right?” I asked.
“Sure did.”
“You got any idea what happened to him?”
The two looked at one another for a moment, shrugged, and turned to me.
“Didn’t have any ID and gave a fake name. I think they took him to psych.”
“Psych?”
“Well, he was saying some, uh… strange things. There were interviews with a, uh…”
The two quieted down and flashed me a smile.
“There’s not that much we can say.”

Coming home, I decided to get to the root of this. It didn’t take me that long to find the place where the guy’d been taken; there aren’t a lot of mental health facilities in this part of the country. Especially facilities that accept involuntary subjects.
But my eyes kept drifting back to the strange dollar bills he’d given me, resting neatly on my nightstand. They were so detailed. A bit old, sure, but that only made them seem more genuine. What the hell was he doing with a handful of clearly fake dollar bills? Like, what’s the purpose? There had to be a purpose.
That unnerved me.

I managed to arrange a meeting. It wasn’t easy, and I think a lot of it boiled down to the police having no idea what could make this guy talk. For some reason, he kept providing them with false information. Maybe a familiar face, for one reason or another, might make him talk.
Just a couple of days later, I was putting my items in a metal bowl on the second floor at a mental health institute in the next town over. I asked one of the nurses if I could keep one of my dollar bills. Apparently, that was okay.
I was shuffled through a couple of locked doors and escorted to an off-white side-room. No décor, no locks. The guy was already there.

He’d been dressed down into these neutral eggshell-white garbs. It was strange seeing him in a lit-up room like this. I didn’t know what to expect.
Getting a closer look at him, he was probably in his 50’s. It’d been hard to tell earlier. I couldn’t get over just how pale he was; it was almost a complete lack of pigment. It looked sickly. His thin arms didn’t help – he looked malnourished. And yet, he was smiling.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello to you too,” I smiled. “You doing okay?”
“I’m… I’m pretty good,” he nodded. “Thank you.”
I sat down across from him and took out the dollar bill he’d given me.
“I wanted to ask you about this.”
“For the bacon,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, was that not enough?”
“No, it’s…”
I took a moment to compose myself. I had too many questions.

He sighed, took the bill, and looked it over. Looking back at me, I could tell there was something painful stirring in his mind. His smile slowly faded.
“Sorry,” he said. “I try to forget sometimes. It’s easier than making sense of it.”
“Let’s start with something simple,” I nodded. “Like… your name. Where you’re from.”
“Those things are pretty far from simple.”
He was looking straight through me; his eyes sinking back to deeper, more uncomfortable thoughts.

His name was Samuel, and he was born around these parts in back in the 1970’s. He’d worked as a telecommunications specialist out of St. Cloud back in the 90's. He had a wife, three children, and a four-bedroom house.
“But it… that was all before, see?” he explained. “Then it all just…”
“Just what?” I asked. “What happened?”
He looked at me, opening and closing his mouth, looking for the right words to come out. Nothing happened. He shook his head, trying again.
“It started with the street preachers,” he said. “Hundreds of them, marching on every city. All saying the same doomsday shit as always. World was dying. All coming to an end.”
“I haven’t seen anything like that.”
“Then there were storms,” he continued without skipping a beat. “Some would last for weeks. Others longer. Entire cities would be flooded or torn apart. Earthquakes causing monster waves along the east coast, sending shockwaves all the way to mainland Europe. Then, Yellowstone.”
“Yellowstone?”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “Lights out.”

Samuel was painting this apocalyptic vision of a world undone. Catastrophe after catastrophe. Hooded people marching the streets, screaming for the mercy of a mad god. But there was more to it.
“Then things stopped making sense. It’s as if the rules changed,” he continued. “Roads would stop leading home. Trees would change color. People turned twisted and corrupted. Like… one of our neighbors couldn’t eat anything but gunpowder. There was a woman just down the street who tried to kill anyone wearing glasses. It was… pandemonium.”
I didn’t say anything. What he was saying didn’t make any sense, but he was trying his best to keep his rambling coherent.
“The plants died. Trees too. The only thing that could grow in that environment were these twisted blue things that popped up out of nowhere. But people… people are what got twisted the most.”
He told me of these towering 7-foot-tall humanoid creatures that roamed the forests. Black as night – not even reflecting light. Arms reaching all the way to their knees. Elongated, inhuman things that all used to be someone he knew.

“The doomsayers all said the same thing,” he continued. “That God was a scared little boy, and that he was dying. Everything that was happening was just an expression of that ceaseless, bottomless, existential grief.”
Samuel looked back and forth, finally burying his face in his hands.
“It all broke down. Roads stopped leading anywhere. No power. No water. Julie changed. Ollie changed. Tobie made himself a mask and wandered off into the woods. Ira just… disappeared. And for… years? Has it been years? It’s just been me.”
“But you’re here, now,” I said. “And what you’re describing, it… it didn’t happen.”
“It happened,” he insisted. “Just not… here. But here.”
He tapped his finger on the single dollar bill.
“Somewhere, somehow, I must’ve taken a wrong turn. I slipped through something broken, and now I’m here. And… and he’s coming to bring me back. He doesn’t want anyone to leave.”
“Who?”
“Just! Just…” he chuckled. “Just a sad little boy who’s been told he’s going to die.”
I didn’t know what to say. I just sat with him for a while, holding his hand.

Before I left, Samuel got up from his chair. He looked at me, forcing himself to smile.
“If I go back, I’ll try not to… to be like them. I’ll try. And… and I’ll be the one to say something.”
He let out a painful little laugh, shaking his head.
“Maybe just a… hello.”

I left that day with more questions than answers. I couldn’t picture the world he’d lived through. Then again, how could it be true? None of it had happened. But what was he gaining from lying about it?
That was the last time I saw Samuel. A few days later, he went missing, as if he’d disappeared into thin air. I didn’t know what to think of it. There was nothing on the cameras – no one entering or leaving the building. No quick escapes, no clever plans. He’d just walked into his room and disappeared. Nothing left but a couple of moths fluttering about.
And for a while, that was it. That was the end of the story. I got busy looking for a new job, and all the little items given to me by Samuel was put away into a little box in my glove compartment. Life soldiered on, and no matter how many questions I had, there was no one around to answer them. Even the strange kid that’d been following me was, seemingly, gone.

A couple of months later, I was driving home from a friend’s place. I stopped at a four-way street, waiting for a couple of trucks to pass, when there was a knock on the passenger side window. I almost choked on my own spit. Scared me half to death.
Looking out, I could see that kid again. I hadn’t seen him for some time, and I quickly bounced between curiosity and downright anger.
“What do you want?” I yelled out.
There was no response. Instead, the door just opened. It’d been locked. As he opened the door, he pointed to the glove box.
“You want his things?” I asked. “Is that it?”
He nodded. I wanted to lash out, but there was something telling me I shouldn’t. Instead, I reached over, opened the glove compartment, and pointed to the box.
“Just take it and leave me alone,” I said. “Get it over with.”

He reached in and grabbed the box. So much effort for a couple of mementos. I turned my head back to face the road. The kid backed out. But of course, I had to get the last word in.
“Not even a thank you, huh?”
That made him pause. He looked at me, tilting his head. As he opened his mouth to speak, a moth fluttered out. Then another. And another.
Then – darkness.

What happened next is hard to describe. My memory of it is fragmented. It’s like trying to watch a buffering video, where long stretches of it are just nothing – but you know something was supposed to happen in-between.
Blink. I was sitting in my car. There was a dark blue sky. No clouds, no stars. Figures in the distance. An open field with blue flowers bending to a howling wind. A powerful stench of ammonia stinging my nostrils. Something to my immediate left, ripping the car door straight off the hinges.
Blink. Running. Ruins of a town. It seemed familiar, but there was barely anything left. My leg was bleeding. I was being followed. No matter where I turned, or where I ran, I seemed to end up at the same intersection.
Blink. A three-story building, brimming with life. Glimpses of arm-long antennae through the broken windows. Clickety-clack of bursting wings tapping against crumbling concrete. A loud warning shriek as something rubs its legs together; a call for prey.
Blink. Hiding in a tipped-over trash container. The rain has stopped in mid-air. Raindrops held in indefinite suspension. I suck water drops out of the air to quench my thirst. My hands are shaking from the blood loss.

Countless little images. Some in order, some not. I have no idea how much time passed. In the moment, it must’ve been much longer than I can remember. Days. Weeks, even. There’s no way to tell.
Blink. Walking through a barren field. It feels like walking through a dead forest, but there are no trees. Only those willingly impaled and wailing.
Blink. An abandoned booth by a broken highway. A sign offers phone calls, in exchange for “real teeth”. There are six sizes of pliers hanging on a wall within. All are bloodied – even the small ones.
Blink. The church that had burned down the night before had reappeared. The people inside, too. They couldn’t leave. Tonight, they would burn again.

Somewhere in this nightmarish puzzle-pieced fragment of nothing, there was a constant drive in me to get away. To get out. I knew that if I’d gotten there, I could get back home again. I just had no idea how. Maybe finding the kid. Asking. Begging. Something.
The last fragment of memory from that space was being cornered in a cellar. They were banging on the door. I’d tipped over a wardrobe to keep them out, but they weren’t going to stop. They were never going to stop. I couldn’t let them kill me again – not like that.
One of the Changed ones were coming. I don’t know what that means, or how I know the name, but I knew of it. There was a mirror, and I could see the signs. It stepped out. Seven feet tall, black as night. Elongated arms and neck. Barely a body at all – just a void space vaguely shaped like the remnants of a person.
Except this one felt… familiar. It was the first one to speak.
“H E L L O.”

Blink. Running. A cold hand. If I squeezed too hard, my fingers went straight through it. I had to keep up. He was showing me something.
Blink. They were flooding over the school bus, tipping it by their sheer numbers. Eruptions from the sewer grates. They were famished.
Blink. An open field. Sunflowers facing me, no matter where I turn. It’s not far.
Blink. I look back, as I’m pushed over the edge. He looks just like the rest of them. They aren’t angered by his betrayal.
They feel nothing, as I fall.

In February of 2017, I was found by the side of the road. I’d been gone for months. My car was too. I came back with nothing but the clothes on my back and countless scars. I’ve been told that I didn’t make any sense at first; I was just rambling nonsense. Or maybe it just sounded like nonsense to these people.
Over time, I forgot more and more of these fragmented images. And the less I remember, the more I can move on. Still, I’ve written them down over time, and they paint an ugly, insane picture of what I’d been going through. Some of which I, myself, have a hard time believing. Then again, I know myself well enough to see that there’s no point in lying.

I haven’t seen Samuel, or that strange kid ever since. I think this is all over, for now. There’s nothing left for me to give.
But even now, years later, I still wake up to that feeling at night. That there’s something wrong, or that I’m forgetting something. That there’s something near that I’m looking straight through, or past.
And every now and then, I hear the flutter of a moth’s wing, tapping against my bedroom window.
And I think I know what it wants.
It wants me to go back.

Where to begin… essentially our mother reminds us of both a child and a Karen if that makes any sense? Here are some tidbits of the past 20 years.

• repeatedly makes threats of suicide when something doesn’t go her way or angers her, starting when I was the age of 8
• one time I asked her a question on my science homework (she didn’t know the answer and also was annoyed at me asking), and she hit me on the head and I was so dizzy that I fell into the stove, which was on at the time. brought it up many years later and she laughed nervously asking if i was completely sure if that happened
• kicked my sister when she was 4, when she was asking her a quick way to distinguish left from right, because she was talking on the phone with her friend and didn’t want to be interrupted. also threw her stuffed animals across the room
• when something minor happened (we were about to be late for the bus and weren’t moving fast enough for her in elementary school), she pretended to have a mental breakdown/panic attack and faint on the floor. when I told her I was about to call 911 (I was scared out of my mind), she promptly got back up and acted like nothing ever happened
• when I told her I was severely depressed and had an ED, she complained that she didn’t know what other people in our community would think of her, and also pretended to stop breathing and fell on the floor AGAIN
• my sister had a knee injury from cross country, and when she asked our mom when the next appointment was, she blew up at her, started swerving the car purposely and driving recklessly, had a full on mental breakdown, honked the horn for long periods of time in the garage several times, pretended how to forget to open the garage door, and called her the spawn of Satan
• refused to talk to me ever again after I told her that I couldn’t do orchestra anymore because I was prioritizing adding more classes focused on my potential major, she proceeded to ignore me and deny my existence for almost a week. the only reason she started talking to me again was because there were two suicides at our school in one week. similar thing happened to my sister last year
• extremely clingy, needy, and possessive. i was instructed to send her good morning and good night texts everyday. i also had to always have my location on as an almost 21 year old. when i didn’t respond to good morning quickly enough once (was talking a shower after i slept in and didn’t see her text), i came back to dozens of calls and texts asking me what happened, and she was about to call the police to do a house check. extremely annoyed, i asked her to stop with the good mornings and good nights, and she reluctantly said ok and sent them anyway and called when i didn’t respond. also if i don’t send emojis in response to her when she does or mirror her exclamation points, she says that i’m mad at her
• when my sister cut her own bangs and it didn’t turn out the way she had hoped, my mom chased her with scissors and locked her in the garage until i had to beg her to get her out
• my mom is overweight, while my sister and i have always been slim/skinny, and it seems like this bothers her though she doesn’t explicitly say it. when i went on a recomp journey to gain more muscle and lose fat, she constantly criticized my mela because i refused to eat the food she cooked (she dumps oil on it and i have told her several times to stop because that adds unnecessary calories and showed her how she should cook it, yet she continues to cook it the same way). when i refused once and for all and started to cook for myself, she said she didn’t even know who i was anymore. she continuously pokes fun at my thighs, knowing they're my biggest insecurity. she always asks what my weight is and despite me trying to help her lose weight in a healthy and sustainable way, she never listens or follows through.
• insults other people’s intelligence even though they’ve done nothing that proves her point (only when they disagree with her honestly)
• manipulates, lies, and gaslights everyday. pretends that she didn’t say something that she communicated to us a few hours prior and blames it on her memory
• splitting: sees people as either 100% good or bad, with her opinion changing within minutes
• exhibits anxious preoccupied protest behavior? i’ll say something she doesn’t like (ex: why did you this? that was out of line) and she’ll proceed to say she is not my mother anymore, never wants to see me again or have a relationship with me, and won’t eat food again (?), but then when i ignore her right back she comes back and continues conversation the next day like again, nothing ever happened. she has also said she is never coming back to the house, drives off for hours, and then returns without a word
• scolded me for crying when I was sad about something, stating that I can only cry when someone has passed
• guilts all of us for her pausing her career to raise us when we were younger, saying that by now she could have x amount of $ by now. but like, that was your choice... i didn't ask you to do that as an infant.
• proclaims to have little to no memory of anything described above, and gives a blanket statement that she has a lot of problems she doesn't know how to deal with
• threatens us that we can't put her in a nursing home when we're older (?) and says she will move wherever we move when we get our full-time jobs after college. i don't want that to happen, we both need a lot of space and time to heal

What do we do to help her while also distancing ourselves so she doesn't go ballistic?