Liebot, what is the saddest thing?

[Doc]

The Saddest thing is that my ICQ list is massive from years of aquiring contacts but these days the only people online any more are people I actually live with.
Is everyone else dead? Did they just change their usernames? Are they blocking me?
I Just. Don't. Know.

What we need more of is Science

Junk improving science is something everyone can agree on.

[linnea]

Junk improving science is something everyone can agree on.

Quoted for truth. Also, CAN'D. That's awesome.

[Nabubrush]

Hey Doomglobe - I think you pretty much got it right on the first go.

[Golfhaus]

The Saddest thing is that my ICQ list is massive from years of aquiring contacts but these days the only people online any more are people I actually live with.

ICQ still exists? It's been at least two computers since I bothered loading it. I had a seven-digit number back in the day, but no one I knew from it still used it. They moved onto AIM and Y! Messenger. It was mostly people from the Philippines trying to get into America left on there, as I recall.

[smick]

The saddest thing is doing all manner of yard work, and then walking to the neighborhood 7/11 for a lemonade.   I purchased the 32 oz. variety of Big Gulp.  As an aside, when I was a youth, this was the HOLY CRAP size fountain soda.   Certainly that fashion of soda is one that would be worked on over the course of a day, maybe two!  Now, it is the smallest of the Big Gulp line.   It is the Big Gulp that the other Big Gulps look on in pity.   Sometimes, they think about culling the 32 oz. Gulp.   It would be an act of pitty, to end the suffering of their litter's runt.

As an aside to the aside, we also had in this area growing up, the Big Juan.   A local taco chain would give you a Big Juan meal, with a plastic Big Juan cup.  I imagine this was a poor time to grow up with the name Juan, and be an undersized Juan.  The indignity of constantly being referred to as Big Juan in a sarcastic manner.

The point however, is it is not the saddest thing to be the smallest of the Big Gulps, or the be an inappropriately size referenced Juan, but rather, to pay for a lemonade, and then knock it over on the counter, directly into the open cargoish pocket of your waiting pant, your waiting pant that is made of a duc material that shouldn't hold liquids as neatly as it does, directly onto your cellphone, thus rendering it inert.

[V-Adore]

I'm not sure about the saddest, but that is an array of sad things, certainly. Bonus points for using the rare singular form on "#####."

[Doc]

[The saddest thing]

Nooooooooo!

[jough]

The Saddest Thing

[littlefallsmets]

The... Saddest Thing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090914/ap_on_fe_st/us_odd_mcdonald_s_employee

[wombat]

What is sad about that is the lack of detail in that report. McDonald's must have been a 100% different place when that man started working. What was it like? How and why did he stay on through so much change? There has to be a story there.

[AugustWest]

Yeah, honestly I see absolutely nothing sad about that story.  The guy found a place where he fit in and made a valuable contribution for 50 years.  It's easy to do a hell of a lot worse than that in life.

[pmcd9]

I guess Mike considers it sad because it's a story about an old man spent his entire career doing a job that is usually handled by teenagers.  But I saw a story about a man that was gainfully employed his entire career without a single interruption.  One could do much worse than that.

[littlefallsmets]

Less "a job usually handled by teenagers" and more, hmmmmm.

More "a job where almost no one, customer or co-worker, treats you with simple human dignity ever".

Which probably flows OUT of the perception that it is a job for teenagers only but yeah.

A lifetime of people telling their kids, right in front of you, that you're what happens if they don't go to school. A lifetime of people snickering behind your back that you probably spit in that burger. A lifetime of people looking at you with the assumption that you must either be developmentally-disabled or spent time in prison and this is the only job that will hire you.

Fifty years of having to say "would you like to try our new thing that we probably won't be serving in three months?" and assholes swearing at you through a tinny microphone and, no, actually they'd like a ridiculously modified and confusing order and if you get it wrong because they were disorganized about it, you get yelled at.

250 days a year, 50 years? Of that?

I'm not saying that a steady job ain't a steady job. The guy definitely worked. But that's what MAKES it the saddest thing.

[Doc]

Yeah, but maybe he likes it there?

[wombat]

See, that's why there's a story there, because I think the situation may not be at all what LFM is imagining. No doubt the first McD's franchises were mom and pop businesses of a very different nature. If this one has been around so long, how much of that quality has it retained? Are the original owners still involved? Have they somehow kept it a worthwhile place to work despite corporate pressures?

I think it's likely that this is not the same as someone getting a job at 18 in a McD's now and keeping it all his adult life, and that's what's interesting to me. Or, of course, it could just be a story of someone who manages not to give a fuck about what other people think of him, and that's a pretty rare quality that would be a good story too.