The Horrors of Adulting: Working with the Public

My eldest child just turned sixteen and is thinking about looking for work, so I was briefing her on my Golden Rule of Customer Service™: “Even if someone’s screaming at you, you don’t come up here [gestures palm-down to eye level], you want them down here with you [gestures palm-down to chest height].” She gave me a look that was kind but conferred that these are things she knows well, and it was then I realized that babysitting her autistic brother since she was 12 has perfectly prepared her to deal with the public.

This is a Facebook post I wrote in May 2025:

“When I first started at [store name redacted–it’s a gas station/travel stop], my coworkers encouraged me to be more assertive by reminding me I’m a mom. This is me picturing how it would be talking to customers like I do my three-year-old:

[Customer has finished fueling and must move so that others can use the pump] “All done. No more. All done.”

[Customer wants to use a shower, but they’re all occupied] “Let’s wait. Good waiting!”

[Showing the customer an expensive item from behind the counter] “No touch.”

[Ringing up purchases when simultaneously the phone rings, the CAT scale goes off, and a professional driver needs their fuel receipt] “Mama has two hands.”

[Customer is exiting the store] “Good night, sweet baby. I love you!”

Due to the amount of disrespect, tantrums, and unreasonable demands, customer service is often reminiscent of dealing with toddlers.

Checking IDs

I get why I’ve had to do it, but carding people sucks. Lots of people get mad about being carded. At the travel stop/gas station, cigarettes were a popular purchase, and I swear every person who said, “Don’t I look old enough?” thought they were the first person to say it. I once worked at a grocery store self-check station, and I was constantly being flagged to check IDs, not only for alcohol (and by the way, in Kentucky, where I had this job, you can’t buy liquor before 1 pm on Sundays, so that was fun), but also for many types of medicine. Most folks were okay with it, but I’ve had customers balk at having their ID scanned, which was store policy, thinking the government is tracking them. At the library, I’ve had people get bent out of shape for being asked to confirm their identity to get a library card or access their account if they showed up without their card. Library accounts are very confidential by law–even if a police officer comes in with a warrant, I cannot release information. Nope, not even if they’re hunting a serial killer and want to see a suspect’s checkout history. I’ve seen people storm out, and one time I got called a robot. I’m just obeying the law, folks.

The Moneys

When I first started at the library, they had a much more extensive fine system than they do now. For example, DVDs used to accrue a $2 fee for every day they were turned in late. I regularly had to surprise people with bills. Library policy prohibits waiving fees except in the case of staff error; it leaves a paper trail for admin, so even if I felt like bending the rules, I would be quickly caught. I’ve had people get aggressive over 75 cents. They sometimes thought the money they paid in fines went towards my salary, and I’ve had at least one patron infer that I enjoyed collecting money from him. People like to save money, and of course they do, groceries are goddamned expensive, but I used to work at a grocery store that had ever-changing weekly sales, and a good portion of my day was spent placating customers who swore the amount that rang up is not what the sign said it was supposed to be. I was allowed to reduce the price up to five dollars, and we all pretty much just did that rather than argue or try to find the item to confirm. I had a customer escalate the issue to my manager because I didn’t immediately take her word that candles were 40 percent off. I don’t miss cashiering one bit.

Being Screamed At

When I was a brand new employee at the library circulation desk, I was oft visited by a mother/daughter duo who showed up a hair before closing with a stack of series DVDs that they wanted to renew. I had yet to learn the fastest way to do this, so they would berate me while I sorted through them as quickly as I could. It didn’t help that they had a personal grudge against my coworker. I used to encounter a mentally ill unhoused patron who came in daily from open to close, working on projects that included historical research, lots of printing, and saving documents on a flash drive. She was upset one day about something the computer did and blamed me for it and started scolding me. I never never treat the public rudely no matter how they treat me (see my Golden Rule of Customer Service™), especially not at the library, where I will die on the hill that everyone is welcome, that’s why I love the library (besides the books), but I had had enough with her that day. I stood up and said, “We’re done here,” and walked away. She followed me, hurling abuse, and thankfully my coworker stepped in. People tend to be of the belief that someone who is paid to assist them is also paid to let them blow off steam when they feel belligerent. Which I guess is technically true but does not make dealing with them any more pleasant.

Criminal Activity

I’m very trusting, but even I know that people steal. Gosh, do they ever. I’ve caught people at the self-check engaging in what we call ticket-switching–taking the barcode from a cheaper item and scanning that instead of the item they wanted. I’ve also had people scan their stuff, pretend to pay, and walk off while my back was turned. At the gas station/truck stop, they only staffed two people for the overnight shift, which is nowhere near enough, and one time while both were busy, somebody loaded up a duffel bag of merchandise and walked out with it. Aside from theft, people get up to dickens in other ways; at one library I worked at, a couple was found getting busy in the public bathroom. Physical altercations (between patrons, not with staff) are not unheard of; at one library I work at, a kid broke a window with his head while fighting. Security guards are really the unsung heroes at public establishments.

Sexual Harassment

I’ve never been what western culture regards as traditionally attractive (maybe briefly as a teenager when I exercised and dieted to the point of neurosis), so my experience with unwanted attention has been limited. I’ve been asked out at work before. I briefly worked at a clinic for autistic kids, and my first regular client was a boy who liked to grab boobies. Later I was told that normally he had a male technician, but one wasn’t currently available; they handed his case to me without any kind of warning. I had been feeling extra anxious about the job to begin with, not only because there is no pressure in the world like being responsible for someone’s kids, but also I hated how unpredictable it was. (In retrospect, I’m frustrated that the staff for an organization dedicated to helping autistic children didn’t recognize signs of it in their own employee.) Being groped, even by a seven-year-old who arguably didn’t know what he was doing, was the last straw for me there. I can be complacent to a fault, and I can put up with a lot, but nope.

As a parent, one worries about how their child will fare in the wild world out there. Thankfully my kid is patient and good-hearted but also extremely tough. She’s gonna do all right.

And if someone touches her wrong, they better watch their fucking back.

‘The Unborn’ (2009) in About 30 Seconds

My review of The Unborn is one of my most viewed posts, probably I called it ‘The Unborn’: Panties, Glorious Panties! So I made a reel. My oldest kid directed and my middle stood in for the creepy ghost. They crushed it.

My son being menacing:

His Will Byers from Stranger Things impression:

Time Test: ‘Cloverfield’

Every so often I think of a movie I saw once, years ago, and I wonder if my perception of it would change over time. Because I’ve grown as a person and all. I’m ever so evolved and mature, you see. I saw Cloverfield in the theatre in 2008 and haven’t seen it since, and I was wondering if I would still loathe it with a passion eighteen years later.

Synopsis: Six New Yorkers are extremely perturbed when a giant alien creature, depositing smaller but also deadly alien creatures, shows up in their fair city and promptly destroys the Statue of Liberty and lots and lots of people.

This is one of those found footage movies that is notorious for making people sick. The camera is constantly panning, zooming around in multiple directions. It’s meant to simulate a first-person experience, our cameraman wildly looking around and trying to see everything at once and document it for posterity. But Jesus fuck, skillful technique or not, 80-ish minutes is a very long time for such continuous swishy camera movement. The shots are exceedingly quick, and it’s hard to tell what’s happening. With CGI monsters of course less is more, but even when they aren’t around, it’s hard to distinguish who’s getting blown up and trampled.

I was pretty cranky right from the opening, which features Rob (Michael Stahl-David) skulking around his girlfriend Beth’s (Odette Annable, née Yustman) apartment narrating his every thought and filming her topless without her consent. This is a flashback, and from there we get Rob’s going-away party, where there is boring expositional drama because Rob and Beth have broken up. Rob’s brother Jason (Mike Vogel) and his partner Lily (Jessica Lucas) are trying to make sure everything is filmed at the party, and filming responsiblity is handed over to Hud (T.J. Miller), who’s crushing on Marlena (Lizzy Caplan). Despite my being much more familiar with the cast this go-round and impressed by their horror pedigrees, it doesn’t make the characters more appealing to me; these upper-class narcissists do not hold my attention before the carnage, and after it’s underway, they get only mildly more compelling.

A good deal of the plot has to do with guys pining away for ladies, and frankly I’m much more interested in the monsters than in Hud creepily staring at Marlena or Rob playing knight in shining armor to the profoundly whiny Beth. (Though to be fair I’d be profoundly whiny too if my apartment building fell on me.) The female characters leave a lot to be desired. Lily does little more than scream and cry, though she is pretty hardcore to be traipsing around the wreckage in high heels and then barefoot. Marlena is the most respectable of the bunch, clobbering extraterrestrials (see below–it’s terrifically difficult to get good stills from this movie, but I did my best) and stoically cleaning her nasty wounds with bottled water and cracking jokes–but not in a cheesy action movie one-liner way. The dialogue does come across as very natural.

The special effects and creature design are top-notch. I didn’t find it very scary, but I did admire one scene when they’re in a subway tunnel and behold a sea of rats ominously fleeing from…something. There’re a few moments of suspense while Hud gets the night vision going on the camera, and then, boom!

It’s a prime example of movies in the aughts reflecting fears about 9/11. This scene below in particular highlights that fear plus a theme throughout the film of the modern need to document (Hud continues to cling to Jason’s camera even as he’s endangering his own life): people are taking pictures on their cell phones of the Statue of Liberty head even while more explosions are imminent–it’s not real to them unless they’re experiencing it through a screen.

Overall, on this rewatching I’m feeling snarky but definitely more respectful towards the filmmakers and the hard work they put into the watching experience. I’m glad I revisited it.

The Horrors of Adulting: Being a Parent

My sister Leslie and her boyfriend Kevin have been together for 25 years; they’re one of the strongest, happiest couples I know. And they don’t have kids. They don’t want kids. They in fact have a running list of reasons why they don’t want and have kids. I myself have three children. I love them, more than life itself, more than Jordan Peele’s oeuvre. But being a parent can be horrifying. Here are five things I want to gripe about.

5. School Dropoffs and Pickups

School parking lots are a nightmare. Cars, cars everywhere, impractical one-way entrances and exits, pedestrians who don’t look where the fuck they’re going. Everyone’s irritable and in a hurry. (School crossing guards: you are god’s angels. A thousand thank yous.) My eldest child Layla started at a new school for sixth grade in Kentucky when we moved there abruptly from California, and picking her up was especially difficult, as she is partially blind and had a hard time finding my car in the sea of other vehicles three rows deep. I quickly learned to come ridiculously early to get a spot right by the curb, but the first day we showed up on time like noobs. My husband tried to get out of the car and was aggressively greeted by a parking lot attendant enforcing the no-getting-out-of- the-car rule, even after my husband explained our situation. And then from there I had to pick up my middle child Orion from a different school and again had to show up ludicrously early to get a spot.

4. Lack of Sleep

Aside from India.Arie’s voice, there is no sweeter sound to my ears than the soft breathing of my sleeping children. When babies are new to about four months old, they wake up every three hours around the clock. It is, no hyperbole here, torture. My youngest, Jack, who’s four, is autistic, and he still wakes up regularly in the night. If I’m lucky he’ll just come climb on me or the husbo and settle down, but if he’s feeling feisty, he’ll roam the house looking for things to get into. Once I found him sitting in the hallway about to take a swig from a whole-ass jug of tea.

3. When They’re Sick

I never realize how much I take my kids’ health for granted until they’re ill. When once they were spirited and fun, they become listless and miserable, which is hard to watch while not being able to do anything about it. As a parent, I’m rending my clothes and crying to the heavens, “Take me instead! I’m old!” When Layla, never one to do anything half-assed, gets sick, she gets sick. Last night she went to the ER because she was coughing so violently it made her vomit, for days on end. It turned out to be a severe respiratory infection. Which leads me to my next point.

2. Kids Are Gross, Y’all

Kids will eat things off the floor, eat things that aren’t food, including the contents of their nose and the contents of their diaper, not bathe enough, poop while they’re bathing, pee in your face, pee in their own mouths (that last one is only while they’re babies, unless they’re extraordinarily talented). If you’ve ever been pregnant, your baby is peeing and pooping inside of you. Once my dog and one of the kids were coincidentally suffering from diarrhea at the same time, and I couldn’t help but think of the scene in Full Metal Jacket when a new Marines recruit at the end of his rope is reminded he needs to get back to his bunk after lights out or he’ll be in a world of shit and he roars, “I am in a world of shit!”

1. Their Toys

Kids’ toys are obnoxious and needy. Jack in particular loves toys that have buttons and light up and sing horrible, repetitive songs. He has one that if he quits playing with it, it’ll guilt trip him, sighing, “Goodbye…My friend…” The toys also sometimes have a mind of their own. Jack has an electronic reader for a series of corresponding Paw Patrol books. It’s meant to read the books aloud for him, but we had to hide the books because he was ripping the pages out. So the reader, bored and friendless, comes to life and screams things from its catalog of phrases. Except Jack, loving repeating sounds, has it trained to stick to small bits of dialogue. Last night around 10:30, it started shouting “Paw Patrol! Paw Patrol! Paw Patrol!” I stealthily removed it from the bedroom while it shrieked, and no one woke up. But the bloody thing kept whooping and hollering off and on through the night, so I had to stow it in a far corner of the house. Did I mention there’s no off switch?

In closing, this is a model of a talking Cryptkeeper head I had in the ’90s that used to cackle and waggle its jaw loudly when the mood struck it. Enjoy!

The Horrors of Adulting: Nonsensical Niche YouTube Trends

My four-year-old son Jack is autistic, and for limited, supervised periods of time, I hand over my phone so he can browse YouTube and indulge in his short attention span/repetition-loving urges. He’s not into anything bad, but some of the stuff he likes can verge on unsettling to me.

5. Nerdcore

He’s been watching nerdcore since he was a wee baby, when his siblings put it on. It’s when gamers make music videos for songs they wrote about video games, and they often perform in costume as the characters. His favorites are The Stupendium, Dan Bull, and Random Encounters. (Though to be honest, I love them too.) Below is his top pick of the moment. He doesn’t scare easily.

Not gonna lie, this song’s catchy as hell and the video looks amazing

4. Disorder

There are videos consisting of people pouring things into a toilet, sometimes to see whether they will flush, sometimes just…because? Jack also enjoys the ones when people fill balloons with various colored liquids and pop them on the floor, making an absolutely unholy mess.

3. Demolishing Things

These involve people ruining things just for the sake of destruction. They run over colorful items with their car or huck breakable objects down a flight of stairs, or in one trend that particularly makes me cringe when I think of how I would fall down and bust my head, jump on alternating steps to squash a balloon.

2. AI Atrocities

People make AI videos for a variety of reasons, sometimes trying to pass them off as real, but Jack likes the ones that are purposely fantastical, like a series of ladies getting into beds made of distinctly un-bed-like materials. It’s seriously supposed to be relaxing, but often the woman starts sinking and merging with the bed. Or there are the ones that are meant to be cute, like the anthropomorphized fruit globes that are squashed open by disembodied hands to reveal animals. In the picture above, that watermelon has eyes and appears sentient–what kind of Cronenbergian body horror is that?! I can’t decide which are more nightmarish: those or the ones of babies made of fruit practicing cannibalism.

Cake Bed: The Bed That Eats

1. Me

I have a YouTube channel for movie reviews. It’s been basically defunct for oh about the last four years, but it’s there. He prefers my video about Season of the Witch.

Overall, to me the creepiest aspect of these channels is the randomness and surrealism. But it makes sense to my son, so carry on ya weirdos. Thank you for making him happy.

The Horrors of Adulting: My Warehouse Job

*Author’s note: all warehouse images are stock photos I found online, because I’m not trying to get fired or sued, y’all.

We don’t need to rehash my employment history, but to contextualize this article, I currently work in a warehouse. It has its ups and downs, and I’m here now to focus on the more disturbing aspects of it. However, because I am a grateful person, I must emphasize that I am very glad to have a job, particularly one that is autism-friendly, pays fairly, and allows me to listen to headphones while I work.

5. Robots

No, not humans acting like robots! Actual robots! I work in the stow department, so some of my coworkers roll around and bring me pods to store items for later purchase. On the upper floors, they stay in their own blocked-off section where they can’t get out, but on the first floor they trundle around loose. They look like giant Roombas. Except they have eyes. And boy can they flatten shit in a hurry if they run over it. They’re also kind of clumsy. Here’s an artist’s conception:

And by artist I mean I threw something together on Canva

4. Rate

Almost all departments in my warehouse have a rate of some kind. Thankfully someone has many chances to get up to an acceptable speed, but it is possible to be fired over not being fast enough. The policy at my work is being in the bottom five percent and being given six warnings, spaced out over a two-week period each. I do find the rate pretty steep, though. Ideally we stow 250 items an hour, or roughly 12 seconds per item. For the better part of ten hours straight. It’s doable, but it’s not always a picnic, particularly during busy times, when mandatory overtime gets up to 60 hours a week.

3. Cameras, Cameras Everywhere

An important aspect of stowing is making sure I don’t block the camera that is tracking my every movement. It does so in order to take note of where the item I put away is for future reference. We’re being recorded pretty much everywhere but the bathroom (I hope). It can be unnerving to be watched all the time. It puts me in mind of the song “The Data Stream” by The Stupendium. It’s about consumerism and companies dehumanizing and controlling people:

2. The Merchandise

Made from real femurs! Not gonna lie, I bought some for my husky for Christmas.

When I stow, I have a series of plastic tote boxes that I reach into and get products out of. I scan them, check my computer screen to make sure what I scanned matches what the computer thinks it is, then I stick the item in a pod. I never know what I’m going to find in the totes. Often it’s just basic stuff like books or crackers or weighted vests. But sometimes I’ll scan a nice, nondescript box and check my screen to see it’s a dildo, with a nice, graphic depiction in all its veiny glory. Or, as what happened the other day, I picked up a bag that felt wrong. To borrow an adverb from Andrew Michael Hurley’s novel Starve Acre, it squished spongily. I scanned it to find out that it was freeze-dried cow eyes. Just a bag of eyes, intended for dissection. I’m not squeamish, but I was gagging.

There is nothing about this that isn’t disturbing! It’s got me using double negatives!

1. Safety Issues

Warehouse managers by necessity are big on safety. My work isn’t exactly a deathtrap, but it’s quite easy to get injured if you’re not careful. Your ass will get sent home if you’re not wearing shoes with nonslip soles and either steel or composite toes. Don’t sit on the ladder, don’t use your phone on the work floor, don’t run in the parking lot. You also better be wearing your hair above your shoulders, because you do not want it getting caught in a belt. Remember that scene in Saw IV?

I once worked at a different company warehouse, and I’ll never forget at orientation our host’s description of personally witnessing a “de-gloving.” If you’re unfamiliar with that phrase, I think you can guess what it means by context. Nope, not that:

But in the end, it’s not all debilitating injuries and surprise sex toys. I don’t think? Hey, here’s a mini cow getting groomed like a dog!