I’ve never worked for an employer that forbade occasional personal use of the printer, and I’m pretty sure there’s even an IRS note listing it as an example of a trivial perk that doesn’t need to be reported as income. I used to use my employer’s pens and paper to jot notes to myself, too. And I’ve used my employer’s wifi to browse the SDMB. (Now that i wfh, i use my own wifi, of course.)
I didn’t answer the “do you do it” poll because my answer isn’t there. I used to, and never felt guilty about it. I never asked permission, and never made any effort to hide that i did it. I didn’t print 200 color pages or anything that would cost real money, but a page here and there? Sure. I assume my colleagues did likewise. Then i bought a color laser printer, and now it’s a lot easier to print my own stuff on my own printer. So i do.
Yeah, how easy it is to park is more important than how many steps I have to walk to get inside (where I’ll be walking plenty more steps anyway). An exception to this would be if the weather’s bad; but if the parking lot is packed, that probably means that there are other folks who “need” the closer spots more than I do.
I tend to argue with people more online than IRL, but I’m not typically mean about it. When I encounter ideas I strongly disagree with in real life, I’m typically silent or extremely measured in my response. Whereas online, I had a friend describe me as “litigious.” I rarely resort to personal insults but goddamn do I enjoy putting idiots in their place.
My parents were both bad, but I think my mother really did the most damage. She had borderline personality disorder which she refused treatment for, among other psychological issues. She was frequently suicidal and often consumed by crazy rage. She shredded our couch with a kitchen knife, drove her car into a building, threatened to jump out of the car while we were speeding down the highway, threatened to bludgeon and shoot me. Every day was “Is this the day she finally kills me?” She constantly berated me, threatened to maim or kill me, destroyed my things, and occasionally threw me out of the house because she couldn’t stand me. No matter how many times I cried and apologized she refused to accept my apology. And she never apologized herself. Oh, and she was always with a different guy, so I had a rotating cast of “fathers” and she looked the other way when they abused me. She is a narcissistic, paranoid, often cruel person and I don’t have a relationship with her any more.
When you are raised in an environment like that, it’s hard not to get down on yourself and it’s hard not to expect calamity around every corner. It’s harder to do a lot of things, including parent your own kid. She just made everything harder for me, for my whole life, and ultimately I decided I can’t forgive that.
I have to say every new facet of your early life was a real downer. Congratulations are in order for not only surviving it but turning out well. Did you ever consider emancipation?
As a matter of fact, I legally emancipated at age 17. By that point I was living with my Aunt, and my Mom was doing everything possible to ruin my life, including take away my driver’s license so I couldn’t get to school, so I really didn’t have a choice if I wanted to graduate high school. It was a bit of an ordeal because she could legally contest it, but for whatever reason that day in court she was in the mood to say, “I neither agree nor disagree.” So I got my emancipation.
I graduated top of my class!** She told me I would never make it in life. I’m trying not to brag too much, but…I definitely made it in life, even with ADHD and PTSD and a ton of other challenges, I did the work, and it turned out well for me.
**Okay, Salutatorian. But one of the assholes who got Valedictorian took the easiest classes. Not that I obsessed about that stuff at all…
I wasn’t sure what category Trader Joe’s would fall under, and it doesn’t really feel like an “ordinary grocery store”, so I chose “other” for them.
I try to get the majority of my fresh produce from the farmers market. Plus certain prepared foods that are available there, like jam/jelly, salsa, and olive oil. There used to be a bakery and cheese vendor that had booths at the market, but they stopped coming, maybe due to lack of staff to run the booths.
Most packaged staple foods (eg. pasta, canned goods) I get from Target, mostly because they’re the closest store to my house and I can walk there.
Most everything else I get from Trader Joe’s, which is also walking distance from my house. (Being walking distance from Trader Joe’s was kind of a selling point when I was house hunting).
Oh, and there’s a small butcher shop in the same shopping center as Trader Joe’s where I buy a lot of my meat products. I need to go back and include them in the poll. (Hmm, no option that covers specialized shops like butcher shops, bakeries, etc. I guess that falls under my “other” response as well.)
Of course I forgot something. I also forgot ‘I don’t buy groceries, somebody else does that and I don’t know where’; and ‘I don’t buy groceries, I only eat out.’ And, for that matter, ‘I don’t buy groceries, I get fed by the college meal plan/prison cafeteria/other institution I live at.’
However – that is indeed what “other” is for!
ETA: There’s no Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods in my immediate area. I don’t know if there’s one in the town where I sometimes shop at a co-op with a wide selection and a broke-people discount, though. But the ritziest I get is Wegman’s and I think they’re more in the “large supermarket” category.
I think we’ve had this discussion before, but I find backing out of a parking spot much easier than backing into one. Some people cite safety reasons for not having to back out into a potentially crowded aisle in a parking lot, but I’ve somehow managed not to run anybody over so far. And I want easy access to the trunk (well, hatchback) to load my groceries.
I interpreted that question as asking what you call the store where you buy your groceries, not what type of store you buy your groceries at. ETA: This referred to @squeegee’s question; I hadn’t seen the othres when I posted this.
If I’m going out to buy groceries, I’ll say I’m going “to the grocery store” or just “to the store,” even if I’m going to a big-box superstore like Walmart, probably because that’s the terminology I grew up hearing my parents using. But it’s the same kind of place that other people refer to as “the supermarket.”
I answered the parking lot question according to what I thought was the spirit of the question, which was to prioritize ease of parking vs. proximity to the entrance vs. proximity to a cart corral. Whether pulling through is easier than backing out (or in) can depend on the layout of the parking lot (e.g. whether the parking spaces are angled or perpendicular).
I live in the opposite of a food desert. Within 15 minutes of home/work (which are only 5 minutes apart), I have access to:
half dozen Ralphs or Vons
Two Walmart Neighborhood Markets
four Trader Joes
a Sprouts
a Costco
at least four upscale markets- (2) Whole foods, Bristol Farms, Gelsons
About 4-6 discount grocery stores
half a dozen or more health food/specialty stores
Two weekly farmer’s markets
And googling, at least a dozen ethnic markets including Mexican, Peruvian, Brazilian. Vietnamese, Japanese, German, and Italian