Still no. The DOD is not saying that Merchant Marines are armed services, they are saying that within a specific timeframe, they did a job equivalent to people who were in the armed services, and that that deserves recognition. Which I think is a stance that most reasonable people would agree with, despite how long it…

I actually have no idea what your point is, beyond "I, too, am sometimes mad that I can't get whatever I want in whatever place I happen to be in, so I will support a stranger in a story who is facing that situation."

Right, but being Important does not make you part of the armed services. There were many people who had Important Jobs during War X, Y, and Z who are not one of the 5 branches of the armed services, and merely loving your grandpa and wanting it really hard is not going to make there magically be 6. And I didn't say…

I didn't have a pair of kitchen scissors in Sudan, so I always ALWAYS spilled the first few centimeters of milk on the counter while I tried to saw through the coated-cardboard bag with a knife.

No one is more grateful for the above and beyond service given by the Merchant Marine during WWII, but that doesn't make them a branch of the armed services, I'm sorry.

I bet it's just more cost-effective to produce a billion plastic or coated cardboard bags than a billion tiny little plastic bottles with bottlecaps. I'd worry about the environmental impact since you can't recycle those things, but I've never seen bagged milk in a country with widespread recycling regardless.

Right. And that is capital d-Disappointing.

The big problem here isn't the question itself, so much as why are you pulling a low-wage worker into a multi-minute psychodrama about something really unimportant? Either be bold and give the thing a shot, if that's your style, or order something else. Unless you're going to a very specific type of restaurant, there…

In similar situations I always just go for the silent but loudly judgmental look, because a) it's just never going to make your life better to interact with certain people, and b) you never want to be the other person in a public screaming match with a moron. I would also counsel some sort of word or gesture of…

Right, but everyone interacts with retail and food service employees a LOT, and they're also both loci for some of the most assholish behavior it's possible for one adult to visit on another. All the examples you cite are annoying and laughable, but I'm going to bet you get relatively few screamed insults or threats…

I can't help but think it must be kind of embarrassing to show up at a party where someone else is also Dressing Naked. Like, done right and by yourself, you look like Rihanna that one time she wore nothing but crystals, bold and brave and essentially like a goddess wandered in from heaven. But if the party has 2 or 5…

I have no idea, as I don't own a bathroom scale and only move for purposes, like, I have to get from point A to point B, or, it's nice out today and I would like to go be in it. But I mean, nothing sounds inherently wrong with what you say.

Thank god I only worked clothing retail for a little while. It was not what you'd call a good fit, mostly because of the behavior talked about right here. One time we had these big sale bins out at the front of the store for our yearly "get rid of all this crap" sale, and a woman pulled out a new-in-stock dress that…

My family and I have one French restaurant we go to for all our special occasions, and it is so nice and the one server has worked there for at least the 15 years we've been going there - and I saw somebody do this ONCE. I'm not even violent but I wanted to reach across and break his fingers with my hands. First of…

What part of the bovine does she think the buffalo wing comes from?

You must be from part of the world where it hasn't been a frozen hellscape for approximately six years so far, because Irish Coffee is the best way for ANYONE to consume alcohol this time of year.

I'm having my first "real" office-experience job in America, and I knew it was going to be oh so much fun my first day of lunch, when a woman came into the kitchen while I was microwaving my meal, announced to the room, "Don't look! I'm going to weigh myself!" and then proceeded to get on the BATHROOM SCALE that I…

Cosigned, and I would also add that people should really work customer service in retail as well. The number of people who have proven to me that they have no idea how ALL THEIR GOODS get to them is astounding - they argue with me about prices and store content like I have anything to do with them. I used to work in a…

A lot of countries sell milk in plastic bags, especially for smaller quantities of milk - I dealt with this in Sudan, and I know Russia does it too. You have to snip off a corner and either pour all the milk out into a container, or have a container that you can stand the bag up in while you use the rest of the milk.

Also I remember that I had ascribed personalities to the different kinds of street lights we would pass in the car. Like, the ones that had little high arches to illuminate two-lane roads were little hunched over old ladies and men, while the ones that were long and graceful were lords and ladies, that kind of thing.…