Plant-Based “Stem Cells” Could Possibly Drive an Environmental Revolution

For the last couple of years, my family has been making a conscious effort to buy less plastic.

Certainly we try to avoid single-use plastics, but even for things that we’ll use again and again we try to find more durable, organic or metal alternatives.

But of course, there’s often an environmental cost to wooden items, too. It presents a conundrum.

Until now. Are you ready to have your mind blown? Lab. Grown. Furniture.

I warned you.

Image credit: Goashape via Unsplash

Wooden furniture is gorgeous, and plant fibers are supremely useful for other everyday items too, like clothing.

That’s why bamboo has become so popular–it grows quickly, with less environmental impact.

But now a PhD candidate at MIT, Ashley Beckwith, and her co-author, Luis Fernando Velásquez-García, have a brilliant plan to reduce waste and environmental impacts even further by growing wood in useful shapes (like 2 by 4’s) right in a lab.

The MIT research team has been working with zinnia tissue, and they published their findings recently in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

As Fast Company reports, their goal is to:

…quickly produce in a lab what would take decades to grow in nature. From there, they could even coax wood tissue to grow into fully-formed shapes—like, say, a table—in order to mitigate the environmental harm of the logging and construction industries.

It’s not a completely new concept. Velásquez-García, a scientist in the university’s Microsystems Technology Lab, explains it in pretty simple terms.

“The plant cells are similar to stem cells. They have the potential to be many things.”

And it’s not just human stem cells. Other scientists have had similar success with lab grown meat products.

So isolating the ability to reduce plants down to a version of a stem cell is just the first step.

Like the meat manufactures who want to grow only the most desirable parts of the animal, Beckwith and team have similar plans for their saplings.

“Trees grow in tall cylindrical poles, and we rarely use tall cylindrical poles in industrial applications.

So you end up shaving off a bunch of material that you spent 20 years growing and that ends up being a waste product.”

Rather than stopping with just growing trees, the team could grow planks, or, rather like 3D printing, they could even guide the development of the plant fiber into the exact shape for its intended purpose.

Of course not every manufacturer has a noble drive to safe the planet.

That’s why this new process is so exciting. It’s so easy, that when compared with the cost of logging, transportation, and everything that goes into cutting down trees to shape them into boards, lab grown trees could actually come out on top, at a lower cost!

Image credit: Lukasz Szmigiel via Unsplash

If the idea of lab-grown veggies freaks you out though, don’t worry. The folks in charge don’t see this being a process that is used to grow food. More like the kinds of plants used to make clothes and industrial materials. There are so many things that could be made from biodegradable plant fibers! Deforestation could become a thing of the past! At least due to human consumption.

How’s that for exciting? Did it blow your mind?

Tell us what you think in the comments!

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If Kids Aren’t Your Thing, These Memes Are For You

Are you the type of person who does NOT want to have kids? Hey! Me too!!

We hate the idea that our independence will be threatened by bedtimes, diaper changes, responsibilities, crying, and snot leakage.

Yeah… completely understandable reasons, fam!

If you’re one of those people, these memes pretty much sum up your outlook on life and kids, so let’s go!

1. Seriously the worst!

Photo Credit: Pizzabottle

2. This won’t end well…

Photo Credit: Pizzabottle

3. Stop looking at me!

Photo Credit: Pizzabottle

4. Too late… already do this…

Photo Credit: Pizzabottle

5. The right response…

Photo Credit: Pizzabottle

6. Get away from me, you devil child!

Photo Credit: Pizzabottle

7. Wut sup!?

Photo Credit: Pizzabottle

8. Get it away!

Photo Credit: Pizzabottle

9. Move away from the child…

Photo Credit: Pizzabottle

10. OMG… YES!

Photo Credit: Pizzabottle

11. Yes? No? Hmmm, better take all of the birth control then!

Photo Credit: Pizzabottle

So, you’re going out to the store right now to gets some condoms, right? Because there’s NO way you want to have a little you running around. That would be horrible.

What do you think? One of these speak to you in a special way?

Let us know in the comments!

The post If Kids Aren’t Your Thing, These Memes Are For You appeared first on UberFacts.

A Kid in the U.S. Got a Response to a Message in a Bottle from Someone in France 9 Years Later

I’ve never thrown a message in a bottle into a body of water, but if I ever did, I would hope the story would end like this one did.

When Max Vredenburgh was 10 years old, he threw a bottle with a message in it into the ocean by Rockport, Massachusetts. This was back in August 2010. The letter read, “Hello my name is Max, whoever is reading this letter, please write back… I”ll tell you a little bit about myself. I’m 1o years old, I like apples, I like the beach, my favorite colors blue, I like animals, I like cars, and I like outer space. Please write back. Sincerely, Max Vredenburgh.”

Fast forward nine years later and the letter was found on a beach in France in October 2019.

The return letter from France reads as follows: “Hello. I found your message in your bottle on October 10, 2019 on a beach in France, between Contis and Mimizan. According to your date, August 21, 2009, It will have taken 9 years to cover the 6000kms that separates us. You had grown a lot during that time: 10 to 19 years old. I put you some maps below to locate you. Respectfully, G. Dubois.”

Vredenburgh shared the story on Twitter and it went viral in a huge way.

As of today, the post has 140,000 retweets and 535,000 likes. Amazingly, Vredenburgh and his pen pal have now connected on Instagram. Vredenburgh said of G. Dubois, “I want to know about him. I want to know if he likes, what his favorite food is, what his favorite color is. Does he like space?”

What a great story! I wish all social media was this positive and wholesome!

The post A Kid in the U.S. Got a Response to a Message in a Bottle from Someone in France 9 Years Later appeared first on UberFacts.

15 People Confess to the Deepest, Darkest Secrets They’re Hiding Right Now

Secrets can be terrible to have but delicious to hear about – as long as they have nothing to do with you.

So, sit back and relax, and enjoy the fact that none of these bombshells are gathering anxiety in your closet.

15. Dank memes.

“That the girl I’m currently dating and beginning a relationship with started messaging me on Facebook because she liked the memes I posted so much. We had never met and she thought I was cute and really funny, so she initiated things.

We tell people that we met by being introduced by her sister-in-law. I have no idea who her sister-in-law is, and have only met her a couple of times.

Everyone asks “how did you meet?” and we’re too embarrassed to tell the truth about dank memes and her pursuing me as a result.”

14. I was such an idiot.

“I’m very embarrassed to admit that I’m hurt over this so I haven’t told anyone. I was talking to someone for a few months and turns out, he has a girlfriend he never mentioned. We went on dates, kissed, and finally had sex.

Told me he’s working on ending the relationship but can’t right now because it’s complicated. Sounds like bullshit. I don’t want to tell my closest family and friends because I was such an idiot.”

13. The next best time.

“I bought the ring, I’m just waiting for a good time. Our vacation out of country is coming up but I don’t know how easy it will be to get a very expensive piece of jewelry with me without her noticing so I’m trying to find the next best time to propose.”

12. A stupid game.

“My gf, her friend, and I went out for mini golfing. I had the score card. I got second and my gf got third, but I botched the numbers and put her as second and me as third.

She was jumping up and down excited she beat me for the rest of the day, and even brought it up the next day.

I’m very happy my secret could make her this happy, even if just for a little bit over a stupid game.”

11. It’s the medicine.

“That i’m taking antidepressants. everyone thinks I’ve gotten my shit together on my own. but it’s the medicine that is keeping me going.”

10. A massive bill.

“When I was about 16, 3-way prank calling was a thing. If you 3-way called someone that person could call someone and on and on.

We had a line party of about 10 or so people. I was feeling bored and 3-way called a fetish porn line which played the introductory message for the whole party who thought it was hilarious.

1-800-WET-FART, 1-800-FAT-LADY, etc etc…

When the phone bill came it reflected a charge of 99 cents for each call I had made.

It was a massive bill.

My mom had no idea it was me. She got the charges removed and I’m glad I never had to explain why her 16 year old daughter was calling those numbers.

Edit The charges were likely from using the 3-way feature I’m not sure. I believe it was free to call the numbers. The numbers still showed up on the phone bill. My mom called the very first number on the bill and it was my friends grandmas house. The lady told her she didn’t have kids in the house. After that my mom dropped it and assumed the “wires got crossed”. Thankfully she never dialed any of the 1-800 numbers.”

9. I really miss her.

“I still really miss my ex, and nothing in my life has come close to filling that void. The thing is, we had a connection from day one and the relationship was really good and just flowed well. It was such an abrupt ending that I think I’m still in shock. We tried to stay friends, but it didn’t work out (mainly because I was still hurting at the time), and I really miss her.”

8. Literal decades.

“People used to confide in me who they had crushes on back in elementary school, I have been keeping that shit under wraps for literal decades now.”

7. He deserves a break.

“I bought my boyfriend tickets to see his favorite NFL team for his birthday. I’ve already got everything set and his boss will let him take the days off. He’s a hard worker and deserves a break.

Hopefully he likes it!”

6. We just don’t know how.

“My wife an I lost our unborn child 3 weeks ago. We still cant tell our family or friends. We just don’t know how.”

5. Stuck doing it.

“The one place I deliver to thinks I have Tourettes. About 5 months ago I started a job being a beer delivery driver. My first day on my route I was delivering to a gas station and there was an Utz snack truck ahead of me delivering as well.

So I’m standing outside my truck waiting to deliver and being bored I started saying Utz to myself in a weird fast way over and over again (pretty much how a samurai would say it I guess). I turn around and there is the manager of the gas station giving me a weird look. My dumbass thought it was a good idea to keep saying it to make him believe I have this weird tick of saying the word Utz. Even filling out his order for him I would throw in Utz. So I get in my truck and think to myself what the fuck did I just do and start cracking up. So for the past couple months everytime I deliver there I throw out the word Utz every couple sentences then get in my truck and start cracking up.

That might make me a shitty person but I’m pretty much stuck with doing it until I find a new job or route.”

4. In 2 and 1/2 years.

“I’m buying my mother a plane ticket to Salt Lake City for Christmas to visit my two brothers who live there one of which she hasn’t seen in 2 1/2 years.”

3. I hate it here.

“I’m studying to take the bar in another state with much better job prospects. I want to leave this state (have never lived anywhere else) because I hate it here. I will be far, far away from any family in the new state.

My family will freak. I’ve always been the one everyone goes to when shit needs fixed. My siblings have all done jack shit for my parents all of their lives. It’s always been my job. I’m bitter, and I want to force them to pick up some of the slack.

Plus, I want to live in a city that actually has stuff to do – not BFE where no one wants to be and everything shuts down at 4:30 pm.”

2. I can’t wait!

“My husband’s 40th birthday is next week. I’ve got tons of surprises planned — concert tickets, football game tickets, surprise party, lots of great gifts— but best of all— his entire family is coming into town to celebrate. I can’t wait! Shhh.”

1. Worst part of it all.

“There was a fly on our large (like $2000+) living room window, and my 3 year old daughter informed me of this. From my natural reflexes, I went to go smack it dead.

It must be noted I got married a few short weeks before this, and wearing a wedding ring was still new to me. Also, I picked a tungsten carbide ring. Yes, one of the heavy beasts.

The initial sound of the metal on glass was enough to realize I fucked up bad. I left a small dent in that glass, not as bad as it could have been. Enough for me to notice, but not too noticeable unless you look for it.

Worst part of it all, I didn’t kill the fly.”

Got any secrets you want to get off your chest? That’s what the comments section is for. Don’t worry, we won’t share it with anybody else.

The post 15 People Confess to the Deepest, Darkest Secrets They’re Hiding Right Now appeared first on UberFacts.

10+ Times People Forgot They Were Being Recorded by Security Cameras

Did you know we’re being videotaped most of the time we’re in public? And if you don’t realize that by now, well, surprise!

Sometimes, however, it’s easy to forget you’re on camera. Or, even if you’re aware, how good are those cameras good at spotting you anyway!

These 11 people DEFINITELY forgot they were being filmed… and some crazy shizz was caught.

Get ready to laugh and gasp and shake your head!

1. Wait… how did you let this happen? You just ate it?!

Photo Credit: Whisper

2. Damn. That’s harsh!

Photo Credit: Whisper

3. Hey, not a bad thing!

Photo Credit: Whisper

4. Did you want to watch this or…?

Photo Credit: Whisper

5. “Where did this wall come from!?”

Photo Credit: Whisper

6. There’s so much going on here, I don’t even know where to start…

Photo Credit: Whisper

7. People! Stop stealing shit! You’re being filmed EVERYWHERE.

Photo Credit: Whisper

8. Sure….

Photo Credit: Whisper

9. Yeah, I bet they’re really keeping track of that…

Photo Credit: Whisper

10. You took an entire ANIMAL?!?

Photo Credit: Whisper

11. Awwww… that’s sweet. ?

Photo Credit: Whisper

Has anything like this ever happened to you?

Share in the comments!

The post 10+ Times People Forgot They Were Being Recorded by Security Cameras appeared first on UberFacts.

Garbage Collectors & Dumpster Divers Reveal the Insane Stuff People Threw ​Out

Ever been dumpster diving? It’s pretty wild.

Yes, rich people throw away a bunch of expensive things for no apparent reason other than they’re rich.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at these 23 answers to the question that reddit asked, “What’s the most illegal, strange or valuable thing you’ve seen while gathering people’s trash?”

Oh, and do you want to know what pro football players throw out? That one is at the end. And it’s pretty nuts.

23. “Ironically a bunch of brand new trashcans”

I’ve volunteered at neighborhood cleanups and have found some amazing stuff.

I was working the metal bin, but took home a couple nice GT bmx bikes for the kids.

A brand new in the box turkey deep fryer.

Ironically a bunch of brand new trashcans (Rubbermaid brute)

Perfectly fine honda pressure washer.

Commercial paint sprayer.

I grab it for myself and sell that shit!

22. “They were BEDAZZLED.”

I’m a janitor in an office building. I’ve seen a lot of strange things in the five years I’ve been there. Bathroom trash is the weirdest – I’ve found empty bottles of lube, chicken wings stuffed into the tampon boxes, pregnancy tests at least a few times a year – but the lady with the bugs was the weirdest.

One of the floors in the building had a huge problem with bugs. One night I was collecting the trash off the floor when I noticed she had very carefully decorated a cardboard box to look like a hotel, and had a sign inviting people to drop any bugs they found inside. It was weird, but I figured she was just collecting proof of the bug problem to get management to do something about it.

A few weeks later, I turned the corner to her cubicle, and it was covered in bugs. There were about 20, tacked up all over with pushpins. And they were BEDAZZLED. Each of these goddamn bugs had its own unique pattern.

After we told management about it they finally did bring an exterminator in! We still talk about the “bug lady” to this day.

21. “…in their own specialty shaped little recessed bits lay three large adult toys.”

I was doing waste analysis, collecting people’s domestic rubbish and sorting it into categories, producing data for recycling planning. Fairly disgusting job.

Anyway, I once found a nice wooden box with a hinged lid, lined with some sort of silky fabric, and in their own specialty shaped little recessed bits lay three large adult toys.

One was the size of a fire extinguisher. The thing was scary.

No idea why someone would throw them out when they’d clearly been cherished.

20. “So, he started a freecycling program…”

Not a garbageman, but in my college town dumpster diving was a regional sport every May with all the college kids throwing away anything they didn’t care to move.

My geography professor found a brand new, never used, pair of skis in the trash one year. So, he started a freecycling program, which was an assignment for my honors human geography class.

We picked up unwanted items from the dorms and Greek houses, and held onto them until school started in the fall, when students could have their pick of anything.

Certain items, like shoes, went straight to where my professor volunteered in Peru, and anything unused went to Goodwill or another thrift store.

Laziness does terrible things when you’re young.

19. “…the CEO doesn’t give a sh!t.”

My friend’s dad is the “do everything” kind of man for a CEO of a construction company.

He gets asked to throw away jewelries and expensive art artifacts.

He also had to get rid of old pick ups (sell them or whatever he could but get rid of them) he could keep the money the CEO doesn’t give a sh!t.

18. “I still have a 3 storage units full of house parts I picked up back then”

I have a (now deceased) friend who basically stocked his antique store with stuff he found on the side of the road.

I’m sort of ashamed to admit it because I feel like it was profiting off the misfortune of others but I lived in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina and I basically rebuilt my house from stuff that people tossed. I was amazed at the amount of stuff people ripped out that was above the waterline.

​People would literally hire crews to gut their entire house and they would put everything, and I repeat, everything on the side of the road. At one point there

Some of the stuff I found: AC Units. 2-3 Sub-Zero refrigerators (compressor is on the top, people, there are no electronics in the bottom to get wet). A full room of paneling which I used to panel a small bathroom.

Marble flooring. Attic fans. Solid wood doors. A full vintage porcelain bathroom set (tub, sink, toilet and bidet). A skeleton shower from the 20’s ($). Hardwood flooring. Chandeliers. Cabinets. Lots and lots of cypress molding and structural elements.

Also found: TV sets. Computers. 2 grand pianos (flood had discolored legs but not reached the soundboard). 3-4 bedroom sets. A stack of paintings by a well-known LA artist ($$). Lamps. Stereo equipment.

I still have a 3 storage units full of house parts I picked up back then that I have slowly been incorporating into my current home renovation. It was truly a shame to see all this great old stuff be tossed and replaced with Home Depot crap. I could have filled 10 more units with stuff I saw and couldn’t store.

17. “…to hear the most satisfying “pop” you’ve ever heard.”

Brother owns a trash company which I worked a lot for during summer breaks.

I’ve found a live possum, which hissed at me. Dead mice. Lots of adult videos. Blow up doll.

The most valuable thing to find is glass handles of vodka. We used to save them in the cab, throw them as high as we could at the dump to hear the most satisfying “pop” you’ve ever heard.

Gotta find little enjoyable things that make you smile while working a literal sh*tty job.

16. “I mean like small scale professional level stuff.”

Not a garbage man, but we used to hang out at the dumpster of the local U-Store type place (before the whole Storage Wars thing happened) and first of the month you could find the coolest sh*t in that dumpster.

I remember we got an entire wine making set. And I don’t mean a little one, I mean like small scale professional level stuff. Wine corks, multiple heavy glass bottles of all different colors, those huge glass bottles, the hoses and valves, everything.

Basically looked like someone had an entire micro-brewery setup and forgot to pay the rent on his box.

Whoopsie.

15. “This man just threw about 30k in the trash”

I worked as garbage man last year as a summer job. One day a man came by who said he lost a high sum of money and he wants us to look for it. The money was in an envelope and he said it was € 10.000+. He said he wanted to bring the money to the bank and stashed it between some old newspaper he wanted to get rid of (yeah, what a genius, right?).

Anyways, we were about 10 men at that time and he promised to give all of us a fair share if we manage to find it, so, obviously we started the search.

As you can imagine, that shit usually takes a while to find because you have to literally look through every paper container (about 20) for a small envelope.

Well, the luck was on our side that day, after about 10 minutes a coworker called out that he got it. Awesome. He looked inside and told us later that it was definitely more than 10k (more like 30k).

Everybody got a 100€ bill and it was pretty much the best working day ever.

This man just threw about 30k in the trash and found it like 2 hours later. Should’ve went to the casino that day.

14. “Others were sold on eBay for 4 times what I paid…”

I’m a major thrift store scavenger. I found a tiny hole-in-the-wall junk shop in a town just outside a big Tennessee city, near Amish country. Most of the stuff was old vending machine crap, and stacks of old magazines etc.

I saw a big plastic bag full of (what looked like) old, torn towels that had “donate” written on it and scratched out, and “whole bag $10” rewritten on the bag. I started peeking through it. Under the torn towels were incredibly beautiful hand-embroidered bed linens and pillowcases, some with crocheted or hand-tatted lace trim.

Most were incredibly soft linen, or beautiful cotton. I’m a crafter so I immediately saw the value. My guess is that someone’s mother/grandmother passed away and they threw her whole linen cabinet into a bag without looking closely. I got up really quickly so the store clerk wouldn’t see how excited I was and guess that the bag had more than towels in it. I paid the $10 and ran to my car to unpack.

In that bag were 8 pairs of pillowcases (all different, all flawlessly embroidered ), 6 embroidered woven dish towels , a 1950s style apron, and many small items like handkerchiefs..and 2 torn towels. Down the road in the antiques shopping row, I saw a pair of nearly identical pillowcases going for $50 a pair.

A bunch of the stuff is currently on my bed. Others were sold on eBay for 4 times what I paid for the whole bag.

13. “Guy had left computers, tvs, a f*cking mercedes…”

Friend’s uncle owns some apartment buildings. Guy from China was living in one of the units and ended up needing to leave the country for Visa issues.

Eventually got in touch with the guy somehow (email likely) to ask what was going on, why no rent paid, etc.

Guy explains and says that he can’t give money for rent, and to just sell off anything in the apartment to make up for it.

Guy had left computers, tvs, a f*cking mercedes, etc.

Cleared way more than the $1600 for two months rent, plus kept the security deposit.

12. “He tells Dad that the foot was likely removed as a warning to someone…”

Not me, but my Dad was.

He found his share of cool stuff. he worked from 1969-1989 for the DSNY. I still have a lamp made from an old brass fire extinguisher that he found, like many others, he found lots of TV’s, some new clothes (usually at Christmas time – that is why we always went through the wrapping paper), baseball cards by the box, wish I kept those, some WWII stuff, most notably an SS Dagger –

but one of the wings of the eagle was broken and attached with scotch tape. Stamps, cause I collected them when I was a kid. I have a Hitler postage stamp somewhere from this.

I wrote this before, but here it goes. The creepiest thing was in the early 1970’s, Dad and the other 2 guys (at the time they were 3 to a truck, one drove, the others loaded the trash), were in East New York, an area of Brooklyn that is really sh*tty (and still is today).

They come across a very large human foot that was black (as in it came from someone who was black). Not knowing what to do, they put it in a paper bag and drove to the nearest police precinct. They walk up to the desk Sgt and place the bag in front of him. He asks what is this about?

He gestures to look inside. Desk Sgt does. closes bag up, looks at Dad and his partners, and tells them “Cycle it” (By cycle, he meant just run it through the truck with the other trash).

He tells Dad that the foot was likely removed as a warning to someone, that they (the police in that precinct) had seen it before. It was likely drug related. Even if they did find the owner, he wouldn’t talk, and the foot couldn’t be attached back. By moving the foot, they pretty much ruined a crime scene.

They cycled the foot.

This was the 1970’s – NYC was in a downward spiral at the time.

11. “The most valuable would have to be an assorted allotment…”

Very wealthy neighborhood.

I tossed 4-5 bags into the hopper, the fifth one ripped… sweet sweet mary jane. Although it was just trimmings.

I laughed and kept going.

The most valuable would have to be an assorted allotment of unused Winsor and Newton oil paints.

Nothing too spectacular. But as an artist it was valuable to me.

10. “…wondering if people knew that I could read all of their medical records…”

As a kid, I can chime in what rich people threw away, even in the 1970s. None of this would make that much sense anymore, but the number one thing that I found that was surprising were clock radios. They were perfectly functioning clock radios, they just weren’t the new LCD models. They were the flip kind, or they would have a gear that would slowly turn and show the time. Are used to clean them up, and then sell them to other neighborhood kids for like five bucks. My mother caught wind of this, and put an end to it because she didn’t like the thought of her son digging through someone else’s trash.

Decades later, I went dumpster diving with some friends once in a while to get computer equipment from the back of failed business operations. It’s how I built my first few computers. I remember looking at one of the contents of the hard drive, and wondering if people knew that I could read all of their medical records or private email. :/

I am told that it’s better handled now. Almost every company I’ve worked for in the last 20 years has some sort of technology recycling service, but I always wonder if they’re just paying someone else to throw it in the dumpster for them.

9. “The rich guy hands him the keys, title,”

My uncle’s friend picked up trash in Grosse Pointe in the 80’s. There was a rich client who would often meet him by the curb just to talk every day. One day, he up and asks, “Hey, you know anything about cars?” Uncle’s friend happened to be working the trash job to save up to open his own car shop, so he replied, “Sure do!”

The guy then asked him what he thought about the Ford Escort, and uncle’s buddy replied that he thought it was cheap, but reliable. The rich guy hands him the keys, title, and tells him to pick it up after his route, he had bought it brand new for his daughter, but she hated it, and he was going to get her a different car.

The odometer had less than 500 miles on it.

8. “Easily have gotten over $5k worth of makeup products…”

I enjoy dumpster diving from time to time even though I make enough money to live comfortably – I grew up in the poor parts of San Diego and would dumpster dive as a kid with my friends for fun and the habit never really wore off.

Back when I was a preteen/teen there was a fairly well off family in our apartment complex who had 4 kids and every month or two, their parents would get PISSED OFF at one of their kids and throw out ALL of their toys. This happened like clockwork every 2-3 months with one kid one month, another kid another month and sometimes 2or 3 kids in one sitting. My friend and I would dumpster dive and pull out EASILY $500 worth of toys each – sometimes brand new stuff with price stickers still attached.

One time, they threw out their kids Harry Potter collection stuff out. Got a few of the books, some limited edition golden Harry Potter bookmarks, unused journals and this brand new and unopened. I still have it over 15 yrs later.

More recently though I’ve found a F*CKTON of crafting supplies – mainly really expensive beads and beading materials to make necklaces/bracelets. I’m talking like 30 lbs of beads and beading materials in one big box – split it up into parts and sold them for $100 on ebay each.

Also found a set of really nice fireplace pokers with the holder, a few used brand name handbags, a bag full of Iron Maiden gear including shirts, CDs, random cutouts and printouts of Iron Maiden’s Eddie and a huge cloth iron maiden flag all from the same dumpster (on different occasions).

Also, when I go out of town to big cities (or when I go back to visit my family in San Diego) I like to go dumpster diving at makeup stores since they tend to throw out perfectly near new condition displays ALL THE TIME.

Easily have gotten over $5k worth of makeup products over the years by diving in their dumpsters.

7. “sold them all online for like $600 pure net profit…”

Not a garbage man – but at work there was this big cleaning spree in our storage room (IT place)

Rummaging through it because I was bored and noticed there were a LOT of brand new sealed in retail box Lexmark color ink cartridges. I don’t have an inkjet but this was going to get thrown on a pallet and tossed.

I scored probably 25 or 30 brand new boxes (tricolor packs) and sold them all online for like $600 pure net profit (after fees).

Turns out people are willing to buy those things when your price is 20% less than everyone else online.

6. “8 year old me f*cking LOVED bin day.”

My dad has been ‘on the bins’ (working for the council doing refuse, blocked drains, street cleaning etc) for about 30-odd years.

He brought a load of books home once, all hard cover Terry Pratchett’s, that someone had just tossed in to a bin in a shopping centre.

He used to do tip runs, collecting stuff that had been dumped illegally and taking it to a tip (landfill?) and he used to come back with all sorts of sh!t. Mum would just bin it all again as soon as he was at work. “Look at this!” he’d say, dragging something utterly horrid in to the house “Can you believe someone would throw this away?!” Yes dad. We can believe.

Bonus points – his mates that worked our route would let me press the button on the trash compactor!

8 year old me f*cking LOVED bin day.

5. “a Raleigh 753 tubing road race bike.”

Dumpster diver: Fender Telecaster, rusted strings but unplayed;

Sony short wave radio;

washing machine & dryer;

silver ashtray, spoon, and chopsticks, a set;

unopened whiskey and brandy bottles;

a sword;

a set of old handmade carbon steel kitchen knives with ebony handles;

several printers;

3 Sony Trinitron monitors;

books, lots of books;

several 30-40 year old passports;

a Raleigh 753 tubing road race bike;

a top-of-the-line DeLonghi espresso machine.

4. “…found $40,000 hidden…”

Not a trash story exactly, but….a couch was donated to a charity.

It went onto the sale floor at a thrift shop and sat there for 2 weeks.

Since it reached the time limit for sale they were throwing it into the dumpster.

A last second inspection found $40,000 hidden inside.

I didn’t see one red cent of it, but it went to charity so I guess thats cool.

3. “He just kept saying heads, heads, heads…”

A normal day at the landfill was interrupted by a scream of terror from the dozer driver who came running full tilt and white as a sheet up to my me.

He just kept saying heads, heads, heads, over and over again.

They went back to his dozer and found a garbage bag torn open with ten bloody heads spilling out of it.

Somebody had thrown away ten mannequin heads that had been used in a local haunted house.

2. “It’s hard to imagine what rich kids throw out.”

I grew up near a very wealthy prep school, and at the end of every year I would dumpster dive for all kinds of things.

Electronics (mp3s, graphing calculators, etc…), brand new camping gear from the one overnight trip they do, desks/desk chairs, money, you name it.

I’d sell some on craigs, keep some, and donate what I didn’t need.

It’s hard to imagine what rich kids throw out.

1. “…contracts and just about all the personal information that one would need to actually become Ricky Williams.”

When former Football player Ricky Williams briefly retired to become a spiritual guru in the hills he moved into a place that was on my recycling route.

I noticed a box he tossed once and grabbed it to see if there was any memorabilia or football items related in it. It looked important.

What was in it was team doctors papers, contracts and just about all the personal information that one would need to actually become Ricky Williams.

I felt weird that this was out there, so I took it home and burned every piece of it in the fireplace.

Felt guilty even looking at it as I tossed it.

Moral to these stories? If you’re Ricky Williams, you need to get a firepit and burn yo shit! #truth

The post Garbage Collectors & Dumpster Divers Reveal the Insane Stuff People Threw ​Out appeared first on UberFacts.

All Women Have the Same Freckle on Their Wrist. Take a Look, We’ll Wait.

A Twitter user recently pointed out something that was staring us in the face this whole time, but none of us noticed this feature most women have in common.

It started off with an innocent question…

“Ladies… you got a freckle on the middle of your wrist or is this a myth,” Aaryn asked.

The answer was YASSSSS!!!! So many women had a freckle in that exact spot!

And so they shared…

Because this is wild, ya’ll!

Shocking to say the least!

Some weren’t so sure…

But that’s because they didn’t look closely enough!

And yeah, you’re right to freak…

Because it’s there. Just need to uncover it.

And look at both wrists, ladies!

To answer the following question: “Because.”

So yeah… that’s crazy right?

The question is now… do you have a freckle in the middle of your wrist?

Snap a shot and leave it in the comments!

The post All Women Have the Same Freckle on Their Wrist. Take a Look, We’ll Wait. appeared first on UberFacts.

12 Times People Did Petty Things to Get Back at Someone

When people are petty, it’s entertaining for us all. Isn’t that right?

Buzzfeed asked their community to tell them about all those petty things they’ve done, and these folks delivered BIG time.

1. Trust officially broken…

“My ex cheated on me, then had the nerve to say that he didn’t trust me.

So I waited until he was at work then took his phone, dumped all his cologne onto his bed, kicked his air conditioner out of the window, and gave his dog away.

He didn’t have a reason not to trust me so I gave him one.”

2. Ass if…

“After years of treating me terribly, my so-called ‘best friend’ was riding my ass about a cheap dress I’d borrowed from her that I hadn’t returned yet, and I just snapped and ended our friendship.

But not before wiping my ass with the dress, putting it in a plastic bag, and giving it to her dad to return to her. To this day, I wonder if she ever caught pink eye from that.

I would never do anything like that again…but fuck that bitch, seriously.”

3. Petty sex

“A college friend was having a small party and invited a guy that she thought was really cute.

Well, that cute guy took a liking to me and kept hanging around me that night, even though I wasn’t really into him. But my friend was still upset that he was paying me so much attention, so she SPRAYED HER CIDER ALL OVER ME with a simple ‘oops.’

After the party ended, the cute guy asked me to crash on the couch with him, but my friend insisted that I sleep in her room instead or else she would totally cut ties with me. I turned her down nicely, and she slammed the door in my face.

So I had sex with the guy on her couch.

I regret nothing.”

4. Mother of the year

“My ex was in prison at the time, and he pissed me off right before Father’s Day. So I bought a card for my daughter to send him that said, ‘I may not be a perfect child, but look on the bright side…at least I’m not mailing this from prison.

Happy Father’s Day!”

5. Screams of displeasure

“My roommate and her boyfriend were having really loud sex against the wall between our bedrooms when they knew I was trying to take a nap.

So I put my speaker right next to the wall and blasted a series of shrill, screaming reaction videos from the internet.

It very effectively killed the mood.”

6. The log of lies

“When I was younger, I would keep a log of all the times my sister lied to my parents.

Then one day, she really pissed me off, so I gave the compilation of years of lies to my mom.

My sister got in so much trouble that my mom still brings it up.”

7. Fun with photoshop…

“I went on a beach trip with my friends and a girl that I don’t like was invited.

So before posting all our pics to social media, I edited the photos to correct blemishes and thin out everyone’s faces,

except hers…which I widened.”

8. Cancel the marriage. It’s done!

“My (now ex) husband would always wake me up to yell at me for leaving a cabinet door open, so one day I waited until he was asleep in his recliner then I went in the kitchen and OPENED EVERY CABINET, all of the drawers, the oven, the dishwasher, and the microwave.

Then, knowing he’d have to cross the kitchen to get to our bedroom, I crawled back in bed and waited.

As soon as I heard him swearing I felt so much glee. That’s when I realized our marriage was over.”

9. Like petty mother, like petty daughter

“My dad pissed me and my mom off one day, so we teamed up and ate his Jimmy John’s tuna sandwich and replaced it with a regular white bread sandwich filled with dry canned tuna.

And hey — my mom wanted to put wet dog food in there instead!

Clearly, the petty apple does not fall far from the petty tree.”

10. When pettiness pays off!

“There was a girl who bullied me in high school and made my life hell.

Well, when I found out that she didn’t get accepted to her dream school, I applied out of spite to see if I could get in.

Not only did I get in with a scholarship, I ended up attending and even made the Dean’s List.”

11. Paging the adult daycare center… we have a petty child for you!

“My mom remarried a few years after my dad died, and I really hate her husband.

So whenever I visit them, I take one of his belongings and I hide it.

Yep — I’m 37 years old and petty AF!”

12. When you don’t makeup

“After a fight with my sister, I secretly dumped her makeup setting spray and filled the bottle with water.

For months, I watched with evil satisfaction as she sprayed water on her face and wondered why it didn’t work.”

Ohhhh, these were so very petty.

Love it!

The post 12 Times People Did Petty Things to Get Back at Someone appeared first on UberFacts.

21 People Explain How They Got Their Bosses Fired

This question on Reddit was quite intriguing:

“People who’ve gotten their bosses fired: how?”

Some stories were funny, and others were pretty shocking. How can people do those kinds of things in the workplace?

Here are 21 of the most interesting tales about someone getting their boss tossed out the door.

1. What an asshole!

He grabbed the back of my neck and said “If you ever say I’m wrong in front of a customer again I will beat your ass.”

I went to the GM and told him and my supervisor was relieved of his duties about 5 minutes later

2. Caught red-handed

I took a cell phone video of her taking money from the safe and putting it in her wallet. I knew she was doing it, and I also knew that the moment it came out that money was missing she’d blame it on me.

She was so stupid that she didn’t realize she should stop doing that while I was standing ten feet away with my phone out and facing her.

3. Well, that backfired!

The CEO publicly praised me for completing a task that my boss had struggled with, so my boss retaliated by forwarding all of his tasks to me in an effort to overwhelm me with work.

I actually found his job pretty manageable, which the CEO also noticed and fired him, giving me his job and office.

4. How do people think this won’t catch up with them?

It was my supervisor.

It got to the point that I had decided to quit. I had my resignation letter in my purse, but decided to let his boss know why I was quitting. Supervisor would talk about all the people on our team constantly, but only behind their backs. I got so sick of telling him to cut it out. My husband and I happened to work at the same place (different departments) and my Supervisor would make sexual comments about threesomes (with him – ewww), what hotel we picked for our afternoon delight, shit like that. It was so bloody uncomfortable. Apart from this he spent most of his supervising time outside smoking. Problem was Supervisor was “one of the guys” and I was the only girl.

Turns out his boss was disgusted, told his boss who lost his mind. They started an investigation which took three days. They interviewed staff – they corroborated what I said. They checked the security cameras, saw he was spending most of his work day outside smoking. And was fired.

When he was told he guessed (wasn’t hard!) that I was the person who complained and tried to get to me to “apologize that I took it the wrong way”. The best feeling was my co workers surrounding me as he was waled out. That was a lovely ending to it all.

5. Document everything.

Was working maintenance at an ice rink.

The rule for anyone who knows how an ice rink works is if the zamboni doors open, you get the fuck off the ice. Some dick-head decided to ignore the fact that they were open and that I was standing in the doorway, and decided to rip off one last slap-shot. The puck bounced off the glass and hit me in the head.

I was OK, but reported it to my boss, because we have to fill out an incident report for things like that. The boss asked “Are you OK?” I said I feel OK, then he responded with “Well, we don’t really have to report it then do we?” I reminded him of the protocol, but it was clear he didn’t want to do it. Since he wouldn’t do it, I sent a descriptive email of the incident up to the administration, because I felt there should be some sort of documentation/paper trail in case god-forbid I ended up having a brain hemorrhage or something a few days later.

The boss was fired by my next shift.

6. He doesn’t know how sound works?

Our desks were separated by a 5 foot cubicle wall. He was under the mistaken impression that it totally blocked sound. Thus I got to hear all his loud phone conversations, primarily his booty calls including those with his boss’s fiance. I figured it was none of my business and tried to ignore it.

Well there was a position in another department that I was interested in and as per procedure I handed in an application to my talkative boss. Didn’t hear anything further and followed up a couple of days later, only to be told that something must have happened to the application. Filled out another one and handed it in. As I return to my desk I hear the boss on the phone with a friend laughing about how he had just trashed my application again and how he was never going to let go of me.

I go to boss’s boss and angrily offer my resignation, telling him what I had just overheard, explaining that I was constantly hearing his phone calls like his booty calls like with <woman’s name> and <woman’s name> and <boss’s boss’s fiance’s name>. He got very quiet and told me to go back to my desk and he’ll take care of everything. The next day I come in and boss is gone. The day after, I have an interview with the other department (got the position).

I tend to avoid office drama, but really, he should have stuck to screwing his boss’s fiance, and not tried to screw me as well.

7. Damn! This is actually pretty vindictive…

Phoned him to tell him I won’t be at work for the rest of the week as my mum is terminally ill in hospital.

The next day (about an hour after she passed away) he phoned and asked why I wasn’t at work, I just hung up on him so I wouldn’t say anything that would get me in trouble.

The next day I sent the area-manager a Whatsap message explaining what he’d be done and attached a video of him breaking the freezer door while having a tantrum which cost the store nearly £5000 in lost stock and the repair costs (which he’d told the AM it broke on its own).

He got fired that day and I got 2 weeks off with full pay

8. Creepers gonna creep…

In college I worked in a take-out restaurant just off campus, and we were all employed by the school.

I was 17-18 years old (back in 2007/2008) and my boss, the manager, was a 40-something creeper. Hitting on me, touching me inappropriately (trying to massage my shoulders, tickling me, putting his hands on/around my waist) despite me asking him to stop. Then he friended me on Facebook, I declined, and suddenly my work schedule was changed. I was on shift during hours when I had class, and when I explained that problem, I got taken off the schedule altogether.

I told the assistant manager what was going on (which I was explicitly told by the manager not to talk to the assistant) and he reported what was going on to upper management– boom, manager was fired. I worried for a while if he was going to come after me for that.

9. Yeah, this isn’t gonna turn out well for you…

About 13-14 years ago, I was working as a web designer for a dot com. In our immediate group were a creative director, a creative manager, and 2 of us who were designers and we were all part of the marketing dept.

The creative director was a joke. Brought in by the previous VP of Marketing who he was friends with, he hardly did any work himself, and just played online poker waiting on us to send him things for approval. And he’d never stick around late when the rest of us needed to stay late to hit a deadline or deal with a crisis, etc. The creative manager, who’d been in charge for a couple years before the creative director’s hiring, still ran the day to day.

So the creative manager gave his notice that he’d accepted a new job, and when I met with the current VP of marketing to discuss transition, I mentioned that the creative director would need to step up and pull his weight. I guess a similar message was expressed by a number of people, and less than a week after the creative manager’s last day the creative director was fired!

This kind of sucked because we went down from 4 to 2 people in our group. I was appointed acting creative manager, and we eventually did hire one more designer. I left the company a couple months later, too, after the latest VP of Marketing was let go and there was going to be a 10th different person overseeing marketing in my 5 years there.

And the asshole creative director? He’d reached out at some point (looking for files for his portfolio, I think?), and it happened to be in the 2 week window where I’d accepted my next job but hadn’t yet started so I mentioned my new position. Well, he fires off a copy of his resume to the company president and tried to poach my new job out from under me! On my first day at the new job, the president mentioned that somebody else from that same company also applied for the job and forwarded me the application email to see if I knew him… saw that the date was after he and I had last communicated!

10. Turnabout is fair play!

I was fired because I “abandoned my job” while on short term disability, because wile on approved leave, they are a date for me to return, never informed me (by their own admission), and when I obviously didn’t return to work… i was fired.

The locker I had at work had my work boots in it that the company pays $90 a year towards. However there isn’t a pair under $100 available. So you always end up having some come out of your paycheck. At that point they are yours regardless of the company line. They disagreed and said they were thrown out, I reported them stolen, and the HR director responsible for getting me fired was fired.

11. A happy ending…

About 15 years ago, I worked at a major university in the IT department. After I was hired, it took me a couple of months to realize my boss was a sociopath as was his #2 guy.

Once I realized what I was dealing with, I just tried to keep my head down because I didn’t want to job hop so soon after leaving my last job. But they made that impossible.

We had a database administrator and I was interested in becoming a DBA so I talked to him a lot about what I should do to transition from a programmer to a DBA. The VP of IT, my bosses boss, would stop by and talk to me and ask me about my aspirations, so I told her about wanting to be a DBA and that I was actually taking night classes so I could. This was a woman who my boss referred to as “she who must be obeyed” in a totally disrespectful manner.

As the months went on, I saw more and more egregious behavior by my boss and his #2 toady. We had a large corporation consulting on transition to their database. This included a young guy who was doing the database install including ordering the right equipment and migrating the data.

We also had student workers in our department. They were students who worked part time hours. One of these was a young woman. The big corp young guy and the young woman started going to lunch together. Apparently this was offensive to my boss, who threatened both of them with termination for “fraternization”. The university had no such rule, my boss was just making it up as he went.

About 6 months after I was hired, the DBA quit. I went into our weekly staff meeting and at the end, my boss announces that I’d been promoted to DBA. My spidey senses were tingling because of his tone of voice and because this was the first I was hearing about it.

After the meeting, I went to his office to thank him and tell him I really appreciated the chance. He was very angry. Apparently, his boss had made him promote me. I had no idea.

The next thing I know, I’m being called into my boss’s #2 guy’s office. He tells me that performance reviews were coming up and I would have to be reviewed on job description of DBA rather than the job description of my old position. That is, unless I turned down the DBA position. Yep, he was threatening me to get me to turn down the promotion. I asked him to see the written description of my old position as well as the one for DBA. He couldn’t give them to me because they didn’t exist. Now, I can be a pretty stubborn bitch, and this really pissed me off. I didn’t do anything wrong and now my job was being threatened.

Part of my job duties during the 6 months of my employment involved working with the head of every department of the university, including the legal department. I had a good working relationship with every head of every department.

So I made an appointment with the university’s head counsel. I explained the situation to him including my boss’s boss making him promote me and my boss threatening me with my performance review. I told him that, although I was studying to be a DBA, I was really not qualified to be one without some hard work and if the university didn’t want me to take the position, I would absolutely turn it down. I also mentioned my boss’s nickname for his boss and the issue with the student worker and the big corp guy. Apparently, the student worker had already filed a harassment complaint so the head counsel knew about it.

He told me I had been promoted by someone (boss’s boss) who had every right to promote me and I should not worry about anything. He said if my boss gave me any more trouble that I should let him know.

A week later my boss and his #2 toady were fired. My boss ended up working at a small city college and is there to this day. I pity his employees.

I left the university about 2 years later and had a successful career as a DBA.

12. Boss gone AND more money?!

My manager wanted to prove I’m slacking off so he could write me up. So he watched CCTV footages then wrote, printed out and SIGNED a detailed 17 pages worth of Word document what did I do in the past two days. With timestamps (like, 07:59 arriving, 08:01 speaking with co-worker A and B, 08:07 sitting down to my desk, etc.). He told me that he’s not happy with my work ethics if I won’t improve my efficiency, I’m fired.

I took the papers and showed to his boss and told her that I’m not happy with my managers work ethics and his efficiency might be better if he wouldn’t watch 17 hours of CCTV footages to spy on an employee. She was terrified (it would’ve been a rock solid lawsuit for me – but I love my job) and we had to search for a new manager.

Also, my salary raised.

13. The ole email trick…

I left my last company due to a bully of a gm.

Many people were leaving over him causing problems, being sexist, racist, doing things people could easily sue them for claiming sexual harassment. List goes on. Everyone informed HR during their exit interviews, hell he even tried to make my exit interview not happen. Though they still weren’t doing anything. I had been at my new job for a couple months now and was STILL getting complaints from my old team almost daily.

So I made an email account and named Concerned company name Crew. Sent an email to EVERYONE who had an email account within the company explaining what he did/still did with events spanning from his start to the day prior.

They fired him within the week and my old crew thanked me.

14. Poachers getting punished…

One summer I volunteered to help a conservation society in East Africa. The aim of the project was to educate the local rural population about poaching and to get them to help us stop it from the ground up.

Anyway, I was staying with the lead ranger and his family and on numerous occasions he served us meat that I’m 100% sure was poached. He tried to tell me that it was pork, but it was dark and gamey with lots of small bones. I think that it was small antelope like dikdik or duiker.

When I returned to Nairobi I mentioned to my grandpa (his boss’s boss) that we’d eaten some odd meals. He investigated, and found out that my boss had a poacher friend who was selling him illegal meat. He was fired, I didn’t feel guilty. Poaching is awful.

15. And…. you’re gone!

I took a phone call on my cell when at my desk. Middle manager came up and screamed at me. Yelling about how I was not allowed to take calls for clients while at that office. I was a contractor and made it perfectly clear that I did work for multiple clients prior to doing work for this company.

The CTO’s office was 10 feet from mine. He came out and stood in his doorway listening to the rant. When the middle manager was done I just looked over at the CTO and said “it’s him or me and at the moment I don’t give a fuck which you pick.” CTO walked the middle manager out right then.

Funny thing: I didn’t hang up throughout the incident. And it was my wife on the other end. I was spending about 70 hours a week at their site digging their staff out of a hole they had dug themselves in.

16. The breaking point…

Complained for months about her breaking company policy (and thus state labor law, since the state considered a signed employee handbook to be a binding contract for both sides) — nothing. Tricked her into saying the things I’d been complaining about for months on a conference call with her boss and her boss’s boss, fired that day.

Context: My boss tried to tell me I couldn’t take breaks. The company policy handbook, which I had signed and thus became a binding contract by state law, laid out lunch and/or breaks based on length of shift scheduled for. When I pointed this out she switched to scheduling me by myself and then strolling by the store to check up on me occasionally, writing me up when she ‘caught me’ having closed the store in order to take breaks/eat lunch. Called her boss (regional director) and complained, got the write-ups removed, listened to her tell my boss to chill the fuck out and let me take my breaks, she still didn’t do it. Further (formal) complaints resulted in no changes. I knew there was a quarterly conference call coming up so I developed the habit of walking into her office and saying, ‘It’s time for my break,’ and making her say, every time, that I wasn’t allowed to go. She got in the habit of doing it kind of absent-mindedly in an increasingly aggressive tone. So then I did it again in the middle of the conference call and she blew a gasket, ranting at me about how many times she’d told me that I was not allowed to take breaks, under any circumstances, etc. The call, which she always put on speakerphone, went dead silent. It took her about 5 seconds to realize what she’d just done, and then before she could try to begin damage-control her boss politely cleared her throat and said, ‘Boss, I’ve told you before that that is incorrect.’ I grinned a big ol’ shit-eating grin and went back to work, and there was a temporary manager from another store there the next day.

Turns out she had had my formal, written complaints intercepted before they got to her boss, which I wasn’t aware was possible (apparently she had friends in high places), so I imagine that didn’t go well for her.

17. Gross!

He’d show up every day and tell us a tale of his sexual exploits. Whether true or not, none of us wanted to hear it.

If an attractive looking female comes in, he drops what he’s doing and stares at her, drooling liking a dog in a dog treat factory. After she leaves, he had to say a comment about her appearance.

After talking on the phone with a certain manager, he always comments on how nice her ass is.

He’d bully us employees and other managers. Called us bitches a lot despite us getting onto him for it.

My female coworker reported him. We all had a phone meeting with our district manager and HR. He was suspended until the investigation was over and they ruled to terminate him. Surprisingly HR worked for us that day.

18. Why can’t people be, yanoo… nice?

He was presenting a PowerPoint that I had put together to all the managers in the building. There was something he wanted to add at the last minute that he had never told me about, and when it wasn’t there, he verbally abused me for like 5 minutes straight. Yelling, name calling, telling me to prove to him that I had a college degree and wasn’t just making it up. I was a contractor so I was afraid to complain to HR because I assumed they’d just fire me, but a lot of other people in the room did.

After the meeting, I went into the share drive folder to find the presentation notes where the extra information was supposedly located. I watched the last changed time change from a day ago to the current time, then he immediately called and said it was right there in the notes file.

He was fired the next day for unprofessional behavior.

19. Everybody has encountered a “Linda”. Sorry in advance if your name is Linda…

My direct supervisor, Linda, was a cantankerous older woman with poor education and even worse people skills. About 3 months after I started, I got her so pissed off, just by doing my job, that she cursed me out, got up from her desk and quit.

I don’t even remember what I said that set her off. I probably asked her if she was done with her half of something that I needed in order to finish my half, and became exasperated when she wasn’t, because she’d been farting around all morning. It was a common occurrence.

After Linda walked out, our boss refused to hire her back when she begged (even though she’d been there something like 15 years), because “her attitude was so terrible and she’d become such a toxic, pathetic excuse for a human being.”

I got a pretty solid raise, most of Linda’s tasks (our boss was not unkind and took over some things herself, while giving me more practical things that I enjoyed doing), and even though my car was fine, she’d always have me drive her car to go make coffee runs, deposit checks, run errands, etc. It was a Toyota Solara convertible, and she’d tell me to take the top down and have fun.

I liked that job, I learned quite a bit, and if I hadn’t found something closer to home, for even more money, I probably would’ve been there quite a while.

20. Sometimes you just have to do it yourself…

I quit and his company collapsed without me. That kinda counts, right?

When I was 16, I had a stint as a small-time social media star on Twitter — not because I’m particularly interesting or anything, but for two reasons: a) I got on Twitter really early in 2007 when it was way easier to get followers and engagement due to the site being less noisy and more ‘stupid’ in terms of algorithms and b) I stood out from a lot of other minor Twitter stars because I didn’t let it get t my head; while a lot of them were egotistical and haughty, I followed everyone back, turned ‘haters’ into friends instead of retaliating, etc.

Through this fleeting fame, my former boss found me. He said he was setting up a regional media studio to help small- and medium-sized local businesses with their social media marketing, and he planned to eventually franchise the business into other cities. He hired me on the basis of my large social following (81,000 followers at the time). Obviously, having a large social following doesn’t automatically mean you know how to market businesses on social media, but I adapted and studiously researched how to do my job properly.

My boss didn’t come from a creative background or a marketing role — he came from a property background, and was just sort of winging it in finding an alternative source of income after the housing crash. Being as young as I was at the time, I didn’t really think about any of this stuff. The outcome was that I never received any training, had no real guidance in what I was doing, and was generally left to my own devices. Younger me thought it was great! I saw it as ‘freedom’, but looking back, I realize it was far too much freedom.

The side effects of this disparity between my social media skills and his inability to communicate creative ideas manifested themselves as people trying to cut past the business and come straight to me, to ask me directly as an individual whether I’d do work for them, rather than giving my boss the money. I was respectful (or naïve) enough to open up to my boss about this, and that’s when things started getting a little bit manipulative. He told me I could go my own way or remain part of a business that’d soon be growing across the country.

Fair enough, I thought. So I stayed, and one year in (I was 17/18 at this time) I realized that managing brands via social media had naturally morphed me into something of a graphic designer. A lot of my time was spent creating eye-catching visuals in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign etc. and so I suggested to my boss that we expand our media offering to include logo, graphic, and print design, and visual branding consultancy. Again, I received no training — I worked all day and studied by myself late into the night.

This pattern snowballed over the coming years. By the time I was 21, I was a social media manager, visual branding designer, copywriter, photographer, video editor, and web developer — all skills I nurtured independently with no input or guidance from my boss. The business was still operating in just one city, and my boss had started spending less and less time in the office. I still didn’t realize this wasn’t particularly normal, until clients who came to the office to meet me constantly asked where he was.

One day, a client went as far as to say: “You’re basically running the business at this point!“ It was a huge ‘glass shatter’ moment for me, and I suddenly realized that, yeah, although I wasn’t actually managing the business and its admin work etc., without me, there wouldn’t be a service or product to sell. What’s more, my wages hadn’t gone up, even though my ‘this is great, I have so much freedom!’ mindset had motivated me to continue working on stuff related to the business when I got home.

As I was nearing 22, the owner of the building where the business’ office was located asked me if I’d help him fix his computer (it was just running really slowly because he hadn’t managed his files very well). Not really thinking of it as work, I agreed, and headed into his office after work to help him out. As luck would have it, my boss walked in to hand over that month‘s rent, so he saw me there. He looked surprised, but didn’t comment — he just gave the dude the rent and left the building.

The next day, my boss wasted no time in probing me about what I was doing. He was speaking to me like a cop would speak to a suspect, asking me how long I’d been doing work for the landlord, what kind of work I was doing, why I hadn’t folded the work into the business, etc. I explained I was just fixing up his computer, and he leapt into a lecture about how we needed to keep all work inside the business, or else we would never be able to grow into other cities.

I turned 22. I’d been there for five years, my wages hadn’t gone up, I wasn’t allowed to do any work outside of the business, I hadn’t witnessed any of the growth I’d initially been promised, my boss was only in the office 25% of the time, and I saw him uploading Instagram Stories from him lunching, working out at the gym, walking his dogs, taking day trips etc. while I was at the office managing everything. A lot of the time he didn’t even warn me he’d not be in the office. It became the norm that if he didn’t turn up, I’d be running everything for the day.

Because I’d grown with the business from my youngest working age, I didn’t know any different, so all of this felt completely normal to me. And because I worked all day and all night and had no firm social life, I never got any outside perspective. Until one day, on a whim, I opened up to the landlord about it. He hadn’t even realized I was the one doing all the work — he figured it was split fairly 50/50. He said the amount of work I was producing was on the same level as an agency with three or four employees.

I started managing all of the branding, social media, and website maintenance for the landlord’s business, but didn’t broadcast that news to anyone. As I was nearing the age of 23, I met my now-fiancée, a perfectly feisty woman who, as soon as I told her about my situation, passionately advised I start my own media studio. This is where I entered the ‘long breakup’ period of my job, where I got increasingly depressed at work and physically felt my productivity slow to a near-halt.

My boss noticed, but never talked to me about it face-to-face. He started sending me irritated emails full of swear words demanding explanations for why I hadn’t delivered certain work by certain times and dates, while he was off sunning it up at the beach. It was like someone had pulled out his cork and let all the toxicity out in one torrent. My girlfriend hated him, and gently pushed me to the point where I felt like I was ready to confront him about the dead end we’d wound up in.

I asked a few of my friends about it, just to get a wider set of viewpoints on how I should go about it. They asked me things like, what does your contact say about you leaving the company and working with other businesses independently? Legal stuff, y’know. And that’s when I realized my lack of training over the past six years had also left me ignorant of the formalities of employment — I never had a contract! The real kicker was, I never had employee liability coverage either. My boss wasn’t even doing the admin stuff properly.

Obviously, that meant he also had no control over me when it came to contracts, so I literally just walked in (without my laptop — I’m now just realizing he never provided equipment either, yikes) and sat there waiting for him to arrive. Thankfully, it was one of the days he decided to turn up. He went and sat down in his chair, asked me where my laptop was and why I wasn’t working etc., and so I just straight-up told him that I was leaving the company to start my own media venture.

He laughed a patronizing laugh and simply said, “alright, good luck then.” Part of me felt like this was normal, because he was usually quite cold like that, but another part of me knew that there should have been some sort of emotion and deeper discussion in that moment. I wanted to say “so that’s it, then?” to try to flesh the talk out, but that really was it. He just turned to his computer and typing away as if I wasn‘t there. So I just turned around and left, went home, and that was it.

He did WhatsApp me a message later that day (all his caring and considerate communication came through digital means — perhaps he hired someone on a zero-hour contract to inject emotion into his texts?) asking if we could meet at the pub for a proper goodbye. And we did. It was a nice gesture, but it felt very awkward and forced, as if he’d spoken to someone about it and they’d coaxed him into doing it. He shook my hand, wished me good luck (much more genuinely this time), and we parted ways.

Three months later, I’d tripled my income as a freelancer. All of those clients who’d try to come to me directly over the years — it was like a floodgate had opened, and they all came rushing to me. I hadn’t told them I’d left, but obviously, they realized it themselves when they went to the office and I was never there. I felt bad about ‘stealing’ clients away from my former boss, but what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just abandon the people I’d been working with just because of morals. That‘d be immoral, if anything.

I continued working with the landlord and even traveled with him a few times to build my solo filmmaking portfolio by documenting his brand’s work across the UK, including his talks at business seminars. We developed a very close working relationship, to the point where just my work for his company was earning me more than all the work I did for my former boss. He started sharing a few bits of gossip with me about how my old boss had begun paying rent later and later. I figure perhaps his cash flow had something to do with it, but the landlord also showed me an email my old boss had written in which he’d expressed his anger at the landlord for ‘colluding’ with me and pushing me to leave his company.

The further I distanced myself from the company, the more I realized how toxic he behaved towards everyone he came into contact with. I could never see it from the inside. Every time I checked the old company’s website, a new service had been removed, because it wasn’t something he could offer anyone anymore.

Back in November 2018, the landlord told me that he was kicking my old boss out of the office after he failed to pay rent for three months. A few weeks after that, the landlord proposed that we go into business together to create a separate media studio solely focused on the industry his business operates within. He said that we’d take the old company’s office once my former boss had moved out, and that I could also use that office for my own freelance venture, free of charge.

One year after leaving, I’ve taken 25% of my old boss’ clients, occupied his office, and quadrupled my income.

There’s a part of me that feels guilty about all of this — he’s a guy who didn’t quite know what to do after the housing market crashed and tried something out which didn’t go too well. But at the same time, I can’t feel too bad for someone who I believe took advantage of me for half a decade. If you treat someone with disrespect, you end up with very little. If you treat someone with respect, they give you a free office and offer to start a new business with you.

TL;DR: boss never did anything properly — no training, no contracts, no insurance, very little respect, not much guidance, empty promises about business growth, etc. Everything I learned independently resulted in me quadrupling my income and taking over his office within a year of leaving his company.

Damn! That last story was EPIC!

Good for him!

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The Mountain From “Game Of Thrones” Has a Wife, and Their Size Difference is Adorable

Meet Thor Björnsson!

 

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He’s the 6′ 9″ 425 lbs behemoth who plays The Mountain on ‘Game of Thrones’.

He lives by some simple rules…

1. I haven’t skipped a meal in 10 years.
2. I never miss a workout.
3. I never miss my 6-8 hours of sleep every night.
4. I never stay up late.
5. I never drink alcohol.

AND he’s got a wife!

According to her Insta, she’s 5’2″ and weighs 116 pounds.

You know what’s coming next… because the title told you…

She could literally fit inside of him…

So how does he fit… nevermind…

 

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Pretty fly! I’m a lucky guy ?

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They work out at the same gym. His gym mostly.

Unless they’re on the road…

And he can probably do this for an hour at a time…

 

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Dope shot!! Check out how relaxed Kelsey is!! This is what I call, complete trust 100%!! @kelc33 . @platinumheritage

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And with two hands… two hours at a time…

There’s a lot of these…

So many….

His head is as big as the camel’s and her head is as big as the camel’s nose…

Okay, I think that’s probably enough.

No, one more…

Turnabout is fair play!

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