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My fully remote coworker kept his camera off for years. I wish he’d never turned it on.

James and I both started working at Keystone Data Analytics in 2019, right before the pandemic. We were pretty good friends. Every Friday, we went out for drinks with a few of the other software engineers. But like most tech companies, Keystone went fully remote in 2020, and James and I lost touch. James always kept his camera off in meetings. For four years, I didn’t see his face. Then one morning, he turned his camera on by mistake. What I saw was so horrible, I’ll never forget it. “Does anyone have any blocks?” Aisha asked, during our morning standup. “The time-series graphs don’t look right,” James said. “I think there’s something going on with the date logs.” I was the one who’d written the logging code, so I told James I’d look into it. Keystone developed data analytics platforms for government organizations. We’d recently signed a billion-dollar contract to build a new platform for a CIA research project. Everything about the project was very hush-hush. We were all forced to ob...
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Customer accused me of holding his money hostage because we didn't have 10k cash on hand

I've worked as a bank teller for about three years now and I've had some wild interactions but this one from last week takes the cake. Guy walks in around 2pm on a Tuesday. No appointment, no phone call ahead, nothing. He walks straight up to my window and says he needs to withdraw $10,000 in cash. Right now. I smile and ask if he called ahead to arrange the withdrawal. He looks at me like I just asked him to solve a calculus problem. "Why would I need to call ahead? It's my money." I explain, as politely as possible, that we're a smaller branch and we don't keep that much cash in our drawers or even in the vault most days. For large cash withdrawals, we ask customers to give us 24-48 hours notice so we can make sure we have the funds available. Standard banking stuff. Every bank does this. He is not having it. "So you're telling me I can't access my money that I deposited in your bank?" I try to explain that he absolutely can access his...
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How a Paper Clip saved a $750 Million Plane

It’s easy to forget how intense experimental flying was in the 1960s. The U.S. was trying to understand what happened to big aircraft at the edge of Mach 3 (three times the speed of sound), testing new materials that glowed from heat and shapes that seemed too sharp to be real. Sitting right in the middle of that race was the XB-70 Valkyrie, a six-engine research bomber that climbed like a rocket and flew faster than anything of its size had ever done. On April 30, 1966, one of those test flights turned into a problem no engineer had imagined. Test pilot Al White and USAF Col. Joe Cotton took off from Edwards Air Force Base on a mission meant to push the Valkyrie to Mach 3 for half an hour. But just after lifting off, they noticed the landing gear wasn’t behaving normally. A short-circuit froze the nose gear halfway into the compartment, and because the gear was jammed against the door, the tires were shredded. When the pilots tried lowering the gear again, the hydraulic system wouldn...
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Lust ruined my relationship with my father

Tw: not kid friendly story. So if ur under 18, don’t read this. Perhaps this story is for those men out there who struggle with lust and are, or aspire to be a dad/husband. Growing up being the eldest daughter, I was soo close with my dad, I viewed him as the perfect man, and that he has no flaws. Little by little that perfect image started to fade away, but as I grew older, I realized that not everyone is perfect, and even our parents are human too. But his red flags become clearer and clearer as time moved on: putting all the responsibility of raising me and my siblings on my mom, being emotionally unavailable, and so much more. when I was 15, while I was on my dad’s phone, I decided to check his YouTube history cause I was curious, aside from endless videos of politics, I saw a sexual video of a girl, my heart sank. Idk why but I litteraly began trembling, like I was not supposed to find this out. From that day, I never looked at him the same way again. This man, the same “religiou...
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The Haybale, the cop, and the truck driver that didn’t give two ****s

This literally just happened 20 minutes ago. I was on my way home from work driving on a 2 lane highway. I saw a giant haybale in middle of the 2 lanes and a woman cop by herself trying to move it. Every single car went around her to the left. I decided to pull over behind her cruiser and shouted out my window, “Do you need help?” She said “Oh my god, yes, thank you.” I hopped out of my car and went to go help her. This haybale was like 20 small ones tied together to form one giant 600 pound bale. Her and I had to start rocking it in order to flip it over and keep doing that til finally we were able to get it way off the road. I can’t believe not one other person stopped to help. Every single car went around us despite seeing her and I struggling to get it off the road. She was very grateful and said thank you and I ended up taking off. My story doesn’t end here though. No, no, it doesn’t. You may have realized I said “and the truck driver that didn’t give 2 shits.” Well, I continued ...
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When life gives you wrecked catering, order pizza

We’d booked this local catering company that everyone swore by, they were amazing during tasting and super sweet. Morning of the wedding we get a call from the coordinator sounding shaky saying there’s been a situation. Turns out the caterer’s delivery van got into an accident on the highway. Everyone was okay thankfully but all the food was ruined. For a few minutes it didn’t even register, like okay they’ll fix it right? Then reality hit that we had around 90 guests showing up in two hours and no dinner. I remember standing there in my dress trying not to cry while my husband called random restaurants nearby asking if anyone could make something fast.We ended up getting takeout pizza from this small family place down the street. The owner literally closed early and helped carry boxes to the venue. People were sitting in their formal clothes eating slices off paper plates and somehow it turned into the most relaxed, funny part of the night. We even did a pizza toast but the panic I f...
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I used to call her the “crazy crack lady” until I saw something I can’t forget

I don’t really know why I’m posting this. I guess it’s been sitting in my head for a long time and I never said it out loud. There was a woman on my street everyone called the “crazy crack lady.” Yellow house, busted porch, smelled weird all the time. She’d yell at nothing, laugh randomly, sometimes cry in the street. You know the type people warn their kids about. I crossed the street when I saw her. I laughed nervously with friends about her. I definitely judged her. One night I saw her barefoot in the road, screaming at the sky. Like *full-on begging*, yelling for something to be given back to her. Then she dropped to her knees and started crying in a way that didn’t sound fake or dramatic—just broken. I went inside and told myself it wasn’t my problem. A few weeks later, there were sirens right outside my house. Not the normal distant ones—the loud, right-there kind. A woman had collapsed, bleeding badly, and everyone was panicking. And the person helping her the most? The crazy c...
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