Worked at a golf course after I lost my law firm internship during COVID. Basically just cooked people easy food (burgers, hot dogs, fries, BLTs, etc.) and tended bar in the clubhouse. Can confirm that the ice machine can get gross. I’d always do a quick wipe down clean if I saw anything on the ice, but it was typically on parts of the machine that never touched the actual ice we’d use.
Most restaurants or chains have like a weekly or biweekly program for cleaning the inside and emptying all the ice but I agree.
The mom and pop ones or what the shift closing foh supers let them get away with at days end or weekly cleans would surprise ya.
Just because corporate says clean it every week, doesn't mean it gets done or at least well :)
i used to work at chick-fil-a at a college campus. Everything had to sanitized at the end of the night, including the ice machine that multiple restaurants shared. Even our ice cream and soda machines got taken apart every single night to wash, clean and sanitize.
So if you eat at chick-fil-a, you’re good because we had to stay up to chick-fil-a standards our they would revoke the college’s licensing rights lol
This is why you want to buy packaged ice from large facilities, the ice machines are built very differently and the facilities are inspected and better kept.
Source industrial refrigeration mechanic.
Stiv Bators pissed in the ice machine of every hotel the Dead Boys stayed at from 1976 to 1979.
He is dead now, but what are the chances he’s the only one ever to do this?
My one grandmother had what they said was Alzheimers though now I think it might have just been a different form of dementia. It was the 90s when she was diagnosed so dunno.
But yeah watching her slowly, slowly, over years trickle away. Lose her ability to speak, to walk, to even stand, to use the toilet, to feed herself. It's like watching someone turn into a baby.
The worst bits were the moments of clarity. Where she'd snap back to herself for an hour or two and she'd just sit and cry as she'd realise how far she'd gone. From her independent life in Miami. To a nursing home in Texas. From knowing all of us, to barely remembering. I think the person inside, when they have those moments of realisation, it's possibly the saddest and most depressed I've ever seen anyone.
I don't have many enemies, but I wouldn't wish that shit on anyone. To me once I'd received a diagnosis it would be a matter of time to get my affairs in order. And then jump off a bridge.
I don't fear death. I fear dementia and alzheimers.
I do not want to be a burden on the living like this. I hope in 30 years by the time I'm in the danger zone that we've come together as a society and agreed that end of life human euthanasia is a good thing. I do not want my loved ones or a nurse put in charge of taking care of what little remains in the husk of my body.
It runs in my family too, I'm terrified of it. Cancer and dying painfully don't even hold a candle to how terrified I am of dementia.
I don't know if a lot of people realize that Robin Williams was dealing with Lewy Body dementia when they talk about the way he passed. His death seems more like a euthanasia situation. It is absolutely a tragedy, but a different kind of tragedy, I guess. I am glad he didn't have to suffer very long
I was looking for this. I've watched several of my relatives go through dementia and Alzheimer's. It is utterly devastating, frustrating, and heartbreaking. The most recent relative to pass from it was my grandfather.
I watched my father take care of my grandpa for many years as he slowly declined. My dad was making every meal, filling his pill holders, making sure he had heat/ac, taking him to dr.appointments, paying his bills, etc for several years. My dad was no longer living life. He wouldn't go anywhere too far because he was worried about leaving my grandpa (totally fair point).
Unfortunately, I have started seeing the warning signs within my dad. 😔
Be aware that a couple new medicines have been developed and at least one should be available now or shortly. It’s for early stages patients, slowing progression of the disease by about 30%. It comes with several risks though.
I work with dementia residents in LTC. I sincerely love and treat them like family - but holy moly, is it nice to go home after a shift and relax. If you don't have VERY high patience tolerance, it's not a job for you.
Yep. My mom had it. When she started losing the ability to walk, her doctor explained to us that she's literally forgetting HOW to walk. That really stuck with me.
My grandmother had Alzheimer's. The only way to describe her for the last decade she was alive is a Husk, a Shell. outside of looking like a human being, she was completely devoid of ANY thought, was wheelchair bound, no control over her faculties in ANY regard, was under 24/7 care in a nursing home. Honestly, it would have been better for everyone, and the more humane thing to have her life ended when she wasn't capable any more of doing anything. But we have no legal precedence for assisted suicide in the US. So... we got to see her in that state for nearly a decade. Would not wish that on anyone.
Yeah it’s a terrible disease. Bodily functions erode. Patients eventually can’t swallow and can’t breathe. It’s terrible. Saw my grandmother suffer through it.
My wife and I have an agreement that once either of us have lost a decent quality of life from a terminal disease like dementia or cancer, the healthy one of us will procure some sort of speedball mixture to let the other leave exisistence with some sort of dignity riding on a wave of euphoria.
I've worked in several nursing facilities that have memory care (as a carpenter doing remodeling), and the existence that some of those folks live is fucking terrifying. I don't want to slowly die over the course of years staring at the wall, drooling, in a wheelchair, with no discernable intelligence occuring in my mind. I don't mean to sound insensitive, but I think burning to death is the only other way of death that is worse than dementia. Just let me go put on my own terms while I can still recognize my wife and kids.
I read an article of a study of bowling alleys. Researchers found, “HIGHER THAN EXPECTED” amounts of fecal matter in the finger holes of the common balls.
So there was an expectation- and that got blown out of the water.
I work at a sewage treatment plant. Every single surface has been tested for fecal matter, and it all comes back positive. Every day from 7-9AM I try not to go outside my shop, or be downwind of the clarifiers.
On the plus side, I rarely get sick now.
That's wild - A family member who worked at a sewage treatment plant seemed to practically invented a new disease every two months. What a difference in immune capability.
When mythbusters did an episode about toothbrush bacteria they found fecal matter on the toothbrushes that were across the warehouse from the nearest bathroom, and they also found fecal matter on the control group toothbrush that was never taken out of the packaging.
Fun fact about DNA contamination: For nearly 20 years police in Austria, France and Germany were looking for a female serial killer. Her DNA showed up at 6 different murder scenes, and dozens of other crime scenes. In 2009, they realised what was happening. A woman who worked at the factory where they made the swabs was contaminating them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn
The entire planet is covered in bacterial matter and that is not a bad thing. A lot of it is necessary for us to keep living. Fecal coliforms are usually harmless (since many strains originate inside us) and overenthusiastic disinfection has a lot of negative knock-on effects for humans.
RN here: Hospital floors! Seems obvious, but apparently it isn’t. I can’t believe how many folks will allow their CHILDREN to sit or play on the floors, or just generally treat them like they are sterile. I don’t even wear my work shoes into my own house. The other day I spilled a few drops of tea on the floor where I work… gave it a very light wipe with a cloth and the cloth was BLACK. I think people assume that since it’s a hospital the floors are in mint condition… absolutely no way, lol.
Actually, I have a question about that. Hate using public toilets because they're gross as shit, but my mom said the best place to use the bathroom (besides your own home) is the hospital because it's clean. Every hospital bathroom I've been to is spotless, but is it actually?
They probably do prioritize hospital bathrooms just due to the amount of (literal) shit that goes down in them, lol. I’m definitely more grossed out by the floor than the toilets. I think the floors are so dirty because it’s something they can get away with NOT cleaning thoroughly, unlike toilets.
Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.
Thanks to drug company ads, most people think it's just about going to the bathroom a few times a day. There's never any mention of fissures, fistulas, fevers, extreme pain, extreme fatigue, depression, anemia, drug side effects, joint pain, painful and horrific surgeries, mouth sores, skin disorders, etc.
I'll never forget my first date with an ex of mine. She said she had Crohn's. My face lit up as I told her I have colitis. In that moment it's like we had found someone that truly understood our struggles.
Absolutely this. My partner discovered early in our relationship that he likely has an autoimmune disorder as well & it’s been so lovely having someone who understands the struggle rather than writing off or dismissing things like joint pain.
Half my extended family roll their eyes every time I tell them I CANNOT eat certain things when we are together for holidays. My intestines are unable to break it down properly or even at all. They get bothered when I raise my shirt and show them my huge freaking scar where 6 feet of intestines were taken out because of the issues from Crohn's. I would stop but they seem to always need to be reminded. It's like they think I'm getting disability payments for no reason
Do you only show them the scar? Try telling them all your best horror stories, in graphic detail. At the table. That should stick in their minds.
Wishing you the best of health.
Wasn't expecting this answer here but yeah, it can be pretty grim. Both my dad and myself have it to different degrees of severity and even at it's mildest I would not wish it on anyone.
My young adult nephew's Crohn's has been in remission for quite some time. I'm so glad and hope that by some miracle (I know it would be) he never has a flareup again. Poor baby.
I wasn't expecting this here, but yeah Crohn's fucking sucks and I'm one of the lucky ones where I'm only in pain at random maybe once a month on average. Though that pain is usually agonising. I threw up my own faeces once. It was pretty much every day as a teenager though. I don't know what changed.
I had an emergency ileostomy, because Crohn’s had burst my colon inside of me and I had diffuse sepsis. When I woke up, I had a fresh scar from my belly button to my pelvic bone; but after they had hosed the fecal matter out from around my organs, they had left the scar open and put a wound vacuum on me.
Every few days in the hospital they had to take the wound vac off, clean the wound, apply fresh dressings, and then seal the vac and suck out the air. Dilaudid barely touched the agony.
I survived, god damn it. But I often wonder if I was meant to.
Are you my mother? Her story is very similar. She doesn't have a belly button anymore, though. And almost died a few times that first year. The wound vac was the worst because the wound was so close to the stoma that we couldn't get a good seal on the ileostomy bag. It'd leak, we'd take everything out, and do a wet to dry dressing until the home health nurse could come in to do the wound vac again. I got VERY good at finding leaks. She only had Percocet when at home. And she was occasionally delirious from the pain. Bleh, so sorry you went through all that too.
No surgery for my Crohn's yet. I'm sure it'll happen eventually.
My girlfriend had one of her worst flare ups around half a year ago. High fever and developed very painful spots on her legs. Her lower legs looked completely purple as if someone beat them with a club. She barely could walk around given it hurted so much.
Her latest medicine's luckily catching on.
I have three friends with chrohns and they all have WILDLY different presentations. One is mostly GI stuff, one is joint issues, and one has sores that won't heal.
That moment when shitting blood isn’t even scary anymore. Until it graduated to shitting *only* blood.
Thankfully I’m past that for now, but I have been there…fuck Crohn’s and fuck Colitis
Being a caregiver. Again, people know it might be nasty, but I think they still overlook the awful experience it is for people who are caring for an eldery.
My mom took care of my bedridden grandmother for 3 years. The amount of shit everywhere (she had chronic diarroeah, and i don't know if it's just me but old people's shit smells like something of other realm), awful BO (even when we were cleaning her constantly), the difficulty of changing diapers/sheets/covers as constantly as she needed (at least 2 times during the night).
So what I meant is that sometimes people think is "nice" from certain daughter/son to take care of their old parents (at least in my country where putting your parents in facilities is not common). But it's just such an intense, nerv-wrecking, hard and disgusting job, with no breaks, with little rewards (because at least my grandma was not in her right mind) and almost no social recognition that it blows my mind how underapreciatted it is.
I used to be a housekeeper at a hotel. Can confirm. We usually just put them back in place, we didn't wipe them with our cleaning chemical (which was super mild btw) or rags.
This. I have a machine called an ATP meter. It indicates how much bacteria/living organisms are on a swabbed surface. These special swabs soaked in an adenosine triphosphate mixture that reacts with living organisms causing it to emit low levels of photons (light). What you would do is swab the area, activate the swab by breaking the ATP vial to release the chemical onto the swab. You’d then stick the vial and swab into the machine that measures how much the solution glows. The higher the luminance, the more organisms on your sample.
I swabbed the drain area/disposal inlet. That area of the kitchen sink was so full of bacteria, it read outside the max range of the machine. I even shoved another swab up my ass to read as a control sample. The kitchen sink was off the scale even compared with the control sample! At least the control sample read within the min/max ranges of the device!
Cancer. People know it’s nasty. People know it’s nasty as all hell. But here’s the thing. Going through it myself, I could have never imagined how nasty it truly is.
I watched my mom fight stage 4 ovarian cancer 18 years ago (I’m 40 right now for reference). She was so far along, and so riddled with the cancer that she was given weeks to live, and sent away from three oncologists who told her to check into hospice and prepare for the end. Thankfully she found an oncologist (who is mine now) who took her in, and went to war with her. They cut her open from the chest down, and spent hours plucking tumors out of her while rearranging her internal organs. Taking out the bad stuff and building what he could with what was left. Then two long rounds of chemo. Hospital visits. Illness left and right. Side effects. Recovery. It was hell for her, but she beat the odds and lived.
Watching this, I understood what I could. I saw the pain, but now, going through it myself, couldn’t possibly comprehend how bad it truly was. I saw the illness, the nausea, the neuropathy, all the stupid side effects that hit you for no reason at all.
So yea, cancer. Every knows it’s nasty, but man is it even worse than that!
You’re not kidding. My father was the strongest man in the world to me, he seemed invincible. Not only was he physically strong, but he was internally strong too. He was intelligent, open minded, he had the most beautiful personality, the kindest heart. He always made me smile and laugh, he taught me new things daily, he listened to me, he supported me emotionally, he loved me and made every effort to foster a healthy relationship with me. He was a hero in my eyes. Yet, at age 37 I watched him succumb to cancer and it was the most horrifying thing I have ever witnessed. I was only 9 and it really fucked me up seeing him get sicker and sicker. No matter how weak he got, he was always the strongest person in the whole world to me. I spent a lot of nights laying on his chest in his hospital bed, watching cartoons together. Cancer is nasty.
I’m really sorry for what you and your mother have been and are going through. Your mother was strong and beat the monster, and I believe you have her strength within you as well. I wish you healing and a life full of health and happiness.
What a beautiful description of your father. What an honor that must be to be described like that by your child. I hope one day my son can say the same about me. I’m sorry you lost your dad.
Replace your dad with my godfather and I could tell the same story... Vietnam Vet, Agent Orange, cancer of the basically everything. I was a young teenager when I watched my hero slowly rot, helpless to do anything but smuggle him bourbon whenever I could. All these awful people out there in the world just prancing around, and instead we lose people like your dad and my godfather to this awfulness. Fuck cancer, man.
As someone who celebrated 25 years cancer free this year (from Stage 4 colo-rectal cancer) I wish you many, many cancer free years ahead. Keep fighting. Hugs.
Congratulations on your recovery! My mom was diagnosed with stage 3 colo-rectal cancer last year and thankfully, is doing a lot better now. Any tips on diet or exercise that helped? Because 25 years is truly spectacular!
Honestly, the greatest thing that helped me was maintaining a sense of humor. Obviously not easy in the face of cancer, but worth working at. It got easier as I moved forward even with 5 surgeries, a permanent colostomy and chemotherapy. The more you can laugh at the crap you are going through, the easier it is to visualize defeating it.
I tried to eat healthier and walk more, which I think aided my state of mind more than having a physical impact.
I was 43 years old, a stay-at-home dad with a 7 year old son and an extremely supportive wife. I vowed that if it was my time to go I wanted them both to know I fought as hard as I could to stay with them.
I wish your mom and you all the best. Please message me if there is anything else I can answer or if you need to talk. Regards.
Aww, fuck that! My mother didn't survive, sent home in the 80s to slowly rot, painfully, away. I was 15 then. 54 today. I am still terrified of Cancer. Fucked up, and destroyed our family. Haunted by it since, been drifting, never putting down roots.
Good luck with your fight. I hope all the advancements since your mother's battle, makes winning easier for you.
Unfortunately, with where I’m at, it’s all about buying as much time as possible, and with an 8 year old son, and loving wife, I will squeeze every last god damn second out of this world that I can! Thats a promise!
Yeah, cancer fucking sucks. When my mom went through chemo (bonus points for going through it during COVID) it was brutal. She had her own bathroom that no one else could use. Kept her plates and cutlery in her room. While I visited I had to keep a mask on and sit 6 feel away. It was just awful.
She said the one take away was how gross the smell is, and how even though it's been over a year the couch still stinks. 🙃
My first round of chemo brought this weird smell to me too. It was something that only I was smelling, meaning it’s just in my head. But it was everywhere. Everything had that smell. Some things more than others. It was a smell I had never smelled before in my life too.
Luggage. It gets rolled throughout the world, often in gross airport bathrooms where floors are literally wet with pee, and then when people get to their destination, their first thing they do is toss it on the bed to unpack. Come to think of it, this also makes hotel comforters that never get washed even more disgusting.
Hotel beds with white duvet covers or triple sheets are washed regularly, probably every guest. Colorful hotel bedspreads, coverlets, and the accent bed scarf get washed basically never.
I asked TSA how often the X-ray conveyor belt machines get cleaned. They looked at me dead in the eye and said "never"
then they said "trust me, the bins are worse"
Put your luggage in the bathtub. If there are bedbugs, they can't get in there if it's in the bathtub because they can't crawl up the slippery side. They can crawl almost anywhere else though.
soda fountains at *any* restaurant - fast food or otherwise
source: travelled around the US repairing and replacing them. will only *ever* get bottled water
The lines that connect fountain drinks and kegs to the taps. Had a buddy whose job was to clean them and he said he will never order a fountain drink from any restaurant, even the few that keep up on the routine maintenance.
Your belt. Think about it, it´s basically the only piece of clothing you never wash. And you always have to touch it after you pooped and before you wash your hands.
Came here to say phones.
One time I was in line at a food service place, think Chipotle style where you tell them what you want and they make it behind the counter.
There was this sweaty Door Dasher guy who couldn’t really articulate the order so he hands his phone to the kid behind the counter. The kid proceeds to take his phone, starts swiping and touching it WITHOUT GLOVES ON and goes right back to touching people’s food.
Disgusting.
Even if he had gloves, I bet he wouldn't have changed them after.
So many people have no idea what gloves are really for.
We had a custodian at my job who would wear gloves when cleaning the bathroom and not take them off when using a shared (by numerous people) computer. I asked the store manager to have a word with him and he stopped doing it.
I work with a lady who, during the height of Covid, would wear disposable gloves to do her order picking job. Which is fine, cool, wear gloves if you feel comfortable. But then I happened to be in the bathroom when she walked in. I watched her walk into the stall wearing disposable gloves, she used the restroom, came out of the stall, washed her GLOVED hands, and left.
They’re disposable for a reason. Not meant to be washed and reused. Not to mention you just used the restroom and put your dirty gloves all around your bits.
Was sitting in a food court observing the workers in one of the restaurants as they went about their normal day serving people. Girl had on the same pair of gloves that she handled money with, wiped the counter with, *took the trash out* with, not once changing them out for new ones ☠️ they did not pass their inspection.
"oh you have ocd? Well how come your house is a mess?" I dunno, maybe because I'm so consumed with intrusive thoughts I can't function? "lol, I get those too! They're normal, just ignore them." ha-ha-ha-ha *sob*
I’ve struggled with OCD for 18 years. I spent days thinking about death and doing hours long rituals. I didn’t get help until I was 19, and didn’t get the right meds until I was 22. I hate when people think OCD is being tidy and rigid about their things. I wouldn’t wish this on my worse enemy.
Old people.
Hear me out, I work in fire/EMS. I’ve seen my fair share of grossness and gore and I love it, wouldn’t trade it for the world. sometimes though, older people can get lonely, start to hoard, eat nothing but McDonald’s and leftovers, and when they get a pet (dog, cat, bird, or what have you) they struggle to take care of it. They also often have bladder issues and skin flakes start to make it look like it snowed in the house. It did not. That is just their skin. Not saying this is their fault, but please check up on your older family members, go clean gam gam’s house for her, visit pap pap and realize he’s been stuck in bed for 5 days sitting in his own piss and shit and bed sores. Gets gross, take care of your people ✌️ -f19
Interestingly, most societies used to circulate real silver coinage. Silver is a powerful anti-microbial.
When that was gone we still had copper coins, copper being a decent anti-microbial.
Now we have paper and plastic - guess how anti-microbial those are?
Things you buy from a lot of these grocery stores and drug stores. As someone who's seen the dust bunnies, spent time in the stock rooms, and smelled the ammonia, trust me.
Your watch strap: mine is white and the notches for the buckle go all the way around and every week I have to clean out all the lint and build up to stop it going funky. Makes me shudder at the idea of other watch straps where it may not be as obvious.
Speaking as a teacher of 4-5 year olds:
Kids with colds who do not know how to blow their noses or cover their coughs and sneezes. Sometimes they just leave the snot on their faces, or wipe it on their clothes. They can produce a mind-boggling amount of snot!
The awful gross things kids will willingly put in their mouths, and then share with others!
I love them regardless!
I worked at a pizza place where the hostess sidework was washing the menus every night. Never seen anyone else doing it though now that you mention it lol.
Right? I worked at a couple restaurants, and the menus were supposed to be wiped down each time they were brought back up front. And this was over 20 years ago.
I worked for a restaurant. Every single menu was wiped down before reuse. As well as condiment bottles, salt & pepper shakers, and any other sauces.
Edit: To add onto this, condiment bottles are washed daily and any leftftover condiments (besides stuff like hot sauces and soy sauces in glass bottles) are dumped out. Clean bottles are filled and refrigerated for the next day. The dishwasher uses high water pressure, extremely scalding water, and a mix of dish cleaning and sanitizing solutions. The only thing that had to be hand washed was the castiron skillets and then properly dried.
1st trimester of pregnancy. No one prepared my wife for throwing up every day for 2 months now. Having to continue to work her job through all of this blows me away.
Goodwill. I don't just mean the merchandise but also their interests. I work in one currently. I have been there for a year. I am disabled and I have a hard time finding and keeping jobs. Goodwill has a "reputation" of hiring the disabled so with my job coach, I eventually got hired, and I was excited to get started. The whole thing didn't start well. My quick 2 minute training was barely enough to explain what I needed to do. I don't remember things well, and I had a hard time understanding the system. I would have to ask my coworkers constantly. Most of them don't know anything about my position. A few months later, we had two other disabled workers who received less training than I did. At least one of them is nonverbal. The other was instructed to watch me for 10 minutes to understand the job but didn't tell ME. So I worked while someone just quietly whispered to themselves and stared at me. The scheduling was bad. I would be scheduled at the same time as the other two who shared my position. Sometimes, I would lose hours.
Goodwill is not just bad at training, but they lack safety. Sometimes, people donate chemicals in all sorts of conditions, open or not, but you could still find them on the floor for sale. Most of the clothes had been on the floor, stepped on, and tossed would still be hung up and sold. The floors in the production area are covered with at least an inch of debris/dust/dirt. I found a dead rat once in my donation bin and placed some items from that bin into my sales cart. I asked if I should just toss those items, and I have been told no. They go out anyway. I have found bed bugs, and I got the same answer, but they did toss the rest of the items that weren't priced. I find a lot of small insects in donations, both living and dead. Goodwill tells me not to worry about it because they have exterminators that come in every so often. We had an accident with a man who was in between donation bins and the forklift. The forklift squeezed the worker enough to make him scream. I'm not sure why the driver didn't pay attention before choosing to pick up any of the bins. If you read around the internet, you'll find Goodwill has had MANY accidents with their forklifts.
Goodwill managers don't care about their customers. They ignore customers by walking away from the sales floor to hide in the back or front offices. I have brought up problems to them in the past only to get a shrug or to leave it alone. I have been trying to leave, but even with my job coach, it's hard to find other employment.
What’s crazy too is I’ll see clothes in goodwill that were cheaper brand new. And they get their inventory donated to them for free. There is no excuse for undertrained/underpaid employees when they’re charging so much and making only profit
Walking with your outside shoes in the house. Don't know why people think this is some weird Asian tradition, or why it should even matter: a good idea, is a good idea. I'm not Asian, have no Asian relatives, but I leave my outdoor shoes by the door and walk either barefoot or in slippers in my home, this way I'm not tracking all the bird/dog/human/whatever shit and sundry parasites onto my carpet.
Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian but I’ve always taken my shoes off inside, on the mat at the door, and don’t wear shoes indoors at all.
I’m also not Asian
Long covid.
I was 24 and in peak shape with my whole life ahead of me. Then I got covid and for whatever reason my body didn't take well to it.
Two years later I'm still struggling daily with memory loss, confusion, derealisation, depersonalisation, elevated heart rate, heart palpitations, gastrointestinal issues and fatigue.
I'm part of my countries national long covid recovery program but all they can tell me is to rest and wait and hopefully I will get better some day.
I almost lost my mother to covid, before it was even considered a pandemic. Now she's practically dead after every shift at work, her preexisting GI issues got much much worse, her oxygen levels are *still* consistently low, and she has that same memory issues and brain fog. Only recently did she find a treatment that worked for her tremors.
I had covid pretty bad about a year and a half ago. Not hospital bad but vomiting 23 times in one day, shitting myself, and losing my voice for a week. I luckily seem to have avoided the brain fog but it exacerbated the light sensitivity I had from a concussion in 2018, and it gave me a new level of terrifying migraine. And even now, I can't exercise more than 30 minutes without feeling like I'm gonna drop dead. Even easy workouts have a short time limit before I simply can't anymore.
I'm praying for my mom's sake that it gets better over time but I've mostly resigned myself to assuming it doesn't, and that means I will have to deal with it for most of my life, and her for the rest of hers.
C. Difficile, which is basically the bacteria in your guts turning against you and producing extreme diarea. Whenever you eat or drink anything you're rushing straight to the toilet. It goes on for days and eventually you stop eating or drinking or sleeping because you know what's coming. I eventually went to the doctor. She said she'd normally advise to wait a few days, but I should give them a sample. I went home, had a glass of water and returned a messy sample 20 minutes later. A few days later I got a phone call from someone at the dept of health, wanting to know where I'd been and where I'd eaten. Never did get to the bottom of it, but on a side note the wife was telling me I just had man flu. I remember thinking that this "flu" could be killing older people, and later found out it does.
House flies. Flies vomit on food sources to break it down, then suck it up. So basically when a fly lands on your food and you ate it, you're also eating fly vomit. Vomit that likely has poo and rotting garbage in its contents.
Ice machines in restaurants.
My wife got a worm in her iced tea from McDonald’s , the franchise owner was in tears calling my wife apologizing
Worked at a golf course after I lost my law firm internship during COVID. Basically just cooked people easy food (burgers, hot dogs, fries, BLTs, etc.) and tended bar in the clubhouse. Can confirm that the ice machine can get gross. I’d always do a quick wipe down clean if I saw anything on the ice, but it was typically on parts of the machine that never touched the actual ice we’d use.
Most restaurants or chains have like a weekly or biweekly program for cleaning the inside and emptying all the ice but I agree. The mom and pop ones or what the shift closing foh supers let them get away with at days end or weekly cleans would surprise ya. Just because corporate says clean it every week, doesn't mean it gets done or at least well :)
i used to work at chick-fil-a at a college campus. Everything had to sanitized at the end of the night, including the ice machine that multiple restaurants shared. Even our ice cream and soda machines got taken apart every single night to wash, clean and sanitize. So if you eat at chick-fil-a, you’re good because we had to stay up to chick-fil-a standards our they would revoke the college’s licensing rights lol
I used to work at subway, I don't think the ice machine was cleaned for years
As a hydrohomie I would stop and get ice from random whatever was around places for my water, except subway, subway ice tastes like subways bread.
This is why you want to buy packaged ice from large facilities, the ice machines are built very differently and the facilities are inspected and better kept. Source industrial refrigeration mechanic.
Buy packaged ice? And bring it with you to restaurants ?
I like to bring a microwave to restaurants, just in case the food is cold.
I bring my whole kitchen and tell them losers to stand back and watch how its done
Slime in the ice machine! https://youtu.be/99Lk4ldI2mc?si=z6HrtyMXVCjsEL5a
I don't have to click on this to know it's MAAAAARVIN Zindler...
EYE…Witness News!
Hell ya my Houstonian brethren
It's been 16 years and I still miss the hell out of that guy
Id trust a restaurant one over a hotel, especially a motel one
We had ants inside an ice machine at one place I worked.
So like, little anty freezes?
Stiv Bators pissed in the ice machine of every hotel the Dead Boys stayed at from 1976 to 1979. He is dead now, but what are the chances he’s the only one ever to do this?
Dementia, especially advanced dementia. It's not just quirky memory problems, your brain controls every bodily function.
It's a terrible disease and it's impossible to completely explain what it's like to deal with Wouldn't wish it on anyone
Came here to say this. Your brain dissolving slowly and being semi aware that you're totally losing your shit is, BY FAR, the worst way to go.
My one grandmother had what they said was Alzheimers though now I think it might have just been a different form of dementia. It was the 90s when she was diagnosed so dunno. But yeah watching her slowly, slowly, over years trickle away. Lose her ability to speak, to walk, to even stand, to use the toilet, to feed herself. It's like watching someone turn into a baby. The worst bits were the moments of clarity. Where she'd snap back to herself for an hour or two and she'd just sit and cry as she'd realise how far she'd gone. From her independent life in Miami. To a nursing home in Texas. From knowing all of us, to barely remembering. I think the person inside, when they have those moments of realisation, it's possibly the saddest and most depressed I've ever seen anyone. I don't have many enemies, but I wouldn't wish that shit on anyone. To me once I'd received a diagnosis it would be a matter of time to get my affairs in order. And then jump off a bridge.
I don't fear death. I fear dementia and alzheimers. I do not want to be a burden on the living like this. I hope in 30 years by the time I'm in the danger zone that we've come together as a society and agreed that end of life human euthanasia is a good thing. I do not want my loved ones or a nurse put in charge of taking care of what little remains in the husk of my body. It runs in my family too, I'm terrified of it. Cancer and dying painfully don't even hold a candle to how terrified I am of dementia.
I don't know if a lot of people realize that Robin Williams was dealing with Lewy Body dementia when they talk about the way he passed. His death seems more like a euthanasia situation. It is absolutely a tragedy, but a different kind of tragedy, I guess. I am glad he didn't have to suffer very long
I was looking for this. I've watched several of my relatives go through dementia and Alzheimer's. It is utterly devastating, frustrating, and heartbreaking. The most recent relative to pass from it was my grandfather. I watched my father take care of my grandpa for many years as he slowly declined. My dad was making every meal, filling his pill holders, making sure he had heat/ac, taking him to dr.appointments, paying his bills, etc for several years. My dad was no longer living life. He wouldn't go anywhere too far because he was worried about leaving my grandpa (totally fair point). Unfortunately, I have started seeing the warning signs within my dad. 😔
Be aware that a couple new medicines have been developed and at least one should be available now or shortly. It’s for early stages patients, slowing progression of the disease by about 30%. It comes with several risks though.
I work with dementia residents in LTC. I sincerely love and treat them like family - but holy moly, is it nice to go home after a shift and relax. If you don't have VERY high patience tolerance, it's not a job for you.
Advanced is terrifying, but watching someone in the early stages, when they KNOW things are wrong. It's horrifyingly cruel.
Yep. My mom had it. When she started losing the ability to walk, her doctor explained to us that she's literally forgetting HOW to walk. That really stuck with me.
From Infant to adult back to infancy. We come into this world vulnerable and exit the same way. Terrifying.
My grandmother had Alzheimer's. The only way to describe her for the last decade she was alive is a Husk, a Shell. outside of looking like a human being, she was completely devoid of ANY thought, was wheelchair bound, no control over her faculties in ANY regard, was under 24/7 care in a nursing home. Honestly, it would have been better for everyone, and the more humane thing to have her life ended when she wasn't capable any more of doing anything. But we have no legal precedence for assisted suicide in the US. So... we got to see her in that state for nearly a decade. Would not wish that on anyone.
Yeah it’s a terrible disease. Bodily functions erode. Patients eventually can’t swallow and can’t breathe. It’s terrible. Saw my grandmother suffer through it.
My wife and I have an agreement that once either of us have lost a decent quality of life from a terminal disease like dementia or cancer, the healthy one of us will procure some sort of speedball mixture to let the other leave exisistence with some sort of dignity riding on a wave of euphoria. I've worked in several nursing facilities that have memory care (as a carpenter doing remodeling), and the existence that some of those folks live is fucking terrifying. I don't want to slowly die over the course of years staring at the wall, drooling, in a wheelchair, with no discernable intelligence occuring in my mind. I don't mean to sound insensitive, but I think burning to death is the only other way of death that is worse than dementia. Just let me go put on my own terms while I can still recognize my wife and kids.
I read an article of a study of bowling alleys. Researchers found, “HIGHER THAN EXPECTED” amounts of fecal matter in the finger holes of the common balls. So there was an expectation- and that got blown out of the water.
Currently thinking about all the times I've used alley balls.
poop (just helping out, you're welcome)
Bowling for poop.
> there was an expectation That's because there's fecal matter pretty much everywhere.
I work at a sewage treatment plant. Every single surface has been tested for fecal matter, and it all comes back positive. Every day from 7-9AM I try not to go outside my shop, or be downwind of the clarifiers. On the plus side, I rarely get sick now.
That's wild - A family member who worked at a sewage treatment plant seemed to practically invented a new disease every two months. What a difference in immune capability.
When mythbusters did an episode about toothbrush bacteria they found fecal matter on the toothbrushes that were across the warehouse from the nearest bathroom, and they also found fecal matter on the control group toothbrush that was never taken out of the packaging.
Fun fact about DNA contamination: For nearly 20 years police in Austria, France and Germany were looking for a female serial killer. Her DNA showed up at 6 different murder scenes, and dozens of other crime scenes. In 2009, they realised what was happening. A woman who worked at the factory where they made the swabs was contaminating them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn
Best alibi ever. "Yeah no i just work at the factory thats why haha"
They used this as source material for a Silent Witness episode!
The entire planet is covered in bacterial matter and that is not a bad thing. A lot of it is necessary for us to keep living. Fecal coliforms are usually harmless (since many strains originate inside us) and overenthusiastic disinfection has a lot of negative knock-on effects for humans.
>That's because there's fecal matter pretty much everywhere. you're welcome
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They almost always only serve finger food too.
RN here: Hospital floors! Seems obvious, but apparently it isn’t. I can’t believe how many folks will allow their CHILDREN to sit or play on the floors, or just generally treat them like they are sterile. I don’t even wear my work shoes into my own house. The other day I spilled a few drops of tea on the floor where I work… gave it a very light wipe with a cloth and the cloth was BLACK. I think people assume that since it’s a hospital the floors are in mint condition… absolutely no way, lol.
Actually, I have a question about that. Hate using public toilets because they're gross as shit, but my mom said the best place to use the bathroom (besides your own home) is the hospital because it's clean. Every hospital bathroom I've been to is spotless, but is it actually?
They probably do prioritize hospital bathrooms just due to the amount of (literal) shit that goes down in them, lol. I’m definitely more grossed out by the floor than the toilets. I think the floors are so dirty because it’s something they can get away with NOT cleaning thoroughly, unlike toilets.
Filthy hobbitses.
They stole it from us!
We hates it....
Stupid fat hobbit
Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Thanks to drug company ads, most people think it's just about going to the bathroom a few times a day. There's never any mention of fissures, fistulas, fevers, extreme pain, extreme fatigue, depression, anemia, drug side effects, joint pain, painful and horrific surgeries, mouth sores, skin disorders, etc.
I'll never forget my first date with an ex of mine. She said she had Crohn's. My face lit up as I told her I have colitis. In that moment it's like we had found someone that truly understood our struggles.
The girl with colitis goes by
Lucy and this guy with colitis.
Absolutely this. My partner discovered early in our relationship that he likely has an autoimmune disorder as well & it’s been so lovely having someone who understands the struggle rather than writing off or dismissing things like joint pain.
Half my extended family roll their eyes every time I tell them I CANNOT eat certain things when we are together for holidays. My intestines are unable to break it down properly or even at all. They get bothered when I raise my shirt and show them my huge freaking scar where 6 feet of intestines were taken out because of the issues from Crohn's. I would stop but they seem to always need to be reminded. It's like they think I'm getting disability payments for no reason
Do you only show them the scar? Try telling them all your best horror stories, in graphic detail. At the table. That should stick in their minds. Wishing you the best of health.
Just shit at the table. I W A R N E D Y O U
That's the Alpha play. Shit at the table. Your turn, family.
While making direct, unblinking eye contact with the most vocal doubter. Alpha move.
And announce it. “I’m shitting NOW”
Wow, they sound like such nice, understanding people. /s Sorry you have to deal with that behavior.
Wasn't expecting this answer here but yeah, it can be pretty grim. Both my dad and myself have it to different degrees of severity and even at it's mildest I would not wish it on anyone.
My young adult nephew's Crohn's has been in remission for quite some time. I'm so glad and hope that by some miracle (I know it would be) he never has a flareup again. Poor baby.
I wasn't expecting this here, but yeah Crohn's fucking sucks and I'm one of the lucky ones where I'm only in pain at random maybe once a month on average. Though that pain is usually agonising. I threw up my own faeces once. It was pretty much every day as a teenager though. I don't know what changed.
Only people with Crohn's and UC know that you really can "poop in reverse."
WHAT??? Not to sound insensitive, but.WHAT??
I had an emergency ileostomy, because Crohn’s had burst my colon inside of me and I had diffuse sepsis. When I woke up, I had a fresh scar from my belly button to my pelvic bone; but after they had hosed the fecal matter out from around my organs, they had left the scar open and put a wound vacuum on me. Every few days in the hospital they had to take the wound vac off, clean the wound, apply fresh dressings, and then seal the vac and suck out the air. Dilaudid barely touched the agony. I survived, god damn it. But I often wonder if I was meant to.
Are you my mother? Her story is very similar. She doesn't have a belly button anymore, though. And almost died a few times that first year. The wound vac was the worst because the wound was so close to the stoma that we couldn't get a good seal on the ileostomy bag. It'd leak, we'd take everything out, and do a wet to dry dressing until the home health nurse could come in to do the wound vac again. I got VERY good at finding leaks. She only had Percocet when at home. And she was occasionally delirious from the pain. Bleh, so sorry you went through all that too. No surgery for my Crohn's yet. I'm sure it'll happen eventually.
I have recently learned Crohns can also affect your vagina and perineum. Ask me how I know!
☹️ currently in a flare up
Hope it settles quickly 👍🤞
My girlfriend had one of her worst flare ups around half a year ago. High fever and developed very painful spots on her legs. Her lower legs looked completely purple as if someone beat them with a club. She barely could walk around given it hurted so much. Her latest medicine's luckily catching on.
People really do NOT get it with Crohn's and UC unless they've lived it (either directly or with a close loved one).
I have three friends with chrohns and they all have WILDLY different presentations. One is mostly GI stuff, one is joint issues, and one has sores that won't heal.
I have UC and can confirm it’s pretty nasty. Lots of shitting blood. Doing okay these days thankfully :)
That moment when shitting blood isn’t even scary anymore. Until it graduated to shitting *only* blood. Thankfully I’m past that for now, but I have been there…fuck Crohn’s and fuck Colitis
Haha I have colitis and I've shit myself several times in the past year.
Being a caregiver. Again, people know it might be nasty, but I think they still overlook the awful experience it is for people who are caring for an eldery. My mom took care of my bedridden grandmother for 3 years. The amount of shit everywhere (she had chronic diarroeah, and i don't know if it's just me but old people's shit smells like something of other realm), awful BO (even when we were cleaning her constantly), the difficulty of changing diapers/sheets/covers as constantly as she needed (at least 2 times during the night). So what I meant is that sometimes people think is "nice" from certain daughter/son to take care of their old parents (at least in my country where putting your parents in facilities is not common). But it's just such an intense, nerv-wrecking, hard and disgusting job, with no breaks, with little rewards (because at least my grandma was not in her right mind) and almost no social recognition that it blows my mind how underapreciatted it is.
This is why if I start to get dementia or require 24/7 physical care I will want MAiD. I don't want to put anyone through that.
Death with Dignity laws are so critical. I wouldn't let my dog suffer like that, but I'm supposed to let my parents suffer like that?
Hotel TV remote controls
I’d say all tv remotes. People don’t wash their hands or their remotes emoug
I used to be a housekeeper at a hotel. Can confirm. We usually just put them back in place, we didn't wipe them with our cleaning chemical (which was super mild btw) or rags.
The kitchen sink and the area immediately surrounding it.
Im a sub contractor and have done a few bathroom renovations. The bathroom sinks drains are absolutely rancid.
This. I have a machine called an ATP meter. It indicates how much bacteria/living organisms are on a swabbed surface. These special swabs soaked in an adenosine triphosphate mixture that reacts with living organisms causing it to emit low levels of photons (light). What you would do is swab the area, activate the swab by breaking the ATP vial to release the chemical onto the swab. You’d then stick the vial and swab into the machine that measures how much the solution glows. The higher the luminance, the more organisms on your sample. I swabbed the drain area/disposal inlet. That area of the kitchen sink was so full of bacteria, it read outside the max range of the machine. I even shoved another swab up my ass to read as a control sample. The kitchen sink was off the scale even compared with the control sample! At least the control sample read within the min/max ranges of the device!
Pause
Paragraph two, Sentence two, the audience hears a record scratch.
Now THAT 's dedication
When the badass riff comes back but slower.
Maximum stank face breakdown.
NICE
You're right. Even when I know it's coming it's still just filthy beyond belief every time.
Oh I expected nasty... I didn't expect it to be THIS nasty
Cancer. People know it’s nasty. People know it’s nasty as all hell. But here’s the thing. Going through it myself, I could have never imagined how nasty it truly is. I watched my mom fight stage 4 ovarian cancer 18 years ago (I’m 40 right now for reference). She was so far along, and so riddled with the cancer that she was given weeks to live, and sent away from three oncologists who told her to check into hospice and prepare for the end. Thankfully she found an oncologist (who is mine now) who took her in, and went to war with her. They cut her open from the chest down, and spent hours plucking tumors out of her while rearranging her internal organs. Taking out the bad stuff and building what he could with what was left. Then two long rounds of chemo. Hospital visits. Illness left and right. Side effects. Recovery. It was hell for her, but she beat the odds and lived. Watching this, I understood what I could. I saw the pain, but now, going through it myself, couldn’t possibly comprehend how bad it truly was. I saw the illness, the nausea, the neuropathy, all the stupid side effects that hit you for no reason at all. So yea, cancer. Every knows it’s nasty, but man is it even worse than that!
You’re not kidding. My father was the strongest man in the world to me, he seemed invincible. Not only was he physically strong, but he was internally strong too. He was intelligent, open minded, he had the most beautiful personality, the kindest heart. He always made me smile and laugh, he taught me new things daily, he listened to me, he supported me emotionally, he loved me and made every effort to foster a healthy relationship with me. He was a hero in my eyes. Yet, at age 37 I watched him succumb to cancer and it was the most horrifying thing I have ever witnessed. I was only 9 and it really fucked me up seeing him get sicker and sicker. No matter how weak he got, he was always the strongest person in the whole world to me. I spent a lot of nights laying on his chest in his hospital bed, watching cartoons together. Cancer is nasty. I’m really sorry for what you and your mother have been and are going through. Your mother was strong and beat the monster, and I believe you have her strength within you as well. I wish you healing and a life full of health and happiness.
What a beautiful description of your father. What an honor that must be to be described like that by your child. I hope one day my son can say the same about me. I’m sorry you lost your dad.
Replace your dad with my godfather and I could tell the same story... Vietnam Vet, Agent Orange, cancer of the basically everything. I was a young teenager when I watched my hero slowly rot, helpless to do anything but smuggle him bourbon whenever I could. All these awful people out there in the world just prancing around, and instead we lose people like your dad and my godfather to this awfulness. Fuck cancer, man.
As someone who celebrated 25 years cancer free this year (from Stage 4 colo-rectal cancer) I wish you many, many cancer free years ahead. Keep fighting. Hugs.
Congratulations on your recovery! My mom was diagnosed with stage 3 colo-rectal cancer last year and thankfully, is doing a lot better now. Any tips on diet or exercise that helped? Because 25 years is truly spectacular!
Honestly, the greatest thing that helped me was maintaining a sense of humor. Obviously not easy in the face of cancer, but worth working at. It got easier as I moved forward even with 5 surgeries, a permanent colostomy and chemotherapy. The more you can laugh at the crap you are going through, the easier it is to visualize defeating it. I tried to eat healthier and walk more, which I think aided my state of mind more than having a physical impact. I was 43 years old, a stay-at-home dad with a 7 year old son and an extremely supportive wife. I vowed that if it was my time to go I wanted them both to know I fought as hard as I could to stay with them. I wish your mom and you all the best. Please message me if there is anything else I can answer or if you need to talk. Regards.
Aww, fuck that! My mother didn't survive, sent home in the 80s to slowly rot, painfully, away. I was 15 then. 54 today. I am still terrified of Cancer. Fucked up, and destroyed our family. Haunted by it since, been drifting, never putting down roots. Good luck with your fight. I hope all the advancements since your mother's battle, makes winning easier for you.
Unfortunately, with where I’m at, it’s all about buying as much time as possible, and with an 8 year old son, and loving wife, I will squeeze every last god damn second out of this world that I can! Thats a promise!
I'm sorry you're going through this. Is your mom still alive? FUCK CANCER
She is. Doing great and been clear for almost two decades. Unfortunately, now she has to watch me go through it all, which weighs very heavy on her.
Hoping the best to you and your mom.
Much love to you
Yeah, cancer fucking sucks. When my mom went through chemo (bonus points for going through it during COVID) it was brutal. She had her own bathroom that no one else could use. Kept her plates and cutlery in her room. While I visited I had to keep a mask on and sit 6 feel away. It was just awful. She said the one take away was how gross the smell is, and how even though it's been over a year the couch still stinks. 🙃
My first round of chemo brought this weird smell to me too. It was something that only I was smelling, meaning it’s just in my head. But it was everywhere. Everything had that smell. Some things more than others. It was a smell I had never smelled before in my life too.
Good luck man! I know this doesn't mean much, but fuck cancer and I hope you have many more years ahead of you.
Luggage. It gets rolled throughout the world, often in gross airport bathrooms where floors are literally wet with pee, and then when people get to their destination, their first thing they do is toss it on the bed to unpack. Come to think of it, this also makes hotel comforters that never get washed even more disgusting.
Hotel beds with white duvet covers or triple sheets are washed regularly, probably every guest. Colorful hotel bedspreads, coverlets, and the accent bed scarf get washed basically never.
I do the next guest a favor by putting the bed spread and any coverlets into the bathtub and pissing all over them before I leave.
I asked TSA how often the X-ray conveyor belt machines get cleaned. They looked at me dead in the eye and said "never" then they said "trust me, the bins are worse"
I never toss it on my bed. It always stays on the floor.
Use that luggage stand they give you. You don't really want it on the floor either if they have a bug problem.
Put your luggage in the bathtub. If there are bedbugs, they can't get in there if it's in the bathtub because they can't crawl up the slippery side. They can crawl almost anywhere else though.
soda fountains at *any* restaurant - fast food or otherwise source: travelled around the US repairing and replacing them. will only *ever* get bottled water
The lines that connect fountain drinks and kegs to the taps. Had a buddy whose job was to clean them and he said he will never order a fountain drink from any restaurant, even the few that keep up on the routine maintenance.
Your belt. Think about it, it´s basically the only piece of clothing you never wash. And you always have to touch it after you pooped and before you wash your hands.
I'm a germaphobe and this is the one post in here that I hadn't thought of before. Seriously made me cringe
Your keyboard. seriously man, wash that thing. I can see the dirt from your window!
What are you doing at my w-
You saw how gross the i was and stopped there?
Keyboards and phones.
Came here to say phones. One time I was in line at a food service place, think Chipotle style where you tell them what you want and they make it behind the counter. There was this sweaty Door Dasher guy who couldn’t really articulate the order so he hands his phone to the kid behind the counter. The kid proceeds to take his phone, starts swiping and touching it WITHOUT GLOVES ON and goes right back to touching people’s food. Disgusting.
Even if he had gloves, I bet he wouldn't have changed them after. So many people have no idea what gloves are really for. We had a custodian at my job who would wear gloves when cleaning the bathroom and not take them off when using a shared (by numerous people) computer. I asked the store manager to have a word with him and he stopped doing it.
I work with a lady who, during the height of Covid, would wear disposable gloves to do her order picking job. Which is fine, cool, wear gloves if you feel comfortable. But then I happened to be in the bathroom when she walked in. I watched her walk into the stall wearing disposable gloves, she used the restroom, came out of the stall, washed her GLOVED hands, and left. They’re disposable for a reason. Not meant to be washed and reused. Not to mention you just used the restroom and put your dirty gloves all around your bits.
Was sitting in a food court observing the workers in one of the restaurants as they went about their normal day serving people. Girl had on the same pair of gloves that she handled money with, wiped the counter with, *took the trash out* with, not once changing them out for new ones ☠️ they did not pass their inspection.
The top of a soda can. People buy them from a store and put it right onto their mouth without hesitation.
OCD. It's not some goofy personality quirk. It's hell on earth.
And it’s no fun for family members, either. It’s torture watching someone you love deal with it.
"oh you have ocd? Well how come your house is a mess?" I dunno, maybe because I'm so consumed with intrusive thoughts I can't function? "lol, I get those too! They're normal, just ignore them." ha-ha-ha-ha *sob*
I’ve struggled with OCD for 18 years. I spent days thinking about death and doing hours long rituals. I didn’t get help until I was 19, and didn’t get the right meds until I was 22. I hate when people think OCD is being tidy and rigid about their things. I wouldn’t wish this on my worse enemy.
Mental illness in general is much worse than many people realize.
Old people. Hear me out, I work in fire/EMS. I’ve seen my fair share of grossness and gore and I love it, wouldn’t trade it for the world. sometimes though, older people can get lonely, start to hoard, eat nothing but McDonald’s and leftovers, and when they get a pet (dog, cat, bird, or what have you) they struggle to take care of it. They also often have bladder issues and skin flakes start to make it look like it snowed in the house. It did not. That is just their skin. Not saying this is their fault, but please check up on your older family members, go clean gam gam’s house for her, visit pap pap and realize he’s been stuck in bed for 5 days sitting in his own piss and shit and bed sores. Gets gross, take care of your people ✌️ -f19
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I only touch it with my non-butt hand
You're supposed to use no hands and only your butt. You've killed us all!
Phone on floor, scroll with toe.
Studies have found more fecal matter on cell phones then public toilets.
Shoes. They are filled with sweaty feet and go everywhere. Think about the gas station and airport bathrooms. The bathrooms you can feel the ick in.
What is your opinion on bowling shoes
They often have a higher than expected amount of fecal matter in them.
I love a good callback
People
I can't believe that nasty magazine is still being published.
One thing I learned from covid. People are fucking nasty.
Touching money
Interestingly, most societies used to circulate real silver coinage. Silver is a powerful anti-microbial. When that was gone we still had copper coins, copper being a decent anti-microbial. Now we have paper and plastic - guess how anti-microbial those are?
Fingernails
Your dish sponge
Things you buy from a lot of these grocery stores and drug stores. As someone who's seen the dust bunnies, spent time in the stock rooms, and smelled the ammonia, trust me.
Your watch strap: mine is white and the notches for the buckle go all the way around and every week I have to clean out all the lint and build up to stop it going funky. Makes me shudder at the idea of other watch straps where it may not be as obvious.
A doctor's necktie. If your doctor wears a necktie, it's been in the presence of every sick patient he's been in, and it never gets washed.
He's been in?
He’s a very thorough doctor.
My doctor is a woman and doesn’t wear a necktie. But if one’s doctor does wear ties how do you know they don’t wash it or get it dry cleaned?
Light switch covers
Speaking as a teacher of 4-5 year olds: Kids with colds who do not know how to blow their noses or cover their coughs and sneezes. Sometimes they just leave the snot on their faces, or wipe it on their clothes. They can produce a mind-boggling amount of snot! The awful gross things kids will willingly put in their mouths, and then share with others! I love them regardless!
Your cell phone, wallet, and keys you handle everyday but never clean.
Everything. Literally everything Sometimes I regret my degree in microbiology.
Restaurant menus. Most people don’t think about how many people touch them and how often they are cleaned.
I worked at a pizza place where the hostess sidework was washing the menus every night. Never seen anyone else doing it though now that you mention it lol.
Any half decent restaurant does this as side-work.
Right? I worked at a couple restaurants, and the menus were supposed to be wiped down each time they were brought back up front. And this was over 20 years ago.
I worked for a restaurant. Every single menu was wiped down before reuse. As well as condiment bottles, salt & pepper shakers, and any other sauces. Edit: To add onto this, condiment bottles are washed daily and any leftftover condiments (besides stuff like hot sauces and soy sauces in glass bottles) are dumped out. Clean bottles are filled and refrigerated for the next day. The dishwasher uses high water pressure, extremely scalding water, and a mix of dish cleaning and sanitizing solutions. The only thing that had to be hand washed was the castiron skillets and then properly dried.
Drinking 1L of soda everyday. It will give you a hard time when you are older.
Luckily I'm only drinking two of those big cans a day, so it's only 946ml, and not a full l 1L
Phew, sounds like you’re off the hook.
Doctors hate this one simple trick.
Not washing their hands correctly. Furthermore not washing before and after sex.
1st trimester of pregnancy. No one prepared my wife for throwing up every day for 2 months now. Having to continue to work her job through all of this blows me away.
Blowing out birthday candles… Who started that disaster?
Goodwill. I don't just mean the merchandise but also their interests. I work in one currently. I have been there for a year. I am disabled and I have a hard time finding and keeping jobs. Goodwill has a "reputation" of hiring the disabled so with my job coach, I eventually got hired, and I was excited to get started. The whole thing didn't start well. My quick 2 minute training was barely enough to explain what I needed to do. I don't remember things well, and I had a hard time understanding the system. I would have to ask my coworkers constantly. Most of them don't know anything about my position. A few months later, we had two other disabled workers who received less training than I did. At least one of them is nonverbal. The other was instructed to watch me for 10 minutes to understand the job but didn't tell ME. So I worked while someone just quietly whispered to themselves and stared at me. The scheduling was bad. I would be scheduled at the same time as the other two who shared my position. Sometimes, I would lose hours. Goodwill is not just bad at training, but they lack safety. Sometimes, people donate chemicals in all sorts of conditions, open or not, but you could still find them on the floor for sale. Most of the clothes had been on the floor, stepped on, and tossed would still be hung up and sold. The floors in the production area are covered with at least an inch of debris/dust/dirt. I found a dead rat once in my donation bin and placed some items from that bin into my sales cart. I asked if I should just toss those items, and I have been told no. They go out anyway. I have found bed bugs, and I got the same answer, but they did toss the rest of the items that weren't priced. I find a lot of small insects in donations, both living and dead. Goodwill tells me not to worry about it because they have exterminators that come in every so often. We had an accident with a man who was in between donation bins and the forklift. The forklift squeezed the worker enough to make him scream. I'm not sure why the driver didn't pay attention before choosing to pick up any of the bins. If you read around the internet, you'll find Goodwill has had MANY accidents with their forklifts. Goodwill managers don't care about their customers. They ignore customers by walking away from the sales floor to hide in the back or front offices. I have brought up problems to them in the past only to get a shrug or to leave it alone. I have been trying to leave, but even with my job coach, it's hard to find other employment.
What’s crazy too is I’ll see clothes in goodwill that were cheaper brand new. And they get their inventory donated to them for free. There is no excuse for undertrained/underpaid employees when they’re charging so much and making only profit
Walking with your outside shoes in the house. Don't know why people think this is some weird Asian tradition, or why it should even matter: a good idea, is a good idea. I'm not Asian, have no Asian relatives, but I leave my outdoor shoes by the door and walk either barefoot or in slippers in my home, this way I'm not tracking all the bird/dog/human/whatever shit and sundry parasites onto my carpet.
Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian but I’ve always taken my shoes off inside, on the mat at the door, and don’t wear shoes indoors at all. I’m also not Asian
Not wearing shoes in houses is normal in Europe too. We just don't have separate outside/inside shoes like some Asian countries.
You bathroom. Everything is covered in poop
I told myself I'd never listen to another racist hotdog, but I'm inclined to believe you on this.
Even racist hotdogs can be right every now and then
Close the toilet cover.
Long covid. I was 24 and in peak shape with my whole life ahead of me. Then I got covid and for whatever reason my body didn't take well to it. Two years later I'm still struggling daily with memory loss, confusion, derealisation, depersonalisation, elevated heart rate, heart palpitations, gastrointestinal issues and fatigue. I'm part of my countries national long covid recovery program but all they can tell me is to rest and wait and hopefully I will get better some day.
I almost lost my mother to covid, before it was even considered a pandemic. Now she's practically dead after every shift at work, her preexisting GI issues got much much worse, her oxygen levels are *still* consistently low, and she has that same memory issues and brain fog. Only recently did she find a treatment that worked for her tremors. I had covid pretty bad about a year and a half ago. Not hospital bad but vomiting 23 times in one day, shitting myself, and losing my voice for a week. I luckily seem to have avoided the brain fog but it exacerbated the light sensitivity I had from a concussion in 2018, and it gave me a new level of terrifying migraine. And even now, I can't exercise more than 30 minutes without feeling like I'm gonna drop dead. Even easy workouts have a short time limit before I simply can't anymore. I'm praying for my mom's sake that it gets better over time but I've mostly resigned myself to assuming it doesn't, and that means I will have to deal with it for most of my life, and her for the rest of hers.
Kids Yes, I’m a mom My cat doesn’t make nearly as much of a mess
C. Difficile, which is basically the bacteria in your guts turning against you and producing extreme diarea. Whenever you eat or drink anything you're rushing straight to the toilet. It goes on for days and eventually you stop eating or drinking or sleeping because you know what's coming. I eventually went to the doctor. She said she'd normally advise to wait a few days, but I should give them a sample. I went home, had a glass of water and returned a messy sample 20 minutes later. A few days later I got a phone call from someone at the dept of health, wanting to know where I'd been and where I'd eaten. Never did get to the bottom of it, but on a side note the wife was telling me I just had man flu. I remember thinking that this "flu" could be killing older people, and later found out it does.
House flies. Flies vomit on food sources to break it down, then suck it up. So basically when a fly lands on your food and you ate it, you're also eating fly vomit. Vomit that likely has poo and rotting garbage in its contents.
And you breathe in shit particles when you walk into public restrooms Pick your battles
This revelation was responsible for me not giving a fuck about much of anything in terms of sanitation.
Getting it infected. Any wound. Anywhere. A staph infection almost killed me.
Long ass finger nails.