why bother if that’s the case?

I always understood part of the appeal of building your own being that you could go PC of Theseus on it and upgrade parts gradually over time, rather than having to drop $1,500-$2,000 all in one go.

I get people wanting to bust their humps and do a bunch of work towards a goal. You want to spend a month just screwing around with your new jetski in the summer and doing OT every week for several months or working a second job for that time will let you do it, I get it. The thing that puts me off is the number of people who see just work and accumulation of stuff as the end goal unto itself. They’ll brag about never calling out sick or missing a single day of work, not taking their vacations (or going, but still living in their work inboxes, sending out so many emails they may as well not have gone on one), and saying stuff like “Oh, I could never retire, I wouldn’t know what to do with my time, there’s nothing to do.” And then these people are held up as models that we should aspire to.

I don’t care if a job pays me so much that I could afford a dream vacation, jetskis and all the new gadgets every year if I have to be working so much I never even get to do/use any of those things the salary makes possible. I’d much rather take a job with a salary that lets me do fewer of those things, or even having to skip years between one and the next, but lets me clock out and have enough time to myself to take care of myself and pursue hobbies and interests outside of work on a regular basis.

I’ve bought plenty of games on Steam that weren’t on sale. Thing is, Steam has a shit ton of titles for $20 or less that aren’t just shovelware. The last several consoles and handhelds I’ve had, that’s really only been the case for rereleases of retro titles.

Honestly, from all my retail jobs between high school to now, nighs shifts were the best. They were the only time in my retail jobs where I would go to work, previous shift manager would tell me what needed to get done by the end of my shift, and just leave me to it. I was advised to bring something to read with me on my first day.

I could bang out all my work in one go, then sit and read for the rest of the night, and nobody cared. Plus, there weren’t that many customers, and most of them tended to keep to themselves, anyway.

When I did overnight grocery in another company, there was even less customer interaction, and we could bring little speakers with us to play music while we stocked our aisles, as long as we didn’t blast it crazy loud or have something playing with tons of profanity. Out of all my positions working with the public in retail, those were easily the best. Also, given the minimal staffing on the overnights, we really only saw each other when we all took our breaks, so work place drama was pretty minimal.