Ah, the hilarity of Craigslist. If you’ve been around the block enough times you know just how silly Craigslist was and sort of still is. Craigslist used to be the place to get basically anything you wanted, and I mean anything. Look, I’ve even used to use the dating section of Craigslist, which really was a thing. As it turns out, you can still get weird stuff from Craigslist.
Today, Jason wrote about some person on Craigslist giving away bags of gasoline. There are so many questions, but one of them is how the heck is the gas not getting through? Frankencamry helps us out here:
Everything about this screams “had to drain a large gas tank and had no plans to use the old gas.”
As far as why it’s not eating through the bags, they’re probably contaminant cleanup bags. If you’ve ever seen the after effects of someone screwing up pumping at the gas station and dealing with the specialized kitty litter, there are similarly specialized bags it goes into that are impervious to liquid fuel.
A quick search confirms that in some locations WM will dispose of gas and other automotive fluids and supplies polyethylene bags when they do so. Looks like what’s in the picture.
As for the rest of the comments, all of them were hilarious, but several of you made the same joke. KYFire:
I think I saw this on TV once.
“Wildcard!”
StillPlaysWithCars:
All we need now is a sketchy van, an oil tycoon, and a fire breather to sell gas door to door.
Wild card b*tches! Yeee-hawwwwwww
If you have no idea what these folks are talking about, you should watch It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
When you are a teenager, you’re under immense pressure to make sure you choose a good career. If you were like me, you were told that if you didn’t go to college you would be a failure. Reality is much nicer than that.
Today, David remarked on how much respect he’s gotten by simply walking around wearing a Mercedes technician coverall. I did write a similar COTD to this back in 2023, but I think it’s worth repeating, and Tbird is going to help:
Engineer – I have worked in industrial maintenance for 25+ years now. I will not discourage ANYONE from looking at a career in one of the trades. You will work for your living, but you can make a damn good living anywhere in this country if willing to do the work. For too long society has pushed college on all youth as the answer, and it is not. The trades can offer security and job satisfaction for many, especially in modern society where all are looking for skilled labor. My 2 cents for what it’s worth.
Many of the smartest, most ambitious people I have ever met were electricians, ironworkers, welders, pipefitters, millwrights….
I fully agree. If you want to flex your welding skills, do it! If you want a desk job, do it! Besides, you can make loads of money either way. Have a great evening, everyone!
Topshot: FX/FXX
I work in the trades. Yes, there is money to be made, but skill-less menial made up management jobs pay the same or more.
In the news today: White collar government employees aren’t showing up for the 3 days of work they are required to show up for. I work 60 hours a week.
Things have taken a serious downturn for us post-pandemic, as corruption has run rampant in management.
I work in one of the better jobs for my profession, a historically coveted position. In the past, once every 2 years or so, the door would open up for a new technician to join our team. For the last 3 or 4 years, we are short on technicians by about 20%, and 3/4 of new hires quit within the first year.
I love my work, but respect and appreciation are seriously lacking, and I don’t know if it’s a path I would reccomend for young people.
My wife and I actually met through Craigslist personal ads. I searched for the word “dork.” She described herself that way. I emailed her and she only responded because we share the same surname (if we’re related it’s waaaay up the family tree). We’ve now been married for 13 years.
I knew a young person who badly wanted to make pizza, own a shop. They kept asking him: why are you going to college if you just want to make pizza? His answer laid bare the trouble with seeing college and the trades as opposite. He said:
“Everyone wants me to be an ignorant pizza shop owner. I want to be an educated pizza shop owner. People are just dumbfounded when I tell them that. They just can’t see the intrinsic value of education.”
Before Hurricane Ian two years ago in FL (of course) some dumbass immolated himself carry gas in trashbags in a van.
Been meaning to ask you: do I recognize you as the tasman green ! owner, from the TTAC days of yore?
You found me, and I still have my wagon 14 years on. Still love it like the first day in Munich too. The best part of summer is heading up to Maine and getting it out of storage for a good run to get the cobwebs out.
Good for you. Mine has been expensive to maintain, but I acquired it for really cheap, so overall math still good. I am at 170k now, and going strong.
+1 for the Sunny in Philadelphia reference.
One of the best shows ever, even if it’s disgusting.
I’ve relatives in the trades.
They struggle with boom-bust of the industry whims. Whilst they would never give it up, being at the mercy of every downturn is frustrating and the majority of them have become very embittered, especially in their political leanings, and heavily cling to negativity rather than any string of hope or opportunity out there. There’s a serious echo chamber in some of their work environments.
It’s always sad to see it repeat when there’s economic headwinds, but they’d never look to other options when things inevitably get slow again (incl even options of temporary relocation to other parts of the country).
On one hand, respect. On the other, there are some deep holes.
As the child of a nuclear/aerospace engineer I can assure you boom and bust cycles are hardly the purview of a blue collar career.
My father-in-law worked in the trades, at least managed to bypass the boom/bust cycles with a government job, but is the first to admit if you’re not careful, a lot of the work can wreck your body and severely curtail your earning years (he instead got enough education to move into management, which he didn’t love, but got him to retirement).
My recommendation to kids all the time is now “Go check out the internet, see what the world claims they need for workers, and go do the absolutely fucking opposite thing.”
Seriously, go find something you can bear to learn about and do that doesn’t have a massive billboard with lit up arrows pointing at it. I understand we have a need for tradespeople, but I’ve watched waves of people follow this style of advice, only for those waves to realize that they’ve devalued themselves by being what increased supply. I’m one of those kids back in the early 00’s that was told “our infrastructure is failing! we need civil engineers!” Turns out, the only thing people want more than engineers to fix things, is to not want to actually pay for engineers. Add a complete economic meltdown in ’08, and I graduated into a pit so deep I’m still slowly extracting myself 15 years later.
Timing is everything. But do yourself a favor and try to be a few steps ahead.
It really doesn’t matter what you get an education in specifically. The best result of a decent education is teaching you how to *learn*. How to think, how to reason effectively and communicate. Overspecialization is a problem.
My undergraduate degree is in accounting, then I went to law school and earned a J.D. Never practiced law, but I have worked as a tax preparer. Fell into IT and am now a consultant/field engineer. All of those things have prepared me for a wide variety of potential jobs.
Though the best thing about my current gig is that we do BETTER in economic downturns. When entities lay off their own staff, the work doesn’t go away, just the people qualified to do it. Guess who they hire to do the work for big money?
Some of us are just not built for manual labor.
FTFY
I personally hate it when they make me work for a living..
I used to wear a t-shirt in our corporate meetings that said “subject to cruel and unusual employment” 🙂
Somewhere there is an idle rich person who wants to work for a living. We have been body swapped without permission.
I always bristle when politicians (of all stripes) start up with the “hard working families” B.S. pandering. I’m proud to be a smart working person. Represent me if you want my vote, not those other shmucks.
Says the owner of a gated shifter Ferrari.
As I have told my dumbass kid brother many times, I went to school all those years so I don’t have to sweat my balls off outside in the sun all day to make a living. He’s a fence installer. And the thing is, I can do what he does just as well as he can, but he can’t even BEGIN to do what I do as a high-school dropout.
If you haven’t seen the South Park special where tradesmen are all super rich, and go to Home Depot in the morning looking for daylaborers in consulting, programming, accounting, etc….well, it’s worth the free trial to Paramount+ just for that. Some of their best work ever, and I’ve been a fan since Day 1.
Timmy for President. Please.
Couldn’t be any worse than this never ending shit show.
At least Timmy has a bit of a conscience.
Instead you got Cartman.
I wish we got regular Cartman.. -_-
My youngest brother designs high speed telecom chipsets and integration logic. He got tired of trying to explain to people what he does as well as being asked to solve their computer problems (he doesn’t own a personal computer) Now he tells them he does mufflers at Canadian Tire. Apparently people lose interest in speaking (bothering he says) to him.
I am a software engineer and I get asked if I know how to fix a printer or email. I don’t know, I write code… It’s quite disturbing how many people don’t really know what that means. I have met a few people who didn’t understand that thier phone runs software and that people have to write that…
I used to be a mechanic and that had it’s own problems with people wanting you to look at thier cars, Even had strangers knock on my door asking advice as they have seen me working on my own cars. My advice, Take it to your mechanic.
I wonder what other professions get this ?, I bet doctors do.
“Not that kind of doctor” is definitely a thing.
Contrariwise, making dinner with an ex, I was giving her shit about butchering an onion. “I can perform surgery!” she said. “Yeah, but you can’t dice an onion at all.”
Prince Philip apparently once asked a famous actress for help setting up his DVD player when he found out she was in the movie business
I get the same, started in telecoms and moved to software. Work as a cloud architect now. Anyone asks me to fix a problem with their pc I tell them my rate is 200 / hr with a minimum of 3 hrs per engagement. They usually stop bugging me.
“Can you fix my computer?”
…yells at “cloud”…
(I agree…a lot of people want something for free and forget that by compensating, it shows that they value each person’s skillset, respect their time, and recognize the willingness to help)
Counterpoint to anyone who says working in the trades is a great idea…
I’m 60 and I’ve been working my trade for 35+ years. My body is broken. When I get home from work, all I can do is take 2 Tylenol and lie in bed for a couple hours until I feel okay enough to fix dinner. Then back to bed so I can (hopefully) get enough sleep to do it again tomorrow. There’s no real path to an early retirement until I’m 62.
Every morning I wake up angry that I chose this path.
I work in a fabric covered box and I don’t see the sun shine for 5 days a week. There’s someone in India who would do my job for half the pay and Elon Musk wants to see that happen. If I’m lucky to still be able to find work, I’ll die in my cubicle.
Grass is always greener.
Yeah, as much as the world is “countercyclically” glorifying trades (and I understand), I’ve talked to enough guys out there (yes, mostly guys) who basically say you’ve for 15-20 years to start your own company and hire people, or it can be a quick path downhill if you’re doing manual labor.
When our A/C was installed, it was 120 in the attic and one of the two HVAC techs was in his mid-60s and had just recovered from heart surgery….3 days earlier.
Desk jobs may be soul-sapping, but I’m not pretending the other grass is perfectly green. I’m happy to DIY on the house and the car, but huge respect for people who do construction or mechanical work all day long.
There really are no perfect careers, unless you’re getting paid to be a travel writer or something. I will say that, while having an email job is definitely soul-sucking, at least I feel physically okay enough at the end of the day to go for a walk or get some kind of physical activity. It’s somewhat easier (at least for now) to have a life balance in the white-collar world, which is why so many go for that route.
Yeah the trick is to make enough money quickly enough to start your own contracting firm and then hire others.
A friend of mine was a licensed union electrician and got out of it for that reason. He told me all the older guys were in such bad shape physically from years on the job. He’s now an electrical engineer, making more money with hardly any physical labor.
I’m 56 and have been in my ‘trade’ (installing/servicing/repairing commercial espresso machines) for 15 years, but even that has played havoc with my back, ankles and knees, and I’m not sure I will physically be able to keep doing this job for the 11 years it will take to get to pension age, assuming our government doesn’t keep raising the qualifying age like they have been doing. And there’s no path from this to a non-physical/desk job in this field. I just have to keep going and hope that my body somehow holds out.
Trailer Park Boys did it better.
Dang, I was hoping my Band reference on David’s post would catch your eye.
Congrats to the ASIP crew for a well deserved bag of gas!
Admittedly, I’m only slightly better on references than David is.