beepboop-its-a-robot:

STORY TIME:

I work in a decent sized, local, indie bookstore. It’s a great job 99% of the time and a lot of our customers are pretty neat people. Any who, middle of the day this little old lady comes up. She’s lovably kooky. She effuses how much she loves the store and how she wishes she could spend more time in it but her husband is waiting in the car (OH! I BETTER BUY HIM SOME CHOCOLATE!), she piles a bunch of art supplies on the counter and then stops and tells me how my bangs are beautiful and remind her of the ocean (“Wooooosh” she says, making a wave gesture with her hand)

Ok. I think to myself. Awesomely happy, weird little old ladies are my favorite kind of customer. They’re thrilled about everything and they’re comfortably bananas. I can have a good time with this one. So we chat and it’s nice.

Then this kid, who’s been up my counter a few times to gather his school textbooks, comes up in line behind her (we’re connected to a major university in the city so we have a lot of harried students pass through). She turns around to him and, out of nowhere, demands that he put his textbooks on the counter. He’s confused but she explains that she’s going to buy his textbooks.

He goes sheetrock white. He refuses and adamantly insists that she can’t do that. It’s like, $400 worth of textbooks. She, this tiny old woman, bodily takes them out of her hands, throws them on the counter and turns to me with a intense stare and tells me to put them on her bill. The kid at this point is practically in tears. He’s confused and shocked and grateful. Then she turns to him and says “you need chocolate.” She starts grabbing handfuls of chocolates and putting them in her pile.

He keeps asking her “why are you doing this?” She responds “Do you like Harry Potter?“ and throws a copy of the new Cursed Child on the pile too.

Finally she’s done and I ring her up for a crazy amount of money. She pays and asks me to please give the kid a few bags for his stuff. While I’m bagging up her merchandise the kid hugs her. We’re both telling her how amazing she is and what an awesome thing she’s done. She turns to both of us and says probably one of the most profound, unscripted things I’ve ever had someone say:

“It’s important to be kind. You can’t know all the times that you’ve hurt people in tiny, significant ways. It’s easy to be cruel without meaning to be. There’s nothing you can do about that. But you can choose to be kind. Be kind.”

The kid thanks her again and leaves. I tell her again how awesome she is. She’s staring out the door after him and says to me: “My son is a homeless meth addict. I don’t know what I did. I see that boy and I see the man my son could have been if someone had chosen to be kind to him at just the right time.”

I’ve bagged up all her stuff and at this point am super awkward and feel like I should say something but I don’t know what. Then she turns to me and says: I wish I could have bangs like that but my darn hair is just too curly.“ And leaves.

And that is the story of the best customer I’ve ever had. Be kind to somebody today.

live-long-and-potter:

petermaximoff:

the planets aren’t in gatorade anymore but my life still sucks????

Is this from Harry Potter’s divination paper

doctor-anfelo:

I don’t like to bother and this is a long read, so I apologize a bit in advance, but I’m in a situation where I must do this.

Some of you know my situation and I know some of you really worry about it, but for those who don’t I’ll try to sum it up: Up until recently I lived in Venezuela, which as many of you know is currently a dictatorship where civil rights are trampled over daily and basic stuff like food, medical attention or even clean water were near impossible to obtain.

During the protests in these few past months I was pointed at with a gun by someone because people were robbing a supermarket near my apartment and I decided I couldn’t take it anymore so I took my little savings and went elsewhere. It was hard and I went through some hardships like government refusing to issue passports and highways being blocked because of protests (Nearly missed my flight), but I made it out in the end.

Sadly, now that I’m in another country, things are really looking up.

I chose Chile because of its inmigration laws making the whole process easier than other countries, at least for me as a Venezuelan. My plans were to rent a small place, work and well, survive just like back in Venezuela; I did find a small place with some basic furniture that runs me about $600 a month (Including water, electricity and good it goes up to about $850-$900 a month).

I know it doesn’t sound like much for many, but since I haven’t found a job yet and my only source of income is Patreon and commissions it’s been quite stressful, because Patreon’s income tends to fluctuate monthly and I get 2-3 commissions a month if I’m lucky and I’m already cutting down on food and eating twice or sometimes once a day.

Some of you might wonder why I’m not working I bet. Laws here state that I need a permit in order to work or be hired, said permit takes an average of 60 office days in being processed, and I’m still waiting for a response (It should take 1.5-2 more months according to some inmigration officers) because the Inmigration Department is currently saturated with work.

My mental health has deteriorated quite a lot these months, to the point were I suffer anxiety attacks almost daily, constant depression, my apetite has gone down a lot and I have stress bouts that give me strong headaches, all because losing patrons or barely getting any notes on my work.

I have asked openly others for advice regarding how to raise my popularity, which characters would people like to see, if they want me to see me try a new style or something, asking others for publicity, etc. I really don’t even know what to do at this point and I’m seriously wondering if my work is so bad that there’s nothing to be done about it, being honest I wish I could do anything else but this is all I have and I’m afraid of starving or ending up homeless, I’m in a new place and I don’t even have a safety net here or back in Venezuela. I can’t even go back to my old country anymore with the current shit going on.

The point of this post is just to ask of you to please share my work in your networks if you can, my Patreon ads or just my page (FB, Tumblr, etc). Tell your friends about it, spread the word, reblog if possible, so people know about my work and hopefully help me out by commissioning me or pledging on Patreon or something. Heck, if you don’t want to pledge or want a commission done and still want to help me somehow I could accept some aid via Paypal.

If you really can’t help in any way, not even sharing or hitting the reblog button in this or my work, it’s okay. I’m not gonna get upset or anything, just know that I’d be infinitely grateful for some help in these dire straits I’m in.

Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/doctor_anfelo