u/Adventurous_Jump8897

My little family has a tradition of naming our cars. Our last one was a Toyota Yaris, and the first thing my best friend said when he saw it was."It looks like a turtle!" Naturally, we named it Yurtle.

Three years ago we got a Toyota RAV4. Carrying on the tradition, we named it Ravi. It was an obvious play on "RAV," and it was fun and easy for our then 2 year old.

I never gave it a second thought. But today, while picking my daughter up from summer camp, she asked, "Mom, did you bring Ravi?"

Another mom overheard and asked, "Oh, who's Ravi?"

I said, "Our car," but didn't elaborate because I was busy gathering my daughter's things.

She kind of scrunched up her face and said, "Well... that's a choice."

I laughed awkwardly and said something like, "Yeah, we have a weird family tradition of naming our cars."

She replied, "No, I meant calling it Ravi. As a privileged white person, I'd be embarrassed to tell people that."

I was honestly so caught off guard that I just finished packing up and left.

Now it's been rattling around in my head. For context, my husband, daughter, and I are all white. The other mom was white as well. We live in a suburb of a large Canadian city. The area is still majority white, but there are plenty of families from many different cultural backgrounds. I genuinely value living in a diverse community and want to teach my daughter to respect and appreciate people from all cultures.

I completely understand that Ravi is a very common South Asian name. But when we chose it, we were honestly just looking for a cute nickname based on "RAV4." We've been calling the car Ravi for three years, and this is the first time anyone has ever reacted negatively.

If this is genuinely disrespectful, I absolutely want to know and we'll stop using it. I'm just not convinced by one strangers reaction.

I'd especially love to hear from people from cultures where Ravi is a common name (or, even better, from anyone actually named Ravi!)

AITAH?

I love my wife and we’ve been together for 15 years. Something that’s always kind of turned me off though is how much my wife farts and how unbothered she is about it, at times. My wife clearly has some type of digestive issue because most of the time her farts smell really really bad like rotten eggs or sulfur. I think she has a dairy intolerance. Any time I bring up maybe seeing a doctor about it she just laughs and says “let me live.” Honestly it’s not even the farting itself that’s annoying. It’s how cavalier she is about it and how she goes about doing it. We’ll be at the dinner table eating and she’ll let it rip while laughing. I know we should all be comfortable in our own homes but that doesn’t mean we can’t have basic etiquette about certain things. I don’t think anyone wants to have their meal soured because of someone dropping gas next to them. We also have a 7 year old and I personally don’t think thats modeling good behavior for him.

Today she was really gassy and instead of taking it easy from a dietary perspective she just kept pouring gas on the flame (no pun intended). I was getting ready for bed and she came to the room with a yasso ice cream pop in her hand. She goes “my booty is on fire tonight”, takes a lick of her ice cream while letting one rip super loud. I was just repulsed by the whole thing. I would never leave my wife over something like this but man id be lying if i said this wasn’t a turn off.

Update: I’m overwhelmed by how much engagement this got. I did not expect it to blow up like this lol but thank you everyone for the thoughtful responses. I think the general takeaway for me is to establish boundaries with my wife and to communicate to her that I’m not ok with what she’s doing.

One of my favourite bits in the continuity is that for all of his general terribleness, Alan is occasionally permitted to be in the right. Not necessarily to have the last laugh (although this post got me thinking - https://www.reddit.com/r/AlanPartridge/s/ydZZp6GhGa)

A few faves for me -

“The fuel in the turbocharger” on This Time - told to him by a lady mechanic!

Kicking the racist kitchen salesman (who cannae cook!) out of his farewell party

Any time he gets one up on Jennie - especially the John Baskell memorial

A bit of a provocative title, but I’ve been in Paris for a couple of days and it just… isn’t as good as TfL. The ticketing is baffling (a bespoke app, on which you have to buy individual tickets or a day pass) and the metro is rammed because of inefficient seat layout and long gaps.

Similarly Berlin has a fairly baffling ticketing system, and big gaps in service - although at least has cottoned on to longitudinal seating.

Is it just good practice that is found accidentally (like grab handle layouts on tube trains), early investment (like oyster and then contactless), or is it a broader push for passenger experience?

There’s clearly some cultural dimension as other cities have perfectly good off-the-shelf per ticket contactless payments unlike Paris or Berlin, but I’m curious how much it’s deliberate prioritisation by TfL vs how much it’s just happy accidents (or that I’ve lived in London for 15 years whereas I only visit Paris or Berlin every year or two)

Edit/addition: I am super happy to see people engaging with this, thank you all! Never realised my view on fares was such an extreme one 😅 for me - I love the TfL price capping as I tend to travel irregularly, and it’s a very intuitive thing (plus as a nerd I love the cleverness of the Oyster system).

The bit that really gets me is the bay seating on deep tubes here - surely we’ve all learned by now that doesn’t work (however cute it is on the Bakerloo!) and the lack of grab handles.

I also wonder whether a lack of ticket barriers is a driver or a sign of higher trust society. If nobody is leaping the barriers, there’s less obvious sign of fare evasion being normalised?

Inspired by this post - what are the things your employees consistently think are unimportant and you wish they grasped?

For me it’s always been formatting, spelling, and grammar. Computers have a built in spell check and most packages will let you format something neatly. I’m not your English teacher and I shouldn’t have to spell check things that are going in front of stakeholders or senior management.

Get it down ya William.

A few weeks ago, my two bosses (a brother and sister) called me in for a chat about what they called a "First World Problem." They explained the business had an exceptionally good season, that they needed to spend some money, and they wanted to get something specifically for me.

- They started by offering me a laptop. I declined because I prefer my desktop setup.
- As I sometimes work from home, they offered to upgrade my entire home PC - screens, hard drives, everything. I declined again; everything I have is in perfect working order, replacing it woupd just be wasteful.
- They asked if I needed a new phone. I had to say no again as I just bought one a few weeks ago.
​
Finally, my boss (the brother) looked at me with a completely straight face and asked: "What about my car? I'm buying a new one for myself. I'll gift you my current one."
​At this point, my brain stopped working and you could have knocked me over with a feather. I have a car; it’s almost 20 years old, but it works just fine for my needs. His car is a 2017 Mercedes-Benz B-Class W246. I told them I’d sleep on it, but I hardly slept at all.
​
I live in a snowy, mountainous area, and my top priority is having 4-wheel drive to get to work safely. While I love his car (we're on the road a lot in it), I was sure it was only 2-wheel drive. I thought I’d have to decline this, too.

The next morning, I went into work ready to explain that I needed my 4WD and instead suggest they could just reimburse me for the phone I’d bought?
​I walked up to him and said, "It would be a yes, if your car was a 4-wheel drive."
He said, "But it is!" I just stood there and said, "...Oh."
He replied, "Great. So that’s that then."
​I never even got to suggest the phone. I asked him if he knew that this wasn't "normal" behavior for a boss, and he just gave me a huge grin. Before I went back to work, I gave him a big hug.

No date fo the exchange has been set, but it'll likely be in the next few weeks. I have test driven the car and it was great!

Posting with my newish alternative account to keep from being identified.

There were some very smartly turned out RNLI fundraisers at London Bridge today, and it occurred to me how lovely that was.

Not paid chuggers trying to sign you up for a monthly Direct Debit, not the We R Blighty scammers, actual volunteers raising money for an actual charity. Two kindly middle aged people giving up their time for a very worthy cause.

Gave them £10 as it was fairly quiet by the time I got off the train to work, and honestly just more of this sort of thing 😂