u/Oxjrnine

I’ve been with the bank for years. I know fully well that if people didn’t have problems and didn’t need my help I wouldn’t have a job. So for my entire career, I’ve been able to keep personal biases out of my conversations, and I’ve had a really great attitude about how clients don’t realize they might be irritating or being silly, etc. etc..

And even now, when I have a difficult client or a client who needs way more instruction and advice - I actually thrive.

but recently tiny little things are starting to cause me to have a micro minute of pure rage.

It doesn’t last and it doesn’t affect my calls (yet) but I am getting irrationally angry over the most petty things.

“Sixty six, triple eight are not on my keypad - why can’t you read off numbers like a normal person?”

“I literally told you not to do that, I confirmed you understood not to do that, then you did that anyway”

“Sure, I can wait for you to go to your truck to grab your card after I had to listen to you complain for 5 minutes about a 4 minute wait time”

The list goes on and on.

Those are all inside voices, and these things never used to get under my skin before.

I’m worried that I might be getting close to the edge of burnout. I’m too old to easily find a different type of job. Any lateral movement or promotions are going to have me doing very similar work. And I’m too young to say that it’s OK because it’s only gonna be a little while and I’m gonna be retired.

So a little advice, what what would be the healthiest way to cope with these feelings?

Do I just let myself have those fractions of seconds of frustration and anger so they don’t build up or carryover, as long as they’re not affecting my calls.

Or are there some techniques where I can go back to not letting these things get under my skin anymore?

Or do I start booking biweekly session at our local smash room?

(by the way, I’m not trying to trash clients. I have genuinely been OK with the fact that they might never have worked in customer service. We have all been guilty of being irritating at some point. And even though negative attitudes are starting to creep into my thoughts, I’m still able to suppress them and handle my calls without bias. - but it is taking a lot of my emotional bandwidth. This post is about my issues and not our clients behaviour)

I just used ChatGPT to create a surprisingly good technical drawing for a small claims case involving my landlord.

Basically, the landlord is claiming that I left a window open and caused a radiator pipe to split. Luckily, I can prove that I didn’t have the window open during the time period, but I was worried that the judge might not be able to visualize the real cause and might think I was just making things up.

So, I requested ChatGPT help me create some technical drawings instead of using generic examples from the internet. Basically, I wanted to show how my apartment’s piping is laid out and that the most likely cause of the split was an ice plug generated in an uninsulated cavity that sits against the outside brick wall and above uninsulated cinder block.
At first, the examples ChatGPT created were terrible, but then I figured out how to fix it. I did a rough sketch, colour-coded it, then gave all my instructions again and told it not to use the drawing to generate the image, but only to use the drawing as a reference for distances.

That little trick made it come out absolutely perfect for what I needed.
So now I’m able to print out several copies and illustrate the different possible scenarios myself that could have caused the pipe to split, then explain, based on my plumber’s explanation, the likelihood of each one, with the most likely one being the uninsulated section.

Using generic examples from the internet probably wouldn’t have been nearly as effective as a visual aid as the ones I was able to make myself.
And I’m actually a pretty decent drawer, but doing this manually would have taken hours and hours, which I really didn’t want to spend on.

forward head posture

For most of my life, I’ve had to fight against forward head posture. I don’t believe I have any defects in my spine. It was more just a coincidence of habits over time.

Back in high school, I had an hour-and-a-half commute, so I often slept with my head pushed forward during those three hours a day on the bus. Then when I went to college, I smartened up and started standing and sitting properly again.

But later in the ‘90s, I got very comfortable with that whole grunge slouch posture thing. At the time it was almost a stylistic choice. But eventually I realized I wasn’t just slouching occasionally to project that attitude, I had trouble standing straight. So I bought those reminder shoulder straps and slowly fixed my posture.

Then came office work and smartphones. So with a combination of slightly poor eyesight and decades of falling into the bad habit of a forward head tilt, it got really bad.

And when I mean bad, I mean it took months to correct. I would go years with normal posture, but then it would creep back to forward head tilt and I didn’t notice until it became painful to stand straight.

The above picture is from the last time I corrected it. Back then I fixed it mostly through exercise, stretching, and a bit of help from a massage therapist to loosen up the muscles.

But this time I’ve ignored it for almost two years, and it’s the worst it has ever been. I am worried that at my age this is going to become permanent.

So this time I think I may need the help of either a physical therapist, and/or a personal trainer, and/or a massage therapist. My work insurance will probably cover one, but not all three.

At this point I’m less worried about appearance and more worried about long-term quality of life. I’m now in my mid-fifties, and if I don’t properly fix this now, I think I’m going to be miserable in old age.

For those of you who had severe forward head posture from years of bad posture and muscle imbalance (not from a permanent spinal disorder) which of the three specialists helped you the most long term?

Physical therapist?
Personal trainer?
Massage therapist?

And which one helped keep the correction more permanent?

So on January 1, I woke up to my living room being flooded.

It was later discovered that one of the pipes that lead up into my radiators was completely uninsulated and against an outside wall.

Because all the hot water pipes run underneath of my apartment, my internal temperature in the winter cannot be controlled through the thermostat so that means my radiators are actually ice cold

I do have to open my windows in the winter because the temperature is actually dangerously warm in the apartment, but I’m always really careful.

Luckily, I can prove my windows were closed that evening but I didn’t have them open at 3:15 for 15 minutes 530 for 15 minutes and 815 for 15 minutes

At that time, the outside temperatures were around -11

But by midnight, they were -17 and around 5 AM they were -25°C

My Landlord is trying to say that I am either lying about having my window open or that having them open 10 hours before the before the split happened is what caused the split

When they tore the ceiling down underneath me, it was discovered that there was no insulation whatsoever protecting the pipes and if you know anything about finish basements, you can’t cover up piping that’s against an outside wall without protecting it

She thinks I’m crazy because she doesn’t believe that an uninsulated pocket between my apartment and then the laundry room ceiling could possibly have gotten below freezing.

I’m gonna be able to prove that I didn’t have my window open, but I would prefer to explain to her that I’m not crazy. An ice plug can create pressure which can cause a split. She thinks the only way a split could happen is from ice expanding in the pipe directly, which is why she thinks it was my window.

Looking more for moral support than actual true advice

Normally, I wouldn’t put my landlord in the slumlord category. My unit is actually very nice. The rent is actually below market value, and even though the rest of the building is a little bit rickety and rundown, it’s kept very clean and repairs are done pretty quickly. But here is the slumlord part: she is trying to get me to pay $6,000 for damages that were caused by two latent defects in the building.

So, a little background.

All the hot water pipes that heat the 10 units in the building run under my kitchen. Because of that, the interior temperature of my apartment is in the high 20s to the low 30s and actually gets hotter the colder it gets outside. It has gone up as high as 34°C. Because of that, I have to vent out the extra heat. Temperatures that hot are actually dangerous.

So the solution has been for me to vent out the extra heat by opening windows for short periods of time and then, at night, using an air conditioner that pumps out the extra heat through a winterized insert. And the reason why I’m so careful about how I vent out the extra heat is that I understand the concept of temperature creep. Even though the heat coming from the floor makes it impossible for the apartment to ever get below zero, a constant draft could cause the wall itself to reach below zero temperatures. I don’t sleep with the windows open when it is below zero and the air-conditioning insert is winterized to make sure no cold drafts come in, only hot air pushed out.

The other reason why I’m cautious is that under my bedroom window and under my living room window is where the radiators are and there is no warm water running through them. The high temperature makes it impossible for the thermostat to kick in, so they’re basically cold pipes up against an exterior wall.

I should also add that my windows are not allowed to be open during my night shift because I work for a financial institution.

So, on January 1, the radiator in my living room split due to an ice jam/ice plug.

My landlord is trying to use the fact that I have to open my windows to claim that I am the reason why an ice plug formed.

The reality is that there was actually a section of pipe directly under my living room radiator that was above uninsulated cinderblock, sealed behind the laundry room ceiling, with the piping in contact with the outside wall, with only a thin piece of wood between it and the brick. And because there was no running water in that pipe, because the radiators don’t ever turn on, it froze.

Now, I don’t believe she truly believes I was the cause because she did not submit an eviction request due to me being negligent, and she didn’t submit a request for damages to the New Brunswick Landlord and Tenant Relations Office. But she did serve me with an invoice for $9,000, and she did try to renovict me by claiming that my apartment needed massive amounts of work. She lost that judgment, and somehow, miraculously, no repairs were actually required in my apartment at all, and I got a new invoice of $6,000 instead.

Now, I would have no problem paying this if I felt I was actually responsible, and I could even acknowledge that maybe there could be a small chance that I could be partly responsible. So I didn’t refuse to pay. I went back to her and asked for the report on how she came to the conclusion that I was responsible. In that report, I asked her if the plumber inspected my air-conditioning unit, and did the plumber take laser temperature readings of the uninsulated piping section before they covered it with spray foam and insulation?

I want to make sure that if we are going to court, she has the correct information in that report and isn’t going to try and claim that my living room window was open, which it wasn’t, and I can prove that.

My living room window was open for two 15-minute breaks and one lunch break. It was not opened after that. I did open my bathroom window for about an hour between 11 PM and 12 AM, which got the temperature down low enough for me to be able to relax and watch a bit of television. The air-conditioning unit was only turned on at 5 AM because it had gotten too uncomfortable to sleep at that point, and the leak was discovered at 9 AM. So the leak occurred somewhere between 5 AM and 9 AM. So even if my air-conditioning unit wasn’t properly installed and somehow a draft came through it, that still isn’t even enough time to create a cold pocket, and it’s also 14 feet from where the pipe split, in a different room.

So, is anyone familiar with New Brunswick landlord and tenant rules? Am I entitled to that report? Am I entitled to have her exhaust all other possibilities? Am I entitled to have her present those possibilities to her insurance? Basically, she’s arguing that correlation is causation.

In any case, if I decide to settle out of court, or if we do go to court, I’m confident she’s not going to win the whole $6,000 anyway. She created the condition where the pipes were at risk of having no warm water going through them, and she’s responsible for the conditions that require hot air to be vented out of the apartment. So whether the cause was due to the uninsulated pipe, or if somehow my insert failed, she has some partial responsibility either way.

Sorry for the word salad

The pictures include a record of how hot it gets in my apartment. Proof that the insert for the air conditioner actually has a higher R value than the window with a photograph of a laser reading of the window and a laser reading of the insert. A picture of the hot water piping that runs under my kitchen, an exterior picture of the air conditioner insert and finally a picture of the section of piping that was not insulated at all that was buried under the ceiling above the cinderblock with no insulation right up against the outside wall.

My god that is some seriously impressive housing density. And it looks like they are family sized units, which is nice considering how close the schools, sports centre, and the park are.

It’s a little sad that there is less of a buffer around Centennial Park, but at least they seem to be using every square inch of what they cut down.

I knew about the high rises being built down town, and I see a new building here and there, across greater Moncton, but I had no idea I was going to stumble upon a massive vertical neighbourhood when I decided to take a right instead of left on my nightly walk.

We run Smokey Bears BBQ out of Fredericton and just got our hands on a 1000 gallon offset smoker.

It’s an absolute beast — planning to use it for bigger events this season.

Instead of naming it ourselves, we figured we’d let people throw out ideas and pick one. Winner gets a pellet smoker + some Smokey Bears merch.

Some of the suggestions so far:

The Grizzly Bear

Midnight Smoker

The Charred Den

Honestly some are hilarious 😂

Curious what you’d call something this ridiculous.