Since once in a blue moon I actually discover a decent rule for adulting, and since I know I have followers a few years younger than me who are just entering the workforce, I want to tell you about a very important phrase.
“I won’t be available.”
Imagine you’re at work and your boss asks you to come in on Saturday. Saturday is usually your day off–coming in Saturdays is not an obligation to keep your job. Maybe you were going to watch a movie with a friend, or maybe you were just going to lie in bed and eat ice cream for eight hours, but either way you really, really don’t want to give up your day off.
If you consider yourself a millennial you’ve probably been raised to believe you need to justify not being constantly at work. And if you’re a gen-Z kid you’re likely getting the same toxic messages that we did. So in a situation like that, you might be inclined to do one of three things:
Tell your boss you’d rather not give up your day off. Cave when they pressure you to come in anyway, since you’re not doing anything important.
Tell your boss you’d rather not give up your day off. Over-apologize and worry that you looked bad/unprofessional.
Lie and say you’ve got a doctor’s appointment or some other activity that feels like an adequate justification for not working.
The fact is, it doesn’t matter to your boss whether you’re having open heart surgery or watching anime in your underwear on Saturday. The only thing that affects them is the fact that you won’t be at work. So telling them why you won’t be at work only gives them reason to try and pressure you to come in anyway.
If you say “I won’t be available,” giving no further information, you’d be surprised how often that’s enough. Be polite and sympathetic in your tone, maybe even say “sorry, but I won’t be available.” But don’t make an excuse. If your boss is a professional individual, they’ll accept that as a ‘no’ and try to find someone else.
But bosses aren’t always professional. Sometimes they’re whiny little tyrants. So, what if they pressure you further? The answer is–politely and sympathetically give them no further information.
“Are you sure you’re not available?” “Sorry, but yes.”
“Why won’t you be available?” “I have a prior commitment.” (Which you do, even if it’s only to yourself.)
“What’s your prior commitment?” “Sorry, but that’s kind of personal.”
“Can you reschedule it?” “I’m afraid not. Maybe someone else can come in?”
If you don’t give them anything to work with, they can’t pressure you into going beyond your obligations as an employee. And when they realize that, they’ll also realize they have to find someone else to come in and move on.
IMPORTANT!! PLEASE READ!!
Just like with many other parts of life, learn to say ‘no’ to people. You are important. Don’t kill yourself for another person, esp. if they are your boss.
Because he was a terrible and abusive father. He didn’t give a damn about his kids; all he cared about was killing Azazel, without caring about the consequences of his acts towards Sam and Dean.
I know that losing Mary, his wife, was painful, and recovering from a death of someone close to you, takes time, but he became an obsessed man who only cared about revenge and about himself. Sam and Dean lost their mother, they needed their father, but John didn’t care about that. His priorities and needs came before Sam’s and/or Dean’s.
Not only did he force Dean, a four year old, to become an adult at such a young age, he also made sure that Dean’s only will to live was to keep Sam safe and to become a soldier. Dean couldn’t be a kid. He looked after Sam and even John, while nobody looked after Dean. He was a kid, and he had to cook, buy food, protect the motel room from strangers and monsters, to be always there for Sam, to take care of his drunk father. And a lot of times he left Dean without any money, and who knows what kind of terrible things Dean had to do to get money when he couldn’t steal food. Dean didn’t have a childhood because of John:
“My father was an obsessed bastard!
All that crap he dumped on me, about protecting Sam! That was his crap. He’s the one who couldn’t protect his family. He-
He’s the one who let Mom die, who wasn’t there for Sam. I always was! He wasn’t fair! I didn’t deserve what he put on me.” Dean in 3x10
But not also that, John also hit both Dean and Sam. We got glimpses of said behavior in 5x16, when Dean tells Sam about a day Sam ran away. “You ran away on my watch. I looked everywhere for you. I thought you were dead. And when Dad came home…“
It is also hinted in 9x07, when we see these wounds (credit to @lyriumglow)
Sonny asks Dean if the deputy did that to him. Dean shakes his head. Then Sonny asks if it he was his father, again Dean shakes his head and this time he says that it was a werewolf. Given that Dean was arrested for stealing for for Sammy, I doubt those marks are from a werewolf. They’re too recent.
It isn’t until 12x21 when Tony tells Mary about John’s abusive behaior towards Sam and Dean:
“After you died, your beloved John was a man slowly going mad, searching
for revenge. What? Your boys didn’t tell you? The drunken rages? The
weeks of abandonment? Child abuse, really. It’s no wonder they’re
damaged.”
But not only was John abusing his sons physically, he also abused them mentally. Not letting Dean and Sam think about any kind of normal life, forcing them to become soldiers. They weren’t allowed to behave like kids. He even got mad at Bobby for letting Dean play ball in 7x10 instead of teaching him how to shoot
“No, we didn’t shoot rifles, as a matter of fact. We threw a ball around, he’s a kid, John. They both are. They’re entitled.”
And let’s not forget how Dean knew his father was possessed by Azazel in 1x22 because John told Dean he was proud of him, and Dean knew that John would never be and had never been proud of him.
Dean: He’d be furious.
John: What?
Dean: That I wasted a bullet. He wouldn’t be proud of me, he’d tear me a new one.
How fucking messed up has to be your father to know that he is possessed when he praises you?
Also in 1x18, John asks Dean to protect Sam, and Dean, as a kid, wants to go out just for a little bit, he’s just a kid after all, and when John comes back and sees Sam being attacked by a monter, he gets furious at Dean. If John knew there was a monster attacking kids, he should have let Sam and Dean somewhere safe, with AN ADULT.
But the worse is this words Dean says:
“You know, Dad never spoke about it again, I didn’t ask. But he…ah…he looked at me different, you know? Which was worse.”
He even said that John gave him an order and didn’t listen, which means that Dean blames himself for it. He was a kid, but Dean doesn’t care about that. He believes that he wasn’t a kid, because John forced him to become an adult. Dean didn’t had any right to be a kid and make mistakes. What kind of parent does that?
You might think that he was going through something terrible, and that he was doing the best he could, even Sam and Dean admitted it in 8x12, but no, John didn’t do the best he could. He didn’t give a crap about Sam and Dean unless he needed them to kill Azazel. The rest of the time, he forgot about them. The best thing John did to Sam and Dean was to leave them with Bobby. Bobby wasn’t the best parent, but at least he cared about both Sam and Dean. Bobby did try his best with them, even if they weren’t blood.
But John made a deal with Azazel to save Dean!, you might said. Yeah, he did, but let me remind you that Dean was dying in the backseat of the Impala in 1x22 and John didn’t care
John: I’m surprised at you, Sammy. Why didn’t you kill it? I thought
we saw eye-to-eye on this? Killing this demon comes first – before me,
before everything.
*Sam looks in the rear view mirror at Dean.*
Sam: No, sir. Not before everything.
John might have done a couple of good things with Sam and Dean, but you can count them with the fingers of one hand. He might have saved Dean in 2x01, but that doesn’t fix all the shitty things he did to both Dean and Sam for 20 years. He took two kids and hurt them mentally and phisically, forced them to become adults and soldiers, without caring how damaging it was for them, until they only became two shells, so he could just take revenge.
Now, do you still wonder why I hate John Winchester?
Dove chocolate and Dove soap are two different companies who havent sued each other because they have different trademarks lol
Damn and I really all this time just thought dove (the soap people) had a meeting one day and were just like “…. we might fuck around and make some chocolate”
I just heard my mom tell my brother, “when you die, you will go outside and garden until your father says you’re done” and it took me a second to realize that my brother was playing a videogame and this was not a theological discussion.
