Bevendre

In regards to the cause of the family discrediting work authority and experience thing, it’s a fun story.

Save for a few days in the past 6 years I have maintained a positive balance in the bank.  There have been periods where, after paying off bills, debts, etc. I was close to a non-balance, but I have never owed the bank money, nor my family more than a few hundred dollars at any time, that largely coming from college tuition.  

This has never stopped my parents, both of whom work for a large banking/hunting company, from criticizing my budgeting and money handling habits.  I will admit to not always making the wisest or best of investments, but I always make sure that what I spend does not exceed what I have.  (The same cannot be said for my sister who has overdrawn every few months for the past 3 years, with little to no parental backlash.)

I have worked the last 6 years at a local grocery store, with the last 3 spent almost solely working with refrigerated and perishable foods.

When getting food from the freezer this evening I noticed that the freezer wasn’t freezing.  It was warmer than the refrigerator in many places.  When I tried to fix the freezer by dialing down the temperature I was told that there was no point because ‘it was too full for that to work’.  The freezer is cooling now, but my parents are convinced that I’m still wrong on the subject.

There is also the case of yogurt being kept and used more than a year after its expiration date, and sour cream still being kept and used after it had expired nearly 5 months ago.  I have brought both issues to my family’s attention in the past to be told that I was being stupid and didn’t know what I was talking about.

For a brief background to put things in perspective: My father is a high school dropout who got his GED and dropped out of college in his sophomore year, and my mother dropped out of college in her junior year, while I have a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and accolades in sciences and four non-English languages.