Lucky escape! It shows how good these con-artists are at what they do, when you went in fully expecting it would be a huge scam, and still got talked into it!

My strategy these days is to never commit to any significant purchase on the spot. Car, sofa, whatever it is, they will always try to lay on the pressure and make it seem like it’s urgent and if you don’t get it now you’ll miss the limited deal, or someone else will buy it or whatever the trick is, but you have to stay firm.

My go to line is “I’ll take that away and think about it”- which gets me out of loads of trouble.

Slimy sales people have plenty of psychological tricks they weave into conversations to get you invested and ready to buy. They want you yourself even to be saying “Yeah that seems like a good deal!” because once you say that, they’ve basically got you - you can’t back out because you’d be disagreeing with yourself, and it’s human nature and pride almost that we ‘stick’ with our decisions.

That’s why never making a decision on the day is the strongest defence. It means you don’t have to be a skilled conversationalist who can spot all the sweet talk and see through the tricks. You’re totally free to get suckered and say “That sounds great!” but not have that become a commitment.

If it sounds great now it will still sound great after you go home and think about it, after all.

I’m trying to swear less. Or rather, to swear only where a swear is warranted.

My Dad has a habit of interjecting constant cuss words into everything he says, like “I was at the fucking supermarket right and then I’m just trying to find a fucking tin of beans…” and it’s just so unnecessary, to the point where the swears mean nothing because they are just peppered everywhere. I have to keep reminding him, “Dad, please tone it down a little”

And that’s an easy habit to get into but its exactly what I don’t want to be doing - swearing just as punctuation.

If a situation calls for a swear then I will swear quite happily, “Ouch, my fucking toe!!” and I’ll use the proper word. There’s no need to find childish swear-alternatives.

But I don’t want to sound like I can’t even stop it.

Being straight? Not a red flag.

Being a woman? Not a red flag.

Being Christian? Not a red flag either, unless you’re the sort of Christian who wants to force your views upon others who do not share them.

The only real red flag is that you said you “don’t understand” being queer. What is there to understand about it? Person A loves person B and that’s all there is to know. If that doesn’t make sense to you, then that perhaps may be the root of the issue, because it positions queer people as something alien.

Edit: Genuine advice - the key to being a good ally is internalised acceptance. You can’t be an ally if you see queer people as a different species, because even if you are “kind” and say “nice” things, there’s still a huge wall. You need to believe, truly, that queer people are exactly the same as you, and treat them exactly as anyone else - which ironically means no special treatment at all. Special treatment, even if it is seemingly ‘positive’ and well meant, is still strange and alienating.

For what it’s worth, I’m with you.

I also work from home, and while I generally cook all my own meals and do meal prep at werkends, sometimes I have a bad/stressful week where I cave and get fast food like three lunches in a row.

I keep a grocery bag in the car and put the fast food in there to hide my shame.