Oh man, that exact thing happened to my buddy Mark at our local shop. He walked in one day to grab the new X-Men issue and this new guy was already camped out at the counter, phone out, checking eBay sold listings on his phone. By week two the guy was buying four copies of everything and my friend could never find a regular cover anymore. The owner finally had to ask him to chill out because he was literally blocking the register area with stacks of books he was just going to flip. It totally killed the vibe for a while.

Grabbed my old trowel the other day and realized it's probably worth more as a museum piece than for actual digging these days. Remember when we used to argue over whether a sherd was "light brown" or "tan"? Now the XRF just tells you it's got 2.3% iron oxide and you're the one feeling wrong. Last season I watched a grad student scan a piece of broken pottery, get the chemical profile, and then upload it to a database before I could even find my magnifying glass. Feels like we traded dirt under our nails for data entry.

Oh man, I really feel this take is spot on! @the_cameron, I gotta ask you something serious. When you say the 30 days protects both sides, can you give me one real example where a client used that clause to hold you to a full month of work when you wanted out? I help my husband run a small electrical business and we have a 10 day cancel clause for exactly this reason. We've had two clients try to ghost us in the middle of a job and the 10 days just gives us enough to finish up what we started without feeling ripped off. But 30 days feels like a lot for someone who's already unhappy with you.

@the_matthew honestly I'm just over here aggressively tapping my face like a woodpecker now because of that post... turns out I've been manhandling my foundation like it owes me money.

Huh, never thought about it that way.