I'd say FF is the best out of all of them.

Be careful about fast food.

When I was a teenager, I worked at one; a McD's franchise.

The policy was that I was *not* supposed to eat fries straight out of the heater (likely more for hygiene reasons than being stingy as hell).

However, they were pretty stingy. It wasn't free, but a 50% discount. Furthermore, that only applied to half an hour before and after the shift, or during official break times, not the few minutes here and there to have a smoke or use the restroom where you'd stay on the clock.

I've since seen some franchisees being even more stingy, only offering 30%.

The only free food I could get was any beverages or that because I regularly worked the closing shift (that location closed at 9PM), I regularly took the leftover pies. The only rule was for the manager on duty to record them as waste, since they obviously couldn't be sold the next day. There was also a policy to keep at least 2 pies of each type available, precooked, for immediate sale, so it was guaranteed there would be some.

You're definitely not getting fat off of that. At best it might help restore the calories burned during the shift.

Even crueler, I've heard that at all Tim Hortons locations, employees are banned from taking the waste home with them at closing time, and that's why I will never buy from one.

Free food and catered lunches are definitely a nice bonus, but let me be clear. The only thing you should be looking at is the pay and size of your paycheck, paid time off, and healthcare coverage. Even employee discounts are relatively worthless.

Wal-Mart offers a 10% discount to employees, which sounds nice at first, but consider this. Suppose you spend $500/mo. at Wal-Mart, which you probably don't, but suppose you do. The 10% discount reduces that to $450, for a $50 value. Suppose you work very part-time, once a week, 8 hours each time. That's an average of about 34 hours, 40 minutes a month, making the value of the benefit to be only $1.44 an hour. If you work more than that, and you probably will, the effective value is even less than that.

Maybe if you're a teenager or young adult, and you know of a local bakery business of some sort (not as many as you might think) that has a strong focus on freshness (*very* important), perhaps that would provide a lot of waste that they'd be happy to let you take home.

Or if you're lucky, certain pizza places, depending on how stingy they want to be.

But in the long run, this is not a benefit that should really be prioritized. The primary focus should always be the pay, followed by paid time off and healthcare coverage. Never, ever switch to another job that pays less because of free food. It's never going to be worth it.

If you are referring to my post, I reread it twice and I don't see where I was being derogatory against plus size women?

That was certainly not my intent.

I would certainly be interested in reading your experiences sometime.

I wouldn't say I was particularly active back then, but I certainly remember mostly lurking around a lot of that old stuff. Back when Yahoo Groups were still a thing. Back when Kelligrrl and SexyMic were still active. Back when Dimensions was more than just a message board, yet was pretty much the only game in town, AOL and Yahoo notwithstanding.

Think I even still remember back then, the kind of feeling I had when I first discovered this sort of thing online. I remember seeing the various weight loss ads on magazines or on TV, and thinking that at least 95% of the time, the before picture looked better. I guess at some point, I wondered if there was anyone who was deliberately trying to get fatter on purpose.

So, I searched on Excite!, or perhaps it was Lycos or Yahoo Search. I think I used a phrase like:

"weight gain" "before and after" pictures

Or phrases like:

"getting fatter" pictures

The quotes were important to match the literal phrase, because otherwise searching for weight gain could return results about gaining confidence from weight loss, which was not what I was looking for at all.

At that point, I discovered Dimensions. I don't really know how else to describe it, so here goes. It was almost as if St. Peter opened up the gates in the sky, and the angels were all singing Hallelujah! It totally blew my mind at the time. I wasn't crazy! It wasn't just me! Somewhere, in this big wide world, there were others who felt as I do.

Keep in mind this was a time when you would be made to feel bad if you ever dared admit that a 5'3", 160 lb girl was possibly attractive, and didn't want her to lose 40 lbs. And don't even dare think, much less admit out loud that you wish she'd gain 40 lbs, and maybe even more than that.

The department stores never had any plus-size mannequins, and suggesting that one use Lane Bryant clothes was derogatory.

This was also when just a few years earlier, the film What's Eating Gilbert Grape? was released. I didn't like how his mother was portrayed, that she was basically a depressed shut-in who never left the house, and that she was fat only because she became a slob who didn't care about anything. Then in the final scene where she went to the courthouse to post bail for her other son who's mentally disabled, everyone around her pointed and laughed at her, mocking how fat she was.

I certainly couldn't really understand such attitudes. Most of the fat people I met back then, actually seemed very nice. Yet I remember this skinny kindergarten teacher I had who was skinny but also a bit of a bitch, like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Very dark times indeed back then, the 90s and before. I hope they never come back.

The funny thing is, I actually saw that film again recently and while the film was still as sad as I remember, Gilbert's mother actually wasn't that big after all. Any time I go out the door, I'm guaranteed to see quite a few people as big as she is, or even bigger. No one cares anymore or gives them any grief.

I don't even know how many hours I spent looking through and getting lost on the entire web site of Dimensions. All the stories from the Weight Room, all the personal accounts, the featured images of Kelligrrl and others, and so on.

I even remember Dimensions had a mod for The Sims 1 for fat sims, and I regret not downloading it. A couple years ago someone asked me if I had those files, and I had to disappoint him. It didn't help that I was using dial-up, and that download would have taken a long time.

Maybe don't lead with being a virgin. It is what it is, but it's not something to brag about. Never lead with something perceived as negative in most of society.

I'm not saying this to be mean, but never lead with anything negative like that. I would tell you the exact same advice if you lead with something else like "I haven't been on a date in years."

The only thing that will do is invite questions as to why this is, which can lead down a rabbit-hole of other questions you really don't want them to be asking, like "what's wrong with this person?" This could then result in "yeah I'm giving that person a wide berth."

If you want me to delete the thread entirely, please let me know and I'd be happy to do so.

In the meantime, I think this belongs in the personals board.