I had no idea this stuff was going on. THAT is how uncool I am. A subterranean network in education where items are traded as currency? And for what? Apparently pencils are as valuable as cigarettes in a prison setting. And is it only the students involved? Are teachers and the administration also running it? So much to think about.
Redditor u/RetardIsProbalyTaken wanted to discuss, what's the value of a few underground things to the educational crowd these days by asking...
Never in my wildest dreams did I think about quid pro quo in school. I clearly missed out. Having suffered from bullying the way I did, I could've bartered for my freedom.
We Need Control
dos equis facepalm GIF by Dos Equis Gifs to the World
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In my junior year we had a gun black market. like that's not even a joke, one boy was selling guns out of the back of his car at lunch.
Candy Kids
Any candy in primary school, Smartys in middle school and marijuana in high school.
I was an entrepreneurial child, and would bring in Sees candy bars to my siblings school and sell them for $4 each. Paid $1. Way better than the cheap stuff the other kids were slinging. My parents knew about it and didn't care. They wouldn't pay for any of my stuff even basics like shampoo and toothpaste from the age of 12, but at least they didn't stop me from making money where I could.
CD Daze...
This will show my age a bit, but I was the first kid (in a large middle school) with a CD burner. I started out selling top 40 compilations for $5, then moved onto mixes by request for $8 (you give me a list of songs, I burn you a CD), then got into full albums the day of release for $5. It was so lucrative, I bought two more high-speed burners and could do three CDs at a time.
Within a few months the whole school knew me and where I'd be hanging out on certain days. I even had a guy working with me for a cut.
We'd walk around with a duffel bag just slinging discs. In a year-and-a-half, we made so much money I don't even want to say. But if you do the math, I was averaging probably 20-30 CDs a day, but on a huge album release I'd easily do 200 or more in a day.
Keeping up with demand was stressful as hell, but my parents knew and were actually supportive, as long as I got my homework done. My dad even found a way to buy blank discs and cases in bulk for cheap from who knows where.
I went away for the summer between 8th and 9th grade, and when I got back another kid had taken over the market. I was so relieved. I still burned discs for friends for free if they gave me a blank, and obviously for myself. But was so glad to get out having made all that money.
People Share The 'Dirty Secrets' That Their Bosses Don't Want Customers To Know
The Pop Gang
So my brother ran his own little black market at our high school. Back in the early 2000's they introduced soda machines to our Upstate NY school. They were $2 for each soda. There was a Kinney's Pharmacy right next to the school. So I'd park my truck in the spots between the two, he'd get out and buy as many 6 packs of soda as he could fit in his bag.
Then he'd sell them during the day for $1.50 each, undercutting the vending machine and making a profit. The school eventually caught on and called our mother. My mother wasn't even mad, she was impressed with his ingenuity.
"rare"
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Silly bandz in elementary school.
This! We would sell, trade, gift them, a true black market. I can say I had some of the "rare" one, spongebob, gary, Mr.Krabs. You know the good stuff.
It's funny, I was an Assistant Principal's assistant, and her candy draw was overflowing with trash. I always had her lunch hour covered. I could've taken everything she confiscated and resold it. Damn me having a conscious. How is candy an issue? Whatever.
For the Pens...
When I was in high school, they gave out Surface computers to all the students. Everyone would lose or break their pens, and the school didn't have anymore replacements. Eventually it got to a point where other students would steal other people's pens and sell them to other kids who need them.
When in Stanford...
At Stanford they let vendors like arts and crafts people set up on a particular lawn i don't recall how often every coupla weeks? one of em sold shrooms. they were selling more than arts and crafts i suppose. giving you a way to see in your own artsy way.
The Chick Plan
Some guy used to bring an entire gym bag full of Chick-fil-A chicken biscuits to sell in HS. Sold out every morning before 1st period. You could be added to his waitlist to get yours reserved or you could wait to see if he had any left. Brilliant.
Christ I could have made a killing doing this. Any kids reading this, you can still make a killing doing this. Do it for me.
Lunch Hour
When I was in high school, students could work in the cafeteria during our lunch hour for a small amount of money as well as a free lunch. A couple of the student lunch workers started selling their free lunches to other students for less money than the cafeteria would charge for the same meal. The school eventually caught on and fired the student workers that were doing it. Nothing crazy, but I always thought it was interesting.
No Flames!
After my middle school banned Flamin' Hot Cheetos because of how popular they were, the kids who came from inner-city busses brought stashes of them in duffel bags and sold them for $1 each.
Diamonds...
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In 3rd grade I got a clay jewelry maker for my birthday, I would make clay bracelets and necklaces and sell them to my classmates.
Anything & Everything
Boarding school black market. We have something called the 'Hedge'. Essentially it's just what it sounds like, it is a big hedge and you can crawl inside of it and can't be seen by anybody looking in.
People meet in it and buy cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, or organise with older students to get them to buy certain items they can't buy since it's age restricted. It also used to be where people bought porn mags back in the day according to my dad (he was surprised it was still a thing), but obviously since porn is now free online it killed that sector of the economy off.
SHOTS!!
Alcohol. One of my buddies would bring a coffee thermos full of hard liquor to school every day and charge people $10 for a pull from it. People sharing coffee or soda wasn't super uncommon and he made quite the killing before he stopped (graduation was coming up and he didn't want to risk anything).
Take your... PIC
I did a thing with Pic-a-Pop. (Our local multi-flavor soda company) I brought 24 bottles of various favorites (cream soda, lime, raspberry, strawberry etc) and sold them for $0.75. It undercut the Coke machine by $0.25 and my cost was $0.50 plus I get a dime back for every bottle I returned. It wasn't a get rich quick scheme but $6 profit per 24 bottles and all I had to do was go for a 5 minute walk to the store every couple of days to reload.
Pika!!
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Pokémon was the black market in primary school. In high school it's drugs.
And Pancakes?
Fresh waffles. We had this one kid that would bring a waffle iron from home and plugged it into one of the sockets meant for your charger. During the breaks, he would pick from the supermarket across the street a bottle of waffle batter to which you only had to add water. Initially, he only this for himself and his friends, but since everyone in the school became hypnotized by the overwhelming waffle smell and started to ask for one, he decided to sell them. Unfortunately, his waffle stand was ultimately taken down by the janitor.
Come and Get It!!
I went to a boarding school. We had cards that allowed us to get however many dollars worth of food at the dining hall for meals. My roommate would get friends to lend him their cards when they went home for weekends, and he'd use them to stock up on mountain dew. Then he'd sell it out of our dorm room throughout the week. He made hundreds of dollars that way.
on the floor...
Marbles. In primary school my friend would win people's marbles in a game and then sell the marbles back to them. Until the teachers stopped him.
Of the Devil
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The black market is D&D supplies, soda, books, snacks and movies. This is a catholic school. They say those things are of the devil.
The Pottery Studio
I mean I feel like it's the basic one but at my old college before I transferred there was an entire network of people exchanging textbooks and course packs because we refuse to support the bullcrap textbook industry. Legit operated out of the back of the pottery studio because it was it's own detached building behind the main lecture hall building.
Literally like a couple times a semester there would be, essentially, a swap meet in the studio and there'd be people from like the Psychology lab majors all the way to engineering students hanging out and exchanging books and course packs.
TicketMaster...
Lunch tickets.
When I was in school, students receiving free lunches would get paper tickets at the beginning of the week and exchange one ticket each day for their meal. These students would sometimes sell their lunch tickets at a reduced price to students who had to pay full price for lunch.
I was a full participant in this.
The reason? If I kept those tickets I could buy lunch for myself. If I sold them for $1 a piece I could use the resulting $5 to buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, or a gallon of milk and block of cheese, or a few cans of soup, and my mother and brother could also eat.
Schools have some dark secrets. There is a WHOLE lot happening that parents are not paying attention to. School is a soap opera. And I think I want to watch.
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There are many grammatical rules that are broken, like nouns acting as adjectives, or nouns acting like verbs.
To explore this concept and to hear input from strangers online, Redditor Shabbydarstqc asked:
"What 'exception to the rule' do you live by?"
According to these Redditors, telling the truth doesn't always set them free.
Truthfulness
"Being honest. There's times where the truth isn't always for the better."
"You can be honest but you don't have to tell them everything you know."
– Ronin100
Feel The Room
"Actually, when you are saying the truth you should consider why you are saying it. If it's to make someone look bad or yourself look good, you should say nothing at all."
Reeling It In
"Everything in moderation, including moderation."
"Basically, exercise restraint and self-control, but not to an extent that it bars me from new experiences, and with the understanding that it's okay to be a complete, sloppy disaster person sometimes."
Generally speaking, we should all treat everyone with kindness.
But, when we're wronged, do we take it lying down?
Conditional Kindness
"Be nice to everyone, you never know what they are dealing with..."
"Except the b*tch that made a huge scene about my disabled son in a packed store at the checkout."
So What Happened Was...
"My son was 5 at the time. He has Septo-optic dysplasia, schizencephaly, and autism. Basically, he's missing two parts of his brain, had brain surgery for a large mass from the schizencephaly, totally blind in one eye and tunnel vision in the other. (It's honestly a miracle he is as functional as he is)."
"Anyway, we were behind the woman currently checking out. There was coloring books at the end of the check out line. He asked if he could look at them and I said that's fine. So he starting flapping his hands while walking that way because he was excited. The side she was standing on was the side he can't see out of. While flapping, his hand grazed her backside and she went off that he groped her. Yelled and pointed in the store that my 5 year old, that you can physically see is disabled- sexually assaulted her by groping her butt. Thankfully he had no idea the scene was about him because he was looking at the coloring books at that point. Im not one to yell, especially in public but I did. Then went to my car and cried wondering how many people like this he's gonna have to deal with in his life. It sucked."
It's all a matter of preference for these Redditors.
Being In Control
"Everyone in the neighborhood hires a lawn service to mow, weed, and trim their properties."
"I do my own - not because I can't afford it, but because I prefer the results when I do it myself."
Better Food
"100%, same for food."
"$15 at home gets you a family meal and maybe leftovers, tastes good, decently healthy."
"$30 out gets you a family meal that is kind of meh, too salty and probably too greasy."
"Home Ec is a dying art."
Sweet Additive
"All things sugar free - except my coffee."
"Hah I'm the other way around. I love sugar, but keep it away from my coffee."
A Matter Of Taste
"Vegetarian except for lobster corn chowder."
"In my defense, the haters claim there is no actual lobster in the chowder so that's my excuse for eating it. It's been so long since I've had actual lobster that I forgot what it tastes like."
Going Off The Footpath
"Shoes. I just don't wear them unless I'm snowboarding, my boss is gonna show up to work, or I plan on doing a lot of walking around outside in the snow."
"I don't care about the needing to wear shoes signs at places."
As a general fan of cinema, I am open to watching all genres of film.
I'm also a huge fan of horror, and I can take bloody carnage, and everything having to do with the supernatural.
However, there is ONE film I refuse to watch, and that's Human Centipede.
Seriously, why would anyone ever watch it? I don't have to see it to know it is gratuitous and made for shock value only.
I challenge anyone that might argue it has artistic integrity. And if they try to make me watch it to prove a point, I just might allow them the win if only to spare me from puking my guts out.
My family has a history that includes the mafia, the FBI, murder in an asylum, alcohol, drugs... the list is endless. And I'd rather just watch Days of Our Lives.
Family Issues
Stephen Colbert Love GIF by The Late Show With Stephen ColbertGiphy"My mother told me that my dad, wasn't my real dad, drunk one night when I was 16. That was 31 years ago. To this day his side of the family still thinks I'm his."
- Traiz3r
Show me the $$$
"One of my uncles borrowed $20,000 from my other more successful Uncle to start a business and refuses to pay his more successful brother back because he's "got so much money already". The more successful uncle refuses to sue him because that's not what family does, but they are no longer on speaking terms."
- mikenyle
Mum is crazy...
"My great-grandmother helped cover up a murder. Claimed the guy was a psychopath and attacked her daughter and granddaughter for no reason. In actuality, my mum was going through a phase where she would try to get men turned on by rubbing her arse on them. This guy pushed her off and told her to screw off."
"My mum took offence to this and claimed the guy was trying to take her clothes off. My grandmother, who was on all the drugs, came out of her room and stabbed the guy to death to protect her daughter. My mum told the truth after the guy was dead and they came up with a cover up story so that they wouldn't get in trouble."
We were on a BREAK!!!
"My grandpa and grandma broke up for a few weeks in August 1962. In that one week my grandpa got drunk one night and got the woman living across the hall from my grandma pregnant, and my grandma had a fling with a married man while on the late shift as a bartender and got pregnant herself. My grandparents got married and my grandma passed my aunt barb off as my grandpas child."
"The other woman gave my aunt Joyce up for adoption. Both were born exactly a week apart. 30 years later my mom was getting married and visited my Grandmas sister to hand out wedding invitations. My Grandmas sister decided that was the perfect occasion to tell my mother out of nowhere that my Aunt Barb was not my grandpas biological daughter. My mom was shocked and confronted my Grandma after the visit and who denied it."
"My mom then decided stupidly to keep it secret. It was kept a secret from my Aunt Barb for 40 years until my aunt Joyce found my grandpa and looked exactly like him. That is when my aunt Barb had a DNA test done and confirmed she wasn't his daughter. It took my aunt barb 17 years to find her real fathers family and she finally found them last year. They all accepted her into the family."
WTF
Steve Harvey Reaction GIFGiphy"My Dad lives in his car and is only given enough money for basic food and is only allowed in the house to clean it. He's more of a household servant than anything."
- Catctus
Yeah, that is a whole lotta mess. That's why sometimes you just have to change your name, or fake your death. These people are crazy.
Captor
Frustrated Skip Bayless GIFGiphy"I have done extensive genealogical research and found that my maternal family enslaved over 700 human beings."
Dirty Grandpa...
"My grandad had sex with everyone of my grandma's 5 sisters, over about 40 years, 3 he had long term affairs with. It all came out at my grandma's 60th birthday party when everyone had too much to drink. Fun times, trying to get between several old women, trying to prevent them from punching one another."
Most Wanted
"While cleaning out a relative's house after his funeral, we discovered that the family member was virtually on a first name basis with every major law enforcement department (city, state and federal) within a 100 mile radius. Among other things, he had consulted on FBI cases."
"He wore his disdain for all politicians openly. So, imagine our surprise to discover that he'd been invited to almost every Presidential inauguration within the last forty'ish years. I never had any illusions that I ever truly knew this family member. But if I had, they would've gone away after discovering all that stuff."
Boxed In
"My great grandfather would lock my uncle in one of those big metal toolboxes you sometimes see in the back of trucks for hours as a form of punishment when he was a kid. I can't even imagine how hot it must have been being locked up outside in one of those during the summer. He must have been terrified. I see now why my uncle's a drug addict with a crap ton of mental health issues. And that's not even the worst thing my great grandfather did but that's not my story to tell."
Smh GIFLord DNA can be messy. And now I want to know even less of my family's past. I'm going to cancel my Ancestry DNA package. Let's be strangers.
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