i’ve been on this planet for quite a few years, and by this point, i’ve also learned quite a few tricks for
interacting with the world around me that help me out a lot. some are a bit unethical, but eh, a girl’s
gotta do what a girl’s gotta do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ here are a few of them:

1. free food
got a hankering for some crappy gas station food, but you’re too broke to afford it?
act real tired (if you have depression like me, you don’t have to act ;) and bring your
stuff to the counter. pay with your card and let it decline (alternatively, fish around
in your wallet/pockets for change and make it obvious that you’ve come up empty-
handed). more often than not, especially if you’re young or look especially
depressed, the attendant will either pay for your stuff or find something cheaper
that they’re willing to get for you. warning: if the attendant doesn’t give you your
stuff for free, the situation will likely become very awkward. if you can’t handle the
embarrassment, don’t try this 0.o

2. extra free drinks/slushies
occasionally, gas stations will do promotions that involve signing up for a free
membership card and getting 1 free drink/slushie/whatever every day for a month.
i know from experience that chevron in canada did this in february of 2021 and i
believe they also did it in 2020. anyway, most of these things are honour-based;
if you want a second free drink, wait for the employee’s shift to change and
ask the second employee for the free drink offer. they never tell each other about
which customers have had their daily free drink already.

3. bypassing app/site blacklists in school
i’m lumping these two together because they’re quite similar in nature. to bypass
a website block, use https://web.archive.org or any other web archive service. you
won’t be able to upload any content to twitter or any other social media, but eh,
it works for reading through sites like wikipedia or something like that :P
to bypass an application block on windows computers: disable “Hide file extensions
for known file types” in windows explorer settings, then change the application’s
file extension to *.com instead of *.exe. *.com was the file extension for MS-DOS
applications, and windows will still recognize an executable as valid if it’s renamed
to a .com file.