Had been meaning to install those plug-in air fresheners but couldn't be bothered to buy them for the past month. Then yesterday I learned that those fragrances are dispersed alongside a bunch of nasty VOCs. Looks like my inaction saved my lungs a bit of damage

What instances of laziness or forgetfulness have worked out in your favor?

Back in 2001 I had a GF whose brother worked in the WTC. On Sept 11, like so often, he slept in and was late to the office.

Saved his ass that day

Just FYI, fragrances are VOCs, pretty much by definition. They have to be "volatile" or else you wouldn't smell them, and every chemical except noble gases is a "compound." I suppose some plug-in air freshener fragrances could be inorganic, but I think the majority of inorganic volatile compounds probably smell bad (think ammonia or sulfur compounds).

A "VOC free" air freshener would either be pointless or BSing you.

Most of the food you smell also has VOC

As someone whose circadian rhythm is inherently later then most, I don't necessarily want to call this "lazy", but at one small company I worked for this worked to my advantage because the President would see me working late all the time, but didn't see what time I came in. Didn't save my ass per se but didn't hurt..

As something who doesn't like those plug in air fresheners, I'm just really curious about your sense that you needed to buy them and use them. I'm not judging here, we all get these notions of what is normal or expected from our environment. I grew up when those didn't exist, and while bathroom air freshener sprays were a thing and not unknown in the house I grew up in, were kind of optional. I know some people for whom these seem just a thing they take for granted, and wonder to what extent they like them vs think of them as a thing they need to do in order to have good hygiene or keep a good household or whatever.

Personally, I'm turned off by them. I don't wan't my house smelling like something it doesn't have any natural reason to smell like. If there is a bad smell, I want to know and take care of it and not cover it up. Some such fragrances actually really bother me, though it depends, but what I just said applies even to a fragrance that doesn't bother me and that I like.

Have these become a thing that people think of as something they just need to do?

Fuck I didn't know that and I just bought a Costco sized box of fresheners 😭 appreciate learning now though, thanks.

There are two replies earlier in the thread I think are for you:

https://vger.to/lemmy.world/comment/26387583

https://vger.to/lemmy.ml/comment/28398218

Regarding fairly dangerous sports like snowboarding, downhill skiing, BMX, skateboard, unharnessed climbing etc: I (almost) never do the "one last run", and those are famously the ones you get injured on. When you are tired and it's time to go home and rest, I go home and rest instead of doing "just one more" and getting hurt.

I've still injured myself but not nearly as much as I might have if I had pushed myself beyond the tiredness. It's hard to prove the injuries you haven't sustained though...

I'm like that too, but I'm afraid they notice the late arrivals more than the late departures sadly

i remember vaguely that a few weeks ago i almost did a lot of work into reading a full email history but got distracted by something for 10 minutes and then an email that closed all the open questions i had came in.
I also try to ask my coworkers fast for help or get a snack when i notice i get stuck and need something that will unstuck me. (i try not to ask when i think i can figure it out in a reasonable time)

I just said this exact thing the other day with someone. Their homes or clothes can have such strong smells - not bad but its interesting to me how others can enjoy that.

My brother one day asked me to go run some errands with him. I had wanted to go to the toilet before going and he said screw it and left without me.

I know it would have changed the timeline and all that had I gone with him, but a lady ran a stop sign on his way home and they got in a wreck.

My brother broke his arm and had to be cut from the car, but the engine and transmission was shoved through the passenger seat, so had I been there, I would have been crushed or cut in half or something along those lines.

I always think about how my ass may have saved my ass that day. 😅

Same with Faraday cages for WiFi routers/access points

A lot of times in my career. It turns out people will ask you to do things that aren't necessary all the time without wanting to pay for it. There are also a lot of times it is better to choose the quicker and less accurate way to do something since it will show the basic feasibility.

End on a victory is a common refrain in our house.

TL;DR: Lazy programming before a planned cruise trip - I didn't get food poisoning, but a bit more money and a new cruise trip.

This is back in the late 90's. I was in charge of a front end demo of one of our network products (including customer signup forms) for a B2B trade show. The demo was installed and tested on site the day before the show opened. I wasn't supposed to be working at the show, so I took time off work and booked a three day cruise trip from the following morning, together with my (now) ex.

At 6 am (the ship left at around 7 am), around when I was about to board, I was called back. There had been a power outage at the fair. The main db server wouldn't boot up, but the backup db server was up and running. My server was running, but the front end demo kept freezing and didn't respond to input.

Took a few hours of debugging.

In my startup script, I was too lazy to set the server IP:s in arguments or variables for setup, all were hardcoded in the program. I didn't even encase connections in "try/catch", so no clue in the logs.

Fixed, recompiled, started, and it worked out well for the rest of the show.

As for my ex... There was a massive case of food poisoning from the buffets on the cruise ship, and the autumn storms hit the Baltic sea early and hard.

I got paid overtime because I came in on a vacation day, and another day off. I enjoyed my time off and just relaxing the rest of the week. We got reimbursed with a free (shorter) cruise trip. My ex didn't want to go on cruises any more, so I went with a sibling instead in spring.

I didn't replace a light bulb rhat went out and it started working again a few days later.

Well I mean, they do exactly what they're supposed to. You just have to live with the side effect of your WiFi no longer working

Fair enough.