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Are there specific disposable gloves for mechanic work? Because mine keeps tearing.
Okay I need to rant a little. This is the third box of disposable gloves I’ve bought this week, and they’ve all been terrible. And yes… before anyone asks, I got them from Alibaba. At this point I think I played myself. I’m doing basic mechanic work, oil changes, brake jobs, dealing with greasy parts, occasional sharp edges, nothing out of the ordinary at all. But these gloves? They tear if I even look at them wrong. I’ll be halfway through loosening a bolt and suddenly feel that gross warm seep of oil on my fingers because the glove split at the thumb. Fuck! They either rip between the fingers, or at the wrist when I’m pulling them on. It’s so exhausting, now I’m wondering whether I am buying the wrong type of disposable gloves? Are there specific ones meant for mechanic work? I’ve seen nitrile, latex, vinyl… powdered, non‑powdered, different mil thicknesses. Does thickness actually make that much of a difference? Do I need heavy‑duty industrial nitrile instead of the standard medical-style ones? I don’t mind disposable gloves honestly, but I at least need them to survive one task without disintegrating. What are you guys using in your shops? Any brand recommendations? Thickness (6 mil? 8 mil?) Or do you think I should just switch to reusable mechanic gloves altogether? Because I’m tired of double-gloving like I’m going into surgery just to change brake pads. submitted by /u/CodeMitama to r/mechanicadvise [link] [comments]
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r/mechanicadvise |
CodeMitama |
May 15, 2026 |
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My folks spilled mercury on the floor and vacuumed it up... How bad is it?
I am NOT the Original Poster. That k33ponkeepingon. They posted in r/CleaningTips Do NOT comment on Original Posts. Latest update is 7 days old. Original Post: June 6, 2025 Apparently stepfather decided that it would be a good idea to play with a small bottle of mercury and somehow spilled a few drops on the floor (About the same amount you would find in a thermometer, as I found out). The real problem is that they used a vacuum cleaner to clean it up. AFAIK coming into contact with it in liquid form is not a big deal but involving a vacuum cleaner changes everything. I told them to leave the room, open all the windows, and get rid of the vacuum cleaner bag immediately but they're entirely unconcerned. Aside from notifying authorities, what else can be done? How big is the risk and how serious was the exposure? Thanks in advance. Some of OOP's Comments: Commenter: The vacuum cleaner must be destroyed. It's contaminated Everything that touched the mercury, like towels or brooms, must also be thrown away Throw away everything it touched, unfortunately OOP: Thanks. Told them to do this. Got accused of blowing things out of proportion and being paranoid. I'll try again but not much I can do if they don't value their own lives I suppose🤷 Commenter: Why do they have mercury to begin with? OOP: Beats me. He hoards all sorts of garbage for no reason. He was never the sharpest tool in the shed but it got worse as he got older. Commenter: It sounds like this was significantly more than a thermometer’s worth of mercury. In which case hoovering was an exceptionally poor decision. The chemistry sub has lots of advice on this, but at the volume, I wouldn’t assume the risk was gone . How much was in the bottle ? (Volume ) , and I have to wonder what the reason for having it was OOP: Their description is "one, maybe two drops that were no bigger than a grain of rice". Not super helpful but could be worse I guess. Commenter: You’re downplaying it based on what they describe as small droplets, but vacuuming can cause them to create mercury vapour. Doesn’t matter if it’s small. [...] OOP: No downplay here. Just told you of their answer when I asked them how much was the spill. I'm fully aware how dangerous even a tiny droplet can be. Commenter: I broke my mercury thermometer during Covid. It was glass and on my bathroom counter, it rolled into the sink and the glass broke. It was about that amount. With the exhaust fan on, I put on nitrile gloves and wiped up the globs, wrapped the trash before disposing of it, and cleaned the sink. Then I died, this is my ghost. OOP: Worry not friendly ghost; I shall be joining you soon :) In response to a longer comment: I'm not in the USA but we do have a poison control hotline in our country. I called them and explained the situation. They advised to throw away anything that had come into contact with mercury, walk outside the house for 3-4 hours, and air out the house. I can't say I'm convinced, but this is how much they care🥲 Update Comment: 2 hours later Finally convinced them to call the authorities and make them get rid of the vacuum cleaner. Score one for me. Update (Same Post): June 7, 2025 (Next Day) Update: Side note: I'm not in the USA. So I drove over to their house and called the emergency line in my country. First the local security forces and health teams came. When I explained the incident they did not take it seriously. They gave me mocking looks and sarcastic smiles. "Dude, such a small amount, why make this fuss" etc. Then a team from an institution called Disaster and Emergency Directorate has come. This team cleaned up the remaining mercury with measuring devices and special equipment. They said I did the right thing by calling and congratulated me. They confirmed the ignorance of my family and the teams that came before them. Looks like everything that could be done, has been done. They told them to take a health test after some time. Fingers crossed that they will comply. Now another team from the Ministry of Environment is on its way to take the vacuum cleaner and other contaminated stuff. After everything he caused stepdouche (Chloe said it best) has the nerve to complain about the bill they will hand them because of me and cost of the vacuum cleaner. Told him to search "mercury poisoning" and check out some visuals to maybe get back on the right track. Thank you everyone. I think it's been an insightful post with good info and interesting stories. Upvote12KDownvote1.3KGo to commentsShare Editor's Note: A different user posted in the same subreddit about being a first responder with the EPA. (They said it was because of OOP's post) They were showing how dangerous mercury is. You can read it here submitted by /u/LucyAriaRose to r/BestofRedditorUpdates [link] [comments]
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r/BestofRedditorUpdates |
LucyAriaRose |
Jun 14, 2025 |
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TIFU by letting a girl use my bathroom
Not today, but I saw a story recently that reminded me of this one, and my sister suggested I post it here. This happened two years ago so I’ll do my best to recount everything as it happened. Some background: I was still living at home at this point. My younger brother (I’ll call him Matt, 15m at the time) has been taking piano lessons since he was little and he got good enough to pick up teaching as a way to make some spending money. His students consisted of kids from our neighborhood, usually around 5-12 years old. This happened while our parents were out of town on a trip. The only ones home at the time were me (20F) my sister (Morgan, 22F), my best friend (Sarah, 21F) and Matt. Matt was teaching some kids who lived down the road from us. It was a group of three siblings (5M, 7M, and 9F) and the way he’d do their lessons was that he’d teach one at a time while the other two hung out and played with toys, watched tv, etc. At one point, 9F asks if she can use the bathroom. We have three, two on the upper level and one downstairs, and she chooses the one downstairs. This is after she’s already had her portion of the lesson, and Matt is finishing up with the last kid. She goes, and 15 or so minutes later, their mom shows up to pick them up, and they leave. I notice that 9F is moving a little quicker than usual, but obviously, I don’t think anything of it. Some time passes, and I go downstairs to go to the bathroom. This bathroom is the type with a separate little room where the toilet is so that people can still brush their teeth and stuff if someone is using the bathroom, and when I walk in, the door is closed. That’s kind of weird, but not alarming. I open the door and lift up the lid, and immediately, I’m hit with the most ungodly stench I’ve ever encountered. I have a strong stomach, but I was close to gagging. This toilet was MEGA clogged. The water is close to the top of the bowl, and this is not a few turds lurking by the drain with mostly clear water; I cannot see where water ends and poop begins. I knew immediately that this was not the work of a family member. No one blood-related to was capable of this; this was an unfamiliar and malignant turd that this girl had dropped in my home. I’m trying to work past my revulsion to deal with this in a quick (and sanitary) manner. The plunger (right next to the toilet, I might add) hadn’t been used, so I had hope that it would be as simple as a few quick rounds of plunging to get everything down. I gave it a try, hoping the murky water wouldn’t impede my progress, and to my horror, the water rose higher. Not only that; it wasn’t draining whatsoever, even when I left it for a several minutes in hopes that the level would go down enough for me to give it another try. The situation was pretty dire. The smell was so thick that if I lit a match I would’ve emerged with singed eyebrows. The water was right on the precipice of overflowing, and if that water escaped the toilet, we would’ve had no choice but to permanently seal off the bathroom as a biohazard. There was no room for error. I had to call in reinforcements. Up to that point, I had kept the situation to myself (I foolishly thought I’d be able to take care of it quickly and it could stay my own, personal shame to have dealt with), so I went upstairs to find Morgan and Sarah. If not for help, at least for moral support. I let them know about our predicament and requested that they follow me to help assess the situation. As expected, they were horrified. It was a grim sight, and once again, the water level had not gone down whatsoever in the time I was gone. With much squealing and gagging, we closed the door and convened in the living room to strategize about what we could do to fix it. Using all the resources available to us (Google), we weighed our options. More plunging with the water as high as it was would only spell disaster; the water displaced by the plunger alone would be enough to send it over the edge. For the same reason, pouring in a bucket of water in to force a manual flush was out of the question. Any “science fair”-esque combination of baking soda and vinegar would could only make the situation worse. After all was said and done, we were left with one option; lower the water level any way we could, and then try again with the plunger. I knew that whatever I used to remove that heinous poop water would be biohazard material by the time I was done with it, so I settled on something we wouldn’t miss: the dozens of empty cottage cheese containers my mother (despite having access to more than enough Tupperware to store all the leftovers we could dream of) had saved over the years. The cottage cheese containers also had the benefit of coming with equally disposable lids, so they were definitely the best option we had in lieu of medical grade waste disposal equipment. I elected to use one extra-unlucky container to scoop the water into another waiting poop receptacle, which I would lid, place on the bathroom counter covered in plastic grocery bags, and then, once I had a couple I could take at once, carry (with the utmost care) upstairs to the nearest unclogged toilet and dispose of. Having the strongest stomach out of all of us, I was drafted for the task and I suited up. A leftover N95 mask from the height of the Covid pandemic, several layers of nitrile gloves, and clothes I was willing to part with if things went south (even if they didn’t, I would going to be throwing them out anyway; the memories attached to them couldn’t be washed out with all the oxy-clean in the world). Gathering my wits, I went to work. It was utterly unholy. I gagged more times than I could count, and it took more trips than you could possibly imagine. Each container I removed revealed water more disgusting than the last batch as I ventured closer and closer to the apex of clog. Morgan and Sarah gagged along with me, flushing as I poured each disgusting container into the loving embrace of the upstairs toilet. Finally, I figured that the water level was low enough to give it another try. Dread descended upon me as the water level rose once more, filling to toilet bowl with horrors anew. Like Sisyphus eternally pushing his boulder up the hill, I returned to my endless task, climbing the stairs with my little containers of evil. Seasons changed outside the window, pages blew off the calendar, and still I trudged. At first, I seethed at the girl who had subjected me to this torment, blissfully ignorant of the horrors I was experiencing at her hand. After I while, I could only pity her because clearly, whatever was going on inside of her intestines must have been more horrifying than I could imagine. Once the water level was low enough to try again (and I had been reduced to a shadow of my former self), I raised the plunger. I plunged with all my might, using muscles I haven’t used before or since. The clouds parted as the toilet let out a pathetic gurgle, and the water finally drained. I could’ve dropped to my knees on the tile floor, I was so happy. I gave it another good plunge and watched the water finally run clear, the bowl refilling and my nightmare ending. I quadruple bagged the disgusting containers and threw them in the dumpster, just as my parents pulled into the driveway. I can only imagine what I looked like when they saw me. Sweating, trembling ready for a year-long shower. They asked what had happened and I saw an opportunity for a joke I hoped I’d never have occasion to make again: “A shit and run.” TL;DR: A 9 year old girl blew up my bathroom so badly that I had to manually remove the water from the toilet to avoid a biohazard situation. A “shit and run”, if you will. Update to answer some FAQs: Did I use a real plunger? Or a “sink plunger”? A real plunger! I grew up with those massive accordion-looking plungers in every bathroom. I guess my parents were passionate about proper plunging etiquette, knowingly or unknowingly. Do we have a poop knife? No, unfortunately we do not have a poop knife. Nor do we have a poop stick, or a poop coat hanger. But I’m very impressed with the arsenal of tools that are apparently available to me should I need them. Did she ever return for another piano lesson? Not only did she return; I asked Matt and he still teaches her to this day. That being said, I haven’t seen her since. I moved out pretty soon after that and although I visit my family frequently, she has not been present at Sunday dinner. But I wish her well and pray that her family has a hearty septic system and a hell of a lot of febreeze! submitted by /u/camiiiilou to r/tifu [link] [comments]
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r/tifu |
camiiiilou |
Aug 24, 2024 |