That's brutal, man. I feel for you.

Reached out immediately after getting the refund request. Didn't get defensive at all. Just asked them to show me what success actually looked like for them. Turns out we were tracking the wrong metrics completely. Spent a full day reworking their goals and they ended up tripling their budget six months later.

Wait, do you mean flat as in the blade is parallel to the strop or something else? I feel like a lot of people don't realize that even a tiny bit of angle makes a huge difference when you're trying to get that final polish. I messed around with mine for months before I stopped being stubborn and just went flat. It's honestly night and day for the cleanest finish, especially on those last few passes.

Been there. Check the seller's return policy first - some third party sites will still refund you even if they say no returns. File a dispute with your payment method too. Had a friend get fake Death Note sets twice, third time he finally paid full price from RightStuf. Only real way to know is look at unboxing videos on YouTube before buying. Those bootleg menus are always a dead giveaway, menus shouldn't look like a kid made them in Windows Movie Maker.

Flip it around and ask yourself why we are all so obsessed with proving we work at all. The real lie isn't the laptop photo, it's the whole hustle culture that makes us feel guilty for just sitting still for an hour. Like if you don't document the grind, society thinks you're lazy. Maybe the barista has a point but not the one she thinks. We're all just performing productivity for each other and its exhausting.