u/Sluttycarolofficial

For nearly three decades I have been brushing my teeth the way I was shown as a kid: hard, fast, side to side, two minutes, done. I thought I was doing great. I floss. I use mouthwash. I even use one of those expensive electric toothbrushes I saw a dentist recommend on a video. I genuinely believed my mouth hygiene was above average.

I went in for a routine cleaning last week and the hygienist got very quiet while she was doing the initial check. Then she called the dentist over. They were both poking around and using words like "recession" and "wear pattern" and I started to get that sinking feeling.

Turns out I have been brushing way too hard and at completely the wrong angle for my entire life. You are supposed to hold the brush at a 45 degree angle toward the gumline and use tiny circular strokes with almost no pressure at all. I was essentially taking a wire brush to my enamel and gums twice a day every single day since I was old enough to reach the sink. The damage to the gum tissue at several teeth is permanent. It does not grow back. I have visibly receding gums at 28 years old and I caused it myself by trying to be clean.

The thing that is making me spiral is that I was never doing nothing. I was actively brushing. I thought I was being diligent. This whole time the effort I was putting in was literally making things worse and I had no idea because nobody ever corrected me after I was about seven years old.

I looked it up when I got home and apparently this is extremely common. Toothbrush abrasion is one of the most frequently seen issues in dental offices and most people have no idea they are doing it. You want to see almost no white on your bristles after two minutes because that means you barely pressed. If your bristles splay out like a fan after a month you are brushing way too hard.

Please go look up the modified Bass technique right now. Watch one video. It took me about three minutes to realize everything I knew was wrong. I wish someone had told me this when I was a teenager instead of just telling me to brush more.

So this happened last Thursday and I'm still kind of shaking.

For context I'm a data analyst at a mid sized logistics company. About 8 months ago I noticed we were hemorrhaging money on fuel costs because of inefficient routing. Nobody asked me to look into it, I just did it on my own time because it genuinely bugged me. I built an entire optimization model, ran it through several quarters of data, and calculated we could save roughly $2.3 million annually if we restructured how we assigned delivery zones.

I presented it to my direct manager, Dave, back in February. He told me it was "interesting" and that he'd "loop in the right people." I followed up three times over the next two months. He kept saying it was "in the pipeline."

Fast forward to last week. Big quarterly review with the CEO and all the department heads. I wasn't even supposed to be in the room, I was only there to help set up the AV equipment.

Dave gets up and starts presenting MY project. My data. My model. My savings projections. Word for word from the doc I sent him. He never mentioned my name once. I watched him take a question from the CEO about methodology and he fumbled it badly because he didn't actually understand how I built it.

Here's the thing though. When I originally sent Dave the model I also emailed it to myself with a full written breakdown of the methodology, timestamped, and I had version history in Google Sheets going back to last July showing every single edit I ever made.

The CEO asked "who put this together" and Dave said "my team worked on it collectively."

I don't know what came over me but I said "actually I can walk you through the methodology if that helps, I built it."

Dead silence.

The CEO looked at Dave. Dave went pale. I pulled up my laptop, connected to the projector and walked through the entire thing for 25 minutes. The CEO asked me follow up questions I answered every single one. At one point he asked Dave something simple about the data source and Dave literally said "I'd have to check on that."

After the meeting the CEO asked me to stay behind. Dave left without making eye contact with me.

I now report directly to the VP of Operations. Starting next month. Dave is apparently being "restructured" out of his role.

Eight months of being ignored and one accidental invitation to set up a projector changed everything.

Always document your work. Always.