Anybody Need Some Tiny Rants?

The BBQ Pit
81

Nope. Take me for example. I’ve never owned a car. We have a great bus system here. Normally, it is very easy to get places. Missing out on that job makes me want to rethink the car thing though.

Also, I live very near the main shopping district in my suburb. There are six grocery stores, four drug stores and other assorted shopping venues within a half mile of my place. For the most part, the area is fairly level. Most of the shopping carts I see are on my street, within four blocks of two of the grocery stores and one of the drug stores.

I’ve always had problems with my legs and more recently, my feet. I have a bone spur on my heel the size of Mount Rushmore. People look at me and assume I’m more crippled than I actually feel. I still wouldn’t use that as an excuse to steal a shopping cart to take my groceries home. Heck, where I lived before, I wouldn’t even take one the half block to the bus stop, though plenty of other people did.

82

The thing that really pisses me off about it is that she’s obviously (to me) not somebody who actually believes any of that trite. She goes on Fox News and says a bunch of wild bullshit and swings her tits around (she’s not even good-looking) so that male red-staters will go out and buy all her books and make her rich. I’d understand if she were really a lunatic, but I don’t think that’s the case.

Yeah, but there are different kinds of bad drivers in different places. Arizona, for example, has roads full of drivers who should be driven around by people 1/4 their age. I understand Florida is similar, and I hear in New York it’s out and out rudeness. In Las Vegas it’s the view (held by taxi drivers in particular) that driving is not so much a mode of transportation as an extreme sport. Same level of driving ability, different issues.

But here in Southern California, they hand out a sense of entitlement the size of a beach house with each birth certificate.

83

I didn’t try to prevent her from doing so. I asked if there was key information I was missing, which you provided. Thanks.

84

Can I mini-rant about Comcast?

They are a monopoly in this part of the country. If you want cable internet, they are the only vendor. We signed up with them as soon as they offered the service, and the connection was always intermittent. After several years of this, and dozens of calls to tech support, we had a guy come out to look at the modem. He was incredulous! “Wow, I’ve never seen one of these modems. We stopped using them years ago.” So he installed a new one.

It was better. Then the connection started dropping at random. Sometimes for minutes, sometimes for hours. More calls to get the modem kick-started remotely. Last Monday, the woman on the phone tells me she sees that there is a switch improperly set inside the modem that has something to do with Pay-Per-View, which we have never ordered. They’ll send a guy out on Friday between 5 and 9. I said, "We work until 5 and will be home by 6. If you need to call us before 6, here’s the cell phone number. After 6, call us on the home phone.

Friday night we arrive home. No card on the door. So far so good. No call on either phone. Nine o’clock comes. No service guy shows up or calls. My wife checks her cell phone. He called at 7:20, saying “Please call this number in the next 15 minutes if you still want the appointment, while I’m still in the neighborhood.” How freakin’ hard is it to follow instructions? Call this number before 6, this other number after 6. If he was in the neighborhood, he could have at least come by to see if we were here. Didn’t happen.

Internet goes out Saturday at 11 AM. Comcast’s computers are down. They have no access to anyone’s account information. Another woman tells me the tech guy didn’t cancel Friday’s appointment, it’s still open, and he will be here within a couple of hours. 6 PM comes. He hasn’t called or come here. Call again. Nobody knows anything about this appointment or Friday’s. No, they can’t call the drivers by radio in the truck, they’re using the same computer system as the office, which is down. They wouldn’t know which driver to call, even if they could. They don’t know what to say and can’t help. “You have a wonderful evening, now.”

It might help if you didn’t tender out service contracts to the lowest fucking bidder, and hire a bunch of incompetents who can’t follow instructions on how to call a fucking telephone number. Morons, the lot of you.

85

That calling the inappropriate number, that seems to be universal. When I’m not home and I give people my cell # to call me (garages, appointments, whatever), it’s because I’M NOT HOME! If you call my home number like I specifically asked you not to, I WON’T ANSWER BECAUSE I’M NOT HOME! I also don’t know why this is so freakin’ hard. It’s not like cell phones are some new-fangled technology that they’ve never heard of before.

86

I usually don’t give them the home number.
Some folks require it, and I believe it’s so the guy making the service call can be sure I’m home before he drives out.

87

Fake prices. I know taxes exist and tipping is socially expected and shipping items has a cost. But wouldn’t it be great if price tags could just reflect that? Just print the price I’m actually going to pay, including all taxes, shipping and handling, service charges, etc. Tipping is a variable amount so this might be more difficult, but they often do it already when there are eight or ten people, so why not just do it always. But include it in the price of the items, rather than tacked on at the end.

88

Similar rant, sort of.

I spend a lot of time at home, and when I’m home, I probably won’t hear my cell phone ring, if it’s turned on at all. When you call my cell phone, before you leave a message, you hear my voice, telling you this, and telling you what my home number is. So don’t leave a message and then (if I don’t happen to check messages within the next couple days) complain that you tried to get in touch with me, but I never called you back.

89

I’m sick of hosting the party. I’m sick of entertaining. I’m sick of being the one to bring the gift every time, only to find when it’s time for me, nothing happens.
And before anyone says, “You need to tell them that.”
I have. I’ve gotten nothing but empty promises for my trouble.
This, however, is a big enough rant for its own thread… I’m just too annoyed and exhausted to type it all up.

Besides, I’m expected to host in another 2 hours. Gotta be ready. :mad:

90

This is a pre-emptive pitting, but:

Dear Roommate,

Please stop complaining about how the “wops” won the World Cup.

Thank you,
Rysto

91

I would like to pit my suburban for having some kind of piston misfiring or something ( I glazed out after the first five minutes, which is not normal for me, the betrayal was just too much.) and this means my 13 year old , less than 100K on it truck needs a new engine.

Haven’t I changed your oil and filters regularly? Haven’t I had your tired rotated regularly? Didn’t I notice how your oil pump was not operating well and had it taken care of immediately instead of letting you linger in pain and misery like many of my heartless neighbors do with their vehicles. Do I haul heavy items
( other than my ass?) Do I rag out the engine pretending to race the young pups in life? Do I blare obnoxious music out the speakers? I clean you on a regular basis and give you lavish praise to everyone within earshot.

This is the thanks I get?
You’ve fucked up everything and the rest of my summer with the kids.

92

Don’t wear black clothes at night and then just mosey into the street. I will, eventually, hit you. This is especially true if you are what is commonly referred to as a black person, since to me you will be even harder to see. Darting out between cars and then slowly walking across will not make me think that you are a dangerous man.

Likewise, do not simply park your car in one lane with the flashers going, especially if there are open spaces. You make me hate you.

93

Hell, I’d be happy if people would just get THIS little piece of advice through their heads. I get so frigging irritated when I’m driving on an Interstate, and while Alabamians are especially bad about this I’ve encountered it all over the country, and Asswipe McFuctard is taking the family on an outing driving 53 mph in the left lane and just not the least bit phased or concerned that people- including 18 wheelers- are passing his ass on the right or having to put on their breaks to keep from slamming into his slow ass while he’s in the passing lane!

Simple rule but why are there so many idjuts with licenses who don’t get it- “IF PEOPLE ARE PASSING YOU ON THE RIGHT, CHANGE LANES OR SPEED UP!”

And also class, why do we pass people on the Interstate in the first places? Is it to prove we can? Nooooo… it’s because we intend to go faster than them. This means that it hurts Mister Nontard Driver’s inner child when he’s driving 68 mph in the right lane, and you get behind him and you pass him on the left, and then you get back in front of him and slow down to 62 mph for no obvious reason, and when you do this Mister Nontard Driver should have the legal right to confiscate your car or your vital organs, whichever he thinks will bring him greater financial gain on e-Bay.

94

Dear bookstore customers,

Three things:

  1. When you call the store, please clear the phlegm from your throat before you dial.

  2. When I’m helping you find a book, it’s probably better not to squat down next to my ear and snap your squishy gum.

  3. Don’t turn books around. Trust me, they sell anyway.

'preciate it.

95

What does this mean? Do customers put books in backwards in hopes of saving them for themselves?

96

These royally piss me off, too. But they’re better than a practice that I run into all the time in Louisville: a car gets into the fast lane, pulls up to another car in the slow lane, and just stays there. The two cars drive in perfect formation, 5 mph under the limit, completely impervious to the growing stretches of frustrated cars. A slow guy in the fast lane that makes me pass him in the slow lane is annoying, but two slow guys who are (apparently) conspiring against me to make me late for things make me wonder about the feasibility of equipping my car with slow-seaking missiles.

97

No, it’s more of a Personal Statement™. Go into your local bookstore’s current affairs section – you’ll find Michael Moore, Anne Coulter, Bill & Hillarie, Jane Fonda, Bill O’Reilly, Laura Bush and anyone else that someone doesn’t like reversed on the shelf. It’s done by all persuasions. Drives us all nuts.

98

I answered the phone today at the museum where I work.

Me: “[Museum Name], this is Lissa.”

Her: “Hi, Lisa!” (Thanks for correcting me, but I didn’t mispronounce my own name, dipshit.) “I was wondering what the hours are for [another museum.]”

Me: “I’m sorry, but I don’t know that. This is [my museum’s name.]”

Her: “Yeah. What’s the admission price at [other museum]?”

Me: “I’m sorry. I don’t know that. We’re not associated with them.”

Her: “Oh. What’s their phone number?”

Me: “Uhm . . . I’ll have to go find a phone book. Are you from out-of-town?”

Her: “No, I’m local. I’ll wait.”

I go and find a phone book, look up the number (which she could have done herself, obviously, since she looked up our number) and recite it into the phone.

Her: “Hold on, I’ve got to go get a pencil.”

I was tempted to hang up on her. Really, I was.

99

Ummm, I’m 47 and I don’t know what a “tossed salad” is either.

100

Oooh! Lissa stirred up a whole bunch of extra mini-rants for me!

  1. Don’t call a restaurant and ask the server to read you the menu.

  2. ESPECIALLY don’t do this during normal lunch or dinner rush-hours.

  3. Don’t drop off a resume to ANY establishment during busy hours. Ever.

  4. Don’t call up a nice Italian restaurant and have THIS conversation at 7:00pm on a Friday night when most restaurants are busiest:

“Hello, (restaurant name), Carly speaking, how may I help you?”

“Hi, yes, I was wondering, do you have buffets at any time other than brunch?”

“Uh… well, no. We don’t have buffets ever. Not at brunch or any other time. All service here is a la carte.”

“Oh. long pause So… do you have buffet for lunch?”

“No, I’m sorry, we NEVER have buffet service. We don’t even own the equipment necessary for buffet service.”

“Oh. longer pause You never have buffets?”

“No. Never. You must order food from the menu.”

“Oh. longest pause yet So… what if I brought in a big party? Would you have a buffet then?”

(meanwhile, 5 tables are waving and snapping, trying to get me to serve them).

One more reason why I’m delighted I’m not a waitress anymore.