I agree, if they offer constructive criticism. And even so, it would be more effective to say “This product could be improved by (blah) (blah)” without the snarky “I’ll never buy” part. IMO it’s just another means for people to be nasty to others.
The guy three doors down does this with his poorly muffled motorcycle every morning before taking off. I’ve decided the reason he does this is because he’s an asshole and not because it helps the 'cycle any.
Thanks.
Right now I’m having the “Should I attempt to take the dogs out in this beautiful weather?” dilemma. I’ve been more or less off my feet all day. Hmmm…
I have been putting this off at least as long. I have observed others doing it and it is not always pretty. Maybe I will be able to get away without it.
Wait, what is this growing up thing? Should I try it? Would I need to give up my 20 boxes of comics or my R2D2 pez dispenser? If I try it and it’s not a hoot, can I go back to being my usual annoying-to-spouse-but-entertaining-to-myself persona?
I want to rant about businesses that force the customer to know how to navigate the internal structure of the business. Case in point something I encountered just this morning. Last year I set up a business checking account at a local Chase bank branch. To be precise (because it comes up later in the story), it was a “Spark” business checking account. Things go along nicely, even when Capital One buys out Chase and converts my account to a CapOne Spark business checking.
So this morning I call their customer service team to find out how to set up ACH payments to a somewhat lame vendor who won’t take credit cards. When I go online, I can only set up online bill pay, where they mail a check. I can do that, but I’d prefer ACH if possible. Anyway, a confusing dialog ensues where I am taught that there are actually two different kinds of Cap One business entities. Because I opened my Spark Business Checking account in a brick and mortar branch, I can only get service in the branch or by logging into Capitalone.com business (which is what I’ve been doing). I can NOT get service by logging into spark.capitalone.com and that’s the only way I can set up ACH payments to vendors. So… Cap One Spark Business checking is not the same as Cap One Spark Business checking from Cap One’s corporate perspective. Right…
And I bet they treated you like you’re the idiot for not understanding this completely clear and obvious distinction, right?
My university’s accounting system requires inputing a ridiculous set of different numbers, one of which is the number labeled “account” number, which does not represent the account that you’re drawing money from but instead the type of purchase that you’re making (office supplies, lab supplies, IT purchases, etc.). At one point an admin sent me a number, clearly labeled “account number”, which did not work. When I complained, she acted like I was the idiot because I should have known that the number she sent was an “activity code” because she had labeled it “account number” with red font.
That’s one of my pet peeves…things that “everybody knows” and you get looked at like you are the bozo when you are an outsider.
Simple example: If you were going to take the subway in Manhattan for your first time, because you are traveling and your friend gave you clear instructions on how to get to the station and what train to pick, your homework should be done.
Then you find yourself faced with two different kinds of vending machines with hordes of commuters mobbing each, as well as a third line for the walled-in ticket counter. There are certain things you can do at one machine that you can’t do at the other, and it’s not obvious to a harried first-timer. Some are credit-only, some accept cash, some won’t allow you to buy a fresh Metro card, but you can top off your existing one, and so on. This is all going on while you are late for wherever you are going.
I have lived in NJ for decades, but whenever I need to commute to the city for the rare week I get a little nervous trying to remember the secrets of the metro card system. Of course, seasoned New Yorkers would grumble “what a tool…going to the credit-only machine with cash”
And better be careful if you buy $20 metro card to swipe your family through the turnstile: if you are a family of 4 you’ll make it, but at the fifth person your card won’t work even though it has plenty of value left.
I have similar issues with POS terminals that are all different: I’m paying with a credit card, not a debit card and it’s asking me for a PIN…do I hit cancel or clear? Does the cashier need to do something? Do I need to find a different button altogether? Well, it’s not obvious to me. I feel bad for the cashiers who get frustrated with idiots who can’t use the machines, but the POS terminals really don’t help the cause.
My favorite thing is how all of the machines are different and then they change them just for fun. On every POS machine the OK button is on the right. The new Wally World machines have OK on the left. On the right is Cancel. Swell. And the cashier looks at me like I’m retarded when I say something about how it used to be different.
I’ve been trying to brisk-walk around my neighborhood, at least 2 miles, at least 3 times per week. Yesterday I was half a mile in when I tripped over a curb cut, and went sprawling. Skinned my knee, and landed hard on my left hand. I went home and iced the hand, then went to do my 2 hour volunteer shift at a cat shelter. I quickly realized that I couldn’t do basic things like open the kennel doors, or get myself up off the floor after playing with the cats in the free-roam rooms, or even pick up a cat. Afterwards I drove to urgent care, got myself x-rayed, and was informed that I had sprained my wrist. My left hand is out of commission for at least a week, probably more, which sucks because my husband is disabled and I do most of the stuff around the house. Plus I’m in the process of learning to do a pull up, and this will set my progress back months. Stupid curb cut. Stupid gravity.
Even worse are the systems where the buttons switch places when you move to the next screen. I’ve caught myself several times just about to cancel a transaction when all the screens show the “OK/ENTER” response on the right except the final screen where this is the location of the “CANCEL” button.
Respiratory infection. Went to urgent care yesterday, went to emergency room last night. I was hoping for strep or pneumonia, or something else that can be blasted with antibiotics. Nope, virus. I will have to endure for another week.
I was hospitalized last February, influenza A with diabetic complications. I am starting to think February hates me.
On Thursday my sister got a ride with a friend to my town for a meeting they both had to attend. It’s about a 6 hour drive, so that was really convenient for her. Happily, my friends and I got together today for an all-day event, so I was able to invite her to tag along. She warned her friend that she’d be busy all Saturday and wouldn’t be able to leave today, so they’d have to drive Sunday.
Today the friend gets the idea in her head that she absolutely has to leave today. She kept sending bitchy texts to my sister all day whining about having to wait, after we finally finished at about 8:30pm insisted on leaving right away. So now she’s going to be driving on the highway until like 3 in the morning, in the snow. This is so unnecessarily dangerous. Once that friend started making noises about leaving in the evening and driving overnight, I should have just advised my sister to stay at my place tonight and take the bus home. The bus would have been a pain but it would have been a lot safer. 
My house’s heating system is going wacko with the unseasonably warm weather we’ve been having:
One zone is dead.
The other zone, in picking up the slack, decides to go up to 80F. Fiddling with the thermostat doesn’t do anything.
Call oil company. They send out a technician. Hmm, he says, that zone shouldn’t be dead and your other zone is overheating. Don’t know what to tell you. Let me clean out the nozzle (it’s how the oil is delivered to the boiler to be heated, IIRC) and see if that makes a difference.
No, it hasn’t. My husband and dogs are literally dying in here. I’m not far behind.
I’m not sure I’m following. The friend is doing your sister a favor by driving her to a meeting? But instead your sister decides to do something with you and your friends? And then she thinks this gives her a right to dictate when the friend gets to go home?
I’ve been given a lot of rides by people over my lifetime. (And given them, of course.) The basic “rule” is that the driver determines where and when the car goes. It seems to me that when your sister changed her plans she should have let the friend know, and absolutely made other plans to get herself home when the driver said she wanted to leave (for whatever reasons) on Saturday.
Zones are controlled by motorized valves. One of yours is stuck closed, the other is stuck open.
You don’t want to know how I know this…
My sister never changed plans. She told the friend from the beginning that she would be busy on Saturday and unable to drive that day, and the friend said she was fine with that. It was only the day-of that the friend decided that this was unacceptable and they needed to leave immediately. If the friend had said this from the start then my sister could have driven herself here and avoided the issue.
ETA: I’m happy to report that they did make it home safely though.
Oh, okay, that makes more sense.
Anyway, glad everything turned out okay.
Sometimes I feel a bit guilty about using an ad-blocker, so occasionally will honour requests from sites that ask me to whitelist their site, which, incidentally, has increased to almost every site.
Today I did it to read an article on a news site, and after reloading, the page took ten times longer to load, the scrolling stuttered to a crawl, pop-ups obscured the text, videos auto-played (thankfully with no audio), and then my browser crashed.
So fuck you. I gave you a fair chance (again) and you muffed it (again).
Sometimes I almost wish it were more socially acceptable to inform people when they smell really bad. Had to sit for two hours yesterday next to a guy who smelled like he’d just eaten a large pile of excrement. Ew.