Dear Co-Worker, thanks terribly much for refusing to work evenings and weekends. Sure, working those shifts occasionally was listed as part of the job that you applied to and were hired for, but that sort of thing is so easy to ignore. It’s nice to know that just because you have young children and strict religious beliefs and I have neither, that your time is so much more important than mine. Thanks also to our supervisor, who puts up with your crap. I’ll be thinking of you both when I’m working until 9:00 for the third time this week.
Jesus christ. Everything I’ve ever heard about artificial sweeteners is that they work well in things like cold drinks but fail miserably for baked goods. Good fucking luck.
Dear Mom,
Don’t forward me an email from Airtran at 3am confirming your flight 12 hours later to Florida without an explanation. Your lack of explanation coupled with a same day flight leads me to believe that something is HORRIBLY WRONG with Grandma.
Your explanation that she’s getting elective cataract surgery and that she was waiting on the insurance approval helps, but you know, you could have always sent that along with the confirmation email. It also doesn’t help to tell me “Well, Middle Bluth and Littlest Bluth already know!” :mad:
ETA: She called me at noon to tell me the surgery went fine and Grandma was eating Chipotle at home. I think she might have finally learned her lesson.
For some reason, I find the idea of a little old lady chowing down on a giant burrito absolutely hilarious.
This made me :(. “Full term?!?” Jesus.
Corporate, if you’re going to send out a flyer to people advertising a rate and telling them to ask about it, could you a) let us mere peons know and b) PUT THE FUCKING RATE IN THE COMPUTER? I have had at least six calls this week from people asking about the rate only to have me tell them I don’t have it available. I asked Boss about it today and he said it was supposed to have ended in December. I asked one of the people on the phone and he said the flyer said it was available until June 30th.
Way to make yourselves look good to potential customers in a down economy, Corporate. You’re going to crash and burn when the tourism around here dries up, yanno. And it will dry up. It will.
I live in a house converted into apartments and the downstairs neighbors keep parking their car at the entrance of the driveway blocking my car in. It’s been going on for about 2 weeks now and almost every evening (I take public transport to and from work) I have to get them to move their car or cars before I can leave. I dutifully shoveled my car out and most of the length of the driveway after the last snowstorm but they didn’t. Unfortunately, the landlord doesn’t take care of snow removal in the driveway and they’re not required to by law, I checked. They’re sending out a memo to all the tenants telling them not to block people but I doubt it will be effective. I didn’t want them to contact the neighbors directly since I’m the only one affected by this (the other neighbors park in front) so they’ll know it was me who complained. I know, I’m a wuss, and I should just ask them to stop parking there. It’s not my problem that they didn’t shovel out their space. I would just park on the street but my city doesn’t allow overnight parking on the streets. It’s so irritating and I feel like i have to ask permission to use my car, it’s ridiculous. Or I’ll have to be the bad guy and report them to the landlord. They also have 2 cars even though we’re only promised one space each.
Aside from the confusing issue of why do you need to drive your car if you’re taking public transit to work 
I’m wondering why you don’t just knock on their door when you need to get your car out, and ask them to move it. No need to involve the management at all.
She is very little and very old; I actually laughed myself. She probably ate the whole thing in 4 sittings.
Next time they move, put your car in that place. I’m sure they’ll contact you.
I know because I’ve been blocked in for hours and simply did what they did in return. They did not understand that the joke was on them, or that it was punishment for what they’d been doing. Stupid knows no bounds. I didn’t respond to their requests to move the car for hours.
Did they ever do it again? No.
Grow a spine and fight back.
You don’t run errands after work? I sure do. Groceries, drug store, vet, mailing parcels, stuff like that.
Dear friend,
I know that moving in with you is probably a bad idea.
I know you have all kind of weird issues and there’s a good chance it would ruin our friendship.
I know living with a friend is almost always a bad idea.
But you said you would move in with me, when my roommate suddenly informed me that was she was moving out, and she was going to sublet her room, and, by the way, “is a male roommate OK with you?”
You want out of your living situation anyways. You don’t have any money to furnish a whole apartment. And you SUGGESTED moving in with me when I showed you the email. I was only showing you it to kvetch about my former roommate anyways.
So why did you then freak out and decide, the next day, that your delicate mental state meant that you needed a place of your own? And then, when, once I talked to you about it, did you change your mind AGAIN and decide that you were sure, you were definitely going to live with me, 100% certain, just a case of cold feet.
And then, when I insisted that you take a day to think about it, did you CHANGE YOUR MIND AGAIN and go back to the living-by-yourself plan? Why can’t you just make up your fucking mind? I know I probably had a lucky escape, and I’m glad I suggested you take another day. But I still feel hurt and rejected. I also feel like I can’t trust a single word you say, anymore, because you are chronically incapable of making a decision, and so desperately eager to please that you are untrustworthy.
I thought you were one of my best friends. And now, because of YOUR suggestion, I feel betrayed by my best friend AND I have to deal with some random stranger moving in to my apartment. Plus we already told my roommate (with your consent!) so now I have to break the news to her that she has to find someone to sublet the place, anyways.
It sucks. I can’t even complain about it to you, as I usually do, because you were the one who fucked me over. I hope I can get over this, because you didn’t really behave that badly (this all happened within like three days), but I’m just so angry at you right now. We usually hang out every day, studying or whatever (grad students) so now I have no idea what I’m going to do this weekend. I don’t really want to see you or talk to you for the moment. I hope I can get over it.
Sincerely,
Your ex-soon-to-be-roommate
I got my bill for next month’s health insurance premium. The rates have gone up. It now costs me more than a week’s salary to procure an individual insurance plan that covers fuck-all. :smack:
Remind me again why UHC is supposed to be a bad idea?
So today we have an emergency team meeting, announced with something like 12 minutes advanced notice. When we get there, our Director (you remember him, right?) takes over and our boss leaves. It turns out there have been a lot of complaints about our boss, but the real trick is that one of the people on our team is upset about it and asked the Director to talk to us about it.
The first topic is disposed of rather quickly.
Then I bring up all the rules changes and re-iterations of rules lately, and how every goddamned one of them is accompanied by threats of disciplinary action if we fail to comply. I state that I’m tired of all the threats and it is killing morale around the place.
Whooooosh!!!
Looking surprised and confused, Director Boy explains how this is just the way it works. Everything in the employee manual is the same way. You explain the rule, or what you want done, then you explain that failure to comply is subject to disciplinary action.
Other person on my team points out that, hey, it might be nice for once to ask us to do something without making a threat out of it.
Whooooosh!!!
Again right over Director Boy’s head. He can’t understand what the problem is, this is the way it works. Why even in his meetings with our supervisors, he has to spell things out and then tell them that if they don’t comply, it is subject to disciplinary measures. What’s the issue here? Of course he has to do this, because otherwise some people aren’t going to do what they are told!
Damn. I’m 48 years old. I’ve been working for 32 years. I found out Wednesday that Director Boy just turned 30. I’ve been working longer than he has been alive. No place I have EVER worked has worked like this. The man is absolutely incapable of grasping how his insistence on constant disciplinary warnings can be perceived as a threat by his employees, or how this can adversely affect morale and drive away good people. Just absolutely astonishing that this company allows this man to act this way and makes no effort to teach him to actually MANAGE AND MOTIVATE his people in a positive manner.
Look, asshole roomate o’ mine- putting slippers on your feet does not automatically make them impossible to pick up. If I have to continue to listen to the ssshhhh sssshhhh ssshhhh of your feet with every step you take, I might have to break your feet off and shove them down your throat. Capiche?
Dear Stalker Dad,
Look, you’re a great guy, but when I tell you that I’m visiting my aunt for a week, on a pass from her airline because I’m broke, for a badly-needed week of R&R after a hellish year,¹ please do not surprise-fly yourself and your girlfriend into the same city so we can all play Big Happy Family.² Please also do not announce that you’d like to fly to my city for my 40th birthday, 9 months ahead of said date, and then start inviting other relatives. Not going to happen.³
Backstory 1: in 2010 I went from the US to Canada with no savings, no job, and no housing lined up, and now I’m working 4 part-time jobs to make ends meet. It was the right decision and it’s going great, but I need a break. My aunt lives in my hometown; a visit there is a visit home, plus my cat is still with her. My father lives a thousand miles away: visits from high-maintenance Eeyore him and his perfectly nice but incurably perky girlfriend are a source of stress, not a break. We spend about an hour a week on the phone; that’s nice, but that’s enough.
Backstory 2: My father & aunt are the survivors of a severely dysfunctional family. When I was growing up family functions were both rare and hellish. We all get along fine as long as we stay 1000+ miles away most of the year. My father has rewritten our history and seems to think we’re all best buds who like to eat meals together outdoors and go for long hikes while nibbling on organic snax. His girlfriend, 14 years older than me, asked me to be her “son” on Facebook. Sweet but creepy.
Backstory 3: I dislike celebrating my birthday; milestone anniversaries are boring, and I find being the focus of a celebration unbearable unless perhaps for an actual accomplishment. I had nothing to do with my birth. If my parents want to celebrate it, they are welcome to, but on their own turf, please.
I hope what you’re taking away from this situation is not to expect flakes to not be flakes, Tanaqui.
Fuck you, Bank of America. You want to start charging me an annual fee to hold your credit card? Go right ahead. Yesterday I received my tax refund and paid off the card, today I finally go through all my mail from the week and find a letter containing this little gem. The timing couldn’t have been more providential. I’m closing my account later today. Way to lose a good damn customer.
Don’t take it personal?
My husband is a GP. He is required to do a weeks worth of oncall and attending work in the hospital every month or so. Inevitably, there is some patient record that needs his signature for discharge or some such other minor shit. The lack of a signature is usually caused by the records disappearing into the transcription department for several weeks (impossible to retrieve once they’ve been sent there). So, without fail, he gets a letter mailed to him from the Chief of Staff every month telling him that he has an uncompleted medical chart somewhere and will lose his license to practice medicine if he doesn’t address this within 48 hours. WTF?
The first time this happened Dr. trimpet had a panic attack and made a special trip to the hospital to deal. The second time he was annoyed. The third time he contacted the Chief of Staff and asked if it was really necessary to threaten him with the revocation of his license for such a minor issue. CoS claimed it was the only way he could get the medical staff to comply with chart completion requirements (which are a legal requirement) and basically he just skipped sending out gentle reminders and went straight to dire threats because nobody paid the slightest attention to gentle reminders.
So now Dr. trimpet rolls his eyes and takes care of any chart omissions when he has the opportunity, and if it’s not within the prescribed 48 hours he doesn’t break a sweat.
He also noticed during that first panic trip that there was a pile of uncompleted charts from other physicians, some of which dated back six months or longer.
But I agree, your Director is a twat. There are better ways to manage people. Giving them a sense of worth and appreciation tends to create an atmosphere where people want to be conscientious employees.
People learn from their managers - I worked in an accounting department where every deadline was a CRISIS!!! Then the deadline passed because we were always short-staffed, and the response was, “Meh. We’ll do it this week, I guess.” Guess which message was the one that I took to heart? It’s a LOT better for management to try to resolve an ongoing problem than escalating their toothless threats to staff.
I’m completely with you on hating BoA. Just a reminder that closing any credit card will ding your credit. In case you were considering buying a car, house, or making another big purchase in the near future, you might wanna hold off on it just a bit and simply not use the card or use it once/month.