I’ll never forget cleaning out a relative’s apartment after a long illness. Someone picked up the cardboard container of milk that was in the fridge to toss it. Trouble is it had been there so long that it disintegrated. The sides came up but the bottom stayed on the shelf & that meant what was on the inside could now escape. We had to leave the apartment for about an hour until we could gag our way back in.
.
I went to get the traditional Xmas Eve beer last night. I looked at the distributor’s website; open until 10pm. A couple of blocks away I put on Google maps as I kinda know where they are but not which cross street. GM tells me the business closed at 9. Pulled up at about 9:15 & guess which one was right? Lights off & security gates down. I could have made it there earlier if I knew it was 9 but their own @#$%& website said 10pm. 35 mile drive for nothing, & I’m not sure I can get back there again. 
I was out grocery shopping with my niece a few months ago, and she seemed unusually stressed out by the child wrangling, freaking out when her son ran around to the other side of the car. I thought it was excessive, then she told me that someone that works at her son’s daycare had warned her that pedophiles were lurking in parking lots, snatching kids whose parents were distracted while loading their cars.
I told her that if there had been even one stranger kidnapping of a toddler from a parking lot in our town, we would know about it, and that this person was full of shit. But fuck that teacher for spreading stuff like that, and fuck her just a little bit for uncritically believing.
Thank you, that is one of the worst stories I have ever heard.
Yeah, I hate that shit. It also just makes people paranoid of strangers (especially men.)
My concern is with my kid bolting into traffic, not pedophiles. He’s not even at the “look both ways” point when crossing the street.
Miscellaneous rants.
I have a massive sinus headache due to my cold and after four hours sorting email, I just sat through a 90 minute board meeting with a sweatshirt on that was too hot. Thank you husband for cranking up the heat.
One of our program directors is pregnant and implied that she wanted someone else on the county continuum of care board instead of her, and I was like, sure, that will be cool, I will learn some things to help with strategic planning for our agency. Now every time something housing related comes up, she’s like “typically the person sitting on the board does that.” Neatly sidestepping the fact that in the past, the person sitting on the board was the person IN HER POSITION with all the housing knowledge doing all the housing stuff. I only took the seat to take some pressure off of her, it didn’t mean I’m suddenly responsible for all housing-related activities. I am the Grants Manager.
I know we are going to have to hash this out after she gets back from mat leave. She is an awesome person and we have a good relationship, I am just freaking out over all the stuff getting dumped on my plate.
Meanwhile, I fucked up. I have a foundation report due Jan 1st that slipped my mind because of being sick, and now everyone is in holiday mode. I have requested a one week extension, which will probably be approved, but I hate when I fuck up.
Hah!
I have one:
Dialysis was sloooooow as Christmas this morning!
That’s the bulk of my Christmas joy. 
(I get to do it Christmas day, as well. Yay me)
This is one of the most underreported long term effects of the pandemic shutdown, and for some reason I just can’t seem to adapt. Store that used to be open 24 hours now close at 11. Restaurants close at 8. Hell, I’ve been surprised to find out that bars close early. It sucks, mostly because I am not used to it, despite it being normal now.
The only thing that hasn’t happened yet is the return of everything being closed on Sunday.
Around here many places closed on Mondays or Mondays and Tuesdays during the pandemic. Many bars, breweries, and restaurants have kept this up.
Same here. A new supermarket opened nearby a few years ago and advertised being open 24 hours. The COVID hit, they closed at 9 PM, and to this day they still do.
During the peak of the COVID panic, all the liquor stores around here were closed Mondays for “cleaning and disinfecting”. I guess there wasn’t much concern for the poor fool who’d been in there on Sunday night and soaked up a week’s worth of viruses! 
Anyway, that, thankfully, ended quite a long time ago. They’re now open 7 days a week, although between now and after the new year it’s kinda irrelevant because only a masochist would venture into those crowds. That’s why I went out last week and purchased basically my own branch liquor store, though I’m not entirely convinced even that haul will survive the holidays.
I miss 24 hour shopping. I like going in the middle of the night when there aren’t any {shudder} people there.
You gotta wonder how profitable it is to be open when no customers are coming in.
I don’t know. There are other people just not as many and they don’t seem to want to get all up in your business like during the day.
I work at a 24/7/365 convenience store/gas station. It’s a small regional corporation. We only close if the power goes out and it’s dark. It must be profitable for them because all the stores in the chain stay open.
I worked at Toys R Us long ago. Once we had a small blizzard. The streets were covered in a couple feet of snow. I figured no way would we be open, but our store director told me he needed me there.
I didn’t drive back then so took the bus, which luckily was running. But at one point the bus got stuck and a half dozen of us had to get out and push it. I did make it to work.
Once I got there it was empty of customers. I asked our director what he wanted me to do. I was told to just hang around in case I was needed. So I played the Nintendo display console video games for two hours before he decided to close the store. During that timeframe nobody came in.
Not saying that it’s the case for your store but sometimes retail places don’t always make great decisions on this sort of thing.
A month or so back I had posted about not receiving a shipment of cat litter I had ordered through Amazon because the order had been canceled by the seller, and how Amazon made it impossible for me to file a complaint on their site (apparently because the seller was no longer an Amazon dealer). Well, I filed a complaint with my credit card company and got credit for the charge, so at least I never had to pay for it.
So, on December 6 I placed another order for the same product on Amazon. The seller was different than the earlier order, and I was told it would be delivered December 11-14. On the 8th I got an email informing me that the order had been shipped. Than I got a follow-up notice that the shipment was delayed, and would be delivered on the 20th.
Well, it’s 9pm on the 20th and it hasn’t arrived. USPS tracking shows that it was picked up, but has no further info on expected delivery. The order information on Amazon says that if it doesn’t arrive by the 20th I can request a refund the next day. I don’t want a refund, I want my goddamned litter! And more importantly, so does my cat.
I have ordered this particular litter from Amazon before with no problem. I have ordered other litter from Amazon with no problem. I may have to resort to using DoorDash to get litter from a local pet store, because I am now completely out of litter.
Fucking Amazon.
I have been ordering from Amazon for years and this is the first time I’ve ever had any problem with getting an order.
Was it Amazon who is shipping it or a third party?
Amazon has always done me right with shipping but some vendors I’ve ordered through on Amazon’s site (not Prime shipping) have given me problems.
Amazon will refund it if it’s not delivered at that time. I’ve requested it before.
I bet it’s the UPS is just behind.
I have Covid. That’s a rant right there.
I’m taking Paxlovid. That shouldn’t be a rant, but it is. It’s giving me a godawful strong bitter flavor at the back of my mouth, complicated by my being very dry due to mouth-breathing and congestion. It’s horrible.
I would like to sign on to this rant. About two weeks ago I was sitting at a stoplight on my way home from work. A pickup truck traveling on the cross street decided he had time to make that left turn in front of oncoming traffic. He was wrong. The impact of the car hitting him propelled his truck into the front of my car. Fortunately, no one was hurt. The grille and bumper of my car were destroyed, but I drove it home and I drove it to the repair shop. Yesterday afternoon the insurance company called and said they were totalling my car.
I feel like they are being fair with the value they assigned to the car, but I don’t want to go fucking car shopping. It always feels like a three card monte game to me. We’ll give you a great deal. Everything is wonderful. Ohhh, so sorry, the queen was under the red car. Thanks for playing. Better luck next time.
Insurance companies seem all to quick to total a car if it’s more than just a few years old, even if the damage seems relatively minor.
A few years ago my son was in an accident, and I was horrified when I saw the car – the whole front half on one side was pretty mangled. His mom (my ex) works in a related business where she has a lot of contacts in the automotive industry including dealers, insurance companies, and body shops. It was towed to one of the body shops she has worked with and knows well. Not to digress, but it took a real argument with the tow truck driver to get him to take it to her preferred body shop, because – at least around here – there’s a big kickback scam going on between tow truck drivers and body shops.
Anyway, while the body shop guy certainly wanted the business, he was honest in his assessment that given the amount of damage and the age of the car the insurance company would almost certainly write it off. Which meant that instead of just paying the insurance deductible and getting the car back, we’d be faced with a huge challenge of buying a new car with whatever lowball amount the insurance offered for the totalled car. So the wife pulled a few strings with her various contacts. I really don’t know the details; all I know is that it resulted in the insurance adjuster and the body shop owner having a little negotiation, and presto! – the car was suddenly deemed repairable.
I drove my son to pick up the repaired car, and the body shop guy rather proudly showed me around the residue. He had to order an entire new door (he showed me the original door which was just I remembered it – a mangled mess) and had completely rebuilt the front half of one side and part of the front, as well as some structural components. He did a great job, and years later my son is still driving that car (a nice reliable Toyota Camry).
Honestly, I think there should be more regulatory pressure on insurers, if only from an environmental perspective, to repair and re-use rather than force customers to add to global over-consumption of raw materials by forcing them to buy a new car.