Holiday Mini Rants

The BBQ Pit
41

Dear Corporate Client,

Pay your bill. You’ve been owing me money since early November, and you haven’t paid it yet. You’ve given no suitable excuses for your lateness, and while I can be pretty lenient and understanding in some circumstances, I do have a limit and you’ve pushed me beyond it. If you wouldn’t neglect your rent, your phone bill, or your payroll, you shouldn’t neglect me. Pay your bill, and pay it now.

Dear Auntie,

First of all, you should know that you’re only going to be our house guest at Christmas because my wife is a generous, kind person who is trying to preserve family harmony. Since I love my wife and respect her decision to invite you (although I didn’t quite understand it), I’m going along with the plan, although reluctantly. However, I’m going to lay down a few ground rules:

There will be no complaining about our cats. They have the run of the house, 24/7. They are not put in the basement at night; they often spend the night on our bed, though they can and do end up wherever they like. This might include your bed. If you don’t like that idea, close your door.

There will be no complaining about me smoking my pipe. It’s our house, dammit, not yours; and if I choose to smoke my pipe once a day with evening television, I will. Lecturing me about the dangers of tobacco will result in a nasty retort; accusing me of harming your health will result in an even nastier one. If you want smoke-free air so badly, I will gladly book you a non-smoking room in a nearby hotel.

There will be as few references to dead family members and “the old days” as possible. Times change, and no matter how much we may not like it, we have little choice but to deal with it. Wondering what Grandma would have thought of our house or our habits, and telling me what she or my mother would have done in situation X is all very well and good, but they’ve each been dead for many years now and the world they knew has changed a lot. Your opinion (and I suppose what you think would be theirs) may be stated; insisting that we do what you (and according to you, they) say, will not be tolerated.

There will be no excessive drinking. I enjoy a cocktail before dinner too, but that’s a cocktail, not four cocktails. And after that many, I’m worried that your inhibitions about mentioning dead relatives, complaining about our cats and worrying about my pipe will fall, and one helluvan argument will ensue. We can have a pleasant conversation about the day’s events and get along quite well if we change the cocktail hour to a cocktail half-hour (or even a cocktail-twenty-minutes), and then have a meal.

Hey, this is kind of a cathartic exercise. Thanks for starting this thread, BottledBlondJeannie!

42

I hate christmas… I think my hatred of the holiday is directly proportional to the amount of money I don’t have. This year is especially bad.

  1. DH has been working shit for hours for this entire year, paying bills has been a strain and extra money is non-existant.

  2. The fucking bank has LOST my fucking christmas fund. They’re telling me that I never put money into it? Why the hell would I have opened the account and never put money into it? $100 of my money is MISSING. Now I have to dig through thousands of receipts because to prove I put the money in the account. As soon as I find that receipt I’m closing that account, and my checking account too. I’m not trusting my money to fuckwads that lose it.

  3. In the five years that I have been at this job, we have ALWAYS gotten a bonus check in December. Of course my employer would decide THIS year to stop giving bonuses. Nice. Thanks. Of course the asshole hasn’t told the employees yet, I only know because the accountant was nice enough to tell me. Evidentally the owner doesn’t want anyone to know they’re not getting a bonus this year as the accountant was told not to tell anyone about it.

Tonight I have to take my coin jars to the store and return some soda cans… hopefully I’ll have enough money between the two to be able to get gifts for the kids. Merry fucking christmas.

43

To all the people who RSVP’d for our party yesterday (at least 15 of you), then didn’t bother to show up or even call to say you weren’t coming:

FUCK YOU!!!

That was a huge expense of money, time and effort wasted (food, tasty beverages, and all). I wouldn’t have had the damn party if I had known that NOBODY WAS GOING TO SHOW UP.

fucks.

44

To my board president:

I know you think that throwing a Christmas party for the organization’s board of trustees and staff is a nice idea. But you people aren’t my friends. You’re my employers. I’m only willing to hang out with you if I’m getting paid for it. Spending a Saturday night with you, your super-bitch wife, my boss, and my co-workers is not mt idea of fun. If you really want to show appreciation for employees, how about giving us health benefits? I could use that a lot more than some nasty-ass canapes and cheap wine.

45

I pit thee, so-called friend, for promising to help us move and not showing up. You called three or four hours after you were meant to show up, with us surrounded by boxes and unable to leave the house in case you called, left a message saying “So do you still want to move tonight?” (you must not have heard the four “Where the hell are you? We need to move tonight!” messages we left for you), left a garbled number where you could be reached (yah, we could reach you if we could hear the fucking number) and never called again.

And I pit thee EXTRA for asking us for $10 for gas even though (a) you were in the 'hood anyway, (b) we have heard you boast that it costs only $5 to drive from your house, around town, to our house, around town again, and back home, and © last summer my husband took the bus to Peterborough to help you with something, at his expense and out of the goodness of his heart, and you never paid him back. You owe us, buddy. Although I expect nothing: clearly only your time/money is important to you. Ours is not.

Finally, I also pit Reese’s for not supplying Canada with those chocolate-covered-cracaliously good things that delphica describes. I’ve never tried a Reeses Christmas tree - have no idea what it is, actually - and am craving it anyway. Curse you !

46

Luck finding your kitty, avabeth.

Holy crap, look@hergo, you mean this feeling doesn’t go away? I thought it was a two or three year long phase I was going through. Maybe my increasing poverty has something to do with it. Are you guys buying a lot of token gifts for people you don’t care if you never see again? I am. I just have to fucking reciprocate for every trinket or Christmas ornament some co-worker lays on me, and I so can’t afford it.

47

delphica, I must Pit you, because after reading this thread I was at the drugstore and thought, “Hmm, I wonder if they have those trees.”

They did. Now I’m hooked. Do you know how many of those things I could put away if I set my mind to it???

I hope the Easter eggs are half as good, because these things blow the regular cups – previously the candy of the Gods in my view – out of the water completely.

:smiley:

48

Dear Customers: Out little adhesive gift cards are to your left, by the door. Right next to the boxed christmas cards you are holding. We have signs and everything - please pay attention.

Furthermore, do not leave your children in the store. They can’t find you, start sniffling and then I have to look after them. I should be selling books or on the counter, but no. I’m chatting to a three year old who’s going to start bawling any second now.

When I ask what your nephew/neice/godchild likes reading and you reply ‘I don’t know’ then I will reccommend what I think is a good read. Telling me halfway through my Mortal Engines spiel that ‘oh, you think fantasy is crap and you’d rather buy the Princess Diaries’ is a waste of my time. I’ve read almost all the books here, I can probably find you something halfway decent for your niece/nephew/whatever. But only if you give me information!

49
  1. To the Snow Shovelers in my Development: I know you guys do a lot of hard work, and I appreciate it, but why oh why must you clear one narrow path for us to get to our cars and then not clear the snow off the curb??? So you walk from your apartment door following this path, to the curb, which is only eight feet or so, and then you hit the curb and there’s three feet of snow on it and I wouldn’t have to wear my boots if you’d cleaned it, since I dug my car out yesterday if I could!
  2. To my SO: Don’t tell me how much your sister-in-law gets along with your mother! I can’t help it as she lives ten minutes from your mother and I live four hours away! How am I supposed to get to know her?!
  3. To my co-worker: Stop telling me about all the poor homeless people in the world! Stop telling me to stop using the word “retard”! I am not PC! I don’t wanna be!

Thanks, this is cathartic.

50

Gods, it’s good to hear that I’m not the only one having a little trouble finding the elusive ‘Christmas spirit’, at least, the one that doesn’t come out of a bottle. :wink:

Let me count the ways, hmmm?

  1. I lost my job November 25th when my contract with Microsoft expired.

  2. My husband’s first present, a fine Guiness pint glass ordered from eBay to replace the one my dumbass broke years ago, arrived in about a million pieces. Seller refunded my purchase, but not the shipping, which was actually more than the friggin’ glass.

  3. My mother’s present to me, a FOODSAVER which I have been wanting for at least five years (no more cash in the trash!) arrived, broken. Seller will replace it, but I have to shell out the twenty bucks to mail it back to her in New York which I won’t be able to afford to do until after the holidays because, see # 1.

  4. Insane-cat-from-hell has NOT. STOPPED. FUCKING. WITH. THE TREE. since we got it two days ago. It’s just a matter of time before I come out and find the shitting thing end-over-teakettle and all of my Jack Skellington lights broken, I just know it.

  5. See my thread “Nevada Unemployment-Fuck you you fucking fucks”. Situation has not been resolved, despite my spending 65 minutes on hold yesterday to talk to a live human being.

  6. Shipping everyone the homemade Christmas presents I made them (to save money, of course), cost SIXTY DOLLARS which I most certainly could not afford because, yep, see # 1.

  7. I feel lost in this stupid ass-sucking lousy excuse for a city and I miss my friends because I have no friends here and I miss my family and my husband works all day and is grouchy when he gets home and my cat hates me and is bent on my destruction and I have no health insurance and my car needs a tune up and my evil cat needs his shots and I’m trying to stay healthy but it’s too fucking expensive and MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS.
    Whew. Cathartic. Thanks.

51

With all due respect, and while parents IMHO should never whine about not having grandchildren, how exactly are they supposed to know that talking about wanting grandchildren is like a gut-shot if you haven’t told them why it’s a gut-shot? You know your reasons for keeping this information from them and I respect that, but it seems a bit on the unfair side to smack them for something they have no way of knowing about.

But enough of that, on to my own mini-rant:

Dear Customers,

Please do not call me in the month of December and beg me not to shut off your phone because it’s Christmas. Especially please don’t beg me not to cut off your phone because you “have” to buy Christmas presents for your spouse/girl-or-boyfriend/children/grandchildren. Your phone isn’t up for disconnection unless your balance is at least 30 days overdue, and it’s usually more like 60 days or longer. And guess what jackasses? It wasn’t Christmas two months ago, and you knew Christmas was on its way this year just like it was last year. And really, isn’t being able to talk to your grandbabies on Christmas morning the best present of all? So pony up, Grandma, and quit fucking whining about it!

52

My son was Joseph in the Christmas play at school. My whole family came to see the play. I was hoping it would be a good time.

To parents sitting behind me: Your brat kicked me in the back so many times I lost count. Then the little shit sneezed on the back of my head (GROSS!) and I had to move. We still ended up with the asshole family on the other side of us who didn’t stop talking through the whole play. The sound quality in the gym was poor to begin with and I really couldn’t hear anything because you talked most of the way through it. I hate you, I really do. I swear I am an asshole magnet.

53

To my friend/cousin who’s “a traditionalist”: I don’t know who the hell this “Mrs. Dr.J” you keep sending cards to is, but quit sending me her mail. You know I didn’t change my last name when I got married. You have my last name listed correctly in your email address book, you apologized for a pun about my last name in an email you sent today, and you’ve outright said, “I know you don’t use that name.” You know that it annoys me when people, especially those who know better, call me by his last name. I don’t give a flying fuck how traditional you are (not traditional enough to use the Mr. and Mrs. thing on your own address, I notice), it has NEVER been traditional to address people by what you think their name ought to be, rather than their names. The next time you try this bit of passive-aggressive bullshit, I’m sending the damn thing back marked “addressee unknown.”