It's a new year - time for fresh new mini-rants!

The BBQ Pit
741

No, no, don’t you see; by “admitting” you had neither done nor said anything wrong, you were supposed to then be feel contrite therefore magnanimous and say “But, no, no, you were right, I’m so sorry.*”

Okay, I’m officially an old fogey. I was previously very annoyed that people on the bus or train play music through their headphones loud enough to disturb my reading or to be heard as a whine* from 10-15 feet away.

Now, they just outright play it through some cheap external speaker and dare you to say anythng about it.

And nobody does. Including me. Those two guys who got stabbed to death on the subway this weekend for bumping somebody with their bag were not the first to encounter Crazy-On-Public-Transportation[sup]TM[/sup].

  • loud enough to hear but not clear enough to be music, except the bass anyway
742

On my way to work today, I was stuck on the 880 - 237 ramp between two cars driven by women who really should have stayed home a bit longer. The one in front of me moved forward sporadically, and was mostly halfway in the breakdown lane on the right. No, she wasn’t on a cellphone - by her cheeks she was eating something, but when I eventually passed her I think the problem might have been an IQ in the single digits.

The woman behind me was less dangerous, but she had her hair in curlers, was applying makeup with a paint roller, and appeared to be wearing a cami or something. Her shoulders were mostly bare, something I might not complain about in some circumstances but not this one. I managed to get away before she started finishing getting dressed behind the wheel.

Why don’t we all set the alarm ten minutes earlier so you can actually drive when you’re driving. And I thought curlers went out in the early '60s!

743

Today, one of our technology guys didn’t just try to tell me how to do my job and make public services decisions. Oh, no. He did that and when I told him it was a public service decision and therefore none of his business, came up and yelled at me on the floor with patrons (and colleagues) around that I was NEVER to speak to him again like that and that he was, get this, NEVER GOING TO SPEAK TO ME AGAIN.

Yeah, the boss is mad and has asshole-scent up her nose. Something tells me she’ll track it down.

744

Well, if he follows through on that, your asshole problem is solved. :slight_smile:

745

Brie is a soft cheese.

The stuff made from fried matzo and eggs is matzo BREI, rhymes with “try”. Not matzo brie.

Thank you, and happy Passover.

746

To the idiot at the post office: New Mexico is part of the United States. A Priority Mail package sent from Albuquerque to Chicago should *not *take over a week to arrive due being from a foreign country and all.

I used to think this story was an urban legend. Then it happened to cwPartner yesterday.

747

I know, right? The thing is, he’ll probably be forced to make an awkward, insincere apology to me and I’ll have to restrain myself from spitting in his face.

ETA - on the other hand, if a miracle occurs and next Tuesday I become First Lady of this fair city… oh yeah, baby. I want to see abasement. I want tears.

748

A couple work related:

When you call our department and tell us you have broken equipment, don’t get all pissy when I say you have to bring it down to us (provided it can br brought down, of course.)

90% of the time, the conversation goes like this:
“Thanks for calling Biomed, this is Bouv.”
“Hi, I have a broken EKG machine.”
“Ok, just bring it down to us and we’ll be happy ot take a look at it.”
“Oh…well…can you come up and get it?”
“No, I’m sorry, the policy is that if it can be brought down to us, then your department is responsible for it.”
“Well…you can’t make an exception? We’re really busy today and short-staffed”
“I’m sorry, but we are also really busy. If there isn’t anyone free in your department to do it now, you can just do it at the end of the day, or tomorrow.”
“So you can’t come get it at all?”

WTF? What part of “it’s the policy” and “no, you have to do it?” don’t you understand? There IS a reason for it, multiple actually, and yes, sometimes I do explain it on the phone. One of the chief reasons is that there are only eight of us to do all this work for the entire hospital. If we always went to deaprtments to get stuff, that would waste a lot of time. I’m not kidding when I say if we, for example, always had one person go get things, it would use up at least two, if not three, hours of their day. When we have over 1500 items that need to be tested, nevermind any repairs we have to do, just this month, we need as much time as we can get. And it still won’t be enough and we’ll get behind, so good thing April is a lighter month.

And secondly, don’t get upset when we don’t do certain things. If you have an Sp02 sensor that doesn’t work, you don’t get it from us. You contact supplies and they take care of it. If it’s still under warrent, they’ll even give you one for free! If it’s not, then yes, you’ll have to pay. No, I don’t know how much it cause, because we aren’t the ones who buy them. It doesn’t matter that “it just stopped working” and it wasn’t physically broken, we still don’t deal with it.

749

Brilliant! :smiley: Sadly enough, the mother is so obsessed with her cell phone and her cigarettes that I could dress the child in a dog suit and the dog in the child’s clothes and she wouldn’t notice.

750

Perfect - just slap on the collars yourself then and she’ll be none the wiser. :wink:

751

Good thing you buried this here. See my thread for how crazy people respond to this sort of thing and how many people on this board get bent out of shape that you dare to say no.

752

sniffle

How soon they forget.

:wink:

753

I’m starting to feel like the woman in Jumping Jack Flash: “I’d really like to go home now. I’d really like to go home now. I’d reeeealy like to go home now.”

754

You almost got fired once for making a blow job joke when the wrong person was in earshot. So then you not only come yell at me for joking *along with *a joke you made at lunch, but then you call me after you’ve left the office because you thought my apology was sarcastic? Fuck you.

**bouv **had a legitimate complaint. *You *dealt with a customer in what was, IMO, a completely retarded way. It’s not remotely comparable. You already have a whole thread for your butthurt self; do you *really *need to drag the story elsewhere?

755

Here’s my list, accumulated over the past 6 days:
Fuck you PetCoSmart
Kiss my ass Humane Society
Take it sideways ShelterCare Pet Scam Insurance
Sis, you’re a weenie
and, I hate to say it,
Darling Daughter of mine, shut the hell up.

After we lost our cats this past year I told TheKid once I adopted a cat and it settled in, she could get a kitten. Lucy has been here a few months now, all has been well.

Saturday morning TheKid said “Yanno, I’d rather have fish”. Okay, no problem. It’s been years since we had fish, but I enjoyed them. Off we go to buy an aquarium and supplies. Got home, set it all up. It’s a no big deal tank, kinda cutsey with changing LED lights. No heater. Saturday evening we went to PetCoSmart where she picked out four fantail guppies. Cute little buggers. Asked the guy if there was anything special needed - no.
They were dead within 3 hours.

Sunday we went back with a water sample. Saleslady tested it, said the water was perfect. Did you have the heater on? Uh, don’t have one. You need them for guppies. Ohhkaay. What fish DON’T you need a heater for? Ended up getting two cute little bug eyed goldfish (Flava Fav and Pumpkin. I know). They lasted 4 hours.

Fuck it. Tank back in the box, is downstairs.

Mom, I think I would like to go to the Humane Society and get a cat. Okay, you look online and we’ll go Tuesday. She found a cat she liked. Well, she wanted a kitten, but there weren’t any. I left work early Tuesday, picked TheKid and my sister up, and off we drove to the other side of the cities to the humane society. We met Jack - what a cutie. Siamese, 10 months old, sweet. After plaing with him for 30 minutes TheKid said “We’ll take him”

As I’m filling out the paperwork the guy at the Humane Society informed me that we would receive 30 days of ShelterCare Pet Insurance FREE! and that they were a great company, no harrassment, great to deal with. Okay, going by what he said 20 days down the road I would receive a reminder email from them wanting me to extend the insurance. I could deal with that.

We get in the car with Jack. Now, I’ve had a Siamese cat before. I KNOW their unworldly meows. I know they don’t shut up when stressed. And remember, we’re on the otherside of the cities, facing a 45 minutes drive home. Within 10 minutes TheKid is crying and yelling at Jack to shut up. It’s MY fault we adopted him, she didn’t want him but knew I liked Siamese, she doesn’t want him, blah blah. I’m upset as I’m of the opinion animals are not whim purchases. My sister is telling TheKid it will all get better…then Jack defecates in the carrier. The rest of the drive home consisted of Jack heowling, TheKid crying, me gagging, and my sister laughing as she thought it was funny.

We get home, I go outside to smoke as I’m ready to cry and or scream. TheKid and Sis give Jack a bath and put him in her room. Where he immediately hops on her bed and unrinates. We caught him in time so it didn’t get to the mattress, but cat urine has such a strong smell… well, that sealed his fate. He was not to be in our home, as I would never want a pet who was not wanted and TheKid made it VERY clear he was not wanted. My sister had said if it didn’t work out to call her and maybe she’d take him. I called her - wellllll, I don’t knoooowwww…

Back to the humane society we went. I have never surrendered an animal and I was pissed that TheKid tried to put all the blame on me.

We come home and I already had an email from ShelterCare welcoming me and telling me just how EASY it is to extend coverage. Delete. Yesterday I had another email. Delete. Today I have received two emails from them AND a fucking phone call. So I call them and cannot get to a fucking human being to cancel. Finally I said SURE! I would LOVE to extend the policy and BAM was connected to a CSR. Told her I want to cancel, be removed from their system, no more calls (which I had been told wouldn’t happen, but anyways), no more emails.

Do you have any other animals? That’s not the point, CANCEL DELETE REMOVE me. Well, ma’am, for just… CANCEL DELETE REMOVE… Would you like… CANCEL DELETE REMOVE. She said she would remove me from their phone list, but could not cancel the policy, despite me no longer having the damn cat. Why not? I do not know, ma’am, it is our policy. I’m stuck with the emails. Spam box here they come.

I told TheKid NO more animals. I will NOT buy her another critter. Period.

756

Too right. Sorry you had to go through that!

757

I’m really sorry, MissTake, because I really do like your posts, usually, but…

It’s not PetSmartCo’s fault. It’s not the Humane Society’s fault. It’s not your sister’s fault. The insurance company is responsible for their idiocy, but…

Is it too much to ask that someone research an animal before they take it home, even if it’s a fish? A Google search on guppy/goldfish/whatever would take about 5 minutes. Relying on a teenager who probably knows as much about pet care as the guy sleeping in the cardboard box in the alley isn’t a good idea.

And, well, the cat…I would actually pretty much expect a cat who’s been subjected to a 45-minute car ride, with a crying human, an insanely laughing human and intimate experience with its own feces, to be slightly upset when it gets to this strange place it’s never been before. I would really be expecting nervous or even revenge peeing. Next-day return? Way too soon…the cat never had a chance to get used to the house. And, frankly, I’m not very impressed with your daughter’s maturity level. A cat is not a toy. If she was at “I DON’T WANT IT!” stage within hours of picking it out, she shouldn’t have been allowed to have it in the first place, and you, as her mother, should have been the one to guage that well before you actually left the shelter with it. If you had already gone through the “cat is not a toy” speech and extracted her agreement that this isn’t a whim, then agreeing to return it so soon is going back on that agreement.

I don’t usually go off in lectures, but this whole situation, as you describe it, is just egregiously un-self-aware. I would be appalled if a relative of mine related that story, let alone a stranger I only know on a message board. And I am sorry, because I know you’re probably not in the mood right now to read this, but it’s just a nasty story to read, period.

758

Yeah, I have to agree with this. In addition to all this, the cat was then given a bath (which it needed) which most cats don’t appreciate, and THEN locked in a room. Of COURSE it’s going to pee! It’s scared to hell! Imagine what it had just gone through, poor thing. And to not even give it a few days?

I’m glad you decided to not get another pet for TheKid.

759

Agreeing with jayjay.

My sister just spent days picking out a shelter cat, then quietly transported the cat home and carefully went through an acclimatization and bonding process. And they didn’t have any other pets for the cat to get used to, either.

760

Sadly, I also agree with you all.

My irk over the fish - I had told the salesguy that it had been years since we had fish, what the tank set up was like, and asked if there was anything ‘extra’ needed for the guppies - and was told no. It wasn’t as if we were getting special saltwater only fish, they were guppies. When we went back and talked to the saleslady we found out guppies needed a heated tank. Should we have researched beforehand? Probably. I did research water - whether I could use tap water with purification stuff, or bottled water, or what. She then suggested the goldfish, stating they are the duracells of fish and it would be pretty darned difficult for them to keel off.

My ONLY irk with the Humane Society is the promoting of the insurance. I was told no calls, no pimping, just an email down the road to see if I wanted to actually purchase the policy. The volunteer in the cat room was sweet, but scattered. The man I dealt with when adopting Jack was very nice. I don’t know if they get a cut of every policy, but he yakked about that more than anything else.

As I said in my post, TheKid and I have talked about getting another cat. Multiple multiple times over many months (even before our elderly cat, Bernie, passed on). It was agreed that we would adopt one cat - she wanted two - under the conditions that s/he would be her cat for as long as she lived at home. Once she moved out, the cat would remain here. Right now she’s looking at two more years here, if she follows her plans and goes to college in Wisconsin. Obviously a cat in a dorm would not work. When I say it would be her cat, we agreed that she would be responsible for cleaning up after him/her, and that we would trade mealtimes (rather than me doing it all, as I have always done). She’s always made comments on how ‘her cat’ Cleo, who died in May, was really my cat. It’s true. I was the one who took care of her, I was the one who gave her snuggles, I was the one who cared for her when she was ill.

Anyways.

I am pissed and disappointed in myself, also. Maybe I should have asked her a tenth time if Jack was who she wanted. Mabe I should have made her listen to Siamese meowls. My sister said I was in kitty-lurve and wouldn’t listen - I called bullshit on that. I have been content with just Lucy, and really didn’t want another cat, but I had promised.

My reasoning for taking Jack back - I would never want an animal in my house that wasn’t wanted by both of us. It would not be fair to the animal. I know my daughter, and while she wouldn’t be mean, she would ignore him/her. That’s not kosher, for me. That’s also why when my sister hemmed and hawed, I said forget it. The primary reason she went with was so she could find a cat, too. However, she didn’t talk to her husband about it and he would have treated the cat horribly if not agreed to beforehand, because he’s that way.

It was not easy to bring him back. The word “failure” flashes in my mind. I know we didn’t give him a chance, and I feel like shit about it, but better he be adopted by someone who could give him what he needed versus being ignored by 50% of the human population in my house. I will not go through that again.