You should move to SoCal. Our supermarkets provide little riding scooters with baskets on the front.
It’s not like we don’t have them here. I had to use them for the first year of my back problems, but they’re a PITA; they don’t hold as much as the regular carts, and they have a habit of breaking down in the middle of the store. But using a regular cart is better for me, since it’s the only exercise I get.
So, I had been seriously planning on retiring within the next year, once I hit a target number in my 401k. Well…
So, my job is as a system consultant and I only get paid if I work. Guess when my project assignment ended? If you said March 27 then you would be correct! Do I have a next project lined up? If you said No then you would be correct! So, in addition to seeing my retirement prospects evaporate, I also happen to be without income for the foreseeable future.
Yipee skippy!
My lament is twofold: A) Make your fuckin’ point up front in the email/message, and B) DO NOT “Reply to All.”
Of Goddamned course I am not reading YOUR emails, Joe, Phil, Michelle, Liza, Jane, Tom, and Zeke!, Facility Maintenance Department, &ca. Here’s why. . .
On Point “A”: Make your goddamned point early! I am working from home. Despite the time to do unmolested research, pants-less productivity, and the on-the-hour coffee breaks, I do not have the time nor predisposition to read the full length of the 300 emails that are still coming into my inbox. Apparently, folks are taking training from crappy telemarketers, and embedding decision points into long-winded posts. Give me the BLUF.* I’ll spare you another example, but this post is the perfect one. Give me the point/decision/question up front: chances are that I can answer your question right then and there. If I need additional information, waste electrons in a blather-fest after the point.
On Point “B”: DO NOT “Reply to All.” My cellphone does not have the cool features that my Outlook Client does to filter out “conversations.” So, when I see 58 new emails from multiple people, all of which are forwarding an email as a “FYSA” or “FYI,” I quit giving a fuck. They all get deleted. And your “Good Ideas!” response to the Divisions’ “How to stay fit while working at home!” adds nothing, and likewise gets deleted faster than I clear a room with a beefsteak fart.
Seriously, people. Quit wasting electrons, eating up my bandwidth, and let me get back to efficient, practical work from home. This’ll be step one. The next step will be teaching you people these principles in the workplace. [sub]I swear to God we waste 15 MW of electron exchanges each day in shitty email discipline[/sub].
Tripler
This post was brought to you by the letter “O.” As in, “‘Oh’ fer Fuck’s sake, another elevator outage email.”
[sub]* Note: BLUF is Bottom Line Up Front**.
** Note: This is an actual acronym in use.[/sub]
Why isn’t that acronym BLUFF as in Bottom Line Up Front Fool?
Made a tad too much income last year and got majorly dinged on taxes when reconciling our advanced health premium tax credit, timing to say the least sucks, could a refi bail us out? maybe if the mortage lenders are reporting to work…shit damn it all to hell. ANd the fucking car, the new 2020 car is still at the dealers while they scratch their heads and shrug idk idk idk idk.
Just Understand My Pain On Failing to Find A Bottom Line Up Front, Fool*!*
#1 some just closed on a house last Friday - everyone wore masks and gloves for the signing. The mortgage hawkers around here are talking about doing it most of it over the phone/online. I imagine you would need to appear in person to sign, but that should be it.
Car - Ford (I think, one of the big ones) is advertising that they’ll deliver your new vehicle to your house (where presumably you let it sit for three days to let all the virii die). Not sure how they are handling signing paperwork.
Ten or twelve years ago my Jeep Wrangler had 150,000 miles on it and I wanted a new one. I didn’t care much about color, didn’t need to test drive it (just so it was a manual transmission).
I called the dealership where I’d gotten the one I had and a salesman came to my business with a new Wrangler. He looked over my Jeep, made an offer, wrote everything up and drove my Jeep back to the dealership.
He returned an hour or so later for final signatures, paperwork, etc.
Tried to deposit a couple of paper checks at my local bank Monday, and found the doors locked. (This was around 2 p.m.) There’s an ATM in the lobby, but the doors between lobby and the world were locked which they’ve never been in my experience. Hmmm. So much for the ‘Most Convenient Bank’ verbiage.
I was on foot, since the bank’s only about a quarter mile from home, and right next to the grocery I mainly use so it was a good excuse for some exercise/fresh air and I could pick up a quart of milk or whatever on the way home to make the trip ‘legitimate’ under our lock down rules. Anyway, there didn’t seem to be any bodies in the bank proper at all, but there were also no cars using the drive up ATM so I used that.
Today I got an email from the bank informing all its customers that most of their ‘stores’ (Do banks call their branches stores? I’d never heard that before.) would be closed for the duration, so please use their phone app or online or atm or phone help line, and in the rare cases you actually need to interact live with a customer service rep, say you need to access a storage box, you could MAKE AN APPOINTMENT and one will show up to meet with you.
Wow. Doesn’t that seem strange?
I’m sick to goddamn death of experts urging everyone to wipe down all their groceries with clorox wipes. Unfortunately, the dipshit hoarders in our area bought out every single store in the area and continue to stampede stores anytime they become available.
I’m sick of watching news that tells me to use things that are largely unavailable for my use. It’s somewhat similar to telling me over and over that a gold-plated toilet is really the best way to avoid typhoid.
I’m also really, really, really tired of my my husband constantly swiping things off my plate. This is the mini-est of rants, but… Knowing that my husband usually eats at least half my food while I’m eating it, I’ll offer to get him a plate, to which he replies, “Oh, no - I’ll just have some of yours.” Then follows me to the table, stands over me vulture-like and eats half my food. When I ask him not to he either thinks it’s just fucking hilarious or, if I sigh after he’s ignored me once again, he gets really upset, tells me that we’re married and he shouldn’t have to ask.
To complicate matters, my mom has been staying with us and regularly comments on everything, including what I eat. So, my husband stands next to me, eats half my food, she comments on it, then I get up to get more, she says, “Ooooh, you’re getting MORE?! I guess you just eat a lot.” Thanks, mom. Yep, I’m a total pig. Can’t help it with someone eating half my food.
Our local news channel latched onto the “decontaminate your groceries” thing after an outraged! viewer contacted them to express his SHOCK! and DISBELIEF! at seeing people handling produce at the grocery store. Yes, I know we’re in the middle of a pandemic, but I’m under no obligation to place produce in my cart if I pick it up and notice that it’s less than fresh, or otherwise objectionable. I’ll refrain from pawing through the entire display (as I always do), but if I pick up a pretty bunch of greens and then realize that they’ve gone soggy underneath, they aren’t going in my cart.
Of course, these stories are always accompanied by one of their reporters standing next to an actual cart at an actual grocery store, demonstrating how to remove a wipe from a container and rub it on the cart, or on groceries. My mom has wondered if the wipes are real, given their scarcity in stores.
Speaking of wipes, a company-wide email was sent out today: wipe containers are not to be thrown away or recycled when they’re empty until someone has collected the liquid remaining inside to use with paper towels.
Fork. Apply to back of his hand, harder each time. Eventually he’ll get the message or you’ll maim him to the point he can’t grab anything anyway.
I was thinking that myself, although I’d give a bit of a warning, first.
Scenario 1:
H: “Oh, no - I’ll just have some of yours.”
O: “No, you won’t. You can have a plate of your own, or I will stab you with a fork each time you try to take food off of my plate.”
H: tries to take some food
O: stabs him with the fork
Scenario 2:
H: “Oh, no - I’ll just have some of yours.”
H: takes food off of overlyverbose’s plate.
O: silently shoves her plate at her husband, gets up and makes another plate for herself.
Scenario 3:
H: “Oh, no - I’ll just have some of yours.”
O: Puts 2x the amount of food she wants on her plate so there’s enough for both of them
Seriously, overlyverbose, this is borderline abusive control. You’ve told him this bothers you and he keeps doing it and then tries to make you feel guilty about it.
And tell your mom to shut up. You’re not 6 anymore, and she has no business commenting on your eating habits, especially when it’s your husband disrupting them.
The pandemic is a perfect excuse to say “Just read we’re not to share food. Which is fine, because I HATE it when you STEAL mine from off of MY plate!”
Seriously, you have to stop him. Before he and mom have a bizarre quarantine-related accident…
A while back I bought a Samsung laser color printer, laser because no matter how careful you are here in Arizona, ink jet cartridges dry out before you use them up.
On the front was a really ugly sticker the size of my hand extolling the features of the printer. When I was installing the printer I stripped off all of the manufacturing sticky films and picked at the edge of the sticker but it didn’t give. “Maybe it’s supposed to be permanent,” I thought.
As the months went by I kept looking at that label and it kept bugging me. When I downloaded the manual for the printer I took a look and the label was not shown on the front of the printer; it was meant to be temporary.
I attacked it again and it resisted more valiantly than any temporary sticker had any right to. “Time for the big guns,” says I and bring in a hobby knife and the can of Goof-off. I lightly scored the surface of the sticker so the solvent could penetrate it better and liberally applied the Goof-off with a paper towel.
Picking away at the label and reapplying the Goof-off as needed, in about forty-five minutes I get the label off in half-inch chunks. I give a final wash down with a clean paper towel to get rid of the adhesive traces left behind, open the window and close the door to the rest of the house because the Goof-off fumes are making me dizzy.
Flash forward two months to this week and I need to print on some specialty paper. I tug on the paper tray on the front of the printer and it doesn’t budge. I tug harder and the right side comes out a tiny bit but the left side, where the label was, is stuck fast. Close examination reveals that the liquidized stickum from the label ran down into the crevice between the printer front panel and paper tray, then hardened.
So far it has resisted my attempts to cut through it with implements of destruction. I have to be careful because the manual shows some Important Stuff lurking just behind that panel if a blade is stuck in too far. The specialty paper job is still waiting.
May the marketing department of Samsung burn in hell.
Ask him whether the wedding vows included being annoying, insensitive and abusive.
I am so sorry, DesertDog. I have laughter tears running down my face because I totally understand how that could happen. So, because its something that I would have done (damn labels), I shouldn’t have laughed so much.
While my BB and I will share food off each other’s plates (and we are married), we ask or offer first. If my BB were to start hovering over me and eating half of my food while refusing a plate of his own, I would just start making him a plate and handing it to him while I sat down with my own. If that didn’t work, I would go for the fork solution.
IME control freaks rarely confine their freakish control to one activity or aspect of their targets’ lives. And a number of them have no problem with voicing their justification for their behavior to their targets.
ETA: Every time I see “the fork solution” here, I keep hearing that old childish rhyme, “Elbows on the table; get them while they’re hot” and seeing kids trying to stab the elbows with the forks.
I used to steal my wife’s food. I don’t any more.
See, I love to share food. I’ve been to a BBQ joint that served family style with great platters of brisket and cornbread and greens getting passed around. I was in heaven!
I open a menu at a restaurant, and the first thing I used to say “I’m going to get the ribs. But I’ll split that since you’re probably getting seafood…”
Well, no more. I still remember the night my wife said “You know what? I really like having MY OWN FOOD.” “Okaaay, I’ll get ribs, and you get… whatever you want and I won’t even ask to try it!” “Thank. You.” Later I found out that my kids hate sharing, too.
All guys are teachable, if you stand up to them. And communicate clearly, until they realize how important an issue it is. They can learn not to steal food, and more importantly… not to be controlling!