Ooh, I like those!
I’m not a big fan of candy, but that’s a good one.
The nearby farm park has a mix of trails; paved, boardwalk, crushed stone/bridle path, fire roads, & some that aren’t even that much. They allow bow hunting of the deer long-legged, white-tailed rats from Oct thru mid-Feb. While walking on one of the main paths this winter, we found an arrow at the edge of the trail, which kinda scared the $#!+ outta me that one would land so close to the main trail & made it damn certain that I wouldn’t try any of the side trails; even picked up an orange vest to be on the main trails. As luck would have it, a couple of weeks after finding that arrow I pulled into the parking lot & started talking to a hunter who was there; trying to suss some info outta him about hunting rules & how not-/safe it is to be there for five months of the year. Turns out, it was his arrow & he dropped it out of his quiver while walking to his intended spot, which made me feel much safer being there; however, I still didn’t take that goat path in season. Since we’re outta bow season I tried it this afternoon; turns out it falls away to nothing; which left me two choices, turn around & go back from whence I came (which was soupy) or continue forward & trailblaze it knowing that I’d hit either a street or a trail that I knew at some point because the park is only so big. I make my way thru about ½ mile & can see the main trail about 10’ in front of me. Did I make it there unscathed? Nope, < 10’ to go is when my shin catches some sticky vegetation & put a nice bleeding line across the bottom of my shin. It wasn’t that bad but I made it 99% of the way unscathed.
Realizing where I was I did the rest of my regular loop & get in the car to drive home when my knee itches. When I go to scratch it I feel a bump & look down to find I’ve picked up a tickhicker. 
I guess it’s that time of the year already.
I get they have their place in the ecosystem but I don’t like them because of what they do to humans & puppers. Nasty little insects! 
And this is why my tournament bracket is in shambles. Iowa State easily knocked off Kentucky, Iowa led most of the game and beat Florida by one, and Kansas lost to St John’s on a layup at the buzzer after coming back from 14 down in the final minutes. March Madness indeed!
This morning’s The Villages lecture: Don’t let Bob pee on the same lawn twice or they’ll get phone calls complaining about it.
What the fuck? Listen. My dog pees where he pees. I respect all the ‘No Pee/No Poop Zone’ signs on people’s lawns, but moderating my dogs bowel movements for sake of the neighborhood is too fucking Stepford for me.
I’ve got a IRA from a well-known company and they recently switched things and I have to put in more paperwork.
The website said I could do it online, but when I tried that, it said I needed to call. Then the misery started.
They wanted the last 4 digits of my SS. No problem. Then they wanted my 5-digit zip code. No, Japanese addresses don’t have that. Ours are different. It got stuck there repeating it again and again. Finally it gives up and lets me move on.
Then prompts for the issue, and my problem isn’t recognized by the system, and we keep repeating.
I did eventually get a human and got it handled but the frustration of having to repeat things endlessly is annoying.
And the human told me to tell the automated system setting up a new account as a way past the gateway.
The thing that annoys me when I get to this point, and I am on hold is they often have a message like: “Did you know you can access your account online, blah, blah, blah” And I want to scream, yes, I know, but the online interface does not allow me to do the one thing I want to, that is why I am calling!
//i\\
I truly hate how difficult it is to get a human on the phone.
Each system is different and I have to make a number of attempts to figure out how to do it for each one. There have been times when I cannot reach a live person in a reasonable time which is totally unacceptable.
The only place I have had a good experience with lately is Medicare. They will offer to call you back at in a specified time frame and my experiences with them has been decent so far.
I actually do scream this. Well, more of a tense bark.
It’s even worse when the Perky Cheerful Voice informs you that you can do all your stuff on their website with the aid of their friendly assistant “Suzy”, or some other cutesy name for whatever badly implemented AI they have. What they’re telling me is, “we value your business so awfully much that we don’t want to talk to you, and just want you to quietly send us money and not cause trouble, but if you do have any issues, take them up with our robot.”
I agree that’s irritating as crap.
But I wonder what percentage of human agent time is spent answering the trivial questions that are available from the website home page or the VRU itself?
That could be true in some cases. I always exhaust all avenues of retrieving information before setting myself on fire trying to get a live human.
I have been having a helluva time with my Wellcare RX provider for prescriptions.
They have my old insurance still attached to the system and I have spent THREE DAYS on countless phone calls and I am about to tear my hair out.
Each time I call an organization I have to go through their relentless gatekeeping menus.
It’s apparently a very specific issue tied to a very specific department and cannot be handled by anyone else but a live person from that particular departmental section.
It takes about a 20/30 minutes to get connected each time.
At this point I don’t even think that they are handing it because the issue is still hanging (since January 2026).
Which means more aggravating phone calls are in my future …
I told my HR rep that I would be writing a letter to WellCare and sending copies to her, my county assigned broker, the 3 County Commissioners who are my direct supervisors, and my state representative if they don’t fix this issue.
What annoys me is that EVERY company’s automated phone system is experiencing “unusually high call volume” ALL THE TIME. If you’re always having “unusually high call volume,” THAT’S your USUAL call volume, and you should increase your staffing accordingly.
Also, EVERYONE has “recently changed their menu options” every time you call.
Putting together an Amazon cart, and because I’m a cheap bitch who doesn’t pay for Prime, we do the “buy just a wee bit more stuff and you get free shipping!” dance each time.
Which is fine, I’m lazy as well as cheap, so if you wanna schlep heavy-ass kitty litter directly to my doorstep, have at it!
I need TP for my bunghole and speaking of, litter for my cat, plus a couple minor things, and I’d like to pull the trigger NOW since free shipping usually takes a bit.
… I’m short FIVE STINKIN’ CENTS to get free shipping.
I’ve been there, it drives me nuts. That happens often when the threshold is an even dollar amount (like $25) and you buy things that cost $X.99.
I guarantee you that it’s quite a “happy accident” for Amazon, and it’s exactly why they do it that way.
I wonder how much of my hard-earned money is going into the custom-tailored pockets of C-suite doofuses while I get relegated to Suzie the Robot?
I feel that instead of figuring out how to communicate with Suzie the Robot, who is likely to be useless anyway, I may as well do my bit to support the menials that I know work at domestic call centers. This is why I have a speakerphone on my desk while I listen to the music the suited doofuses have picked out. I duly note that they’re “experiencing a higher call volume than usual”, but I just do my usual stuff on the computer until someone picks up.
My fear – and we all know this is coming – is that the phone will be answered by Suzie.
Eh, it’s just a matter of finding something inexpensive that, if not needed now, will be useful at some point and won’t go bad in the meantime.
For a while, there was a two-dollar bag of reasonably healthy kitty treats that was my go-to, but the cute lil’ twerp has amassed plenty of treats in his dragon hoard treasure trove.
…so I got a bag of croutons. Less than two bucks, and given my love of soooooouuuuuuup it’ll definitely get eaten.
That’s how I ended up with the metal clamp-on cupholder attached to my home office desk, which I am so absolutely thrilled to have. It was an impulse buy for free quick shipping and a total afterthought, but it has probably proven much more valuable than whatever else I was buying at the time.
The real person also told me that. As if I I wanted to wait in line forever just because I love pain.
Are you threatening me?
Oh, thank gawd someone got the reference. Otherwise, that probably looked weird/creepy.
… I guess, if you don’t get the reference, still weird/creepy.
