Mini rants

The BBQ Pit
301

[QUOTE=AimeeB]
Funny, I just started a new position on Friday. I received a guidebook. The first time I did something according to the guidebook, I got a call from the CEO reaming me out. “You ask me before you do these things! Who told you to use the book? I didn’t authorize any book! No more book! Ask questions, don’t go so fast!”

When I went angrily back to the guy who gave it to me, he said, “well, it’s in the process of being vetted… it’s just been resurrected. It’s five years old. Don’t use it.”

Well, THANKS. THANKS A LOT. Who gives an entirely outdated guidebook to someone on their first day, and expect them to know NOT to use it? Arghhhh :mad:
[/QUOTE]

Well, that’s just wrong.

My rant du jour - real estate agents who put up signs to lead you to their open house, and miss putting up one of the signs at a place where you can go two or more ways. I followed you through two turns, but you lost me where it could go straight or turn, and I never did find your open house. You really don’t want to keep open houses for places you’re trying to sell a secret, do you?

302

[QUOTE=Queen Bruin]
Stupid community college abolished changing names on diplomas (with a fee). So now I’m stuck with my maiden name on the damn thing until I plead my case to the director of admissions. And guess who isn’t returning my phone calls or calling back when she scheduled a “phone appointment”?

Plus I’d rather not have to explain my numerous and very very good reasons for not being further associated with other people of my maiden name, especially my father. It would be much better if I could just pay my fee and get a new diploma, no questions asked. Instead, I have to expose a chunk of my personal life.

(Yes, I know it’s rather petty to want my married name on my AA. But I want to be able to hang it on the wall and not cringe every time I look at it).
[/QUOTE]

Heh. I recently got a diploma that has my middle name (my maiden name) completely wrong. As in, not even a variation in spelling, just a wrong name stuck there in between my first and last names. It has caused trouble with a licensing board and I had to get a letter from the school explaining the discrepancy between my real name and the one on the diploma. It is being replaced, but it will take a few weeks.

Good luck getting yours changed.

303

My husband is coming home today after being abroad doing research for many many months. I have missed him. I am looking forward to his return. I am looking forward to smooching him. So OF COURSE I woke up this morning growing a massive, throbbing, subterranean zit on the edge of my upper lip. It’s so deep and painful, I thought it might be a cold sore *inside *my lip until I looked in the mirror. This zit is distorting my face. I will be welcoming my husband home with half a sneer.

304

I was in the bathroom, getting ready for work this morning, and I heard a rumbling crash from the other room. I went out and looked, and the top two shelves in one of my bookcases had given way, scattering their contents on and half-burying my exercise mat. It took me a moment to realise that something else was not visible: my classic SY-77 synthesiser was also under the pile, on top of its folded support stand, which had collapsed. And the worst thing was that it was fifteen minutes to the last bus and there wasn’t time to do anything about it except pull down the third shelf of books, which was tilted and about to give way.

I guess that’s my signal to renovate…

305

This is very, very, very petty.
About a week ago, I got the worst manicure in the world. Admittedly, it was beyond dirt cheap, and I should have known that you pay for quality. But how freaking hard is a manicure? (And why didn’t I just do it myself?) The twit didn’t let my fingers soak long enough and didn’t push back my cuticles. Instead - she cut something off (not the cuticle, some of the skin near the cuticle), and painted over the fucking cuticle. I didn’t notice the line until later that evening, when I looked at a couple of nails, saw the line where the edge of the cuticle was clearly delineated, and thought “shit - that’s cuticle.” But at that point, what could I do?

They also didn’t use a top coat - so it was chipping off within 3 days. I needed them to be painted for at least 5.

Of course, my nails are reacting, and this week, I have an incredible, very painful set of hangnails. I hate hangnails. And I need to buy a set of orange sticks.

306

Firefox 3.0 can’t play Youtube videos! It says I don’t have Flash installed, but About:Plugins says I have fucking Flash 9.0.124!! Stupid fucking Mozilla!

307

[QUOTE=Neidhart]
Firefox 3.0 can’t play Youtube videos! It says I don’t have Flash installed, but About:Plugins says I have fucking Flash 9.0.124!! Stupid fucking Mozilla!
[/QUOTE]
Have you enabled javascript? I’m looking at a youtube video right now in FF3.

308

Today sucked. I’d like to pit the day, at least the parts from 8am to 6pm.

First some idiots in a southern state who shall remain nameless decided they needed to put their personal touches on the training material I had to use today, leading to close to half of people failing the training because of the logical inconsistencies in said materials. Oh, a couple of people didn’t pay attention, but a lot of people who usually do well screwed up too. But that’s not the worst thing.

Second the garage called and said they thought my car was all set. This time. After replacing the starter and having it turn out not to be the problem so I had to be towed a second time in less than a week. Sure, the car started fine this afternoon, but when I got home the key wouldn’t come out. Oops. Back to the garage so they could “adjust” the shifter they thought they’d just repaired. But that wasn’t the worst thing either.

No, the worst thing was finding out that a work friend who was home sick yesterday wasn’t still out sick today. Less than ten minutes before we left for the day we learned that he wasn’t in today because he’d been killed this morning when he drifted into the other lane and got into a head-on collision with a tractor-trailer truck. The driver he hit will be okay, so that’s a small blessing.

309

Christ, when will my temp agency get it in their gourds that I am NOT willing to commute to freakin’ Orange County? Yeah the job looks great - too bad it’s in freakin’ Mission Viejo!

God I need to move.

310

I’m another 1st time mini-ranter.

I work at Walmart in a (somewhat) depressed community. First day of the month means social security checks & food stamps. 'Kay, oldsters mostly ok, except for “whatdya mean I gotta go all the way across the store for Depends?”

Food stamps, heh. This rant goes out to the lady who brought in the four kids, then proceded to ignore them while they tore down the store. Madam, I don’t care if your cell phone conversations are more interesting/important than your kids…control the little…darlings! “Mamma, mamma, look at this, that, the other…” Madam, they’re trying to get your attention. The kid who opened the 5-pound-bag of sugar and spelled his name on the floor was trying to get your attention. The girl who threw swimsuits onto every inch of floor in the kids department while screaming, “Mamma, look” was trying to get your attention. The kid who punched out every box of cereal in the entire aisle was trying…

And then, when I tell your kid to stop, you yell at me, telling me noone talks like that to your kids (when did you?), you’ll have my job (lady, you couldn’t handle my job), & you want to talk to my boss. Joe, my boss, shows up, sees the damage, and asks you to leave.

You take your filled-to-the-max cart to the front of the store & try to get it out the front door, setting off alarms. When Loss Prevention shows up you show your kids how to handle authorities by screaming & yelling, “It’s my stuff (when did you pay? Didn’t, huh?)…I’ll sue your *** asses off, motherf*ckers.” (You’re teaching your kids both litigation techniques & acceptable vocabulary?). Our LP people are county sheriff’s deputies who moonlight, so, yes they are allowed to arrest your sorry butt. And, yes, it’s nice that your mother’s minister’s wife was in the store to take your kids home. Madam, where are YOU spending the night?

Sometimes I think they don’t pay us enough, but at least they don’t charge for entertainment.

Love, Phil

311

[QUOTE=elfkin477]
No, the worst thing was finding out that a work friend who was home sick yesterday wasn’t still out sick today. Less than ten minutes before we left for the day we learned that he wasn’t in today because he’d been killed this morning when he drifted into the other lane and got into a head-on collision with a tractor-trailer truck. The driver he hit will be okay, so that’s a small blessing.
[/QUOTE]

Uh, jeez. Not a *close * friend, I hope? (I know that sounds terrible but I mean well…)

312

Last night about ten, after being up all day, my husband was paged and had to work all night. So, who will look after this pain-in-the-ass-puppy-that-needs-constant-supervision while I go to work and my husband gets some sleep? I know! We could get his teenage son, who lives in our house and mentions every day that he hates my cats! Oh wait, no we can’t, because the teenage boy never lifts a finger around here, and his dad doesn’t dare to ask him. Besides, the teenage boy was up until 6:30 this morning playing video games.

I guess it’s up to my kid, who is only about twice the size of this beast, who is getting harder to handle every day. I called in late to work and tried to wear the dog down as much as I could before I left them. I’m getting really sick of this animal and this teenager.

313

Dear Condom,

Please stop bunching up near the base. When you do that, it restricts the blood flow, and I have to stop and straighten you back out. :mad:

I should only have to unroll you once. Thank you.

Your User,
Engineer Dude

314

New Coworkers:

Invoicing is a monthly process. It comes around like clockwork on the fourth business day of every month (and by the way, you over there, there is no such thing as “the fourth calendar business day”; pick one or the other). So, if every month we need to produce invoices, and you can see it coming a full 30 days ahead of time…WHY IS IT SUCH A CLUSTER FUCK! Why do we run around like headless chickens trying to gather the same fucking data we ran around like headless chickens gathering last month? Why is any of this a surprise to you? And, why do you think that, when you go on vacation, leaving no one in your department to cover for you, that IT will run your financial reports? See my door? It says “Systems Analyst” not fucking Accountant. Tell you what – I won’t ask you to write code if you don’t ask me to balance the books. How about that? I am so looking forward to Monday (the fourth business day)! Oh, and one more thing. You know when you didn’t provide your data, saying helpfully that I could get it from the Pivot Table? Guess what? I need your fucking data to generate the Pivot Table. See, the invoicing database I programmed (I’m a programmer, recall) takes your data in and spits the Pivot Table out. Therefore, I cannot use the Pivot Table to supply the data to the database to build the fucking Pivot Table.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

315

I got an email saying that my financial aid for next semester has been summarily cancelled. A quick check shows that the reason is because once again the financial aid office forgot that Thesis counts as a full-time class by itself. I send an email to a person I was told could handle this. No reply.

I run down to the office itself. I see one person standing at a desk, one person on the other side of the desk busily typing, a whole lot of people sitting around, a sign that says “Please take a number” and a sign on the wall that says “Now Serving Number: 0”.

I call the office. I get put on hold for ten minutes. The same snippet of horrible “lite jazz” plays on continuous loop, interrupted every thirty seconds by a recorded voice giving their fax number. I hung up after the fourteenth repetition.

I’m so tempted to send a fax that says “PICK UP YOUR GODDAMNED PHONE.” Instead I shall pop up on their doorstep bright and fucking early Monday morning with my most irritating Morning Cheerfulness on and demand to see someone post. haste. This happens every year to every person taking thesis. You’d think that someone would notice and fix it by now.

Then again, this is the same office where two people were recently fired for stealing student’s personal information, so I’m not surprised.

316

There is a special place in NIMBY hell reserved just for people who buy homes next to hundred-year-old abbatoirs and then complain about the smell.

There has been an abbatoir on the downtown lakeshore of Toronto for longer than most Torontonians have been alive. (see here - the photo at the foot of Niagara St.) It was even featured in Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion which was set at the turn of the century (the last century, that is). It’s pretty difficult to miss, really.

That neighbourhood is becoming a very trendy spot for condominiums. But local homeowners are disgusted by the smell!

Wahhh!

Homeowners: You noticed that it is a beautiful neighbourhood, it is close to downtown, and there are very nice homes around there. But although I have never shopped for a house even I know the three most important things about real estate! Did you not investigate the location around your new digs? Now, I know this is only one article and does not necessarily indicate a trend. But I live in Toronto and I hear this exact crap all the time. There are regular complaints from people who live in that area. I have no love for the local city councillor but he’s bang on with this one:

Idiots.

317

I agree with you, Cowgirl.

Where I used to live (San Jose, California), there was a cool little private airport. The city expanded. Houses were built under the flight paths, and people complained about the noise. A shopping mall was built nearby and people complained about the danger (“if one of those little planes crashes, think how many people could be killed!”).

They took the complaint to City Council, and hordes of people wrote in and showed up at meetings to say, “The airport was there before you were, dummy. If you don’t like the sound of airplanes, don’t build a house a mile away from an airport in line with the runway!”

I don’t know if it’s still there, but it won quite a few rounds with the idiotic homeowners.

318

We have the same damned thing in Calgary. Our local music fests have been in Prince’s Island Park just north of downtown for a long time; they built condos around Prince’s Island Park, jerks moved in, and now they are all complaining about the noise from the music fests. What do these kind of people think, that the force of their never-ending complaints is going to alter reality after they move in?

319

[QUOTE=featherlou]
What do these kind of people think, that the force of their never-ending complaints is going to alter reality after they move in?
[/QUOTE]

Well, yeah. Duh. [/sarcasm]

I’m printing at work right now. So what does my boss decide to do? Dump three OTHER projects in my lap. Thanks boss, you couldn’t have given them to me LAST week when I had nothing to do?

And because I’m having to stay late to try to get the printing done, I don’t have time or energy to shop for stuff to replace the stuff my sister took. And I won’t be able to do it this weekend, because I’ll be out of town (although happily out of town.)

320

[QUOTE=cowgirl]
There is a special place in NIMBY hell reserved just for people who buy homes next to hundred-year-old abbatoirs and then complain about the smell.
[/QUOTE]

It’s not just there. Nor a recent phenomenon. While I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, there was a vocal segment of the population that had bought new houses under the flight paths of the town’s existing GA airport.

And after they moved in tried to start pushing for noise abatement regulations.

Of course, they set the bar so low that they would have also ended up banning the use of crop sprayers at the local apple orchards. For some reason when that came out, the measure was voted down. Quickly.