This is a Short Rant in Four Shorter Parts
Part the First
You. Tall redhaired man with the dog! Yes, you, with the beautiful Old English Sheepdog. I like your dog. Your dog’s excrement, not so much. I’m responsible for that stupid strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street, so if your dog relieves himself there, I’m the one who has to clean it up. I don’t want to do that. I have to children in diapers and my own dog. I deal with enough excrement in my life already. Clean Up After Your Dog. If you need one, I’ll give you a baggie. Anything to make sure that I’m not forced to do scooping duty for your pet’s doody.
Part the Second
Dear Road Work Contractors: you’re working near the park, but not in it. Who gave you permission to park two huge earthmovers and a thing that I cannot identify but which looks really scary right in the path from the sidewalk to the children’s playground? There’s a parking lot twenty yards away! It’s paved. The path you parked on and around all weekend long is not. You’ve chewed up the turf something fierce and come spring, it’s going to be a mud bog and mosquito haven. Great. Also, it’s a place where children play, or where they would play were your heavy equipment not there. Soon it’ll be too cold to go to the park. Thank you for ruining some of the last play opportunities the kids might get this year.
Corrollary – Dear Dave the Parks Department Dude: If you gave the road work contractors permission to park their equipment in that stupid, stupid location, you’re goofier than I thought. Please go find a job that’s more appropriate for your level of intellect and skill. The McDonald’s on the parkway is hiring.
Part the Third
As we get into the season, it’d be nice, oh community affairs director, if you could take a moment to get it into your tiny brain that not everyone celebrates Christmas, even “secularly.” Nor is it fair to the sizable Jewish and Muslim populations in the area to have Channukah and Eid-al-Fitr treated as afterthoughts or lumped into some generic “other holiday” category. In secular communications, “Happy Holidays” is the proper and respectful way to advance well-wishes for the season. Why be ignorant and offensive when you don’t have to be?
Part the Fourth (aka The Biggie)
As I have posted about on the SDMB before, I am part of a chorale group. For the past few weeks we have been auditioning new members, and I’ve been assisting our director in the process. No fewer than 3 dozen people called with interest in joining. Of those three dozen, everyone who actually came to the audition is now in the group. The group has only grown by 5 members.
So to you 31 people who called and set appointments then failed to show or even to call to say that you got lost and decided to go home, that you changed your mind, that your husband decided that he didn’t want to watch the kids during the weekly rehearsal, who couldn’t get time off of work, whatever, I hope you’re happy. You wasted a collective 15 hours of time of four people (myself, the group secretary, the group director and our keyboard accompanist) who absolutely had better things to do than sit around in a church basement waiting for nothing. Yes we had some good brownies and nice conversation and even rearranged “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” for our Christmas concert, but we had other things we could’ve been doing and would’ve been doing had you had the decency to let us know (via any of the three phone numbers that I gave each of you, including the cell phones that the director and I carried) that you weren’t going to show. You owe a debt you cannot repay. I hope you remember that the next that you make a commitment and fail to honor it.
The moral of all these stories: show some consideration! The world does not revolve around you, you are not exempt from rules or from common courtesy and your decisions have an impact upon other people. Think about that sometime!
That is all.