Thank God It's Tiny Rants

The BBQ Pit
141

To my new boss, whose learning curve is turning out to be as long and as flat as a runway at Laguardia, a couple of free hints:

Using “Blah-blah-blah” to describe a technical aspect of what we do does Not make you appear superior (or even intelligent). It makes you look like an ignorant and lazy ass. If you aren’t an ignorant and lazy ass, then why not try to learn what we do? Or take an advanced English conversational course, if you’re having trouble. The only shame about not understanding is not doing anything about it.

Making sure that you never speak to anyone w/o your arms tightly folded and a hateful stare on your mug does not make you look like a ‘competent manager’. It makes you look like a jerk. Worse, a jerk who by not listening, is not only wasting the team’s time but her own as well. You need to listen, as it is your only chance to get up to speed regarding what we do and what you need to know to do this job.

Look, I know your job better than you do because I’ve not only done it, I’ve trained others to do it. You are the Third manager I’ve trained for that position in two years. Ignore this Gaijin at your peril, my dear…

142

Weather: K WTF are you trying to prove with all the snow? I get it, it’s winter. Knock it off.

Guy tailgating me: In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s an assload of fluffy fresh snow on the street that the plows haven’t gotten to yet. You may trust your awesome breaking power, but please excuse me if I don’t. Try not to get too mad as I creep along at 5 below the limit just in case we need to stop and you collide with me.

Women who smoke at the parking garage entrance: Stop fucking staring at me! Every day, every time I go in, you freaking glare at me while I scan my pass, even when I’m not wearing my bright blue “Hanson Silo” fuzzy stoking cap with the puffy ball. Is this like your own personal, private parking garage? NO!

People in my parking garage: Mini vans, pickup trucks and SUVs are never compact cars, mmmkay? Also, please attempt to park in the spots straight. If I can’t wiggle my teeny Hyundai Accent into the spot next to you, you parked like a cunt.

Bathroom at work: You’re broken, unclean, and smell like dead monkeys. Also, your soap is too drying on my hands.

Idiots at work: Stop being so willfully retarded! The fourteenth time I show you something, maybe you could write it down or take notes or something so I don’t have to go through this all tomorrow? Also, I don’t small talk. Perhaps you noticed that? So when you say “Blah, blah, blah, I need this fixed” and I say “Sure, I’m all over it.” it’s completely unnecessary to say “Yeah, I need it fixed because I blah blah blah…” Fuck! I already said I’d do it! Go away now! And you, idiot supervisor (not mine)! Maybe before you ask me to reorganize your whole department in the system you might want to think ahead, 'cause telling me to undo it all since it turned out you didn’t think it would turn out the way it did kinda wastes my time. And you, Supervisor (mine)! Look, we had a rough patch starting out, what with you trying to prove you’re my boss and all, but you’ve been really cool lately. Which is great, but occasionally you get crazy up in my bidness and it gets a bit distracting. I know how to organize my time quite effectively, so I’d appreciate it if you would bud the hell out. Thx.

The one awesome person at work: Why did you have to get all knocked up? K, it’s awesome or whatever that you and your husband are crazy happy and excited to have your first baby, but you are ready to pop any second, and I don’t think I can deal with these people for 8 weeks without imming you to bitch every 5 minutes. Could you spend a few minutes thinking about my happiness? (the preceding involved heavy sarcasm, I’m totally thrilled about the baby, but it’s gonna be tough not having her around to bitch to.)

Dot the Queen of the Kitties: You are not a keyboard. Learn that.

Skin: What are you, 15? We turn 26 in 10 days, calm the hell down!

Wow, I think that’s about it for now…

143

Google.

I love you, you asshats. Most of the time. But my language skills do not change by location. Please would you KINDLY refrain from changing my google to fragging German? I’ll take English, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, French. Heck, I’d probably understand Romanian better than I understand German. Stop trying to Helfen me!

And btw: do you guys think you could create a filter setting for “if it’s not in a latin alphabet it’s spam”?

(They seem to be changing language settings based on my ip address, it sure isn’t by “keyboard setting” (ES) or “OS language” (ES again))

144

Dear February,

You really fucking suck. Normally I’m used to interruptions in my life due to the pervasive and all-encompassing sense that my life is meaningless, but I don’t feel that way right now and I have a TON of shit to do. WHY are you punishing me with alternative interruptions? Can I just enjoy one little slice of life depression free?

It’s bad enough my fucking wisdom teeth put me out of commission and unable to attend class for over a WEEK. Now I’m back in class, and scrambling to catch up in time for next week’s STATS exam. Not only must I somehow assimilate 1.5 months of STATS material into my scattered little humanities-oriented brain by Thursday next week, but I have until the 24th to finish coding for approximately 30 more hours worth of research. What I MOST LOOK FORWARD TO MORE THAN EVER is spending all of next week when I SHOULD be studying at the courthouse for fucking Jury Duty. Because let me tell you, of all the times to be called for Jury Duty, I CAN’T IMAGINE A MORE CONVENIENT TIME THAN RIGHT NOW!!! Yes, I realize I may be legally obligated to miss my STATS exam which would mean it was pointless to study for it in the first place. Yes, I realize I would then miss a SECOND full week of class in one month and somehow have to cram research coding into the remaining week while desperately trying to recover for my classes.

What’s that? I’m completely insomniatic and my jaw still hurts like a bitch? I keep waking up after 5 hours of sleep every night regardless of taking sleeping pills whether I go to bed early and avoid caffeine and stick to a routine and all the other bullshit that’s supposed to help with insomnia? I still can’t eat without getting sick? I just dropped a FOURTH jeans size and I’m not even trying to lose weight? It’s fucking 9 below or some shit and my skin has turned red and raw and painfully dry, to the point I can’t even shower without pain? These factors in no way enhance my ability to perform in STATS, Spanish and my fucking research project? Oh, really?

…I… I hadn’t noticed…

THIS IS PISSING ME OFF SO FUCKING MUCH! For once in my life I’m doing the responsible thing by sucking up my abject terror and sitting through class, and going into public spaces that make me want to scream, and dragging my ass out of bed no matter how hopeless and scared I feel, and THIS is the fucking reward I get?

Are you fucking KIDDING ME?

Seriously, can you, O Universe, cut me a break for once in my life? It seems like there’s always SOME shit making my life more complicated. I want for just one tiny semester to not have to be a fucking Warrior Goddess of Divine Perseverance and Ingenuity. I’m tired of proving how strong I am.

I just want… to rest. I’m so tired. :frowning:

145

Dear Orange

Your broadband technical help staff are as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

For some reason my PC went down and when I’d fixed it I was unable to connect to broadband.

So I phoned your staff, your “highly dedicated and professional staff”.

I got routed to some call centre, the person I spoke to had just the basic grasp of the English language so I asked for a supervisor…same again!! fucking useless…

After being offline for 10 days and spending over £25 on phone calls I asked for a MAC code to transfer to another server.

“We will e-mail it to you” You fucking moron! I’m offline I can’t get e-mails, I’ve told you this time after time but you just ignore me. Well at last I’m back on and you can go fuck spiders 'cos you did send an e-mail and now I have the MAC code and you are fucked off as my ISP.

Bollox

146

Dear Google Maps: I tried you ONCE to get to the Rodino building in Newark, and you chose instead to send me to Bayonne. Never more will you get my business except as a pure novelty tool. MapQuest, you are once again the top dog.

Dear USCIS: Getting citizenship is wonderful, and we appreciate that you were the only office in the country that does same day oaths. For the love of all things holy, couldn’t this have just been a quickie in the office? Because of your delay we not only hit rush hour traffic, but also had to pay extra for the parking. Also, when you say, “Oath at 4 pm.” I forgot it meant, “Oath at 4:50, so we can get out at 5.” I could’ve gone to SubWay or something.

147

The Morning News:

Do you really have to spend another morning going on about the freakin’ weather? Yes, it’s interesting that Pulaski got 5 feet of snow, and will get another three by Monday, but that’s nothing new. The autoi dealership owner who was shoveling out his cars, because “people won’t buy it if they can’t see it” didn’t think it was news. After ten minutes of this we get, “Also yesterday, in Kansas City,” and we cut to three seconds of video of a huge factory being consumed in a fireball which is still exploding. What the hell?

And it’s not “Killer Cold.” It is at worst, “whicked bad.”

148

olive, I feel ya about that dry skin. I seriously considered calling in sick today because the skin on my face has become a horrifying sight. It looks like I have layers of spiderweb wrapped around my head. I try to scrub it off and lotion up, but that just makes it worse. And it burns…

149

I can relate to this too. The worst are the ones who call me up freaking out about the problem that needs to be solved now, Now, NOW! I say okay, I’ll get right on it, and they say, “Oh good, because…” and then they go through the whole story again, doing their best to impress upon me that time is of the essence. I say, okay, I’m going to call so-and-so right now. They say, “Yeah, it’s like really, really important because…” and they tell me the fucking tale again! Asshole, if you don’t let me hang up I can’t help you! :mad:

150

You mean you don’t think EVERY novel should include wrestling and dancing bears?

151

WTF is with mulitple ?? and !!
ONE IS ENOUGH!

152

I love Irving, and I think his last novel should be called Wrestling Bears in New Hampshire.

153

I hate Irving, but I’m not sure why. I thought it was because everything happening in his books was so far-fetched, but then I read Winston Groom’s Forrest Gump and it was okay. Maybe it’s because I feel I’m supposed to take Irving seriously?

154

Menopausal women should be banned from adjusting the temperatures in shared offices. Our Menopausal Woman changed the temperature yesterday and today everyone else’s late twenties/early thirties asses are FREEZING OFF! I declare majority rules on office temperatures from now on.

155

Small nit: As of December 15, 2006, with the release of Will Smith’s movie, that’s spelled “happyness”. Mkay? :smiley:

All kidding aside, great rant – just mundane enough to be considered small, but enough of these piled up makes you wanna kill.

9.5 out 10.

Now mine, for real.

Please keep to the right when walking on the sidewalk. I know that’s not always going to happen – people sometimes need to be in that area to the right – window shopping, standing there smoking, about to enter and after exiting a building, etc.

But to the extent possible, please try. In New York especially, with so much sidewalk congestion, it is even more important to try to keep foot traffic snarls to a minimum.

And don’t get me started on all the scofflaw bike riders on the sidewalk come the warm weather.

Please. Just try it. Keep to the right.

156

You only get them in the warm weather? New York bicyclists must be wimps! :smiley: We get them all year, even in the dead of winter.

157

Dear Apple:

Just because you’ve decided that I must install your crappy QuickTime player in order to use iTunes does not mean that I want you to reset all of my file associations so QuickTime is now the default player instead of Windows Media Player. Your crappy little application with its crappy little picture sucks for running video, and I wouldn’t even have it on my PC if it wasn’t required in order to use iTunes.

I most certainly do not want QuickTime to be the default player for the various video formats out there, but you don’t even do the courtesy of asking me that, do you? No, Apple applications are so wonderful, so marvelous, such a pinnacle of software perfection that everyone must want to use them for everything and anything. And just in case they’re some sort of benighted heathen who doesn’t feel that way, well, you’ll just go ahead and change the settings on their PC anyway. Then maybe they’ll see the glory that is Apple and be ‘saved’.

Listen, Apple asstards; there’s a word for applications that makes changes to my computer without permission. They’re called viruses. QuickPlayer is a virus, and I’ll continue to refer to it as such until it stops overwriting my preferences without asking.

158

Dear new Kitty Cat across the way:
Please stop *yikes!!*ing like your tail has been stepped on every time you see Papa Doug come around the corner. He is not a predator.

Dear CalorieKing:
Please develop diabetes software that will work on both my Palm phone and another computer. Your $14.95 product is worth about $14.93 less if I have to wait around to recharge my phone to put data in it.

159

Can we extend this to all temperatures everywhere? When I lived at home my mum insisted on a freezing house and freezing car.

160

Can we further institude a ceiling of 72°? I swear, some of you gals aren’t happy till a man can’t wear a suit coat indoors.