We have a big yard, but it’s not that big 
What’s the novel where scientists have created an entire galaxy inside a building?
Pretty sure it’s one of the Hitchhiker’s Guide novels. Don’t remember which one.
Zaphod was warned to leave the office by the window after the building crashed.
If that’s an answer to my question, definitely not. I’ve never read those. This was an old book, from the '60s; could have been an Ace double, though I’m not sure.
I get this a lot because my wife is Asian so a lot of Japanese prefer to talk to her. There are a number of things that I’m handling and she doesn’t know what’s happening. It drives me nuts as well.
We are almost done with this, so I’m not gonna complain to them any more. It’s pointless since they won’t fix it. Well they sure as shit should be able to fix it, but don’t. One reason this really aggravates me is that I’m a programmer. Our department also handles all the communication for county government. Damn right they could fix it. Apparently it’s too hard to change a database entry. Boo freaking hoo.
But I REALLY hope they want me to review their process. Everything went great except for the communication which is totally jacked up.
A personal annoyance for me is those aggregator sites which show up when you search for a tradesperson to do a job.
NO, I do NOT want to ‘leave a contact number and message to receive four quotes’.
If I’m looking for a carpenter, I want to see phone numbers or emails for actual carpenters, goddamit!
It definitely was in Adams’ “Restaurant at the End of the Universe”, but clearly not the first use of that particular plot mechanism.
There is a skit somewhere with an Anglo looking dude who speaks Japanese perfectly, with a Japanese American woman who knows not a word- and the waitstaff keeps talking to her, not him.
I know two young women who were inseparable friends in high school. One is Indian-American who spent five or six years in China during her childhood, being taken care of by Chinese “household helpers”. The other is a Chinese-born adoptee. The Indian-American one speaks serviceable Mandarin and Cantonese. The Chinese-American one speaks no Chinese at all.
It’s absolutely hilarious when they go to Chinatown and the shopkeepers and restaurant staff just cannot digest what is happening. They keep speaking to the Chinese girl in Chinese. Even though all she says is “I don’t speak Chinese” and her friend answers them in Chinese. They will just turn around and say the next sentence to the Chinese-looking one in Chinese.
They are used to East Asian looking people who can’t speak Chinese (or at least Mandarin or Cantonese). And they are used to two East Asian looking people one of who speaks Chinese and the other doesn’t. But this particular combination gives them fits.
that phrase stopped me stone-cold in my tracks … (context IS important)
ninja’d!!!
That does sound entertaining!
I just stopped by our local CVS Pharmacy to pick up a prescription and was greeted with a new level of suck: they placed a kiosk at the register by the pharmacy where you are supposed to enter your name and date of birth before they will even talk to you.
This would be fine if it were a modern device from 2025, but though it appears shiny and new, the responsiveness is worse than the touch-screen keyboards of the pre-iPhone era. Seriously, the thing is so stunningly laggy that as I am typing in “Joe Cool” it is three keystrokes behind and ends up producing “Je Cl”…so I backspace and re-enter, backspace, re-enter, suddenly the screen clears and goes back to the home screen.
Then I finally type deliberately “J” …pause… “O” …pause… “E” … and so on. Now for the DOB: type in the month. Now the month… Now the day. ARGH!
It then lists my single prescription and asks if that’s the one. Then it shows me marketing garbage that I skip over (probably telling me I need a flu shot).
Finally a person comes over and says “Just the one? That’ll be $19.”
I let her know that the device is awful, while simultaneously apologizing profusely for stating my opinion to someone who has no control or choice in what CVS puts out front.
If any company were to try selling tablets or phones with that degree of lagginess they would fail miserably. Heck, the cheap touch screens on random electronic gadgets are more responsive than that kiosk was.
They really ought to think about their customer base: mostly old people. Surely they won’t have an issue typing in a ton of info before a human will even look at them.
Suggestion: go through the drive thru next time (unless they have a kiosk there too…)
What you described is bad enough but I just encountered this the other day and I am trying to figure out the point - the kiosk is at the register, so I have to wait on line to get to the kiosk where I will type in my info, more slowly than the person on the other side of the counter could. I could understand if they just eliminated the normal line, and had six or seven of those tablets somewhere other than right in front of the register and called me over to the counter when they took my precription off the shelf , like they do when I’m waiting for a precription. Maybe it makes sense if there is no one on line - but I have literally never been in a drugstore with no line at all at the prescription counter.
Not looking at my microwave. The wife will stop it with like 16 seconds left and not hit “Reset” so I walk in and apparently it is 12:16am.
That was my wife’s suggestion as well…and that is my plan. Get the touch screens out of the loop and let the human who is typing on a real keyboard do the work.
I can imagine that some corporate genius thought “if we can let the customer enter their information we can get the order queued up and now one worker can go between multiple POS terminals and everyone wins” but they didn’t ever try it themselves.
Or they didn’t imagine that the bean counters would force the engineers to select the most craptastic inferior hardware.
Heck, I was telling my wife that it felt like there must be a hardware setting in their POS terminals that adjusts “customer annoyance” and they have that one cranked up, kind of like how those crane games have a setting where the operator can make the grippy claws have zero clamping force and let the plush prize slip from their featherweight grasp.
Never? Wow, I’m really surprised. For me it’s well over half the time that there’s no line at all. I do use a very small pharmacy; wonder if that’s part of why.
Probably. I use a small pharmacy in a small town; there’s often no line, and when there is it’s rarely more than a couple of people.
Went to the doctor the other day. Place now has a check in kiosk. Sigh. Enter name, OK. Enter phone number — WTF? I only get the area code in and it says “invalid number”. Maybe I accidentally punched in something weird? Try again, same result. Luckily, they’re still able to check you in at the desk.
Never - if I’m lucky it’s only two or three people. If I’m not, there might be 15. ( in which case I leave and come back some other time). But it’s a CVS- might be different if I went to a small independent pharmacy.