[Homer] I thought ellipses were just stretchy circles. [/Homer]
AND … ellipses are supposed to have one space *(n-space? m-space? i-can-haz-space?) *before and/or after them.
And they should be typed as one character (option-colon on a mac), but even us design fascists have gotten over that one… ( <– did that there just to share your pain)
I thought ellipses internal to a sentence have three dots, but ones at the end of a sentence take four? As in, the last dot is actually the period for the sentence.
Dear MS Word developers,
Just so you know, a complex sentence with multiple clauses is in fact the opposite of a sentence fragment. Fragments lack either a verb or a subject, so if a sentence contains both and has an independent clause, it’s not a fucking fragment.** I** know enough to ignore your stupid green squiggles, but you’re baffling kids who are just trying to write their damn papers. Isn’t it enough that they’re doing the work without confusing them like this?! Bastards.
Yep, I’m the regular night auditor (or at least as “regular” as anyone working at this asylum masquerading as a hotel…) Actually, we have a pretty good team working at the desk, all of us get along pretty well (except for Miss I’m Not a People Person - we all hate her.) I thought that random notes taped to the counter were the approved method of all current condition updates at hotels?! (Honestly, I have to use Goo Gone on our front desk area about once a month to get rid of all of the adhesive residue from tape. The owner/manager is the worst offender - she loves her some Scotch tape!)
I love those folks who show up wearing all sorts of outfits (from “homeless” to “hoochie mama” to everything in between) when looking for a job application. For legal reasons, we give applications to virtually anyone who asks, but I use color-coded paper clips to organize the manager’s in-box. A green paper clip is “yeah, might be okay,” a red one is “Oh hell no!” and a yellow one is “ask me about this one - you ain’t gonna believe this shit!” The current hotel is better than one I previously worked at - it was located right next door to a public housing neighborhood, in downtown. The other managers and I had a standing bet on which of us fielded the biggest loser of the week - everything from schizo homeless dudes, to 50-something prostitutes dressed in their “professional clothes,” to wannabe thugs in their humongous man-pris with visible underwear and grills. It was always an adventure!
I have a razor blade I keep hidden in the junk drawer that I use to scrape off the old adhesive tape. Makes the managers very nervous when I do that, it does. 
I’m never sure of whether to be happy that I’m not nearly this stupid and greedy as other people, or sad for Humanity as a whole that these people exist.
I had a customer this week who wrote in to complain about how arrogant, uncooperative, rude and mean I was because I refused to tell him his wifi password. We don’t make the equipment or control his account in any way, shape or form. It has fuck all to do with us. I was very nice in trying to explain this to him and direct him to calling that company, but he absolutely refused to do so, weeping and gnashing his teeth about our “poor service” and how he was going to write to our CEO to complain about it. You know what, sir? I was nice to you. But you’re a fucking moron and at this point, I sincerely wish you meet a man named Darwin. Next time call Sears and demand that they tell you your wifi password. It will work just as well.
One of my co-workers got a call from a man who demanded $500 per hour in order for him to participate in troubleshooting the $200 device he purchased from us, and threatened to sue if we didn’t pony up. Needless to say, he didn’t get it.
No, I can’t accept back a 1 year old piece of equipment and give you the new version we’ve just released - for free - because you throw a fit. You’ve been using it for a full year now, jackass. You want the new model, fucking buy it like everyone else.
Look, my first name is simple, and only five characters long. If it takes me more than three times to spell it for you, perhaps you should check into Chimera’s Home for the Terminally Stupid. Especially when your third attempt is all consonants and makes no damned sense compared to what I’m saying. At that point I can only assume that you’re either terminally stupid, or intentionally messing with me. Six attempts before you get it? Yeah, at that point I’m proving no further information because I don’t have all day for you to get my phone number right and I no longer want to deal with you.
I loved this one the best. Product is outside of phone support, which only last so long. Customer throws a fit because it wasn’t convenient for her to call these last many months, but it is convenient for her to call NOW. Tells me that our support exists for her convenience and as the customer is always right, we have to support her NOW. When I said “Sorry, but the customer is not always right”, she went into a rage about how I was calling her a liar. No ma’am, I wasn’t calling you a liar, but right now I’m signing you up for a future bed at that special home I mentioned earlier in this post. We have a long argument about support, I tell her that she has the option, like anyone else, to purchase extended support agreements. She refuses, repeating that it was never convenient for her to call before, and it is convenient for her NOW, and so we had damned well better support her, because the customer is always right. Well, bottom line is that she did not get the support she demanded, because she refused to pay for it.
Her next step was to demand that we replace her product, while refusing to tell me what was wrong with it. So I set up a repair ticket, advising the repair people to look it over, and if there wasn’t anything wrong with it, to simply send it back. I’ll check back in a week or two to see if there was, in fact, anything wrong with it, and whether or not she called in to scream about that.
Our relief auditor is nice enough in her own way, but kind of… different. I’m pretty sure that leaving her unchaperoned with a sharp instrument would be a bad idea.
But on to the new rant:
Apparently, I’m a horrible, horrible mother because I (gasp!) allow my almost-ten-year-old daughter to walk to school! (The horror!) Some nosy bitch decided Friday to get involved, to the point of stopping on the street to ask my daughter about it, then asking the crossing guard and the police officer who directs traffic at the school.
Now, I could sort of see this level of concern if my daughter were in pre-K or kindergarten, but she’s in the fourth grade. And her less-than-five-block walk to school consists of:
Leave home (the one with the deputy’s patrol car parked out front.) Walk about 1/2 block east.
Turn right (opposite the local police department) and walk two blocks south on quiet residential street.
At intersection IN FRONT OF HER DAD’S HOUSE, turn left.
Proceed one block east. Get escorted across street by crossing guard.
Arrive at school, in the same quiet, leafy, suburban town where my daughter has been walking to school since kindergarten. (Accompanied by me and/or her older brother up until last year.)
Did I mention that my daughter also has a cell phone in her backpack, in case of emergency? And that she is literally NEVER out of sight of her mom’s house, her dad’s house, or her school on her entire route? And that her walks occur during broad daylight each day? And that (most of all) this is nobody else’s fucking business?!
Now I get to go up to the school and raise holy hell on Tuesday, because my daughter was made to worry that there’s something wrong with this arrangement. And because the school secretary decided to call my daughter’s dad instead of me. And because everyone needs to just butt the hell out - just because I’m not a helicopter parent doesn’t mean that I’m not a good, caring, mindful, and attentive parent.
Do you think any of them would listen if you told them how important this is for your daughter’s development? How does anyone think kids are going to grow into mature, responsible adults if they never get to do anything on their own?
This is where I’d express concern that some random stranger was accosting my child on the street and harassing both her and her family. “If this person was male, would you have contacted me about it, or would you have told him to have no further contact with my child? If your answer is that you would have told A MAN to keep the hell away from my child, then I ask why you’re not doing the same thing to a female stranger. Because not all males are child molesters and not all child molesters are male.”
See, all these cans of worms have been opened here:
Total stranger accosting my child on the street.
Total stranger randomly deciding that my child is too taxed by her 10-minute walk.
School/crossing guard/police officer not telling that total stranger where to stuff it.
School employee calling non-custodial parent instead of me.
The notion that anyone else’s judgment matters here more than mine as a mother.
Before allowing my daughter to walk to school unaccompanied, I walked with her first, then walked halfway (to the point where she was within sight of the crossing guard,) and then to the first street corner. I made sure that she knew the route, the safest way to walk it, and had the tools she needed if anything happened to go wrong. And then I let her go. Sure, I could drive her to school, or walk with her, but how will she learn to act independently if I do that? (And, for the record, driving her would actually take longer, in addition to being a crummy use of resources. To drop off a child, I’d have to drive about twice as far as the walking route, and wait in the drop-off line for 5-15 minutes while the line creeps forward. I only consider this option if the weather is really bad.)
Mainly, I resent that I now feel compelled to go to the school to justify my completely reasonable parenting choice to a bunch of idiots. (And to remind some employee that I am the primary contact. Really, call me first - not her dad, because he really has no clue about the day-to-day stuff in the kids’ lives. We work together just fine, there are no custody issues, but all of this just worries him, and he can’t really give any useful input.)
My parents were helicopter parents, but even THEY had me walk the four blocks to school, when I was in kindergarten or first grade. Most kids are perfectly capable of finding their way around the neighborhood. I allowed my own daughter to ride her bike just about anywhere in the residential areas of the Air Force Base where we lived. Kids NEED to get out and walk and run and ride bikes and otherwise be physically active, while they’re kids. They need to be growing muscle as well as bone and fat and other tissue. I like curling up with a good book as much as anyone else, and I encourage kids to read…but it’s GOOD for kids to walk to school, if it’s within a reasonable distance, and there’s no real dangers.
Other than maybe the first day or two, I walked about 3 blocks to kindergarden by myself. Although that was way back in 1967. Hell, I used to wander all over the place by myself even before that. My parents almost never knew where I was.
I guess my folks were neglectful of us then. :rolleyes: At four years of age, she thought nothing of sending me down to the little grocery a couple of blocks away for something she needed. I couldn’t even sign the credit slip with much more than my initials at that age.
Of course, I had to cross no major streets and she could see me almost all of the way.
It was very cool yesterday morning ,in the 40s. It has been so hot this year, I had forgotten what cold feels like. I did not like it.
I never walked to school in elementary school even though it was less than a mile away because there was a very dangerous intersection 'twixt me and it. To this day I’m still nervous driving across it. (There’s a very steep hill that come up to the crossroads and you can’t see the other car coming until it’s at the top of the hill.) Had that intersection not been there, I bet I would have been walking to school.
Today’s rant: stop honking your horn in tunnels! Seriously, folks, I walk home almost every day and every day some idiot honks in the tunnel as I’m walking through it. Yes, it echos. Now STOP IT. The same applies to revving engines.
Went to a niece’s bridal shower. It blew. Crappy food, horrible attempt at cake, a bunch of strangers that my niece had never met before–her other grandma’s friends and their granddaughters. Niece did not have a single one of her friends there and it was pretty far from their homes anyway. My mom/grandma to the bride to be tried to read a poem and my SIL kept translating every line into Spanish for the benefit of some of the guests, disrupting the rhythm of the poem.
Can’t wait for the wedding. :rolleyes: It’s going to be in my back yard. The groom wants brownies and ice cream. The bride has known him for all of 4 months online and two weeks in person when she went out of state to see him. The event will be at 2pm, stinking hot, probably there will be a wildfire somewhere, and there is massive construction going on right behind my house.
Actually, one of the nice things about Seville in the summer is that I can just drop the sliced bread in the fridge and it keeps nicely, unlike in Scotland (it kept better when I was living alone than when I had The Kitchenmates From Hell, but it still lasted a lot less than here). I understand from local sliced-bread users that once temperatures stay below boiling consistently I should just leave it outside (right now the problem with leaving it outside is that it dries, even in the bag). But the choices I have, as far as I can tell, are sliced bread or throw away most of a bar… man, those months living over a baker’s in France so totally spoiled me!
I had to send one of those please-remove-me-from-all-non-work-distribution-lists e-mails Saturday.
The first e-mail in my inbox was one from a woman in another department, on a different shift. I have helped her out in the past (I handle that department’s inventory account) and since then, I’ve gotten one or two pieces of glurge a week from her. Generally, they run to the big-eyed kitten or Jesus’ face in a tortilla types that get deleted without reading them.
Saturday’s got my attention with the subject line: RE:RE:RE:RE:RE: Black people are so funny
WTF!:eek:
It contained People of WalMart type pics, but only of black people.
Holy crap! This is the 21rst century. I sent her my request to be removed, flagged it in my files and went about my work night.
Sunday morning, about 15 minutes before I left, she came steaming up to my desk, all up in the air. She really didn’t get why I found it offensive. :smack:
My impression of her prior to this had always been that she wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier but a good worker and not a bad person.
She went on about how this piece of crap was ok because a black guy sent it to her. :smack::smack::smack:
I patiently explained to her that if she felt compelled to excuse this trash with that statement, that maybe it wasn’t a piece of communication suitable for e-mailing on her company account. AND SHE STILL DIDN’T GET IT!!!
I told her that if I received nothing else that wasn’t business related, after a year of being flagged in my file, it would go away without HR or her supervisor getting involved. Then she got nervous, trying more explanations. At that point I just asked her to leave my office.
I have a sense of the ridiculas and log in to People of WalMart occasionally when I feel the need to laugh at people who, shall I say, have different tastes in clothing, hair and accessories than I do, but at least that site is pretty equal opportunity about the folks who make the cut. No singling out just one demographic. Too bad that some people can’t wrap their heads around that.
Hearing a dog vomiting at 7:45 a.m. is not the best way to awaken on a holiday.
Having it continue for the rest of the morning with TWO dogs is not the best way for the holiday to continue.
(We have talked to the vet.)
I’d like to send a hearty “fuck you” the old douchebag sitting in front of the bay window facing the patio at the Broad Arrow Tavern this evening. I saw the chicken he ordered; there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with it. It was beautiful, and it smelled delicious; however, he was apparently unhappy with how it was carved, and he decided it was the waiter’s fault. Simply telling the waiter he wasn’t happy with the meal wasn’t enough; he had to rant on and on and on about his disappointment, and how terrible the chicken was, and how this just ruined his day. He kept on ranting even after the supposedly awful meal had been compensated, and he and his absolute hag of a wife had gotten free desserts. Jeez asshole, what is so wrong in your life that you have to completely lose your shit over a freaking chicken?!