Can I pre-emptively rant against anyone in the US saying that they’re going to move to Canada because of politics? What makes you think WE want you? You can take a nice, restful vacation here if you like. No problem with that. Victoria on Vancouver Island is lovely. But we won’t even take draft dodgers any longer. We’re not some kind of consolation prize country - we only want you if you actually want to be a Canadian, not if you’re just pissed off at your fellow US Americans.
When this gets to me, I just inform them that I will bag myself. Why not just do it yourself in the first place?
My mini-rant: I have (fairly) successfuly dealt with depression for about 14 years. the last 6 months have been rough. I hit a scarey new low last week and decided it’s time to go back to a Dr and think about finally going on meds. So why is it almost impossible to get help? I have been making phone calls every day for a week. Either they aren’t taking new patients or they aren’t returning voicemails or they want a referral from my insurance. My insurance doesn’t require referrals, I called them too. lt’s starting to look like the only way you can get help around here is to admit yourself to the hospital. I do not want to do that, I have three kids and am the main breadwinner in my family. I just want an appointment to talk to someone and decide together if we think i need meds. It shouldn’t be so fucking complicated.
Once I was voluntarily committed on a 24 hour emergency hold because my depression had gotten so bad.
(Wherein I got to try to “sleep” either with the lights on in my… cell? OR I had to have the door open. With the two “nurses” cackling and talking really loudly all night.
Oh, and the only thing I was allowed to do was read. I chose a copy of The New Yorker. That I came to find had a really long, involved, fascinating story on, get this…
SUICIDE NOTES.)
But that’s not why I’m replying.
In the hospital, they started me on a new med. I was supposed to go back three days later for more. I was still so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed. Could they pleeeeeze just call in the med to my pharmacy?
No. I HAD to come in for an eval.
Or they’d cut off my meds.
“So. I’m so depressed that the county forcifully puts me on a 24-hour emergency hold. I’m a danger to myself and others. And you’re solution is to take my meds away???”
They called in my meds.
(The follow-up “therapy” was helpful, tho. They kept telling me they couldn’t understand what I had to be depressed about. Why didn’t I just go to grad school?)
Dear manager… do you think you could bring yourself, just this once, to use the time you spend “delegating” to do some of that work yourself?
Seriously. I sent you the damn file. Then I sent it to someone else on your behalf, because you couldn’t be bothered to find out where you put it in your black pit of an inbox. Then I did some more finagling of the file to get you a number.
AAARGH.
ETA: niblet, your shrinks must’ve gone to the same school as mine… his favourite line was “but you must feel better now that you’ve reconciled with your BF, right?”.
Because clearly, anyone with a psych degree would know that my depression was the result of getting dumped as opposed to less important issues like my father’s alcoholism, my parents’ crumbling marriage, or the fact that based on family history, there’s a clear pattern of people falling into clinical depression even when the sun is shining and bunnies are running through the fields?
Dear, dear husband:
Don’t blow up on me because I failed to see that you needed a hug this morning! I was still half asleep and you were doing your usual morning stuff, fixing lunch sammidges and coffee to go.
Now you’ll be pissed of all day at work, come home pissed, we’ll yell and fight and SO MUCH FOR ENJOYING A NICE FRIDAY NIGHT!
Goddammit woman, will you find a new hobby that isn’t looking up court cases? Go hire yourself a personal fucking paralegal instead of calling me up all the time.
Dear me:
When the hell will I learn to quit making more work for myself? Everyone says my end results are excellent, and I am proud of them. But I always seem to do things the hard way. After six years on this job, I should have figured it out by now. And I have got to stop being such a horrible deadline junkie. I’m getting better in this regard, but I’m still killing myself on the last few days before the deadline. I’ve got to learn how to even out my workflow.
Micro-rant terrority:
Why is it possible to buy a box of 6 mass-produced donuts (do not mock the mass-produced donut taste!) at supermarkets with all 6 plain (OK), all 6 powdered sugar (ugh), and 2 each sugar, plain, and glorious cinnamon (like) - but NEVER all 6 in glorious cinnamon (like) flavor? 
Dear people who organize things at the Student Home I live at; I love you, all of you. You’re doing lovely work and you’re not being paid for it.
However, I think you’ve misunderstood the word “dugnad.” It’s Norwegian and it means “volunteer work where you feed us.” The operative word being “volunteer” one might say. Making lists for participation - well, it’s a bit beyond the normal palé, but since youths are by definition lazy slouths who’d rather spend twice the effort making up excuses to avoid doing work early on saturdays, I get it. I really do.
But when I - in writing - ask you to have my date re-assigned two weeks advance, then get it approved, I do NOT expect to be hit with both a $100 penalty ticket as WELL as a penalty extra date of work, because I “didn’t show up”! WTF - I now have three days AND a ticket? Bitch, I work two jobs and go to school full-time, don’t give me that “I’ve never seen that letter” - I’VE GOT IT RIGHT HERE, BITCH. 2.5 INCHES UNDER YOUR NOSE!
Arrggh.
I’d also pit the human penchant for being;
- Unpleasant to receptionists.
- Assholes.
- Junkies.
I swear, I can’t stand people like my father who are always fishing for something or coming down on people who just work there whenever there’s something wrong. A hotell is a fucking big operation - even the tiny, cheap one I work at has 12 people working in it, 7 on any given day, and that’s with the night-watch receptionist making the breakfast and the morning-watch receptionist serving and doing the dishes.
Things go wrong. The receptionist will fix it and/or compensate you for the trouble. I know it smarts to have the veil of industrialized perfection in front of the service industry brutally drawn aside, but is it fucking impossible for you to attempt to point this out in a civil, agreeable fashion?
(On that note, I love Dutch people. Hell, I’m wearing my “I <3 the Dutch!” t-shirt under my shirt&tie right now. I rip off my shirt and smile whenever I see a dutch person coming out of the elevator. Which does prove problematic, since my boss is Dutch. I have a 15 pound bag of spare buttons and string under the reception desk.)
Office phone rings.
[Intro spiel]
“Blah blah blah… how may I help you?”
“What is your mailing address?”
:dubious:
We get all kinds of shit. I have to open, sort, shred and file shit. I don’t want more shit. And just who the fuck are YOU, anyway???
Me: “May I ask who’s calling?”
Dumb-ass Bitch: “Melanie.”
:dubious: :dubious: :mad:
Me: “And who are you with???”
Look, I’m the gatekeeper, “Melanie”.
Dumb-ass Melanie: “Blah blah blah.”
Ok, so you’re from a potential client. An important potential client. You couldn’t have developed the professional courtesy of saying, “Hi, this is Melanie from important potential client. May I have your mailing address?”
You know, I really think most times people think they’re going to be dealing with a dippy receptionist who doesn’t “know” anything and doesn’t “deserve” professional courtesy.
A) if that’s what you think, I find it hard to extend courtesy to YOU, and b) how do you know you’re not talking to important guy’s assistant?? Cuz you are. Do you not understand the power of assistants to block you???
More importantly than that, you are arrogant and RUDE, and I don’t care who you are or who you think you’re talking to.
Idiot dumb-ass bitch.
Once again, I cannot fucking sleep. The past three nights have been a pain in the ass, but tonight it’s worse, because I have to get up and go to work tomorrow. Fuck fuck FUCK.
I have to scroll too far to find the list of forums now.
What?
I need a fucking time machine, really badly. There’s an internship I would absolutely love, and would look fantastic on my resume, and I could probably get it and I want it so much, but they require a commitment of twenty hours per week.
I’m in class or doing homework for class somewhere north of forty hours per week, I’m at work ten hours per week, and spending another fifteen to twenty hours per week working on my senior thesis, studying for the GRE, and researching grad schools. Some people I’m sure could manage to add another twenty-hour commitment to that, but as it is it’s the end of week two and I’m getting by on Red Bull and antacids already, and I’m ridiculously stressed out with no end in sight.
Senior year kind of sucks in that regard.
I don’t understand why this is rude. Do you have a secret underground lair that only the Properly Identified can get the mailing address to? When I answered phones for a part of my job, I was grateful when people didn’t make me listen to how important they were or what relationship existed between his company and mine when all they wanted was the mailing address, the fax number or something equally simple-to-answer request. YMMV, of course, by why does it matter to you who is asking for your company’s mailing address?
They don’t have to give me five minutes of historical context. It take less than ten seconds to say, “Hello, I’m calling from so and so. My I have your mailing address?”
It’s even more rude when it’s clear I’m asking for the nature of your business to give me your name. Oh, you’re Melanie? Well, that clears that right up.
It’s a courtesy. It takes two seconds. It acknowledges that the person on the other end of the line has a job to do: that is, to screen what comes into the office. Sorry, it’s my job. It’s the job of all the assistants, secretaries, and receptionists I have to call to get mailing addresses. Maybe it’s just my industry, but I can’t think of the last time I was able to just ask for contact info and NOT have the person on the other end of the line correctly do their job by finding out who the hell I am.
If I was calling Target, yeah, I wouldn’t give them any info like my name, but you can bet I’d at least say please. And if for some reason the person on the other end of the line needed more information from me, I’d assume that they had a reason for it or they wouldn’t ask.
1st shift, why can’t you EVER be on time? My shift ends at 8am. Not 8:05; not 8:10, not 8:15. 1st shift never arrives any earlier than 7:59. The employee handbook states that operators must be on hand and ready to log in at 3 minutes prior to the start of the shift. 1st shift NEVER is - not one of the 4 people on the shift - and the bedamned management never calls them on it. Of the two people who were scheduled to be there at 8 this morning, one arrived at 8:10 - after calling at 8 to say she would be there after she paid for her newspaper - and the other wasn’t there yet when I left at 8:15.
I have been at this job for nearly a year and have been late exactly twice.
Grrrrr.
When one team is up by 31 points and there’s 2 seconds left in the forth quarter…don’t call a fucking penalty!
BTW, what’s the point of having a backup ref who’s not sanctioned to ref the game?
When you call me, unless you are my mother or my husband, tell me who you are!
I HATE it when people (usually someone I don’t even know that well) just say “Hi!” and start talking. My step brother did this after I hadn’t talked to him for 4 years. Another woman did this and I had only talked to her once on the phone before.
And they always sound miffed when I interrupt to ask, “Who is this?”
“Where’s my wallet?”
I don’t know.
“Where are my keys?”
I don’t know.
“When do I have to fulfill my pro bono requirement?”
I don’t know.
“Did X write me back?”
I don’t know.
See,* I don’t know* these things because it is *your *responsibility to know them!!! :mad: