Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Vent Thread

Inspired by Chris's Christmas Vent thread, this one is for you to let off steam about all those inconsequential little things that just drive you up the wall. Yes, in the grand scheme of things they're probably so unimportant you shouldn't let them get to you. But they bug you all the same! So, here's a place to immortalise your rage. Most irritating of all, I can't watch the online birthday card my brother sent me because there it is scuttling around.

Secondly - news channels that tell you things twice in the space of two seconds! Typical conversation:

Studio news presenter: "And now we go over live to our reporter in Jerusalem..."

Reporter: "Yes, here we are in Jerusalem..."

Cue me leaping up and down, yelling "I know that! You just told me that! You told me that two seconds ago!" at the TV. :rolleyes:

Takes deep breath and goes off to read some soothing board posts...

The rest of you - have at it.


LabRat

I always loathe listening to a mass of sport reports and they only talk about Rugby League or Union and other sports don't get me wrong I love Aussie Rules, tennis and the cricket but what about soccer? It's the World Game for crying out loud yet it's the most under appreciated here and let's be honest how does a couple of guys carrying the ball across the goal line instead of kicking it around qualifies being called football? Aussie Rules yes, soccer definitely I mean in Europe it is called football and well really Rugby is rugby and soccer is the only true form of football!

Had to vent that frustration maybe with Australia getting into the World Cup this year and the Asia Cup next year will help boost its profile, but I'm not betting on that happening soon.

As a matter of fact, Lab, you can turn it off.

Step 1 (which you may already have completed -- I can't remember): Get FireFox .

Step 2: Install one or more of the following extensions:

AdBlock , which allows you to set up a list of filters which automatically remove images and content. For example, the filter "*/banners/*" will remove any web page item (image, flash program, etc) with "/banners/" anywhere in the URL. A short list of general filters will get rid of most online ads, and you can always add new ones from the right-click menu. (Just right-click something you don't like, choose "Adblock Image," and create a new filter based on the image's URL.)

Flashblock automatically hides all flash animations. Flash programs are replaced with a simple button, which you can use to view the animation if you so desire.

Nuke Anything allows you to selectively remove content with a simple mouse command. Right-click any object, choose "remove this object," and *poof* -- it's gone!

Step 3: Next time you see the spider, use the extension of your choice to make it disappear!

Paul

I want to vent about boring paperwork - need I really say more??

And I also want to vent about employees who do the very thing that I mentioned not to do in a memo and they do it the VERY NEXT DAY! And then they don't understand why I get mad. And the reaction to my anger is something like 'I didn't think you meant me.'

I am a really nice boss. All my employees agree on that. Some even tell me that I'm too nice! But then people think they can take advantage of my niceness, and they don't get that while I may be nice, I'm not a pushover. So I'm venting about people who can't stop themselves from pushing my limits!

Irene

Paul - thank you! That ad has been the bane of my life recently! Yes, I have Firefox, so dashing over to those links to do the necessary. You're a star!


LabRat

Hmmm venting - My grandparents -

I am really mad that my Grandparents were very unresponsible parents to my mum and uncle.

They ran away to Canada from England and while we have ties to England and can talk to . . . they are trying to hide something and tell us sweet little lies about our family tree...I don't even know my own family over there in its entirity

For now though, my one vent is people getting things done on time. After working all day, I wound up at FedEx til after 1 in the morning helping people make copies we needed for this morning because they can't get their acts together. If they'd done it ahead of time, we could have handed the whole binder to UPS where we actually have an account, and they could have made 40 copies for us instead of us having to put the darn things together ourselves.

Oh, I have something else. My roommates. Ugh. I cannot wait til I move out of my apartment in May. I don't even care if I have to move back into my parent's house. Sad, huh. But they are the most ridiculous, rude, drama-oriented people I've ever met. Grow the hell up already. Granted, my parents raised me rather drill-sergeant-esque, but I don't think it's expecting that much of college students for them to act lik adults.

Ok I'm done. I like this thread.
Jen

...seriously...

I've always wondered about ads that....well, let's put it this way. when is someone with a spider phobia going to sue the ad company? yeah, I've seen that spider ad, and it irritates me (but then, all of those "shoot the clown and win a million dollars!" ads irritate me. they're a con.), but for cryin' out loud, they could get sued. As I understand, flashing/strobe lights can sometimes trigger epileptic seizures. but they're also used in on-line ads as well. when will people learn?

Ok, there's my rant. taking LabRat's idea and expanding it..... you don't seriously expect me to believe that if I click my mouse 10 times, that will entitle me to a free laptop computer, do you? :rolleyes: eejits....

oh, yes, and my eternal rant. writing. why can't I be like those pollyannas who peck away happily and crank out 20,000 words a day? grrrr....

People who eat noisily. The sound drives me nuts. Can't they close their mouths while they chew? And why film makers and radio program makers feel the need to make things so realistic that their actors speak while they're eating and so they slurp and slush and gulp and glob - argh!!! I've been known to leave the room just to get away from the sound.

Yvonne

I can't stand the fact that people who are too senile/weak/angry still drive. They think they are wonderful drivers...meanwhile they are hogging two lanes....

Speaking of spiders, I can't stand those ads on Yahoo Groups that ask you the question: How many spiders do you swallow in your sleep every night?!?

I hate spiders as it is...so the LAST thing I need to read about is the possiblity of swallowing them while you sleep!

agreed. I've got a brother-in-law who does it--grab your shotgun and come with me.

I heard it described in a comedy routine once as sounding like "someone running through a swamp with their wellies full of vomit".

"The average person swallows seven spiders a year." You know, I had heard that statistic hundreds of times and it always creeped me out, plus I had to wonder, why on earth would a spider decide to crawl into my mouth while I was sleeping? Does he think it looks like a good place to catch bugs?

Anyway, one day I decided to take matters into my own hands and find out if that were really true, and according to Snopes.com , it's an urban legend!



That won't get rid of the obnoxious ads asking about it, but at least you can sleep a little easier knowing spiders aren't trying to commit suicide in your mouth...

If you love, work at, or have stock in Wal-Mart, no offense to you; I just don't like it. I guess it was the bad experiences I had the other day that made me want to vent about this, so here goes.

Reasons why I hate Wal-Mart:

1. There is NEVER a parking place close to the door no matter what time of day I go.

2. It is ALWAYS crowded, no matter what time of day I go.

3. They never have what I need or enough of what I need.

4. I have to wait in LONG lines no matter what time of day I go.

5. There are so many people on the aisles at a given time that I can't get through to get what I need.

6. NO customer service - I've never been asked once by a Wal-Mart employee if they can help me.

7. Rude employees - never greet me at the register or tell me to have a nice day.

8. They check my receipt at the door, but don't look in the bag to see if that's what's in there. So what's the point in looking at my receipt!

I thank you for doing that research then. I'm more relieved now, but I'm still creeped out by even the thought of it.

When I worked for McDonald's I had to work two years in a Wal-Mart location. My husband hates Wal-Mart for the reasons mentioned above. I liked working there because if I had a shift start at 8, I could shop the hour prior without the lovely customers and lack of stock. That was the only reason I like that McD location.

However, our cooler and freezer were located on the other side of the Wal-Mart and I would always get stopped by WM customers thinking I worked for WM....hello I'm in a McDonald's manager's outfit. Even when I was a Team Leader where I had to wear a black McD hat! I would help them b/c they would get mad at me b/c no WM people would help or thought I was a WM empl. Sometimes I’d say "sorry I don't know where that is" if I was too busy to breath. Sometimes I would tell them I would find someone and I would...however I'd come back later and find them there with no one helping them and they would let me have it. Even get physical.

Many times I used the intercom. It is fun experimenting! I am not allowed to, but after trying it a few times one WM employee showed me once b/c they said, "well if we are not around you should help." Ummm hello I don't work for your company. But I'd help b/c honestly sometimes I didn't want to go back to the restaurant only to get yelled at by a WM customer or employee and I felt bad for them especially if they had a screaming kid.

I know not every customer is bad and so on, but every McDonald's worker I know who has experience with a regular restaurant, a McD location in a casino and one in a WM - the WM and Casino are very scary.

I guess because of the long line ups. :p

The WM managers were evil to us. They wouldn't let us have decent space in the storage area and didn't care about our safety unless we were wandering on the top shelves - obviously. Well they made us put our product up there and we had no other way to get it down. Using a stick to poke at a box won't exactly coax it down. We were the busiest WM location in western Canada and they wouldn't give us more space. They checked our bags, even though I was a manager. I once made them empty their pockets because I found them behind the counter of my restaurant. They had no right to be behind our tills and amongst our product. I will treat them the same he treated me. It was very embarrassing having to empty out my school bag in front of customers. I understand why. . . But once they found out I was not 16 but 25 they stopped. Perhaps they had a bad experience with other employees. I know how much ‘internal theft’ occurs.

The head WM dude was nice. He offered me a job there when I wanted to quit McD because of school. Thanks, but no thanks!

Side rant -

I was sad when Wal-Mart came in because it killed many of the Canadian chains. Just like Home Depot did. With the infiltration of those stores and the amount of US TV on the boob tube and other pop culture, I find the Cdn kids now don't have the same Cdn identity/experience I saw when I was growing up. To me I could go venting on about that forever. What makes me Canadian ?

I studied that in my pscy/history/pop culture/journalism classes and well Wal-Mart just is the right amount for me to make me sad.

Ah, I won’t go into that now. I have to clean the kitchen. Now that is universal unfortunately. . . I will do it with the cleaner I bought at WM and the dish soap I bought at Safeway while watching the evening news from Minneapolis.

Other people had such good rants that I'm going to borrow a few.

I'm with you on this one, Yvonne!!

And ditto to everything ShellyEm said about Wal-Mart! I went there tonight on my way home from work - 10pm and a nearly full parking lot. I went to find black slacks for work. Can you believe they didn't have a SINGLE pair of plain, black slacks?! Completely ridiculous if you ask me, considering a great deal of 'working class' people need plain, black slacks as part of their work uniform.

A rant of my own:

I'm a waitress at Olive Garden (well, currently a hostess because of an injury) and if there's one thing that drives me nuts... it's the ordering of soup. Yeah, sounds stupid, but here's a little scenario. You're the server:

Let's say two guests come in and you're a bit busy, so it takes a minute or two for you to get over to them. When you get to the table, they have their menus closed up and they're impatiently waiting to order. Each of them orders the "all you can eat soup and salad" because they saw the ad on TV and it's a really good deal for $6. You say, "All right. What kind of soup would you like?" The guest says, "What kind do you have?"

Still seems innocuous, right?

Well, what I want to know is: How the heck do you come into a restaurant with the intent to get "soup and salad" - that's what you're getting, no ifs, ands or buts - and you don't even know what kind of soup the place serves? What if they only serve clam chowder and you hate seafood?? Though that is somewhat excusable. What isn't is coming in with the intent to get "soup and salad", waiting *impatiently* (and getting unecessarily cranky because you've known what you wanted to order before you even got there) with your menu closed, and then asking the server to list the soups that are clearly listed and even described in the menu. If you were in such a hurry and dying of starvation, why the heck wouldn't you decide on the type of soup you want right away?

Sadly (pathetically :rolleyes: ), I could go on for a while about even more soup ordering pet peeves, but I think that's enough for now.

Sara (who really does love working at OG even though she wants to hit people who ask the soup question :p )

I send e-mail progress reports home to the parents of my students each Friday as a way of trying to improve school-home communication. The report lists every assignment, every due date, every grade, every zero a student earned - everything a parent might need to know. Everything is clearly labeled on that report! I don't mind if parents e-mail back a legitimate question - that's part of the point. But it drives me crazy when they e-mail back the entire report and ask "What is my son/daughter missing?" Hello!!! Did you even read the report?

I've come to the conclusion that all tourist are required to leave their brains at home. I've come to this conclusion because:

1. They can't all be that bad of drivers at home.
We have a highway that runs the length of Ocean City, MD and people will cut across 2 a lanes to get to the turning lane cause they found the place they were looking for and don't want to miss it. We've got one road take your time working your way over, make a u-turn and go back the place isn't going any where it will be there when you get turned around.

2. I've never seen a bigger production made out of buying groceries than tourist. You would think 2 couples who have rented a condo for a week could buy a bag of chips without taking up the whole isle. It's like they think they are the only ones in the store.

3. They show up with no reservations and can't believe that on a Saturday night in July all the rooms are sold out. To make it worse they look at you and say I know you hold rooms. "What would you do if the President of the United States walked in here now." They can't believe it when I tell them to I would tell the President to return to the White House cause that is the closes room I know available. When I say that I'm being serious. I've seen it where nothing is available within at least 100 miles on a Saturday in the Summer. (in resort areas in season hotels that have rooms will call and let others know so you can send business their way - its a big grapevine). Of course this is like 1 am and they've been riding all over town looking for a room and are mad cause they can't find one. Dude next time make a reservation.

Also I wish people who have children that are not well behaved would stop taking them out to eat. It really makes me mad when people have children that act like animals in restaurants. I was one of 5 children and we went to fancy restaurants all the time even when we were in high chairs. You would see the staff cringe when we came in but at the end they would come over and complement my parents on how well behaved we were. That was because that was the way behaved and ate at the dinner table at home. If not you got 2 warnings and the third time you got sent away with no dinner.

I guess my peeve is so many people act like they are the only ones that matter and are a pain in the butt to the rest of us. We are paying the same hard earned money as the rest of you and we shouldn't have to put up with your c..p or your out of control children.

Yeah, I'm back already.

Something Kmar said sparked a nerve.

Point three about showing up without reservations and being angry that there are no rooms...

Well, like I said earlier, I've been hostessing at OG lately. Saturday night between 5-8. You'd expect it to be busy, right? Well, some people don't. I had several people come in last Saturday night during our busiest hours. I told them the wait was 90 minutes, and they said, "You're kidding me." And they're pissy about it. What did they expect me to say? "Yes. Yes, I'm kidding you. The wait is only five minutes, but I invited 50 of my friends over to stand around in the lobby and look hungry so I could fool you." :rolleyes:

Oh, and another thing since I'm here.

Why don't people count their babies as part of their dining party?

"Party of two."

"Two including the baby?"

"No, but she's only a month old."

Okaaay... so you're going to keep her in the carrier and on your lap when we put you at a table meant for two? Yeah, didn't think so.

Sara (who's done for the night, really)

Sorry, Roo, but my current pet peeve is with McDonalds... I'm fine with the food and all, but you have to understand that I pay for everything with credit cards. Charge it, get the reward points, then pay it right off, but the point is, I don't use cash very much anymore, and I'll sometimes go around for weeks without having more than a few coins in my purse. I was *delighted* when fast food places started taking cards -- no more running to the ATM just so I could eat french fries. :rolleyes:

The only problem is, sometimes their credit card machines aren't working, so they'll only accept cash. Which I probably don't have. I'm a reasonable woman, I know that glitches happen, but this happened to me *three* times last week, at three different McD's locations. It's happened before, too -- at a fourth location, plus possibly some while we've been travelling.

One of those times was at a Wal-Mart, actually -- the guy said they were rebooting the system and it should only be ten minutes. Hello? I'm hungry now, and I have shopping to do, and I'm not going to twiddle my thumbs while you get your electronics working. Lost the sale, buddy. That was the second time last week it'd happened. The first time was in a mall food court -- although, mysteriously, the woman behind me was able to pay with her credit card.

The third time was at a drive-through. Now, this is a location that was slow to get cards -- other area locations were taking them, but this place was cash-only. When I pulled up to the drive through, I was delighted to see those little credit card signs -- finally, I thought, this McD's has joined the 21st century. So I ordered -- everything came up on the little screen okay. She was trying to tell me something, but between the intercom and her accent, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what she was saying (and that's another thing -- when someone says they didn't understand something, could the speaker please repeat it *slowly* and try hard to be clear -- maybe even reword it -- instead of just rattling off the same phrase again??). I got the impression it was something about Happy Meal toys, so I said, okay, whatever.

But then when I get around to the window to pay and try to hand over my card, she says, "we don't take those." I pointed at the sign which clearly said that they *did* take them. "The system is down." Luckily for me and my hungry family, I did have cash on hand, so I was able to pay, but... yeesh, people. I understand technology can be finicky, nothing's perfect, etc, but why does this *only* ever happen to me at McDonalds??? I don't recall *ever* having that problem at a Wendy's, or Burger King, or Arby's, or KFC, or... They need to stop ordering their card readers off the back pages of comic books.

I said I was never going to go to McD's again -- much to the dismay of my two kids. I didn't really mean it, but... it might be a while.

So that's my vent for the day, aren't you glad you asked?

PJ

Sorry, I'm going to take this for a rant. Because this is one thing that really peeves me.

Now, just so you know, I live right behind a local mall. It's a nice quiet location, but it's literally hell during the Christmas season. I have to get through mall traffic just to get home from work. So I *know* how busy things get.

But no matter what time of the year, I'll head over to the mall, and grab a parking spot, usually one of the first near the end of the row of cars that I see. I might go down one aisle and back another just to see how crowded it is, before I take a parking spot at the end of the line. But I'll watch people stalk the aisles, going up and down them several times. They'll see someone get into their car, back up a bit, and wait for that car to pull out so they can get that "prime" spot. I was once stopped 2 cars behind one car that did this. I was impatient, wanting to get into the next aisle so I could quickly find parking spot of my own. But no, I had to wait 5 minutes for that car to back out, just so Mr. Whiny could take that spot so he wouldn't have to park that far.

Now, I know Americans are lazy. But for goodness sake, WALK! If you can't walk that far, talk to the doctor, maybe you can get a handicapped tag. But don't make *me* wait and waste gas so you can save a few footsteps. The gas is more expensive.

Just to show how ridiculous this is, last month we had two shootings at the mall over parking spaces. I know one person only shot a gun up into the air, but it really is sad.

Oooooh... venting! I can do that! So what gets on my nerve?

1) Weirdos I seem to attract lately. Just last Saturday I was at a birthday party and there was one guy who followed my every step all night and kept taking pictures of me. Really freaked me out after a while.

2) Parents who think we teachers ought to be perfect. I'm enough of a perfectionist without a student's mother coming to school just to tell me I made a mistake in the example of an exercise (horror! damnation!) and that's why her son failed there. Uh... yeah. So why did my 8 other first graders get it?

3) Letting things pile up and not dealing with them as they come. No matter what I keep failing at being organised. It's a pain in the backside.

I think that's it for now.

Kaethel

Yeah, I remember hearing on a radio program a couple of years back that this one was an urban myth. As for the figures - partly, it was supposed to be down to people keeping glasses of water beside their beds at night. Spider gets into glass, person wakes up thirsty, reaches for glass without putting light on....

Can't say as a theory it ever made all that much sense to me, but it is partly the reason why the only water beside my bed at night is in bottles.

I'm picking up on this vent by the way - what on earth makes the makers of these ads think that grossing out your potential pool of takers is a good marketing strategy?

LabRat

My vent of the day...

Bookshops that don't actually act like a bookshop!

I have just started an online course. Got my booklist a week or so ago, plus the address/website of the campus bookshop. Went there and saw that they have an online ordering facility for distance-education students (which I am) and that books may be ordered for postage or pickup.

Fine. As I will be at the college a week after placing my order (tonight, actually), I decide to order online with a view to picking the books up tonight. Go through all the process online, noting that stock of one book is down to one. Get to delivery info stage and discover that there is only an option to ship the order, at a cost of Can$15 plus tax. Cancel process and phone bookstore.

Staff in bookstore do not have the details the website has of essential texts for each course, so instead of telling them my module codes I have to list each book individually. They then tell me that they cannot hold the order for me to pick up a week later as they have no space to keep individual orders. They tell me to order online and have books shipped. So, even though it will cost me more, when it would have been convenient to pick up my books tonight, I ordered them to have them shipped - was conscious of that one text which only had one copy left.

A week later, no books have arrived. When at the college tonight, I went into the bookshop to ask when my order was dispatched.

They have no record of my order.

So now I have to call tomorrow with my order confirmation information and try to get it sorted out. I will then have to wait to get the books dispatched. In the meantime, my course has now started and they are out of stock of the one essential text which I did actually manage to order. So, having been organised enough to have my books in time, I now have nothing.

AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!


Wendy

Lab, glad I could help.

Walmart -- not touching that one. Which, come to think of it, is my general policy when it comes to Walmart. (Except Sam's Club, but that's different...)

My rant: Push-To-Talk cell phones. Now, those things drive me nuts. What is the point? Suddenly, instead of speaking normally into your phone, so that at least the volume isn't disruptive, you're shouting into the thing because it's in speakerphone mode.

Not only that, but whatever's said on the other side gets blasted out of the phone's speaker. The sound quality is poor and garbled, but you can still hear it across the room.

Then, just in case that wasn't loud and annoying enough, the phone punctuates every sentence with a loud chirp which can be heard from two rooms away.

So, you're adding three new levels of noise pollution to fill the room/bus/whatever, and what's the benefit? The minutes are a little cheaper. Except that you have to buy a phone capable of using the service, and you have to pay extra to get the PTT minutes (which are seperate from your regular minutes).

Really, then, you're annoying an entire room full of people (me especially) for no better reason than because it seemed like a cool idea. Or something.

Grr.

*other venty noises*

Paul

Cell phones. I cannot stand it when people come into the store on the phone and expect me to help them. I feel like I have to interrupt their phone conversation to help them find what they're looking for, take their money, get them to sign their receipt, etc etc. Just hang up the phone for five seconds and let me do my job. We'll all get done faster if I don't have to compete with a cell phone conversation.

Jen

Sara's rant reminded me of something.

Vent Subject: Restaurant Menus.

Why? Because you can never be sure that they serve everything that's in the menu. I don't know if it's the same everywhere, but it's true here in Greece for most restaurants/taverns. I do check the menu before ordering, but it just bugs me to know that I can't say "I'd like this one, please" and instead I must say "Would you happen to have this one?" Isn't there a reason there are menus??

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Think that must be a Greek thing, Anna. Certainly, it doesn't seem to be the norm in any country I've visited (UK, France, US, Canada, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria...um...Czechoslovakia, old Yugoslavia, Germany, Hungary...).

Yvonne

Ah, I've got one.

Last week a couple of friends taught me how to make home-made sushi. As a huge fan of it, I went looking for the ingredients to make some. Basically what I needed was seaweed for the wrap and a special sort of rice.

There is a supermarket beside my house that specifically carries Asian products, so after I came to my senses and remembered it was there <g> (I went to a regular store before that and was pissed because they didn't have what I needed) I went.

I found an aisle labeled (among other things) "Sushi Items." Wouldn't you think that would include rice? I found the seaweed. One side of the aisle had rice sticks, that looked more like noodles til I read the label, so I thought maybe I kept missing it or something. There was a stack of Indian rice nearby too, so I thought that might've been it, but it didn't look like it was.

Eventually I caught an employee and asked him to point me to the sushi rice. He did. To the other end of the store. How on EARTH am I supposed to guess it would be at the other end of the store???

Julie

Ah, yes, Julie. The layout of supermarkets defies any logic known to the human race. And why they insist rearranging them when you've only just figured out where everything is again, I really don't know.

Well, I do, really. It's so that you notice new stuff while you're trying to find the stuff you really want to buy. As if an aggravated, irritated shopper who just wants to find the canned soup aisle would *really* be interested in an impulse buy of dried fish scales or whatever it is they're trying to sell you.

Yvonne

this finding-things-in-a-supermarket rant is very interesting. if I was as rich as the fictional character in my avatar, I would offer all of you my services because:

I have a superpower. It's finding things in supermarkets.

It works 99% of the time. Even if I've never been in the store, I can walk immediately to the correct aisle and find the correct section right away. Now, this doesn't mean that I can go into Cash Wise Groceries and find savory (they don't carry it), but I certainly can get you to the spice aisle fast and directly.

If I had the money to travel around the world at will, I would offer my services.

What's your superpower?

(but this is a topic for another thread. )

I'm not sure I've got a superpower, but I can tell you both my kids do -- Indestructible Cuteness

PJ

To tag onto Paul's...

I hate Push-to-Talk, too. For all the reasons Paul stated and one more:

You have no choice but to answer your phone. Say I'm at dance and I'm expecting a call from my mother about something important so I leave my ringer on and warn my kids that I might have to answer the phone (because, otherwise, naturally, I would turn it off). If my best friend calls, for whatever reason, I can check the caller ID, realize it's not my important-urgent call, and ignore it.

Not so with PTT. Instead, a disembodied voice just SPEAKS with no regard whatsoever for the fact that you might be, oh, say, busy! And then, you have to answer, even if only to say, "Can't talk right now."

How rude is that?

Drives me bonkers.

Bethy

Wendy, you have my sympathies. There's nothing more aggravating than a service company that fails to do the one thing it's in business to do. Delivery companies come to mind, or even worse, delivery drivers.

Their sole function in life is to drive the van to the correct address and hand over the goods. You'd think, therefore, that they'd be pretty good at finding addresses - I mean, that's all they do, all day long, every day of the week. All that practice! They must be experts, mustn't they?

Well...no. Instead, they ring you up on their mobile and tell you where they are and expect you to guide them in. Thus ensues a ridiculous conversation wherein you use one set of landmarks to describe the route and they use another.

"I'm driving past the Shell garage," they say.

"What Shell garage? Are you anywhere near the big Sainsbury's?"

"Don't know, but there's a pub coming up on the left called the Jolly Roger."

"Sorry, don't know that," you reply. "How about that big Sainsbury's I just mentioned?"

"No, love, can't see that. There's a police station...?"

And so on until they crash into the next car because they're driving while talking on their phone.

Yvonne

I've got another one...

Parents who move into a new sector of town (or another city) in the middle of the year and register their kids at my school. My class just got its 25th student, and in a couple of weeks I'll have a 26th one, and that within a double class (first and second grade), which is supposed to have *less* students than regular classes!

Kae :p

People that talk to you when you're obviously busy drive me nuts!!!

My sister has been ranting for the last hour or so about someone in her writing forum. In between spurts of rant, I was calling the theater to reserve tickets for a special show. She read the phone number to me, watched me dial, then proceeded to rant again! Worse, is that she expected me to get the information from the phone call *and* respond to her rant. Bah!! I can only process one conversation at a time, thank you!

Sara

People that talk to me when I'm tired. I know that sounds rather witchy, but the last thing I want to do when I'm tired is talk or even listen to people talk.

jd

I hate having to call for any kind of repair service. Be it calling a plumber or the cable company. They tell you they will be their between 8 am and noon or 1 pm and 4pm. How come then every time the show up it is like 11:30 am or 3:30 pm. What are they doing the rest of the time because I have friends with the same complaint. They show up right at the end of the time they say they will come. We can't always be the last one scheduled.

I also hate the fact that you go through this long description of what is wrong and when the repair person gets there they have it all wrong and because of that half the time don't have the right parts.

Continuing with kmar's rant about service people...

My insurance company had arranged for a guy to come out and have a look at the leak in my roof that's now morphed into a rather large hole...I was told he would arrive between 1pm and 4pm.

He arrived at 4.20pm, and for some reason thought it was appropriate to bring along his two daughters, aged 4 and 6. While he was on the roof assessing the damage, the girls decided to go through the front door and start going through my house, touching things (and breaking them), and then chasing the poor cats around.

Hope you complained to the company, Aurora!! That's totally out of order!

LabRat

I know I'm late to the party, but I'll add my little whine and cheese.

Hate, hate, hate HATE line jumpers (or queue jumpers for you UK folk).

The other day I was waiting in a rather long line to pay a toll on the highway (don't get me started on highway tolls). I was about four cars from the pay booth when some yahoo comes zooming up between my line and the line just to my left, only to cut in my line when the big concrete barrier gave him no other choice. The car in front of me let him get in front of her. I don't know if I could have gathered my outraged wits enough to stop him but I would have let him hit my car before getting in front of me.

Or yesterday, when I was waiting patiently in the marked line for pick-up at the pharmacy. There were two clerks helping customers, but rather than line up behind a specific clerk, there was one line that fed to the next available clerk. I was next. This woman in one of those electric-motorized chairs came zipping up next to me, clearly expecting to use the clerk in front of her despite the fact that I'd been waiting patiently for 10 minutes to be helped. Thankfully the clerk she was waiting for called me to the counter when her customer finished up.

It's a crowded world. Those out there who think they are oh-so-much more important than the rest of us and therefore shouldn't have to wait can kiss my grits!

Lynn

Yep, Lynn, and the doubly-annoying thing about your second example is that the woman in the electric buggy thing had staked out the moral high ground - ie, she was disabled - and therefore you couldn't complain because then you'd be perceived as unsympathetic towards the disabled.

I had a similar thing at the airport over Christmas. I was standing in the queue to check in, and in waltzes a guy with a woman in tow who's on crutches. He goes straight to the check-in counter, jumping ahead of me and the queue behind me and throwing an apologetic 'sorry-but-as-you-can-see-she's-disabled' glance at us. Well, there were plenty of seats around, so the woman on crutches could have sat down while he checked in, for heaven's sake! But we all smiled understandingly and let him queue-jump.

Yvonne

I'm back - must be feeling grumpy today.

Clothing gripes:

1. Winter coats that are so close-fitting you can't get them on over your not-*that*-thick woollen sweater. I mean, what's the point of a winter coat that doesn't work with other winter clothes?

2. Winter dresses made out of thin, summer weight materials *and* with short sleeves. Just because the dress is in a 'winter' colour does *not* make it a winter dress, oh stupid fashion designer!

3. Cardigans, sweaters and fleeces with sleeves so tight you can't wear anything underneath them. And no, the rest of me might be a bit lumpy, but my arms are slim, so it's not the wearer that's at fault. Oh, and if you, by happy chance, *can* wear anything underneath, they're still so tight that the underneath garment rides all the way up your arms into tight bunches of material which you then have to pull back down by squeezing your hand up the tight sleeve of the cardigan and pulling. Then that pulls the neck out of shape so *then* you have to do a desperate wiggling motion to get everything back in place.

I'm sure there's more but I seem to have run out of grumpiness for now.

Yvonne

My turn. Banks who think you are so stupid that when you phone them up to tell them the cheque they were supposed to send at the beginning of December hasn't arrived and they promise to cancel it and send another and then you get the original cheque on Friday dated 2nd December but posted on the 18th! you won't realise that they never sent it out in the first place and it didn't go missing in the mail after all! Gits.

And then you get the second, replacement cheque the day after you put the original in the bank and you realise the original will bounce because it was cancelled before they sent it to you....

<breathe deep, breathe deep...>

Ah well, at least the dang thing has finally arrived, putting an end to a ten year (yup, you heard right) saga of trying to close down an account and get the balance paid and I NO LONGER HAVE TO DEAL WITH IT. )

LabRat

People (more specifically, students) who send me an email and expect a reply within two hours--especially if they sent the email at two in the morning. I check my email at the very least once a day during the semester. Sometimes a lot more times than that. And I answer emails promptly.

But you need to give me at least 24 hours. We do have lives, and are not sitting around just waiting to answer your emails.

And for that matter, people who think they are entitled to things they haven't worked for. If you didn't bother doing your homework all semester and couldn't get up to come to class, WHY do you expect me to work with you, even bend the rules, so you can still pass my class? Just because you want it doesn't mean you should get it.

My turn. I just lost one of my jobs. I call it surprise layoffs today, but I should have seen it coming. It's retail and our last sale just ended so they cut the associate list in half again. I didn't make the cut. I'm wallowing in bed into a pint of Haagan Daz, but my best friend is going to force me to go out with them and have fun tonight. I still have my other job, but it'll probably end in March. I'm just doing some free lance design work for a university in town while they're short-staffed.

Whine.

Fellow teachers should be able to identify with my latest complaint:
My GATE students have (theoretically) been working on their History Day projects since last July. I have given them pages of notes worth of feedback to students who turned pieces of the project in according to the week by week deadlines they had. I graded all of the projects at the end of November according to the national competition rubric and warned them that if they didn't improve their projects, then that was the grade they'd earn. Almost none of my students made any significant changes. Surprise, surprise, I gave them the grade they had earned. I just got an angry (all caps) e-mail from a parent who complained bitterly that she didn't agree with the B that I gave her daughter. "She gave A+ effort. You should reward her for her effort." Ummm, no! The girl should have taken the page of notes and the month of time to do what I told her to do. Do parents really believe that threatening to go to the principal and superintendent over a B on one assignment will get them anywhere?

Oh boy can I relate. I teach college level Art History, Art Ed and Computer Graphics. 2/3rds of the students (and that is being generous) are there because their parents insist they go to college. They don't hand in homework on time, if they hand it in at all. They exceed the absenses for the class or arive late and leave early. They don't put in the lab time required out side of the class. Of course, these are the students that complain most about their grade and how unfare I am or how tough I am. Then the college asks these same students to rate their Professor. Why doesn't the college ask the Professor to rate the student in the same fashon. Sure we give them a grade and keep track of absenses but unless they are in fear of failing reports do not go out. I think if you are going to give an irrisponsible student the right to bad mouth a professor then the professor should be able to defend their actions. Thank God most of the reports I get are mostly good or I would be out of a job.

Punctuality. Currently I'm sitting around in my office getting paid to do nothing. And no, I'm not complaining about the paying part. :p But if my boss tells me specifically to show up at 9 and she's not there...well, crap. I can't do anything until I receive my assignments.

Hey, my pet peeve is going back to a McDonald's and seeing everything wrong. I can't go in and just be a customer. LOL. Ah, it's been over a year now and I don't regret leaving the cult. I'm still branded mind you (burns LOL).

Oh Pam, where I am there is only face to face drive thru. I can't do the speaker ones anyways. I am so deaf!

Were I am (EDIT - was!) they took credit cards for a long time. The reason they stopped taking credit cards in my area (western cda) was... too many people were having fraudlent charges and so on. The credit card people too decided something too. The cards were a pain to deal with too!!!!! It slowed down service. We found our sevice on average decreased after the cards were not accepted. Mind you, our location ROCKED! yeah! LOL

One of our managers who was working towards their BSC in psch did this whole experiment and studied all the variables and found how the credit cards were slowing us down. It was fun and he got to watch us. Mind you he had to pick a project and he created this one (you have to do stuff like that when you want to 'develope' at McDs). We knew they were getting taken away and he just wanted to see if it would be a perk OR NOT for us.

Also another reason they stopped accepting, too many people were coming back saying "I didn't authorize this", but they did. One lady did that to us a lot. You don't use debit?
I think they started accepting them again here a month or two ago...

I could alwasy get the card to work. Did they do all the magic tricks? LOL. In one shift coffee spilt on the debit machine three times. I had many people get mad at me b/c our machine wouldn't work. Half the time it was because their cards were old. LOL. But that's just normal.

- try the burger wrapper around the card
- try a napkin
- get them to get the cleaner wipes for the card and/or the machine
- swipe at varying speeds
- unplug the cords at the back of the machine and try again.

These little kids there now a days are just to afraid to play with the machine. I like to, it's a challenge during a boring work day. I can do the above in just a minute or two, but man some workers are ...slow in every which way!

Oh and the computers bite. I had no problem. When they go down - just do it old school style! LOL. I love doing it that way.

There are too many better jobs out there and the better employees no longer work at McDonald's and just go elsewhere. Before it was so hard to get a job there b/c their criteria was high, but by the mid to late 90s it became easier b/c the eligable workforce was looking elsewhere.

Olive Garden -- yeah, why do people get surprised that things can take a while if it is busy! Gee wiz. I hate it when people don't read a menu period. I was with one girl and she just asked, "so what do you have" to the waitress. Um duh, read the menu!

I hate icky gross menus. I found out later thats why she just asks and gets what the waitress says is their so-called favourite.
I say just go wash your hands afterwards.

Todays pet peeves
Pens that explode. They should ban that.
Stupid people in classrooms. Just be quiet and listen and read what the prof gives you and don't ask dumb questions equivalent to what day of the week is it.
Dumb people that just dump their garbage while walking around and not hold on to it until they see a bin.
The weather we have been having. Hello it is suppose to be -10 to -20 here with the odd -30. It's been spring all the way through so far!!! UGH!! I want to go skiing and not end up in a muddy puddle. I want to go skating onthe river!!! The world is coming to an end.

Me again.

My digital TV company and their stupid new 'wonderful' Teleport service. Every time I see an ad for this they tell us it's 'TV you control' and it gives you access to 'a vast library of programmes you can watch any time you like.'

Har!

First of all, where's the control? You're at the mercy of some idiot back at the office and which programmes they decide to upload to the service out of Telewest's archives. And I've concluded that whoever it is they've hired to do it is straight off the bus from the local insane asylum.

Teleport Replay - a selection of programmes from the previous day, in case you missed them. There are about 15 per day on average. Vast library, huh?

Then there's the other section to the service, which are programmes from the archives. About 40 or so so far. Yeah, vast library, right.

Here's where the idiot really gets into his/her stride. Programmes are uploaded one day, then totally vanish three days later (they're supposed to be up for a couple of months before moving to the Last Chance To Watch section and then finally being deleted). Series are uploaded in haphazard order, with episodes missing. I spent two hours the other day watching a Cracker story in two parts - only to discover at the end of part two that it was actually a three part story...and part three was nowhere to be found. Three days later the entire list of Cracker episodes vanished.

Like everything about Telewest it's a lot of hooha and not much substance.

LabRat

Interesting, Roo -- I wouldn't have thought that cards were slowing things down. From my end (when the machines work) it's just as fast if not faster. Though I used to do credit card sales (back in prehistoric times of the late 80s to Telewest. I hate being at the mercy of someone else's idea of the things I ought to watch. We got a Tivo for Christmas, which is cool, but not quite as cool as I thought it'd be. I mostly wanted it because of Sci-Fi Fridays, where they show Stargate and Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica back-to-back. Meanwhile Monk is on USA, and we'd like to watch that, too. But you can't record two things at once. And the first time we tried it, it recorded Stargate and BG, but *not* Atlantis. Stupid thing thought that its schedule conflicted with Stargate, and therefore it dropped Atlantis. And while it's played again later that night (this is cable, after all) apparently the nifty Season Pass feature doesn't understand when you want to capture the second showing of something. We'll work around it -- you can set it to manually record -- but it was annoying to discover. Still a fun toy, though.

PJ

Okay, there I can't argue. We were getting something that was on the top shelf once and there was no one around to get it for us, so we just used the ladder there and got it ourselves. If the manager had seen us, he probably would have had a cow!

And my own vent...

Customers who don't feel like doing their own work. 90% of the questions I answer all day could have been answered by looking in our catalog or on our website! It's just easier to pick up that phone and get someone else to do it for you!

Oh, and when someone asks a question...and I answer it...and they don't like the answer so they say, "really?" or "you're kidding." As if I'd make things up just to see if they're paying attention!!

AND my two and a half hour round-trip commute doesn't help my outlook much either!

I suspect it won't make you feel any better, Pam, but you're not alone.
Tivo apparently isn't recording Atlantis because of some glitch that's mixed up the dates.

LabRat

Oh Labby, same thing goes on here. With Rogers Digital Cable, we're supposed to get a service called RogersOnDemand, which is the same thing - can select programs to watch.

Trouble is all the shows they have on the selection menus are really old/bad movies and documentaries I don't want to watch.

If you won't put *good* programming on it, what's the freaking point of the service?? :p

Julie

Yeah, the Teleport Replay section is pretty naff. It's mostly the dross, like dumbed down documentaries/reality shows. And the news! I'm still trying to figure out who the heck would want to watch the previous night's news again.

The other thing that irks me with the entire service is that you can't record what's uploaded. This kills me. Why can I record series two of Waking the Dead if they showed it on their UK Drama channel, but I can't record it from Teleport? This makes no sense to me. ) and in the middle of S9 of SG1. I was able to circumvent it by switching my recording of Voyager from the 4pm run to the midnight run. But nothing I can do to avoid it with SG1. Which totally sucks.

Then, they added insult to injury this week by adding in a logo for Over There in the middle of BSG! The swines! How can they decimate good programming this way? It's sacrilege.

LabRat

So it's not an overlap problem? Thanks, Labby, that's helpful I've reprogrammed my Season Pass to get *all* showings, including duplicates, so that also scheduled the midnight replay of Atlantis. So if it skips the first one, for overlap, at least it'll get the second. I think. Guess we'll find out tonight

The irony, of course, is that I don't usually find Atlantis that interesting but every once in a while they have something good.

PJ

In my cubefarm at work -- I am sick of being in a cube next to a person who loves to fart and cut their nails.

Joy.

UPDATE -- (feb 9). I get to move my cube b/c I will be doing a different job w/i my dept! YAY. No more Mr. FartClip

Sitting up all night unable to sleep and then having to get ready to go out at 7 am and sit for an hour listening to an engaged tone on the phone in the hope I can get through to my doctor's surgery in among all the other patients phoning - which is the only way to get a doctor's appointment these days thanks to my surgery's new appointments system. (If I don't get through by 9am I have to give up and try again the next day)

<yawn>

LabRat

Well,

I think this particular pet peeve of mine concerns a very local phenomenon.

Here, whenever you arrive at a mall or even a cafe you will be delayed by a guard who checks to make sure you don't have any weapons and/or bombs on you.

I'm really fine with that part - after all they are there for everyone's safety and this method works.

The annoying thing is when I reach Jerusalem by bus. Again, when you enter the station you go through a short security check which includes either the guard waving an impressive wand around you and going through your bag/large purse/world traveler backpack or going through one of those electro-magnetic gates (like the ones you have at an airport) and having your pack (whatever size) x-rayed.

No big deal right?

Well, it is when people get involved in the process!

All this equipment has been there for at least a year but still people try to go through the electronic gate with:

• change in their pockets
• with their cell phone in their pocket or hung around their necks
• with keys in their pocket
• or (and this is my favorite) while talking on their cell phone!

Just get everything organized before you reach the station!

Oh, and the best part: some people complain about these safety precautions and the delay and later you see them holding up the line with one, or all of the listed above acts of stupidity.

That's it for now, I think.
Avia (who is traveling to Jerusalem, by bus, this evening)

You can never fail to be surprised by just how dumb some people are. I remember when I worked in the local library, we often had to take trolley loads of books just in to the main public area to check through the card catalogue while processing them.

These books couldn't be taken out by readers until they were processed, labelled, catalogued, etc, so we'd always stick a huge notice on the sides of the trolley to say so. The notices covered the shelves of books.

It was always a source of amazement how often you'd turn around to find some reader lifting up the notice to get to the books underneath and then trying to make off with them.

Never failed.

And then, classic, they'd either say, "Oh, didn't realise." or, my favourite, "Oh, I didn't notice the sign." You just lifted it up to get underneath it, you moron! How could you not see it?

LabRat

1. Users who don't read the instructions on the screen. Doesn't matter how big you make the notice, or how non-technical and succinct you make it, they still won't read it. They prefer to click, get stuck, and then phone for help.

2. Users who ask for instructions to be specially written and made easily available, and then don't read them.

3. Users who don't read the informative or instructional emails I send them.

4. Users who think disk storage is infinite.

5. Users who think low disk storage is an IT problem and definitely not, under any circumstances whatsoever, their problem.

6. Users who think that a few scraps of knowledge about their home computer equates to being an expert on professional, business-level computing, causing them to make suggestions and requests which are so preposterous that you just don't know where to start telling them how wrong or stupid they are.

7. And just for a change of pace, staff who lose the information I email them and need me to re-locate and resend it.

8. Staff who never put anything away and then turn to me for a solution when the installation CD they need has mysteriously got lost.

There. That was fun. I feel so much better now.

Yvonne

I did that.

Was getting some HTML software off the web. Downloaded, installed. Didn't work. Updated. Didn't work. Uninstalled. Uninstalling triggered an auto-form asking if I wanted to tell the company why I'd gotten rid of the software.

So, I decided to fill it out. Said I couldn't get it work on my system.

Half an hour later, I got an email from the developers explaining that the latest Windows security update interfered with the software's function, and that there was a patch available.

Downloaded and installed the patch, and *poof*, it worked!

I emailed them back, thanking them for their help and suggesting that they put up a notice on the download page that you need the patch.

Quick reply: There is one.

Went to check. Didn't see it. Decided to take a more careful look.

And there, at the top of the page, in giant red "this is hugely important; read it now or you're an idiot" letters, was a notice about the problem and the patch.

The reason I didn't see it? I'm so used to that sort of thing being used to sell virtual snake oil that I automatically block it out. The content was recognized and disregarded before it ever made it to the conscious level. I had to stop, realize there was a part of the page I hadn't actually looked at, scroll back up, and consciously force myself to override the mental filters before I could actually read the text.

Oops.

Paul