Whew it's hot out here! Summer Mini-Rants

[niblet_head]

So, you're clearly calling from a call center asking for my boss. I ask your name and who you're with. You're not at all familiar to me, so I buzz into the boss's office and he doesn't know you or your company, either.

Me: Thanks for holding, can I take a message?
You: Is he not available?
Me: (Not for YOU, now that you've asked such a stupid question.) May I take a message?
You: So, he's not available?
Me: Can I ask what the call is in reference to?
You: (Heavy sigh.) I have a client here in front of me. (Heavy sigh.) Ah, forget it.

Click.

So, you are training your client in how to be unprofessional?

Look, I know that I can be a Total Bitch on the phone, but it is my job to screen. I just TOLD you he's not available by asking if you want to leave a message. Do you want me to confirm he has no fucking idea who you are and doesn't take unsolicited calls? Ok, I'll do that next time, Ruth Lee from SRC.

 

[Shot From Guns]

Couldn't you just personally consider three of the numbers to be non-operational? I.e., don't give the numbers to anyone and route them to jacks with no phones or with phones with the ringers silenced?

 

[Bosstone]

This is why I try to have as many discussions as possible via email. You can send people the chain when they fuck up.

I should have clarified: that conversation was in email. I did send her the past emails in the conversation. She sent me the very emails she was insisting said something they did not. That's a special kind of dumb right there.

 

[Bosstone]

That's why I refuse to mention Standard or Daylight in any times I give. I just say Pacific Time or Mountain Time or Arizona Time or whatever. Even for a date in the future, it's not as if there's two time systems in effect on November 24 or anything.

 

[Wile E]

If it takes 10 minutes to get a fucking cup of coffee then you're not a convenience store. First I had to dodge various people wandering around oblivious to other people holding scalding hot cups of coffee. I finally make it to the island where they keep the cups and creamers and more than half of the area is taken up by a store worker who chose this very busy time to restock and has to have all the cabinet doors open and pulled out several large containers and spread them on the counter. Some other patron decided to camp out in front of the coffee lids and chit chat with the worker making her even less attentive to people trying to walk around her while holding scalding hot cups of coffee.

When I had to go to the other side of the island because I couldn't reach the stirrers or lids, the worker chose that second to bend over and stick her big ass* in the way almost causing me to spill scalding hot coffee on myself or her big ass. Make it to the other side of the island, dodging a couple more people. Worker decides to plop another container down on that side and take up more space. Now someone else wants to get to the stuff where I'm at and can't wait.

I finally get my coffee together and a lid on my scalding hot coffee and walk to the
counter where there are 3 registers and someone at each register. I stand in a line in the middle ready to go to the next open register other people line up behind me but out of the corner of my eye I see a woman standing off to the side. The worker at the first register has trouble resetting one of the gas pumps (recent power outage messed stuff up) so he has to ask someone else to tell the customer at that pump that they
need to move to another pump. Thing is, he was already talking to that person on the intercom but he couldn't bother to talk to them again, better to pull someone away who was working the middle register. The first register opens and lurking lady jumps forward. I say out loud, "you've got to be kidding me". Well, karma got her because her card got declined and while she was arguing with the guy the middle register
opened, I paid for my coffee and left, dodging a few more people with my cup of scalding hot coffee.

There were several times I thought about just walking out and leaving the coffee and I wish I had because the coffee sucked.

*In case I offended anyone with a big ass, I also have a big ass for my size and I am keenly aware of where I'm placing it when other people are trying to walk around me especially if they are holding SCALDING HOT COFFEE!

 

[Cat Whisperer]

And as long as they're not fish hooks.

"You fit into me
Like a hook into an eye
A fish hook
An open eye."

- The ever-cheerful Margaret Atwood

I'm on Mountain Time, baby! I don't know nuthin' bout no standard or daylight savings or whatever.

 

[purplehorseshoe]

Who the FUCK burned popcorn in the break room microwave?

(Actually, that's not true: I know exactly who it was. New Gal, you're officially on notice.)

 

[Shot From Guns]

This is a very volatile topic in our house. It cannot be approached without a fight.

Some fights just need to happen. (Or discussions, at least--there's not reason it has to be a fight, per se, at least on your end.) It's not fair for you to have to put up with this shit just because your husband is counting on your desire to avoid confrontation to keep you complacent with his son stepping all over you. (And I'm assuming it is you getting all the extra work of cleaning up after His Highness, and not your husband.)

IMO, husband should have three options: (1) immediately take over any and all extra work that results from his son living with you; (2) persuade son to start doing his fair share of the housework--which may be more than either of you end up doing, because he's not contributing in any other way; or (3) get his son to move out and start supporting himself.

 

[Moonlitherial]

When the revolution comes, you are going to be first against the wall.

Curiously enough a post from the Dope that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined Shot from Guns as "The first against the wall when the revolution came"

 

[Shot From Guns]

I'm already completely wiped out from the TERRIBLE HORRIBLE PAIN in my back and right arm

Ugh, there's nothing worse than trying to work with terrible people when you're in pain and have been for quite some time. It just wears down any normal buffer of patience and sanity that normally keeps you from snapping.

Fortunately, the big one came just short of having to go for stitches.

Eh, as long as the cut is somewhere you don't mind having a scar, sometimes you can just make do with some good solid band-aids.

Fuck my fucking eyebrows for still trying to meet across the bridge of my nose after many moths of plucking them.

Just months? You can pluck that shit for years and it will keep coming back. Always and forever, if mine are any indication. (Sounds like they don't grow as far to the middle as yours, but the parts I do pluck have never stopped growing.)

 

[Boggette]

WELL THEN WHY THE FUCK DID YOU USE AN A4 TEMPLATE FOR THIS POWERPOINT?

They want you to have to feed the printer one page at a time!

 

[Cat Whisperer]

Nope. I've managed to avoid it by not caring in the slightest about LeBron James.

 

[Time Stranger]

Dung Beetle, from all I've read about your trials with your step kids, you must be the most patient person on earth. I think I would have strangled them all years ago. Hang in there.

 

[Shot From Guns]

I'm mostly just tired of being whined at because she's bored and "stuck", when she had opportunities to do something about it.

From the way you phrased your post (one last summer of freedom), she's gotta be at least 16 or 17. Tell her to grow the fuck up already. She's old enough to be responsible for making her own summer plans. Read a book--or even watch some fucking shitty daytime television, if that's what it comes down to.

ETA:

I mean, what the hell was she expecting? Not to have to work, but to have some magical income source that meant she could spend the summer in Cancun?

 

[olivesmarch4th]

I am really fucking sick right now. Not sleeping so well last night, finally fell asleep on the couch this morning, and was immediately disappointed upon waking up, because damn, this ''being awake'' thing sucks right now. I would rather just be unconscious 'til it's over.

It's also apparently 100 degrees outside. Which, while not immediately affecting me and my sickness, just sucks on a general level for everyone concerned.

ETA- sorry, Palo Verde. It's just weird, that's all.

 

[Cicero]

Why does every company I ring- no matter what they trade in, or what time- explain that they are "experiencing high volumes of calls and your call answering may be delayed"? Why the hell can't they just say they are too cheap to hire enough staff?

 

[dante]

Dunno if I qualify as old (age 54), and I don't have to stop when my pelvis hurts (although it does get pretty bad), but the last time I sought medical attention for it, the doctor's medical treatment was to tell me to lose weight.

At least you actually went to see a doctor though, even if he didn't do what you wanted him to do. Which is my other complaint. People who go in thinking they already know the problem and the cure, and the doctor should just confirm it. My father-in-law apparently managed to cram a medical degree into his high school education somewhere...

 

[Shot From Guns]

Honestly, the sheer incompetence of most of humanity never ceases to amaze me.

ETA:

I suppose it would be more accurate, and also more depressing, to say that I have ceased to be amazed by the sheer incompetence of most of humanity.

 

[badbadrubberpiggy]

What's sad is that there are people who will staple one page or cannot manage to staple multiple pages in an intelligent fashion* prompting people like your boss to have to explain stapling to everyone in case they might be as moronic as these other people.

*I work with just such people. We often have multiple pages of medical records which we staple together. We have a set order to staple them in which rarely gets followed. People often staple in the middle of the client's name and address section then realize they forgot to staple something or fax the record and so they rip it apart tearing the name and address section making it unreadable and then put it back together using several staples to piece together the mess they made. Sometimes the staple ends up half off the pages so they are barely held together or the staple doesn't go through all the pages and they somehow fail to notice this. And yes, I have seen someone staple one piece of paper. :smack:

It really is amazing how some people can't handle the simplest tasks. At an old job, we had a bunch of temps (like 8, IIRC) come in to help on this massive copying & filing project. Basically, take the file (each was paperclipped together), copy one page from it (same page from every one), then put it back together & file it. Boring as hell, but easy, no?

7 of them had no issue with this. The one, well, paperclips eluded him. He could get the paper out, and copy it, but somehow managed to never actually get the file clipped back together. And I don't mean he didn't use the paperclip and just put stuff back loose. He clipped some stuff half-backwards, some half upside down, others the paper clip was just barely hanging on. He just couldn't figure out how paperclip.

 

[Shot From Guns]

If you ask me for help with something at 4:45 p.m. and I immediately respond "Sure!"... DON'T FUCKING SIT THERE AND NOT TELL ME WHAT IT IS YOU ACTUALLY NEED.