start a victory garden and ration your IRRATIONALLY ANGRY feelings, part 3

Also:

I was printing out my parents boarding passes from Spirit Airlines last night and they offered the normal nickel-and-dime-you-to-death services and the option to voluntarily pay an additional $1 or $5 to help the airline be more green.

So not a service, just some random fucking guilty bullshit about how if we want this airline to be more environmentally friendly, give us extra money. We're already paying extra money to check a bag and have more leg room than a chicken a 12-by-12 factory farming crate, and now these fuckers have the nerve to try to extort money for their environmental initiative? I'm still so angry about that I can barely form a coherent objection to it.

I'm underemployed right now working as a temp in a law firm.. I got a ton of overtime last week but I am FUCKING FURIOUS because I HATE overtime and I hate my line of work because Im subject to the whims of capricious lawyers who dont give a fuck about my life or free time (or common sense/decency). The irony being I'm making time and a half and have a bunch more money than I would yet I am still FUCKING FURIOUS because theres a lot more overtime in the future.

It also doesnt help that because I'm a temp I'm realizing about 2/3ds of what my employer is paying the temp agency, which is basically the same amont of money I used to make like ten fucking years ago.

thanks obama

^^^great CSR, there, carl. *screams*

I was a participant in the following exchange last week:

Cashier: 'Thanks for shopping with us. Can I take your e-mail address?'
Me: 'No...'

Hate it when I'm too fast for a website. Site loads, I put the cursor on something like "SEARCH" and click, but in that split second between those two actions, the site has loaded up just a little bit more and I wind up clicking on something like "CONTACT US".

When I started at TCS they encouraged us to ask ppl for their email addresses at the register. At first they said it like, "Hey, people might want to know when we have sales! Just ask, if they say no, that's fine obvs." By the time I left they were offering positive incentives to workers who got the highest percentages of ppl to give them an email. I got the feeling negative incentives were right around the corner.

Radio Shack has been really obnoxious about the email stuff for years

lol Radio Shack was way ahead of the curve, they used to ask for your address years ago

I just had one of those, cash purchase of an overpriced-yet-undeniably-effective hair care product for one of my daughters from a salon I visit for no other purpose.

"What's your last name?" "Is it 'Dusty' Perry?" "I'm supposed to ask." "How do you spell your last name?" "Who normally does your hair here?" Ha ha ha, who does my greying, thinning hair.

Canada Goose Parkas

It also doesnt help that because I'm a temp I'm realizing about 2/3ds of what my employer is paying the temp agency

Not to stoke any further IA, but it's possible that you are grossly overestimating the cut that your temp agency is willing to part with.

Very true. I used to be temped for Accounts Payable jobs, so the most hilarious thing to me was knowing the 'big secret' of exactly how much the company was paying for my services because I was the one processing the bill! (Of course temp agencies never ever want their temps to know this stuff).

I recall more than one job where I got hourly $13, and the agency was getting $22, and that this ratio was pretty usual, so, I got more than half, but less than 2/3 of the payout.

However, and this really ticked me off, one job that was largely funded by taxpayer dollars paid me way less than half of the outrageous sum the temp agency got! I think I got $9 out of $25 bucks on that one! No business like soaking the people.

temp agencies take that much?! damn.

i guess companies will pay to screw people out of benefits

Most of the times I was ever offered to 'go perm' it was usually with a pay cut from what I had been getting as a temp ('but you'll get benefits') so, no, thanks.

One reason I did temp for a long time was that the pay rates had at least something to do with demand, whereas permanent positions tended to be successfully squashed. While it was humiliating in some ways to have the agency taking a lot of money for doing nothing but landing me the spot, that did save me a lot of dreadful human resources interviews and frankly, I just wouldn't have found those positions on my own. I also used to see the most interesting trainwrecks: places where I'd take over the suddenly vacated position of an embezzler, a revenge case, a blazing incompetent. Whole little histories there. The work of course was more boring than not so regular changes of scenery were helpful as well.

lol Radio Shack was way ahead of the curve, they used to ask for your address years ago

That reminds me of this collection of anecdotes (I thought it mentioned the hassling-for-address thing but it doesn't seem to):
http://www.ihateworkinginretail.com/tag/i-hate-radioshack/

I particularly enjoyed VIII and XV, if you've got better things to do than read the whole collection of longwinded rants. But who would have better things to do than that?

omg XV is amazing, I have no idea what that is

http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t53/baldie0522/doin-brum.gif

baldie doin-brum.gif

ia: egregiously bad service in restaurants. i'm sooooo chill and forgiving about minor food service slip-ups. i don't care if you smile. i don't care if you refill my water without me having to ask. if i don't say when i'm ordering that i'm allergic to XYZ food item (which would be a gross overstatement, since my food allergies are really trivial), it's a minor inconvenience but not the end of the world if the kitchen forgets to leave it off. i just want a baseline level of transactional ease if i'm gonna choose your place over other places. i had work to do last night and i ran out to get a quick takeout order so i could scarf down some food and meet my midnight deadline. i ended up waiting probably 40 minutes for a dish that at most would take ten minutes to cook from pre-prepped ingredients and assemble in a styrofoam box. and the restaurant was busy, but not slammed. it just made me very stressed out. which is my problem, not theirs. i don't handle stress well. 40 minutes is a long time to wait though.

no i in yr a

so to speak

the level of stress made my a feel i

_lol Radio Shack was way ahead of the curve, they used to ask for your address years ago_

That reminds me of this collection of anecdotes (I thought it mentioned the hassling-for-address thing but it doesn't seem to):
http://www.ihateworkinginretail.com/tag/i-hate-radioshack/

I particularly enjoyed VIII and XV, if you've got better things to do than read the whole collection of longwinded rants. But who would have better things to do than that?

Whoa thank you, aps! I read the first few of those when it was first posted, but missed the great ones you pointed out plus my favorite, the one w/ Stoned Craig going "I'm hungry, Paw." (Which I've said a lot to various people over decades for no reason I can discern, so maybe it's just part of the collective human drive to say it.)

Stoned Je55e

OK that Brum story looool
Original Brum theme was instrumental but TIL there is an extremely lengthy modern version

bill gates the spider

News sites showing handheld video but blurring out the edges? I feel like I see something like this every week or two. Sorry, this is some really traumatic video.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/dying-among-strangers-metro-victim-found-fellow-riders-who-tried-to-save-her-life/2015/01/13/98f6c37e-9b7a-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html?hpid=z3

lately every time i watch some crappy viral video prank, i get IA imagining myself just out and about trying to run an errand and getting trapped in a viral video prank. like that dumb telekinesis coffee shop thing.*

*maybe the reactions are fake, idk.

It's very likely my last dying words will be "Turn your phone sideways if you insist on recording this."

Yeah, it's not because something is being blurred out, it's because people don't shoot in landscape and for some reason news organizations have chosen to present it like that. I think they should just reject all portrait videos.

Why can't phones just format videos in landscape regardless of the position of the phone?

camera sensor orientation? the actual sensor isn't square iirc, I may be wrong

those takeout containers with interlocking flaps - eating from them makes me ia bcz the flaps get in the way

i usually dump it out onto a plate of something but sometimes you can't & raaaaage

Like Chinese take out containers?

if you hold it from the side you are holding down three of the flaps automatically

Blurred margins - you'll also see this sometimes when shows re-run old 4x3 segments in their new 16x9 format.

Was cutting up a carrot for some soup for dinner and lost about half of it to the 3 slices just rolling right off the cutting board and onto the floor.

Weather getting even worse and still not collected flat pack. Had stiff neck on Monday the one day this week when there hasn't been really bad weather, think it was actually calm and sunny.
Snowed last night and now there's a major storm happening tonight and tomorrow.
i was just hoping I'd be able to get this thing home on the bus. Which will be a load of fun in itself. Thing is about 5 foot or so long which means it's a bit awkward. Maybe will have to get taxi and I'm really broke this week.

xp
I don't know your floors but you can rinse stuff off.

Having so much fun trying to get my cursor to keep things selected so it can organise them. Not sure where flaw lies is it a thing with Windows 7 or something.
JUst tried to sort out a load of music on Foobar and instead of it clicking ad dragging a set of tracks it would just shift the highlight across other tracks or click and start playing on any track among several selected.
Then just had even more fun trying to scroll up a page elsewhere on this site to try to click on the link to here.
aaaaaargh

These cutsey little browser messages that appear when a problem occurs.

For example, I guess Firefox didn't shut down properly last night, so now I've got it over here in the other window saying "Well, this is embarassing…" Like it somehow dinged my bumper as it was trying to back out of its own driveway.

The worst is Chrome. "There's no way you can see this PDF of your parcel map because we're Chrome and AWWWWWWW SNAP!"

while we're on computer issues - windows programs which, when you go to open a file, always take you back to some obscure folder on your hard drive rather than the last one you were on, meaning if you want to open multiple files you have to go through the rigmarole of locating the folder you wanted each time.

Oh yeah that sucks. Why do they do that?

there must be a 1337 way of stopping that. it's so frustrating.

i can admit that i am irrationally angered by the npr program "invisibilia"
i hate the way they edit it
the topics are just barely quasi-deep and today i learned the urgent lesson of "your fears aren't real"
the style of speech exemplified in that program annoys me
ugh

invisibiiiilya
so precious, so deep

ok i feel better
definitely need to avoid this program though

Ha Just 15 minutes ago I subscribed to this podcast b/c my therapist recommended one particular episode (not the fear one).

I do hate that but I also hate it sometimes when programs do what you suggest and default to the last one, e.g. if 99% of the files I edit are in a standard documents folder but one day I need to use the same software to edit some configuration file in an obscure location or something that e.g. Google Talk has hidden in its own downloads folder, and then next time I open a document it shows me that folder and not the standard one

in short, why can't software just read my mind

(but please don't actually read my mind either, it is full of junk and secrets)

xxp I just heard the first Invisibilia double-bill this week and kind of liked it - it was good for my walk home, where I don't want to think too hard about anything because I might have to check out for a minute and concentrate on not being hit by a car etc - but while the interviewees were interesting, the questions the presenters asked were so point-missingly "so, a bad thing happened. did that feel bad?", and at one point they were almost falling over each other to emphasise that they totally didn't know anything about this mental health gobbledegook because lol not crazy, I mean this stuff is for the crazies, right? and I felt embarrassed

(ok, I just checked and I've heard the Thoughts double-bill but not the Fear one yet)

i heard the thoughts one
it wasn't so bad tbh
it contained some essential truths -- i guess it's the way they're delivered that makes me want to barf

mostly it's the radiolab-style
my irritation is totally irrational

the radiolab guys make me IA so I can totally relate

When people say "oh, like you could do better" in response to criticism of someone who is supposed to be a professional or high-level in their field. Like yeah, that's the fucking point, they're supposed to be much better at whatever it is than me.

in 3rd grade I pointed out in the spelling bee that one girl horribly blew a word and this kid in front of me said "you couldn't do any better, so shut up kid".

won it in 5th grade. take that, motherfucker.

splendid

https://static.standard.co.uk/2024/05/30/13/05/Close_Up_Of_New_Cap_Attached_To_Plastic_Bottle__Connected_m1g9z4nh.jpeg

in 3rd grade I pointed out in the spelling bee that one girl horribly blew a word and this kid in front of me said "you couldn't do any better, so shut up kid".

won it in 5th grade. take that, motherfucker.

oh man I came in 2nd in my first grade spelling bee- the last “word” was “great aunt”. I spelled it G-R-E-A-T-A-U-N-T and was shocked when I was told I was wrong. The kid who won spelled it G-R-E-A-T-hyphen-A-U-N-T. My immediate take was, “what the heck is a hyphen, I’ve never heard that word in my life!” Certainly we didn’t learn hyphens in first grade. Forty years later, my current take is “WTF, that is two words and no way in hell is it hyphenated.”

I won it in 6th grade and went on to the state competition. The same kid had by then moved to a different school, and he was also representing his school at the state finals. I am pleased to report that, even though I didn’t come close to winning at that level, I did make it way further than him.

"sometimes when I get annoyed by the sounds of the world being the world, I think to myself, "What would John Cage make of this?"

i live in the middle of nowhere in the woods of massachusetts and where i am now is the loudest place i have ever lived in my life and i lived in the middle of Philadelphia for 12 years. sometimes i will get - all at once - cars, tons of birds (including an insanely loud and annoying hawk), digging machines, road construction, house improvement construction, leaf blowers, lawn mowers, dogs barking, and my neighbor's wood shop saws. and on top of it sometimes, the local kid post-punk jazz rock band practicing across the street. its a lot! i always lived in quiet places in philly off of the street. my last apartment there was SO quiet. i never heard a thing.
i just close my windows now. listen to the air conditioner.

I can cope with the world being the world in a big symphony. I can listen to it or it will disappear if i'm focusing on something. But when the dog next door takes a barking solo and it is way too loud in the mix and is largely stop start staccato i cant hear or do anything but wait it out

When people say "oh, like you could do better" in response to criticism of someone who is supposed to be a professional or high-level in their field. Like yeah, that's the fucking point, they're supposed to be much better at whatever it is than me.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Monday, 19 August 2024 19:30 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this will some day soon drive me to the headlines

oh like u could do better than Poch

pbuh

i am definitely an indoor loudhead. i like music loud and the t.v./movies loud. with the windows closed. but as i get older the less i like the car noise and all the rest of it. i do wish sometimes that i lived away from it but i think i'm too old to start living in the wilderness.

x-post

arrythmic barking drives me up the wall

neighbors dog gets let out of a morning & intermittently goes off abt squirrels

drives me batty

Yep, same. Sometimes at 5am. This morning as 7am which, ok, i was awake... but i gave my partner the shits cos i put earplugs in to read the news.

neighbor’s car is banged up & battery is slowly dying, car alarm goes off at least twice a day, random times, so fun >:(

the sounds of the city are, this morning, mainly mechanical wrenches being used to secure the scaffolding 30ft away. surely those things (and electric screwdrivers etc) could be quieter because jesus.

pause. pause. BRRRRRRRRRRR. pause. BRRRRRRRRRRR. pause, pause. BRRRRRRRRRRR.

repeat for two hours

See also A FUCKING LEAF BLOWER

I would like to be a vegan but for noise. There must be *some*way of making it possible, that isn't moving to a shack in the woods?

i opened my window this morning and it has been nonstop chainsaws ever since.

I like hearing multiple bandsaws from different driveways harmonize together

fireworks, gunshots or nailgun

fabric bandaids - did they always unravel this fast? i swear the current ones shred 10 minutes after you put them on
fucking maddening

oh man I came in 2nd in my first grade spelling bee- the last “word” was “great aunt”. I spelled it G-R-E-A-T-A-U-N-T and was shocked when I was told I was wrong. The kid who won spelled it G-R-E-A-T-hyphen-A-U-N-T. My immediate take was, “what the heck is a hyphen, I’ve never heard that word in my life!” Certainly we didn’t learn hyphens in first grade. Forty years later, my current take is “WTF, that is two words and no way in hell is it hyphenated.”

I won it in 6th grade and went on to the state competition. The same kid had by then moved to a different school, and he was also representing his school at the state finals. I am pleased to report that, even though I didn’t come close to winning at that level, I did make it way further than him.

― epistantophus, Monday, August 19, 2024 3:15 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I came in second in I think 5th and made it to the ward spelling be (one level below the city-wide). I was doing reasonably well, but I got a judge with a thick dc-maryland accent and the word was "Autarchy." I could not fucking make out what she was saying no matter how much she repeated it, it sounded like "AWRCHRTRGARCHY" I can still hear it ringing in my head. I got out on that word.

Lol it had to be a mush of closed vowels

God, the ice cream van, specifically the tuneless warbling of the music they play. I live in a relatively quiet area, but there are lots of houses around and I can hear the fucker doing the round for over an hour before he turns up practically outside our house. Once it pulls up, it's loud and the music wheezes and oscillates, like a low-powered toy on its last legs.

There's quite a lot of old folk in our close and they all wobble out, clutching their bank cards, for their cone of sludge and sprinkles, sharing their tales of bunions and varicose veins. I imagine having to work inside the tiny cab, sweating, purple, literally powering the amp with a turning crank like an organ grinder.

I have no residual joy from my youth about this either. It's irrational anger all the way down.

^ a minor masterpiece

otm

Businesses that leave ALL their lights on when they're closed. Particularly car dealerships, but plenty of others too.

God, the ice cream van, specifically the tuneless warbling of the music they play. I live in a relatively quiet area, but there are lots of houses around and I can hear the fucker doing the round for over an hour before he turns up practically outside our house. Once it pulls up, it's loud and the music wheezes and oscillates, like a low-powered toy on its last legs.

There's quite a lot of old folk in our close and they all wobble out, clutching their bank cards, for their cone of sludge and sprinkles, sharing their tales of bunions and varicose veins. I imagine having to work inside the tiny cab, sweating, purple, literally powering the amp with a turning crank like an organ grinder.

I have no residual joy from my youth about this either. It's irrational anger all the way down.

― I would prefer not to. (Chinaski), Friday, 30 August 2024 17:02 (one week ago) link

Ha, great post. This took me back to hot, air-conditioning-less summers in New Brunswick, NJ in between my college years. There was this one particular truck that sounded like a skipping record, it just played these same three bars of 2/4 music over and over again that sounded like possibly the end of some tune. There was another one that randomly punctuated its music with a recorded "HELLO?" in the voice of a middle-aged New Jersey Jewish woman. I'm also now remembering the revolting smell of my summer housemate Joey's room - feet + weed + booze + old window AC + no outside air, just disgusting.

We kept hearing the ice cream man and his off-key music around the neighborhood this summer, but never spotted him.

Finally, on a walk, I saw him — a dude on a bicycle? With a big basket of ... orange snacks? I couldn't figure out what they were, but it couldn't have been ice cream. Woulda melted too soon.

That day, the warped jingle was playing "Deck the Halls". This happened last month.

Mom does this annoying thing where she'll ask me a question, and if I don't answer within whatever arbitrary period of time she sets, she just does whatever she wants.

Like tonight, an old friend is coming over to watch election results with is, so we decided to get a pizza. She msgs me to ask "when should we get it", and I hadn't talked to my friend yet to see when he was coming, but he pings me and he tells me sausage.

I go back to mom to say we can do it now, can we get sausage and she's like "oh I already ordered it w pepperoni"

Only 15 minutes had passed!

My daughter just showed me a snowflake she'd cut out at school, carefully following instructions to fold the correct kind of triangle. It was very detailed and impressive. And had eightfold symmetry. (I blame the school obviously.)