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

now trayce you know that violence never solves anything

'specially if there is a short pause before-and-after. Because, Matthew, I am wasting my precious time to enlighten you with my point of view.

Customers pull this shit too when theyre trying to be pushy asswipes. "OK so listen here... what was your name again? Trayce? OK, Trayce. Listen to me, Trayce. I need you to understand that this issue with bla bla bla bla bla just isnt acceptable, Trayce, and I need you do bla bla bla bla"

*Trayce shoots self*

Funny thing is that in those customer experiences, they usually call me Trayce or Tracey too.

Sometimes even Terry.

One time, a guy started in on that sort of thing, except he was like, "Why don't you come outside with me. I don't want to embarrass you in front of your customers in here."

How considerate of him.

websites whose frontpages have a huge "NEW USER? REGISTER HERE" prompt right at the top of the page and a tiny "registered user? login here" box (or sometimes just a link that requires a pointless clickthrough) hidden somewhere near the bottom. I guess they aren't too optimistic about attracting repeat users?

The last couple times I have been standing watching a parade and purely through attrition have slowly advanced to the front row: if I'm there for more than about an hour, without fail, some person will appear near me who in their quest to be in the front row will bump, press, ignore all social boundaries around unwanted contact, assuming that if they act oblivious and bump/press enough that it will get me to move away and create a front row space for them. I have given zero ground and have had to just about bark and snarl at these people to get them to stop it. One woman was pressing her arm so hard against mine that it almost hurt.
This experience has convinced me that the front rows of parade-watchers contain a high enough proportion of this type of people that justice would be served by randomly pepper spraying the entire front row viewers of any parade, innocent and guilty alike.

If you can srsly watch a parade for "more than about an hour" I am not sure I am ready to trust your perception of pain, pleasure, innocence, or guilt.

people who say "operating in silos" should be buried alive in drywall

God help me man I may have sinned this very day

Well excuse me! If you've got a better way for me to describe how my workers store grain, I'm all ears!

Well excuse me! If you've got a better way for me to describe the career of Walter Salas-Humara, I'm all ears!

people who comment on a news site's published tv show review just to say "i don't watch this show"

seriously, who are you and who fucking cares

kids hitting their parents - this is just so fucked up to me...

that's totally rational anger

(hating people doing that is rational anger, i mean)

aaaand i misread your post. fuck. carry on.

kids hitting their parents - this is just so fucked up to me...

Say what?

I think we can all agree that any sort of domestic is pretty fucked up and sad.

*domestic violence

Just regular old domestic is alright, I guess.

Tom - a little kid was ceaselessly hitting his parents on the skytrain. His parents were pretty calm about it. Yeah agree Austin

IA at ambush conference calls

HI ITS GARY IM HERE WITH STEVE & TONY FROM ACCOUNTS AND FRAN FROM MARKETING AND WE JUST WANTED TO PICK YR BRAIN REAL QUICK

they are the worst and the people who do this are monsters.

ok maybe not irrational

People who say "Pick your brain." Don't do that. That's just not okay.

Now, if you really want to get on my good side, I'm all for back scratches.

This may be the ne plus ultra of irrational anger: People who wear wristwatches with the dial on the underside of their wrists.

we have a brain picker in my office. it disgusts me. she also once said "do you have a second?" and i pwned her by saying yes and then exclaiming "time's up!" when she started talking. i'm annoying.

Also very IA: When I'm going into a place I sometimes leave my car door unlocked, because there's nothing in it to steal and I'll only be away for a few minutes. Then when I come back to it, I use my key in the lock anyway (since 95% of the time I do lock it), so I get mad at myself for not taking advantage of my labor-saving move earlier.

i do that too. also our employee entrance at work is mostly locked but someone unlocks it in the middle of the day. my secretary smoking i think. if i put the key in, it is unlocked, and the handle won't turn with my key in it. if it don't put the key in, it's locked and i jerk myself backwards. whichever way it is is the opposite of what i think it will be, all the time.

Why do people do that, Phil? To protect the face?

Hate it too.

people who instant message you in piecemeal format. Never "hey Neanderthal, can I ask you a question", but like:

them: Hi Neanderthal
me: hi
them: how are you?
me: I am fine - how are you? and what's up?
them: I was hoping you could help me with something?
me: WOULD YOU JUST FUCKING ASK WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO ASK

^
Yes! I absolutely hate this and it happens to me constantly. You didn't message me just to chit-chat, you obviously want something from me, so get to the point and let's move on with our lives.

sometimes when they ask "how are you", to punish them I want to say "I'm at the end of my rope and don't know how I'm going to get through the afternoon. how about you?"

Wasn't picking his brain what killed Trotsky?

sometimes when they ask "how are you", to punish them I want to say "I'm at the end of my rope and don't know how I'm going to get through the afternoon. how about you?"

Well, that's what that part of the conversation is there to determine, right? Or more prosaically "I'm really busy at the moment, if it's not very urgent then go ask Bob" "No it's
Fine I'll ask Bob / maybe ring you tomorrow".

But it's an instant message (or Skype or whatever) you'll answer it when you answer it, there's no need for the availability dance. A phone call would be different.

It happened to me last Friday on irc (lol, 80s).

But it's an instant message (or Skype or whatever) you'll answer it when you answer it

<malfunctioning robots sparks>

years ago when i was in china, a friend sent me a string of messages going "please do me a small favour, pleeeeeeease". he wouldn't tell me what the favour was until i said i'd do it, but i said i'm not doing shit until i know what the favour is. this went on for an hour and a half before he revealed the favour, which was to give a small, easily transportable piece of artwork to someone. that was all it was.

I like Andrew Farrell's suggestion. Considering setting my out-of-office replies to just say GO ASK BOB. Especially since I don't work with anyone named Bob.

The "How are you?" conversation in corporate-land is v v weird, its like a handshake but more drawn out and awkward. Amuses more than IAs tbh.

linkedin. it's swill. all of it. the way people have profiles that say things like "building a cutting-edge paradigm to propel your business into the future". the way people post shit to their linkedin wall (?) that's just a link to something like "17 ways to supercharge your corporate effectiveness in the enterprise", with their own comment that says "this is crucial" but with buzzwords instead of actual words. the way recruiters send you messages saying "heads up going forward i'd like to put you forward for this role which matches the work you were doing 12 years ago heads up going forward" when all they really want to do is harvest your cv and boast about how many candidates they have on their books.

this one guy i've never met or even heard of, but who once worked for the same giant company i once worked for (and not even at the same time), has been inviting me to connect every couple of weeks for the best part of a decade. hundreds and hundreds of requests. i don't get it.

I don't get it either.

And you may not want to request a "connection" with me. Every day, my inbox has subject lines that say things like, "Autumn Almanac is still waiting for you to respond to his invitation!" even though I damn well know that person clicked on a connect button on my profile and promptly forgot about it.

the linkedin nagfest is insane. i've had it all marked as email spam for ages because there's so much linkedin won't let you turn off. it's like internet mould.

You should watch this TED talk #soinspirational

nice

I'm a hypocrite cos I sometimes do this too, but when people on FB post "open invites", i.e. "I'm having a birthday get together at <place>, open invite all are welcome".

I'm like a vampire in that I feel like I need a formal invite before I show up somewhere and if this person isn't one of my closer friends, I always wind up having to think "do I know this person well enough that they won't arch an eyebrow if I show up" and then just decide not to go.

then again, though, I did have a relationship start this way (posted an open invite for the movie "Bullitt" and a friend I'd only recently met decided to join me and we eventually dated) so it's not all bad

I figure people do this because they're afraid of people feeling slighted if they actually invite people and leave someone off.

People who never close out of shared spreadsheets at work. I use one spreadsheet for 80% of my work, and every morning when I come in and try to open it it's locked for editing because my boss opened it up last night and left her computer on overnight. She comes in hours later than me so I have to send an email asking her to close out of it and then wait.

Not being able to co-edit in Excel (as one can in most other applications) is a major annoyance - quite apart from your boss's inconsiderate violation of good check-in/check-out etiquette. Which is also annoying.

(BTW I have asked MSFT People Who Know Things about that, and it is a long-known hurdle - possibly relating to how editing in zone x you could mess with formulas in zone y. Not sure it's a high priority to address, though.)