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

they're not necessarily white noise, but every office building I've ever worked in has had some sort of electronic device doing sound masking, usually installed in the ceiling.

Huh. I suppose it is possible such a thing exists, and I've assumed it as aircon.

i have never heard of this before & it’s weirding me the fuck out tbh

I've mentioned my loud as fuck open office before, not just here but also t my company president. I got a new desk by the window away from everyone, so that's why I haven't been on the "hat your coworkers" read as much anymore.

But the boss did bring up white noise machines. Said he had been at some utility company headquarters where they had 'em. "You don't even notice that they're on," he told me. And frankly, I had no response to that.

I hat this iPad, btw.

i am

not sure

that every workplace in america is running noise interference

https://cambridgesound.com/learn/sound-masking-101/

the more you know

At my last office they were too cheap to install a real system so we just had interns walking around going WHHCHSCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I've mostly worked in open plan offices (playing peekaboo over monitors) or had to share my office with someone else. The last one I worked in was so deathly quiet that you could hear people chewing, stomachs rumbling. I felt weird about opening a bag of chips. I hated it.

I worked with a woman who kept the radio on all day to an FM station. Some people complained but I didn't mind. I don't think I would have ever heard a lot of top 40 music in my life otherwise. Another woman kept a fan on for the white noise.

When the current temperature displayed on a weather website/app falls outside of their predicted range of temperatures for the day. Definitely 'I' but probably only 'A' because it reminds me of people who very confidently double down when they're demonstrably wrong.

Completely rational but I felt you lot would appreciate this.

I got a warning due to a severely overdue parking ticket in the mail the other day. This was perplexing cos I haven't received a parking ticket in nine years - I am meticulous about checking for signs prior to dumping my car anywhere. Also, the license plate cited was from the car I wrecked last year but the date of incident was just two months ago. It's not registered to a vehicle currently.

So I go online to look at the ticket and the idiot officer listed "unknown" for the make and model of the vehicle. Then lists the color as white and type of vehicle as "truck", which I've never driven.

So it's obviously mistaken identity but I realize there's corresponding pics from the incident. I open them and it's a motherfucking FedEx truck parked in a loading zone only. Well, that explains why I never got it.

So I'm expecting that this guy has a plate with similar characters with a digit off or something. But it's even stupider than that.

The vehicle was ticketed in mid-delivery, with packages hanging off of the back of the truck. Which leave only the first three license plate characters visible - the fourth is partially obscured, fifth and sixth not at all visible.

The first three characters match my old plate - the fourth one, while partially obscured, is still clearly is not an "E" like mine was.

So in the officer's hurry, it appears since he didn't want to disturb the packages for liability reasons, he merely did a search for vehicles with my first three characters and merely guessed that it was my plate, and sodded off, assuming the dummy would pay it.

But he/she didn't pay it, so parking division looked up my records and mailed me the ticket, conveniently ignoring that it was not registered to any vehicle at the time of the ticket. And someone internally signed off on the officer's ticket, despite his pictorial evidence clearly demonstrating the entire plate was not visible.

I got it voided on Monday, fortunately, more easily than usual. Guessing they were embarrassed. And they voided the entire ticket so FedEx guy got away with it lol

ugh that would make me lose my shit
parking tickets are $$$ enough without wasting everyone’s time cuz the parking officer is too lazy to do due diligence & ticket the correct vehicle ffs
morans

cyclist stops from crossing road as car is there, while his girlfriend stops behind him and says

girl: why did you stop!! (time is money)
guy: i was sooo worried my bike would get hit by the car
(girl is annoyed)

man affluent fucks in this city can f off

A weird lawyer-lady decided that the hallway outside my office is a "confidential zone" where she can talk to her clients by phone. Ok, except that I can hear everything you're saying. What pushes this over to Rational Anger is that when we step foot out of the office she starts yelling, "Give me privacy! This is a confidential zone!"

Today in IA: Pedestrians.

like everyday, pedestrians are super variable in being dumb fucks or decent

people who walk on the left side of the sidewalk and wonder why people keep almost slamming into them

I mean I hate everyone equally: pedestrians, drivers of cars, film set crews, delivery trucks, construction sites. Hate. Haaaaate.

fair

People in general have just become completely careless about how they interact with the world.

we gotta care more to counteract

i care because U do

I had a pedestrian in Cocoa Beach a few months ago start crossing A1A in front of oncoming traffic, nowhere near a crosswalk, during rush hour on a Friday. Kept walking despite the onslaught of vehicles only to stop walking at the last second as I approached, seeming to think I was going to slam on my brakes at one of the busiest streets and risk getting plowed into to let her finish jaywalking.

So she was basically standing in the middle of the road while cars on either side rushed by her.

fuck man

recently a rogue bus driver ran a red light while i was half way through the crosswalk. called transit police and said we need keanu cuz there is a rogue driver on yer network

I hate it when someone leaves the vacuum on button depressed when it's unplugged, so that as soon as I plug it in it vrooms right to life and scares the shit out of me (even if it's usually my fault).

What pushes this over to Rational Anger is that when we step foot out of the office she starts yelling, "Give me privacy! This is a confidential zone!"

Because I'm a dick like that, I'dve just replied with "oh really? Cuz we can all hear every word you say and btw Ive recorded most of it, its pretty hilarious"

lol

Because the loud talking situation has not improved, I very passive aggressively asked one of my coworkers yesterday after I got off the phone, "Hey, do I talk really loud when I'm on the phone?" The immediate response was, "No, why?" I just kind of shrugged and said, "Oh, no reason. Just want to make sure I'm not. . ." —I kind of looked up and away as if in deeper thought and intentionally paused for an abnormal amount of time here— ". . .interrupting anyone's work." It did not hit the mark, as I'm currently being forced to listen to a different coworker's very one-sided conversation about the benefits of therapy dogs for vets with PTSD. Noble cause, absolutely. Necessary to repeat, "It's such a huge life improvement for those people" countless times? No. Work-related? Also no. This is a fourty minute phone call thus far.

Also, not affiliated in way whatsoever, but in heavy slow traffic on the freeway, I'm very scared to follow too closely. I usually hang back thirty feet or so from the car in front of me and just coast. Why does the person behind me need to tailgate me? As if by tailgating me, I will tailgate the person in front of me and somehow all of the thousands of cars in this traffic jam will magically start going the speed limit. The best is when that tailgating jerk behind me gets the opportunity to pass me. They do so in a very aggressive manner and quickly accelerate up to the car in front of me, slamming on their brakes so they can tailgate that person now. You are now (maybe) one car length ahead. You'll definitely get there two, maybe even three, microseconds sooner. Fucking champion of the freeway, dude.

When you are at the drive thru, hear a prerecorded order asking you "can i take your order", starting to speak the otder, then having real drivethru person bark HOLD ON A MINUTE

speaking of which, the proliferation of led tv-type menu screens that change all the time, I can't fucking decide what to order that way

haha yeah Popeye's does that, drives me insane

Argh Londoners who move out of London and then talk like they've invented the idea of there being anywhere that isn't London AND THEN continuously complaining about their daily commute into and out of London.

every large city with suburbs ever imo

yeah but I'm irrationally calm about burbs livers doing this; it's the ones who move to Bristol or Norwich or wherever and do it.

Not sure if we've mentioned this before but: People whispering to each other in the office. There's been an increasing amount of it here and it drives me nuts. There was a manager at my old job who would do it too. He'd go up to someone, cup his hand to their ear and move his mouth in an exaggerated fashion while darting his eyes around the room. It was like an exercise in making people feel uneasy

Notifications on Facebook that link to the board not the comment. So you need to work through a stack of entries to find the original comment, or the response. If you can be bothered. So obviously missing life changing input.

But seems to be set up to be more frustrating than useful.

I was just having this experience this morning. Think it's a recent problem. Related is that clicking the notification that a new person has liked my page takes me to... my page. I kind of understand why, but surely it would be better to give some sort of information, or even not allow it to be clicked.

how's life at 10:54 19 Jul 18

FUCKING traffic signals that they've put up but haven't turned on yet so they're just swaying there in the breeze with burlap sacks over them for a week. JUST FUCKING TURN THEM ON WHEN YOU PUT THEM UP!

― how's life, Friday, March 9, 2018 8:30 PM (four months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

These things still aren't turned on yet.

That whispering thing with the cupped hand to ear is nuts. I thought you just meant talking in a hushed whisper.

https://i.imgur.com/DeB6gIh.png

I haven't clicked on that notification button since February. It's gone all the way up to 63 at one point, usually hovers around 54, but recently dropped down to what you see above. In other words, those little white numbers are there just to get you click on something, like a chicken playing tic-tac-toe. Meaningless otherwise.

Haha, and boy did I come across like a trenchant commentator just then.

It is meaningless. I've seen it grow into the 90s, and because I still didn't click it, it decided to just give up and be lowered again.

It's all meant to get you to click, and the longer you don't, the more it will broaden its definition of what a "notification" is. Someone tagging or messaging me, sure. But the longer you hold out, the crazier the notifications get. "Someone someone is going somewhere sometime in the future", "you might like [no I won't]", stuff like that.

See people who are obviously about to go home from work and then just ... don't? Drive me batshit. Why are you still hanging around and touching shit on your desk like you're going to cry at having to leave it? Why are you endlessly coming up with shit to say to people nearby who clearly just want to work? "Oh and another thing, I had a great cake at lunchtime!"? Very good. Why has your jacket been half-on for ten minutes?

Stand up, jacket on, sling hook.

(God, the person who prompted this post has just sauntered back to tell that poor deskmate that she needs to have a think tonight about what her favourite cake of all time is and report back tomorrow. GO HOME.)

even worse are people in the office who say nothing to you all day, until they see you leaving for the day and decide that that's the right time to have a conversation

^ also when they’re not nice to you until you leave or they leave and they beam that shit eating smile at ya

the people in the parking garage at work at 8am just sitting in their cars dicking around on their phones.

A stranger standing or sitting so close to you that their arm hair scratches you repeatedly.

the people in the parking garage at work at 8am just sitting in their cars dicking around on their phones.

I used to see this a lot when working temp jobs. I'd pull up to the hose clamp factory at 7:55 and stroll past the full-timers who were just sitting in their parked cars, listening to the radio. Took me... about a week... to realize they were out there to avoid spending even one extra minute they didn't have to spend inside that place.

Parking garage sounds a little less blue collar, but still.

I do this because I want to send texts / check personal email / goof off on instagram, and as soon as I go in my building I'm on the work wifi and can't do that any more.

i work at a university so who knows who these people are (they're too old to be the students).