I was standing over the sink last night washing dishes. You know... doing my little part to help out around the house. After a long hard day of bringing home the bacon I also try to clean that same bacon grease out of the pan that night. Anyway, I'm standing over the sink and I get to the part I hate the most. And when I say hate - I really can't understate how vile this is to me. Revulsion is not too strong a word. Loath is actually pretty spot on! I LOATH WOODEN F-ING SPOONS! The shit that get's caked onto those things is like a bond created at an atomic level! I know why you ladies like the wooden spoons for cooking... they don't scratch the pan; they don't conduct heat, blah - blah - blah! But trying to scrub dried egg, dried soup, or any other food filth off of those bloody things is an exercise in futility. I have to resort to using my own damn finger nails and - if I may peel back the curtain just a bit on my own inner psychosis - touching the food stained remains of dirty dishes is the essence of repulsive to me!
How about those stupid ass travel industry counter attendants? Perhaps it’s because I travel so much for my work but I've run across my fair share of these sons a bitches. In fact I had one a few weeks ago down in SoTex. When I travel I keep a tight schedule so I have very little patience for the out of ordinary delay! Anyway, I'm turning in a rental car. It's the end of a VERY long day and my frazzled wife and kids are waiting outside. I hand over the keys for the lady to provide me a receipt for the rental. She starts to tap on her counter key-board. Clickity, clack, clack, clackity, click, click. She pauses for a moment and then goes at it again for about five freakin’ minutes. More Clickity, clack, clack and Clackity, click, click. She stops and frowns before continuing for another impressive sonata. Mind you, she doesn't say a damn thing to me, but I can tell there’s a problem. So I wait and wonder when she's going to admit it. It goes on, and on, and on... until another five minutes go by and I have to say something.
Me: "Is there a problem?"
Lady: "Well I'm having trouble getting our rental out of the hold status."
Me: "How can it be in a hold status, I just rented it?"
Lady: "Well I upgraded you yesterday and I meant to take it off of hold but I couldn't."
Me: "So what about today made you think it would magically work?"
Lady: "Well I guess I just have to call regional and have them do it."
Me: "Do I really need to be here for this."
Lady: "Well, I assume you need a receipt."
Me: "Fax it to me... goodbye."
I have one final story for you today, and this is the pièce de résistance, the coup de grâce if you will. Dear heavenly Lord I almost throttled the woman in front of me in line at my local WalMart last week. I did my best to pick the line that might clear the fastest. It was late and I wanted to get home. As luck would have it there was a middle aged lady in a snappy blue blazer with about twenty items, so I jumped in line behind her. Little did I know she would stop the check-out girl for EVERY DAMN ITEM to inform she had a coupon. But wait! It gets better. You see she didn't have a stack of coupons. She had a stack of magazines. She had to flip through each one, page by page, find the coupon, extend her arms over the counter, without relinquishing the damn coupon, have the checker zap it, before placing the magazine back in her stack. She did this EVERY time! I almost had a fucking aneurism right then and there. But WAIT! It gets even better! Finally the checker rang up the total and this smartly dressed lady pulls out her check book. At this point I am scrutinizing ever move she makes so the fact that she writes the stinking check like it's calligraphy for a wedding invitation forces me to curse her under my breath. She deftly hands over the pristinely written check to the checker only to have the WalMart data base DECLINE the method of payment!!! Wonderful! Whip out that credit card and be done with it, right? Oh no... She proceeds to write another check. The checker objects but the woman insists this is a different method of payment... after all... it's a different damn check!!!!! It is taking every ounce of restraint I have to not knock this woman's block off. The checker stupidly accepts the 2nd check only for it to be declined as well. No shit, Sherlock Holmes! So what does the woman do? She leaves her groceries at the counter and tells her that she will return later with payment.
Dear sweet heavenly baby Jesus! Save me from a damn stroke!
12 comments:
Dude, I think you need to mellow out a little bit. Just calm down. Breath deep. If you are still getting worked up over minor shit, well dude I know a guy that will hook you up with some of the finest herb in NoTex. Problem solved.
Wal-Mart is da debil.
A couple of things:
1) You know that Deluxe Wooden Spoon Set I was going to get your for your birthday - you can FORGET IT, BUSTER!
2) You have officially given me an idea for my next blog entry on how I slowly transformed from hating people who got angry at service industry professionals (wait staff, flight attendants, rental car staff, etc.) to becoming a person who routinely gets angry at service industry professionals. Being a business traveler means you become one of THOSE people.
3) That woman in front of you in line at Wal-Mart is pulling a VERY COMMON theft scam. I promise you her pants and jacket were loaded with stolen merchandise. If she walked through the little item detector thing and the alarm went off, do you think the cashier would wave her back and ask her to empty her pockets? No way! That cashier is happy to see her go and too tired to care. So, if it is any consolation, that woman in line in front of you probably leads a miserable life and will spend eternity burning in H-E-double-hockey sticks, probably surrounded by a sinkful of dirty wooden spoons and a flock of slow-witted rental car agents.
Q, no way... the last time you hooked me up with one of your connections, I got held up at gunpoint and taken to a shed south of town.
fringes, unfortuantley the devil and I both love a good bargain. It's why I still go.
Roberto, I have only worked direclty with customers in one job... and that was as a lifeguard. It's a whole lot easier though when you can order them around and tell them what to do or else eject them from your establishment.
Geez Cyber, yer all pizzy like someone punched you in the junk or something.
I find the best way to handle these situations is to wander up to the counter and say "Do you know who I am?" That usually settles things.
cyber: I, too, love a bargain. However, my love of a bargain and hatred of 90% of the people in Walmart come to a vs situation every time I'm driving in the parking lot trying to find a spot.
Gyuss, I have this mental image of you walking up to a counter and saying, "Do you know who I am?" the person shaking his or her head, and then you grabbing them by the collar, yanking them inches away from your nose, and hissing, "I'm Batman!"
i was wondering how long it would be before you posted this.
this is your, 'i may have been snipped but i'm still a man damn it!' post.
you even swore! ~real~ swearing. no sh*t. :-)
1. wooden spoons suck and i refuse to use them.
why?
cause i wash dishes.
2. what no 'regional must love you' parting remark?
3. nice to know walmart doesn't actually require you to ~give~ them the coupon. i'll keep that in mind.
screw q's hook-up. i'll send you some hydro with gorgeous red hair and a blueberry back. you'll love it. big time mellow. and very little munchie effect. ;-)
I'm not defending the lady in front of you by any means, but I'v ehad my check declined at the grocery store, by "the system" and given a phone number to call for an explanation. You know what explanation I've received when I call. None. Everything is fine. There's no bad history showing (don't ask me why)but still, there you go. All they can say is that some indefinable quality set off a flag in their system, but they have no way of telling me what it was. This kind of shit infuriates me. They embarrassed me in front of a line of people and don't even have a good reason.
Glad to hear you won't be having any more children!! That ought to lower the insurance premiums in strip clubs everywhere.
The world is awash with fuckhats.
'Nuff said really.
Dagromm, they will not tell you why your check set off the system because they believe if you knew why, you could game the system somehow. People who work in these areas have a really poor view of humanity and don't trust anyone.
What probably set it off was either frequency of checks written in a given period of time, amount of checks written in a given period of time, or a combination of both.
For example, if your bank has an auto-approve amount of $40.00 and you write three to five checks for $39.99 within a five day period, someone at Wal-Mart assumes you know about the $40 auto-approve limit and are spending money you don't really have. So they flag your account and make you call. And as soon as you call, they unflag the account because only someone who was honest would be pissed enough to call them.
Insanity, I know.
M. Robert, thanks for the peek inside the madness. I don't use checks to buy stuff in stores since 1) all my checks still have the addresses from my last two residences (and HELL no I'm not going to stop using them. I paid hard-earned, unexpected money for them!) and 2) I have a check card anyway!
But CyberD, I know it was painful, but THANK you for the laughs, mate. When I'm in that situation, I'm usually going into overtime to control myself, and the people BEHIND me get frustrated. Which helps me bond and laugh with them while DumbyMcTiddlebrains is doing mathematic yoga in front of us.
But WAIT! There IS more!!
If your spirits still need a lift, then live in anticpation of the Doctor Who Season Four premiere.
O!!
My God, it was AWESOME!!! I had two shriek out loud laughing fits, and one shocked HOLLERATION moment. and giggles and talking at the screen with pulse racing commentary all the way throughout. I recommend, I recommend, I recommend!!
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