11 posts tagged “idiots”
The Nine Inch Nails concert last night reminded me how much I love seeing good live music. It's the first time in a long time I've truly enjoyed seeing a band perform, not giving a shit how late I was going to get home / having to get up early for work tomorrow / how crappy getting out of the parking area would be. Even the 40 minute stop in the middle of the show because the power at the Hordern was completely cut off didn't destroy the night for me, but made the second half of the show more enjoyable.
Anyway, at one point, the lighters came out, as they do. There were two young girls (probably around 16ish) fully decked out in goth-wear behind me.
Girl One "Oh wow! The lighters look so cool!"
Girl Two "How don't they burn their fingers off?"
Girl One "Why don't they just use their phones?"
That exchange had me laughing all night. I must be getting old.
Some pastor of an evangelical church I've never heard of is claiming that the Victoria bushfires are God's punishment for Victoria moving into the twenty-first century decriminalising abortion.
So he's saying the fuckwits that lit these fires are carrying out God's work?
*fuming*
I just had a recruiter try to tell me that one of our Operations guys is in charge of recruitment. When I wouldn't put him through, and said he had to go through HR, he told me he doesn't want to speak to HR, and would call back for the guy on Monday.
Um, I think I know who does the recruitment in the company... and if I didn't put you through today, why would I put you through on Monday?
I do feel kind of sorry for recruiters - places with phones ringing off the hook don't have the time or energy to argue. I only answer 2 or 3 calls a day, and I'm always up for a good argument.
Everything's winding down, except for the social stuff! I'm really looking forward to work being over for the year, the early mornings really are killing me.
Belly dancing finished up on Tuesday night, and I don't think I'll sign up for another term. There was too much running around with a veil and not enough hip jiggling for my liking. After the class the girls I do it with and I went out for coffee. I'd driven my friend, who doesn't really know the other girls very well, and she got all shitty with me for agreeing to go out for coffee because she wanted to go home and watch TV... this is the same girl who bitches that she doesn't get invited to things. It just makes me so mad - we DO ask her to something, she bitches, complains and says she'd rather watch TV. But then when she DOESN'T get included and worries about having hardly any friends, I have to bite my tongue.
Had a pole dancing class last night after missing last week, my legs are really sore today. I pulled a muscle doing a crucifix, I'll need to stretch it out more tonight before Sunday's class.
It's so miserable today, winter seems to have returned, it's wet, cold, and half the office are off sick. I'm hoping the guys go out drinking this afternoon so I can do some uni reading. (Who am I kidding? I'll spend the day reading blogs!)
I'm a little tired and stressed at the moment, so probably wasn't in the best state of mind to be checking feedback on the creative writing piece I had to submit over the weekend.
I've complained about this course before, having to critique other people's writing is a pain in the ass. But there's no need for rudeness.
One girl wrote an absolutely scathing critique of my work. Now, I know it wasn't great, I wrote it in half an hour. But she's carried on about how it 'isn't my best work' (um, the only other work of mine she has seen is the minimalist poem I posted a few weeks back... it's certainly better than that. She potentially saw the assignment piece I submitted, but it was a load of trash too) and then went on to say I'd missed the entire point of the exercise.
Now, no one else gave me that sort of feedback. No one. Not even the tutor - he didn't think I'd missed the entire point. AND she'd given similar feedback (about missing the point) to other people as well. So, I went back to read her piece... which I couldn't make any sense of at all. It was just an overload of connotations trying to sound intelligent... but it just looked wanky.
Starting to feel better about myself, I decided to do a little facebook stalking. She's straight out of high school! Not that that means much, but it made me feel a bit better about the blunt way she'd critiqued me (most of us are nice in pointing out 'helpful suggestions' rather than just saying it was a piece of crap and we don't know what we're on about). So it made me feel a bit better. A bit, obviously not a lot, or I wouldn't be bitching about it now.
I know it wasn't the greatest piece of writing in history, but I didn't 'miss the point entirely'. At least mine was a cohesive piece, rather than the drivel she wrote. *sigh* Time to press 'post' and get over it.
just a quickie... why are all writers so tortured? Or should I say wanna-be writers? All anyone in my creative writing class ever writes is depressing, drama-laden drivel that is 20 times longer than it needs to be.
My writing isn't much better, but I try and keep it short and sweet for the sanity of others. GRR!
This semester is taking a lot more out of me than I thought it would, too many discussion boards to keep up with!
In the Children's Lit unit I'm doing, I'm finding it really hard to keep my mouth shut when a certain person posts things. I know everyone's entitled to their opinion, but this woman just won't let up, and starts arguments with anyone that doesn't agree with her.
The biggest arguments (which I've tried to mostly stay out of) is one about issues in Young Adult Fiction. She keeps complaining that the novels we are studying don't delve deeply enough into the issues. The opposing view (which I agree with) is that fiction doesn't NEED to address issues in any depth. Getting teenagers to read at all is a good thing, isn't the fact that these books even touch on issues enough? Why can't a young adult novel be written purely for entertainment? Why does it have to address multiculturalism and racism on some deep, educational level? Why can't the books be read and given credit for what they are?
Then this woman is bitching and moaning about how cold the parents are in Two Weeks with the Queen, apparently the author should have spent a chapter having the parents discuss their decision with Colin. Now, I personally hate the book (after studying and hating it in high school) but why can't this woman just take the book for what it is? I know university students are supposed to be critical and whatever, but this woman just never has ANYTHING positive to say about any of the novels. I'd love to see some of her writing.... grrrr
- People who substitute ‘x’ for other letters as in ‘officeworx’. You’re saving yourself one letter, and making yourself look like an idiot – why do it?
- When someone asks you for something 8 times in the space of 5 minutes, when you told them the first time that it will be an hour before you receive the thing they want.
- When you’re out with people who speak another language, and one of them insists on speaking that language when they know full well you can’t understand them. It’s just plain rude.
- People that complain for the sake of complaining. A message was posted on one of my uni discussion boards saying that the feedback survey didn’t leave anywhere for her to complain about the lectures. I’m curious as hell to know what she could possibly be wanting to complain about. The lectures were recorded in a studio (rather than just being a recording of an on-campus lecture), were relevant and interesting, and the only thing that I could see that was remotely annoying was the female lecturer’s voice was a bit painful to listen to… but this isn’t something you can exactly complain about – the poor woman can’t help how she sounds. Stupid lady in my unit… I hope I don’t run into her again. She’s been a know it all all through
- Another case of someone complaining… our 10 year reunion is this year, and a girl was organizing it, didn’t get the sort of response she was hoping for, so threw it all in (this girl also refused to let ANYONE help her out). So 3 other girls have organised something else, and spent a lot of time working on it. I was irritated to see yet another girl (who I didn’t like very much in High School, she was one of the ‘cool’ girls) had written on someone’s facebook wall for all to see ‘what idiots organised for the reunion to be on a Friday night and all the way out at ****?’ First of all – did coolgirl step in and attempt to organise something when the first one fell through? No. Secondly- just because she’s moved away from the area we all grew up in, 50% of us are still in the area… and for those who have moved away, 90% still have family living in the area where they can stay. The venue was actually a very good choice.
- When people want something, but instead of emailing, IM, or even calling through the request, they come and stand by you and won’t go away until you’ve done it, even when it’s obvious that you’re busy working on something else. Irritation increases if they come stand and stare at your monitor instead of standing on the other side of the desk while they do this. This actually made for an incredibly awkward moment yesterday, I was updating salary information, and someone just walked up behind me to ask for something stupid, and fully leaned in to look at what I was working on. Guess what – it’s none of your business what I’m doing, and even if it was, this especially was something that you shouldn’t be seeing, so I have no sympathy that you’ve just seen that you’re disgustingly underpaid because you were too much of a wimp to ask for a payrise when your job changed.
- The cake shop that I ordered my sister’s birthday cake didn’t call to confirm the order yesterday… now I’m paranoid they didn’t get it and the stupid comment I had arranged to have on there won’t happen, and she’ll end up with a stock standard boring cake. UPDATE: Just called, and the cake is all good, and will be delivered to me at 3. Now must make sure I catch a bus home where I will have a seat.
- I’m hating that now I’m complaining and I’m letting this stuff get to me. I blame the rain outside. Thank god it’s nearly the weekend (and a weekend filled with fun things at that!! (yes, I know I need to study as well… urgh))
Our lovely employer gives us all gym memberships. Part of my job is to keep track of all the memberships, transfer them when people leave, organise them for new employees...
This has always been really easy, something that doesn't take up much time, that I kind of enjoy doing.
Until a new manager started down at the gym.
Up until this week, the girl I dealt with at Fitness First (yes, I have no problems naming and shaming) was fantastic. This new one... it's all just too hard for her and she can't be bothered with it. She just has no common sense!
All week I've been trying to transfer a membership from someone who has left. Now, this membership is not even a month old, has never been used, and all we need to do is change the NAME on it. The company account is paying for it, all the other details are company details, ALL she has to do is change the name.
She insists she needs a signature from the employee that left. I explain that this particular employee took off and flew to another country, and that it's not really a situation where I can get a signature. So she says I need an email from him saying he's happy to transfer the membership. Um, bad situation, I can't really get that from him. So apparently I can't transfer the membership to his replacement - we have to pay an entire years worth of fees for a membership that has not ONCE been used because this girl is a frikin moron. Surely anyone with an ounce of common sense would think 'well, the company is paying for the membership, the company can cancel or transfer the membership as they wish.'
Now she's not answering my emails or taking my calls. I'm SO tempted to tell her that I'm canceling the 50 memberships we have with them and moving them to another gym.
Because all our clients are overseas, the phone doesn't really ring very often. About 60% of the calls are people chasing money for the boss's other business (our accountant works for both).
At least twice a day, I have the following conversation:
Painful caller: Can I speak to *insert name of person here*
Me: I'll just see if they're available, may I ask who's speaking?
Painful caller: Jack (or some other such name)
Me: And were are you calling from?
Painful caller: It's a personal business matter
Me: I'm sorry, but I get a lot of these calls, unless you can tell me where you are calling from, or what company you are calling from, they won't take your call.
Painful caller: Just tell them it's a personal business matter.
Me: Yes, I understand it's a personal business matter, but we get a lot of calls with people trying to sell us stuff that say it's a personal business matter just to get through. So I need you to please tell me the company you are calling from, or what the call is regarding, or I cannot put you through.
Painful caller: *hangs up*
I've had the odd person get very rude and aggressive with me, at which point I pretend to try and transfer them.
Me: I'm sorry, they're not answering, can I take a message.
Painful caller: No, I'll just call back later.
Me: But you were very insistent, surely it must be important, are you sure I can't take a message and get them to call you back as soon as they get back into the office?
Painful caller: *hangs up*
I'm such a phone bitch... but I figure, if it's a legitimate, important call, then the person won't have any problems giving me their name, number and either company or message.
I've had some other shockers recently too. This woman was calling from Malaysia, trying to 'send us information' about a trade show. However, all our guys are already going to said trade show. Not only that - the trade show isn't even in Malaysia. After a couple of tries, I finally put her through to one of the guys. He ended up arguing with her for about half an hour, because she was pestering him for his email address so that she could send him information, but he kept repeating, "I am already registered, I don't need any further information."
He ended up hanging up on her. Literally 30 seconds later the phone rings again.
Hello, I just want to confirm *guy who was just on the phone for half an hour*'s email address
I recognised her voice.
Me: I'm sorry, I can't give out that information.
Her: But he just gave it to me, but I didn't hear it properly. I just want to make sure I got it right.
I had heard the entire conversation. At no point did he give her his email address. In fact, he had refused to.
Me: He did not give you his email address, I heard exactly what he said to you.
Her: But I need to send him this information.
Me: If he wanted the information, he would have given you the email address.
Her: Can you please put me through to him again?
Thankfully, I haven't heard from her for a few weeks now. But idiots really do annoy me. And part of me does know that they're just doing their jobs, and that they're just repeating what they've been told to say. Maybe I need to start asking to speak to their managers. heh.
