Minor rant thread. Post your rants o' the day here!

TravisTheHuman said:

They dont want to pay staff.  Kiosk eliminates the need for 2 or more workers.  Its only a matter of time before they eliminate the speaker at the drive through and have app-only ordering.

This is America and some businesses can't justify extra cost for improved customer experience because their customer's primary shopping criteria is price.

Have you seen the prices at McDonald's lately? Apparently they're doing something wrong.

I think it's only a matter of time before all fast food restaurants eliminate in-restaurant eating and go drive through only.

Dusterbd13 said:

I prefer places with people. Which is why I'm going to little Tokyo for dinner. 6.99 hibachi chicken special. Waitress. Fresh ingredients and local business. 

Why can't more people do this and be grateful to do so, instead of spending twice that much on E36 M3ty fast food and bitching about it?

If I had more than 15minites to hork down "lunch" I would have.

berkeley you Taco Bell, the mexican place down the street is getting your money from now on.

In reply to Peabody :

Portillo's has a bunch of restaurants around the country - beef sandwiches, hot dogs, fries, shakes - you know the place.

They just opened their third drive thru / take out location - you called it - it reminds me of the Michael Keaton, Ray Kroc movie when he went to McDonald's the first time.

Dusterbd13 said:

I prefer places with people. Which is why I'm going to little Tokyo for dinner. 6.99 hibachi chicken special. Waitress. Fresh ingredients and local business. 

Why can't more people do this and be grateful to do so, instead of spending twice that much on E36 M3ty fast food and bitching about it?

If I take your meaning correctly, same here. Mrs Monohue is partial to a familiar guilty pleasure and will appily idle in line for ten minutes for the privilege of paying twelve dollars for a five dollar hamburger from your various multinational chains. This offers neither low prices nor convenience, but she takes comfort in the predictability and the "luxury" of sitting in her own car.

I'd much rather exit the vehicle and spend seven or eight bucks for a burrito or a burger made with identifiable ingredients from a mom-and-pop joint. And it's probably faster.

I pick my battles.

In reply to DarkMonohue :

Same. Why bojangles? Burleson square is cheaper, better and faster but doesn't have a drive through....

Im glad I'm not alone here. 

I ordered new tail light assemblies for the Tahoe as some of the mounting tabs are broken and they have a bunch of holes drilled in them for strobes (ex-Sheriff truck). I figured I'd upgrade to some stock looking LED assemblies. I purchased a set on eBay, which got delivered on Friday.

Guess what they fit? If you guessed a 2007-2014 Suburban, Tahoe or Yukon, we were both wrong. They fit a berkeleying Silverado. Now I'm fighting with the seller for a return. Awesome 😡

Dusterbd13 said:

In reply to DarkMonohue :

 Burleson square is cheaper, better and faster but doesn't have a drive through....

 

Yeah, but it's hours away. Maybe when I pick up the tow dolly I'll stop in there, LOL.

I get where you're coming from, though. That's why I eat at the Mexican joint up the street and other places like it.

RE: Ordering fast food

I order ahead using the respective website. I too hate that every damn thing has an app now.

Usually when I order fast food, I had a E36 M3ty day and I want as minimal human interaction as possible. So I order through the website and pick it up in the drive thru. I have to say like 4 words in total.

That way I can take it home and eat it in my cave, er, house like a goblin.

Apps have become as bad as the days when everyone wanted you to have a customer card for the store.

And it's still just for data mining.

Tim Hortons doesn't need access to my contacts, just so they can screw up my double-double and bacon farmer's wrap 9 times out of ten.

Appleseed said:

Is every fast food joint going to these god awful kiosks? Just order from the kiosk. No, I'd like to see a menu. See what's cheap. These things are confusing as hell. And berkeley no, I'm not getting the app. I already walked out of Wendy's. Now add Taco Bell to the list.

You want to lose money with everyone who isn't Generation Z? This is a good start. I just want trash, not to play Streetfighter II with the menu.

On the contrary, I prefer to use the kiosks because I'm not dealing with people. And I can customize the hell out of my order and not have to worry about the person taking my order not understanding what I'm saying and mercilessly berkeleying up entering the order.

In reply to ShawnG :

Didn't they get busted a couple years back collecting a lot of info they shouldn't have? 
I don't install anything on my phone 

The seller of the tail lights finally responded:

WTF is this? No, I will not take $5 as a refund. That's just insulting. How about you send me the correct item for free? Or maybe I should open a dispute with PayPal? I'm half tempted to click "Reply with offer" and it will just be a picture of a middle finger.

In reply to stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) :

Look at their feedback rating. It's below 97%. They're not interested in making it right.

Open a dispute with eBay or PayPal.

ShawnG said:

Apps have become as bad as the days when everyone wanted you to have a customer card for the store.

And it's still just for data mining.

Tim Hortons doesn't need access to my contacts, just so they can screw up my double-double and bacon farmer's wrap 9 times out of ten.

Everyone is data mining. I tried to look at a camper the other day at Camping World. The girl at the counter wanted my name, address, email, and phone number just get a sales man to show it to me. She actually couldn't understand when I told her she didn't need that information for me to look. She kept insisting until I started to walk out and her manager called her off. 

If your business model requires an app or any form of sign-in for in-person purchases, I will not be your customer. If you ask for an email or phone number at the register, the answer is no. If your employees try to force the issue, I'll leave with my money. 

In reply to Toyman! :

My phone number is 867-5309

Early last fall, The Dancer's Colorado had a few hiccups that caused us to consider more seriously whether we should be looking at replacing it again- which she was all in favor of since she has never stopped wanting to go back to having a black truck vs. the metallic gray that the current one is (they didn't have any black ones when we traded the previous one in because it was in the middle of the supply chain crisis). The urgency of when we should replace it bumped up considerably in early November when since we expect that the price of pretty much all new vehicles (and parts) is going to go up after the administration change. That was 2 months ago- I have been trying to get her out to the dealership to look at and test drive just any of the new ones (since the current ones are a new generation vs. the last two), but she's just not been able to make the time.

Yesterday I apparently had pestered her enough about it and since she was at home the whole day unexpectedly because the schools decided to stay closed, she finally agreed to go out late in the afternoon. We went in to the dealership, did some test-fitting with the current clamshell cover on our truck (despite the new generation coming out 2 years ago the maker of the cover we have now has still not made a cover for the new ones- so I'm going to have to work out mounting our current one to one of the new trucks if we get one) on the new trucks (they changed the body lines, so it will look a bit odd where it would stick out but should work) and she got to look them over and take one on a test drive.

Almost immediately she notices that the new trucks all seem to have a sliding rear window which our current one (and most of the older generation ones I remember seeing) doesn't have- and that she has a MUCH harder time seeing out of the back window because of it and that the side mirrors on the new trucks are about 1/4 to 1/3 smaller than those on the current one and (consistent with their overall design choices for the new body) are much more angular and less rounded. The side mirrors are likely something that she would just need to get used to- but the visibility out the back is something she's really worried about, so when we get back home I dig a bit into the configuration settings on Chevy's website to see if we can get one without the sliding rear window.

The answer? Yes... with about a million asterisks after it. At least when configuring a build on the website, the only way to get a truck without the sliding rear window is to not add anything in the way of features to the truck. Everything- every option, and definitely every package, requires the addition of the Package 1- which includes the sliding rear window. And since having a remote start is a requirement for her (as is cruise control for me- and I would really like the dual-zone climate control...) it looks like there's no way to get any of those without being forced (even if we were to build and order one) to get the sliding rear mirror.

Why even BOTHER with making it an option? If you want anything beyond an absolute barebones truck, you have to get that feature. 

Finally- when she mentioned the issue with the visibility out the back and the smaller side mirrors to the sales guy who was helping us, his response was to ask if we'd seen the 360-degree view mode on the camera and that it could be used to make up for those problems. I don't think he was paying very much attention to her as the look she gave him in response to that would absolutely have drawn a reaction from most people.

Also kind of frustratingly, the local dealership doesn't have any black Colorados- and the one that they did have until a short while ago was one of the models with the factory 2" lift (which is a non-starter for her given her height). Also- for some reason (I'm guessing that they think people will want it) every one of the Colorados they have has the option for the fancier 20" wheels instead of the standard 17-or-18" ones, which also add additional height to the step into the truck (granted, they only effectively add about 1/2"- but she already has to practically jump down and haul herself up).

DarkMonohue said:

In reply to stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) :

Look at their feedback rating. It's below 97%. They're not interested in making it right.

Open a dispute with eBay or PayPal.

Yep, that's exactly what I'm going to do. eBay makes you wait 3 days before opening a dispute which means I have to wait another day, which isn't a big deal. I'm not even going to bother with a response to the seller.

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Any chance the Maverick or Santa Cruz would work better for her anyway?  IIRC, you don't tow with it, so it'd be down to whether it has enough bed and interior space?

In reply to eastsideTim :

I know the Santa Cruz is out- I really like them and have said as much since they came out, but she thinks they look ridiculous. The Maverick might be an option, but we've not really looked that much into anything but the Colorado- she has really liked the ones she's had and was just figuring that getting a newer one would be best. But if the sliding window on them ends up being a deal-breaker, we may have to start looking at things again from scratch.

*sigh* Either way, I seriously doubt anything will happen for another month now- I was really hoping that she'd really like one after driving it such that we could find one that had the features she would want that the dealership could do a dealer trade for and we'd be able to get the new one this weekend. But as things are, I doubt she's going to want to make the time to do anything else until after the Winter show in a bit under a month.

Edit: I just looked- and the Maverick has a 4.5' bed vs the Colorado's 5' bed... and she uses every inch of the bed lenght to fit what she carries around for her outreach work. So the Maverick would be out. The Ranger has a 5' bed though, and is probably closer to the Colorado in many other aspects as well.

i want it all. proximity, square footage, price. i can afford proximity and sqft, but i've squeezed pennies for so long that i can't get up off my wallet to buy something close to home.

My satellite provider has dropped the ball so large I will be leaving for their competitor. I would have stayed if I could have negotiated a significantly better rate, which I'm sure I could have, but at this point it is not possible to contact them in any way. They did give me a call back this morning, put me on hold, then hung up on me.

The rant? I can choose 10 channels of my choice to add to the base pkg. We can't find 10 channels that are worth watching

Not exactly a rant, but sort of a random "WTF?"

Watched a line of cars crowding a semi that had its right merge blinker on for at least a minute. Eventually the semi just merged over and the last one in line backed off so there was *just* enough room for the semi to squeeze in.

Do semi drivers just... do that regularly? Like they know that drivers are asshats who won't give them room so they eventually have to force the issue when they think there's maybe enough room, and trust that the other drivers have enough sense of self preservation to make way?

In reply to Beer Baron 🍺 :

I don't know about truck drivers, but I have had to do that in the RV and pulling a trailer many times before.  Signal on, way ahead of the merge or whatever, and pretty much every car will tuck in on the bumper of the car in front so you can't get over.  When I had the Excursion I didn't have many problems because nice cars will part like the Red Sea for Moses when a dude driving a banged up, giant SUV with a E36 M3box on a trailer starts coming over.

In reply to wae :

Been in the same spot with a horse trailer-- great fun with ~1200 lbs of not quite completely secured cargo.

Beer Baron 🍺 said:

Not exactly a rant, but sort of a random "WTF?"

Watched a line of cars crowding a semi that had its right merge blinker on for at least a minute. Eventually the semi just merged over and the last one in line backed off so there was *just* enough room for the semi to squeeze in.

Do semi drivers just... do that regularly? Like they know that drivers are asshats who won't give them room so they eventually have to force the issue when they think there's maybe enough room, and trust that the other drivers have enough sense of self preservation to make way?

In Houston if you want to change lanes in traffic jams forcing a lane change is usually the only way to go.  Just make the other guy  who won't let you change, even though your blinker has been on for a while, think you aren't going to stop moving over and they get the message, hit the brakes, call you "shiny happy person", and you get the lane change.   I have found this does not work well with my Miata but works fine with my pickup truck.