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

The extent to which we coddle our customers never ceases to amaze me.
This morning we get a call, a woman says she's handicapped and will need help shopping, which is fine.
What ends up happening is she dictates her list, we collect the items, then when she arrives she doesn't even come in, one of us (your truly) has to go meet her outside to collect her CC, go back inside to ring everything up, then bring it all back out to her.
Bonus points for how she didn't have handicapped plates or placard, and was walking around her car with no apparent troubles.
And predictably, didn't thank me.

Maybe I'm off base, with my attempts to be self reliant whenever possible, but that someone would even consider such an entitled request - much less actually make it - blows my mind.

When you make 3rd-world money, buying anything meaningful is like Wolverine deploying his claws...doesn't matter how much it needs to be done, it hurts every time. I've spent almost an hour (or maybe more like 2 days, depending on how you look at it) cringing at the cost of this new helmet so far, but mine's been out of spec for a looong time, I'm just lucky nobody's looked too closely at it for a while, but the lack of HANS holes is becoming a problem that can't be overlooked now.

Wall-e wrote: In reply to KyAllroad: Id help if you were closer but after building two for people that didn't make it home to use you may not want the help.

Thanks man, we ended up with enough people that is went quickly and painlessly.

Weird thing about the one a built a few years back: due to the shape of the house and yard I built it in three sections which were bolted together. After the owner passed (fast moving pancreatic cancer meant he got to use it twice before being carried out on it) his son was outside dissassembling it a few weeks later. A neighbor drove past and stopped because his father, a half mile up the street, had pancreatic cancer and lived in an identical house. They had been ogling the ramp trying to figure out how to build one. So the two of them simply unbolted the three sections and moved them by pickup down the street where another dude got to use it for the remainder of his days.

Obligatory rant: cancer.

In reply to SnowMongoose:

Not saying thank you is inexcusable but as far as picking an order and bringing it to a car how much of a hardship was this for you? Does your company not pay you for this trouble?

My wife keeps her handicap permit in her bag. Leaving it hanging from the mirror is both illegal and an obstruction. She can also do a lap or two around her car with little trouble but by going from the lot into a store can take some doing and generally after about 100 or so feet she's in quite a bit of pain. More so after a day at work or in bad weather.

She does try to be self reliant when ever possible and normally does her shopping with one of the scooters so you can just mumble about how she's too lazy to walk around or sends me but sometimes that's not possible. She doesn't enjoy having to be the person that needs help any more than you enjoy having to help someone. If you asked her what her problem was she'd tell you. In far more detail than you'd ever care to know. She's a much better person than I. I've moved on to just saying "Go berkeley your self" and going on with my day.

As the person married to someone who can't be as self reliant as they should be I'm sorry that that person had to trouble you and could send someone out to do her shopping or drag her lazy ass around on her own.

In reply to KyAllroad:

I'm glad it worked out. The ones I did were also for people at the end of fighting cancer. It sucks.

Had a wonderful vacation. Came back, and have no answers on when closing might be (we're trying to move it up from the set date). Then wife texts me that the AC in the car isn't working. Great. Time to google "TSX AC Problems after sitting for a week". Hopefully an easy fix, because we don't really have time or money free to fix anything on it right now.

Oh, and the 89 emails I came back to. That was fun. I need a drink.

Related to the above rant: I was on vacation with my in-laws. I helped a lot apparently, by installing a temporary AC (had to cut some insulation and put it in a door) and getting boats prepared each day for launch, and launching and driving said boats. Stop thanking me. It makes me feel uncomfortable and everything I did was entirely self serving. So thank yourselves for paying for everything, not me.

Related to the ramp rants: I'll probably have to find out how to build one pretty soon. Will likely start a thread here. And I really wish my MIL would stop caring about image. She got a Lexus RX350. In a year or two she'll need a van. Why'd you do that and then pay $4k to get a scooter lift installed? And now you guys are getting a stair lift for the house so she can get to the second floor--she won't be able to get in and out of the chair in 2 years--why don't you just go move? None of this makes sense--get into a condo or a ranch house. You're throwing money away. If you wanted to do the $30k elevator, maybe that would make sense since it would effectively make your house a lifetime house--but you guys need to kick my 30 year old BIL out of the house and MOVE. You don't need a 4 BR house.

In reply to mtn:

That situation sounds a lot like the move my grandparents did three years ago this week, into a huge for them, two story, 4 br house. Long story short, after another two moves, they've landed in a 1 story condo around the corner from my aunt's house. Which is exactly what the entire family had encouraged them to do in the first place

My related rant: My grandmother apparently fell and broke her femur yesterday and should be undergoing surgery right about now. With settlement, the move, and a funeral already on the agenda for the upcoming weekend, IDK if I'm going to have the time to go visit her any time this week.

SERIOUSLY? You pick the middle of equipment knockdown to stand right in front of me and tell me ways I should run my autocross program better? I've got a vanfull of computers and timing hardware to pack and load before I can move on to the trophy talk... And you need to tell me right now how I'm doing it wrong.

I mean, berkeleyin A, I'm not allergic to constructive criticism, but it sounds a berk load better coming from someone who doesn't sit on his ass under the shade of my timing tent all day without lifting a damn finger to help.

In reply to mtn:

Your not going to change the in laws. Eventually they will stop saying thank you all the time. Mine are the type of people that do everything for everyone and it is rarely returned and they don't care. My sister in law's husband and I do anything they need and they were kind of uncomfortable at first having us do things and were overly thankful. It took a while but eventually they came to accept it. As far as the car and house you're just going to have to deal with it. These are serious changes she's going through and mentally it's almost like part of her is dying each time she as to give up something she enjoyed. I've had to see a bit of it myself and it makes me glad that I should be good right up until my ticker bursts.

Ugh, today working second shift 2-10, tomorrow 6-2, Wednesday finally on first shift fully so 5-1.....oh boy.

Do you know Ingle Snow?

If you do please tell him to reach out to all his friends, family and employer and tell them that you changed your number. I know Ingle Snow is a truck driver, because his boss keeps texting me instruction for him and right ups and directions to dairy farms. I text back that this is not Ingle Snows phone number, that seems important to him maybe check your files for a new number. Every single day. And his friends text me pictures of trucks all the time and ask when I'm going to be back in town. And pretty jealous of Ingle Snow, I got more happy birthday wishes for him from various people than I have for myself, cumulatively, over my entire lifetime.

Ingle Snow, you seem like a pretty popular fellow, tell your friends and family and employers your new number. Seriously, they want to talk to you. It's been over a year.

In reply to Nick (picaso) Comstock:

Ha! I had a phone number that we kept getting calls for someone else. For four or five YEARS. Answering machine message clearly stated, this is NOT (name), we have had this number since (year), it is no longer (name)'s number, if you need to reach (name) you need to get appropriate contact info, if you want to leave a message for (me) or (roommate) then leave a message at the beep.

MANY MANY messages for (name). Some were bill collectors, some sounded like family, some sounded like friends. Finally we just disconnected the answering machine since maybe 19 out of 20 messages were for this other person.

Nick (picaso) Comstock wrote: Do you know Ingle Snow? If you do please tell him to reach out to all his friends, family and employer and tell them that you changed your number. I know Ingle Snow is a truck driver, because his boss keeps texting me instruction for him and right ups and directions to dairy farms. I text back that this is not Ingle Snows phone number, that seems important to him maybe check your files for a new number. Every single day. And his friends text me pictures of trucks all the time and ask when I'm going to be back in town. And pretty jealous of Ingle Snow, I got more happy birthday wishes for him from various people than I have for myself, cumulatively, over my entire lifetime. Ingle Snow, you seem like a pretty popular fellow, tell your friends and family and employers your new number. Seriously, they want to talk to you. It's been over a year.

Ive had the same number the last 4 years and still get calls and texts from temp services in findlay ohio. Thankfully his friends finally quit calling at 3am for a ride home.

I just moved and I don't know where any of my E36 M3 is.

In reply to Wall-e:

Ultimately it came down to the lack of thanks.
Same as when you let someone in in traffic and they don't acknowledge it.
I have no idea what was going on with her, but there's no excuse not to be appreciative of someone going out of their way for you.

sorry to say, Mongoose.. that is the whole world today. I cannot tell you how many times I had a door slam in my face because the person I was following did not even bother to check if anybody was behind them when they went through and just let it close on it's own.. people are too wrapped up in themselves that when somebody does acknowledge others and holds a door, picks up a dropped item for you, or even makes eye contact.. it is a breath of fresh air

In reply to Appleseed:

We're still slowly sifting through boxes trying to find things. My weedeater charger is still mia.

Are you still in Illinois?

My lease is up August 31. I'm hoping to close sometime this week on a house. But it is stuck in underwriting. This is infuriating. I'd just like to know, do I need to get a storage unit or not?

In reply to The_Jed:

Yes. (Unfortunately )

Yesterday sucked. At a level that I've not encountered for almost 4 years- and will hopefully not be repeated for a VERY, VERY long time (though hopefully the combination of events will NEVER be repeated on the same day).

After a fairly uneventful but not totally dismal day at work, SWMBO and I went out to run some errands. A short while into them, my phone rang with a call from my Dad- and it's very rarely a good thing when I get a call from them before 8pm or so when they normally call. He had called to tell me that my maternal grandmother, who had been in nursing care for the last year or so, had suddenly taken a turn for the worse that morning and passed on in the early afternoon. It was not wholly unexpected- she was 91 and her health (both physical and mental) had been steadily declining since my grandfather passed one about 4 years ago- but it was still more out of the blue than I had expected. For the time being my parents have said that there's not really anything to be done so I don't need to go down there unless I really want to- she hadn't wanted a funeral or service at all.

But.... this berking day wasn't done with me yet- it was about to hit us a whole lot closer to home. We finished our errands, changing plans to get dinner out instead of cooking at home so we could relax and talk a bit more easily, and then headed for home. Once we got home, I headed upstairs to clean the cats' litter boxes and make sure they didn't need more food and water as I usually do in the evening- and found that the older of our two cats, Kage, had apparently died in his sleep sometime during the day (probably while we had been out running errands) as he was sprawled out on the chair he liked to sleep in but was clearly not breathing and was stiff and completely unresponsive (but not particularly cold, which is why I don't think it had happened very long before we got home).

We had to quickly try and figure out what to do, and found that there was a pet memorial service nearby that you could call 24/7- so I had to put him on some towels in a large Amazon box and we drove out to the memorial place to arrange to have him cremated. I'd managed to largely hold it together until the memorial place director had to wait for some things to process on the computer and I went to say my final goodbyes in the memorial room where we'd put the box, and everything from both losses hit me full-on.

I wish I'd had the chance to say goodbye to both of them. I hadn't been to see my grandmother in the last year and a half or so since she moved closer to my parents and into the nursing home- we've not been down to Texas for even longer than that, and honestly wasn't sure I could take seeing her in such a bad state and often not remembering even her daughter (my Mom). Still- I feel bad that I didn't make the effort and at least go down and say my goodbyes. SWMBO at least could spin that in a positive direction- that my last memories of her were of her at least far closer to the Grandmother I'd known growing up.

Kage though... I didn't have any indication that anything was wrong and that I needed to be even thinking about saying any goodbyes. As bad of a person as it may make me seem like, his loss honestly has hit harder than my Grandmother's- both because of having to deal with everything involved in it directly as well as the fact that he was my responsibility. I feel bad that I didn't have any clue that anything was wrong, and can't help but wonder if we had come home earlier if things might have been different. I kind of think he may himself have had some clue though- when I went upstairs to Cat Land yesterday morning he was waiting for me by the gate instead of lazing around on my desk chair. I wish I'd taken more time to pet him and sit down for a few minutes so he could sit on my lap. I am at least thankful that over the last week I've had a lot of things to work on at my computer so spent more time than usual sitting at my desk with him sitting on my lap trying to distract me from what I was trying to do on the computer.

I considered staying home today from work, but ultimately decided I would be better off with the distraction that work would afford. If I'd stayed home and tried to do anything, the major thing I need to get done involves finishing what I have spent so much time working on at my computer- and I'd likely have a really hard time keeping it together sitting there at my desk without Kage trying to distract me.

Sorry for the long, probably not-so-minor rant...

In reply to Ashyukun: Sorry to hear it man, that was a rough day.

I agree with you about the grandmother thing. My memories of mine are still pretty good, and she's in a home now entirely taken away by Alzheimers. Visits are (reportedly) traumatic and unsettling for her, I've avoided them for both reasons, but that makes me feel guilty as well.

KyAllroad wrote: In reply to Ashyukun: Sorry to hear it man, that was a rough day. I agree with you about the grandmother thing. My memories of mine are still pretty good, and she's in a home now entirely taken away by Alzheimers. Visits are (reportedly) traumatic and unsettling for her, I've avoided them for both reasons, but that makes me feel guilty as well.

It was very similar with my Grandfather, though he was much further away geographically. In his case, my Mom actually said that she wouldn't stop me from going out to see him if I wanted to, but strongly encouraged me not to since it would likely be frustrating and traumatic for both he and I.

Even in the years prior to his decline (my Grandmother's only really began in earnest once he was gone- I think she just decided she didn't have anything to live for any more...) it was difficult to see him getting older and weaker and so different from how I'd known him growing up. Of course, the same can somewhat be said for my own parents too, though they're a good ways from where my grandparents were...

In reply to Ashyukun:

I'm very sorry for your losses :(

Very sorry to hear that. And I totally understand that it is harder to lose the pet than the person. Don't feel bad.