The grumpy thread

[New POD]

13 hours ago, MikeR said:

I have Mrs Nextdoors parcel in the hallway , should I wait for the bathroom light to go on and then go and ring the door bell ?

No. Wait. Make her come around, and then play dumb, whilst it's sitting next to you in the Porch. Then insist she provides ID

 

[purplebargeken]

That is generally due to the fact that the majority of French persons actually give a fuck about their town, village, commune.  Sadly that is quite lacking in a lot of places in the UK. 

[Datsuncog]

15 hours ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

For fuck's sake.  Already?  Felching thundercunts!

I'm guessing that they started putting the Yuletide stuff on the shelves the day after the August bank holiday (I took the pic last Thursday, as it happens). The same way they start piling up Easter eggs and hot cross buns on Boxing Day, and disposable barbeques on Easter Tuesday.

 

I appreciate some people do quite like chomping on fare like this all year round, and that's okay - I'm partial to a mince pie myself - but I just find it a harbinger of the festive greedathon and national orgy of smugly saccharine cutesy ads portraying unrealistic family dynamics, and basically instigating a great deal of unhappiness on many levels.

Not everyone finds it this way, of course - but for me it amounts to a sturm und drang campaign to encourage people to feel deeply inadequate, to which spending colossal sums in supermarkets is offered up as the only possible remedy,

It used to be that shops at least waited until after Hallowe'en before going all C*******s on us (always a big event here in Ireland, and let's not forget the Yanks borrowed it off us - it's not an 'import', even though the Chinese tat that lately accompanies it certainly is). Now the pallets of Cadburys Heroes and Mars Celebrations tubs are already massed by the Tesco doors before the first leaves have fallen, and I feel an ominous sense of dread...

This is why I hated working in retail. It's only ever Easter, Summer or Christmas. That's it. As soon as one goes, the next one piles in, full throttle - no time for reflection or transition. Months and months of build-up, the same loop of Christmas songs playing through the store since 1 November, all snuggly sweet - then you're asked to stay late on Christmas Eve to tear it all down and put up all the Sale signage. Bang. Obliteration. It never happened.

By 4pm on 24 December, all those cloying ads featuring amusing polar bears and snow and sensitive female indie-vocal music completely vanish, to be replaced by shrieking technicolour ads for Thompsons Holidays and the DFS Cunting Sofa Sale Now On.

Buy a fucking Crème Egg on Boxing Day. Buy five. Buy ten. Go on, your kids will hate you if you don't. 

And so it goes...

(I know, I know... I need to chill.)

[Supernaut]

3 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

 

(I know, I know... I need to chill)

No. That was absolutely perfect.

[Datsuncog]

4 hours ago, Wack said:

If the UK is one of the richest countries in the world why is it so shit 

I'm in normandy and it's spotless, no litter anywhere, grass verges cut and tidy, smooth roads without any potholes, people driving cars built in their country , motorways where people allow you to pull out and merge without the need to call you a cunt

At a guess, it's because the UK's wealth tends to be unequally distributed. Rich on paper, but much of it apparently held in overseas tax havens, or else generated through a housing market which long ago lost all semblance of reality and has now become a means to tithe individuals and families to banks for life.

Years of cuts to UK public services set against a background of rising demand, make civic niceties such as tidy verges and smooth roads unaffordable. Tax cuts for the increasingly super-wealthy never have the claimed trickle-down effect to the rest of the economy. As a national body, we're in financial ketosis. There's too much wealth leaking out through offshore trusts and other loopholes, than can be replaced through sustainable national productivity (actual industry, rather than financial services moving-numbers-around). At least, that's my hazy reading of it, based on a background in undergraduate economics.

Decades of championing ruthless individualism, while demolishing a sense of community, means that people feel unconnected to their surroundings, environment or neighbours. They're only living here temporarily, while waiting for their true genius to be recognised through Britain's Got Dancing Popstars On Ice or whatever, so they can move into Barbie's Dreamhouse/the Playboy Mansion. Picking up your own litter is for little people and losers, not superstars-in-waiting. I'm not really sure that changing this can be taught through schools, when the behaviour of other adults and traditional/social media outlets seems to constantly affirm it. 

Fuck me, I really need to log off and take a chill pill.

[captain_70s]

5 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

Fuck me, I really need to log off and take a chill pill.

Take the pills, close your eyes and it'll all be fiiiine.

[loserone]

@Datsuncog that's brilliant.  Thank you.

[dozeydustman]

2 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

I'm guessing that they started putting the Yuletide stuff on the shelves the day after the August bank holiday (I took the pic last Thursday, as it happens). The same way they start piling up Easter eggs and hot cross buns on Boxing Day, and disposable barbeques on Easter Tuesday.

 

I appreciate some people do quite like chomping on fare like this all year round, and that's okay - I'm partial to a mince pie myself - but I just find it a harbinger of the festive greedathon and national orgy of smugly saccharine cutesy ads portraying unrealistic family dynamics, and basically instigating a great deal of unhappiness on many levels.

Not everyone finds it this way, of course - but for me it amounts to a sturm und drang campaign to encourage people to feel deeply inadequate, to which spending colossal sums in supermarkets is offered up as the only possible remedy,

It used to be that shops at least waited until after Hallowe'en before going all C*******s on us (always a big event here in Ireland, and let's not forget the Yanks borrowed it off us - it's not an 'import', even though the Chinese tat that lately accompanies it certainly is). Now the pallets of Cadburys Heroes and Mars Celebrations tubs are already massed by the Tesco doors before the first leaves have fallen, and I feel an ominous sense of dread...

This is why I hated working in retail. It's only ever Easter, Summer or Christmas. That's it. As soon as one goes, the next one piles in, full throttle - no time for reflection or transition. Months and months of build-up, the same loop of Christmas songs playing through the store since 1 November, all snuggly sweet - then you're asked to stay late on Christmas Eve to tear it all down and put up all the Sale signage. Bang. Obliteration. It never happened.

By 4pm on 24 December, all those cloying ads featuring amusing polar bears and snow and sensitive female indie-vocal music completely vanish, to be replaced by shrieking technicolour ads for Thompsons Holidays and the DFS Cunting Sofa Sale Now On.

Buy a fucking Crème Egg on Boxing Day. Buy five. Buy ten. Go on, your kids will hate you if you don't. 

And so it goes...

(I know, I know... I need to chill.)

I just hate the mass-marketing and extreme overhype of nearly any celebration that is forced upon you. Easter, Christmas, St Patricks day, Parents days and Hallowe'en are all whacked into overdrive while Mayday (Beltane), other patron saints days, solstices, Burns night etc and many other significant national, cultural or religious observations are put into the sidelines. The origin of a lot of the massive both secular and religious festivals is lost and many kids by the time of secondary school don't know why the above are actually observed.

The world is driven by mass marketing. Have DFS ever had a day when they've not had a sale on? I can imagine the handful of branches of Allied Carpets still have sales on as well. It creates wastefulness in terms of both the punter's money and physical items that need disposal; why buy a new item of furniture when the one in the lounge is only a year old, has loads of life and still doesn't look out of date when you could save your money for a rainy day or a household emergency. Or Roffles.

There's also built in obsolescence, as found in most of our technological devices etc.

1 minute ago, Datsuncog said:

Years of cuts to UK public services set against a background of rising demand, make civic niceties such as tidy verges and smooth roads unaffordable. Tax cuts for the increasingly super-wealthy never have the claimed trickle-down effect to the rest of the economy.

 

As a public service worker, I can fully vouch for this. Where I work has suddenly managed to find £X million available to make our depot 'good' for a further 5-6 years, yet the fleet of vehicles we have is ageing, getting unreliable and needing constant maintenance to the point that a routine service is no longer half a day, nearer a day as parts are worn out and need to be replaced and need ordering from a specialist or the refuse body builder, therefor we have to occasionally hire an extra vehicle in at £lots per day. 

The pay increase of 1% last year means that they've got 'no option but to cut a round off', which if they didn't bugger about 3 years ago make one 5-day a week round that was too big into 2 3 days dusting, 2 days as spare crews and just palm a road of 2 from each day onto another nearby crew, they'd save all this hassle.

[Fumbler]

Our phone line's been cut off. People ring in, you pick up the phone, all you hear is the ring relay at the telephone exchange. Our landline powered phone merely chirps and falls dead. The wireless phones are the ones picking up all the static. I have no idea when this happened, or why this has happened, but it seems out line to the exchange has been cut off from the thing which connects us and just keeps on ringing. What's even more strange is that the Internet is still working, despite using nearly all the same telephone lines.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

1 minute ago, Fumbler said:

Our phone line's been cut off. People ring in, you pick up the phone, all you hear is the ring relay at the telephone exchange. Our landline powered phone merely chirps and falls dead. The wireless phones are the ones picking up all the static. I have no idea when this happened, or why this has happened, but it seems out line to the exchange has been cut off from the thing which connects us and just keeps on ringing. What's even more strange is that the Internet is still working, despite using nearly all the same telephone lines.

Did some maintenance contractor press the wrong button, or drill through a cable somewhere? Maybe an irate Tweet might get someone looking at the problem.....

[Fumbler]

39 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

Fuck me, I really need to log off and take a chill pill.

Take the packet out of the cupboard and throw them away. Also, shout "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not taking it anymore!" out of the window.

[Fumbler]

6 minutes ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

Did some maintenance contractor press the wrong button, or drill through a cable somewhere? Maybe an irate Tweet might get someone looking at the problem.....

Have no idea. I know it's got nothing to do with anything local- I can physically hear the exchange ring relay ticking which makes the phones ring like they do. Anyway- in talking to Father Fumbler on the mobile, he reported the fault to BT who are now running tests and hopefully will find a problem. We've been asked to unplug the phones and wait until further notice. Continuity tests I suppose.

[EssDeeWon]

16 hours ago, 155V6 said:

In the pub on Saturday(Not even into September),there was a sign saying you could book your Boxing Day lunch now ?

This is the side of Christmas I loathe, GIVE US YA MONEY GIVE US YA MONEY!  There is never need for Christmas to be mentioned before November, and that is being generous.

[MikeR]

27 minutes ago, Fumbler said:

Have no idea. I know it's got nothing to do with anything local- I can physically hear the exchange ring relay ticking which makes the phones ring like they do. Anyway- in talking to Father Fumbler on the mobile, he reported the fault to BT who are now running tests and hopefully will find a problem. We've been asked to unplug the phones and wait until further notice. Continuity tests I suppose.

they can use the termination resistor and ringer capacitor for the line test , the line card in the exchange has 2 sets of relays , one set to do the ringing , and another set to connect the line when you answer .

could be the ring trip is not seeing you lift the hand set and carries on ringing , could be the line or the exchange

[Fumbler]

1 minute ago, MikeR said:

they can use the termination resistor and ringer capacitor for the line test , the line card in the exchange has 2 sets of relays , one set to do the ringing , and another set to connect the line when you answer .

could be the ring trip is not seeing you lift the hand set and carries on ringing , could be the line or the exchange

Line powered phones pick up nothing, as if they're not plugged in. I suspect there's a drop out of line voltage somewhere beyond the exchange. The wireless handset phones with basestation will ring, showing the number, but will not transmit or receive any voice stuff whatsoever. This leads me to suspect that while the ringer wire is working, there is no line voltage so the line driven phone we have for backup isn't working. The other evidence for this that I have is that BT shortly came back to Father Fumbler saying they couldn't detect any fault. We know as well as thay do that the phone lines are ringing, and it also proves our master socket isn't to blame either.

[DoctorRetro]

Fucking work. 

Put simply, there are 5 of us (4 plus office manager) doing the work of 7. But there never seems to be a day when we are all in / available, the system we have is crap, and the colleagues we work in other locations with are often unhelpful and awkward. 

I'm bloody good at my job, if I do say so myself (bosses say so too) - I even covered the whole office by myself for 3 weeks recently. But we just don't have the support /resources to get things done properly. 

Fed up of being stretched too thin, stressing about too many things and not getting anything done to the standard I'd like it. 

Coupled with my fucking anxiety, not fun. 

[Split_Pin]

Twice I've nearly been run off the road since Saturday.

First was in a 30mph zone with chicanes. I saw a transit pickup in my mirror approaching alarmingly quick. He must have passed me at 60mph and we both reached a chicane at the same time. Luckily I braked in time. He had the check to sound his horn at me. I replied by tootling mine melodiously at this absolute trumpet. He had to have either been high or drunk, no question.

Also,  yesterday I was deliberately almost rammed at the back by an A-class because I didn't pull away from a roundabout at 600mph.

Let them have their moment, I suppose.

[Lord Sterling]

38 minutes ago, TheDoctor said:

Fucking work. 

 

30 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

Twice I've nearly been run off the road since Saturday.

Yes and yes.

To add to the fun* of travelling to the IoW, through Berkshire. Some impatient twat in a Blacl soft-roader decided to cut in front me and proceeded to try and be a 'funny' I let him get on with it.

Job.

Yep. Still getting on my nerves. Yes, I get thay the owner has built the business from scratch about 20 years ago but its suffered badly in the last few years. I don't understand whats going on. There was a bigger team here a few years ago (before I joined) but now there is the UK team (whom seem to be constantly celebrated) and the French team who seem to be left to our own devices and receive a shower of shit when things don't go the owners 'way'.

There used to be a Spanish team here tok that shut down and disappeared some time back. Our Netherlands branch recently closed down too.  Plus the owner had to apologise to a former employee of the NL branch after being accused of fraud.

Wow. Fucking wow.

I've worked in many shitty places, most of those you could take and write off as being part of the job etc... but this place takes the absolute biscuit. Even some newer but more experienced employees are looking elsewhere.

[Split_Pin]

Got in the Audi, started driving home and something starts tapping the back of my head.

THERE WERE 4 FUCKING WASPS INSIDE THE CAR!!

Thankfully I'm not scared of them and they were very woozy. After a nevertheless tense drive to the nearest car park I stopped, flung both doors open and flicked the bastards out. As it was raining they all died in puddle, a just end.

It was really wet so I had to dry the interior a bit before setting off.

Wasps. Shower of bastards.

[Fumbler]

Since BT doesn't seem to know what's going on, which is understandable, they're going to have to send a man out. For a charge of £100. Ho hum...

[DoctorRetro]

20 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

Got in the Audi, started driving home and something starts tapping the back of my head.

THERE WERE 4 FUCKING WASPS INSIDE THE CAR!!

Thankfully I'm not scared of them and they were very woozy. After a nevertheless tense drive to the nearest car park I stopped, flung both doors open and flicked the bastards out. As it was raining they all died in puddle, a just end.

It was really wet so I had to dry the interior a bit before setting off.

Wasps. Shower of bastards.

Fuck. That. 

I'd have been out like a shot, car moving or not

[DoctorRetro]

In other news... Fucking Rimmer Brothers/ UPS. 

UPS: No you can't change delivery address, RB requested direct delivery. 

RB: No we can't change delivery address. 

UPS: No we can't leave in a safe location, with a neighbour or even give you better tracking info so you can pop round home (9 min walk or 30 sec drive) to meet delivery driver. Choices = wait in for 4 hours or drive 26 miles to local depot in a car that is iffy as waiting for the delivery of said part!) 

Fucksake. 

[purplebargeken]

Long time ago...... Wasp flies into the space behind my partially open visor on a full face helmet whilst travelling at a reasonable speed in traffic. Much hilarity* ensues trying to open visor, waft/blow/encourage wasp to fuck off whilst dodging cars, vans, nuns and kittens whilst looking for a place to pull over, take helmet off and run away from wasp.

[Aston Martin]

Here's the prick from yesterday.

Compression doesn't help 

 

https://streamable.com/p8165

[MikeR]

5 hours ago, Fumbler said:

Line powered phones pick up nothing, as if they're not plugged in. I suspect there's a drop out of line voltage somewhere beyond the exchange. The wireless handset phones with basestation will ring, showing the number, but will not transmit or receive any voice stuff whatsoever. This leads me to suspect that while the ringer wire is working, there is no line voltage so the line driven phone we have for backup isn't working. The other evidence for this that I have is that BT shortly came back to Father Fumbler saying they couldn't detect any fault. We know as well as thay do that the phone lines are ringing, and it also proves our master socket isn't to blame either.

Only 2 wires from the exchange . if the bell works they are connected . more like the line feed is not working on the line card . but they will pad out the job to max the ot .... 

[Fumbler]

I suppose they'll narrow down the suspects eventually when they come out. It's either the master socket that's gone phut, the junction box on the pole opposite the house, or the new distribution box down the road. What I do know is that when everything's fixed, dialling 1571 will show us probably 16 million messages from people who couldn't get through to us!

[Tadhg Tiogar]

1 hour ago, purplebargeken said:

Long time ago...... Wasp flies into the space behind my partially open visor on a full face helmet whilst travelling at a reasonable speed in traffic. Much hilarity* ensues trying to open visor, waft/blow/encourage wasp to fuck off whilst dodging cars, vans, nuns and kittens whilst looking for a place to pull over, take helmet off and run away from wasp.

And this is why motorcycling has never appealed to me.

[vulgalour]

They came to measure our windows for the third time today.  It's great living in a rental property and being passed about, it's taken about three years to get anywhere with the windows.  Anyway, we're told they're a custom size, will need 1-3 days to make and then they can come and fit them.  It'll be an all-day job, early start.  Can we move the time or day it happens?  Nope.  Is it going to be at all friendly for my working hours?  Nope.  I am not looking forward to window-fitting day at all, wouldn't be so bad if the windows being replaced were in another room, but it would be the room I work and sleep in.

Ah well, it'll be nice to have windows that don't shed paint and grow mould.  Unless they cock it up, which they probably will, because it's the same rubbish lettings agency we were with at the previous house.  Except apparently it's not because they have a different brand name for this particular catchment area, even though their cars are all stickered up as the shitty agent's company.  Urgh.  I wish someone would regulate the FUCK out of rental agencies and individuals in the UK so they all had to take some fucking responsibility and stopped it being such an utter crapshoot.

[Jazoli]

1 hour ago, purplebargeken said:

Long time ago...... Wasp flies into the space behind my partially open visor on a full face helmet whilst travelling at a reasonable speed in traffic. Much hilarity* ensues trying to open visor, waft/blow/encourage wasp to fuck off whilst dodging cars, vans, nuns and kittens whilst looking for a place to pull over, take helmet off and run away from wasp.

2 weeks ago whilst I was out on the bike I managed to swallow a wasp whilst wearing a full face lid, it stung me on the uvulva of all places, it was an interesting 70 mile ride home whilst not being able to breathe well or swallow

[xtriple]

Half way through washing the car and the bastard hose burst in spectacular fashion, soaking me from head to foot. Also, as it's an expanding one it suddenly got about 20 foot shorter so doing the passenger side was, tricky.

S'pose I shouldn't complain as the hose only cost about £7 and that was about 3 years ago. Just bought another one from Amazon for a whole £9 delivered.