The grumpy thread

[CaptainBoom]

7 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

Best keeping your distance then. Window of opportunity to reclaim ladder when they're in China?

That's my plan to go back and launch a counter-offensive when they are out of the country. It was borrowed from work, so barring an audit of ladders, it shouldn't be missed for a month or so.

[RoverFolkUs]

9 minutes ago, CaptainBoom said:

Incoming wall of text, sorry about that.  

My father-in-law is massively getting on my tits.  After neglecting his house for 15 or so years, he's finally decided that he needs to do some maintenance.  Except he doesn't want to pay for someone to come out and do the work, he'd rather get muggins here to do it.   The text messages referred to it as 'a couple of jobs', when I got there I realised it really wasn't.  Last Saturday I was there for six hours after just finishing a night shift and getting three hours rest.  It's the priority that pisses me off though.  He has a semi-glazed lean-to built on to the side of the property which leaks like a sieve, the glass has dropped as the frames are all rotten.  As he uses the lean-to for storage of generic house crap (he and my step-M-i-L are shocking hoarders, so was my wife for that matter).  Clearly that's a job that needs seeing to first?  Apparently no, putting up a 3x3" post in the garden he can secure trellis to is a far more important task.  He tries to tell me that a bag of pure cement that he buried in the garage in 1996 will do the job of securing a post.  I ask him where the sand and stone are to make a concrete mix (channelling my inner Sierraman).  'Don't be fucking ridiculous', he says.  So I tell him it's getting done half-properly or not at all. 

Mid-tantrum off we plod to B&Q on a Saturday afternoon, in a town I don't know that well, in my car with him whinging about it.  All the way there I'm on the receiving end of a long lecture about my shit job and how I'm not able to support his grandchildren (I hasten to add, I don't ask him to support me at all, I'd rather bite my own arse than ask him for help, financial or otherwise), how much he earned before he retired, and how his retirement is well covered.  You hear me, I'm getting the full ego-trip.  He at least had the decency to shell out for the required materials, although he needed prompting at the check-out.

Old snapped post and original concrete lump out.  Hole cleaned up.  Temporary supporting posts fitted.  Concrete mixed and poured in.  That'll be reet in three days or so.  Just screw the trellis to the post, not nail said I.  Oh, I don't have a screwdriver he says.  Fucksake.  So I carefully fit the trellis with wood screws.  I'd be damned if I loaned him an electric screwdriver that I borrowed from work, he'd squirrel that away in milliseconds.  Just as I'm packing up after a couple of small jobs,  Step-M-i-L asks if I can prune one of their Leylandii.  Fair enough, I unpacked some steps from the car then realised there was a pile of scrap wood all around the tree.  I start moving it, step-M-i-l starts moving the stuff to, what I presume was another part of the garden.  Tree pruned (I fucking hate Leylandii, the dead bits go down my back and the sap makes my skin and eyes itch like crazy).  F-i-L then asks if I can take the bits of tree away,  I get a bit fed up at that point, he has a garden waste bin that the council gave him, I'll chop it up so that he can dispose of it in that spread over a few collections.  Finally free of the shackles I walk the ladder to the car and find that step-M-i-L has filled my SAAB with all of the scrap wood that was around the tree.  Fucking bastards!  I leave the stepladder in their garage, I was tempted to put it through the windscreen of their Civic.  So I drive home with their scrap wood which can go in Blasty McFurnaceFace, my homemade incinerator that I have in my garden.

When I got home, I get a text, 'can you skip off work and come tomorrow (Sunday)?'  I respond with, 'No, but can you perhaps at least pay for my diesel for today?'.  'Oh.  I'll pay you when all of the work is finished.'  Like fuck you will, you slippery spunktrumpet.  That list will just get longer and longer as he invents more shitty jobs that he wants bodged.  I'm generally very patient, but at that point I rang him and lost my shit, told him to fuck off like the parasite he is and fuck the horse he rode in on, and gave him specific directions on how to use Google to find another gullible mug.  I owe him nothing, after the debacle of him massively upping the price of the Civic he was going to sell me last year at the last minute.  I knew I should have walked away from them and communicated by the medium of Christmas and birthday cards (which is a one-way street as he won't buy stamps).

For context, he lives in Enfield, the other side of London from me.  With favourable traffic, it's a 1:15 journey.  At the weekend, especially a Saturday afternoon, it's more like 1:45.  So six hours there equates to 9 1/2 hours all told on my one rest day.  He is able-bodied as is step-M-i-L, they are just paranoid about getting COVID so they don't go out, even though they've both already had it twice and are travelling off to China later this year.  

TL:DR grown man has a rare strop and loses a stepladder.

Sweet Jesus!

The worst thing anyone can do is give the impression you are handy at anything to people like that!

I learnt that a long time ago. People tend to leave me alone now when the answer has recently always been "no" or I suggest they'll need to pay for it.. 

My colleague keeps working on one of his "mate's" cars absolutely free of charge. Not only has he not charged any sort of labour, he's not even been paid for the parts from the last time and he's gone and spent another £300 or so on more parts from his own pocket again this time which it doesn't sound like will be paid back 🤦

He's spent 2 evenings on it and the cunt who owns the car was phoning him up while at work asking if he can finish early as he needs the car later that evening 🤦

[CaptainBoom]

52 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

Sweet Jesus!

The worst thing anyone can do is give the impression you are handy at anything to people like that!

I learnt that a long time ago. People tend to leave me alone now when the answer has recently always been "no" or I suggest they'll need to pay for it.. 

My colleague keeps working on one of his "mate's" cars absolutely free of charge. Not only has he not charged any sort of labour, he's not even been paid for the parts from the last time and he's gone and spent another £300 or so on more parts from his own pocket again this time which it doesn't sound like will be paid back 🤦

He's spent 2 evenings on it and the cunt who owns the car was phoning him up while at work asking if he can finish early as he needs the car later that evening 🤦

Believe it or not, that's my first attempt at a meme, been pon this planet nearly 40 years and thought I'd pop into popular culture.  Who knows, by the end of the day I'll be listing to Miley Prius or whatever the kids do these days

 

[artdjones]

1 hour ago, CaptainBoom said:

That's my plan to go back and launch a counter-offensive when they are out of the country. It was borrowed from work, so barring an audit of ladders, it shouldn't be missed for a month or so.

They'll probably have sold it on Marketplace by then. 

"Sorry, didn't realise that was yours."

[artdjones]

Fitting a cabin filter to a Megane 3.😖 I can understand why the original 9 year old filter was still in there.

[Spurious]

Just now, artdjones said:

Fitting a cabin filter to a Megane 3.😖 I can understand why the original 9 year old filter was still in there.

Daft to think it took Renault 3 generations of Meagane to make an accessible cabin filter. It's a ten minute job on the Megane 4. Headlights are a two minute job, unlike the Megane 2, where you needed the hands of a double jointed three year old. 

[RoverFolkUs]

2 minutes ago, artdjones said:

Fitting a cabin filter to a Megane 3.😖 I can understand why the original 9 year old filter was still in there.

Legend has it that they had to pay someone to stand there and hold the cabin filter while they assembled the rest of the car around it 🤣

[somewhatfoolish]

7 hours ago, CaptainBoom said:

That's my plan to go back and launch a counter-offensive when they are out of the country. It was borrowed from work, so barring an audit of ladders, it shouldn't be missed for a month or so.

You have a lot of patience; I'd have just ignored the request in the first place given he seems a whiny entitled cunt and well able to afford trades persons, and in the hypothetical situation of a car miracled full of shitty rotten wood it would(geddit!?!) have been launched onto the pavement, the ladder stowed and with a single bound be off home. If the stuff's dry I suppose I might begrudgingly set fire to it, but if not they can deal with it themselves, or just do the green thing, let it rot in a corner of the garden and provide a habitat for critters and beasties. It's the modern way.

[Soundwave]

Went for an early evening stroll, brushed past a hedge and apparently accidentally disturbed a small bees nest. Had about a dozen of them pop out and start buzzing around and crawling about on my head.

Apparently the advice is not to swat at them. I instinctively swatted at them. 🤦‍♂️

Mercifully managed to run away and escaped with just the one sting on my swatting hand. First time I've ever had a bee sting me, pulling out the barb manually was fun*. Had a sausage finger for several hours after, just about gone down now.

 

[artdjones]

30 minutes ago, Spurious said:

Daft to think it took Renault 3 generations of Meagane to make an accessible cabin filter. It's a ten minute job on the Megane 4. Headlights are a two minute job, unlike the Megane 2, where you needed the hands of a double jointed three year old. 

At least headlamp bulbs are easy on the Mk3. But the cabin filter on this one took longer than the last Mk3 I did. I think because that one had had the cover screw which is impossible to see left out previously. Unless you are a pinhead it's hard to ram your head far enough under the dash to find it .

Strange, because they are easy to work on generally.

[twosmoke300]

34 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

Legend has it that they had to pay someone to stand there and hold the cabin filter while they assembled the rest of the car around it 🤣

Fucking awful aren’t they ? Even once you have taken the clutch pedal box out you still have to scrunch the filter up like a cricket ball .

[RoverFolkUs]

8 minutes ago, twosmoke300 said:

Fucking awful aren’t they ? Even once you have taken the clutch pedal box out you still have to scrunch the filter up like a cricket ball .

Fiat 500s are almost as bad. 

Unless you want to disconnect the steering column you just can't get anything decent onto the bolt heads. Unless someone previously has modified the fitment to make it easier! 

I always replace the hex heads with normal self tappers and leave them finger tight so it's easier for the next person! And grind a bit of the cover off 

[twosmoke300]

Then you get a hilux or Honda crv . Couldn’t be easier- proper design / engineering 

[artdjones]

I think it would be awkward but not terrible on a LHD car, taking the glove compartment out would give fair access, but on a rhd car the steering column gets right in the way, as well as the clutch pedal on manual cars. 

[barefoot]

We're walking up to Download Festival this afternoon, face book reveals that they sold out of draught beer and cider yesterday and were selling cans for SEVEN fucking quid a pop. This year will be my last.

[New POD]

I have broken my cafetiere this morning. I shall have to drink instant. Ballocks.

[twosmoke300]

1 hour ago, artdjones said:

I think it would be awkward but not terrible on a LHD car, taking the glove compartment out would give fair access, but on a rhd car the steering column gets right in the way, as well as the clutch pedal on manual cars. 

Yeh it’s definitely a poor LHD/ RHD swap job by the manufacturer. They obviously use the same heater box on both so RHD is blocked by all sorts of shit . 

[artdjones]

3 minutes ago, twosmoke300 said:

Yeh it’s definitely a poor LHD/ RHD swap job by the manufacturer. They obviously use the same heater box on both so RHD is blocked by all sorts of shit . 

I saw someone on the French Car Forum claiming to do the job in 15 minutes without removing the clutch pedal .🙄 

On the other hand, someone on there says that when having his replaced at the main dealer they managed to break part of the steering column taking it out to get at the filter housing.

[horriblemercedes]

21 hours ago, CaptainBoom said:

Incoming wall of text, sorry about that.  

My father-in-law is massively getting on my tits.  After neglecting his house for 15 or so years, he's finally decided that he needs to do some maintenance.  Except he doesn't want to pay for someone to come out and do the work, he'd rather get muggins here to do it.   The text messages referred to it as 'a couple of jobs', when I got there I realised it really wasn't.  Last Saturday I was there for six hours after just finishing a night shift and getting three hours rest.  It's the priority that pisses me off though.  He has a semi-glazed lean-to built on to the side of the property which leaks like a sieve, the glass has dropped as the frames are all rotten.  As he uses the lean-to for storage of generic house crap (he and my step-M-i-L are shocking hoarders, so was my wife for that matter).  Clearly that's a job that needs seeing to first?  Apparently no, putting up a 3x3" post in the garden he can secure trellis to is a far more important task.  He tries to tell me that a bag of pure cement that he buried in the garage in 1996 will do the job of securing a post.  I ask him where the sand and stone are to make a concrete mix (channelling my inner Sierraman).  'Don't be fucking ridiculous', he says.  So I tell him it's getting done half-properly or not at all. 

Mid his stroppy fit about having to buy something off we plod to B&Q on a Saturday afternoon, in a town I don't know that well, in my car with him whinging about it.  All the way there I'm on the receiving end of a long lecture about my shit job and how I'm not able to support his grandchildren (I hasten to add, I don't ask him to support me or the children at all, I'd rather bite my own arse than ask him for help, financial or otherwise), how much he earned before he retired, and how his retirement is well covered.  You hear me, I'm getting the full ego-trip.  He at least had the decency to shell out for the required materials, although he needed prompting at the check-out.

Old snapped post and original concrete lump out.  Hole cleaned up.  Temporary supporting posts fitted.  Concrete mixed and poured in.  That'll be reet in three days or so.  Just screw the trellis to the post, not nail said I.  Oh, I don't have a screwdriver he says.  Fucksake.  So I carefully fit the trellis with wood screws.  I'd be damned if I loaned him an electric screwdriver that I borrowed from work, he'd squirrel that away in milliseconds.  Just as I'm packing up after a couple of small jobs,  Step-M-i-L asks if I can prune one of their Leylandii.  Fair enough, I unpacked some steps from the car then realised there was a pile of scrap wood all around the tree.  I start moving it, step-M-i-l starts moving the stuff to, what I presume was another part of the garden.  Tree pruned (I fucking hate Leylandii, the dead bits go down my back and the sap makes my skin and eyes itch like crazy).  F-i-L then asks if I can take the bits of tree away,  I get a bit fed up at that point, he has a garden waste bin that the council gave him, I'll chop it up so that he can dispose of it in that spread over a few collections.  Finally free of the shackles I walk the ladder to the car and find that step-M-i-L has filled my SAAB with all of the scrap wood that was around the tree.  Fucking bastards!  I leave the stepladder in their garage, I was tempted to put it through the windscreen of their Civic.  So I drive home with their scrap wood which can go in Blasty McFurnaceFace, my homemade incinerator that I have in my garden.

When I got home, I get a text, 'can you skip off work and come tomorrow (Sunday)?'  I respond with, 'No, but can you perhaps at least pay for my diesel for today?'.  'Oh.  I'll pay you when all of the work is finished.'  Like fuck you will, you slippery spunktrumpet.  That list will just get longer and longer as he invents more shitty jobs that he wants bodged.  I'm generally very patient, but at that point I rang him and lost my shit, told him to fuck off like the parasite he is and fuck the horse he rode in on, and gave him specific directions on how to use Google to find another gullible mug.  I owe him nothing, after the debacle of him massively upping the price of the Civic he was going to sell me last year at the last minute.  I knew I should have walked away from them and communicated by the medium of Christmas and birthday cards (which is a one-way street as he won't buy stamps).

For context, he lives in Enfield, the other side of London from me.  With favourable traffic, it's a 1:15 journey.  At the weekend, especially a Saturday afternoon, it's more like 1:45.  So six hours there equates to 9 1/2 hours all told on my one rest day.  He is able-bodied as is step-M-i-L, they are just paranoid about getting COVID so they don't go out, even though they've both already had it twice and are travelling off to China later this year.  

TL:DR grown man has a rare strop and loses a stepladder.

Sounds like a twat of the highest order

 

For some reason I'm reminded of my hoarder father. When my sister and I were children, she had a pet rabbit

 

Years later I was forcing my dad to clear out some of his old crap and I found the rabbit hutch. He said, "no, don't get rid of that." 

I replied, "why not?" 

He said, "what if I get a rabbit?" 

"you're a 60 year old man, you're not getting a pet rabbit. Don't be so fucking ridiculous" 

[Mrcento]

In todays episode of 'Searching for a car locally, you couldn't make it up'

Arranged last night to go and see one today, got a message this morning, alongside a photograph outside the sellers house informing me that there'd be no point in coming to look now, because not only was the road closed due to a 'police incident', but that incident in question involved a drunk driver smashing into the car i was going to see (alongside several other parked cars) and will have written it off.

Conclusion, I'm actually cursed.....

[Mrcento]

On 6/10/2023 at 2:13 PM, CaptainBoom said:

Mid his stroppy fit about having to buy something off we plod to B&Q on a Saturday afternoon, in a town I don't know that well, in my car with him whinging about it.  All the way there I'm on the receiving end of a long lecture about my shit job and how I'm not able to support his grandchildren (I hasten to add, I don't ask him to support me or the children at all, I'd rather bite my own arse than ask him for help, financial or otherwise), how much he earned before he retired, and how his retirement is well covered.

Did he also tell you about his Sun Life over 50's plan? (It sounds like the perfect script for one of those ads).

In all seriousness, i'd have got to B&Q, walked into the middle of the store, tell him i'd left my wallet/phone in the car, be right back, get in, drive off and leave the fucker stranded there.

Not only would it stop hearing his egotistical bollocks, but the line in the sand would be so deep through the whole family, you'd never be asked for anything ever again and could sleep safe in the knowledge that to him, you're 'That cunt that left me stranded in B&Q'. (and yes, everyone would find it fucking hilarious deep down if they know what he's like).

[chaseracer]

That's both evilly brilliant and brilliantly evil.

Chapeau.

[PicantoJon]

Well the last few days of work have reaffirmed my need to GTFO. Can't go into detail, but it involved me being put in a seriously dodgy situation without any staff to back me up.

I have enough mental health issues with anxiety and me Asperger's syndrome without being put in a situation like that. 

And then my manager had the cheek to ask me to do more overtime, faaaaaaaahk orf! 

[sheffcortinacentre]

On 6/10/2023 at 9:46 PM, RoverFolkUs said:

Legend has it that they had to pay someone to stand there and hold the cabin filter while they assembled the rest of the car around it 🤣

Thats how the starter motors where fitted to the original Reno 5's.

[cort1977]

Flipping insurance.

Just noticed an email, 'contact us about your policy'.

Called them up and turns out they have noticed I got a speeding fine in January.  Insurance auto-renewed last month.  Fair enough, I can see there might be an increase in premium but they then had the front to charge a made up £30 admin fee on top.  No interest in waiving it and another £120 quid premium for an SP30 speeding code. 

Need to sort out a proper multicar policy, saw Admiral recommended on here, trouble is Admiral are the thieving bastards I'm with now!

[MikeR]

Local bank is shutting its doors ..

But that's okay by them as I could bank up in Southport or go down to Norris green ....like 10 miles each way !

So as a long time customer I will Fuck that off , move banks and take my Dosh else where ..

I suspected it could happen and so no investments or deals where done with them ...

[loserone]

9 minutes ago, MikeR said:

like 10 miles each way

Our nearest bank of any flavour is 23 miles away.  Why do you need one at all?

[MikeR]

17 minutes ago, loserone said:

Our nearest bank of any flavour is 23 miles away.  Why do you need one at all?

I like the face to face when sorting things out ....  I suppose I will adapt ..

[Lankytim]

Wife cancelled our broadband deal because she spotted a much cheaper deal online. Entered the address and they don’t cover our area. Shopped around and other providers can supply us but there’s going to be a week or two where we’re cut off from broadband, kids not impressed. 
 

My phone contract is also up next month, so I’m shopping around. I can’t understand what the fuck half of these offers meanie what they provide. I’m seriously thinking of going on a tech detox and binning the phone off altogether. 

[Remspoor]

3 hours ago, Lankytim said:

there’s going to be a week or two where we’re cut off from broadband

It seems a bit of a mess.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/advice-for-consumers/costs-and-billing/switching/switching-broadband-provider