Innocuous things that make you irrationally angry (a list thread)

The A/C situation in my office sucks for me b/c my office/cube area has no vents, but my boss' office has two of them, but she is always cold and she hates A/C. I have a fan on at my desk year-round.

Actually, I have a fan on at home year-round, too. Ceiling fan is only off when I'm away and I also sleep w/ a fan blowing on my torso.

especially when I get a window seat on a hot day and I can lean on the vent.

YES. This is super great if I can angle my arm so the air blows into my shirt.

Also working from home is one of my top five career goals.

It can be an isolation hell after a honeymoon of "lol I haven't worn shoes in three days" small pleasures.

Maybe work from home 3 days out of 5. I probably would get kind of lonely.

my desk is right under the AC vent -- I'm almost always wearing a sweater even in the height of summer

even though some of my colleagues drive me crazy, i think i would go even crazier being at home all day. but yeah, 3 days in the office, 2 days out would be fantastic.

Have seriously considered working at the Caterpillar plant just to get the 4 on, 3 off.

We can do 4 on, 3 off here, but the 4 on are long days and that is not appealing to me, either.

I always figure if I'm here, I'm here. Wouldn't want to work six six-hour days either.

Good point. And half the time I work hours as long as I would if I worked 4 days instead of 5.

Yeah, we switched to summer hours a few weeks ago, meaning we can do four 8.75 hour days M-Th and then leave 3 hours early on Friday. My first thought is always, "this is awesome because I'm usually hear that long every day anyway", but it is quickly revealed not to matter because I'm too busy to leave early on Friday or have meeting scheduled 2 out of 3 weeks.

you need to get into yr outlook and block that time out. 'sorry! conflict!'

I'm very, very thankful that my hours are 8:30-5 M-Th, 8:30-1 Friday. It was a bit tough to get used to the first few weeks (that extra half hour is annoying!) but the feeling of leaving most Fridays around 1 is exhilirating.

insurance companies are the fucking worst.

Yes.

We're allowed to do summer hours but it's 9 hour days Mon through Th and then Fridays off and I just can't do it. I can't be here for 10 hours (inc lunch) - it kills me. I am bored 80% of the time as is.

I would be allllllllllll over that, especially since Andrew works nights, Sun-Thursday. It's like we'd have Real Weekends together! But I can see how people with normal schedules may find it useless.

I tried it last year. I literally could not stay here that long every day. I felt like I wanted to die. I haven't done a fucking thing for the last three hours and I'm going out of my mind. No way I could handle the thought of being here late tonight or any other night for that matter. Christ, I need a new job.

hahaha, that's fair. I went from a super busy job to a fairly mellow one and I feel it sometimes too.. but that's what ILX is for!

Pet hate on my mind right now: Sales reps who are really bad at small talk, but who persist in trying to have a conversation like you're their only prospect for a fucking friend. This rep from a legal services company we use emails me occasionally just to make sure I remember her. Most recently she emailed me asking if I could recommend any leads for court reporting or document services and she also said "How is your summer so far? I went to the beach this weekend but I dropped my phone in the lake! :( I hope your weekend was better than mine! :)"

I responded that my weekend was great and no, I had no leads.

She wrote back Well thank you anyways :) I appreciate it :)
How’s everything going? How’s your summer so far?

~Jen

WTF? She really really cares about my summer!

MY ~SUMMER~ IS STILL ~GREAT~, EVEN TWO WHOLE DAYS SINCE WE LAST TALKED!! :D Could you give me your mobile number :) so that I can text you if that happens to change on the night or weekend? :P

I'm not actually angry, btw. I just think that kind of ass kissing chumminess is gross.

Oh god, architectural reps pull that forced chumminess all the time and it drives me batshit.

Unfortunately I have to write sales emails in my job. I try to be personable, but I limit it to "I hope your (whatever season it is) is going well," and then I get down to business.

Next time she asks how your summer is, write back that it's still technically spring.

I really don't like when people ask me to "teach them how to make a website" as if it's a simple thing that can be explained in the time it takes to drink morning coffee.

I work with an editor who gets so pissed that her 2342 x 2342 images she uploads to her stories get all distorted and blows up the page. "Can't I.T. make it where the photos automatically resize? It would take them five minutes."

And I'm all, yeah, why don't you just call their extension and tell them that.

They should just have an auto style in them restricting them to 400 px or something.. but she is also dumb :)

I'll tell them to get right on that.

Let them know my inner former web designer is raising an eyebrow at the idea they'd let randoms update websites without implementing that simple trick. ;D

(Though perhaps you are not talking about websites per se.. I had not thought of that when I mentioned the auto resize.. if a website, it'd be a line in the stylesheet that would carry across the entire website easily..)

On our 2005-era website (which we're rebuilding), any editor can upload art to their story. However, it's gotta be 200 pixels wide. Anything more and it bounces out of its box and into the margins.

The new site will resize it to the correct parameters, but then you've got something so compressed, it'll take a year to load and will look all jaypeggy.

Allowing randoms to put their own photos up makes sense in our office. You're trusting them with a story free of grammatical errors or formatting, so you should educate them not to use crazy ass pictures. Otherwise, it would just be one person (likely me) handling everyone's art.

The editor I mentioned above makes me IA because she needs to accommodate the style of the website (since it works for everyone else) and not the other way around.

The needlessly complicated system of the Chicago Transit Authority's/Regional Transit Authority's employee transit tax savings is kind of amazing. I'm the administrator and a participant. Why do I have to fax or email a form rather than submit info online like w/ all other parts of the CTA? Why are their enrollment windows so fucking weird? Why do the CTA and RTA each have their own systems, when ultimately, both do EXACTLY the same thing? And finally: Why oh WHY do they not accept credit cards?????

WHY DO THEY NOT ACCEPT CREDIT CARDS

I still walk to the water company's office every month to pay the bill because their website tacks on an extra $5 for any cc charge.

$5???? i feel like that's a crazy fee for cc use...

I agree. I need the exercise anyway.

People saying credit cards when they mean debit cards.

people here at work keep just leaving things in the sink. they might wash their dishes, but cups and flatware just pile up. we put a sign up saying for people to wash even the flatware they use, and it worked perfectly. but as soon as the sign was taken down (b/c it seemed like ppl were doing it!), cups and flatware started appearing in the sink again. wtf??

when you are seated on the side of an airplane, with just the two seats, and the person next to you hogs the center armrest the entire flight...where do they get off?

wherever the plane lands

i've had to sit in the center seat with both people on both sides of me using the armrest.

that calls for a double elbow thwack into each of their noses....god i wanted to beat this armrest hog down

When I'm writing business emails that require a note of semi-personalization, I've boiled it down to six words:

"How are you? Hope all's well."

Then on to business.

Com Ed uses a third party billing service that is free, but really annoying and but if you pay over the computerized phone system, it costs $3.95. Bleh.

People saying credit cards when they mean debit cards.

I've thought of what to call plastic besides "plastic," and I can't think of any alternatives. And "plastic" is kind of silly sounding.

Xp "How are you? Hope all's well." is brilliantly simple.

My card can be either. It's magic.

Oh, and what's confounding about the CTA/RTA's transit benefits site not taking plastic is that their regular websites do. And their forms are all submitted online.

People saying credit cards when they mean debit cards.

― kinder, Thursday, June 14, 2012 4:52 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was so confused when I went to the states for the first time as an adult - wanted to pay for shoes using my debit card and they kept calling it a credit card and then it didn't work and I kept trying to tell them it was a *card that accesses the money in my bank account, not credit* but they would only key it in as credit and eventually I had to go to a bank machine and take money out! FFS!

How long ago was that? I've found they are pretty interchangeable. Clerks will ask me "Credit or debit?" and I'll say debit, usually, since then I don't have to sign anything, but either way it's the same card. And sometimes it runs through as a credit card and I have to sign something, but it's still taking money directly out of my account.

IA: the state MCLE board sending me an email reminding me that I haven't reported my compliance with CLE requirements, which is fine because I haven't because I have to take a couple of professional responsibility credit WEBINARS (<-- IA FOREVER) this weekend, and I appreciate the reminder, but it's not just a reminder. It's a long, hectoring email talking about "You haven't reported yet, and maybe you don't realize it's almost June 30, and it doesn't look like you're registered as inactive, so you know you have to report by June 30." I don't know. MCLE makes me angry because it's a complete racket, and I don't like to be lectured by passive aggressive professional regulatory bodies.

there are 417 mentions of the word "phone" in this thread btw

i'm going to just agree vehemently with this from last week because it pissed me off yesterday:

Oh gosh yes I am like that about phonecalls too. I'm like "ffs I cant listen to two people at once". Esp hard thanks to hearing loss in one ear.

wtf is wrong with people. would you do this to someone if they were having a separate conversation with someone in the room? just walk up to them while the other person is talking and start a new conversation? do you think the other person doesn't exist if you can't see them? i'm not trying to fool you! but i just went from understanding one conversation fully to understanding absolutely nothing about anything anyone is saying. wtf wtf wtf

How long ago was that? I've found they are pretty interchangeable. Clerks will ask me "Credit or debit?" and I'll say debit, usually, since then I don't have to sign anything, but either way it's the same card. And sometimes it runs through as a credit card and I have to sign something, but it's still taking money directly out of my account.

― carl agatha, Thursday, June 14, 2012 2:44 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i always say credit because in my head someone told me something about how there's some kind of fee if you pay with debit but not with credit? or maybe it costs the store less to process? obviously i don't know why i always run as credit but i do.