start a victory garden and ration your IRRATIONALLY ANGRY feelings, part 3

100 FE college kids all on a trip somewhere taking up the entire footpath and not moving over

I brushed one particularly stubborn not-moving-over-er with my arm and she whined all the way down the path about "she hit me! that bitch hit me!"

further down the line a not-even-looking-er was a big dude using a skateboard as a shield so I just had to stand still and glare at that point

FE students or new students in general and tourist groups tend to be totally clueless about other people needing to use the pavement.
& it's the time of year where the tourist trade is at about its height.

Can't work out why the main square in the centre of town still has all its grassy areas fenced off, would have thought they'd make sure they were moved by now. Possibly used the Bank Holiday at the beginning of this week as a milestone. Would think they'd want that open for tourist season.
& don't think having 4 foot, if that, security barriers without a horizontal cover realy served the purpose they were intended for, keeping birds off the reseeded lawns which had been wrecked by the Xmas market.

one thing that mildly irks me is people who police the use of mailing lists or slack channels or whatever.

like everywhere i've ever worked there's someone who okay, says "hey what a nice day!" on a channel that reaches about 600 people or whatever, but equally there are these hordes of enforcers beating those people down with "this is a public list!"

i swear the latter group are like dreaming of a fascist society.

in the case of mailing lists, the irony of the fact that their replies also reach hundreds of people never seems to strike them.

i mean i know this kind of has to be done, but it definitely feels like people enjoy it sometimes, or if not enjoy, then feel a sense of orderly righteousness by telling someone they disturbed a few people for 5 seconds.

right now someone in my office change the description of a slack channel to say, among other passive aggressions - "this list is for building-is-on-fire type announcements" and it's like, really? we should only use this slack channel to discuss something as serious as the flames rising through our workspace threatening to melt our bodies? even as a joke or figure of speech that seems slightly insane. don't ever make an announcement here unless it's as serious as the threat of imminent death.

Yeah come across a lot of that including lists where the person supposedly keeping other people in check is the least in control of their own behaviour. But thinks if they set up somebody else to blame their own creepiness is bypassed.

we had some renovations at our office and a woman from the state agency that leases buildings for offices came to inspect it and she had all these criticisms like "you should never tape anything to the walls" and "you can't have two microwaves in here" (not a fire code issue) and "no plants" just completely arbitrary and i was wondering like are these real rules? but no she's just a crazy person who has control of a small domain. just like a listserv moderator.

one thing that mildly irks me is people who police the use of mailing lists or slack channels or whatever.

like everywhere i've ever worked there's someone who okay, says "hey what a nice day!" on a channel that reaches about 600 people or whatever, but equally there are these hordes of enforcers beating those people down with "this is a public list!"

i swear the latter group are like dreaming of a fascist society.

in the case of mailing lists, the irony of the fact that their replies also reach hundreds of people never seems to strike them.

i mean i know this kind of has to be done, but it definitely feels like people enjoy it sometimes, or if not enjoy, then feel a sense of orderly righteousness by telling someone they disturbed a few people for 5 seconds.

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Thursday, June 9, 2016 5:37 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

one thing that mildly irks me "is when" people complain about the thing that they are doing in making the complaint

In line at Starbucks this morning. Guy ahead of me is ordering:

"I'd like three, uh, lattes."
"OK. What sizes?"
"Uh . . . the tall."
"Three tall lattes. Would you like anything else?"
"OK, and one of them should be non-fat. The other two just, like, regular."
"OK, two tall lattes, one tall non-fat latte."
(Guy's wife wanders over.) "Just the latte, right?"
"Yes, vanilla. And non-fat."
"OK, so one tall non-fat latte, one tall vanilla non-fat latte, and one tall latte?"

ad infinitum

I would expand that to 'anyone who enters an otherwise fast-moving queue without being prepared for what's at the end of the line'.

You mean I have to PAY for this bus journey I've been queuing for 15 minutes for? With the small change that's in a special zipped section of my wallet which is in a special pocket of my bag which is inside another bag under a coat and all my shopping?

xxpost Phil, did you start wailing loudly y/n

Feel like stuff like that Starbucks catastrophe is a good reason to carry one of those portable air horns on your person at all times. Someone like that needs a blast right in the ear.

Basketball players that chew on their mouth guards and it just hangs out of their mouth.

aka steph curry

the backlash is in full swing!

Veg, no, just made desperate eye contact with the barista, with whom I'm friendly. I'm pretty sure she blinked out "help me" in Morse code.

i got a card for a free drink at whole foods coffee because i got behind an elderly woman who took forever to make her order and kept going on and on about how she orders the thing at starbucks. then asked where she could find magnesium, the guy was like sorry idk, she ran off to get it and he was like "sorry" and gave me the thing.

Yesterday I was at a WF and the guy ahead of me tried to pay with his iPhone (Apple Pay) but that didn't work so he tried a credit card and that didn't work either, so I bailed on that line to a spot behind a woman with a lot of stuff. When she finally went to pay she used her iPhone too and couldn't get it to work, but at least the clerk was able to go around and do it. All I could think of was "Is it so hard to just use a credit card, people?"

It really shouldn't be so hard for Whole Foods to take Apple Pay.

Basketball players that chew on their mouth guards and it just hangs out of their mouth.

My pet peeve is when they do this.

http://i.imgur.com/gqMVFFd.jpg

Whats a slack channel? is that like a group skype chat or something.

https://slack.com/is

So, yes.

so would you actively watch a channel that literally had nothing going on and was there only for dire emergencies? cos if not then no-one's going to know when the dire emergency happen

if people keep using something for the wrong purpose then maybe the thing is wrong.

You don't have to actively watch it, there's an app. There's a lot of ways to use Slack, and some people (myself included) don't do so well with unwarranted interruption (as er opposed to refreshing ILX repeatedly) so I have to say I can totally see a use case for "If the notification flashes then it must be worth paying attention to".

When people describe food as "revelatory"

Unless they mean the toast with jesus's face

gnostic breakfast experiences excepted, obv

the crying laughing facebook emoji

"don't change your avatar, change your SENATOR"

wow gee thanks i never thought about voting for a democrat before

Revelatory.

increasingly, long-winded sermonic facebook posts, although I have been guilty of them myself on occasion.

people who run IN THE STREET when there is a sidewalk, please get hit by a car

there is runner folk wisdom (don't know if it's true) that road is better for your joints than sidewalk.

I only run in the street when assholes are blocking the sidewalk. And it's only for like 15 feet. But yeah, not my preferred path.

I prefer running on the streets to running on the sidewalk but only when the streets are p much empty.

If I run in the street it's b/c the asphalt is softer than concrete, but I run on the left side (against oncoming traffic) and try to never be in any car's way

If i run in the street it is because i am naked and want to share it with the world

Revelatory

my lifelong IA and secondhand embarrassment still has to be public q&a sessions and ppl's inability to ask short succinct questions
esp the ones with the long rambly lifestory intro like they decided right before "fuckit i'm getting my 15 min of fame while I'm at it"

Birch Barlow: Mayor Quimby, you are well known for your lenient stance on crime, but suppose for a second that your house was ransacked by thugs, your family was tied up in the basement with socks in their mouths, you try to open the door but there's too much blood on the knob....

Mayor Quimby: What is your, ah, question?

Birch Barlow: My question is about the budget, sir.

Lol <3

exactly

The car in front of me at the Dunkin Donuts drive through paid for my coffee this morning. I can't STAND when people do that!

And just think of the smug self-satisfaction they're feeling RIGHT NOW

It weirds me out because I'm all set to pay for my own drink, then I have to re-evaluate the situation. Am I expected to participate in this too? Is the person in front of me a stalker or something? Is there someone behind me now? Did they order a coffee or a dozen donuts? Am I on candid camera?

There was no one behind me to pay it forward to, thank god, so I tipped the counter dudes and got the hell out of there.

So cynical!

I don't think it's cynicism as much as anxiety.

is it ok to be cynical about restaurants that commodity this behavior?

http://i.imgur.com/eOq7JbR.jpg

it's nice that some of the money is going to charity, but it's impossible not to see this as a calculated marketing strategy to turn a profit under the guise of "random" acts of kindness, barf.

i think generally pay it forward is kinda nice, but it can for sure throw you off kilter

i am suspicious of people who do it habitually though. one of the managers in our office is a habitual pay-it-forward-er & loves to faux-humbly drop it into conversation etc & basically thinks he's got a box seat in heaven bcz of his Good Deeds. i take a very dim view of his charity in general because i know that he wants the world to know about it AND hopes that we're keeping score