Really minor annoyances

[Mousehold Mackem]

This type of toaster that you get in hotels. One round and the bread is still anaemic, two and it’s burnt to buggery

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And people who think they can block access to the toaster until their toast has completed its Odyssey into Hades and back.

And people who think it's OK to stuff half a french stick into the toaster and wonder why it gets stuck.

 

[DaveH]

Being the member of your team who is physically the most remote from any of the company's offices and being told you have to go to Telford next week for a 3 hour meeting.

And will you be posting next week with a major annoyance that half the attendees were on Teams?

That happened a few times in my last job. I had a 2-3 hour drive. Generally I went in once every 2 weeks, but not on any regular cycle. It was always when someone called an onsite meeting.

I remember one day for a must have everyone onsite meeting, traffic was awful, it was one of the 3 hour drive days (only around 85 miles drive). I got in feeling tired, hungry and generally annoyed. It was lashing it down with rain which had slowed down all traffic. Got to the meeting room and it was fairly quiet. Gradually half the people came in, then up pops 8 people on Teams on the big screen. Most of them lived within 5 miles of work but didn't fancy going out in the rain and were quite jovial about it. "Oh Dave, I can't believe you drove all the way from Kent, I could not be arsed to walk to my car in this rain, oh ha ha ha". Well I take my job seriously and try to be professional you absolute *****.

I made a point after that of asking for each must be on site meeting, if local people were actually going to be onsite, otherwise I would just stay at home.

 

[ned_werby]

And will you be posting next week with a major annoyance that half the attendees were on Teams?

That happened a few times in my last job. I had a 2-3 hour drive. Generally I went in once every 2 weeks, but not on any regular cycle. It was always when someone called an onsite meeting.

I remember one day for a must have everyone onsite meeting, traffic was awful, it was one of the 3 hour drive days (only around 85 miles drive). I got in feeling tired, hungry and generally annoyed. It was lashing it down with rain which had slowed down all traffic. Got to the meeting room and it was fairly quiet. Gradually half the people came in, then up pops 8 people on Teams on the big screen. Most of them lived within 5 miles of work but didn't fancy going out in the rain and were quite jovial about it. "Oh Dave, I can't believe you drove all the way from Kent, I could not be arsed to walk to my car in this rain, oh ha ha ha". Well I take my job seriously and try to be professional you absolute *****.

I made a point after that of asking for each must be on site meeting, if local people were actually going to be onsite, otherwise I would just stay at home.

Sounds like my type of working life. Fortunately, next week has to be face-to-face as it's in a secure facility (behind 3 locked doors apparently) where the servers are located. It'll be bloody freezing.

 

[DaveH]

Sounds like my type of working life. Fortunately, next week has to be face-to-face as it's in a secure facility (behind 3 locked doors apparently) where the servers are located. It'll be bloody freezing.

I used to make sure I had jobs to do in data centres on really hot days.

 

[Mousehold Mackem]

The annual car insurance carry on.

Raise price by 25%.
Call and cancel.
We'll only increase the price by 2%.
OK.

Cheating, robbing, lying bastards.

 

[DaveH]

The annual car insurance carry on.

Raise price by 25%.
Call and cancel.
We'll only increase the price by 2%.
OK.

Cheating, robbing, lying bastards.

And the default of auto-renewal in the hope you forget about it and they can get away with it.

Anyone who takes money automatically really.

Fall £5 into debt on your water or energy and they are on to you like a shot. Yet if you go hundreds of pounds over, they don't have anything to detect that and warn you, to stop collecting or automatically reduce. If my memory is correct, I think my mam had over £1k in payments at one point and I think we had £800 credit with one of them. Both scenarios it had built up gradually over a couple of years so there was no excuse for them not picking it up at the end of the financial year.

 

[BiG]

“How do I reply to an email?”

That’s annoying in itself. She (the missus) is sat with her Samsung tablet on her lap and has … brace yourself.. a hotmail account! And she can’t remember how to reply to an email. Coz she normally just forwards the bastards to me.

But, as with everything she ever does on her tablet or her phone, she asks me how to do it. And as I do every single time, I say “I have an iPad and an iPhone. You have a Samsung phone and tablet. I can’t just TELL you how to do stuff. I can very quickly figure it out by looking at the bloody icon on a button of the menu bar on your device or email system or whatever software you’re using but I can’t just do it off the top of my head”

And she gets all shirty about me wanting to look at her device. So we go around the same circle about 6 times before she gets pissed off enough to let me look at it… then I say “that button with the back curvy arrow is reply. The one pointing the other way is ‘forward’ and the one with two arrows is ‘reply to all’”

And she says “Why can’t they just make it simple?”

 

[Crook Mackem]

People who use the last of the milk and then put it back in the fridge. Likewise, use all the bread except the crusts and put that back in the breadbin. Also likewise, similar with the butter so your scraping miniscule amounts out of the corners in the tub

 

[DaveH]

“How do I reply to an email?”

That’s annoying in itself. She (the missus) is sat with her Samsung tablet on her lap and has … brace yourself.. a hotmail account! And she can’t remember how to reply to an email. Coz she normally just forwards the bastards to me.

But, as with everything she ever does on her tablet or her phone, she asks me how to do it. And as I do every single time, I say “I have an iPad and an iPhone. You have a Samsung phone and tablet. I can’t just TELL you how to do stuff. I can very quickly figure it out by looking at the bloody icon on a button of the menu bar on your device or email system or whatever software you’re using but I can’t just do it off the top of my head”

And she gets all shirty about me wanting to look at her device. So we go around the same circle about 6 times before she gets pissed off enough to let me look at it… then I say “that button with the back curvy arrow is reply. The one pointing the other way is ‘forward’ and the one with two arrows is ‘reply to all’”

And she says “Why can’t they just make it simple?”

Make a little poster.

When I was younger, my dad was a teacher and used to make his own worksheets on the computer. He had a study in the next room from my bedroom. I would suddenly here a bellow through the wall "oh man, how do I do this?". No little knock and ask if I would not mind helping, just shouting his problem through the wall. Eventually I would go and ask what the problem is. He could not remember how to do something that I showed him last week.

Except because in those days you didn't have tool bars and had to go through a few menu steps, I would tell him the first click, and he would race ahead showing me again what he tried and didn't work. Ok stop that, click the menu, click here, "yes, and then I was doing this this this". Ok dad, you have shown me that 3 times now, start again and please listen. Click here, here and here, "yes, and then I tried this this and this". FFS stop doing that, start again.

In the end I made step by step posters for all the things he asked every few days and stuck them all over the walls around the computer. Want to do a heading in bold and underlined, look it is there. He still did used to say "Oh I don't have time to learn stuff like that". He didn't realise it took him 12 times longer to fail and then shout through walls at me.

 

[BiG]

Make a little poster.

When I was younger, my dad was a teacher and used to make his own worksheets on the computer. He had a study in the next room from my bedroom. I would suddenly here a bellow through the wall "oh man, how do I do this?". No little knock and ask if I would not mind helping, just shouting his problem through the wall. Eventually I would go and ask what the problem is. He could not remember how to do something that I showed him last week.

Except because in those days you didn't have tool bars and had to go through a few menu steps, I would tell him the first click, and he would race ahead showing me again what he tried and didn't work. Ok stop that, click the menu, click here, "yes, and then I was doing this this this". Ok dad, you have shown me that 3 times now, start again and please listen. Click here, here and here, "yes, and then I tried this this and this". FFS stop doing that, start again.

In the end I made step by step posters for all the things he asked every few days and stuck them all over the walls around the computer. Want to do a heading in bold and underlined, look it is there. He still did used to say "Oh I don't have time to learn stuff like that". He didn't realise it took him 12 times longer to fail and then shout through walls at me.

So you're not married?

 

[DaveH]

So you're not married?

Yes, but thankfully my wife can operate technology.

She needed some advice a couple of months ago about some python code she wrote to work out something mathematical, but I think that was the last technical question I have had.

The above story was from when I was a teenager. A long time ago now.

 

[chunkyshanhawk53]

Supermarkets that have now started to add a “round up to charity” option when you pay.

I’ll donate to the charities of my choosing thanks

 

[DaveH]

Supermarkets that have now started to add a “round up to charity” option when you pay.

I’ll donate to the charities of my choosing thanks

Worse are the charities that seem to be able to get a regular spot in the doorway of B&Q every day.

If you nip in for a pack of screws and hope to be 2 minutes in and out, you can't without making excuses or talking for a few minutes. Once in a while is fine, but when you have to dodge them every single visit, it puts you off going. Or tailgate someone more likely to get stopped.

 

[BiG]

Yes, but thankfully my wife can operate technology.

She needed some advice a couple of months ago about some python code she wrote to work out something mathematical, but I think that was the last technical question I have had.

The above story was from when I was a teenager. A long time ago now.

It was a snide reference to the unlikelihood of my wife taking kindly to a poster with instructions on how to operate her device.