Yesterday was affirmation of that statement as it relates to shopping. It's not a true statement, not by a long mile. Just read back a few dozen posts to the ones about my eyes and my fear (terror) that I had the start of a detached retina.
But that does pretty well describe how I feel about shopping. I hate shopping and simply saying 'I hate shopping' doesn't describe how I really feel about it.
Yesterday and last weekend are two perfect examples.
Last weekend I had the Saga of the Jeans. The end result, after going through the horror of actually finding them and paying for them, was wearing them.
Pair 1 is fine. It's not a perfect fit because they're just a touch too big, but I can live with that. They ride reasonably well and I don't feel as if I have to keep grabbing the waistband to haul them back into position.
Pair 2, however, is something else again. Same brand, same style, same cut, but nothing like the same 'feel'. They feel like nothing better than a pair of crack pants. Whoever made the fabric used about 300% too much spandex (and why does every garment made by man these days require spandex, anyway?).
They bag and they sag and they shift and they are miserable to wear. Ordinarily, I am not a consumer who complains. This time I did because I figure they need to know to improve their product. I specifically said: I bought 'em fair and square. I washed 'em and I wore 'em so I don't expect anything in return.
This just makes me hate shopping even more.
Yesterday I got to go to Costco. Normally, I like Costco. Or, at least, I don't hate it. Yesterday, though, made me hate Costco, too.
I decided to buy gas, which I never do on the weekends because the station is packed. But I decided to get it over with so I wouldn't have to do it on Monday morning.
Got into line - one car ahead of me with two cars at the pumps. I figure it'll be just a couple of minutes. Sure enough, the front car finishes and pulls out but the guy in front of me doesn't move. The vehicle in front of him is a big truck with a correspondingly large gas tank. Five minutes I sat there waiting for something to happen. It finally does and I get to the pump.
I put my card into the reader and get the "Remove Card Quickly". I did. "Re-insert Card". I did that twice more and, by then, I am annoyed. I am annoyed that I have to do this at all. I am annoyed that the idiot in front of me didn't take advantage of that empty pump before. I am annoyed at the stupid mechanism.
Idiot finishes before I do and gets back in his car just as my pump stops. I finish up and get in my car and start the motor and idiot is still sitting there - paying absolutely no attention to the fact that there's a line behind us, and that those people probably want to get this over with, too. Idiot.
So, I put my car in gear and pull out to go around him and that is the point at which his brain engages. He pulls out.
Almost fifteen minutes spent doing something that, under normal circumstance (stopping during the week) takes about five minutes and, on the weekends assuming I don't have an idiot in front of me, takes maybe ten. I'm annoyed.
I find a space, park the car and get into the store. My shopping is done in about ten minutes because I know what I want and where to find it.
At the front of the store they have moved tall displays in front of the registers so you cannot see the lines from the other side of the displays. Is this deliberate? I have no idea, but I pick a line and... it's long. It's five people long and the guy at the front, which I didn't realize immediately, had two overflowing carts.
Shit. I look around. All of the other lines, now that I'm on the 'right' side of the displays, look just as bad so I heave a heavy sigh of resignation and settle in to wait.
Front guy's first cart is emptied and his wife starts unloading the second cart and... crash. She dropped a double jar of jalapeno peppers. Oh, frabjous day!
Four full carts in front of mine and a puddle of vinegar spreading from a mess of shattered glass intermixed with peppers.
Cue the mop bucket and two guys tasked with cleaning it up. In the meantime, as we all do, I'm looking around at the other lines.
The woman who had been behind me but whose husband had stationed himself in another line which moved faster than the one we were in has moved over and has reached the register while I still have three people in front of me.
What do I have in my cart? A bag of six avocados and a case of water. That's it. That's why I'm there. That's what I'm buying and I stood in line for nearly twenty minutes for the privilege.
By the time I got to unload the avocados onto the belt, I was so frustrated and annoyed I was ready to just walk away and leave it. Then, the woman in front of me has this insulated bag filled with stuff - which means the clerk has to unload the bag in order to scan the items inside it. Irritation notches up another two degrees, and spikes again when he says, "Oh, the bag of veggies broke open."
Shit. So they deal with that while my toes are just about doing a tarantella inside my shoes from frustration and impatience but, by this point, the temptation to just leave the cart and walk away is over-run by "just get it over with". I waited and they finished. My order took zero time since it was a matter of scanning just two barcodes. I paid and got into the line to get out of the store. I was NOT happy but when the guy at the door said, "How're you?" I didn't snap. I just said, snidely, "Just peachy, thanks."
In the car, I turn on the motor and start to pull out, stopping when a family strolls by at a snail's pace as if they haven't a care in the world. They didn't stop to wait for me to pull out. They acted as if they hadn't seen my tail lights and the car moving. They wander off and I start to back out again and the cart wrangler shows up. Standing between my car and the cart corral that's right next to my car he ignores my back-up lights and wrestles carts into line so he can pull them out, line them up, so he can push them back to the store. It's like my car with its taillights (which do work, by the way) doesn't even exist.
Finally I get to pull out and start home. I get into a line of cars at a traffic light and there's another idiot in front of me. He's not paying attention, looking down (probably playing with his God damned phone!) and, when the light changes, he just sits there. I honk. He looks up, scrambles and he just makes the left turn light before it turns red, leaving me sitting there at the red light. This is a major intersection, not a minor, and that light is about three minutes long. If he hadn't been screwing around with his phone we both could have made that light but noooo. He had to pay attention to his phone.
I HATE people who do shit like that. And this is why I HATE shopping.
Thank God it's Sunday and the shopping is done for another week.
I'm breathing again. Sitting here in my PJs with my coffee and I will relax, dammit.
Have a quiet, shopping-free day with no idiots around.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Showing posts with label Idiots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Idiots. Show all posts
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Am I A Curmudgeon?
I'm wondering, am I a curmudgeon? Or is the world really getting stupider?
Things that ten years ago I never would have seen, at all, or at which I would just shrug off with an accompanying shake of the head, now bother me. Last night, for instance. And before this goes farther, let me warn anyone reading this: I don't pull punches or beat around bushes. I say what I think on all subjects, so please don't take offense. It's called 'freedom of speech'.
I work in Calistoga. I live "over the hill" in Sonoma County. It's a pretty big hill, even around here. Getting out of town, or getting in, there is a pretty respectable grade. It's posted as 12% and a mile-and-a-half long. It's a serious climb for my car at the end of the day, and it's dangerous for big trucks coming down because there is no "out" if they lose their brakes and need one.
From the top, there's a fairly steep stretch for about a quarter-of-a-mile, then it "levels" out a bit, then descends again, gets steeper, then levels and then goes into the final descent. It's respectable and it's not a grade on which you can just cruise down sans brakes. It's cambered the wrong way in places so your momentum carries you in the wrong direction (toward the bank) if you get going too fast.
After work yesterday, I was heading up the hill and, about two-thirds of the way up, I started around a bend when I was met by two skateboarders heading down in the other lane. There was a line of cars behind them, all apparently doing what I've observed in the past few years to be a reasonable speed. In other words, the cars weren't going noticeably slower than they would have been without these idiots in front of them which means the two skateboarders had to have been going at least forty-five miles per hour by then because they were a good half-mile into the descent. At that speed, it's called "terminal velocity" for good reason.
A bump, a stone, a wheel coming off, just any little thing and... what? What would happen?
The boarder would fly off the board - at a high rate of speed - and would go tumbling and flailing and rolling and... There would be no way for the other one to stop safely. At the very least, the one who fell would get badly hurt, probably killed. If not from the repeated impacts with the road as he bounced and flailed and rolled, but by an oncoming car. Because there is traffic on that road. It's a primary road in and out of the Napa Valley so it's not like they had it to themselves. The second one, distracted by his buddy's situation, would probably lose control, too. So you would have two brain dead morons bouncing, rolling, tumbling and flailing into oblivion.
Then what? What about the oncoming car(s)? It would be virtually impossible for one projectile to miss the other - unless the moron happened to sail off the edge of pavement into the embankment. Or unless the car went over the side and down the embankment on the down-slope side of the road.
So after the dust settled and we have at least one seriously messed up car, probably an injured driver, possibly injured passengers, and a dead brain dead moron, there's the aftermath.
How would you like to live with the knowledge that, even though it wasn't your fault and there was no way of avoiding the accident because of some dumb-ass brain dead moron, you killed someone?
I wouldn't like it. I wouldn't like it, at all. Even though intellectually I would know it was their bad choice, their own damned fault, I would still feel guilty. Horribly so, and there wouldn't be a single thing I could do about it, except endlessly wrestle with my conscience and a million 'what-if' scenarios that would make zero difference in the final analysis.
And then what? Would that kid's family or their insurance company try to sue the driver of the car into which this dumb ass ran? In this day and age, probably.
And... for what? Why? Because they're adrenaline junkies and want to get a rush? Sorry folks, but there is only one term for someone this astonishingly selfish, self-centered and unthinking: Fucking MORON.
Only I hope they don't. I hope that particular collection of genes ends with them.
So that was yesterday.
This morning, I was on my way to work. It was early, around seven o'clock. I don't drive fast. I usually do between fifty and sixty and stay in the right lane so I don't irritate people who want to go faster. So I'm cruising along at about fifty-five in the slow lane when a truck merges onto the freeway just ahead of me. I check the lane to my left. It's clear, so I move over and more cars come on at the same on-ramp, meaning I can't go back into the right lane for a while.
Out of nowhere, this idiot comes racing up behind me - I was probably doing sixty by then and he had to have been doing seventy-five or better because he was nowhere and then he was there. I couldn't get over to the right to get out of his way because of the other cars, but he swerved (and I use that word with purpose, because that's what he did) into the HOV lane, cutting off another car, zoomed past me, swerved in front of me and swept through the next lane into the exit lane - completely ignoring everyone else - and then zoomed around the truck that had first caused me to move over, then back across all lanes into the HOV lane.
WTFIUWT??? In the space of a half a mile he endangered probably fifteen or twenty other people. And for what? Why? What was so damned important that he had to put the rest of us at risk?
I don't get that. Was his ass on fire and he was heading to the ER for treatment? That's the only thing I can think of that makes that kind of behavior make any sense at all.
And these things seem to be happening more and more often. I used to see them once in a while, maybe once or twice a week, but now it seems it's an almost daily event.
You know, writing this out and thinking about it, I don't really think I'm a curmudgeon. I think I'm sane and these other people are nuts. In fact, I suspect the majority of other people on the road who saw these things think the same.
Whew! Curmudgeon-dom averted. I'm normal.
I hope you have a normal, curmudgeon-less day, too!
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Things that ten years ago I never would have seen, at all, or at which I would just shrug off with an accompanying shake of the head, now bother me. Last night, for instance. And before this goes farther, let me warn anyone reading this: I don't pull punches or beat around bushes. I say what I think on all subjects, so please don't take offense. It's called 'freedom of speech'.
I work in Calistoga. I live "over the hill" in Sonoma County. It's a pretty big hill, even around here. Getting out of town, or getting in, there is a pretty respectable grade. It's posted as 12% and a mile-and-a-half long. It's a serious climb for my car at the end of the day, and it's dangerous for big trucks coming down because there is no "out" if they lose their brakes and need one.
From the top, there's a fairly steep stretch for about a quarter-of-a-mile, then it "levels" out a bit, then descends again, gets steeper, then levels and then goes into the final descent. It's respectable and it's not a grade on which you can just cruise down sans brakes. It's cambered the wrong way in places so your momentum carries you in the wrong direction (toward the bank) if you get going too fast.
After work yesterday, I was heading up the hill and, about two-thirds of the way up, I started around a bend when I was met by two skateboarders heading down in the other lane. There was a line of cars behind them, all apparently doing what I've observed in the past few years to be a reasonable speed. In other words, the cars weren't going noticeably slower than they would have been without these idiots in front of them which means the two skateboarders had to have been going at least forty-five miles per hour by then because they were a good half-mile into the descent. At that speed, it's called "terminal velocity" for good reason.
A bump, a stone, a wheel coming off, just any little thing and... what? What would happen?
The boarder would fly off the board - at a high rate of speed - and would go tumbling and flailing and rolling and... There would be no way for the other one to stop safely. At the very least, the one who fell would get badly hurt, probably killed. If not from the repeated impacts with the road as he bounced and flailed and rolled, but by an oncoming car. Because there is traffic on that road. It's a primary road in and out of the Napa Valley so it's not like they had it to themselves. The second one, distracted by his buddy's situation, would probably lose control, too. So you would have two brain dead morons bouncing, rolling, tumbling and flailing into oblivion.
Then what? What about the oncoming car(s)? It would be virtually impossible for one projectile to miss the other - unless the moron happened to sail off the edge of pavement into the embankment. Or unless the car went over the side and down the embankment on the down-slope side of the road.
So after the dust settled and we have at least one seriously messed up car, probably an injured driver, possibly injured passengers, and a dead brain dead moron, there's the aftermath.
How would you like to live with the knowledge that, even though it wasn't your fault and there was no way of avoiding the accident because of some dumb-ass brain dead moron, you killed someone?
I wouldn't like it. I wouldn't like it, at all. Even though intellectually I would know it was their bad choice, their own damned fault, I would still feel guilty. Horribly so, and there wouldn't be a single thing I could do about it, except endlessly wrestle with my conscience and a million 'what-if' scenarios that would make zero difference in the final analysis.
And then what? Would that kid's family or their insurance company try to sue the driver of the car into which this dumb ass ran? In this day and age, probably.
And... for what? Why? Because they're adrenaline junkies and want to get a rush? Sorry folks, but there is only one term for someone this astonishingly selfish, self-centered and unthinking: Fucking MORON.
Only I hope they don't. I hope that particular collection of genes ends with them.
So that was yesterday.
This morning, I was on my way to work. It was early, around seven o'clock. I don't drive fast. I usually do between fifty and sixty and stay in the right lane so I don't irritate people who want to go faster. So I'm cruising along at about fifty-five in the slow lane when a truck merges onto the freeway just ahead of me. I check the lane to my left. It's clear, so I move over and more cars come on at the same on-ramp, meaning I can't go back into the right lane for a while.
Out of nowhere, this idiot comes racing up behind me - I was probably doing sixty by then and he had to have been doing seventy-five or better because he was nowhere and then he was there. I couldn't get over to the right to get out of his way because of the other cars, but he swerved (and I use that word with purpose, because that's what he did) into the HOV lane, cutting off another car, zoomed past me, swerved in front of me and swept through the next lane into the exit lane - completely ignoring everyone else - and then zoomed around the truck that had first caused me to move over, then back across all lanes into the HOV lane.
WTFIUWT??? In the space of a half a mile he endangered probably fifteen or twenty other people. And for what? Why? What was so damned important that he had to put the rest of us at risk?
I don't get that. Was his ass on fire and he was heading to the ER for treatment? That's the only thing I can think of that makes that kind of behavior make any sense at all.
And these things seem to be happening more and more often. I used to see them once in a while, maybe once or twice a week, but now it seems it's an almost daily event.
You know, writing this out and thinking about it, I don't really think I'm a curmudgeon. I think I'm sane and these other people are nuts. In fact, I suspect the majority of other people on the road who saw these things think the same.
Whew! Curmudgeon-dom averted. I'm normal.
I hope you have a normal, curmudgeon-less day, too!
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
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