One of my biggest pet peeves as I’ve gotten older is all these people who stare at their cellphones all the friggin’ time. Today, for example,I was taking the elevator down from the 14th floor to go to lunch and not once, but three times, the elevator stopped, the doors opened and someone ambled into the elevator at a snail’s pace, staring at their phone screen all the while. And don’t get me started about the ones who stare at their phone while they’re walking, ignoring their surroundings totally. Can’t count the number of times I’ve been cut off by one of the new walking dead wandering in front of me.
How about basic courtesy? Since when have “Please” and “Thank you” become obsolete?
I had a student stand talking to her friends leaving a 4" thick text book in the middle of the hallway. I brought her attention to it, and she didn’t even look at me (kept her back to me) and kicked it towards the wall.
It doesn’t seem to be linked to age, gender nor ethnicity, people in supermarkets just suck.
Like, when you nip in for milk but can’t get to it because Geordie and Geordette are having their hourly domestic in the dairy aisle. You want some biscuits but can’t get to them because Nana is there, with the seeing eye dog she blatantly doesn’t need as she reads the ingredients of Mr Plain’s Plain Old Plain Biscuits (now with plain flour!). You walk down an aisle and suddenly Geordie is there with his trolley and decides that your ankle is where the trolley should be right now. In disarray you step to the side, only to be screamed at by Aunty Banshee because she wanted to look at something opposite you.
Grocery shopping during the day is such a delight. Though I do get odd looks from the ladies. I’m finding I’m a very small minority as a male housewife.
I must say I’ve never experienced that here in SA.
From reading the stories on notalwaysright it seems that you guys must have a lot of special snowflakes who tend to flip (or get triggered) just because you’re dressed wrong, looking at them wrong, or, in general, are standing in the wrong spot.
Sometime in the 80s or early 90s customer service here in the USA became bending over and taking it from the customer with no lube. People realized they could get away with just about anything. And since food/retail workers tend to be looked down on by your average white collar worker, that just exacerbated the situation. It really sucks for the workers because management never has their back. They just give the customer whatever they want, even if said customer is clearly in the wrong. With the advent of Yelp and social media it’s become even worse because the person will go write a bad review even though their experience was caused by their own stupidity. Whoever came up with the saying “the customer is always right” obviously never worked with the public a day in their life.
In the late 80s, I worked at several different location for a regional dry cleaner chain. At one of the locations where they actually did dry cleaning in the back, the location manager was one of the owners - I didn’t know this at the time, though. Anyway, there was an instance where a customer who was semi-belligerent on a regular basis was making a big stink. $Manager must have been walking by the door to the back and heard the ruckus, because he came into the front counter area while they were bitching at me. My first reaction was along the “oh crap” lines, but I was pleasantly surprised when he defended me and my position… I had been standing by the official policy. He told the customer as much, then (paraphrasing, but pretty close, and in a very measured calm manner) added “if $Customer had been less unpleasant about the whole situation, RR could have walked into the back and requested an exception, but because of the way RR had been treated, he was not surprised that RR had not made such a request, and because of the behavior that $Customer had displayed, maybe $Customer didn’t really deserve an exception. Hmmm?”
I can’t describe how good it felt to be defended like that. I think the customer was mad about a broken button on a dress shirt, and wanted to get their entire order of laundry and dry cleaning for free, like $40 or $50 worth. Because I had worked there for a few years, $Manager later told me that he was ok with me making mini “executive decisions” to resolve potential issues, like to give a few bucks off here or there, but that I was not required to reward bad behavior like I had just experienced.
I invoke threadus resurrectus because I’m an old fart.
I’ve noticed a trend in certain science fiction/fantasy (young adult stuff especially) where they will pick a stupid term for common words. The book I’m reading at the moment uses light for day and sliver for either minute or hour (I think minute).
These people are not speaking English, and the author is “translating” their speech, so FFS translate it all
I get that they are trying to be edgy and show that these people speak differently, but it just confuses things.
