Excellent Technique

This morning:

[phone rings]
“Hello there sir, my names Josh and this is just a quick customer service call about your Orange phone”
“I don’t have an Orange phone. Never have.”
[*click*]

Short, sweet, and pithy. It doesn’t get much better, really.


Failure

I tried, God knows, I tried.

M&S for a flying visit to grab a sandwich and go back to work. Shouldn’t have been difficult. Except there’s fuckwits everywhere, dithering about, abandoning trolleys any old place, and generally just being a bunch of tossers. Still, I get what I want and go to the tills. The “Five items or less – Food only” queue. Ha.

When I got there, the queue had five people in front of me. It took fifteen minutes to get through those people. The two in front of me were obviously work colleagues, and kept on and on and on talking – loudly. I don’t need to know about what their office party was like last night, nor why Donna is – apparently – “mental” and “crazy”. (Although it turns out she’s “mental” and “crazy” for the disgracefully original stunts of a) photocopying her arse, and b) flashing her tits at the barman in order to get served. Barking, eh?)

Then they got to the till. By now I’ve done OK, haven’t said anything, and any obscenities and swearwords have been kept on a firmly internal basis – I’ve been good.

They start asking the till person why one tub of biscuits is discounted. She doesn’t know. Frankly, no-one cares. “Oh, it’s just that if any more of them were discounted, I could’ve bought them all and taken them to the office, because the lads there will be able to eat them before they get past the sell-by date, no problem. So, is there any chance you’ve got any more anywhere? Because I’m sure I can take them to the office and there’ll be people there that’ll eat them.” Till person doesn’t care, and isn’t going to fucking look. Blood pressure is rising.
Oh look Tracey, you’ve only gone and got me the wrong crisps. I know you’ve scanned them already, but can you go and get me the right crisps? I don’t like those ones. You don’t mind, do you love? (at the till person) She’ll only be a minute. And while you’re there, Tracey, can you have a look at those biscuits, see if there’s any more on offer? Because then we can take them back to the office, and the lads there’ll eat them

It’s too much, I’m afraid…

For fuck’s sake! No one cares about the biscuits. No-one cares about the crisps. You’re obviously too fucking thick to read the fucking label yourself. You’ve been in the sodding queue for at least ten bloody minutes, and you didn’t notice. There’s people behind you who want to just get their fucking lunch, and go back to work.

Now would you please shut up, pay your money, and fuck off?

They did.


Big

Knock Knock
Who’s There?
Bigish
Bigish Who?
No thanks.


Baggage

Shopping in a very busy Waitrose today, I was walking down one of the aisles when I got whacked in the face by a handbag. No thought at all, she’d just flung her bag over her shoulder while not paying any attention to anyone around her.

The icing on the cake though, was that having been smacked in the gob by a fairly fast and chunky dollop of Gucci Leather – and if I didn’t wear glasses I’d have had the fucking badge/clasp/fastener/whatever-the-fuck-it-is in my eye – she tutted at me, as if it were my fault.

It’s at roughly that point when all niceties and tact take the day off.

“Oh, excuse me, was I supposed to apologise for getting in the way of your fucking handbag? Did I cause you a problem by being as inconsiderate as to obstruct your handbag’s path with my fucking face?”


Pavement Parking

Last night, I was walking home, and the path I was taking was blocked by some numpty who’d decided to park on it. There was maybe two feet of room to go through. Being rather more than two foot wide, I went through it.

*crack* went moronicus’s wing-mirror. Not broken, just bent back (in the way it should do) against the car’s window.

Driver : [getting out of car] Oi! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?
Moi : Walking home. Only some twat’s decided that the path is a driveway.
Driver : Well you could’ve walked round the car.
Moi: Onto an unlit main road? At night? Wearing all black? Don’t be a fuckwit all your life.

At which he shut up, got back in his car, and fucked off, wheelspinning away to show how tough and macho he really was.

I wasn’t impressed.


Parcelforce

When we got back on Monday, there was a card on the doormat (along with about a thousand other things) to say that Parcelforce had tried delivering something to me, we hadn’t been in, so they’d left it at the local post office.

Only it wouldn’t be at the local post office ’til Tuesday. Yes, apparently it takes 24 hours to drop off something just down the road.

So I called up the *ahem* Customer Services people at Parcelforce to try and get it redelivered to the house today – because of course I’m not at home for the rest of the week in the hours that the post office is open. Nor are we there at the weekend when it’s open, so frankly, the delivery’s knackered.

[I’ve cut out lots of the preliminary stuff – it was all just obstructive and a pain in the arse]
“Oh yes, it’s on the delivery truck today”
“OK, so can you get it redelivered to my home address today”
“No, because it’s on the truck already”
“Eh?”
“We can’t contact the driver to tell him to redeliver. He’s tried, you weren’t at home. It’ll be at the post office tomorrow”
“But I won’t be. So you’re telling me that you can’t contact your drivers at all?”
“No, we can’t. They’re not allowed to take mobile phones out in the trucks. [sarky] You see, it’s illegal to answer them while they’re driving”
“Yes, I know that. Obviously the concept of ‘leaving a message’ is beyond your experience.”

I tried getting it delivered to my work address on Tuesday instead – you know, so I can at least receive the sodding thing. But first “we need the postcode” which, frankly, I’ve no idea of. I can give the address, but they also apparently don’t have anything that can find a postcode from the address. Oh, and they charge £5.50 to change the address.

So, it’s waiting at the post office. With luck I might get there at some point in order to collect it. But you can be fucking certain I will never ever use Parcelforce, if that’s the attitude they’ve got. Fuck ’em – there’s better services out there that charge far less.


Alleyway

The Scenario : Lunch-hour, and I have to go through a narrow alleyway, populated on both sides by shops. In the middle (both lengthwise and widthwise) of the alley, two couples have met up, and decided to have a natter. A side-effect of this is that, of course, they’ve completely blocked the alleyway, so no-one else can get through – and there’s no easy/quick way to get round them either. Selfish blinkered tossers.

“Excuse Me.”
[ absolutely no response. Not a dickie-bird.]
“Excuse Me.”
[ again, nothing. Obviously I am a speck of dirt on a shoe ]
OY! Deafarse! Get out the bloody way!
[They move, to much tutting. As I go past I hear…]
No bloody manners, these people today
“Well, perhaps if older people had some manners themselves, and moved their arses instead of blocking up pathways and then ignoring people politely asking them to move, then people wouldn’t fucking swear at you. You twat.”

That rumbling noise you hear in the background? It’s the head teacher of the Charm School spinning in his grave.