Literal vs Lateral
Posted: Fri 12 April, 2024 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, I Don't Understand, People, Thoughts Leave a comment »One thing I’ve found fascinating with people – both where I live now, and previous places – is how literal they are, even when it means they take longer to do things.
For example, where I now live there are several junctions where turning right onto a busy road can mean significant delays for people. But most of those junctions also have roundabouts a short distance up the road if people instead turned left.
So here, for example – the scenario is that I’m pulling out of the Stephenson industrial estate, wanting to turn right.
If I turn left, it’s 400m to the roundabout. It’s a simple thing, an 800m round-trip, and far faster than the delay when waiting to turn right. But no-one does it. They’re so locked into “I’m turning right” that they somehow don’t even think about turning left instead.
On another regular drive, in the run-up to another roundabout, the left-hand lane gets utterly jammed, waiting for a safe gap in which to get out and turn left. But if one takes the right-hand lane, it’s all too easy to get up to the front, go all the way round the roundabout and then come off to that same route – well before the equivalent drivers in the left-hand lane have caught up. Yes, it’s effectively a 450° turn, but it’s *so* much quicker. And again, people are locked into “I’m turning left” and seem to not see the alternative at all.
It’s all very odd. I mean, I’m glad I can look at it and see those lateral decisions that make life easier, but I do find it fascinating that so many people simply can’t/don’t do so.
Subscriptions and Stupidity
Posted: Mon 26 June, 2023 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Domestic, Finances, I Don't Understand, People, Stupidity 3 Comments »Interesting to see that subscription things are now the latest target in the Government’s “How can we protect stupid people from being stupid?” process.
Now OK, some of the tactics used by subscription-model companies can be a pain – particularly the “sign up for a free trial and we’ll charge you after that” thing – but also (as that summary hints) they bloody well tell you what they’re going to do! I assume that people just get as far as “sign up for a free trial” and then stop reading/comprehending, but it really isn’t rocket science.
If you’re wanting to try it, then sign up for the free trial. But at the same time put a reminder in your phone for 25-ish days away that says “Cancel [x]”. Then when the phone says “Cancel [x]”, do so. Voila, no charge.
Yes, the model absolutely relies on people being stupid and not bothering to cancel the subscription. Similarly, most gym memberships expect/hope that the majority of people will sign up for the year and only use the place for two or three months. (although that one is a contract, so they can’t easily get out of it) But a subscription model paid month-to-month is an easy one to cancel – assuming even a vague level of competence, of course. The first time the payment comes out, if you don’t want it, it’s easy to go “Oh, fuck it. Forgot that – let’s cancel that now so I don’t have to pay again next month!” and just log in and get it cancelled.
Now OK, I accept that I’m probably not “normal” on this, but I keep a close eye on my money – I know when payments come out, I know what I’m expecting to pay, and I check my bank account every couple of days, minimum. I know where I stand on all of it on any given day. So it absolutely gobsmacks me to see things like this (from the story linked above) :
John, for example, told the BBC he had signed up to Amazon Prime video for a 30-day free period and forgot to cancel it when he had to start paying for it.
“I’m just gutted I spent £6.99 a month for 18 months for no reason”.
Now, I’d like to see Amazon’s side of that story, and see whether “John” actually watched Amazon video in that time, and/or whether he got Amazon deliveries in that time. It’s worth noting that Amazon is actually an oddity in this case, in that you pay for Prime delivery and get the video stuff as well – so if he’s paid for Prime to get things delivered next-day and made use of that then it’s not been a waste of money in the first place!
As for cancelling, John comes up with this gem…
“It was such a stressful ordeal and left me with a lot of anxiety. It ridiculous, these companies only care about the money not the person”.
I mean…. A) Welcome to Capitalism. And B) it’s a simple process. Yes, they’ll say “Are you sure? Here’s what you’ll lose out on” and so on, because they do want to keep your custom/money. Of course they do. But it’s not a challenging thing to just say “Yep, cancel it”. Certainly most (if not all) of the online companies make it easy – a couple of clicks and it’s done. Even the dating sites don’t make a big thing of the people leaving – they know they’ll have plenty of other people signing up or staying on.
All told, if someone says they’re short of money (“Cost of living crisis” etc. etc.) and yet still ‘not knowing’ that they’re paying out for subscriptions, then they’re not actually that short of money. (Or are congenitally and irredeemably stupid)
On the other hand, I can absolutely see that it would be good/ethical for a subscription service to send a check-up message if the person using it hasn’t accessed that service at all in (for example) six months, and have them opt back in (or at least say “Yes, I want to keep going with this”) at that point. And if they don’t respond, then their account gets deactivated. Among other things, that would be useful in scenarios where the person has died or become incapacitated, and reduces the whole nightmare of trying to unsubscribe someone from something where you don’t even know their username/password.
Christmas Debts
Posted: Tue 17 January, 2023 Filed under: Bankruptcy, Cynicism, Domestic, Festering Season, Finances, I Don't Understand, People, Rebuilding Leave a comment »This week, the BBC has had a couple of pieces about Christmas Debt – the people who’ve overspent, or put Christmas purchasing entirely on credit cards etc., and now don’t know how it’ll be paid off.
According to that piece, in a poll of people who used credit to help get through Christmas and the holiday season, a third of them said they were not confident about their ability to repay what they’d borrowed. And that’s pretty scary.
You can open up the Excel Spreadsheet from that survey here : The BBC News Cost of Living Survey, Jan 2023. (It’s not mine, I got it from a link in that feature about Cost of Living and so on, but it’s a useful reference point)
Now I’ll admit that I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for people who overspend and/or borrow in order to “have a good Christmas”, but equally I do understand that lots of people feel pressure to do that, to make everything “ideal and perfect and shiny and happy” despite whatever is going on under the surface, and to hell with the cost. I understand that even more when they have children, and the thought of a bleak Christmas can be too much to handle. (Although it’s entirely beyond me why it’s too much to handle a bleak festival of gifts but OK-ish to have a bleak year as a result of paying off those presents)
But all the same, I don’t quite get that whole thing of “We’re going to buy these things even though we’ve no idea how we’ll actually pay them off“. Even in my own worst times, I wasn’t in that situation – when I bought stuff, I knew how I’d pay things off, and what I was committing to, and I was managing that as best I could until the time when I couldn’t.
It’s a terrifying situation to be in, to see those bills coming in and knowing that they can’t be paid. (Although, as always, it’s better to talk to the lenders and explain the situation, rather than hiding or running away) My own debts were the result of furnishing houses, rather than buying the latest/greatest gadgets, or just “whatever was cool” – I imagine it’s even worse when you’ve actually not even got anything to show for it other than the ephemeral “but everyone had a good Christmas”.
I don’t know where I’m going with this, really. Life’s expensive and complex enough for everyone at the moment, and we all know it – so I just don’t quite get why some people are so willingly throwing themselves even further into the shit for no really good reason.
Romance Fraud
Posted: Tue 10 January, 2023 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, I Don't Understand, People, Stupidity, Television, Thoughts Leave a comment »In the new house I’m working from home a lot more, which has also led to me having slightly more TV on during the daytime. (I know, I know)
One of the things I had the misfortune to catch this week was BBC’s “For Love or Money” (that link takes you to the iPlayer page for it) about people falling for “romance fraud” – basically, fraudsters getting contact with lonely people who respond, form online ‘relationships’, and end up sending money to these “partners” for all manner of outlandish reasons.
Actually, it’s not fair to say “misfortune” – I guess that morning daytime TV is a good place for this, as the main demographic for seeing it and going “Oh shit, that’s what I’ve been doing” are likely to have it on. So it’s probably useful and good on that score.
In some ways I have sympathy for the people who fall for this shit – the main group seem to be older people who’ve usually lost a long-term spouse, and suddenly find themselves alone for the first time in decades, are lonely, and will grip onto anything that makes them feel less lonely. I do understand (kinda/sorta) that side at least.
But at the same time, Jesus Fuck, these people are bloody stupid. I don’t understand how they can class the communication as a relationship, or being “in love” with someone they’ve never met. And I really don’t understand the whole thing of giving money to someone they’ve never met. I know it’s a psychological thing, that the scam starts (comparatively) small and then people keep on paying out because they don’t want to be proved to have been scammed/stupid – which boggles my mind in all kinds of different ways – “I don’t want to be seen as stupid for sending them £200, so I’ll send £2,000 to end up proving I was right” What?!?
Even more mind-boggling are the ones who get into this trap with one “person” , realise they’ve been scammed, and then get caught again in the same situation. And (in my opinion, blah blah) those particular people are too stupid for words. And then they say *on the programme* “Oh, you must think I’m really stupid” and the presenters say “No, no, you’ve done nothing wrong“. And I don’t feel that’s right – they didn’t do anything wrong initially, but if they carry on (and particularly if they fall for the same thing twice) then the presenter should be allowed to say “Yes, you are. What kind of fucking idiot gives money to someone they’ve never even met?!?“. Shock them into realising how bloody stupid they’ve been, and it just might have a lasting effect.
I don’t know the answer – there’ll always be stupid people in these kind of horrible situations. But it seems to me like the basic thought process of “I don’t know this person, we’ve talked but I’ve never met them, yet they’re asking me for money – why?” shouldn’t really be that difficult, should it?
Making More Work
Posted: Fri 12 August, 2022 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Organised, I Don't Understand, People, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »As part of my preparation for moving (about which another post sometime soon) this week I ordered some decent moving boxes from SafeStore. Yes, I’m sure there are other sources for them, and so on, but I was happy with the stuff on offer, and they’d deliver it, so *shrug*, it’ll do.
For cost-effectiveness (within the provisos of “I’m sure I could get it better somewhere else, but CBA to hunt”) I got one of their “kits” – 4 each of small, medium and large box sizes for considerably less than individual prices – and also added in some bubblewrap, tissue paper, and a mattress cover. All well and good.
It got delivered this morning, as expected and on-time. Two boxes – one the ‘kit’ box, and one for the bubblewrap roll etc. Except… there’s no mattress cover, no tissue paper. So I called them up to let them know, and the lady went off to check with the despatchers. And that was where it got weird.
“Have you checked in the Kit box? They say they might’ve put the extra things in there, to keep it all together“.
And it turned out that was exactly what had happened. But that boggles my mind.
Now, I assume (and I’m aware it’s an assumption and thus could be utterly flawed) that the kit boxes are exactly that – they come as a sealed box with the kit contents in. That makes sense to me. (Otherwise they’d be assembling the kit from box stocks for every order, which seems… odd)
So, if that’s the case, the despatchers opened a kit box, put the extra bits in, sealed it up, and then put it with the other box that already had bubblewrap etc. in it. Why go to that effort when there’s an unsealed box (with space in it) right there? Why make even more work for oneself?
I despair.
[Note : I actually did better than expected out of this deal – because they didn’t send me the kit box I’d ordered, and instead sent one that’s larger, and should’ve cost about £10 more!]
Getting Stuff (Finally) Done
Posted: Fri 29 July, 2022 Filed under: A428, Anglian Water, Central Bedfordshire Council, Change, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Driving, Getting Organised, I Don't Understand, Laziness, People, Politics, Thoughts 1 Comment »My local council are, to be polite, utterly fucking useless. Their skills in organisation, communication, professionalism and competence appear to be absolutely zero – in fact, most of the time I doubt they could even spell any of those words, let alone be good at them.
But, after literally years of nagging, they’ve finally done two of the jobs I’ve been nagging them about.
First, we start with The Bridge
Six years ago (I’ve probably written about it before, but can’t be arsed currently to check) we had a mains water line burst near the village – a burst that was so powerful, it destroyed the bridge wall that the pipe was next to. Now, it’s not a main road per se (i.e. it’s not an A-road or motorway) but it is one of the two main roads from my village to Milton Keynes and the motorway. So it’s not short of a fair bit of traffic.
Initially, Anglian Water put up some cones/barriers and traffic lights so that the road was usable (kinda/sorta) but reduced to one lane, on the side that wasn’t missing half a bridge wall. That situation remained for about six months (with regular failures of the traffic lights) until I asked Anglian Water what was actually happening, and had they forgotten about the bloody thing. Turned out, they had forgotten. And there began the saga of getting it fixed.
Anglian moved things about, put in a temporary fence and barrier, opened the road up, and tried to get a repair done. (Which was fraught with its own issues around who actually owned the fucking thing, who was responsible for what, etc. etc.) The council insisted it should be done by their Highways department, who would do the work properly, and all that happy crap. So after eighteen months, Anglian handed the entire clusterfuck over to Central Bedfordshire Council, as requested, and washed their hands of the problem.
For four years I’ve been asking when it’s going to happen, what’s occurring, and so on. It’s outlasted four admin assistants, and two managers. And every time they’ve said “Oh, it’s all scheduled, we’ll hopefully have it done in about three months time“. I do realise there’ve been a lot of hassles – again, with who owns the bridge and the land underneath it, who’ll be stumping up the money, how it’ll all work and so on. But it’s been four years where it would’ve been all too possible for someone to come off the road, through the fence, and end up twenty-odd feet down underneath it. After every decent storm we’ve had, I’ve had to contact the council and suggest that they might want to come and put the fence back up, along with the holders/barrier that’ve fallen over.
But about a month ago, signs went up around the bridge saying that work was going to start, and take about eight weeks. And it actually started, and has been progressing nicely. (Not that anyone from the council has thought to send a message saying “Hey, just to catch you up, it’s all happening”. That would be expecting far too much from them!
Second – the other bridge.
Back at the start of the pandemic, in the next village to mine, someone went on a graffiti spree, writing/spraying stuff on all the village’s road signs and so on. Nothing monumentally offensive, just stupid shit that no-one needs to see. And in fairness, Central Bedfordshire’s Highways department cleaned most of it off comparatively quickly. (I think it only took them a fortnight to get rid of the stuff that was nasty about Central Beds Council, and then about another two months to get rid of the less offensive but stupid stuff)
And then when Captain Tom hysteria was at its peak (Captain Tom was from the village I live in, so it was all relevant locally) they sprayed a big message about him on one of the other local bridges. You can see some of it below, or go to Google Streetview here for the full experience
Yes, it lasted long enough that it even made it onto Google Streetview.
That’s taken two and a half years to get rid of, but finally got cleaned off last month. Of course, others who’ve seen how long it takes Central Beds to sort these things, have also taken to graffiti’ing local walls and so on. Fine, it may be an influx of new people, but before the first lot happened (and that person has since moved away) we never saw any happening. Now though, I can easily think of eight or nine sites that have been hit.
Again, allegedly there were problems for the council in gaining permissions/clearances to clean that bridge – it goes over a railway line, and they were saying they couldn’t clean/wash the bridge while things might be running underneath, although that sounds like bullshit. The cleaning job when it finally happened didn’t go over the top of the bridge wall at all, so nothing would’ve been affected. But there we go.
Purely personally, I suspect that if that graffiti had said “Central Beds council are useless bastards” it would’ve only been there a couple of weeks. But because it was about Captain Tom, I wonder if they thought it would be worse to get rid of it than to leave it. I don’t know.
Anyway. Both jobs have (finally) been done, and it’s really nice that I won’t have to nag the useless bastards any more. But things like this shouldn’t take that long to get sorted. If it had been me in charge of either project I’d have got the work done, and *then* chased whoever needed to pay for it, including court stuff if necessary. But the general public don’t need to see those delays, regardless of the cause – we just want to see stuff that’s been broken get fixed.
I don’t know what the answers are on all this – but government (both local and national) at the moment just seems like one giant clusterfuck of ineffectiveness and general incompetence. And surely there must be better ways than what we’ve currently got?
Smart Motorways, Dumb Drivers
Posted: Tue 20 April, 2021 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, I Don't Understand, M1, People, Stupidity, Thoughts, Travel 2 Comments »I see today that the UK has decided to stop any new “Smart Motorway” projects, insisting that they need extra safety precautions. This is primarily the aftermath of coroner’s reports into certain fatal accidents on these Smart Motorways.
From the article…
- In 2019, 15 people were killed on “all lane running” and “dynamic hard shoulder” motorways. This is four more deaths than in 2018.
- The number of people being killed on motorways without hard shoulders increased each year from 2015 to 2019, and totalled 39 deaths.
- By contrast, on so-called “controlled motorways” – a type of smart motorway which have variable speed limits and a hard shoulder – there were 24 deaths in that period.
- On conventional motorways, which cover more of the UK than smart motorways, there were 368 fatalities from 2015 to 2019.
The M1 around where I live was one of the first Smart Motorways, and I’ve written a lot about how stupid people can be on those motorways – particularly about the availability of lanes, and a lack of general driving standards (Middle-lane cunts and the like)
From my experience, a lot of drivers seem to be incapable of reading road signs saying whether a lane is open or closed (although also even whether the approaching junction is the one they want or not, until the absolute last minute) This also seems to be borne out by the latest rash of road-safety adverts telling people that they should ‘go left’ in case of problems on motorways (and fucking hell, in my opinion anyone who needs to be told this shouldn’t be in possession of a driving licence!)
As an example of this, one of the cases the coroners were looking at was one local to me where the person’s vehicle had a problem, showed the ‘engine problem’ warning light, and they pulled in to one of the emergency refuge areas. Now, when that happened to me, I got out of the car (in a snowy January) and called recovery to get me off the road safely. But not this twerd, oh no. They gave it a few minutes, started the car, no light came on, so they pulled out to continue their journey. (The ‘engine problem’ light doesn’t necessarily immediately light up on starting – for example, if the issue is to do with the turbo, the EGR valve, air filter etc., it’ll only come on when you accelerate over a certain rpm limit, at which point you’re shafted) And that’s what happened to Twonktacular – the light came back on, the engine performance disappeared, and they got hit by another vehicle. Yet somehow that’s the fault of the smart motorway, not the dumbass driver.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a huge fan of motorways without hard-shoulders. And I’m sure there are considerations and gambles that have been taken about how people get to emergency refuge areas, how the road monitoring is managed/staffed and so on. But I also understand how impractical it is, with current traffic levels and so on, to have a quarter of each road surface only available to vehicles in emergencies.
All told, I don’t believe that Smart Motorways are inherently dangerous. I think drivers (and their decisions, or lack thereof) are far more dangerous than roads. You just can’t blame an inanimate road for human stupidity.
Burning Money
Posted: Tue 2 March, 2021 Filed under: Domestic, I Don't Understand, Lockdown, People, Thoughts Leave a comment »Over the last year, a number of businesses have (unsurprisingly) moved out of the building where I have my office. The move to primarily working from home and so on has made them more aware of the costs of the offices, and in general I can see that it makes sense for them to downsize and so on.
What’s been more of a surprise is that other ones have moved in. Again, I get it for situations like mine, where it’s better to have the office, and where working from home isn’t practicable.
There are some of those new businesses though, that despite paying the office rental/lease for a year, haven’t actually been using the offices at all, and I really don’t understand that at all.
I suppose it’s a good write-off for tax purposes or whatever, but to me it’s still odd to be basically burning that cash for no benefit at all.
Obviously it’s not my problem, and nothing to do with me. It’s other people’s business decisions and so on. I just find it interesting, and slightly baffling.
Alone vs Lonely
Posted: Sun 22 November, 2020 Filed under: Domestic, Health, I Don't Understand, Lockdown, Mental Health, People, Thoughts 1 Comment »With the current Covid stuff, I’ve found it interesting to see how it has affected a range of people.
One of the big complaints about it is how the lockdowns have made so many people realise how lonely they are, along with the damage it’s done to those social norms and events.
Truly, this isn’t something I can empathise with. I’ve never really lived close to any of my friends – they’re scattered all over the place – so I’m absolutely used to being on my own in any particular area. So I’m alone, but I’m never lonely.
Alongside that, I don’t know, I simply don’t feel those things. I’m happy on my own, and always have been. Being sociable is my “not normal“, being on my own is the default position.
In all of that, I recognise that I’m “lucky“. I’ve come through this year OK, with far less damage than most people have suffered – whether that’s realising their lives are more lonely than they thought, being ill (or watching others being ill), or just seeing things change so much and feeling insecure because everything “normal” has suddenly tilted beyond recognition.
I sort-of understand that desire for everything to “go back to how it was“, but to me even that still carries a fair degree of self-delusion. Things have changed, and it’s (to me) far easier and smarter to embrace those changes and make progress with them (I hate the expression “the new normal”, but that’s what this is – even with vaccines and so on, there’ll still be major changes for the forseeable future)
I don’t know what 2021’s going to bring – although I don’t think it’s going to be a positive year – but I’m pretty sure I’ll get through it, same as I have this year. And all I can do is hope that the same is true for those I give a sod about.
Obsessive Dedication to Perfection
Posted: Sat 12 September, 2020 Filed under: Domestic, I Don't Understand, People, Thoughts 1 Comment »Since re-starting the archery, I’ve been going pretty regularly, and it’s reminded me of one of those things I really don’t get, or don’t understand about other people.
I don’t get obsession. I never have – I don’t get it when it comes to collecting things, or dealing with people, or things like competitions.
In the case of the archery, to excel in it you need to be super-precise, to do everything exactly the same each time. And, frankly, I can’t be arsed. When I tried collecting things, it was the same – I did OK, but then when it gets to the obsession with completing things, with finding the rarities and the one-offs, I can’t be arsed.
I know I’m not perfect – but I’m good enough. I’m almost certainly not going to win against people who practice every day, or even multiple times a week. (Although from what I’ve seen, some of those people still aren’t any bloody good at it. But there we go, that’s a different matter) I don’t insist on everything being identical with each shot, I don’t have any aiming rituals etc. Instead, my mantra tends to be “Yeah, that’ll do”
Honestly, I don’t quite see how being that obsessed with perfection makes the entire thing any fun. To be that focused on something, when it’s the minutiae that matters, it seems to (in my opinion/experience) just suck all the life and enjoyment out of things.
At the end of the day, I’m good enough. It’s rare I miss, but I simply don’t care enough to want every single shot to be in the inner gold. I do what I can, and I don’t get stressed out by something I enjoy.
All things considered, that’ll do me.
Memory Failings
Posted: Fri 28 August, 2020 Filed under: 1BEM, I Don't Understand, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Do you suffer from long-term memory loss?
I don’t remember, I don’t remember(Chumbawumba’s “Amnesia”)
Within my office block, I’m regularly gobsmacked by how people seem incapable of seemingly simple tasks, like remembering to turn things off that they’ve just turned on. For example, walking in to the toilets, turning on the lights, and failing to turn them off again when leaving. (And sometimes also somehow forgetting to turn off taps that they’ve just used)
I honestly don’t understand this – and I’m potentially being charitable by attributing it to forgetfulness, rather than just being unthinking asshats – but it does seem to be ever more prevalent. Maybe it’s related to the office rentals being all-inclusive, meaning people give less of a sod about utilities and so on.
But even then, I wonder, is that also how they are at home? Do they keep leaving things on there as well? Do their partners/parents just keep on tidying up after them, turning things off again?
(And just because I’m not perfect – I’ve been meaning to write this post for the last two weeks, and I’ve kept on forgetting to do so)
Lockdown – Changing Values
Posted: Mon 18 May, 2020 Filed under: Change, Cynicism, Domestic, I Don't Understand, Lockdown, People, Thoughts 3 Comments »One thing I hope will be interesting – as and when the current lockdown is properly eased – is to see the things that people decide are important, the things they’ve actually missed, as opposed to the things they’ve just not been able to go to as part of a routine.
For example, I wonder if [big chain] coffee shops will suffer, as people have (hopefully) realised that they don’t need all that caffeine and sugar.
[Note : I amended this afterwards, following Gordon’s comment, because I’d particularly meant big-chain (Starbucks, Costa et al) places rather than independents/locals that definitely deserve the business and support]
On the evidence of the things that’ve currently re-started, I don’t think it’ll be the case – as soon as they’ve re-opened, there have been huge queues outside places like McDonalds, Burger King and KFC.
It’ll be more interesting to see what happens longer-term, once the “Oh good, they’re back!” novelty value fades.
Lockdown – Ongoing
Posted: Sun 10 May, 2020 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, I Don't Understand, Lockdown, News, People, Thoughts Leave a comment »Tonight, the PM has announced a “conditional plan” to help the country get through the next phase of Covid-19.
To be honest, it is (as expected) a bit of a car-crash, with mixed messages, bloody awful phrasing, and no real clarity on any of it.
So for me (and, I hope, for a lot of others) I’m sticking with my own Plan A, which is to carry on doing what I was doing before.
I’m still planning on mainly using my office – which is OK (so far as I can tell) because I go from a house on my own, to a car on my own, to an office on my own, with no real human contact at all, and thus an absolutely minimal chance of catching it, or passing it on. If my office building gets too crowded then I’ll re-assess and figure out a different plan. Until then, we’ll see.
Other than that, all I’m doing is keeping myself as safe from everything as possible, and hoping that everyone else is doing the same. Really, I don’t see that there’s anything else that can be done.
Levels of Stupid
Posted: Tue 25 February, 2020 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, I Don't Understand, People, Stupidity, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »At the moment, I get a *lot* of spam about property investment – probably an average of five to ten a day. I don’t know why it’s suddenly this subject, but it’s definitely noticeable.
Student flats in Hull, Hotel rooms in Leicester, Apartments in Liverpool and Manchester, and even some overseas stuff. I don’t pay attention to it, but it does make me think.
Basically, what kind of idiot (or lunatic) is going to decide to invest in a property, based on receiving a spam/junk email? It’s a huge amount of money, however you look at it.
I mean, obviously people do fall for this crap – the spammers/scammers wouldn’t bother sending it out if they didn’t – but I can’t deny, I figure that the people who do so pretty much deserve everything they get.
Self-Incrimination
Posted: Fri 21 February, 2020 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, I Don't Understand, Legal, M1, People, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s no secret that I tend to assume people with dashcams are usually shit drivers. Obviously that’s not always the case, but in my experience it’s predominantly true – as though there’s an attitude of “Well I’m perfect, and it’s all these other idiots on the road” or something.
I also know that it’s now far easier to upload one’s dashcam footage to report driving offences when the police haven’t been there.
What I do wonder is how many people self-incriminate on those uploads? For example, if one were to upload video of someone undertaking on a motorway, only for that footage to also show that the reporting driver had been middle-lane-hogging for the previous ten miles, and thus being at least a partial cause of said undertaking…
And no, this doesn’t involve my own driving. Just something I noticed occurring in front of me on the M1 this morning, and then started thinking about the extrapolations.
Reinsuring
Posted: Wed 25 September, 2019 Filed under: Advertising, Brands, Change, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Driving, Finances, I Don't Understand, Insurance, People, Weirdness Leave a comment »The world of Car Insurance is very, very strange. I truly don’t understand how it all works.
My car insurance is due for renewal in October, so I recently received the renewal gubbins from my current insurer. They’ve put my insurance up by £60 for the year. Bear in mind, I’ve not even spoken to them all year, let alone made a claim, and I’ve now got another year’s no claims discount as well. And yet it’s gone up.
So I shopped around, doing the usual comparison website thing (Meerkats rather than opera singers) and got one that’s actually £120 cheaper than what I was being offered by the current insurer – and with slightly better cover.
Brilliant, I’ll sign up and do that. Job done. And this is where it all gets weird(er)
My new insurer is actually one I used a couple of years ago. So when I log in to their ‘self-service portal’ to see my new policy, all I can see is the details of the old one. Fuck sake. (It looks like the policy is actually tied to a combination of my username and password – so I can change password, and now view the new details instead – but I didn’t know that at the time)
So first things first, I call my current insurer to tell them I won’t be renewing with them. It’s the usual automatic phone gubbins, and gives the name of the insurance provider – let’s call them ABC Insurers, for the sake of argument. I give the correct information, go through, tell them I won’t be renewing, explain why, and it’s as easy as that.
Then I call the new insurers. Who are also using ABC Insurers. So I go through the correct information for the new insurance, get things sorted, get the documents emailed to me, and it’s as easy as that.
But it’s weird – I’ve used two different companies (well, two different front-ends) and given them the same information (obviously) but one faction is offering me a significantly better deal than both the one I’m on, and the renewal quote from the one I’m on. But they’re both the same company underneath!
How the fuck does that make sense? Offering the same person two completely different prices (and slightly different packages/benefits) Why not allow my current insurer to offer the same price as my new one? It’s all just a bit bizarre.
Scheduled
Posted: Wed 5 June, 2019 Filed under: Advertising, Bad Ads, D4D™, Domestic, Food, I Don't Understand, People, Solo Dining, Television, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »At the moment, there’s an advert on TV for Just Eat, and it freaks me out a little bit.
There’s one part of it where they talk about people “ordering their usual”, and doing so at a specific time – implying that it’s the same thing every week. And that just weirds me out, that there are people out there who do the same thing every week, who eat the same meals with little to no variety.
At the same time though, it’s odd in other ways. I’m just as bad at being uninspired when it comes to meals and so on – but that’s when I’m just cooking for myself. If I’m paying for it (i.e. a takeaway, a restaurant meal or whatever) then I’m going to go for random stuff that I fancy eating.
So I think it’s the combination – that there are people who are paying for their meal and still only having the same thing at the same time – rather than *just* that it’s the same thing every time.
Anyway, it weirds me out – even though in some ways I’m also a massive hypocrite about it, as I’m semi-guilty of the same thing, but only in the privacy of my own home…
Average 50
Posted: Mon 26 November, 2018 Filed under: Commuting, D4D™, Domestic, Driving, I Don't Understand, Laziness, M1, People Leave a comment »At the moment, my daily drive is on the M1, which has roadworks on it through ’til mid-2022. (Yes, it’s a joy) Throughout those roadworks there’s a speed limit of 50mph, which is monitored by average-speed cameras. And as I’ve been going through them, I come more and more to the conclusion that the average speed stuff isn’t actually all that safe.
More accurately, I don’t think they’re that safe when it comes to British drivers, and the habits that a lot of them have – which don’t appear to be the same as those of drivers in other countries.
The main problem with averaged 50mph limits is that it means everyone is driving at the same speed – cars, vans, HGVs, all at 50mph (or close to it) That means that the British-normal of last-minute lane changes for junctions are nigh-on impossible (although that doesn’t actually stop people from trying it) Instead, you need to be aware of the other lanes, and plan to be ready for the junction far further in advance.
Additionally, British drivers being what they are, turn off their brains completely when in average-speed areas, and will just stick to a particular lane with no regard or understanding of anyone around them, or of moving over into empty space to allow others past. On any given day, it’s terrifying to see just how many drivers are there, zoned out, sat in the outside lane and overtaking two lanes of fuck-all.
All told, it adds up to a whole bundle of unsafe situations at any given time of day. I can see (and have seen) people doing this shit at 6am, at 4pm, at 10pm, and at 2am. It just seems to be the way things are in these situations.
Fun and games, fun and games.
Laziness and Safety
Posted: Wed 24 October, 2018 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, I Don't Understand, Laziness, Parking, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »I regularly drive through Woburn, and at least a couple of times a week I’m amazed at how lazy people are, even when it comes to their own safety.
In the case of Woburn, there are two zebra crossings within a very short stretch of road. There are good reasons for this – the road is usually busy, and fairly fast. But people still cross away from the crossings, where it’s apparently “more convenient” rather than walking a tiny way to the crossing where cars *have* to stop for pedestrians…
The first one looks like this…
This is where most people cross – and you can see the markings for the zebra crossing at the top of the photo (the zig-zags, for non-UK readers) Note also that this is just after a busy crossroads, so has any number of vehicles coming round corners and paying far more attention to other vehicles than to pedestrians. I measured it on Google Maps – it’s 30 metres from here to the crossing. Not even a minute’s walk. (I’ll also note that all the people avoiding the crossing are able-bodied, so it’s not like they can’t walk that distance.)
The second one (slightly further up the road from here, after a tight choke-point and just round the corner so out of view from this one) looks like this
This one is a bit harder to see – it’s a bit further, at 45m from where people actually cross – but it’s still there, with markings visible across the road. Here, people cross from the pub to the hotel and back – and again, with parked cars on the right, an extremely tight road with drivers focusing on squeezing through rather than on pedestrians, people trying to park (or turn into the various lanes and archways along this bit) rather than walking that 45m to be able to do so safely.
I know people in general are lazy bastards and so on, but really, it utterly amazes me just how many (and even more so at school times, as there’s a school just back from where this shot is taken) are prepared to ‘save’ time waiting for a space in traffic and then risk their all to cross the road, rather than walking that tiny distance to do so safely (and actually usually more quickly than waiting for that gap!)
I don’t know if they don’t see the crossing, that they’re blinkered to just going straight across the road instead, or if they’re all just fuckwit examples of Darwinism waiting to happen. Either way, it is (to me) a gobsmacking way to live.
Ignored
Posted: Thu 11 October, 2018 Filed under: Domestic, General, I Don't Understand, Laziness, People, Thoughts Leave a comment »This morning, when I rocked up to my office, there was a guy apparently passed out across three of the parking spaces outside. I couldn’t tell much about him – he was asleep/comatose rather than visibly wounded or bleeding – but it still wasn’t a great situation. In particular I was aware of the upcoming rush hour, and of the speed (and stupidity, and lack of observational powers) of various drivers peeling into apparently empty parking spaces.
I didn’t know whether he’d chosen to sleep there, or had fallen over the railings separating the parking spaces from the pavement and bus stops.
So I ended up calling 101 (the non-emergency number for police services) to report the issue, and let the professionals handle it. As it turned out, I should’ve called 111 instead (the non-emergency number for NHS) but I’d forgotten that one, but remembered 101.
Anyway, the details were taken – but what surprised (and depressed) me was that my call was the first they’d heard of this particular man. It’s particularly depressing because where he was, he’d been completely visible to any number of people waiting at the bus-stop on the other side of the railings. (The bus-stop and pavement are slightly raised from the car-park level, so he was definitely visible)
I do understand that a lot of people don’t want to get involved, or all assume that someone else will be doing something. But still, I know that if it were me laying there, I’d at least hope that someone would call the emergency services about me as well.
I don’t know, maybe I’m still feeling all optimistic and stuff, but it just pisses me off when people simply ignore those in need. And yes, I probably could’ve done more as well – although my first-aid knowledge is rudimentary, and old – but I did what seemed right at the time.
(Oh, and to close this particular tale, he was OK, but intoxicated, and got taken to hospital as a precaution – I saw the ambulance people as they were about to leave, and asked how he was)
Labelling
Posted: Fri 5 October, 2018 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Food, Getting Organised, Health, I Don't Understand, People Leave a comment »This week, I’ve found myself actually shocked by the news stories about Pret a Manger and their labelling – and more relevantly, the whole story about the death of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who suffered an allergic reaction to unlabelled sesame in a Pret sandwich.
The inquest into Natasha’s death was this week – she died two years ago – which is why it’s been in the news this week.
It turns out that the UK’s Food Regulations 2014 have an exception that allows freshly handmade, non pre-packaged food to not be individually labelled – which is the loophole that allowed Pret to get away with not labelling each sandwich individually. To me, that’s disgraceful. The loophole was (understandably) intended for small sandwich bars etc. to not be constrained by huge amounts of red tape. It’s not intended for large commercial efforts. (Although of course they’ve taken advantage of it)
Even worse, Natasha isn’t even the first person to have died as a result of this mis-labelling or lack of information.
All told though, two things in the whole sorry story left me utterly gobsmacked and despairing of people and corporations.
The first was how badly the staff on the flight handled Natasha’s allergic reaction. The doctor who attended to her wasn’t made aware of all the equipment on the plane, and also that “because Natasha went into cardiac arrest as the plane was landing, it would have been unsafe to retrieve the defibrillator from the back of the plane, where it was stored, while Natasha was being tended to at the front” (that quote is from the Guardian story) I mean really, for fuck’s sake, how robotic and uncaring do you have to be, to go “Nope, I’m not going to get that, we’ve got to be prepared for landing the plane”?
The second thing – and to me, the worst – is the timescales involved. Pret a Manger knew about this issue when Natasha died. Two years ago. Yet it’s only now, once the coroner has finished the inquest, that they say “We’ll look at changing our labels“. That’s two years where they’ve known about the problem, and have done nothing. I wonder what the reaction would/will be if someone else turns out to have died for the same reason within that time.
I assume there’s been some corporate legal bullshit going on that says that if they changed the labels before the inquest, they’d be acknowledging they were liable, or some such. Thing is, they were – and are – liable. If the labels had been in place, she wouldn’t have taken that sandwich, and wouldn’t have died. How on earth can that be anything other than being responsible for her death?
Married At First Sight
Posted: Mon 19 February, 2018 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Domestic, I Don't Understand, People, Television, Thoughts, Valentine's Day Leave a comment »Following on from Valentine’s Day, Channel 4 has a documentary series going about people who have allowed themselves to be paired up by scientists and specialists, signing up to meet on their wedding day. (It turns out that this is actually the third series of it in the UK – and the results on the previous two series haven’t been all that promising!)
They’ve done it with some run-up in order to do all the stuff like declarations of intent to marry, telling family and friends, and make all the preparations. So they get told that they’ve been paired up (and are now ‘engaged’) and then six weeks later they’ll meet for the first time and get married.
Thursday’s episode was the first one, and basically all the set-up and preparations. From there I assume it’ll be about the aftermath, and how they work out once the wedding is done.
Marriage is something that, to be honest, leaves me cold – it really hasn’t ever appealed to me at all, and it’s never been on the list of Things To Do. And so far, there’s never been anyone I’ve been with who’s changed that opinion, or made me think differently about it at all.
But I do still find it an interesting concept, and the whole arranged-marriage type thing, of seeing how people handle that and so on. Whether I continue watching the programme or not is a different matter, but for now it’s at least vaguely interesting. We’ll see.
Fish, Cambridge Corn Exchange
Posted: Wed 20 December, 2017 Filed under: Cambridge, Domestic, Gigs, I Don't Understand, People, Reviews(ish), Travel Leave a comment »About 18 months ago, I went to see Fish (the ex-lead-singer of Marillion) at a gig in Aylesbury, including performing the whole of Marillion‘s “Misplaced Childhood” album for its 30th anniversary.
This year, it was announced he’d be touring again, and this time performing both stuff from the new album, and the whole of the “Clutching At Straws” album – again, for its 30th anniversary.
As with “Childhood”, “Straws” isn’t among my all-time favourite albums, but they both got played a lot as I grew up, so it was still of interest to go and see it performed live. And I’m glad I did.
The gig started with some old favourites, but nothing new. And there was a reason for that – he hasn’t actually written the new album yet, let alone released it. When they advertised the gigs and organised the tour, they expected it to be done, but life got in the way. So… some classics instead of new stuff. Fine with me, and apparently fine with most of the audience too.
As for the performance of “Straws” itself, that was excellent, and brought back a bundle of memories of listening to the album, as well as re-realising just how bleak it is in places. There were also parts of it that they’d never performed live before this tour, including one track that was ad-libbed at the time, so Fish had to listen to the album in order to write down the lyrics to learn them for performance. Which is, when you think about it, pretty messed up.
Anyway, the gig was one I really enjoyed – in spite of the audience. As always, I really don’t understand the mindset of people who go to a concert, and then spend the entire gig going to and from the bar, and the toilet. The three people in front of me (it was a seated gig) were barely ever in their seats, and kept walking off. That’s not just a waste of their time and money, it’s also insanely annoying for the people around them, getting constantly disturbed and having to move.
But, audience aside, it was a good gig. It might be the last time he tours, it might not. It’s likely the last chance to see “Straws” performed like that, so it was definitely worth going.
Illumination
Posted: Mon 23 October, 2017 Filed under: Commuting, Domestic, Driving, Finances, I Don't Understand, People, Weirdness Leave a comment »On Friday morning, while it was still dark, I started the car to go to the client office – and one of the headlight bulbs blew.
Bollocks.
I’m not a fan of driving with one bulb out, but in this case it was going to have to happen, so off I went, a bit more carefully than usual, as a bigger swathe of the road than usual was in darkness.
On the way home though, I dropped in to one of the local(ish) Halfords, and got a new bulb sorted and fitted. Yeah, in theory I could fit it myself – but seeing the struggle the lad had with getting to it (the space was extremely tight/narrow) I’d have had issues, so it makes sense to get them to do it. (Also, when he opened the packaging for the first bulb and dropped the bulb through the engine block, he just went to get a replacement – that wouldn’t have happened if it’d been me doing it!)
From start to finish, it took less than half an hour – even with the difficulties the lad had. And all for less than £20.
I really don’t get why so many people seem to have problems with getting bulbs replaced. Some people I see in the village have had the same bulb out for weeks, if not months. I understand that sometimes you just get used to the problem existing, rather than fixing it – but at the same time, working headlights are a pretty basic requirement, I’d have said.
And besides, if it’s only £20 all-in to fix it, really, I don’t get the point of not bothering. but maybe I’m missing something. Wouldn’t be the first time, after all.
PIDU – Blockage
Posted: Fri 18 August, 2017 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, I Don't Understand, People, Thoughts Leave a comment »Another in my list of “People I Don’t Understand” pieces…
I do wonder sometimes about people, and what goes through their minds. On occasion, I’m pretty sure that the only thing that should be allowed through their thought processes is a sledgehammer.
One of those occasions – which comes up with depressing regularity – is what logical process leads people to block toilets with paper. It’s not ‘used’ paper (it’s always surprisingly white and mark-free) so it’s more that they’ve just decided to fill the bowl with paper. Why? I have no fucking idea.
There are some places that seem more prone to it than others. Most Wetherspoons pubs, in my experience. The majority of cinemas. But really, it seems like anywhere that’s got shared facilities (by which I mean where they’re publically accessible, rather than a private “it’s mine and mine alone” set-up) is fair game.
I’d love to see someone who’s just done it, stop them, and ask why, ask what went on in their braincell to think it would be a good/fun thing to do. However, weirdly you also never get to see someone doing it, you just always come in to the aftermath.
PIDU – Performance Cars
Posted: Wed 26 July, 2017 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, I Don't Understand, People, Thoughts Leave a comment »[PIDU = People I Don’t Understand]
There are many, many types of people I don’t understand – or at least whose thought processes are beyond me. That’s the theme of the PIDU posts (as mentioned here, although I’ll probably repeat this a few times) and may also become a bit of a throwback to the rants of yore.
In this case, I don’t understand people who buy performance cars, and whose driving abilities can’t match the car at all.
I’m not even talking about high-end performance vehicles like Ferraris and the like. No, this is even down to the level of a standard (for example) VW Golf GTI. Anything that’s at the higher-end of performance than the standard models of cars.
As an aside, I also don’t really get why anyone in the UK would bother buying any of the seriously high-end performance cars, when our top legal speed can be attained by them in second or third gear. But that’s a thought for a different time.
A lot of the drives I do are on country roads – still decent-enough roads, which I can easily (as well as legally and safely) cover at 55-60mph with no problems. But they’re narrow enough, and bendy enough, that if you’re stuck behind someone, you’re stuck behind them for the duration.
I regularly end up behind other drivers, usually in cars with a much better performance than my shitty Kia – yet we’re going at 40mph instead, and they’re still braking at every sodding corner, and panicking when another car comes towards them.
Last night was a perfect example – I spent the drive following a beautiful Lotus Evora 400 (one of my current favourite cars) that did the entire thing not going above 50mph, and usually slower than that. It was a total waste of a brilliant little car, and I almost wanted to stop them, and suggest we swapped vehicles.
I just don’t get it, why someone/anyone would pay out a load more on a sporty/performance car – and on the commensurate higher-rated insurance and so on – when they’re just going to drive it slowly and badly. It seems to be a case of either “More money than sense” or just believing they’re better at driving than they actually are.
PIDU – Ill-prepared
Posted: Mon 10 July, 2017 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, I Don't Understand, London, People, Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »As I’ve said before, I tend to be ridiculously early for things, primarily so I know it’s all sorted well in advance.
However, I find it utterly amazing how many people appear to be so chronically ill-prepared for just about anything and everything in their lives.
My primary office is near(ish) to the local test centre for the theory part of the UK driving test. By “nearish” I mean “it’s walking distance, in a straight line, but over a significant road, so maybe five minutes walk”. On a regular basis I get stopped outside my office, and asked where the test centre is, by people obviously already running late, and get this “Oh shit” look when I tell them it’s still five minutes away. These tests are renownedly run punctually, and they don’t have much tolerance for lateness – but from memory, it makes all that very clear on the paperwork that tells you where the test is to be taken.
So because they haven’t checked where they’re supposed to be, they’re now running the risk of not even being allowed to take the test – and you don’t get a refund on it for being late and/or disorganised. I’ve never seen it as all that difficult to do, to be in the right place at the right time, but it’s obviously an issue for some people.
Similarly, a couple of weeks back I was with friends in London, and their son was meeting other friends of his so they could go to a concert/festival thing in Hyde Park. We’d got other plans once he was in the venue, but they were somewhat dependent on the friends actually having IQ points of their own. They’re similarly pathologically early to me, which helps – but the son’s friends…. weren’t.
Despite the concert tickets telling them where they needed to be, which entrance to use and so on, they decided to turn up to the wrong Underground station, at the wrong time, and at the wrong entrance. There’d been no preparation, no thought, not even an understanding of how best to get around, yet still left it all to the last minute, as if expecting some fairy godmother to wave a wand and everything would be All Right.
And it kind-of was. They got there, and we got to where we were going, but a couple of minutes late. (Anyone else, it would’ve been late by twenty minutes or more, but we can all shift our arses when necessary) So it did work out OK, but only because we knew more about where they were than they did, and walked the extra to find the fucking idiots.
All told, it’s just an attitude I don’t understand. I know I’m at the opposite end of the scale, but still, it never seems that difficult to me, to be prepared, to know what you’re doing, and get wherever on time. But obviously it’s more of a challenge for others…
One Minute
Posted: Fri 26 May, 2017 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Domestic, I Don't Understand, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Yesterday, a lot of people held a one-minute silence for the victims of Monday’s bombing in Manchester. Personally, I don’t really understand why this appears to have become one of the “done things” to do for any tragic event.
Yes, the bombing is awful, and should never have happened. The people who did it are unutterable motherfuckers, and deserve to be damned to whatever eternity their religion believes in. The victims shouldn’t have been victims, because this shit shouldn’t have happened.
But it did, and so we go on.
But what do these silences actually do? They re-focus attention on the event (but of course we’re not going to give terrorists the air of publicity that they crave, except when we then have every news broadcast for the next 72 hours focused pretty-much-purely on that event) and make people think about it even more. But we’re not going to let terrorists change our lives, are we? Except when we do, when there are now more armed police on the streets, and even more security on the streets, in airports and elsewhere – all of which changes our lives, and makes us think about terrorism even more.
I know the silences started off from the two-minutes-silence on Armistice Day – and I’m fine with that. But when did they become the done thing, the marker for every event?
I feel the same about the huge numbers of bouquets at the sites of deaths and tragedies. I get that people want to voice their sympathies, but when did a bouquet and gifts become the way to do it? It’s almost enough to make you wonder whether it’s not the florist industry behind it all, in a similar way to Valentine’s Day, just to improve their own profits – but this time out of the grimness and death of others. And the sodding cards that go with it – the ones that get read out in news broadcasts, that all seem to be suspiciously “on-message” for whatever’s been being reported.
The real start for the floral stuff seemed (to me) to be the death of Princess Diana, when flowers appeared everywhere, in true Damien Day style. Since then, they’ve accompanied every bloody event known to man.
Fine, people want to show their concerns, voice their sympathies and so on. But surely it’s better to do so with donations to a particular cause, with speaking up about (in the case of Manchester) terrorism and the like, to actually do something, rather than pay lipservice through a wallet and a minute’s silence?
PIDU – Lift Control
Posted: Mon 22 May, 2017 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, I Don't Understand, People, Stupidity, Thoughts Leave a comment »[PIDU = People I Don’t Understand]
There are many, many types of people I don’t understand – or at least whose thought processes are beyond me. That’s the theme of the PIDU posts (as mentioned here, although I’ll probably repeat this a few times) and may also become a bit of a throwback to the rants of yore.
This one’s a bit more niche – I work in a tall building, which has lifts (elevators, whatever you prefer) and it gobsmacks me on a regular basis how many people seem incapable of operating it with any form of common sense.
Primarily, this relates to people waiting on whatever floor for the lift. The lift lobby on each floor (well, except for the ground and top floors, obviously) has two call buttons – one to go up, one to go down. And, despite lifts having been in existence for more than 150 years, so many people seem to think it’ll work to hit both call buttons, rather than just the one in the direction they want to go in.
Of course this means that these fucking dipshits get in a lift going up, and expect it to be going down, as that’s the direction they actually want. If they’d only hit the sodding down button, it would work better, rather than them either getting on and going up before going down, or stopping to let them on, realising it’s going in the ‘wrong’ direction, and then getting off again.
But really, how can people not know how these sodding call buttons work, and what they mean?
PIDU – ‘arfer Job
Posted: Mon 15 May, 2017 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, I Don't Understand, Laziness, People, Thoughts 1 Comment »[PIDU = People I Don’t Understand]
There are many, many types of people I don’t understand – or at least whose thought processes are beyond me. That’s the theme of the PIDU posts (as mentioned here, although I’ll probably repeat this a few times) and may also become a bit of a throwback to the rants of yore.
Anyway, another one of the many things that are beyond me are the people who don’t follow through on their actions. People who use the last of something, and don’t replace it. People who turns lights on when they enter a room (regardless of whether they need to) and then don’t turn them off when they leave. People who don’t clear up after themselves in staffrooms and the like. Basically, useless inept twatspanners with the memory-span of a goldfish.
I don’t understand what makes these simple processes so complex. (Although I am assuming that the majority of these people aren’t cognitively impaired, or suffering from brain injuries – not an unreasonable assumption, in a set of offices, for example) If you’ve used up a toilet roll, replace it – don’t just leave the fucking cardboard roll for the next person to find. If you’ve turned the light on in a room when you go in, and no-one else has entered after you, turn the cocking thing off again. Is it really that difficult?
The sad thing is, if you start pulling these people up on their failings, they get defensive and insist it’s not their fault. Well if that’s the case, whose fault is it? No-one else is responsible for doing it, unless they’ve spent a whole lifetime with someone following behind them fixing everything that they can’t be bothered to do.
I know, personal responsibility is one of my own bugbears – I hate it when people don’t take responsibility for their actions, or follow through on their actions. It’s always someone else’s fault, someone else’s problem, and that’s a mindset I just don’t get.
PIDU : Missing the Main Attraction
Posted: Mon 8 May, 2017 Filed under: 1BEM, Cinema, Gigs, I Don't Understand, London, People, Seeing Films, Sweary, Thoughts 1 Comment »[PIDU = People I Don’t Understand]
There are many, many types of people I don’t understand – or at least whose thought processes are beyond me. That’s the theme of the PIDU posts (as mentioned here, although I’ll probably repeat this a few times) and may also become a bit of a throwback to the rants of yore. It may also just fade out. We’ll see.
Anyway, one of the many things that are beyond me are the people who turn up for a concert – indeed, a performance of any kind, really – or a film, and then keep on going out, or chatting, or really doing anything that doesn’t involve focusing on that main act.
In the cinema, it boggles my mind. People will rock up late, when the film’s already started. They’ll sit for a bit, eat their sodding popcorn, slurp their bastard drinks, and before you know it, they’ve got to go to the toilet. (I assume. They never come back having purchased more food or drink, anyway) Seriously, what the hell is wrong with people, that they can’t manage to control their bladders for a couple of hours so they can sit and watch a film they’ve paid good money to see? Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever had to walk out of a film in order to have a slash. Even in the five-ish hour Alien/Prometheus double-bill the other week.
I get it, some people have bladder issues, or continence issues, and there are other complaints along the way. But I haven’t been to a film in years where no-one walks out at some point in the showing, and then comes back. Yes, those issues exist, but a) so do preventive measures and things to cater for those issues, and b) I truly don’t believe that the issues are so prevalent that it affects that many people in Milton Keynes.
And then, of course, we get to the fuckknuckles who go to concerts and performances, and chat to their mates all the way through – a lot of the time barely even looking at the stage. If they are looking, these self-absorbed vacuous twatwoggles are filming the performance/act on their bastard phones and tables, and screwing things up for everyone behind them.
What’s the point? Why would you pay £20-50 per head to go to a concert and then not bother watching/listening? If all you want to do is drink beer and talk bollocks, you might as well save the ticket money, and fuck off to the pub. Let more people in that want to see the actual gig, rather than making them listen to your braying laugh and piss-awful “banter”. (speaking of which, anyone who uses the word “banter” or “bantz/bants” to describe their interactions with friends is a fuckwitted jizzwizard by definition) Just cock off and spend your money on lukewarm piss at a Wetherspoons round the corner.
At some point, it’s all going to annoy me enough that I walk up to one of these spaffbuckles and just ask what went through their minds, why they decided to go to a gig and then ignore it all, and just chat. It’s happened before, and all I got in return was a look of blank incomprehension (I’m pretty sure it was their default expression, in fairness) but it fascinates me, I want to know why they’ve decided that those actions are a good plan.
Maybe one day I’ll find out. But I can’t see it being any time soon, because those doing it don’t have the introspection or self-awareness to be able to explain those processes.
I Don’t Understand
Posted: Fri 28 April, 2017 Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™, Domestic, Getting Organised, I Don't Understand, People, Write More Here, Writing Leave a comment »As part of the whole “write more here” ethos, I’m introducing a new occasional topic, which is quite simply “Things I Don’t Understand About People“. Not the snappiest of titles, but it’ll do for now.
Of course, most of them can probably be explained away as “Because people are generally horrifically shit“, but I’ll try to do a bit better than that.
It may be a short-lived theme/topic, or it might be something that keeps me going for a while. There’s certainly a few bouncing around in my head already, so we’ll see how it goes.