So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

Oh, no--was that your night? Of course, on a Saturday.

Not only that, I got a call from the janitor at 7AM telling me that the lobby lights wouldn't come on. Went down to discover that the electronic programmable dimmer box in my office had incinerated itself overnight, and can't be repaired. After spending five hours with an electrican, a roll of blue prints, and a toolbox, we rigged up a hilarious alternative --



And then I started my regular workday.

Problem with our brilliant improvisation is that all the lights are full on all the time, which is not unlike glaring into the surface of the sun. And getting some kind of replacement deal in there that will work properly will run about two thousand dollars, because the whole system was designed to work on an electronic dimmer and nothing analog has the capacity to handle it.

I hate technology. I really do.

HudsonHawk said:

In the restaurant business, this is known as being "in the weeds". And it's not that they can't operate at full capacity, it's when suddenly everyone comes in at once and expects to be served immediately. The idea of having to wait one's turn, turns people into entitled, obnoxious Neanderthals.

Click to expand...

Exactly. I was a bartender and we would have one or two bartenders on shift based on the historic traffic at the bar. And that worked 95% of the time. But 5% or so of the time, you are standing at the bar at 4pm and it's dead and by 4:10Pm three couples have come in - several ordering mixed drinks - and then some guy walks in and wants his martini mixed just this way (martini drinkers care very much about how their drinks are made) and, then, a group of women come in wanting to order wine (thank God - easy pour), but still, you will not get to everyone in a timely fashion. And, then, once you have served everyone, no one else walks in for twenty minutes.

No sane business that wants to remain profitable will staff for that 1-5%, statistical anomaly of a crush - you just deal as best you can. And most of the customers are understanding, but there will be that jerk or two that feels entitled and is "going to take my business elsewhere" as if I can just split in two and serve everyone.

But here is my variation-on-a-theme complaint. When I lived in Boston, you could get your driver's license renewed at a License Express (or something like that) that the State ran in a Mall near the city. It opened at 10am on Saturday (even though all the other stores in the mall opened at 9am) and there was already a line forming by 9:00am-ish. I got there at nine, was first on line, waited an hour and ten minutes because the doors didn't open until 10:05 and the window wasn't staffed until 10:10. When I left, the line was snaking well out into the mall. And the same thing happened to my girlfriend when she went and other friends in Boston when they want - i.e., my experience wasn't an anomaly, an unexpected crush.

All the other stores in the mall functioned normally - a cash register line might be 2 or 3 deep, but no lines snaking out the store. And the Driver's License store has the advantage of a guaranteed customer base. Is it too much to ask that they staff to a point that doesn't result in hours of waiting for most people?

Jury Duty

I recently received a notice saying that I had failed to report for jury service on September 3. Well, that was news to me because I never received a first notice. But that's not the point of my rant. Why is it that I get constantly called for jury duty every other stinking year??? I know lots of people who rarely, if ever get called. Some haven't been called in twenty or thirty years but they always seem zero in on me thinking I've got nothing else better to do than having to sit and listen to someone else's squabble because if you end up seated on jury it's more than likely that it will be a civil case.

The last time I ended up on a jury was for a civil case that was five years old at the time. It was originally thrown out but was appealed and thus, I had the dubious privilege of being empanelled on the jury for a case that should have never gone to trial. And did I mention that the plaintiff was a lawyer who was representing himself??? :doh:

V.C. Brunswick said:

Jury Duty

I recently received a notice saying that I had failed to report for jury service on September 3. Well, that was news to me because I never received a first notice. But that's not the point of my rant. Why is it that I get constantly called for jury duty every other stinking year??? I know lots of people who rarely, if ever get called. Some haven't been called in twenty or thirty years but they always seem zero in on me thinking I've got nothing else better to do than having to sit and listen to someone else's squabble because if you end up seated on jury it's more than likely that it will be a civil case.

The last time I ended up on a jury was for a civil case that was five years old at the time. It was originally thrown out but was appealed and thus, I had the dubious privilege of being empanelled on the jury for a case that should have never gone to trial. And did I mention that the plaintiff was a lawyer who was representing himself??? :doh:

Click to expand...

Jury duty can be a pain, but everyone should sit on a jury at least once in their life. Last jury I was on, a couple of years ago, it was attempted capital murder. We did the entire trial, translated from Spanish to English, deliberation, and sentencing in three days. Judge ran a tight ship.

HudsonHawk said:

Jury duty can be a pain, but everyone should sit on a jury at least once in their life. Last jury I was on, a couple of years ago, it was attempted capital murder. We did the entire trial, translated from Spanish to English, deliberation, and sentencing in three days. Judge ran a tight ship.

Click to expand...

The trial that I was in was five days but because of an intervening Martin Luther King holiday and the courthouse being closed on Fridays meant I had to go downtown for nearly two weeks.

V.C. Brunswick said:

Jury Duty

I recently received a notice saying that I had failed to report for jury service on September 3. Well, that was news to me because I never received a first notice. But that's not the point of my rant. Why is it that I get constantly called for jury duty every other stinking year??? I know lots of people who rarely, if ever get called. Some haven't been called in twenty or thirty years but they always seem zero in on me thinking I've got nothing else better to do than having to sit and listen to someone else's squabble because if you end up seated on jury it's more than likely that it will be a civil case.

The last time I ended up on a jury was for a civil case that was five years old at the time. It was originally thrown out but was appealed and thus, I had the dubious privilege of being empanelled on the jury for a case that should have never gone to trial. And did I mention that the plaintiff was a lawyer who was representing himself??? :doh:

Click to expand...

Join the club, I get called almost every year! I can call them every other year, and complain, they then tell me, I do not have to come in. What is really annoying is, I was dismissed many years ago, from a capital crime jury, now no attorney wants me within a 1000 miles of a jury. I always get dismissed, the last time, the judge sent me home. Yet, I will have to go through the whole process again in a year or two!

Estate and Yard Sales.

1. Being first in line, or in the very least, among the first ten in line at an estate sale and as soon as the doors open find that the place had already been picked over because the estate sale organizers had a private presale for their fellow dealers the day before.

2. At another estate sale of a lady who had been a flight attendant, I found a bunch of airline buttons and pins as well as a pair of vintage flight attendant wings in a small box. I decided to buy the whole thing but when I took it up front to pay for it the woman at the table took the wings out of the box and said that it had the person's name on it and that she couldn't sell it and had to give it back to the family. Well, that was the whole reason that I wanted to buy all the other stuff!

3. At a yard sale that was advertised online among the things mentioned was WWII books. I got there first thing in the morning and didn't see anything of the sort so I asked the husband and he said that they might be in the garage so he brought out a box that had some really good stuff including a unit history! I made a small pile and bought the lot for twenty bucks. Just then the wife came up to the husband and said that she didn't think they should be selling those books there and that they should be selling them to a collector. But in a master stroke of CYA the husband said he had already looked up the books online before selling them to me. Nonetheless, I suspect that the poor guy was sleeping on the couch that night.

But even though I had dodged the bullet on that one a lot of other people at the yard sale would pick something up wanting to buy it and the wife would tell them that it wasn't for sale. :doh:

And along those same lines I'm sick to death of people coming up to me and pointing to my car, bicycle, or something else I happen to have in view and ask "whoa, what's that worth?"

It's how I'm getting home today, that's what it's worth. Must everything have a dollar sign attached to it?

All goods and resources have monetary value. It's an efficient way to process them. We don't ascribe monetary value to enough things, such as air.

And people who think they're sitting on a goldmine just because they "saw it on American Pickers."

LizzieMaine said:

And along those same lines I'm sick to death of people coming up to me and pointing to my car, bicycle, or something else I happen to have in view and ask "whoa, what's that worth?"

It's how I'm getting home today, that's what it's worth. Must everything have a dollar sign attached to it?

Click to expand...

More annoying yet are the jerks who can't accept that you don't play their game.

No, I'm not accepting offers. And no, everything (and everyone) doesn't have its price. And no, I don't take you seriously because you aren't to be taken seriously. You wouldn't buy this car (or whatever) anyway, and you wouldn't know what to do with it if you did, so what you're really doing is talking a bunch of ****.

Can you tell I've dealt with that type before?

tonyb said:

More annoying yet are the jerks who can't accept that you don't play their game.

No, I'm not accepting offers. And no, everything (and everyone) doesn't have its price. And no, I don't take you seriously because you aren't to be taken seriously. You wouldn't buy this car (or whatever) anyway, and you wouldn't know what to do with it if you did, so what you're really doing is talking a bunch of ****.

Can you tell I've dealt with that type before?

Click to expand...

Oh yes. They're right up there with the butts who swagger up to the ticket window and flip a hundred dollar bill thru the hole and ask for two tickets and say "sorry I haven't got anything smaller." And I say "sorry, I don't have change for a hundred, there's an ATM right next door there. " Even if I actually *do* have change for a hundred, because, well, he's a butt.

tonyb said:

More annoying yet are the jerks who can't accept that you don't play their game.

No, I'm not accepting offers. And no, everything (and everyone) doesn't have its price. And no, I don't take you seriously because you aren't to be taken seriously. You wouldn't buy this car (or whatever) anyway, and you wouldn't know what to do with it if you did, so what you're really doing is talking a bunch of ****.

Can you tell I've dealt with that type before?

Click to expand...

Sounds like curbstoners who knock on your door and want to buy your car (especially if your car is or looks like a junker) even though it's not for sale and they won't take no for an answer. A similar phenomenon occurred during the heady days of the housing bubble when people would knock on your door begging you to sell them your house and, once again, even though it wasn't for sale.

We're left to conclude that some people pass their time talking nonsense and they seek out people with whom to talk nonsense. I accept that some of those people have benign intentions; they're just making empty conversation.

As I've mentioned before, I've taken to replying with a simple nod and a "thank you" to people who comment favorably on whatever hat I happen to be wearing. In the large majority of such instances, the hat is one of my own creation, but I don't mention that unless I'm pushed to it, because doing so almost invariably results in a five-minute conversation with a person who professes an interest in such a hat and asks for a business card and who then NEVER orders a hat.

Sure, they mean me no harm, and they are being "nice." But it's a minuscule portion of the general population that has any real interest in spending 300-plus dollars on a custom hat. I just happened to come across some person who feels like chatting, and I'm not necessarily averse to that, but I've grown weary of answering the same questions from the people who will never do business with me.

If a borderline phatic conversation it is to be, I'd just as soon it be about the weather.

"Pickers" and "pawn stars" and all that other b.s. on the TV have, unfortunately, cemented this as a part of life that isn't going away. If you have even a passing interest in anything "vintage" you are going to have to deal with it. The TV and the ebay have made the problem godawful. I have nutbags knocking on my door all the time wanting to buy my car or bike or even once my kid's pedal car (while he was riding on it, no less). Of course not one of the presumptuous a-cracks was ever really prepared to buy anything, and were horribly offended when, after much pressuring on their part, I politely gave them a price they didn't like.
We live in a global market. What's reasonable in NYC or on the west coast is ridiculous down here, or in the mid-west, or even up east, yet if you're looking to buy anything, you have to, unfortunately and for the most part, be prepared to pay these prices. This is all due to media exposure. And greedy @sshats.

Sorry for the rant. This is something that REALLY ticks me off. As someone who has enjoyed wearing vintage clothes, driving a vintage car, sitting on vintage furniture, etc. etc.for the better part of the last 30 years, and also as someone who works to earn a living and has to balance my lifestyle with house payments and feeding kids and has watched my access to my interests get squeezed out by the "collectors", it makes me more than a little bitter.

I weary of the "vintage voyeurs": the men and women who get a vicarious thrill out of seeing (and collecting via Pinterest, etc.) photos of other people wearing vintage clothing and attending vintage-themed events. These are the same people who don't dare put together vintage wardrobes of their own, and who fail to attend vintage events (even the nearby and free ones). They are parasites, feeding upon the work and passion of others who do dare.

dh66 said:

"Pickers" and "pawn stars" and all that other b.s. on the TV have, unfortunately, cemented this as a part of life that isn't going away. If you have even a passing interest in anything "vintage" you are going to have to deal with it. The TV and the ebay have made the problem godawful. I have nutbags knocking on my door all the time wanting to buy my car or bike or even once my kid's pedal car (while he was riding on it, no less). Of course not one of the presumptuous a-cracks was ever really prepared to buy anything, and were horribly offended when, after much pressuring on their part, I politely gave them a price they didn't like.
We live in a global market. What's reasonable in NYC or on the west coast is ridiculous down here, or in the mid-west, or even up east, yet if you're looking to buy anything, you have to, unfortunately and for the most part, be prepared to pay these prices. This is all due to media exposure. And greedy @sshats.

Sorry for the rant. This is something that REALLY ticks me off. As someone who has enjoyed wearing vintage clothes, driving a vintage car, sitting on vintage furniture, etc. etc.for the better part of the last 30 years, and also as someone who works to earn a living and has to balance my lifestyle with house payments and feeding kids and has watched my access to my interests get squeezed out by the "collectors", it makes me more than a little bitter.

Click to expand...

Well, ain't that stating it plainly.

The worst of it. as you noted, are the people who are in no way prepared to buy the thing. It's childish, really, which isn't the worst thing a person can be, but there's a reason we wish the kids (and ourselves) to grow up.

The collectors --and, more crucially, the entertainment industry costumers-- are the only people who are keeping the vintage menswear business alive. It's hanging by a thread in any case.

Oh, I'm sure many of them ARE prepared to buy, but at some ridiculous low price like they've made this incredible "barn find" and got this car, bike, boat, lamp, sofa, whatever for such a sweet deal from some rube who had no idea what he had. Not only is it presumptuous, it's downright disrespectful. I know what I have, and I know a good ballpark of what it's all worth, and I ain't coming off any of it for any less than close to what it would take to replace it with something else. I'm not being greedy, I've just sweated too hard for what I've got.