The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.

[nicknack]

Weather Bomb

FFS

I think the met office are just trying to make their work sound more interesting than it is. There's a storm coming in from the Atlantic. I think they've hired the writers from the Expendables or Die Hard to jazz the weather reports up.

Meteorological term that's been around for 30 odd years. Perhaps you would have preferred Explosive Cyclogenesis.

[Basil]

Anyway, on to my grumble. People wishing to get onto packed tube trains….it is quite simple and indeed the Platform Staff even give you a clue…. PLEASE let people off first. It’s not hard and it will make things easier for everyone. It is really irritating the number of people who are so selfish and demand to get on when there is no space for them: yet, to do so.

I nearly got my head kicked in about this time last year when someone attempted to barge onto the cross city train while lots of us were trying to get off.  I simply placed the flat of my hand into his chest and proceeded out of the doors, pushing the idiot back onto the platform.  Although he was a large type, it was quite easy as he was off ballence.  He took great umbrage at this and started to square up and utter oaths but luckily my fellow travellers soon put him in doubt about the outcome of any retaliatory action he was considering.

[bumper]

Weather Bomb

FFS

I think the met office are just trying to make their work sound more interesting than it is. There's a storm coming in from the Atlantic. I think they've hired the writers from the Expendables or Die Hard to jazz the weather reports up.

Meteorological term that's been around for 30 odd years. Perhaps you would have preferred Explosive Cyclogenesis.

Still prefer straight talking storm or gales

They'll be getting Peter Gibbs rolling into shot with explosions and gun fire in the background next. It's just the weather ffs.

[Cudzoziemiec]

So it's a cyclone even in which particles of vapour chase round and round in an endless loop. Sounds like part of the North Atlantic Track Pursuit Cup.

[nicknack]

I'll bet Ikea have never done a customer shopping experience satisfaction survey.

[Gattopardo]

Ordered a usb cable for my fruit thing from china, first one didn't arrive so got my money back, it was less than 60p so re ordered the cable from another chinese supplier and a package arrived the other day and now opening it I found a back for another fruit device.

Am grumpy now as I have the hassle of sorting the thing out and still awaiting a cable to arrive to charge my thingy.

[Jaded]

Anyway, on to my grumble. People wishing to get onto packed tube trains….it is quite simple and indeed the Platform Staff even give you a clue…. PLEASE let people off first. It’s not hard and it will make things easier for everyone. It is really irritating the number of people who are so selfish and demand to get on when there is no space for them: yet, to do so.

I nearly got my head kicked in about this time last year when someone attempted to barge onto the cross city train while lots of us were trying to get off.  I simply placed the flat of my hand into his chest and proceeded out of the doors, pushing the idiot back onto the platform.  Although he was a large type, it was quite easy as he was off ballence.  He took great umbrage at this and started to square up and utter oaths but luckily my fellow travellers soon put him in doubt about the outcome of any retaliatory action he was considering.

Probably an immigrant.

[Jaded]

My sister's house is late Victorian and I suspect has the original letter box. Even a small card won't fit through. I guess more paper, more money, fewer servants.

Our Georgian letterbox is nailed up. We use the 1980's one, which is large, so large that you could get two cats fighting through it, or maybe a small cow. We get delivery notes scrawled on delivered boxes  saying "couldn't fit this in your wheelie bin, so tried the letterbox".

[Mr Larrington]

I'll bet Ikea have never done a customer shopping experience satisfaction survey.

Teh Roolz for shopping at IKEA:

• Go on a weekday.  Preferably as soon as it opens.
• If getting Stuffs from the warehouse, make a note of where it is before you get there.
• Keep telling yourself It's just another shop.

[essexian]

I'll bet Ikea have never done a customer shopping experience satisfaction survey.

Teh Roolz for shopping at IKEA:

• Go on a weekday.  Preferably as soon as it opens.
• If getting Stuffs from the warehouse, make a note of where it is before you get there.
• Keep telling yourself It's just another shop.

If I may be so bold to add a fourth....

4) Find the shortcuts. The IKEA store in Wednesbury has a cut off where you can miss out most of the top floor and get to the warehouse without needing to kill to wonder around for hours being lost. I would hope they all have such shortcuts or otherwise, their staff will never get nowhere (sorry poor English!)

[nicknack]

I'll bet Ikea have never done a customer shopping experience satisfaction survey.

Teh Roolz for shopping at IKEA:

• Go on a weekday.  Preferably as soon as it opens.
• If getting Stuffs from the warehouse, make a note of where it is before you get there.
• Keep telling yourself It's just another shop.

1. Wednesday, about 12. Not particularly crowded.
2. No use if the item has to be collected from the Collection Point after paying (Argos stylee). 15 min wait.
3.Well, yes, it is, but one who employs staff who really couldn't give a shit.

[Gattopardo]

What IKEA visit with out a visit to the Restaurant and then the final hot dog.  Pity that the cinamon doughnuts aren't made any more.

[SteveC]

Ikea: they all have shortcuts.
Tubes: the bottleneck is now, at least on the lines where they've upgraded the trains (Central and Victoria for example) is getting people on and off the platforms. Basically the entire network is full (or over-full) at peak times; it's just a question of moving the sticking point round.

[ian]

Ikea stuffz part 666.

• Go to the one in Red Hook, NYC. They have a ferry. Probably doesn't come all the way to London, but hey, hijacking isn't a crime. I think. Come on, boat vs. Croydon tramlink, who's going to win. One ends up in downtown Manhattan, the other New Addington.
• Don't go to the Edmonton one, it's a riot. Occasionally literally.
• Neasdon. Or le Tour de Pebbledash. Play Frogger on the North Circular for bonus points.
• Croydon. Famous chimney landmarks and the delicate bouquet of slowly decomposing human effluent from the Beddington sewage works.
• Car parking. Use the collection bays and save yourself entire metres of walking. Plus you'll get handy reminders over the Tannoy that your car hasn't been nicked.
• Navigation. Go with the flow. Occasionally people may stop. Show them no mercy.
• It's OK to go into a showroom and pretend to a burglar, the man from Milk Tray, or Hannibal Lecter. Ignore your spouse's claims that you're embarrassing her and scaring children.
• Scribble down your purchases with the teeny pencil and paper. Pretend to be a hobbit while doing it.
• Survive the market section by buying stuff you didn't know you needed. Look at that giant pan! Keep it in kitchen cupboard on the off-chance you ever need to boil an elk head.
• Arrive at the warehouse. Discover that you're holding a piece of paper written by a hobbit in a made-up language. Perhaps it's a Sigur Rós track listing. Try to decipher. Was the hornikampa a dining table? Or the curtain rail? And just what the hell is a dogmaspanket?
• Locate, locate, locate. You think Indiana Jones had it tough? He only had Nazis to deal with.
• Behold the vacant shelf of disappointment!
• The search for a 'coworker'. He won't just share in your disappointment, he'll display all the symptoms of chronic ennui, the disease that just can't be bothered. He's man for whom every shelf is vacant. Watch him wander off. He won't be back soon. That's probably because he's gone to the Coworker Palace to watch all three LoTR movies back-to-back. The director's cuts. And bonus features.
• Hot dogs. Now we're talking sustenance. Why do you think the Vikings went to America? Hot dogs, that's why. Earn more points by avoiding the children that lunge at your with hands full of mustard and ice-cream. If you don't get mown down by a bed while crossing the post-till badlands.
• Coworker comes back from LoTR. He does look a bit like an Orc. You don't remember far enough back to remember if he looked like that before. He hands you a box labelled dogmaspanket. It looks like it's been in a battle. It's the last one, he mutters grimly, like it very well might be the last thing ever. And you do really need a dogmaspanket. You're pretty sure about that now.
• Add it to the vertiginous mountain of purchases wobbling on your trolley. Proceed to till. Those bumps? Probably just a deer. Carry on, carry on, there's time for more hot dogs.
• You've been to university. You know it's not going to fit into a Ford Ka. Looking outside, it seems you are the only person to be encumbered by such an awareness. Look, a man with insufficient knowledge of higher dimensional tessellation trying to fit an entire living room into a Hyundai hatchback.
• Home delivery. They don't specify your home. Just a home.
• One day later, the mountain comes to Mohammad. You're not Mohammad. According to the delivery label he lives in Coulsdon.
• Two days later, your very own mountain comes to you. Finally, the Olympian flatpackery can commence. Man meet allen key. Hold on, where's the bloody dogmaspanket?
• The customer services helpline. They're like the reverse Samaritans. A hour with them and despite the fact that razors will pain you, rivers are damp, acids will stain you, and the drugs will likely cause cramp, guns aren’t lawful, nooses will tend to give, and gas smells awful, another ten minutes on hold and you’re not going to want to live. You know where the ennui came from.
• Three weeks later and there's an Orc at the door with a dogmaspanket. Why did you buy that? And wasn't it supposed to be blue?

[Kim]

Or just buy things from eBay sellers at a mark-up that seems perfectly reasonable when you consider that it means neither having to ride to Wednesbury, nor visiting Ikea.

[Gattopardo]

I am prepared to go shopping in IKEA, if I can borrow kids it is a bonus as you can have the biggest play gorund ever.

[mcshroom]

Fighting to keep my bike under control on the way home this evening has left my lower back aching. I'm hoping it's just balancing muscles complaining about being overworked.

Oh, and it would have been nice if they hadn't shut the gate at the top of site, meaning I had to ride back down the hill again into the wind and ride up the exposed NSL road instead.

[Mrs Pingu]

I can't get warm at all tonight

[Cudzoziemiec]

My sister's house is late Victorian and I suspect has the original letter box. Even a small card won't fit through. I guess more paper, more money, fewer servants.

Our Georgian letterbox is nailed up. We use the 1980's one, which is large, so large that you could get two cats fighting through it, or maybe a small cow. We get delivery notes scrawled on delivered boxes  saying "couldn't fit this in your wheelie bin, so tried the letterbox".

Your small cow is in the post.

[Mr Larrington]

Ikea stuffz part 666.

• Don't go to the Edmonton one, it's a riot. Occasionally literally.

["The Death Of The Soul" - Mr Sunshine] is my local branch and only has riots these days when the café runs out of dead dogs.

[ian]

Ikea stuffz part 666.

• Don't go to the Edmonton one, it's a riot. Occasionally literally.

["The Death Of The Soul" - Mr Sunshine] is my local branch and only has riots these days when the café runs out of dead dogs.

I actually do like Ikea. There stuff always seems reasonable quality at a not unreasonable price. I'm not one for paying £4000 for a sofa on the grounds I'll just spill stuff on it and the cat will use it as a scratching post.

Customer service is an experience though as we found when they only delivered half our stuff and didn't seem very motivated to find the other half. Which resulted in my wife crashing Boudicca-like (evidently she's swapped the chariot for a Ka) into the Croydon branch and demanding restitution there and then.

It still took them about two hours, but they buy us dinner (including wine – well, we took it anyway) while we waited.

It's weird in the US because the coworkers, in that smiley American way, actually try to be helpful. Which feels like some kind of trap. Or that maybe you've stepped into an alternate dimension.

[woollypigs]

Feels like a trap, that is a good way to explain it, when you experience the American customer service the first time. It is weird, you are really not sure what to do and say when a person is so keen on helping you, even without asking.

[ian]

Feels like a trap, that is a good way to explain it, when you experience the American customer service the first time. It is weird, you are really not sure what to do and say when a person is so keen on helping you, even without asking.

And greeters. Someone standing there in the entrance of the store with nothing better to do that deliver a smile that's probably 75% pharmaceutical and ask how your day is going and do you need any help? I'm always tempted to ask, sotto voce, if they can help me get the body out of the trunk and bury it.

[T42]

Waited in all afternoon yesterday for a client to send me his database so that I could add a couple of fields and a fix up various crap he'd put in. It finally arrived towards 5 o'clock with the rider that he was waiting for his techs to get back so that he could send me the latest version, and can I have it for 8 am tomorrow please?

No you bloody can't.

[Jaded]

My sister's house is late Victorian and I suspect has the original letter box. Even a small card won't fit through. I guess more paper, more money, fewer servants.

Our Georgian letterbox is nailed up. We use the 1980's one, which is large, so large that you could get two cats fighting through it, or maybe a small cow. We get delivery notes scrawled on delivered boxes  saying "couldn't fit this in your wheelie bin, so tried the letterbox".

Your small cow is in the post.

It's arrived!!

And I was out, so just as well it fitted