The RANT thread (often contains fruity language)

[Mrs Pingu]

I get so many emails, which are meant for a bloke in procurement in the US with the same first initial and surname as me, but a different email address.
Maybe they are just guessing at his email address and getting mine, but an evil part of me can't help thinking he's given them an email address that sounds like it could be his, but isn't. And it turns out to be mine, the bastard.

[cygnet]

PR fuckwit, sending me a terse email with just the words "Did you get my emails?" is not the way to elicit a favourable response. 

Perhaps if you spent more time targeting your emails at the right people in the first place, you would then have to spend less time following them up to find out why you're not getting an answer.

Now just fuck off and do something more useful with your worthless life, like dunking your head in a vat of boiling oil.

I occasionally get passive-aggressive sales stuff

ian, would you be interested in trialling our super-new data analysis platform.
[silence, but no, I'm not]
Are you sure? It's super! It's new! It does data analysis in a way that you've never experienced.
[silence, I am sure]
All your competitors have signed up!
[silence, I am sure they haven't]
We can't keep making this offer.
[silence, feel free to stop then]
This is your last chance.
[silence, I doubt it]
This is a good faith offer. We're not sure why you wouldn't respond.
[silence, because I get eight of these a week]
This is absolutely your last chance. We won't offer this again.
[silence, I hope not]
This is your loss and your competitors' gain. I hope you are happy with your decision not to engage with us.
[silence, oh go get in the sea]

I'm not sure this sales technique is as effectively they may have thought.

You might as well change your name to Margret and be done with it.

[MattH]

But my rant. HSBC. Again. Why is it impossible for me to set up a standing order to a company on your useless website? Individuals, yep, no problem. Any company - my council (wanted to set up this year's council tax), credit cards (just testing to see if they worked) etc. - you don't even get the switch to flip to enable standing orders, just a single date. WTF? I'd ask in your online chat, but it doesn't work on Chrome for me. And your site is painfully slow in Firefox.

Having got through to someone on the phone (as the online chat person couldn't help), apparently it is actually impossible - when the phone person looked into it, they have a note saying they have to set them up manually if the company is one that is listed on their system (so all councils, major utilities, large businesses etc). So they only way to set up a standing order to a company is to dictate the details to someone who will type them in - but it will allow you to do it for individuals. Thinking back a couple of years, MrsH hit this issue - and set one up over the phone. But they did it from the wrong account, which is rarely used, so immediately went into unauthorised overdraft with charges applied. That was eventually resolved and compensation paid, but I'd rather the system worked.

[andrewc]

TransBloodyPennineExpress.   Sort your online system out.  I can't reset my password which means I can't give you money for tickets. 

[Jurek]

I had to speak with six people at LB Southwark earlier today before I could find someone who could give me the telephone number for the cafe in Southwark Park.

[rafletcher]

I had to speak with six people at LB Southwark earlier today before I could find someone who could give me the telephone number for the cafe in Southwark Park.

Might have been quicker to message the cafe on Farcebook?

[citoyen]

Since the office redesign, my desk neighbour is a chap who wears his headphones all day, which is antisocial enough, but made worse by the fact that he has the volume loud enough for the sound to leak.

Plus he types like a tap-dancing elephant. (Seriously, dude, you really don’t need to hit the keys that hard.)

And he eats apples noisily at his desk.

And he wears a hat indoors.

In short, he’s a cunt.

Oh well, only two more office days to put up with him. Silver linings and all that.

[Kim]

The real silver lining is that apples aren't fish.

[citoyen]

The real silver lining is that apples aren't fish.

FPWM

[TheLurker]

And he wears a hat indoors.

Come the winter and the next round of fuel price hikes everyone will be wearing hats indoors, not just us bald skinny blokes with poor thermoregulation.

[mrcharly-YHT]

There is a discount scheme on flights for island residents. Reduces very expensive flights (Stornoway - Edinburgh, a 1hr flight, is £128) to just extortionate.

I used it in early April.

Just tried to book flights for June "e-voucher not recognised". So I phone the office. "Due to covid restrictions, the office is closed. We are all working from home."

So they couldn't get the 0800 calls forwarded to skype/teams/something?  FFS

[Kim]

So they couldn't get the 0800 calls forwarded to skype/teams/something?  FFS

I don't think that's uncommon outside of tech.  In most organisations where working from home wasn't normal, the monkey who knows how to reconfigure the phone system was too busy scrounging up laptops and wrangling VPNs and so on.  And by now everyone's used to whatever work-arounds were hastily thrown together.

I believe barakta's $ork still lacks a way of forwarding phone calls, though obviously that isn't a problem for her.  They're mostly using Teams for telephony as a result (which is of course shit).  They're also running the whole department out of one of the manager's personal OneDrive accounts, which results in regular file-locking shenanigans.

[Pickled Onion]

email from PlusNet "Good News! You are due a refund!"

Pardon? You overcharged me. I had to phone up to get you to correct the bill. You're going to give me back the money you should never have taken from me.

How the fuck is this "Good News"?

(yeah, I know, it could have been Virgin and it would have taken 18 months)

[citoyen]

My sister has signed up to become an agent/reseller/patsy/whatever you want to call it for Utility Warehouse. Now it's impossible to have a conversation with her without being bombarded with the hard sell. Ugh. At least when it's some random call centre droid I can just put the phone down on them.

How do you politely tell your own sibling to just please fuck off without causing a breakdown in family relations? 

[Basil]

My sister has signed up to become an agent/reseller/patsy/whatever you want to call it for Utility Warehouse. Now it's impossible to have a conversation with her without being bombarded with the hard sell. Ugh. At least when it's some random call centre droid I can just put the phone down on them.

How do you politely tell your own sibling to just please fuck off without causing a breakdown in family relations? 

Exactly the same. Sister and BiL constantly trying to get me signed up. And my own mother, who had, nagging me to do so to help out.

Never did, and sadly two of the above mentioned have passed away so nagging no more.

[citoyen]

Exactly the same. Sister and BiL constantly trying to get me signed up. And my own mother, who had, nagging me to do so to help out.

Ugh! I hope my parents don't get dragged into it.

Never did, and sadly two of the above mentioned have passed away so nagging no more.

I suppose I'd rather put up with a bit of nagging if that's the alternative. 

[Giraffe]

Idea: telephone with a button marked DETH! - should reduce such calls.

[Beardy]

TFL/Greater Anglia: I accept that problems occur that are out of your control, and that the can occur anywhere and any when. But you’ve been running trains for a ver long time and your lines and stations aren’t exactly subject to frequent changes. It’s really not that difficult to know just what you need to do in any given circumstances and neither is it that difficult to inform your customers what they need to do and where they need to do it. And while I’m at it, those fancy information boards you’ve got on every platform; how about reporting actual reality on the rather than have the behave like a Microsoft update countdown. If you don’t know when a train is coming, the tell us.
Bastards.

[SoreTween]

Dear blue eagle bank,

You are morons.  Do you know my vole supplier account number?  No, you do not.  Do you know the reference number I used to pay my vole supplier last month?  Yes you do - the same one I'm trying to use this month.  Do you know the payment reference number printed in large friendly letters on the back of my vole supplier bill?  No you do not.

So why the utter fuck are you blocking the payment with this 'helpful' message?

Error :You have 1 error to correct before you can proceed

    This reference format doesn't match the one we have for that company. Please check this, as the wrong reference might mean your payment is unsuccessful.

Fuck off.  Fuck off some more.  When done with that, go on, guess.

(I feel a thread cross with other web developer rants.)

[Mrs Pingu]

The floor fitter came to fit our kitchen vinyl. He did a good job but when he showed me the results it transpired that the vinyl that had been delivered was not what I had ordered.
Yes, I had checked it when it was delivered, but the corner I peeled back showed it was approximately the same background colour as the vinyl I had ordered, but it did not have a fetching hexagon pattern on top.

It's not offensive, it's about the right colour and I can't be arsed moving all the appliances again but that's a bit annoying.

[hellymedic]

Similar in some ways to our garage situation 7 years ago.

We had a replacement prefab garage installed in a heatwave and contractors scarpered before we could check the work.  We had specified an openable window on one wall but a fixed one was installed.

Changing the window would have entailed MAJOR work so we accepted the situation.

[Jasmine]

I'd like to be able to sit outside in my garden today. However, my neighbour has decided to not only mow his grass for over 2 hours* but he's also got a massive bonfire going. My garden is completely filled with thick smoke so I can't go out. I've had to bring in my washing and close all the windows. I first noticed because I thought my kitchen was on fire, and then noticed that the smoke was coming in the window. Asshat.

* He mows his garden for about 6 hours a week, using a ride on mower. He also strims/trims for at least another 3 hours every week. There's something very ironic about the fact that they then have bird feeders, despite the fact that nothing can live in their garden - absolutely zero biodiversity value

[CAMRAMan]

AirBnB: a double bed is just that: a bed, in the singular. Stop your clients listing a double bed as two beds, then your filters become meaningful, instead of throwing up loads of inappropriate properties.

[Mrs Pingu]

One of the sets of hooks that my brother put in the garage wall to store a bike on fell out the other day and dropped the stored bike on those beneath.
Today my commuter (one of those beneath) wasn't working properly, something wrong with the rear wheel or brake or summat.

I now need to find a better method of fixing than the masonry wall plugs that were in there before. Chemical anchors maybe.

[mrcharly-YHT]

I don't normally disagree with experts, particularly scientists, but this:

To extract peat bricks, explains Prof Gallego-Sala, you have to drain the whole peatland.

Is absolute bollocks.

Draining the peat bog (to extract peat) is only necessary if you are going to:
A) use heavy machinery
B) extract peat down to a great depth.

Context; the quote is from this article https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61596047