A Conversation for Ask h2g2

Petty Hates

Post 16101

Sho - employed again!

smiley - rofl


Petty Hates

Post 16102

Sho - employed again!

PH: in the relax (break) room at work and someone slurps and crunches and makes otherwise disgusting chewing nois essential while you try to trade.
I so want to get my slapping hand out


Petty Hates

Post 16103

Keith Miller yes that Keith Miller

Forgetting your a member of h2g2.


Petty Hates

Post 16104

You can call me TC

Welcome back, Keith!


Petty Hates

Post 16105

Teasswill

Current PH: trying to find a holiday daily bag to suit my requirements. I've seen bags I like but never the right combination of pattern/colour, size, fabric, pockets, strap length…

Am I just too fussy?


Petty Hates

Post 16106

Baron Grim

In my official capacity as a male, yes.


Petty Hates

Post 16107

You can call me TC

I see a bag I just can't resist and pack accordingly.


Petty Hates

Post 16108

Bluebottle

My bag's buckle can also be used as a whistle if you need to signal attention, say if your ferry has sunk or you fall off a mountain.

<BB<


Petty Hates

Post 16109

Teasswill

Oh now you're giving me more ideas to look for smiley - winkeye


Petty Hates

Post 16110

Keith Miller yes that Keith Miller

You can call me TC
Posted Yesterday

Thank you, nice to be back. Still learning where everything is


Petty Hates

Post 16111

Cheerful Dragon

P.I.P. 'helpline'. I recently received a letter telling me that I have to apply for PIP (Personal Independence Payment) because DLA (Disability Living Allowance) is being discontinued. Fair enough, I was expecting that. Today I called the number to tell the DWP that I wanted to apply for PIP. That call went smoothly enough, although the woman I spoke to didn't understand my pronunciation of 'pool'. (Understandable as she was from Liverpool and I'm from Warwickshire.) Then I mentioned that I'm going on holiday for two weeks. Once you receive the application form, there's a deadline to return it. You have four weeks, but I don't know when that starts - the date you apply or the date they send it out.
I
Anyhow, I was given the number of the PIP helpline to find out if anything could be done to deal with my situation. I called several times. Each time I got music-on-hold, and was told that 'All the staff are busy. Please continue to hold, or you may prefer to call back later.' As if that would make any difference. It's an 0345 number, which BT treats as a local call AFAIK. Even so, there's a limit to how long I'm prepared to hold, and the music irritated me after a while. I'm not fond of violin music to start with, and I don't want to hear the Spring movement of Vivaldi's Four Seasons for quite some time.


Petty Hates

Post 16112

ITIWBS

PH: Long hold times on telephone calls while waiting for a live pick-up.




There is a better answer, with queued call-back systems, so that the answering machine takes your phone number and calls you back automatically when your turn comes up, used for example in California by the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles).

Queued call-back systems, besides relieving the caller of interminable waits that more often than not culminate in a dropped call on account of overloading the internal system of the agency or organization receiving the call, also reduce load on the recipient telephone system, and demands on the telephone company's infrastructure and the internet generally, drastically reducing potentials for a system crash generally with a markedly more time economical system, a win-win-win-win proposition.

Non-automated and automated telephone appointment systems have similar benefits.

All goverment agencies and many other kinds of institutions, anything with routine wait times for a live pick up, should be using systems of the type as a matter of course.


Petty Hates

Post 16113

Pink Paisley

Long recorded menus with options on telephones.

Hello, you call is important to us .

All calls are recorded for training purposes (aka so you can't lie to us and get away with it).

1. If your call is about the colour of your shoes.
2. If you want to complain about the weather.
3. If you have fluff in your belly button.
4. If you want to complain about the hold music.
5. If you once caught a bus to Canterbury.
6. If you have a wart on your nose.
7. If you have sent a letter to Father Christmas.
8. If you have a cat.
9. If there is an 'x' in your name.
10. If you own a blue shirt.
11. If you missed option 7.
12. If you know a joke about a duck.
13. If you have ever left a biro in a shirt in the wash.
14. If You have had a letter from our KSNODS department.
15. If you are still paying attention and want to talk to a real person.

My attention usually wanders and I end up picking option 1 and letting them re-direct me.

PP.


Petty Hates

Post 16114

Baron Grim

When they repeat, "your call is important to us" for the forty second time it's quite obvious they're lying.


Petty Hates

Post 16115

Mr. X ---> "Be excellent to each other. And party on, dudes!"

Personally, I wish they'd just let the music play, rather than constantly interrupting it.

smiley - pirate


Petty Hates

Post 16116

ITIWBS

PH: Deliberately scratchy, discordant and out of key 'muzak' designed to keep people from going to sleep while waiting for a live pick up.

People resorting to obsolescent trash like that need to be regularly arm-twisted and beleagured to switch to a more modern queued call-back system or automated or telephone appointment system.

Enlisting the muzak providers to promote more up to date technology like that is one possible option for the purpose.

At least one wouldn't have to wait interminably for a live pick up only to have call drop instead.


Petty Hates

Post 16117

Baron Grim

I recently switched employer, insurance, and mail order pharmacy.

Of course my first prescription order went FUBAR. But the only improvement over the previous was that rather than wait forever on hold hell, their website has an option to enter your phone number and they call you. And that took less than 2 minutes.

But that still doesn't make up for them canceling three orders because my Nurse Practitioner didn't return their call inquiring if they could substitute a generic testosterone gel in 24 hours. The entire time they never contacted me. They let the order sit for over a week. No problem. They finally get approval and they cancel in under 24 hours and yet in both cases I could have cleared things up if they only emailed or called.


I went through all of this for three of the previous five years with the previous insurance and pharmacy.

I'm tired of it!


Petty Hates

Post 16118

Dr Anthea - ah who needs to learn things... just google it!

my mother in law bought a trampoline for my garden without asking
if she had asked I would have said no as would my husband
we had no desire for a trampoline in the garden
she already has a bigger one in her garden which is only a couple of miles away and my children visit multiple times a week I did not need a trampoline

I suppose i should be happy to receive such a 'gift' but I am not,
I have considered giving it away for free without telling her but that truly would be petty...


Petty Hates

Post 16119

Pastey

Today's Petty Hate (well, the first one) is the lack of realism in apocalypse movies. Even with the surreal fantasy I write I strive for realism, yes I write about goblins, manticore, etc, but at least it's believable. Whereas all the apocalypse films I can think of have a massive glaring error in them that now I've noticed it, I can't take the rest of the film seriously.

So I'm now happy to spoil the films for you all too...

General scenario, meteorite hits earth, zombie plague, scientists/terrorists release deadly toxin, take your pick. Only a few handfuls of survivors, or maybe even just one... empty, desolate streets, feeling of bleak loneliness, etc, etc...

So where are the corpses?

Seriously, what happened to all the people who died?

Even if it was a zombie apocalypse and they were chomping their way through the dead, it'd take a *very long time* to eat their way through civilisation. There's about a week's worth of food on an average human being, so you'd either need a *LOT* more zombies about than you see in the films, or there'd be corpses everywhere.

So now whenever I start watching these films I keep screaming "WHERE'S THE CORPSES!!!" at the screen smiley - erm



Totally unrelated Petty Hate: The general public being expected to know how to operate industrial machinery. Doesn't happen? It does, and this PH has been festering for a while.

Here's the situation, you're staying in a hotel, you go down for breakfast, bleary eyed and groggy, they show you to a table and point you in the direction of the breakfast buffet where you can get your tea. Except it's not in a teapot ready to just pick up, you have to make it yourself, ookay, you can do this. Teapot (or cup), teabag, sugar, milk jug, milk... where's the water? There's an industrial flask there marked "hot water" but how do you use it? There's not one in your kitchen at home, and there's no instructions. If you've never seen or used one of these before, it's not really obvious how to get the water from the flask into your teapot. So what do you do? I've seen people wander off to the fresh fruit, hoping someone else will come along and use it so they can see how. I've also seen someone (my mother) break the thing apart to get to the hot water.

And the flask isn't the worst of it. The toaster is.

Toasters at home are little pop-up things with a nice little dial. But the industrial ones you get on breakfast buffets are weird. If you've never used on, how do you know where to start? And why are the dials to control the speed of the belt, and therefore the amount of burntness, hidden around the back? I've often seen people put their bread through three, four or more times because they don't know that you can slow down or speed it up, or even what that would do.

People aren't usually at their best first thing in the morning, after sleeping in a strange bed, before they've had their cup of tea. So why do we force them to try and figure out how to use industrial machinery with no instructions?


Petty Hates

Post 16120

swl

They're called Broasters because the result isn't bread, isn't toast. Most of them have the knobs taken off the dials so the customers can't:

a) Turn up the heat beyond barely warm and thus run up the hotel electricity bill and,

b) Slow them down and cause a queue at the breakfast bar.


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