h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

planning to vist the usa. specifically, san francisco. why must we go through this crap before we even get there? all i wanna know is do i need a visa or not to get in?! jeez.

(i'm from the uk and therefore can take part in the visa waiver program. i dont think i need a visa but i'm not sure.)

Petty hates? Not so petty, actually - and I had it today.

A bad round on the golf course

Better drown my sorrows:

(trying to cheer myself up)
(it doesn't work, so back to

So, before his business meeting in Japan this manager visits a...well, house of ill repute. The lady keeps screaming "間違った穴! 間違った穴!"

In the afternoon he plays a round of golf with his business partner who hits an incredibly good drive. "OK, so I´ll say something nice in Japanese...間違った穴!"

The elderly gentleman stares at him "What you mean - wrong hole?"

I'm sure I complained about this before but ...

Going to the supermarket checkout and the operator starting the conveyor belt before you've got all your stuff out onto it. Even worse when they start beeping it through as you're still unloading ...

>>Going to the supermarket checkout and the operator starting the conveyor belt before you've got all your stuff out onto it. Even worse when they start beeping it through as you're still unloading ...<<

Worse than that - the checkout girls - and yes, it usually is the girls - talk to their mate on the other till while chewing gum and attending to your shopping.

In my experience, the only reason it's usually the girls is that teenage girls on checkouts outnumber teenage boys by two or three to one. Other than that I can't say I have noticed much difference, to be honest...

>>Going to the supermarket checkout and the operator starting the conveyor belt before you've got all your stuff out onto it. Even worse when they start beeping it through as you're still unloading ...<<


It annoys me when they don't do that. Unloading the stuff on to the belt takes long enough. Surely it's in everyone's interest to save time and work parallel - checking the items through the till at one end while I'm unloading the trolley at the other end makes sense to me. Why should they wait?

Checkout girls sometimes ask if they should start checking, once I've got a few items on to the conveyor belt, and of course I say "go ahead" but usually they just start.

I hate it when they just sit and stare vacantly while I unload too - apart from anything else I eventually end up with no further room on the belt and we reach a kind of impasse. I don't want to heap things up, they don't want to do some scanning and packing.

In my days as a checkout girl I used to ask if I could start scanning and packing for them or if they would rather I waited.

Petty hate of the day today - I managed to get into some of my nicer clothes today and am feeling better about my appearance...so obviously my usual mum's group has been cancelled and I have nobody to show off to

My current petty hate is excess packaging. My new tablet (about 23 x 34 x 2 cm) arrived in a box that was 30 x 41 x 6 cm, which in turn was inside a 40 x 58 x 20 cm box!

How the hell are you going to swallow that? You will need a HUGE glass of water!

PP

I have coffee to help

So you haven't heard about the pill that creates 1 litre of water then?

All you do is add 1 litre of water to the pill...

All of the obscene little dongly things. The power cord(s), the usb things, those tiny wiry bits. I have twenty some odd power cords that don't belong to anything. And naturally, twenty some odd things that are missing their power cords, or the little video cord thing.

Ohhh no, I can't agree with that one. All those strange little cords are about the only thing I keep "in case they might come in useful" which actually do come in useful sometimes.

this may be true but there comes a point when you have for too many of them and the tangled mess that ensues is enough to drive one up several walls.

"All of the obscene little dongly things."

Am I the only one that laughed at that? It's possible I misread it as 'dangly' and thought you were some sort of manhater...

No i found it amusign as well

"It annoys me when they don't do that. Unloading the stuff on to the belt takes long enough. Surely it's in everyone's interest to save time and work parallel - checking the items through the till at one end while I'm unloading the trolley at the other end makes sense to me. Why should they wait?"

Firstly because them shoving everything through doesn't move things any quicker. I still have to unpack my basket before I can walk through and load my bags before I can pay before the next person can begin to have their stuff scanned. In fact, I'd venture it's slower because I have to pick around the items in the out area to find the correct ones to put at the bottom of my bags. Which leads me into ...

Secondly because I want to unpack my basket onto the conveyor belt in the order I want to pack it e.g. boxes at the bottom of the bag. Add in the fact that I may well also be packing different bags for unloading to different areas at home e.g. fridge, cupboards, toiletries.

Thirdly and perhaps most importantly ... because I feel under pressure to rush from unloading my basket to packing. I don't want my shopping experience to be stressful, I want serene.

"he tangled mess that ensues is enough to drive one up several walls"

That's the benefit of keeping the little tiny wiry things ... you use them to ravel up the cords to the max length you need and then tie them up neatly

My power cords and usb cables are labelled, so I know what goes with what... Also very helpful when you're trying to figure out which one to unplug.