It’s the petty things

I used to work in food service, a couple of takeaway’s and a cinema concession stand.
It’s where you go if you really want to learn to properly despise all of humanity. It makes you petty, it forces you to be petty, as you have petty thrust upon you daily. If you are lucky and have never been subjected to the daily humiliation and deprivation that is food service, a place where every tiny mistake is called out, every perceived slight or attitude is worthy of being called into the office. You have a different boss every minute and none of them have any regard for immediately before or after their interaction with you, but you must comply fully with them, however stupid they may be (and a lot of them are at the very least, wilfully ignorant), or face the wrath of the actual boss.
It’s not hard to see where the attitude comes from, where the pettiness originates. I thought it might be “chicken or egg”, “attitude or degrading job”, but, turns out, it’s the job. The stupid pointless job. It’s just popcorn, it’s not important, you are going to see a film, graze for a bit, get bored and throw it at the person sitting in front of you, then I have to go clean it up after you.
Ok, I’m not a people person. I’m so not a people person that on at least one occasion, a customer told me I wasn’t a people person, and asked me why I was working there. Seriously? Why does anyone work there? It’s not for self fulfilment, it’s for money, and not much of it.
And this, this is why I hate this man.

I warn you now, it’s petty. Really petty. I am clearly scarred from the job, but it’s been years since I worked in service, and over a year since this was on, and this man still makes me angry. This man, and the hundreds or so of him that you deal with daily, have the potential to really ruin your day.
As this advert was on TV over a year ago (I warned you, it lingers, in my heart and in my drafts folder) it’ll probably help to watch the advert again.

Stupid haircut aside, this man has that slightly passive agressive attitude that is instantly infuriating. The scene, he’s in a sandwich shop. He’s ordering a sandwich. It’s clearly the girls first day as she is cheery and helpful.

She then clearly offends him. She offers him jalepenos on his sandwich. Jalepenos, can you believe the gall of this?
This man clearly can’t. Because his reaction, is subtle, but instantly annoying. He crumples up his face, puts on a look of disgust, and yes, disappointment. “errrr, no”.

I told you it was petty.

But it’s the condescention in his voice, the fact that he can’t believe that she doesn’t know he doesn’t like jalepenos. How does she not know that as a child he once mistook a jalepeneo for a green bean and bit into it, in all his innocence and wide eyed youth. He bit into a jalepeneo and from that moment was scarred for life. “Mum mum” he cries “my mouth is on fire, it hurts!”. And his mum, who never paid proper attention in chemistry gave him some water, which, as we all know is pH 7, or neutral. If she had listened in chemistry when she was 14, instead of writing Bob Dylan lyrics on her copybook, she would have given the child some milk instead, which has a high pH and would have helped balance the low pH of the acidic jelepeneo pepper. So his mouth continued to burn and he continued to cry, and even his favourite teddy bear couldn’t make it better, and how could this young girl working in his favourite sandwich shop not know this most pertinent of facts about him. You do not offer him jalepenos.

It’s such a slap in the face to him, he can’t even hide his contempt. He can’t just say “no thanks” like a normal civilised human. He has to pull faces and be a dick about it. If someone came up to him and asked him how his sandwhich was he would say that “the experience was ruined by jalepeneo-gate” because he is the sort of bastard that appends “gate” onto any sort of incident

Look at his face, pure contempt.

I’m really glad he gets accosted by a green pepper.

The Chinese have got it right. You order by giving a list of numbers. End of story. No fuss, no misunderstanding. It’s a good system, maybe we should try it more.

This blog has not been bought to you by Subway, although they are rather tasty.

That's obsolete

I was in a good mood today. Despite various stuff(tm). I decided yesterday that I was going to make an effort to talk properly to random people that I’d normally ignore, leafleters, shop assistants, police officers, that sort of thing.

Yesterday I picked up a HD-DVD add on for my xbox. I know full well the format was discontinued last year.  I also know that it cost £5 and that plenty of second hand shops sell cheap discs. I guess £20 will get me a player and a nice stack of films. So I went to this little independent store that sells second hand video games and films.

This is not a classy store, the DVD’s are stacked to the ceiling5 for £10 deals. There are rows of used porn DVD’s above the cheap action fims and anime. There’s also a sizeable blu-ray section but no HD-DVD’s to be seen. So I ask the assistant and the the “nerd treatement”

(nerd voice, Keith and the Girl fans will know what I mean) *snort* “Why would you want that,” *snort* “you might as well ask if we stock VHS”

“Well places still sell them cheap and I bought a drive for a fiver yesterday, so why not, I got a couple of discs off ebay and thought I’d check out here”

“Well that’s the only place you’ll get them, no proper shops sell them anymore. You know they wont make any more right, you’ve bought into an obsolete system”

Screw me for trying to give you money. Fucking christ fuck me for trying to buy a shitty discontinued product from a shitty little second hand store that sells FUCKING MEGADRIVE GAMES like they weren’t end of lined 15 years ago. I guess HD-DVD isn’t retro yet so it isn’t cool enough, which by the way, is stocked in every gamestation in the country still.

I tried, and I’ll carry on trying with people. I know it’s often my fault for just ignoring people. At least it gives me ranting material.

Anyway, the shop is a shitty little second hand video game store (I don’t remember the name) on Bedminster Parade, Bedminster, Bristol, UK. Go there  if you want to be mocked and patronised.

Cashback

I was just at Sainsbury’s and asked for cashback. Not the most interesting of openers I know, but the woman on the tills gave me the same look a chip shop worker gives you if you ask if they sell chips.
Turns out it wasn’t that I wanted cashback, it was the amount I wanted. I really wonder, what is so odd about asking for £6 cashback? It’s a unit of money like any other, and it happened to be the amount of money I needed at that moment.

“Most people want £10 or £20″
“I just want £6, is that ok? Will the till let you do that?”
“umm, are you sure you want £6.”
“I’ll take £10 if it’s a problem.”
“Whch would you prefer?”
“£6!”
“That’s an wierd number”
“Not really, but are you sure you want to charge me £4.23 for my things? It’s not a round number, maybe we should round it up to £5, or down to £4 as that’s closer.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”

No shit? Maybe we should have made you chancellor supermarket lady. I don’t expect much from you; swipe, beep, swipe, beep, tell me the total, but I do expect you to be able to deal with differing amounts of cash. Unless you want to go round the shop and re prioce everything up by one penny so we don’t have any more “odd prices” that end in “wierd numbers” like .99. I can’t work in customer service, I know, I tried, I’m too intolerant, so I quite, know your limits, if thinking’s not your thing you could always be a librarian. If anyone asks you a question you don’t like you can just ssh them.

People often do stupid things that annoy me, like I said, Im intolerant. This may be a recurring theme.