Peeves in everyday life...

[T3G]

8 hours ago, captaintrolley said:

Roping off entire benches and seating areas because of, you know, covid. As far as I am aware, 'Covid Bum' is not a thing. Yeah, I get it, you don't want throngs of people sitting next to each other. You want to facilitate physical distancing. So that means nobody gets to sit down. Ever. I am not a spring chicken any more, and if my knee gets really sore, or if the extreme heat outside just has me knackered.  THEN I AM GOING TO SIT DOWN.  A friend of mine that recently had both knees replaced told an employee at her city's Farmers Market the same thing, and she grabbed the string of yellow tape and yanked it from its moorings and SAT DOWN.  Fine. Call the cops. You think just because of 'covid' that suddenly everyone has limitless strength and stamina and never ever needs to sit down ever again?!?!?!?

As far as I am aware, the whole 'COVID Bum' notion came along because of an early contact tracing study in South Korea, where a churchgoer was found to have contracted it after sitting in the same spot as another positive patient, but didn't recall actually having an interaction with said patient. I'm not sure if it was the scientists running the study that came to the conclusion that COVID was communicable through one's bottom, or if some layman read the study and started a chain reaction, but for a while, that was the prevalent consensus, that sitting on the same surface could give you COVID. Well, if that's how a respiratory virus spreads, then good luck to all of us!!!

You're right, though, in retrospect it looks pretty silly. Oakville (a western suburb of Toronto) was one of the last holdouts for this stuff. There is a waterfront park I've been to a few times and I don't remember if they have even taken the scary looking caution tape off the bench yet the last time I was there - I was more surprised at the fact that they'd reopened the playgrounds (which, in my city, have been open for at least a few months now). I love your friend's reaction to the thing. These small revolutions affirm the human.

8 hours ago, captaintrolley said:

And libraries not having photocopy and fax machines for public use anymore, because of covid.  I needed to get a photocopy made, and went to my neighborhood library. A staffer was sitting outside and asked me what I was there for. I told her I needed a photocopy. She told me they no longer offer that service because of covid.  FFS. REALLY ?!?!?!

If I were feeling conspirational, I'd say that the virus is being used as an excuse to do only the bare minimum required of one's job. Why would these services be any more dangerous than getting books for a customer?

8 hours ago, captaintrolley said:

Personally I think too many ridiculous restrictions have fallen under the 'Covid Response' umbrella. I get the whole mask and physical distancing thing, and washing hands and keeping frequently touched surfaces clean, but OMG, give your head a shake people, some things have gotten way over the top ridiculous.

I absolutely agree. Obviously we can't fully go back to the way we were living before for a bit, yet, but some of these rules are getting so pointless you'd be forgiven for thinking we as humans have never dealt with the threat of dangerous communicable disease before, or indeed have even an iota of understanding of how they actually spread. The thing that tires me out the most about the whole thing though is how there's always gotta be a million infographics everywhere about all of these "measures", such as they are. It's not bad enough to be living in this situation; we now also have to be assaulted by a barrage of visual reminders that we are living in a nightmarish hellscape, because you're not allowed to forget, not for one single solitary second. I beg for a swift end to this crisis.

[captaintrolley]

Defiant Rebel Child (me) pushed past some barricades at Starbucks in Safeway to sit on their bench.  The Starbucks lady was fine with it.  However, after about 20 minutes (I was waiting for my neighbor to finish up her shopping) some 'important looking' girl, not a day over 12, tells me I cannot sit there because of (you know) Covid. 

I told her to show me a peer reviewed scientific document that states, because of (you know) Covid, that nobody is allowed to sit down again. Ever.  And I even told her I was fine with her calling the cops. I added that I just spent $79.00 shopping at her store and perhaps she should be more understanding, that she will be old and tired someday too.

I left, but this is WAR. TIRED LIVES MATTER.

[Wayside Observer]

On 8/3/2020 at 8:45 PM, captaintrolley said:

Defiant Rebel Child (me) pushed past some barricades at Starbucks in Safeway to sit on their bench.  The Starbucks lady was fine with it.  However, after about 20 minutes (I was waiting for my neighbor to finish up her shopping) some 'important looking' girl, not a day over 12, tells me I cannot sit there because of (you know) Covid. 

I told her to show me a peer reviewed scientific document that states, because of (you know) Covid, that nobody is allowed to sit down again. Ever.  And I even told her I was fine with her calling the cops. I added that I just spent $79.00 shopping at her store and perhaps she should be more understanding, that she will be old and tired someday too.

I left, but this is WAR. TIRED LIVES MATTER.

Good for you. You know, an 80 year old lady in Toronto got a thousand dollar ticket because she sat on a park bench back in the spring?  So much of this stuff has been poorly thought through and half baked.  People with mobility problems can’t sit down?  At 80, life isn’t just a mobility problem, it’s a challenge in general.  But yeah, anything and everything is being hung on COVID-19.  I flipped my lid over in a the Hamilton Street Railway thread about someone blaming the removal of wi-fi on buses on COVID.  Wi-fi can pass computer viruses   Wi-fi cannot pass biological viruses.  So what the hell does that have to do with COVID-19 for crying out loud?

Now are all of you ready to roll your eyes?  Good. Let’s get started.

I just took these pictures now.  6:36 PM on Wednesday, August 5:

All of Ontario except for the southernmost tip down by Windsor and Essex County is in stage 3 reopening.  Patios have been open for a while now and indoor dining has been open for a little bit.

I am not in Windsor right now.  The Tim Hortons near one of the independent grocery stores I like to go to roped off the outdoor tables with caution tape months ago but not to be content with that, they rented the snap fencing that you put around construction sites and barricaded off the outdoor tables completely. Even now, now that the outdoor patios have been allowed to be open for weeks and weeks!

Meanwhile at work, they just revised policies yet again.  Keeping track of all the moving targets is insane.  The people I really feel sorry for are children and youth.  They’re in the least at risk categories For direct illness and apparently don’t even pass the thing around at a very high rate and yet they’ve been hit with the most onerous restrictions of any demographic.  It’s shameful.  However they can’t vote.  Seniors can.  And they do. And politicians know it. So damn right golf courses opened pretty early.  Junior wasn’t allowed to use the playground at the park all spring and most of the summer.  I could go on with more examples but honestly, why bother?  It isn’t needed.   We all know how absurd things have been.  What’s really been grating me lately is the over the top paranoia of some of the people I’ve had to deal with and it’s getting old.

[T3G]

The goalposts have changed again. The focus is not any more on the possibility of getting ill or dying but about the 'long term effects' (in Toronto anyway; stateside I still see people in hysterics about the thought of sending children back to school).

I find this to be particularly frustrating because there is so little useful data out there about how commonplace it's supposed to be that it's next to impossible to decide my own level of risk tolerance. A lot of the stuff people have been mentioning could happen (blood clotting, kidney damage, lung damage, heart damage) have been known to be possible complications of flu infections. What I am not able to find is - is this as rare for COVID as it is for influenza? Is it much more common? I've seen a few scary contextless numbers thrown around - one study said that out of 100 'randomly selected' patients in Germany, they found some abnormalities in 78% of the studied patients - and another one was from a New York hospital, that was apparently set up to treat COVID survivors that claimed to have had 300 patients with potentially permanent disabilities like lung fibrosis. But these are disturbingly small sample sizes.

Personally, as someone not very well versed in sciences, the idea that this kind of damage can be widespread from a virus that, for most people, they don't even realize they have is a little suspect, but I have seen no data yet to reasonably justify or discredit these fears. I'm not really sure what the hold up is, if I'm being honest - there's only 10 million+ recovered patients around the globe. Sure, we can't know now if this damage is long term or not, but if doctors are finding this kind of damage in some people now, surely it can't be out of the question to do a mass examination/follow up of COVID survivors and get to the bottom of this? Not even to find out whether this damage is permanent, but whether the kind of damage that we are seeing now is actually alarmingly widespread or not. It's only the future of our society that depends on these findings, after all.

[Wayside Observer]

13 hours ago, PCC Guy said:

The goalposts have changed again. The focus is not any more on the possibility of getting ill or dying but about the 'long term effects' (in Toronto anyway; stateside I still see people in hysterics about the thought of sending children back to school).

I find this to be particularly frustrating because there is so little useful data out there about how commonplace it's supposed to be that it's next to impossible to decide my own level of risk tolerance. A lot of the stuff people have been mentioning could happen (blood clotting, kidney damage, lung damage, heart damage) have been known to be possible complications of flu infections. What I am not able to find is - is this as rare for COVID as it is for influenza? Is it much more common? I've seen a few scary contextless numbers thrown around - one study said that out of 100 'randomly selected' patients in Germany, they found some abnormalities in 78% of the studied patients - and another one was from a New York hospital, that was apparently set up to treat COVID survivors that claimed to have had 300 patients with potentially permanent disabilities like lung fibrosis. But these are disturbingly small sample sizes.

Personally, as someone not very well versed in sciences, the idea that this kind of damage can be widespread from a virus that, for most people, they don't even realize they have is a little suspect, but I have seen no data yet to reasonably justify or discredit these fears. I'm not really sure what the hold up is, if I'm being honest - there's only 10 million+ recovered patients around the globe. Sure, we can't know now if this damage is long term or not, but if doctors are finding this kind of damage in some people now, surely it can't be out of the question to do a mass examination/follow up of COVID survivors and get to the bottom of this? Not even to find out whether this damage is permanent, but whether the kind of damage that we are seeing now is actually alarmingly widespread or not. It's only the future of our society that depends on these findings, after all.

Shifting goalposts is one of my major peeves in every day life.  When your family, the Toronto Board of Education, employers, etc. define the goal posts and you in good faith work towards them and finally get there, and show them that you've made it and all of a sudden it no longer matters or meets the requirements because womp-womp-womp, it got moved.  Aw, did they forget to tell you?  Yeah.  But they're telling you now, it's moved and your old expectations are wrong.  Sorry, but there's a new measure that you haven't met so start all over again.  I think we can safely add the local foam organizations to the list for pulling this kind of crap.

So, long term grotesque effects of COVID?  Agreed, something doesn't add up here.  If the majority of cases are mild and recovered from, I wouldn't expect long term grotesque effects.  Long term, possibly permanent differences that can be discovered with blood tests etc?  Possible and probably very likely.  Things like Chicken Pox, mono, stuff like that lays dormant or leaves permanent changes after you recover from it, but these long term effects are minor, not the grotesque horror stories we've been hearing about COVID-19.  But a study of 100 randomly selected patients is much too small a sample size to draw meaningful conclusion unless that 100 randomly selected people were very carefully screened because things could break down at least three ways that I can think of:

1)  Long term grotesque effects that are directly attributable to COVID-19.  This is one possibility to be worried about with COVID-19 for sure.

2)  Long term grotesque effects that are directly attributable to something else, and the patient having COVID-19 is an unrelated coincidence.  This is a situation where you should be worried about the something else that caused the problem, but because of the coincidence it'll jack up the fear of COVID-19.

3)  Long term grotesque effects due to COVID-19 interacting with something else.  This is another possibility to be worried about for sure because if COVID-19 interacts with something else and the combination produces horrible results, this is something that has to be paid attention to so that disastrous combinations of COVID-19 plus the other things that make it worse can be avoided.  There's a good example of the sort of bad combination idea I'm thinking of here that was discovered in studies of asbestos workers in Quebec.  Asbestos exposure and smoking cigarettes are both bad enough health-wise by themselves but it turns out when you combine the two, the health consequences are far worse.

Small sample size studies might give hints and suggestions about directions to go and investigate in but they're not good for drawing any kind of large scale firm conclusions from.  You can't really extract useful information about how COVID-19 plays out in even that small three way breakdown I did above from a sample size of 100.

As for the goal posts changing again, remember back when the flatten the curve business started it was all about preventing the health care system from being overwhelmed by lowering the peak but drawing the curve out over a longer period of time, not about reducing the total number of cases?  Some of the earlier press conferences almost turned into mini calculus lessons about how the area under both curves was the same even though the shape was not.  I don't even know what the currently stated objectives are.

[Wayside Observer]

On 8/5/2020 at 8:46 PM, PCC Guy said:

The goalposts have changed again. The focus is not any more on the possibility of getting ill or dying but about the 'long term effects'

‘I was worried I’d end up bald.’ Survivors alarmed by latest fallout of COVID-19 — their hair - be prepared for the world to remain shut down until there's a vaccine for COVID-19 plus now a cure for hair loss.

[J. S. Bach]

On 8/3/2020 at 8:45 PM, captaintrolley said:

 ...snip... I added that I just spent $79.00 shopping at her store ...snip...

$79.00 at Starbucks?? I know their coffee is over-priced (over-rated, too); was that two or three cups?

[captaintrolley]

17 minutes ago, J. S. Bach said:

$79.00 at Starbucks?? I know their coffee is over-priced (over-rated, too); was that two or three cups?

I had two double espressos. Espresso shots are rather inexpensive, it's all the fancy stuff that is dear.   The Starbucks was inside a Safeway store where I had just finished spending $79.00. (Which is not really a big expenditure, but enough for me).

[Wayside Observer]

15 hours ago, captaintrolley said:

I had two double espressos. Espresso shots are rather inexpensive, it's all the fancy stuff that is dear.   The Starbucks was inside a Safeway store where I had just finished spending $79.00. (Which is not really a big expenditure, but enough for me).

It’s amazing how far money doesn’t go when you’re shopping for food.

I have no idea how the bank of Canada keeps calculating inflation rates around 1.5% because that’s not what I’ve experienced and not what everyone else I know has experienced, especially when it comes to food prices.

[T3G]

Peeves in every day life, returns edition:

People who have a million receipts and wait until they've dumped their product on your desk before they begin to look for it. Bonus points if they are returning half the store, because it can never be simple.

People who tell you the story of why they're returning something. I don't care, dude - you don't need to justify yourself to me. Tell me if the product is defective or not, that's all I need.

People who plop the return bag on your counter and make no effort to get anything out of there, choosing instead to watch as you untangle the mess of junk they've brought in.

People who pay cash for large ($100+) purchases. This is a great way to strip your cash register of cash in one fell swoop, and now you've gotta involve someone else to replace the returned bills. I understand cash for some purchases, but good grief, how are you just carrying around $100+ in cash?!?!?!?

People who are on their cellphone while making a return. You are not obligated to make your return at any given moment - finish your conversation and then come, because trying to figure out if you're grunting incomprehensibly to me or to whoever you're talking to is a nightmare.

People who return nuts and bolts.

People who return nuts and bolts.

People who return nuts and bolts!!!!

Pardon the triple repetition, but it really needed to be said. There is nothing quite like having an avalanche of people all wanting to do returns, you're working fast and clearing out the backlog, when suddenly someone comes in with a bag of 40 nuts and bolts, all different types, none of them labelled, and now you're hunched over the return like an imbecile, trying to figure out what product is which while the line of people waiting to return their shit gets longer and longer and longer and you're getting more agitated and you begin to question every single life decision that lead you to where you are. Inevitably this ends in having to call someone from the department that sells this stuff, and now you're holding up the line even more. Especially if that worker is also tied up with customers.

Related: people who bring an item without a barcode on it, and have no receipt.

Bonus, non return pet peeve: when I'm doing a job in a department I am not assigned to, and a customer asks me for some information, I tell them that I don't know but I can send them to customer service where they have a computer/call a departmental associate to assist them, and then they ask me "why can't you just (find out if we have the product on hand/tell me)"? Hmm, why do you think that might be? Also, when they get pissed at me because the person from that department is on their lunch/elsewhere. Sure, bud, I'll go into the break room and forcibly drag them out, just for you.

 

[T3G]

Another day, another bullshit delivery.

I come into the store and process the paperwork for the deliveries that are supposed to go out this morning, as routine. I don't have a forklift license, so my ability to do anything about a problem order is limited. I check the paperwork, check the orders to ensure that things look right, everything seems in order. Looks like it's going to be an ok day.

The delivery driver comes in about 2 hours into my shift, right when I was hoping to go for a break, and he starts bellyaching about how a bunch of the orders were packed wrong. So I go out to see what the issue is, and find two things that make my blood boil: one of the orders, which I had seen with my own eyes some hours before and looked fine, had had its plastic wrapping torn off by him; and there was a second order which had a pair of glass doors stacked on top of a bunch of drywall, which the driver refused to take because if we'd used the straps on that package, the glass would break.

This is not the first time that I've had issues with this driver of this type. About a week ago, none of the orders had been prepared by the overnight team as they should've been, and around that same time there was another that he refused to take because it had been strapped wrong, and he said that he would get in trouble if pulled over by the MTO. Another time, he refused to take an order with a damaged panel of drywall, at the very bottom of a large pile of such an item, because he didn't want the customer yelling at him when he delivered that.

OK. Fine. I'll accept the concern over being pulled over by the MTO. It is, after all, his livelihood on the line here. But what I didn't appreciate was how each time he felt compelled to inform me that this was my problem to deal with, and that I should've made sure all the orders were ready to go before he even arrived. I've managed to be civil with him so far but I'm running out of ways to inform him that this wasn't my fault. How the fuck could this possibly be my problem, when I'd come in long after the order was done being put togetherand my job only involves processing the fucking paperwork?!?!?! And moreover, what special knowledge should I have that tells me if a snugly wrapped pile of goods is packed correctly for your truck or not? Because of all my extensive trucking experience? I would've sooner got up in the middle of the night and chewed night crew's ears off rather than deal with the bullshit that is being thrown at me, but somehow I should take responsibility for something that happened while I was sound asleep. I do my best with the limited resources at my hand, but try and realize that you're talking to someone barely older than a teenager that makes $14 an hour. Your job may be difficult; so is mine. If you can't be polite to your comrades in arms, there are other jobs out there just waiting for you.

The order that he pulled the plastic wrap off was apparently "not wrapped right" the first time (funny, it looked fine to me, and it must've looked fine to night crew too), so he then watched as I struggled to wrap a skid loaded with concrete bags, making snarky interjections as I struggled for the better part of 5 minutes to do the job correctly. Again, dude, it's not a veteran of the packaging industry you're talking to, here.

After he left with all the other orders, I had to go inside and call the customer up. They were enraged, for they were, again, idiots that had ordered their contractor before ensuring all their materials were on hand and ready to go. I really don't understand the logic of these people - what if we were out of stock? Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine. Sure, I get it, people place orders for things, it sucks when those orders don't arrive on time. But it could've been just an inconvenience, if you'd not made it so much more than that.

Later on I teamed up with some associates to correct the order and have it repackaged and sent out differently (there were 4 skids, one of them was altered and the other three were not). The order went out, and I thought that this was the end of that. Until, right before the end of my shift, we get another call from the customer, complaining that they were missing some items. One of those items was backordered, and should've been indicated as such on the sheet of paper the driver gave the customer when making the delivery; the other item was indicated on the pick sheet the night crew left for me as having been fulfilled completely, so absent of tearing apart the saran packaging, obsessively checking each box to ensure that what night crew told me they picked was the same as what was actually picked, and then repackaging the whole thing again, I don't have a choice but to take what they told me at its word. I went and checked in the back; no products had been left behind. Oh well, my shift was over, it's someone elses' problem now.

I've been in touch with the people who trained me to do this job and they said that they've been reminding night crew of the protocols for several weeks. Well, whatever it is they're doing, clearly isn't working.

The grief that I put up with at this job. If I didn't urgently need as much money as possible to facilitate a fast and permanent escape to Europe...

[MVTArider]

I need to renew my vehicle registration by the end of the month. I never got my renewal notice in the mail though. Not sure if that's due to COVID delays, or if my change of address I filed last year never went though and it got sent to my old place and then 'returned to sender'. Well I checked online and I can easily renew my reg. online just fine but thing is for security they won't tell me what the current address is for the reg. so I know it'll be mailed to my current place. So I'm going to have to go to a local deputy registrar office after all  and renew in person. Hopefully they can look it up and file the renewal as well and me not having a renewal slip won't be a problem

 

On 8/17/2020 at 3:36 PM, PCC Guy said:

 The grief that I put up with at this job. If I didn't urgently need as much money as possible to facilitate a fast and permanent escape to Europe...

The amount of crap retail workers need to put up with is astounding sometimes. Sucks when it's coming from within and not just the village idiots. (That's one of our terms for select customers at my work)

[captaintrolley]

11 hours ago, MVTArider said:

(That's one of our terms for select customers at my work)

At ETS, many of the customers that came in for their disability bus pass always recognized me (because I have been taking the bus all my life, and mostly on busy mainline routes where a lot of the group homes are for these clients). Anyhow, they would get all excited and wave to me and want to be at 'my window' - I would *affectionately* call them 'My Royal Subjects'.

[T3G]

I've only ever once been recognized by a customer that didn't want to give me hell for something I did (didn't*) do. Must be nice.

[J. S. Bach]

On 9/17/2020 at 8:38 AM, PCC Guy said:

I've only ever once been recognized by a customer that didn't want to give me hell for something I did (didn't*) do. Must be nice.

I was at a Menards last year and the service that one person gave was so good that I just had to say something to management.

"I take it that you accept complaints about employees here?"

"Yes sir, what was the problem?"

"Well then, you must take compliments, too."

"Oh, yes we do.'

I was handed a form and filled it out with all that I knew (employee's first name from his nametag, dept, time, and date) and handed it in. I was quite surprised when a few weeks later I got a reply from Menards thanking me for doing it. I guess that management at Menards cares about its employees. A copy of the compliment was give to said employee, BTW.

[captaintrolley]

1 hour ago, J. S. Bach said:

I was at a Menards last year and the service that one person gave was so good that I just had to say something to management.

I love that you did that.  All too often people in general are just so quick to complain, but stellar service goes unrecognized.

[T3G]

About a week ago, there was an overflow of customers doing returns, so I opened an additional till to take on some of the overflow, and shouted that I could help the next customer.

Two men walked over to the returns booth, and I assumed that they were together. I interacted with one of them, went to put the product out of the way, after which I motioned to the next customer to come see me.

What I didn't see, because he was obscured behind my computer monitor, was that the two customers that had made their way over were actually not together, and he was enraged at the fact that I had called over another customer before serving him, threatening to report me to head office (for what????) He and the other customer I called over then proceeded to start taking jabs at each other, as I kept my head down and tried my hardest not to get involved in their ridiculous conflict. Fortunately a co-worker had finished with her returns and called the other customer over; who then proceeded to throw his return bag onto the counter and throw a temper tantrum about what had just happened. As for the customer who threatened to report me to head office, he had been standing in line at returns to pick up an online order, and when I presented the order to him, he immediately rejected it and complained that the store didn't have any of what he wanted in stock, and how he had to come all the way from somewhere mildly far away to pick it up. Dude, you know you can have products delivered to your home, right?

I really hope the economy recovers from lockdown soon, because I despair at the thought of having to work in a retail environment until I'm 30+.

[T3G]

I have developed a visceral reaction to any of the 'cutesy' pandemic phrases people love to repeat: mask it or casket, six feet apart or six feet under, staying apart keeps us together, or, the newest abomination I've just seen: Over the nose and under the chin, or else covid will take you for a spin!

Just... why? Can we communicate messages without the quirky rhyming/structuring? Please????

[Greatcoinz]

People who repeat the same topic or always make the conversation about themselves.

Don't get me wrong, as much as it sounds, I am a sociable and very talkative person (once you get to know me). Especially during a pandemic where face-to-face interaction is somewhat rare, I value whatever conversations that I can have with other individuals who I can relate too. However, there are few coworkers at one of my jobs where the conversations give me a headache. All they do when they talk is make the conversations about themselves, repeating the same topic when another person walks in the room. I'm not kidding, for example, one of the guys injured himself when chocking the front gear of an aircraft, resulting in him in hitting his head on one of the antennas and having a decent gash on his head. He left the office with a bleeding head and ended up getting stiches. I go through clearance this morning and he tells me what happened, but when we got to the lunchroom, he shouts out loud "Did anyone hear about the guy who injured himself on the Q400 and ended up with a gash on his head?, That was me" (Or something to familiar effect) It was known that someone was injured but most people just brushed it off, everyday someone gets injured on the job. This ended up being a day where all I heard was this guy talking about it to other coworkers, same story and etc. I  ended up getting a headache as its all he discussed. (Didn't help that I had a bad night of rest) You might ask why didn't I just walk away or go somewhere else away from this person? Well I was on the same crew with this person, rule is we all have to get along as there is a job that needs to get done. I did go on my own for a coffee or a drive around the terminal when there was no assignments. The same guy weeks earlier kept non-stop talking about the gaming computer he was going to get the entire seven-hour shift. If I was at my old job, I'd tell him to shut up,  the conversation doesn't always have to be about you, the same subject and etc, but obviously it isn't worth it. I love having and joining conversations, but unless if its getting personal where you need someone to listen to your thoughts, have some mild manners and think about think about how you are annoying the people around you. Guilty, I've done this in the past, but I've learned where its easier to join the flow of the conversation than try to be the highlight of the party. 

[captaintrolley]

49 minutes ago, Greatcoinz said:

People who repeat the same topic or always make the conversation about themselves.

I know people like this.   Never say " How are you?" to these people as a greeting, they will use it as an opening gambit to tell you all about their 'issue of the day'. They almost lie in wait for someone to say "How are you?" to them. They hear the word 'You' and then it becomes all about them.

Often, if I have to mutter some type of greeting, I will say "How are things?" It takes the emphasis off of the 'You'. Throws 'em off sometimes. 

[T3G]

I will go one further and say that "how are you?" as small talk pisses me off. If I ask someone how they're doing, I would want to hear a truthful answer, not empty (and occasionally false) platitudes that tell me nothing I would want to actually know about the person. I usually try to avoid asking the question unless it's someone I know and might be inclined to be truthful with me, but that doesn't go both ways!

[captaintrolley]

I dislike it too. Mostly because people say it without really caring to know the answer. And most people reply with 'Fine' or 'Not bad' just to fulfill the question rather than actually answering truthfully. Of course, most people if they answered truthfully would end up giving you a long list of what is wrong with them, which you don't want to hear, unless you have time and are genuinely concerned.

When 'Hey' as a greeting first became popular, I thought it was rude. I always thought of 'Hey' as an attention getter, like 'Hey You'  Now I say either 'Hi' or 'Hey' (depending on how informal the situation is). At least this way it is not a question which begs an answer.

[Wayside Observer]

12 hours ago, captaintrolley said:

When 'Hey' as a greeting first became popular, I thought it was rude. I always thought of 'Hey' as an attention getter, like 'Hey You'  Now I say either 'Hi' or 'Hey' (depending on how informal the situation is). At least this way it is not a question which begs an answer.

There was a fad in the early '90s at least in Toronto, I don't know if it was more widespread than that, of saying, "Yo!" as a greeting.  I'm glad that one didn't catch on and become permanent.

[captaintrolley]

2 hours ago, Wayside Observer said:

There was a fad in the early '90s at least in Toronto, I don't know if it was more widespread than that, of saying, "Yo!" as a greeting.  I'm glad that one didn't catch on and become permanent.

Pretty sure 'Yo' was all over Canada. It was here too, but didn't catch on. Maybe it was (thankfully) replaced by 'Hey'.

[J. S. Bach]

On 12/5/2020 at 9:45 PM, Greatcoinz said:

...snip... resulting in him in hitting his head on one of the antennas and having a decent gash on his head ...snip...

I guess that was better than having an RA-5C Vigilante tailhook dropped on one's head. That happened to me when post-flighting one. It was more of an ouch and no blood; it actually hit on the top of the ear protector headband. The pilot came back and apologized; I told him that I was fine but the tailhook may have to be thoroughly checked for damage.

On 12/5/2020 at 10:51 PM, PCC Guy said:

I will go one further and say that "how are you?" as small talk pisses me off. If I ask someone how they're doing, I would want to hear a truthful answer, not empty (and occasionally false) platitudes that tell me nothing ...snip...

My usual answer to that is "Breathing."

On 12/6/2020 at 12:42 PM, Wayside Observer said:

 ...snip... "Yo!"  ...snip...

A friend that I call , when he answers, I usually say "Yo! Mooseface!".