Pet Peeve rants.

figmentPez

Staff member
If you play dumb on the internet without any context, do not be surprised when people assume you actually are dumb!

"I was just joking, I didn't mean that seriously!"

You didn't give any indication that you had a greater understanding of the subject. How the fuck was I supposed to know you were pretending to be an idiot for a joke?
 
If you play dumb on the internet without any context, do not be surprised when people assume you actually are dumb!

"I was just joking, I didn't mean that seriously!"

You didn't give any indication that you had a greater understanding of the subject. How the fuck was I supposed to know you were pretending to be an idiot for a joke?
Someone who tries to weasel out of saying something dumb by claiming they were "joking" were almost never actually joking in the first place.
 
Every fucking email interaction with this company I'm in the middle of applying for a job at has been fucking infuriating. This is from this morning at 7 am.

" Hi Frank we have yet to received the required documents to process your hiring . Please sent in to redacted company name by 2pm et today to remain seated in the class roster . Thank you Comapny Recruiting "

WHAT FUCKING DOCUMENTS? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME? I email my recruiter, the internal message board, etc. all asking what they want and it's been radio silence for 2 hours. Great way to ruin an entire day. Every single interaction has been like this.

"DO SOMETHING IMMEDIATELY OR DIE!"

What do you need me to do?

/three days pass

"DO SOMETHING IMMEDIATELY OR DIE!"

WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO!!?????

/three days pass
 
Fuck I'm old. It's pouring rain out, with 30 cm of snow on the ground but eveywhere I turn in this hell scape (mall) it's nothing but bare midrifts and those ugg shoes. Bah! Have some weather sense or I'll sacrifice you to the pscho Xmas tree.
 
Fuck I'm old. It's pouring rain out, with 30 cm of snow on the ground but eveywhere I turn in this hell scape (mall) it's nothing but bare midrifts and those ugg shoes. Bah! Have some weather sense or I'll sacrifice you to the pscho Xmas tree.
Uggs are beautiful and bring joy to my heart. I do however know to not hurt them by wearing them in the monsoon that is happening outside.
 
So, there's currrently a minor Metoo style scandal going on at my old university. I say "minor" in the sense that it isn't about a whole hierarchy covering up systematic sexual abuse for decades or anything -not because what happened isn't bad or serious or whatever. Doesn't really matter, that's not what my pet peeve is.

Now the professor in question has been kept anonymous because of contractual stuff and accepting guilt, apologizing, quitting, whatever. Given the severity of the issues, this seems like a som:ewhat OKish punishment; his career is over, the victims hae also agreed with this, what have you. Still not my annoyance.

He's identified by his initials. And his area of expertise. And his age. Now, admittedly, this isn't a huge university, but even so...There's 8 professors in his (former) department. Five are women (which is great considering one of the things in the media being thrown around again is the male dominance in academics...about a case where the department head, faculty head, dean, headmaster and COO are all female. I mean, it's probably true that there's plenty of chauvinism and male practices still around and so on, but it's kind of hard to point there in this case). Of the other three, there's only one with that age, or those initials. In other words, everybody knows exactly who it's about. A while ago there was something similar in a UK soccer club, where the player involved could not be named...But age and position in the field was fine. Shockingly, the team had only one left defensive back aged 25 years! Gosh!

This really bothers me. Both victims and accused can sometimes be named, or be kept anonymous, for a variety of reasons. The media playing this sort of "game" to point to who it is but technically not breaking the law is obnoxious. It's akin to doxxing. Don't bloody do it.
 
If you're the type of bar/restaurant that's, you know, small mom and pop style, or just a regular pizza delivery thing, ok.
But if you're going to be trendy happening young establishment in this day and age, with a flashy website with lots of cool pictures on your instagram.....

FFS, INCLUDE A MENU. I'm setting up a meeting with a couple of friends, and there are three lunch suggestions, and all three are hipster city things with terrace and coffee and all that crap. Fair enough. But only ONE of them has a menu on line, and it's only their drinks. Yeah, I can learn a lot from looking at 15,054 Instagram pictures, but I still don't know if they serve brunch stuff at 13h00 or not. I still don't know if they have glutenfree or veggie options (again, yes, I can see some veggie choices on pictures....But are those always available, or just coincidental this-week's-specials?).

Really, people, this is the Age of Information. Don't give me razzle dazzle fancy pictures and moving menus and sliding graphics, give me my f*cking INFORMATION. If I can't tell if my group CAN all eat at your place, guess what, we're NOT eating at your place.
 
In addition, POST ALLERGY INFORMATION! Spouse is allergic to a number of things and I can't tell you the number of times we have skipped a restaurant because we can't find any info on if their dishes have soy, squash, or almonds in them. If we can't know that there is something they can eat there, we aren't going to bother. Asking the waiter may work, but often they don't know either and have to go ask the chefs.

And the number of people who don't know allergens that work in the food industry is alarming. I can't count the number of times we have asked about soy and the person we ask came back with, "Well, it's Gluten free." That's great, but if I wanted to know about gluten, I would have asked about gluten. I asked about SOY. It's not even a small allergen, it's one of the major ones alongside milk and peanuts.

A lot of places have separate allergen menus, which is great, but please put that info online. So many places don't and probably miss out on a ton of business from people who don't want to go through the hassle.
 
YES. My wife (who is luckily not coming this time :whistling: ) can't have garlic or onion, gluten, or soy, legumes, or any type of mushroom. It's "a little bit" limiting (since most non-gluten varieties are soy, mushroom or legume based, and nearly all premade sauces have onion and garlic in them).

I understand she's a hard case, but really, how hard is it to just clearly SAY what's in there and what can or can't be replaced. Ugh.
 
The number of people who call about the email they just sent, then visit in person to follow up on the email in this lab is too damn high!
 
In the same vein, messaging me with just "Hello." or "Hello, I need your help with an issue." instantly places you to the bottom of the list of people that need my help, forever to be pushed down by people that can actually ask in an efficient way.

"Hi, I have a ticket regarding a customer getting billed incorrectly: (link to ticket)

(Link to their salesforce and another to the contract in question.)

Mind taking a look and letting me know if you can make heads or tails of what's gone on here?"

New favourite person.
 
"Do you have a minute to call?"

Waits 5 seconds.

Calls anyway, then your above scenario is all to common too.

Or honestly just any internal calls anymore kinda irk me. Especially unscheduled. It says drop everything your doing and focus on me and, as above, its never anything that needed a call.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
"Do you have a minute to call?"

Waits 5 seconds.

Calls anyway, then your above scenario is all to common too.

Or honestly just any internal calls anymore kinda irk me. Especially unscheduled. It says drop everything your doing and focus on me and, as above, its never anything that needed a call.
I can forgive the installers on site calling me because they just ran into something they don't understand and time is a factor. (Whatever room we're working on has class/court the next morning, and the president and the pope are going to be there. Always.)

I hate the project managers and other cubicle-dwellers who do it.

And my previous post is ALWAYS cubicle dwellers.
 
Ah yeah, those are time-sensitive requests though so totally ok from the installers. Even if it is a simple thing or an obvious thing with that situation, they need to 100% know the right answer, as fast as possible. I'd still be annoyed cause calls but it's necessary in that case.
 
Just had a discussion on Facebook, and the other side responded with "Yeah, but I don't trust the official numbers, because they don't correlate to my personal observations" and I'm just....YES. THAT IS WHY STATISTICS WERE INVENTED YOU ABSOLUTE COW. THE WORLD IS NOT YOUR PERSONAL SPACE COPY PASTED OVER AND OVER.
 
I do not like when people open the lid of the laser cutter when it is operating even though it's probably safe.

I also do not like the feeling that I'm going to get fussed at for raising my voice and making someone close the lid on an active laser cutter at the Makerspace.


I need to remember that my petty revenge will be doing something entirely reasonable -- fixing the lid interlock on said laser cutter.
 
I do not like when people open the lid of the laser cutter when it is operating even though it's probably safe.
Good on your for wanting to fix it, because it is definitely not safe.
For class 1, 2 and 3R lasers, it is expected that your blink reflex will protect you from such damage.
For class 3B lasers, a specular reflection from a mirror WILL damage your eyes before you can blink.
For class 4 lasers, the reflection from a wall, a piece of plastic or even a sheet of paper will likely damage your eyes before you can blink.
--Patrick
 

Dave

Staff member
Uggghhh I had 3 URGENT! emails this morning. They all pertain to the company picnic next month.
When I got back from vacation I had 408 emails to go through. Didn't take long, though, as 350 or so had the same subject line and was nothing more than a shitload of people replying all asking to not be on a mailing list that went all company. I really wish that was an exaggeration.
 
I hate when a group swears up and down that the problem is not on their end, then they fix the issue and never tell you what was wrong. I literally had a vendor network team tell me that there were no firewalls between my server and the mainframe. Then on the fourth day one admitted that there was a firewall and the problems we were having dried up after the next day.
 
Pronouns.
To be precise, trans and enby pronouns.
To be even more precise: trans and enby pronouns in Dutch.

Now, I'm well aware this is something that on all of this board I'm probably the only one who is ever confronted with it, since nobody else here regularly speaks Dutch (well, I haven't seen AmE or Wahad in ages).
Also, and I'll repeat this throughout...I'm not opposed or in any way against people choosing their own pronouns. I have no intent of coming off as sexist or discriminatory; I'm not sure I'll manage that, but please be aware that I'm trying. Anything coming off as insensitive or offensive, my apologies.

So, as far as pronouns go, T/NB people tend to fall into a number of groups.

First off are the ones who are still using "traditional" pronouns but maybe not the one expected. Born a woman, now identify as a man, prefer he/him. Sure. Presenting as male but preferring female pronouns, go right ahead. I might make an occasional mistake (if preferred pronouns don't correspond to presented gender) but I'll try. There's really no reason not to use the chosen pronouns here.

Secondly, there's the people who use their own, self chosen pronouns. If you really insist on people using....Xor and Zim (or whatever the fuck) for you....fair enough. It comes across (to me) as try hard edgy "I want to be dIfFeRent!" specialness, and to my mind in many cases a bit immature. OK, I can imagine that there are people who really are "out there" on the spectrum in a spot where they genuinely feel they don't belong anywhere on the he/they/she part of the spectrum and in such a case....sure. Most cases of people with this sort of pronouns I know, though, it comes off as more attention seeking than out of a genuine feeling of identity.
Now, I mean, I can accept your right to choose and the choice you made, even if I think it's silly or ridiculous, mind you, and I'll try - but I'll probably make mistakes more often than with the first group, not because I think the choice is any less valid but because it's harder to remember and especially to use properly. "I went to see Xandy yesterday, xor was really shaken up about the incident" or "I went to see Xandy yesterday, zim was really shaken up" both scan the same way to me so it's more confusing.
And while I'll personally try to keep using preferred pronouns even when a person isn't around, I can somewhat understand (though not agree) with people who revert to "standard" pronouns when referring to someone who's not present simply to avoid having to explain someone else's idiosyncrasies to a third party. Honestly, in this sort of case in a spot where I don't feel comfortable to use the preferred pronouns and explain, I'll usually just try to avoid pronouns altogether. Can be a bit clunky but not any more than using some unknown pronoun.

Third, of course, there's the currently most "visible" group - using singular they/them. I'm 100% aware that it's ancient usage of the words and I don't mind at all. For people who don't conform to either he or she, or those who don't know (yet) or whatever, it's probably my preference as it's easy and clear and in most cases not that clunky*. I've now met someone who insisted on using they but wanted singular verbs - so "they is going to the butcher". That feels weird to me as it scans wrong and moves it more towards the second group, but, again, their choice I'll try to accommodate. Throughout all the Age of Man, singular They has used plural verb conjugations, so I might mess up but no problems.

Now, the first and the second group, my reaction stays exactly the same in Dutch or French or German.
The third group, though...now, again, I'm willing to try and follow whatever the crap someone chooses about their own identity. I don't particularly care, and I try not to judge. My pet peeve is simply this: the... "default" pronouns for enbies in Dutch are Hen/die. Which translates roughly to Them/that. The Dutch word for "they" is the same as for "she" (though with a different verb form) so I can see why they wouldn't want to use that one....But "them" just ISNT the same type of pronoun. "I spoke to Xandy and them said them will come" is just grammatically wrong. And yes and no, I know, the "they're doing it wrong grammatically" is a go-to bullshit argument for people against the singular They in English, and I do mean it when I say people can choose and I'll try to follow preference. I'm not saying there's a great alternative, like I said, just using the "they" word would be akin to calling them all women which is obviously not the intent. While Dutch is a gendered language, I still do feel why these people don't want to use the translations of "it/their" (Het/hun). The Dutch "it" is neutral gendered, but that's "neither", not "both or other". There probably are some out there who use those, but I've never met these.
It's their choice, and I try to follow it, but it just sounds absolutely wrong every time. it's like someone choosing "there" as their possessive pronouns. Sure it's possible, it just looks incredibly annoying.

TL;DR: the Dutch version of "they/them" is "them/that", using a "wrong" type of pronoun, and it annoys my grammatically cold and distant heart.


*When the NB character on Star Trek Discovery first asked to use they/them it felt quite natural and normal. At the end of the episode the writers forced in a conversation between two characters about them that felt forced, but that was because it was badly written and 25x "they" and "them" felt shoehorned in, not because "they" in itself is cumbersome.
 
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