[Rules p.1] Things that annoy you guys. 100 percent. Not gonna lie

Tomous wrote:Having to speak to someone to cancel a contract. Been on hold to Sky forever and gave up yesterday after an hour.

Companies over a certain size should either be fined for not maintaining swift response times on calling them or should allow for an automated process. It's 2022. They only reason they're making me speak to someone is so they can try to change my mind which I know I'm not going to do. It's frustrating to say the least.

Speaking of complaints, here's one I sent yesterday, concerning an ongoing issue that has been ignored by the company in question for five weeks:

Attention [company] stakeholders,

Regrettably we are yet to receive a response to the below complaint and perhaps rather comically, when I phone through to your customer services department the line mysteriously develops a problem whereby the call is terminated.

At which point did you decide that to treat your customers like cattle, that exist purely to be milked for as much money as possible, was a sensible and respectful way of doing business?

I have had enough of your ethically repugnant practises and I am most certainly tired of attempting to get a response from anyone in your company concerning the experience detailed below. I have already told several of my family members and friends that if they value their self-worth, they'll go with [competitor 1], or [competitor 2], or quite frankly anyone else besides your company. I've broadcast it on my social media pages and contacted two local publications (so far) to advise the nearby community to avoid your outlet like the plague.

The next step will be proceed with dispute resolution under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 - unless you can enter into a meaningful dialogue with me beforehand.

Up to you.

-Drum

Copied in a bunch of senior stakeholders whose email addresses I found online.

Received a call from someone falling over themselves to apologise and offering to investigate before midday today.

Might have to repurpose that myself Drummy as my parents have recently had a kitchen fitted by Wren and some of the appliances (fridge freezers made by CDA) are what I'd generously describe as utter dogshit (literally falling apart within a fortnight of normal use) and judging by a lot of online reviews the company are shady as strawberry float to deal with.

Ironhide wrote:Might have to repurpose that myself Drummy as my parents have recently had a kitchen fitted by Wren and some of the appliances (fridge freezers made by CDA) are what I'd generously describe as utter dogshit (literally falling apart within a fortnight of normal use) and judging by a lot of online reviews the company are shady as strawberry float to deal with.

It won't surprise you one bit that the above was written in relation to the fitting of my kitchen.

Drumstick wrote:

Ironhide wrote:Might have to repurpose that myself Drummy as my parents have recently had a kitchen fitted by Wren and some of the appliances (fridge freezers made by CDA) are what I'd generously describe as utter dogshit (literally falling apart within a fortnight of normal use) and judging by a lot of online reviews the company are shady as strawberry float to deal with.

It won't surprise you one bit that the above was written in relation to the fitting of my kitchen.

Not at all

It's genuinely stressful just hearing what a ballache its all been, my parents have been married for 42 years and I've never known them argue over anything as much as they have over this kitchen (my mum is furious with the quality of the appliances and my dad being too 'diplomatic' towards the company).

Other peoples travel arrangements have been my responsibility to solve. Again. I've had a customer come in expecting me to:

Solve her travel arrangement problems
Advise on how to spend her money (should she cancel the flights and re-book them because she made a mistake in the initial booking)
Solve her tech problems on her phones (apps aren't where they are supposed to be)

All the while:

Ignoring what I was saying (I'm sorry, you can't do online check-in for this, you have to do it at the airport)
Trying to give me her log in details for various accounts (followed by tuts and sighs when I made her type them in herself)
And getting frustrated because I wouldn't give her advice and wouldn't tell her what she wanted to hear

She has clearly dealt with staff in the library before who have done all this stuff for her before despite us being told that we can only give basic help (so no advice, not dealing with passwords or finances etc) and she is now expecting that level of attention all the time.

I get that people aren't necessarily tech savvy and I will do what I can to help (within reason). But surely they need to realise that it's not safe to give a stranger personal details and they shouldn't be putting us in a position to offer advice; if we do offer advice and it goes wrong then we'll be the first ones they blame. Today's shift helped make up my mind as to whether to take unpaid leave for the year or just quit (its the latter)

When things suddenly start working properly when someone is repairing/servicing them.

I use a ceiling track hoist to get in/out of my wheelchair which gets serviced/safety checked every six months, the other day I had one of the engineers out to do a service and mentioned that one of the buttons on the controls (which are pneumatic rather than electronic) was sticking and didn't always work, he checked it by repeatedly pressing and said it was fine (it functioned perfectly ever press).

Came to use it last night and the strawberry floating button was back to not working properly again FFS!:fp:

People who will stand in a ten minute queue for food or drink or whatever and wait until they get to the front to decide what they want.

Genuinely, shouldn't be allowed to vote. Cretins.

Tomous wrote:People who will stand in a ten minute queue for food or drink or whatever and wait until they get to the front to decide what they want.

Genuinely, shouldn't be allowed to vote. Cretins.

It's not always our fault, sometimes we can't see the menu!

Vermilion wrote:

Tomous wrote:People who will stand in a ten minute queue for food or drink or whatever and wait until they get to the front to decide what they want.

Genuinely, shouldn't be allowed to vote. Cretins.

It's not always our fault, sometimes we can't see the menu!

I always felt like this and then I got my eyes tested and now I can see the menu again. Might be worth getting glasses. It'll really improve your life.

Vermilion wrote:

Tomous wrote:People who will stand in a ten minute queue for food or drink or whatever and wait until they get to the front to decide what they want.

Genuinely, shouldn't be allowed to vote. Cretins.

It's not always our fault, sometimes we can't see the menu!

Nope, sorry. Captive bolt to the back of the head.

Outrunner wrote:Other peoples travel arrangements have been my responsibility to solve. Again. I've had a customer come in expecting me to:

Solve her travel arrangement problems
Advise on how to spend her money (should she cancel the flights and re-book them because she made a mistake in the initial booking)
Solve her tech problems on her phones (apps aren't where they are supposed to be)

All the while:

Ignoring what I was saying (I'm sorry, you can't do online check-in for this, you have to do it at the airport)
Trying to give me her log in details for various accounts (followed by tuts and sighs when I made her type them in herself)
And getting frustrated because I wouldn't give her advice and wouldn't tell her what she wanted to hear

She has clearly dealt with staff in the library before who have done all this stuff for her before despite us being told that we can only give basic help (so no advice, not dealing with passwords or finances etc) and she is now expecting that level of attention all the time.

I get that people aren't necessarily tech savvy and I will do what I can to help (within reason). But surely they need to realise that it's not safe to give a stranger personal details and they shouldn't be putting us in a position to offer advice; if we do offer advice and it goes wrong then we'll be the first ones they blame. Today's shift helped make up my mind as to whether to take unpaid leave for the year or just quit (its the latter)

Give an inch and they will take a mile. For introverts it's real energy vampire stuff.

The library is right limiting the remit of the kind of advice you can offer. While being helpful and supportive is important in general, declining is fine - you aren't necessarily qualified to do these things, you maybe giving out bad or incomplete advice, the library might be liable, etc etc. People are often looking for a conversation when they could instead do these things themselves, they are lonely or whatever, I get that, but it's also really annoying when you can't or should not give that advice, yes.

More work related but similar thing about boundaries (both of these today but I've also had people just show up and ringing my doorbell):

Thank you for getting back to me.

I was wondering if it possible to visit your studio this weekend to discuss further as I do have a second design.

Thank you for your email and update. I hope you have also had a nice bank holiday weekend.

I have also provided any comments to your response below.

I think the best way forward would be to meet in person and discuss all the options.

It really is not the best way forward - I'm already a well established, credible business with loads of testimonials. I don't work weekends. I don't have anywhere to meet anyone. I have iterated already the information I know they are looking for (based on years and years of experience answering the same enquiries) in the e-mail and all they have to do is make a decision. I can provide a coherent and incredibly short document that outlines the product offer, visuals, price and terms. It's essentially a yes/no situation. If there are questions, just write them out, you're already sat there writing to me!!

But nah can we meet up and shoot the gooseberry fool about this forever. No we can't. I've done it before and the returns are abysmal. I end up working for days for free discussing the same things forever in circles. It strawberry floating pisses me off - I was up until 1:30am writing those emails and there is basically nothing else to discuss - if they want to discuss something, just write it down rather than proposing a meeting over 1 strawberry floating T-shirt.

Infuriating on the days when I am already so busy. As everybody knows I'm autistic so meetings are a nightmare, it is completely counterproductive and exhausting compared to innumerable other ways of working. I can't even outline the steps that are required for me to facilitate that myself.

Perhaps I should hire someone else to do all of these meetings to "discuss things further" and pay them about 1p instead. Actually they should pay for the meetings for the chance of maybe getting a 1% commission on each sale. Because that is pretty much what some types of customers ask for.

So, the answer is simple, "I am sorry, but I lack the capacity for that, at the moment" and then they disappear. That's perfectly fine, because another client wants 1000 items, there are three basic factors, art exists yes/no, price, turnaround and then the rest is essentially sales.

I realise for some people this type of sales or customer service, going to endless meetings, can be or perhaps even feel productive but it's a bit of a stretch when so many people assume you are going to take time out of your time off, at your own home or whatever place of work, to humour them about mere ideas that they possibly maybe might consider buying into had they only been capable of making a decision in the first place.

I think we're talking about the same type of customer here. Having a single point of contact (e-mail) helps because you can weed them all out and decide how to best focus your time and efforts if you are strained in this respect.

This all sounds really uncompassionate and I hate that, I really do, yet I have learnt the hard way that the burnout that occurs helping everyone with their myriad of vaguely related problems is not worth it and it actually harms your ability to help other people that are important to you. You end up giving up friends, family and indeed yourself because you are constantly stressed out worrying about the entire world's problems.

And yet someone will go on a site like Amazon, give a random marketplace seller money for a product they haven't really seen, and it just arrives in the post. The point is that the seller or worker is immediately compensated for that. When you reverse this situation, people have spectacularly elaborate or inventive ways to avoid making decisions and returning their side of the bargain. Often the more you help them, the worse it gets, in terms of offloading stuff onto you. I am a generally helpful person, if someone asks me a question I will give them loads of information, basically when it comes to knowledge and *some* problem solving I am always somewhat interested, the struggle is I do so automatically and without any regard to my own wellbeing, time, resources, or sometimes, even how qualified I actually am to give that advice responsibly (this is important).

If you're a salaried worker, OK maybe it's a bit different, but for independents it's a hellscape of constantly worrying whether or not this person is taking you for a ride or not.

And I'll say it again, I really really hate speaking this way about people, and I never let it on, because they are usually totally fine people, just with little to zero boundaries and maybe underserved and unfulfilled members of the public who seek satisfaction in life through various means - sadly they so often have nothing to do with a simple transaction, or job, that you are obliged to do (for them). That is, in and of itself, quite depressing when you do want to help people, but often you simply cannot. This isn't even getting into people being arseholes about it and treating you poorly, which is of course 10x worse.

Green Gecko wrote:Give an inch and they will take a mile. For introverts it's real energy vampire stuff.

The library is right limiting the remit of the kind of advice you can offer. While being helpful and supportive is important in general, declining is fine - you aren't necessarily qualified to do these things, you maybe giving out bad or incomplete advice, the library might be liable, etc etc. People are often looking for a conversation when they could instead do these things themselves, they are lonely or whatever, I get that, but it's also really annoying when you can't or should not give that advice, yes.

Exactly this. I'm genuinely happy to help with stuff if it's a problem at our end. I'm even happy to help with stuff like printing (the system we use is a pain and not intuitive) but absolutely draw the line anything out of the library remit. I've been called a jobsworth before but honestly, I'd rather be that than have someone come back to me later blaming me for bad advice.

More work related but similar thing about boundaries (both of these today but I've also had people just show up and ringing my doorbell):

Thank you for getting back to me.

I was wondering if it possible to visit your studio this weekend to discuss further as I do have a second design.

Thank you for your email and update. I hope you have also had a nice bank holiday weekend.

I have also provided any comments to your response below.

I think the best way forward would be to meet in person and discuss all the options.

It really is not the best way forward - I'm already a well established, credible business with loads of testimonials. I don't work weekends. I don't have anywhere to meet anyone. I have iterated already the information I know they are looking for (based on years and years of experience answering the same enquiries) in the e-mail and all they have to do is make a decision. I can provide a coherent and incredibly short document that outlines the product offer, visuals, price and terms. It's essentially a yes/no situation. If there are questions, just write them out, you're already sat there writing to me!!

But nah can we meet up and shoot the gooseberry fool about this forever. No we can't. I've done it before and the returns are abysmal. I end up working for days for free discussing the same things forever in circles. It strawberry floating pisses me off - I was up until 1:30am writing those emails and there is basically nothing else to discuss - if they want to discuss something, just write it down rather than proposing a meeting over 1 strawberry floating T-shirt.

Infuriating on the days when I am already so busy. As everybody knows I'm autistic so meetings are a nightmare, it is completely counterproductive and exhausting compared to innumerable other ways of working. I can't even outline the steps that are required for me to facilitate that myself.

Perhaps I should hire someone else to do all of these meetings to "discuss things further" and pay them about 1p instead. Actually they should pay for the meetings for the chance of maybe getting a 1% commission on each sale. Because that is pretty much what some types of customers ask for.

So, the answer is simple, "I am sorry, but I lack the capacity for that, at the moment" and then they disappear. That's perfectly fine, because another client wants 1000 items, there are three basic factors, art exists yes/no, price, turnaround and then the rest is essentially sales.

I realise for some people this type of sales or customer service, going to endless meetings, can be or perhaps even feel productive but it's a bit of a stretch when so many people assume you are going to take time out of your time off, at your own home or whatever place of work, to humour them about mere ideas that they possibly maybe might consider buying into had they only been capable of making a decision in the first place.

I think we're talking about the same type of customer here. Having a single point of contact (e-mail) helps because you can weed them all out and decide how to best focus your time and efforts if you are strained in this respect.

This all sounds really uncompassionate and I hate that, I really do, yet I have learnt the hard way that the burnout that occurs helping everyone with their myriad of vaguely related problems is not worth it and it actually harms your ability to help other people that are important to you. You end up giving up friends, family and indeed yourself because you are constantly stressed out worrying about the entire world's problems.

And yet someone will go on a site like Amazon, give a random marketplace seller money for a product they haven't really seen, and it just arrives in the post. The point is that the seller or worker is immediately compensated for that. When you reverse this situation, people have spectacularly elaborate or inventive ways to avoid making decisions and returning their side of the bargain. Often the more you help them, the worse it gets, in terms of offloading stuff onto you. I am a generally helpful person, if someone asks me a question I will give them loads of information, basically when it comes to knowledge and *some* problem solving I am always somewhat interested, the struggle is I do so automatically and without any regard to my own wellbeing, time, resources, or sometimes, even how qualified I actually am to give that advice responsibly (this is important).

If you're a salaried worker, OK maybe it's a bit different, but for independents it's a hellscape of constantly worrying whether or not this person is taking you for a ride or not.

And I'll say it again, I really really hate speaking this way about people, and I never let it on, because they are usually totally fine people, just with little to zero boundaries and maybe underserved and unfulfilled members of the public who seek satisfaction in life through various means - sadly they so often have nothing to do with a simple transaction, or job, that you are obliged to do (for them). That is, in and of itself, quite depressing when you do want to help people, but often you simply cannot. This isn't even getting into people being arseholes about it and treating you poorly, which is of course 10x worse.

I can't imagine doing the work you do. At the end of the day I can always fall back in library policy or even get a manager involved if need be, all stuff that's not really available to you. Like you say, I want to help, I really do, it's just that people don't see boundaries (or at least see them in a very different way).

That youtube have stuck an unremovable 'crisis panel' with a link to Samaritans on a video of an analysis of Jeremy by Pearl Jam, yes the song is about suicide but that doesn't mean everyone watching it is having a mental health crisis, I get why its there but I don't want to see it permanently as its kind of heavy handed and presumptious, its oddly offputting and weirding me out a bit.

Why not just stick a content warning at the start so anyone who doesn't feel comfortable with the themes can stop watching.

I had this with a music video I like (I have to listen to it on youtube because it isn't anywhere else). As someone who's been suicidal on several occasions and has passive suicidal ideation even more often, a 'crisis panel' has been useful at getting through to me. Honestly, if it saves even one life, I'd rather have it there.

Outrunner wrote:I had this with a music video I like (I have to listen to it on youtube because it isn't anywhere else). As someone who's been suicidal on several occasions and has passive suicidal ideation even more often, a 'crisis panel' has been useful at getting through to me. Honestly, if it saves even one life, I'd rather have it there.

I fully agree with it being there but I would like the option to dismiss it if I'm fine with seeing the content in question.

When you order something and the courier gives you a slot in the strawberry floating evening and they always turn up at the end of the estimated time.

Let me update that. When they don't turn up at all and no contact from the courier as to a possible issue.

Facebook marketplace. Firstly:

"Lots of items, all new and unused.
If interested please message with an offer, I won’t reply if you ask me for an amount"



mummy strawberry floater do you have no idea how selling things works? I'm not going to go look up what the reasonable already sold/going rate for said items are, message you with an offer to in all likelihood get insulted for "lowballing" or whatever. Fortunately most dedicated trading groups on facebook i'm in have rules such as "must have photos of your items, must have a price" etc but holy gooseberry fool. Same goes for "collection only WILL NOT POST" listings for absolute steals at the other end of the country and despite offering to book fully tracked couriers who will turn up at your house to pick it up and pay for the extra.

Secondly: "buyer pays paypal fees"

No they don't, at least according to the T&Cs you agreed to when signing up to use paypal, and contravention can lead to getting blocked from using it. The fees are 2.9% of the item plus 30p, for anything under £50 that's fairly negligable and a lot less than you'd have to pay on ebay on a normal day.

Yeah, I try to sell off ebay and through Paypal directly as much as possible. Ebay really don't like it when sellers do that though.

It's so dispiriting sometimes with their fees, basically just kneeling with my hands behind my back receiving ebay's schlong down my throat every time I make a sale.

Business motivational speakers.

I don't know why but I'm getting loads of these pop up on my feed at the moment and they speak absolute bollocks a lot of the time. Like this one:



I mean, I doubt Bob exists but this is a ridiculous story anyway. Bloke giving him $20m and he has a hissy fit over a 5 hour visit?

I don't think there's anything on this planet that can put me in more of a bad mood than technology - it routinely strawberry floats me over!

Today's ongoing irritation: the scanner in the printer suddenly doesn't work. Out of the blue hit with a "Failed to open a connection to the device (-21345)" error message on my Mac. Go through the whole rigmarole of turning the computer off, printer off, router off...usual bullshit that wastes half hour of your life. Finally connects but it's only recognising the printer aspect of the Canon. The option to scan has now vanished.

Torture.