I am such an ass

Yesterday in work it was a colleague’s birthday. A time for celebration? Well yes, but, more importantly, a time for sentences with lots of commas, but seriously, what’s the deal with this sentence?

Hoo boy.

Anyhoo, as I was saying, more importantly it’s a time for mockery!

As such I purchased a “Happy 40th Birthday” card for said colleague.

Mockery? Well, she did only turn 33…

Self service check-out Part II: This time it's personal

So in my last entry I mentioned that I was in a battle of wills with one of the self-service tills at the Sainsburys near my place of employ. Well today I got the chance to gain restitution! Oh yes indeedy!

My shopping at lunch time came to the princely sum of £4.60 so I took those five two-pence pieces and, in feeding them to the machine, got the price to £4.50, and then gave that bastard contraption a ten pound note. The machine told me to expect £5.50 in change.

The machine gave me a five pound note.

I awaited my fifty-pence piece.

The machine gave me two twenty-pence pieces.

My heart sank a little bit but I awaited a ten-pence piece.

The machine gave me five two-pence pieces.

Balls.

Upon looking at them 'twould appear that the machine gave me a different set of five two-pence pieces as these were shinier.

Somehow this has made it all the worse.

I will not back down.

Self-service check-out

Today, when I purchased some items, the self-service till at the supermarket near my place of employ decided to dick me around. Oh sure it did an impression of just doing what it's supposed to but on this occasion it was doing what it was supposed to do to dick me around.

Paranoid you say? Oh no, not me, and I think you'll agree in just a couple of moments.

At least on this issue.

Today, what I was purchasing at lunch-time came to the sum of £9.73 which is an amount that does nothing to let me carry as little small change as possible. However, I already had some small change and so, in a flash of numeric inspiration, I chose to use the three pennies I had in my pocket and then pay for the rest with a twenty pound note. I was really rather proud of myself at this point.

The machine took my proffered pennies. The machine took my proffered twenty pound note. The machine told me it would be depositing £10.30 in change to me. Oh yeah, fuck those copper coins, silver all the way!

The machine gave me a ten pound note. The machine gave me a twenty pence piece. The machine then paused for a fraction of a second and then spat out five two-pence pieces. Motherfucker. More small pieces of change than I had at the start and more volume than I would have had if I'd just given the machine my note.

I was unimpressed with the lack of a ten-pence piece.

And then... and then... and then... and then the bloody machine used its standard script and measured tone to say "thank you for using Sainsburys self service". I mean, sure, it was in exactly the same way that they always say this. But it was the way that it was exactly the same way that they always say this that told me to fuck right off.

It might as well have had a recording of the woman's voice saying "hahaha, thank you for using Sainsbury's self service, bitch" and it would have had less impact.

Fuck you Sainsbury's self-service. You think that I'm going to carry around that change around forever? You think someone else is going to get that off me? Oh no, not likely, you're getting those back. That's right, I'm locked in a battle of wills with an inanimate object. Handily, I think I'm more stubborn, so I intend to win. That till's gonna take that money and then victory is mine!

A sense of perswhatnow? Not seen one, no, why do you ask?

We've been in regular contact

If you were to follow this link here then you would see that there is a gentleman in Birmingham (the one in England by the way) that has been incorrectly visited by the Police numerous times by mistake.

Leaving aside the fact that one would hope that officers would be able to think "haven't we been here before?" by, oh, I don't know, the twentieth or so time they were calling at the wrong house I am struck by the fact that, in their defence, the Police have said that "Officers have been in regular contact with the occupier to apologise for the mistakes" which strikes me as an odd defence.

It's not so much that they're apologising that I find odd, I'm all for them apologising, it's more that the fact that they mention "in regular contact" as if it's part of the defence and not part of the problem. The fact that it's a regular occurrence is exactly what you're apologising for.

Oh well.

It's political correctness gone mad!

You mean that we don't put seventeen year old girls in an asylum if they have a baby out of wedlock these days? What is the World coming to?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1364656/Missing-woman-reunited-family-60-years-disappearance.html

It's shit like this that really pisses me off when people talk about how much more moral everyone was a couple of generations ago and how everything's so much worse these days.

Walk in to work

Generally speaking I avoid people and keep myself to myself but occasionally I struggle to do so. One such situation is when people just throw litter on the ground. I know that there are bigger problems in the World, I have not completely lost a sense of perspective, but I also like walking around clean streets.

I find it particularly annoying when someone throws litter on the ground while they're walking by a bin.

'Twas just such an occasion on my way in to work on Friday.

Now, I have three basic approaches to this situation:

1. Just pick up the rubbish myself and place it in a bin.

B. Pick up the rubbish and place it in the bag that the person who has dropped it is carrying so they take it home with them.

iii. Telling people exactly what I think of them.

Obviously the third one of those is the least calm, mature, and sensible. Equally obviously it is also the most tempting for me a lot of the time.

Like on Friday when I was walking in to work.

However, as I was walking toward the person who'd dropped a few pieces of paper on the ground (and appeared to have more paper to throw on the ground) I noticed that he seemed to be a little glazed of eye. He also seemed to have a couple of tics. As I was getting still closer I had a very clear image pop in to my head.

I had a scene in my head where I was loudly remonstrating with someone who had dropped a few pieces of paper on the ground where it turned out that the person in question had learning difficulties, and was quite possibly taking medication for something else, who would not be able to process what was going on and would just end up a tearful wreck. I had a scene in my head where I was basically shouting at someone who didn't really know what they were doing and making it look like I just randomly walked up to people who have more difficulty navigating the World and give them an instant nervous breakdown.

'Twas rather hard not to think that I'd be seen as the bad guy in this situation.

By the time I'd processed all of this I'd walked a good bit farther down the street, completely failed to actually get the rubbish off the pavement, and carried on towards my place of work as I'd been walking on auto-pilot.

But at least I didn't make anyone cry.

In work today

One of the guys I work with was talking about how he didn't want to use the new(ish) Dyson hand-dryers when he first saw them because he "associated Dysons with sucking not blowing" and wasn't sure how this was going to work.

My reply of "so does that mean that you climbed up and straddled it?" did not go over as well as I might have liked.

Actually, this is not true at all, I like that look on people's faces.

Charlie Charlie Charlie

http://www.spearhead-entertainment.com/storage/charliesheen.swf


 Did I really just spend a couple of minutes switching between clicking on "I will love you violently" and "I will murder you violently"?*
Hey, does Charlie Sheen have tiger blood and Adonis DNA?*



*These questions may or may not have the same answer.