Things I Hate

There was once a time when I decided to use the blog in a very Lane Wilson style of doing things--as a vehicle for management and mitigation of my misanthropy. And also to craft clever consonance. Aha, aha!

But I soon realized that my rage just doesn't carry with it the stamina of some.

Therefore, with the understanding that this is not another attempt at making this blog into a vitriol-delivering machine, cranking out more and more hate like some diabolical engine, I submit for your approval the following (truncated) list of things I utterly loathe.

1. Customer service


• I have a habit of being hard on waitresses in theory but easy in practice. For instance, if I sit in your restaurant and get thirsty enough to contemplate strapping on an apron and waltzing into the kitchen to refill my own drink before you have time to again pass by my table without so much as a glance, I probably won't be tipping you at all, unless I decide to be downright insulting and leave you a dime and a Post-It outlining my dissatisfaction. On the other hand, if you smile and bring me my food in a timely manner, and maybe ask if I need a refill once in a while, I'm generally willing to tip at least %20, and more if the service was really great. Bad service = bad tip; it's as simple as that.


• Next on the chopping block is the pizza delivery guys. I don't care if you have to spend money on gas to drive to my office to bring me my Caesar salad. It is not the job of the consumer (in this case, literally) to worry about the structuring of your compensation plan. I already pay an extra fee (which is more than enough to pay for the gas it took you to drive less than three miles to my door) for you to bring my food to me. If you were overly friendly, or perhaps even timely, then you might deserve a gratuity. If you disagree, allow me to offer two alternatives: 1) look up the fucking definition of "gratuity" and get back with me and 2) take it up with your boss: if you want me to pay more for the salad that I waited on for an hour, then build it into the salad's base price and let me decide if it's worth it. Oh, and since you're so into tipping, allow me to provide you this third nugget of advice that meets the double criteria of being more than you earned and more than I agreed to provide: get a better job; nobody cares that gas is hard to pay for if you can't be bothered to attend some kind of post-secondary education. If you're a college student pizza delivery boy, then you know that a better career is on its way (unless you're studying general communications, in which case I advise you to see if your pizza delivery firm has stock options).
  
• It goes on, of course. I can generally handle either one or the other, but the combination of both incompetence and unfriendliness gets me every time. For instance, the last time I visited Office Depot, I bought a trackball (yes, on purpose, you ass). The lilliputian auctioneer behind the counter doubtless heard none of my responses to the questions his Draconian corporate lower-management boss requires him to ask because he never stopped talking. Still, though, the line moved quickly enough that I wasn't too put off by his rudeness. This incident puts my recent trip to the new Einstein's Brothers Bagels that they put on campus in stark relief. The lady behind the counter smiled when she took my order and said she liked my name, though I had to repeat it twice (really, I blame my parents for this, and I have resolved on multiple occasions to start giving out my middle name in such situations, for its monosyllabic appeal). When I attempted to pay for my bagels, the other lady behind the cash register looked blankly at my Discover card and the machine through which I was about to suggest she slide it for approximately two minutes before remembering that Einstein's doesn't accept Discover (leaving it up to me to propose an acceptable alternative). Despite this inefficiency, I left Einstein's knowing that I would come back, because they gave me delicious bagels and a personal touch.


• These two experiences are meant to set the stage for the third, the most dreadful: a recent trip to Orange Julius really ticked me off. The bimbo behind the counter looked up from the text message that she was presumably tapping out to one of her idiot friends ("omg so b0rd visit plz") long enough to notice that I was there, then looked back down for a couple more seconds while she finished sending it. Once she was good and ready, she took my order. Rather, I should say, she accepted my order, as I had to provide it without either greeting or solicitation. Then she called back to the girl sitting in the back of the place by the machine and had her blend my smoothie. The two girls' relationship could only be described as "strained," and I don't care to know why ("lemme borrow that top, bitch!").


2. Pontification, both by bloggers/vloggers and Popes


• Etymology of my complaint aside, I hate it when people insist upon authority that was either 1) denied them long enough ago that it makes no difference or 2) never theirs in the first place. The Pope recently proclaimed that Protestants aren't Christians. Now, to be fair, he's not the first one to point the finger. However, he's the most prominent one to do it in such an open and faux-authoritative way in a long, long time. People can tune out the incoherent ramblings of the crazy IT guy ("Mark, Catholics aren't Christians.") or the uninformed Baptist preacher who says crazy shit to keep his job, but when the Pope turns out an actual document articulating the point... it's bad. I think we can all agree that Nazi-Pope has dealt a crushing blow to JP2's efforts at Christian unity.


• Bloggers. And Vloggers, you pieces of trash that call yourselves journalists. You're not. Get out of your mother's basement and do something. Nobody cares that you hate Bush enough to think yourself another Michael Moore. Just the other day, I saw a blogger touting the advantages of a certain radio-controlled airplane based solely on how it runs on "pure, clean electrical energy," which I'm glad she did, becuase it made sure that I knew she was an idiot. The only way electrical energy is "clean" and "pure" is when it's not dug out of the ground and extracted from vast piles of dirty rocks, with the waste piped into the atmosphere. Just because the machine itself is not burning gas doesn't mean that the energy it is using is in any way efficient.



• Digg. Don't get me wrong, I read it every day. But now it's full of idiots. It may always have been (such is the democratization of information, sadly), but it was not always so readily apparent. I have the formula for success for any Digg posting: rail on the PlayStation3, the Bush administration, the war in Iraq, Microsoft (M$!!1one!!), homosexuality and mention alcohol, all in a "top 10" list of some kind. Alternatively, praise any or all of the above to get an interesting "most buried" effect. Oh, or describe a 4 or 5 megabyte picture of a baboon taking a shit as "breathtaking."



3. People who don't finish things they started.