Little things that make your day shitty

[Green Spanner]

This is more a vent post masquerading as pointless question time v3.0, but what the hey.

I've had a really shitty day.

So, it snowed where I live last night. Didn't settle very well, ordinarily not a problem.

However, I was going to get a train to see my family for christmas. The problem is that where they live, it snowed more heavily.

The trains were cancelled on the route I had to go to. At no point was I told, and only learned it when I went to a help desk at the station after half an hour of waiting in the cold to confirm it. Where I live had apparently been one of the hardest hit areas, and seeing as there was little more than a few bits of white on peoples' roofs, I didn't think for a second that the snow would be severe enough elsewhere to cause major line closures.

So I had to wait in line, still in the cold, to get a refund for my ticket, get back on the tube and go to another, equally cold station that would take me to my family. Tickets from this station are more expensive due to some bright spark privatising the train services, but oh well.

The train ride was uneventful, but my mother can't pick me up from the station as she was having injections done for an upcoming trip to Ghana. My step-dad was getting his hair cut, and so I had only my brother to rely on.

Cue standing in the bloody snow, waiting for him, only to get a phone call from him telling me that his car had stalled due to the snow, and that he couldn't come pick me up.

So I went to the nearby bus-station, and began waiting for the one-every-hour bus that would take me home, only to get a call saying that step-dad could pick me up, and that my phone had been repeatedly going off without me realising.

So I had to go back to where I was, still bloody freezing, more than a little bit pissed off.

And all the time this was happening, I was carrying both a heavy rucksack and a just as heavy holdall. My shoulder is still sore, and probably will be for the next couple of days.

Fuck this snow.

So, now that I feel better for venting that, what little things have ruined your days in the past?

Apologies for length (*insert penis gag here*)

[krogothwolf]

End Users, Stupid idiotic End Users.

We are doing a goddamn E-mail exhange server move forced onto us by corporate head office. It makes things stupid. We had an internal mail server and then set everyone up on a pop3 account for the head office mail address. Worked really well in the past no problem. Then they upgraded the servers to 2008 and they DIDN'T CONFIGURE THE POP CORRECTLY. Finally got it working eventually, but they still didn't configuring it correctly and were lazy and didn't want to fix it. Eventually we are now getting forced to shutdown our nice little internal one, because Montreal Head Office people are a bunch of lazy dicks. Now Its up to me to go around a reconfigure and recreate everyones damn profile so that they are on the corporate one only. I sent out emails explaining this before it happened, I send out emails after everyone one I do plus a list of those who have been moved. Pretty easy for people to figure out things. Plus theres instructions on how to e-mail to the people who have been moved if you havent been.

Guess what? 75% of the people don't check the emails(3 to 4 notifications get sent out a day, plus the list gets sent out twice a day). They just deleted them. Then they call or page or send an email going "GAAA, I CANT FIND THIS PERSONS EMAIL, I SO DUMB!" I ask them did they follow the instructions in the emails that have been getting sent out? "Duuuh, I deleted those cause duuuh, I didn't think it was important". I tell them to wait for the next one coming out because I'm currently moving someone so another one will follow in 15-20 minutes. "Duuuh Okay, I wait" I sent it out, he pagers 40 minutes later "Uhhh, I don't KNow how to do thiss!" I ask again if he followed the e-mail "oooh, I was suppose to read that? Duhhh, I deleted it!"

I am working twice as much because PEOPLE ARE FREAKIN MORONS!

Plus I got a few emails sent to me which every email i sent attached to it with this little thing in the body.

"Thanks for the updates. Why do I need these updates?............"

Seriously It says in the goddamn fucking e-mails why you're getting the updates!

If for some reason you never hear from me again, It's because I've begun murdering End Users.

[Ecks]

There was one morning in the last couple of weeks where it snowed/frozen rain fell. I go and brave this shitty weather in my recently acquired '93 Oldsmobile Cutlass, I could barely see due to the sheets of rain and blowing snow (nearly hit six people who were being superdumbasses and not braking until 2 carlengths away from the person in front of them).

I realized about an hour and a half before work started that I would be late. Because I had gone seven miles in twenty minutes. Fucking freeways. So I called in and said, "I'm gonna be a little bit late." They said, "All right, we'll take care of it, don't worry about it."

I got to work at 8:40 am. I'm forty minutes late. Fucking. Freeways. I go inside, my supervisor says, "That bad out, huh?" "You have no idea." He takes a look around the plant and tells me to go to line two. I get there, and one of the other supervisors, who was managing that line, asks what I'm doing there. I told him [my supervisor's name] sent me there. He says, "I don't need anyone else on that line, sorry," and gestures me toward the door. I put my shit back on and am on my way to punch out thinking '[other supervisor's name] is a dick' when the foreman comes up and asks why I'm leaving. I explain why, and he stops for a moment, and tells me to go hang out with sanitation for the day. I manage about five hours with sanitation before [other supervisor's name] decides I've had enough charity for the day and sends me home, for real this time.

The weather is still shit out. I swerve into a snowbank trying to get on the mother. fucking. freeway. (My Olds is a powerful old bitch, though, I managed to get back on the road with minimal effort, but still). I make it home.

The shittiest thing about that week? That was the only day I actually had work that week. I got sent home (I'm a temp employee, see; I'm not guaranteed work on any given day. My expenses don't require me to have a steady paycheck just yet, and I'd rather not be on the job market again anytime soon, so I deal with it) just about every other day that week.

[Sir Pinkleton]

I wish I could be more specific, but pretty much any time I'm too itchy, I just get pissed the hell off. Like, it's a constant irritation, so anything else annoying (parent's telling me to do chores, computer being slow, etc.) which I could normally just deal with, I then have to withhold my rage against. That, coupled with being tired, makes me especially grouchy.

[Dracorion]

If for some reason you never hear from me again, It's because I've slipped into a seasonal depressed state.

Fix'd.

[krogothwolf]

I feel like I'm being urged into Seasonal Depression by obi-wan now :(

[Geminex]

Walter Cronkite will save you!

[Darth SS]

Holy crap, thanksgiving this year qualifies so hard!

So, Canadian thanksgiving is in October. I know, we're a bunch of baseless savages. Anyways, around that time was the first decently heavy snowfall to hit south/southwestern Saskatchewan. Also, my first two years of university, I was going Septembre to Christmas without seeing my family. So this was the first time I was actually going to be home for thanksgiving, which was kind of a big deal. Upon discussing with my family, we agree that the best way to move my person from Saskatoon to Calgary (about a 6-7 hour drive normally, with an added hour because I need to head to the south) is to make use of an airplane. My dad buys me tickets, everyone agrees, h'okay, we're set.

Day I'm supposed to go home. I wake up and my foot is just screaming bloody murder. I had been playing hockey the night before and took a shot right in the laces. Upon examination, my foot is quite swollen and quite bruised. My roommate said he can take me to the airport. He ended up spending the night at someone else's place. Thankfully, his girlfriend is a champ and saves him. I get to the airport, and notice there is a very long line to get to the check-in counter. I check the flight board. My flight was canceled. Apparently no one thought that a cracked windshield was problematic, and it started losing pressure before anyone cared.

After an hour (!) I get to the counter and they tell me the next available flight is 6:15 AM the next day. That is completely unacceptable. So I call home, and basically say that I pretty much have to spend thanksgiving in Saskatoon. My mom loses it, and around this time I realize that I haven't seen my best friends in months, so dammit I'm going home. Thankfully, my parents left a spare car (yes, that was weird) at my house in Saskatoon. So I decide to drive back. The drive is headfirst into a snowstorm, from Saskatoon until Hannah. However, the car's quite jerky, especially when the RPMs get around 2000. It kind of skips, and around 2500 RPM it feels like the transmission wants to downshift but can't make up it's mind. So around Rosetown (google map it, darn it) I call home again and just flat out say "I'm not sure this thing is going to make it." I bite my better instinct, and drive the rest of the way home with overdrive disabled. After Hannah I get an awesome crosswind.

Thanksgiving happens. My mom takes one look at my foot and decides to take me to the emergency room. I had a broken bone in my foot. Which explained the pain. The car was taken to our favourite mechanic who reported that the clutch pack was burning out, hence the wonky shifting feeling, and one of the spark plugs was kaput, hence the skipping. It shouldn't have accomplished that drive. After a scant time with my family, it is once again time to go back to Saskatoon, this time using the return airfare ticket. I painstakingly pack my backpack with baked delights the night before. The flight's at 7 AM, so due to where we live this neccesitates me being up at 5 if I want to get ready and feel human before the 40 minute drive, and subsequent security.

I wake up at 5. Someone's in the shower. So I have to wait. (1) As I'm getting ready, I realize that I've misplaced my gloves, and have to scrounge for them. (2) Also, my boarding pass was foolishly left in my backpack, so I have to rearrange to get it. (3) And now the dogs are up, so I have to take them out. (4) One of them wants to sniff stuff and take a poo. (5) We start driving up the deerfoot, and it's really foggy. (6) We get to the airport and there aren't any parking spaces except for a really far away one. (7) Before going to security, my dad adamantly demands he buy me breakfast. (8) I go to security, which is kind of busy, and I get directed to a line. It turns out to be the most painfully slow one. (9) For reasons unknown, people are insisting on arguing with the CATSA agents. As I'm walking through the metal detector I hear "Would [me] please report to Gate 6? Your flight is about to leave." Simultaneously, the gentleman on the other side says "Congratulations, you just won a random physical pat down and physical bag check." (10) I ask, "I was the guy just called. Can we skip this?" Apparently once they've committed they must go through. My bag is hard to unpack and pack quickly. I sprint to my gate, on the aforementioned broken foot, and discover that my flight has left. Thankfully, the Air Canada gentleman was kind enough as to put my on the next flight, which left at 10AM, so it was only a 3 hour delay.

So, to recap, the series of events 1-10 were each annoyances of varying sizes, which summed up to me missing my flight. Each one, on it's own, is maybe five or so minutes of annoyance. But they decided to clump together. This story gets better.

As I didn't take the first flight, I go to the air canada desk in Saskatoon looking for a refund. They say that I need to present the original boarding pass, which I never received. Also, they insist that I present the original receipt, which is impossible as my dad it over the computer. Next, they recommend that this be done over the phone. So my dad tries that. They tell him it has to be done at an airport counter. Meanwhile, I'm trying to get back to my house, and can't because every freaking cab in Saskatoon was busy.

Next thanksgiving? Totally staying in Saskatoon.