Humans = Big Ol' Suckfest

When you get a job and it involves anything to do with talking and dealing with people face-to-face you eventually come to the realization that people suck.

Let me just emphasise that a little bit more – people SUCK.

I’m sure we’ve all been in a retail/hospitality type situation where an individual goes crazy over the most trivial and insignificant matters. It happens A LOT.

I’ve been working at a hotel for a while now and I never knew people were so annoying – particularly when they are holidays. When I go on holiday I go there to see the place I am visiting, eat good food and have a good time. I never care about the state of the place I stay in (unless of course it is crawling with lice and there is no roof) but SO many people do. I am constantly bombarded by the wankiest complaints.

“Excuse me but does the body lotion in the bathroom contain wheat?”

“My soap dish wasn’t properly cleaned. I think someone might have stayed in my room before me”

“My television only gets 399 channels and I really need 400”

“When I go into the public swimming pool other people can see me and it isn’t very private”

“I’ve been in my room for five minutes and it hasn’t been cleaned again yet”

For the most part people whinge about stuff they should have found out before arriving. If you do your research then you won’t need to get all huffy about the fact that, no, your room does not have a gold plated urinal that shoots fanta when flushed whilst playing “We Will Rock you”.

Why do people suck?

Interacting with other humans is mostly an unpleasant experience and all the good people you meet and see don’t counteract the lame ones that plague the earth demanding soy sheets and turtle friendly light fixtures.

I think the only conclusion is that people are douche bags love to complain. Or rather older people love to complain. I consider myself to be in the youthful category and I have hardly ever complained about anything in any official capacity because I go at it with the thought “get over it”. Older people (and I had SO better not turn into one… though maybe it’s fun…) like to find fault in most things and nothing compares to their humble abodes which begs the conclusion to STAY AT HOME. Buy some inflatable palm trees, throw some sand about the place and BAM a tropical paradise in your own home.

What annoying people have YOU dealt with?    

Just a Thought... naked children (oo-err)

Why is it that every single person has a photo of themselves naked? Usually as children.

Not only are you naked but often you are in a nude situation with some other kids you have absolutely no recollection of.

First, why do parents photograph their children when they are in the process of bathing? Is it really necessary? I understand that, yes, children are covered in dirt, poo or general detritus 99% of the time and that remaining one per cent is when they actually are in the bath but why the need for a photograph? I thought photographs were reserved for special events but apparently not.

When I was a kid my dad use to put me in my high chair to eat my lunch, naked, and let nature take its course. After I had “had my fill” he’d literally hose me off with the garden hose. Luckily there’s no picture of that. I guess I didn’t look as cute covering my face in food and shitting myself at the same time as I did in a bubble bath. Who would’ve thought?

Second, why do parents always seem to dump their kids in the bath with other random kids? It’s as if parents have little hang-outs so they jam all the kids in the bath to amuse themselves. Given that there is photographic evidence I assume it isn’t unsupervised.

Every person has a photo of themselves bathing with other children. If I bathed with these people now I would freak out. Not only would we not fit into a bath tub as we did back in the day but there would be too much hair and privacy being exposed.

Maybe parents do this because kids never stay still. It makes sense to put them in a slippy sided container (as you would a spider) whilst you struggle to maintain your hair and sanity. Then once you have attempted to pull yourself together you realise these little wee ones aren’t so bad after all and begin to gather snapshots of them with beards made of bubble bath or chewing the head of a rubber duck.

Chances are if I am ever a parent I will end up taking snapshots of my widdle babies when they are getting all squeaky clean. I assume they will be my own children as well...

Man Clothes are Manly

There’s so much irony in this world I don’t know where to begin! Probably with this blog... and its title. Duh.

Men.

The eternal question.

I should probably rephrase that.

Men?

Ahhh men... the “y” chromosome of manliness. Men want to be considered masculine – generally – and in order to do this they shun all that is the opposite. All that is girly. One of the aforementioned shunned fields is that of fashion or rather caring about the way they physically appear to others. At least openly. I know loads of guys who spend FOREVER on their I-didn’t-even-try look but that is not the irony of the day.

It weirds me out that dudes consider clothes as girly yet the manliest of all sports (I give this title due to the violence, brutality, sweatiness and lack of shirts) is boxing. Boxing, as far as I can deduce, is two blokes beating the living bejeepers out of one another whilst wearing shorts and mittens. Does anyone else find it odd that the manliest man (the victor) is bestowed with an accessory? Otherwise known as an item of clothing. Nothing says “I destroy other men” like a pimped out, bling-bling belt. It happens in A LOT of sports now that I think about it.

What about cycling? Or rather the Tour-de-France. Okay we are taking a step down in the manly list with this one given the fact that these guys are admittedly shaving their legs but the winner of the whole she-bang is awarded the coveted yellow jersey. I wouldn’t be caught dead in a jersey let alone a yellow one.

Then there’s golf. Again I don’t really see this as particularly manly. Tiger Woods attempted to make the sport pretty pimpin’ when he started screwing around with other women and his wife took to him with a golf club (oh the irony...). But at the end of the day these guys earn millions of bucks for twisting a stick. At the end the best twister gets a jacket. A jacket is an item of clothing just in case you were unaware.

Cricket tournaments just get some old dirt. I guess you could use it as body glitter if you got really desperate.
Before you know it Rugby players will be given some garishly coloured lingerie as a prize.

My Laptop is a Skank

I’ve had my laptop for many years now. We’ve worked together, played together and spent hours together just hanging out. My laptop, who I lovingly named Mungo, and I were so happy.

Note the past tense.

Whilst Mungo is still my favourite laptop, complete with all my personal touches and files it runs slower than a legless turtle. When I press the “on” button I walk away and do another activity so I don’t have to witness the outright eons that it takes to get itself ready to do a simple task. Opening an internet window takes a good twenty seconds and don’t get me started on trying to do anything simultaneously.

It also flashes white for an instant and sometimes decides to create thousands of internet windows one after the other as if to say “you wanted internet windows WELL HERE THEY ARE, BITCH!!”

It’s a nightmare if anyone else wants to use it. Sure I can navigate all its faults but a first timer does nothing but whinge, moan and throw their hands in the air at the sheer hopelessness of this computer. I bet it hurts Mungo’s feelings. After all, I’m the only one allowed to complain about it.

Moving on to my main point – Mungo is a dirty, dirty, strumpet.

Context? Right.

I decided after all its faults that I would get Mungo fixed. It was getting to the point where I wasn’t using it at all if I didn’t have to. And using other, more competent computers, it was making me realise how screwed Mungo really was.

I found someone at my place of work who considered himself quite the geek (his words not mine) so I packed Mungo up with an overnight case and sent it away to be fixed.

A few days later Mungo was returned to me. I took it home and eagerly awaited turning it on to see just how super jet fast and capable it would now be. I pressed the “on” button.

 What seemed like hours later...

“What the crap!? This thing is still a slow motioned turd of a system. COME ON! Grrrrrr....”

It didn’t work. It wasn’t fixed. Mungo was as slow as ever.

I tried calling the geek who supposedly fixed it – ready for a story of how he was defeated in the mending process.

“Hello?”

“I thought you were going to fix my lappy?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“What?”

“I turned it on and ran it a couple of times but didn’t have a problem with it.”  

“What? I’ve seen 90 year olds shuffle faster than this thing.”

“It didn’t do any of things you say it did to me. So I didn’t do anything to it.”

The plot thickens.

Apparently my laptop is a conniving conception of modern day technology. Mungo no longer wants me as an owner and acts like a retarded piece of metal instead of my only portal to the internet and life companion.

I had always thought Mungo to be a male. Well as male as a no-sex inanimate object can get. Either I was wrong or Mungo is gay. Mungo lusts after the computer geek and no longer chooses me as its master. I can see it now batting its web cam eyelashes at him, displaying extra bright just so he’ll notice and opening its disk drive right up... unbelievable.

Mungo is a manipulative, mature aged harlot and that’s all there is to it. And I’m stuck with it.     

Hugs All Round

I’m sorry, but when did hugging become the new handshake?

I have recently been finding myself pressed against individuals that I have no real connection to a lot lately. I remember the days when an odd glance and an almost awkward finger waggle would be enough to get you through the gates of western social etiquette. Apparently the non-touchy days are over.

Since when have we been feeling the need to invade one another’s personal space in the desperate need to become more physically engaged with each other?

I’ll be honest – if I don’t know you – I don’t really want to touch you. Even if I do know you there are levels of awkward hugging. Seems to me the level of comfortableness is in direct relation to the distance of either parties’ hips/private areas. It looks something like this...

Or this...

There are the rare occasions when you get an overly friendly person who will grind right into close friend hugging town and when that happens abort immediately. Make it an extremely short hug and keep your eyes peeled for their every intimate action.

The rate this is happening pretty soon we’ll all be hugging at job interviews or when we use public transport.

Drivers Gone Wild

As we discussed earlier, criticising someone in person is not something we all enjoy doing (unless you are one of those hilariously evil people).Talking behind other peoples’ backs just makes the world go round but when it comes to expressing your negative critiques to someone in the same room as yourself you tend to bite your tongue or at least say it in a half joking way to gauge their reaction like

“yeah the haircut looks great – for a transvestite!

*pause – quickly scan other person’s face*

I’m just kidding – it is fantastic and you are fantastic!” *nervous laughter*

Hours later talking to a different person

“O-M-G she TOTALLY looks like a trannie now!”

This is life.

The one thing, however, that we never seem to be able to discuss is the driving skills of another direct person. If you are in the passenger seat with someone who is driving like a drunken hyperactive orangutan there is little you can do to get them to stop without them getting really offended, sulky and either driving ridiculously slow or race car fast for the remaining duration of the drive.

There are so many important facets of driving that can be done badly – tail gating, speeding, driving too fast around corners or on wet roads, cutting people off, littering, not indicating, driving naked, falling asleep at the wheel, operating a tamagotchi whilst driving and so on.

It makes me nervous. And it is a little silly that we have to use that fake smile that says “I’m totally cool with dying today – I’ve had a pretty good run” and never express our fears when our lives are at risk. You can make some feeble analogy to make them get the hint like “Oh... on a totally unrelated note I knew this guy once, friend of a friend, who was driving really fast with his closest family members in the car and because he was going too fast they smashed into an apartment building and everybody in the car and the building died because the building collapsed on it and it was because he was driving too fast. That’s the thing with driving too fast though, huh?”

I guess you can somehow try to screen the potential drivers in your life based on their car appearance. Though this can be misleading. If the car is a race car you might need to worry, if the car is deceptively safe looking you might need to worry and if the car has bumps and scratches all through the paint with the number plate hanging off and the bonnet leaking fire then you should worry.

I mean of all the times when it should be kosher to speak up this is the worst. You just have to live (no pun intended) with the fact that you may die as a direct cause of these crap drivers. As much as you want to scream out “SLOW DOWN YOU CRAZY B****! HOLY CRAP, LOOK OUT! AHHHHHH!” You probably won’t. Instead you’ll silently cry and wet yourself. It’s the polite choice.

Technology - Turning us into Twats one Gadget at a Time

Has anyone else noticed that as our social technology has advanced and become less physically personal that people are getting progressively ruder?

I have.

When you work in hospitality you learn that people are more than willing to treat you like something they found stuck to the bottom of their unattractive shoes than be told “no” over the phone. Of course there are the people who act like complete tossers face-to-face - but that is a different story.

Firstly, people don’t like being told they can’t have or do something and they get crappy about it. Which is fair enough if they have been promised but people in our fast-paced, consumer driven, me me me world aren’t okay with less then what they were after and more.

People like to complain – a lot. It’s the bad things that happen to us that we remember most. So, in turn, we like to whinge and bitch through a variety of isolated mediums. We like to take our attacks out on anyone we can. Any slight indication of another person we can blame and insult for our sake and we are off like a shot. We scream at the telemarketers, we berate the receptionists, we write long winded and poorly thought out complaints that will only be seen by a few people at the bottom of the chain who will creatively fashion their idea of the complainer in their heads and move on (this imagination will always leave the complainer being fat).

Before phones were invented I can imagine people getting around in crazy old timey dress and being polite to one another and accepting when things didn’t go their way with a tip of their hat or a flutter of their Parisian fans. Then Alexander Graham Bell had to invent something that would allow these people to vent wholeheartedly into and not suffer any of the disappointed looks they would face were they in person.

When you are mean to someone on the phone you don’t take into account that the voice on the other end is actually a real person with real feelings. Well they are. I’m sure we’ve all had our moments when we’ve got frustrated but swearing and becoming unreasonable to someone via this medium is a little trashy. At least you can pull faces and flip people the bird into the phone without them noticing – or hanging up on them. Though hanging up on someone doesn’t feel as victorious when you have a cordless phone. There’s nothing like slamming a phone down in a fit of passion. Pressing a little “end” button isn’t as poetic or cathartic but much more prissy.

Then it comes to the internet. I think you all know where I’m going with this one. Have you ever been a chat room? Or read some of the comments people write about anything and everything? Good lord. The internet has become a place consisting mostly of half-illiterate complainers and people with a vocabulary that consists of misspelt profanities. When you read some of these can you imagine them being said out loud? To another person?  I marvel at half the crap these people come out with. If someone said to me, at my job, in person “yo didn do wot i asked an evrything woz shit so gimme bak my $$$ bich – LOL”. I would have to stifle my laughter whilst pressing the button for security to take this person somewhere special.

Let’s get eloquent with our complaints. Let’s get creative with our issues. If you need an example take a leaf out of www.27slash6.com ‘s book – this is a huge plug for this website. It makes me literally lol.
So the next time you get frustrated with something in your life – just take a second to calm down before verbally lashing out at another person or else you’ll be laughed about for days later for being a fat complainer. Whether you are fat or not.