Monday, October 15, 2012

Change in Venue

Well there has been a serious LOAD of changes in my life. Biggest one is I've moved across the country, "lost" my job (I actually volunteered to take the cut from my work so I could move, and no one else would lose their jobs... I know sounds selfless, but I got 7 months of pay and 10k for schooling) and I'm living in a Condo, the first time since I was 21. Big adjustment to get use to when one is use to a house.

Currently I'm debating what to study at the University that will give me a different career further on, I'm applying for part time jobs (to keep my sanity) and playing Fallout 3 & Dance Party.

But along the way I've gathered a couple stories to share...

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Whatever happened to looking both ways?

I am one of the "lucky" ones who spends times idling in traffic on a daily basis trying to make my way too and from work. With all this time spent in the car, you come across a lot of pedestrians. I'm all for walking to and from when you can, I certainly did enough of that during University, but it seems as though people are just getting dumber or they are testing drivers on whole new levels. Which doesn't seem like the smartest thing considering how many places have put in the "Distracted Driver" fines.

Case in point, on my way home one day, I notice a guy strolling leisurely out into the street, drinking his coffee, no where near the actual crosswalk. He failed to look both ways and only realized at the yellow line that he had cars coming at him from both directions. He then proceeded to do a panic twirl, trying to decide which way to run, almost losing that precious coffee in the process.

Luckily for him, I had been paying attention to this moron and stopped. The other guy driving didn't even slow down, either he wasn't paying as much attention or he thought the pedestrian deserved a bit of a scare for his moron move. - Yes, I do enjoy the word moron when it's particularly appropriate. (I actually have a You Moron hand gesture).

I also enjoy when you in a special right turning lane at a light and there is a person walking. You come to a complete stop (as you are supposed to do), then the pedestrian stands there arguing with you that you should go. Look dude(tte), I took the time to stop for you, you better friggin walk. Then you have the other people who just stand there, look at you, appear not to be crossing, then suddenly dash out in front of you. Then have the nerve to look annoyed at you when you are screeching your brakes to avoid hitting them.

Then we have Parking Lots Walkers. These are a whole other breed of annoying. The worst is the diagonal walker. You know who you are. Could you possibly take a longer way to cross the lot? This one always surprises me, especially since you know these people drove to the store as well and know how annoying it is to try and find a spot when trailing behind someone dragging their feet across the middle of the lane. That's when I get ½ tempted to find them in the stores and use my cart to continually block them by parking it diagonally in the aisle.

The pseudo pedestrians are also up there with Darwin Award Nominations. Which are bicyclists who pretend to be pedestrians when they find it convent to do so. Then they are shocked when the ride out on a Walk light and almost get hit. I'm sorry little bike dude, but you were driving on the road and then decided to drive on the crosswalk, without signalling your intentions. Do you not realize that you move a lot faster than a person walking and to anticipate what you are about to do would require a driver to have the power of premonition? You moron.

Then you have the especially smart people. Those who cannot WAIT for the light to change. They MUST cross the road at that instant. A friend told me of the following incident. He was about three cars back from a light, in rush hour traffic, when he noticed a guy weaving through the cars. The guy hopped the meridian between traffic, landing himself directly in front of a bus, which luckily for him, had only started to move, and promptly got bounced a few feet down the road from the impact. The idiot jumps up and just kept going, almost getting hit by two more cars before making it to the sidewalk. The poor bus driver had to take a minute before being able to move on... wonder how one reports this type of hit and run. Well, you see here officer...

I get these guys a lot, especially after getting off a city bus, they think that the bus stop location acts as an insta-crosswalk. My favourite was the guy who did the diagonal walk, with his back to me and crossed the street. He didn't check to see if there was anyone driving until after he got to the other side. He jumped slightly seeing that I was directly behind him, followed up by about 8 other cars all at a turtle crawl from his leisurely crossing. Yeah moron, you aren't on a cross walk, and imagine that you totally cut off a whole lot of drivers. He got the moron hand wave.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Wrong Number

When I first moved here, I had to change cell numbers (obvious to a move yes). Quickly after getting my new number, I began to get a number of phone calls while I was at work. However since my job is very Go-Go-Go, I normally keep my cell on silent as I don't have time for chit-chat.

However one day I did happen to notice the phone light-up for a call, so I answered it... why oh why??

I had an Indian accented man on the phone (picture Russell Peters making fun of his Dad), asking me where I was.

Well I knew that this person had the wrong number, and told him so. You'd think problem solved. But no, that's not how things work for me.

Guy starts telling me that he had gone to the American Embassy, however they would not allow him into the building with his wrapped package (geez dude, wonder why not?!). Upset, the cabbie offered a solution, leave the package with him, and he would return to the Embassy when this guy was done with the parcel.

All the guy had to do was call this cabby's personal cell number... which turned out to be my number. The guy totally though I was lying, that I was trying to steal his parcel. Took me 5 min to get him to understand that I had no idea what he was talking about and he had the wrong person and to call the cab company the car came from.

Meanwhile I'm thinking, wholly crap, I really do NOT want to caught in the middle of a conversation about Embassies, mysterious packages and strangers. Next thing I know I'll have my cubical stormed by Secret Agents and I'll never be heard from again!

Monday, March 12, 2012

It's painful somedays con't...

I'm going back to revisit an old character, Deb, the woman who couldn't figure out the futuristic birth-date (she's listed under It's painful somedays & Justifiable I say)...

I had recently made a trip back to the old stomping grounds and inevitably someone brought her up, giving us a good laugh and reminding me about a few more incidents with her.

1) On her first closing on a weekend (alone), one of the senior girls left her cell number in case of emergencies. Sparky was out at supper with her boyfriend and her family when her cell goes off. Slightly embarrassed to have to leave the table to take the call from work, which she will almost instantly regret.

Deb was finishing up the items on the check list, when she became stumped by something, not on the checklist but in her mind must be completed. So she called Sparky (see Justifiable I say for history on these two) and asked, "How do you turn off the fridge?"

Sparky, speechless at first, finally found her voice and asked, "Did you just ask how you turn off the fridge?"

Deb says "Yes, and I can't find the On/Off switch..."

So Sparky replied with, "Do you turn off your fridge at home??" (- If so this might explain a thing or two)

Deb said, "Well no, of course not..."

"Then why would you turn off the fridges at work?!" was the reply.

2) Part of our job at this workplace was to do Data Entry, however because of shift changes, breaks, work flow, etc sometimes we are short on computer spaces. We emphasize that people must log off on breaks and not lock their computers, as this shorts us a station that can be used when busy.

Deb was especially notorious for locking her computer, much to our annoyance. It didn't seem to matter how many times we reminded her not too. One day, fed up, I decided to shut off her computer completely instead of restarting it. When she returned from break, Deb shook her mouse. When the screen did not "wake", she tried again. Nothing. She pulled the monitor towards herself, looked behind it, baffled, she moved the screen back. Completely stumped, she moved to another computer and signs in.  All the while looking very puzzled at computer that was turned off.

I then took delightful pleasure in sitting down at the computer and firing it up as she watched, mystified.

3) We had one male co-worker in particular who disliked Deb on an atomic level. It was basically built into his DNA to hate her. Really it was... didn't help that she seemed to have a slight boy-crush on him and constantly tried to talk to him.

One day he made opinion clear, she came in for her shift and sat next to him. He promptly signed off the computer he was logged on and moved across the room. 

4) After a particularly trying week with Deb, her constantly asking the same question over and over, and after explaining a simple concept in 100 different ways and her not grasping it, I was exhausted and frustrated. The last day I was grateful for my break and a few of us went upstairs to the cafeteria. I was sitting at our table, waiting for everyone who was buying there lunch, when Deb, plopped down across from me. This wasn't her break time, I guess she decided she wanted to go with our group, regardless of the schedule (because of course why should that apply to her?!).

She then started to go on and on about something, I was getting to the point of actually being angry, as it was my break time, and really didn't want to have to be inundated it idiotic conversation as I was eating too, bad enough we were bombarded daily for hours during work.

Deb noticed that I was not really responding and was rubbing my head. She finally asked if I was ok. I said no, you are giving me a headache with all your talking (yes that might seem mean, but I had spent 1 1/2 years working with this woman who still couldn't do the simplest task correctly and who's conversation was as interesting as a stale piece of bread).

She finally trailed off on talking... and that was the last lunch she ever ate with me. I got a large following of people on my breaks from them on, everyone who wanted to avoid her chatter.

5) We were having one of our drawn out meetings one day. You know the type, where you're told, "You guys are doing a GREAT job.... now here's a list of 100 things you've done wrong (as policies/protocols were changed without us being told)".

Most of us find ways to amuse ourselves during these meetings as the Supervisor drones on and on about something that could have been summarized in 5 minutes (I know as I acted as Team Leader on occasion and ran the meetings during those times).

This particular day, we were especially lucky to have our Manager pay a visit as well, so we got an especially long winded version of all the "wrong doings" (in this case it was the Manager/Supervisor having no clue about what we actually do or how it was done). I was fascinated at how the Manager (a female) seemed to lean towards wearing an Alpine scented perfume. Smelled like a rotting Xmas tree had barfed on her. Also she seemed to be hovering over the floor somehow. Her pants were straight down, covering all aspects of her shoes, giving a her a slightly demonic floating look.

Finally I realized I had been staring for awhile at her floating feet and decided to look else where. What a mistake!!!

I happened to look up at Deb, who had the worst case of Camel Toe that I have ever seen on a person... I actually jumped when I noticed. At which points set off more than a few giggles around me, as everyone had already noticed and they were all waiting for my reaction.

It was like staring at a train wreck and not being able to look away.

And here is a reference for all of those who do not know what Camel Toe is, please refer to the first photo on this link, not the animal reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel_toe

Just envision it 10 times worse and in jeans. Erkel type, faded almost to white jeans.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

We were having our typical girl's night, preparing to watch yet another Horror flick. When one of Pinks saw a spider on the ottoman. Being the kind, nature loving person that I am, I brushed the spider on to my hand and moved to go to the back door and set the little guy free.

Instantly the other Pink starts yelling, "Spinder, where? Where?!" Hopping up and down on her feet, her large dog immediately getting excited and barking. The Pink who saw the spider however, launches off the couch beside where I had been sitting, literally jumping on top of Purple who was sitting in a chair beside us.

But during this jump, she kicks the ottoman into me, almost knocking me to the floor and successfully caused me to drop the spider.

Mini hysterics ensued for another 5 mins.

The offending spider was all the size of the tip of a felt pen. I'm sure a sneeze could have squished it.

Funnily enough, none of the girls were freaked out by the Ladybug infestation in the bathroom, where easily 10 Ladybugs were seen at any given moment.

I guess looks do matter in some cases...

Invisible Days

I'm sure you've had a day where you've felt invisible, everyone does at some point.

I was having an especially invisible day, where I narrowly missed two nasty accidents on the highway with people merging into my lane, completely cutting me off. Considering where I live, this is more of a norm than not. I didn't think much of it at first.

But once I got to work, I was walking into the building behind someone, a stranger, who looked briefly behind themselves right at me and let the door slam behind them anyway. No apologizes to me either or even acknowledgement that I swiped in behind them.

Annoying, but again, just brushed it off. But later that morning when I had no less than 3 people bump into me while walking into a hallway, I started to get paranoid. I'm not a large person by any means nor were they. You'd have to go out of your way to run into me in that space... or just not see me.

The coat of invisibility continued as at lunch one of my gfs walked right by as she was looking for me and didn't even hear me when I called her name at first. Apparently cloak was getting more powerful as in it was making me unheard as well.

The final straw was in the bathroom when I went to wash my hands at the automatic sinks. It took 2 sinks before one "saw me" and I was able to get running water. I checked to make sure I still had a reflection, just in case.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Nails are the new dust bunny.

I've had an ongoing gross-ination with people and their finger/toe-nail etiquette.

First off, I do not understand guys who wear their fingernails long, maybe in other countries this is considered attractive, but here, it just looks gross when a guy's nails are longer than most women's. When you are capable of getting french tips, that's a hint it's time to trim.

Even with girls I have a hard time sometimes, when you have to awkwardly arch your fingers to try and type or you can't pick up a simple dime from the counter, maybe you are a bit extreme. And how does that feel comfortable? Don't you get annoyed that you can't type like a normal person? How do you not injure yourself doing normal daily tasks?

But this aside, it's how people take care of their nails that is baffling. Case in point, I just returned from the women's washroom where I discovered someone had obviously been trimming their talons in the stall, as they left their DNA all over the toilet paper roll dispenser. Never thought I should have to worry about sitting down on a fingernail.

My friends have come across more cases, the Pinks to be exact each have had issues. One girl while sitting at her desk reviewing a document had her cube-neighbour trimming her claws, when one bounced over onto her papers. Luckily she was able to bit back the yelp of surprise and dumped the offending object off into her garbage.

The other Pink on her first week of her new job walked by a cube only to witness something elbow deep in toe-jam trimming off her toenails at her desk. No one needs to smell you with your socks off working on that ingrown nail you should have taken care of at home.

Yet another friend had a person beside her on the city bus trimming away. She ended up moving so she wouldn't get nail clippings in her purse. Women have enough stuff in there as it is, we don't need to cart around someone else's cast offs.

There is a time and a place for these things and at work, or on public transportation isn't one of them. Sure if you've broken a nail, I can understand a patch up is necessary, nothing worse then a nail snagging everything around you, but that's only the extent is should go to.