Annoyances

Friday 24 Sep 2004




Today I'm going to do several mini-rants about various foolishness I've recently encountered.

My girlfriend's vehicle was hit by a falling tree branch in the recent storms, so it was in a major Chevrolet dealer's body shop per insurance. The body shop guy (adjuster? estimator?) seemed to know what he was doing, until a week later when we went to get the vehicle and found 1) big scratch on outside of replacement door, 2) no tinting on inside of replacement door's window, 3) loose molding on interior of new door. She raised hell and the guy promised to make things right; this involved ordering a new door and after it arrived, paying for her rental car for a day. So she goes back at the end of that day and finds that the piece of molding had been secured, not with the clip that was supposed to have been ordered, but rather with a screw of a different color, put directly into the plastic of the new door! She raised hell again and they're supposed to order whatever they need. Let me add that every single time, the body shop guy said he'd call to update her and never did, plus every time he said something would be ready, it never was. Bear in mind that this is a major dealer in the Atlanta area - not some third-rate body shop. We've concluded that the guy she's been dealing with is just plain stupid.

Why is it that, no matter where you put your groceries on the conveyor belt in the store and no matter how few groceries you're buying, the people on either side of you feel compelled to use the little plastic divider? I kid you not, last night I had _three_ small items and there was a two-foot gap between my groceries and those of the lady in front of me, and she still had to put that plastic bar between her stuff and mine.

But it's not just dumb people who act stupid. Consider these two examples; one's a doctor and one's a PhD-holding CTO.

Why is it that while securing a sub for a softball game, I have to give the same directions to the same person each time I ask her to come out and play for us, even though the new field is 1.1 miles down the road from the old field? I think it's because she's so used to using her car's fancy DVD-based mapping system that she forgot how to just use her brain.

Why is it that someone who makes $200,000 a year is haggling over $500 vs $600 for the laptop I'm selling them?