Subscribe now and choose from over 30 free gifts worth up to £49 - Plus get £25 to spend in our shop
Oh that reminds me, people presenting me a document I wrote as though they had written it!I had that shortly after i started here. I'd written a few chapters of a training course (and contributed to the book that the course was based on) then emigrated/moved company/etc.Clearly they have never read said document or they would have noticed my name on it!
Been here about a month and some poor bugger was strong armed into running the training. Page one of the training slide deck pops up, BIIIIIIG title block, reference to the book immediately under and then a list of contributors and the companies they represented, my name is about 1/3rd of the way down with my old employer listed... took about 30 seconds for the laughing to start.
Pointy bottomed sieves can get in the sea! Forcing me into the deepest darkest recesses of the kitchen just to find something they'll sit on without wobbling due to touching bottom.
Some potential crossover to political threads, but ...
Got a letter from the NHS for an appointment for an ultrasound. It's for a time I'm away, so I called to rearrange. I'll actually be away for a while, so the person said they'd have to wait until next month to make a new appointment and send out a new letter. As I'm away, I won't be able to receive the letter (duh). I asked if they can send an email or - wonder of wonders - use the NHS app to contact me? In short - no they can't/won't. So when I'm back I'll have to see when the new appointment is for and then rearrange if necessary - giving them little notice to fill the slot. It's not that I'm wanting them to accommodate me - I choose to be away, that's on me. But surely it would be more efficient all round if - in 2025 - they could use a more efficient means of communication?
Ah @DrJ I feel your pain !
Gloucester Royal - App to tell you you're getting a letter. Letter in PDF form notified via app.. Text before your appt and a ping on the App. It's a bit needy but all seems to work. Turn up, book in and now you have your proper time to start waiting 😉 To be fair fracture clinic has been pretty good in terms of time if not in consistency of message/advice.
Hereford - do you own a telex machine? or a horse? Letter for appt, letter after appt with what is generally script/randomness not related to appt, letter to my GP. Needed to move an appt, get a new one, I say "it's in my diary, all good, please don't waste time/paper sending me out a new letter". Four days later a new letter arrives.
It's playing blooming hell with capacity in the recycling bin!
Temporary traffic lights in a 30 built-up area, covering a space that's smaller than a parked car (gutter repair).
The roadworks have finished, but you didn't really need them in the first place, just put a few reflective cones out and collect them when you've done. It's too hot to sit in traffic needlessly!
Not coordinating works so that the other route has an equally needless temporary set of lights. Did you not see the Heineken ad?
Consultants from the big 4 who have turned up on mass for the last 2 weeks and clearly haven’t got the beginning of a clue despite claiming to be specialist in their area. They are getting the law wrong
The way that the pad separating spring in a bike brake caliper means you cannot see the gap between pads and disc through the only bit of the caliper that you could otherwise see straight through without being a contortionist.
(I grudgingly accept the need for the spring and whybit is there but I don't have to LIKE where it is)
The signs on the M6 that tell you the M6 Toll is clear. Of course it is, it’s the toll road. What I really need to know is if the M6 itself is clear so I can decide whether or not to spaff £10.50 on the toll road.
Temporary traffic lights in a 30 built-up area, covering a space that's smaller than a parked car (gutter repair).
The roadworks have finished, but you didn't really need them in the first place, just put a few reflective cones out and collect them when you've done. It's too hot to sit in traffic needlessly!
Not coordinating works so that the other route has an equally needless temporary set of lights. Did you not see the Heineken ad?
I saw a report that there are 7 sets of temporary lights in Chapel en le Frith this week. It's not big enough for 3!
Might have raised this one before, but they did a little bit of road works outside my old place ~30 years ago, they finished, reinstated the white and yellow lines, sealed the tarmac patch and then left the lights and generator there, blocking off one lane for (literally) 5 metres, directly opposite one of the two major access roads into a housing estate of ~500 middle managers.
Just enough space for two traffic lights, the generator/trailer thing, about 10 cones and a couple of barriers.
The little man came by once or twice a week to refill the fuel tank and it just sat there chugging away, 10 m from my bedroom window, continually, for probably a month. Got fed up one night (drink may have been involved), shut the generator down and moved the whole lot a little way down the road into an off road space. It stayed there for another few weeks, then disappeared when i was at work one day.
The signs on the M6 that tell you the M6 Toll is clear. Of course it is, it’s the toll road. What I really need to know is if the M6 itself is clear so I can decide whether or not to spaff £10.50 on the toll road.
Rule of thumb: if it says "M6 toll clear" then the M6 is also flowing freely. If it says that there are delays on the M6, then the M6 toll is worth the money.
In further exiting garden furniture news, not only did I get an email back offering me a replacement part for the princely sum of £10 but also a follow up phone call from a very helpful fella explaining it was the last one, as the original German factory had gone bust and now they ordered everything from China.
He added "so the new stuff lasts about 28 months not 28 years". I was disproportionately sad about that.
Still I'll soon be able to erect my new 3m parasol WITH SOLAR LIGHTS so I can sit under some low powered glow worms shivering in a blanket soon.
I have a new colleague who insists on using double question marks on everything. I am very close to telling them to do one. It's needless and makes your simple questions look aggressive.
My boss likes to send emails telling me to do stuff I've already done. When I point this out, instead of saying "Thanks, 10 I knew I could count on you", he likes to send me another task. In this case, I can't do both tasks simultaneously. So, I guess it's a trap! /Ackbar
The roadworks on the M8 at Charing Cross which have been going for about a decade with no end in sight and which seriously reduce the capacity of the road. The roadworks have been in place for longer than it took to build the road from scratch.
Her: "This room needs repainting."
Me: "Wait, what? I only painted it a couple of years ago, surely it's the last room that needs painting?"
Her: "Yeah, but there's marks all over it, it's been bugging me for weeks."
Me: wipes wall down "There you go."
Her: "... but I've bought all the paint!"
The Vitality intro/outro at every ad break on Sky in the cricket.
That is all...for now.
Her: "... but I've bought all the paint!"
My response to that would be, "crack on then, love! or take the paint back for a refund, if you need me, I'll be down the pub" 😆
Now, I actually think I’m proportionally cross about someone dropping their dog leavings in our Wheelie bin this morning. Yes it’s better than leaving it on the street, but our bin now reeks of shit, due to having shit in an untied bag dumped within.
Is it disproportionate that I’ve ordered a wireless camera, for next day delivery and fully intend to return any further leavings of the one of four suspects?
It won’t be in a bag.
Her: "This room needs repainting."
Me: "Wait, what? I only painted it a couple of years ago, surely it's the last room that needs painting?"
Her: "Yeah, but there's marks all over it, it's been bugging me for weeks."
Me: wipes wall down "There you go."
Her: "... but I've bought all the paint!"
I once ‘helped’ a friend in a similar situation. I turned up, declared we needed a pint first, drank all afternoon.
My friend was concerned nothing had been done and wife was due home soon.
so I got him to throw some dust sheets on stuff, open a few cans of paint and we painted around the light switches, corners and any visible marks.
Worked a treat. Wife was happy, we’d had a fun afternoon in the pub.
"I have a new colleague who insists on using double question marks on everything. I am very close to telling them to do one"
That seems like a sensible course of action and hopefully he'll take on board your comments and just use a single question mark from now on. 😄
I once ‘helped’ a friend in a similar situation. I turned up, declared we needed a pint first, drank all afternoon.
My friend was concerned nothing had been done and wife was due home soon.
so I got him to throw some dust sheets on stuff, open a few cans of paint and we painted around the light switches, corners and any visible marks.
Worked a treat. Wife was happy, we’d had a fun afternoon in the pub.
Is it disproportionate that I’ve ordered a wireless camera, for next day delivery and fully intend to return any further leavings of the one of four suspects?
It won’t be in a bag.
Large paper bag on doorstep, set light, ring bell, run 🙃
Something that annoys me, has done for years, and watching The Assassin on Prime, it happened on there and it still annoys me:
whenever people are shown using binoculars, the view they’re apparently seeing is this:
But it’s not like that it’s a circle, as anyone who’s ever used binoculars knows!
That really does bug me! 😖
Is it disproportionate that I’ve ordered a wireless camera,
When you could've bought a padlock instead, probably.
The chances of me remembering to unlock the bin, for the Bin men are slim.
The rubber caps for the charger ports on Exposure lights never seem to just pop back on easily. 3 months of not needing lights had caused me to forget this!
The very existence of The Hundred.
Confused me no end when I was a child. I rationalised it as being "old fashioned bins"
Getting a cold in the summer. I fully understand I am not being singled out by the God of the Snotty. But even so it's annoying. And snotty.
The refuse collection for us will only take black bin bags. (Come get ya black bin bags, on offer till September)
We barely have a lot of actual unrecyclable waste so the little white swing bin bag we've put stuff in over two weeks has to get put into a whacking great black bin bag otherwise it gets left.
That even when we don't have enough staff trained and equipped to do the job properly, there is still some higher graded/paid **** with a non-job who can interrupt my day to get feedback on yet another quality assurance check on my work that I didn’t even know existed.
FENSA. Useless for the consumer.
When a website asks me to fill in my mobile number and has pre-populated the +44, but then throws a tantrum if you don't start with "0".
When a website asks me to fill in my mobile number and has pre-populated the +44, but then throws a tantrum if you don't start with "0".
So many variations of this.
Boxes to fill in the postcode which sometimes require a space, like AB12 3CD and sometimes require AB123CD.
Boxes that get upset if you leave a trailing space in the field you type.
Phone number boxes that make assumptions about where you live (I'm looking at you, France) and only accept 10 digit numbers, no +44, no 0044.
Address fields that require you have a house number even if you live at Ivy Cottage, St Mary Mead.
Probably more but now I'm too agitated to think of them.
Address fields that require you have a house number even if you live at Ivy Cottage, St Mary Mead.
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that all UK properties built since like the 1700s have a number.
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that all UK properties built since like the 1700s have a number.
You, sir, are wrong sir. We lived in an 80's place that had a name, not a number and our current place has a name too (although that probably was built pre-1700). The official address list issued by the Post Office (aka the PAF, fact-fans), which is what most companies use to validate addresses, happily copes with names-not-numbers properties, but poorly designed webforms often don't.
"I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that all UK properties built since like the 1700s have a number."
Yes, Cougar, I'm afraid you are wrong. (My house, for example, has just name and village name, built 1990.)
My house, for example, has just name and village name, built 1990.
It might not have a number on the door, doesn't mean there isn't one allocated internally.
I could be wrong of course. I looked into an adjacent topic a couple of weeks ago and tripped over some C18 housing act which said that all houses must be numbered, and that you're legally obliged to display that number within the boundary of your property even if you also display a name. It's possible that act has been superseded, I don't know (it wasn't relevant to what I was looking for).
I could be wrong of course
You are, honestly. PAF is the definitive address list, and not all addresses on there have a number, even modern ones.
(Number or name) + postcode defines a property address.
The LLPG thing is different. That's a technical definition that uniquely identifies properties for planning and utility purposes, and, let's be honest, it's not something Joe Public would ever use.
It's a bit like the difference between the reg plate and the VIN on a vehicle. The common way to identify a vehicle is using the reg plate, even though, technically, the VIN is the unique identifier. If you code a form that only accepts reg plates in the standard format, and not special plates, vintage plates etc, that's pretty dumb.
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that all UK properties built since like the 1700s have a number.
If ours has a number I have no idea what is, and I've lived in it for 10 years. It certainly doesn't have one in the post code look up tables. It doesn't even have a street name (we live on a rough track which is a bridleway). Just a house name and hamlet. Same for most of the other scattered houses in our bit of rural Shropshire. Are you saying there is some kind of master list somewhere where they have numbers allocated to them?
Lived in a friends house for a few months whilst I was "between houses" no one on the close used or displayed any house numbers but the council tax demands all had house numbers & the names on them - early 60's built close.
Mine has a name and area followed by town and postcode.
Spelling of the house name and area have 1 letters difference. Hedge and Edge.
Mine has a name and area followed by town and postcode.
Spelling of the house name and area have 1 letters difference. Hedge and Edge.
Please tell us the town is Hedge End 😆
The LLPG thing is different. That's a technical definition that uniquely identifies properties for planning and utility purposes, and, let's be honest, it's not something Joe Public would ever use.
It's a bit like the difference between the reg plate and the VIN on a vehicle. The common way to identify a vehicle is using the reg plate, even though, technically, the VIN is the unique identifier.
The LLPG may well be "only" a technical definition, but it's where everyone else gets data from. Like with your VIN example, you wouldn't get a vanity plate saying "D4VE" and then proclaim that your car is now named Dave and doesn't have a VIN. No?
I'm not arguing. Like I say, I don't actually know, it's just something I came across the other day. For context (not that it's overly relevant) my door number is hyphenated. Let's say for discussion purposes without putting my actual address on the public Internet that it's 3-5. This is proving to be a pain in the ass because a) it just reads 5 on the door and I cannot get a door number containing a dash without getting a custom-made plaque; b) I often can't just KISS and state '5' as my number because it appears in computerised postcode lookup tables (presumably derived from LLPG) as 3-5, often listed out of sequence; c) it occasionally gets corrupted, the dash gets lost resulting in 35 which doesn't exist or "three to five" gets turned into 325 which really doesn't exist because the last property on the road is something like #34 (I once had a delivery driver call me, he was practically in the next county going "where are all these bloody houses?"); and so on. SO, I looked into changing it to officially just be '5' and concluded that it was more trouble than it was worth.
That was a lot of words to say not much, sorry.
Are you saying there is some kind of master list somewhere where they have numbers allocated to them?
This was my understanding, yes. But, see above.
Flags in gardens*
* unless it's a ☠ on a playhouse
Re: my minor irritation on colds also being hots. Now I've found that "swollen eyelids" are a thing. Not a thing I can recommend tho.
What next? inflamed ears?
Pretty sure IHN’s VIN number analogy is accurate. The LLPG will contain a unique number for a property but it’s not something you’d use on an envelope or add to your Amazon account.
Our old house had a sort of granny flat that I used as a bike store at the time (luxury!). It didn’t have a separate address as far as we could discover but it did have a separate electricity meter. I never did discover if we paid for the electricity.
I will have said this before but "swapped out" really irks me. "I swapped out my stem.." Why the addition of out when "I swapped my stem.." works perfectly well?
Adjacent to the house name on web forms thing, automated telephone systems that ask for customer details that you then have to repeat to the human who answers the call wind me up. Either don't collect them in the menu system, or transfer them to the call handler! Could understand getting a different bit of info for a security check, but .... 😡
Why the addition of out when "I swapped my stem.." works perfectly well?
Yeah - though even "swapped" is usually wrong. Generally people mean "I changed my stem", unless they've swapped it at the shop on purchase
Flags in gardens
perform a crucial role IMO, a bit like hats on drivers. St George, or even Union, makes occupants worth avoiding whereas a Ukrainian or Euro flag (or, say, a British regional one) much better
Complete animals that'll do this to a box of screws rather than be bothered to cut the little tabs of sellotape. 😡😡😡
Hanging is too good for them.
I will have said this before but "swapped out" really irks me. "I swapped out my stem.." Why the addition of out when "I swapped my stem.." works perfectly well?
Implication of what you've swapped it with.
"I swapped out my stem.." with another stem. "I swapped my stem.." for two oranges and a banana.
Complete animals that'll do this to a box of screws
Cereal
The scissors playing a vanishing trick when I want to open the cereal packet 😠
Two from the last two days:
1. The number of people driving on motorways in lanes 2 and three thinking they have no obligation to pull left into lane 1, even when it's clear for long distances. Especially pronounced on 4 lane sections. This is not the USA. This is not a highway. Pull the **** over and help everyone get the free flowing capacity we've all paid billions in tax for.
2. The price charged by Londis Oakwood Service Station Birchwood Warrington for a non-chilled 1.5l bottle of water - £2.95 with all other drinks suitably extortionate - criminal and no I did not pay it. Retailers taking the pee pee in this country. I'd love for BBC news to map profits of the top 500 retailers and restaurant chains' profits against the overall inflation rate since Covid - I think I know which one increases more.
d love for BBC news to map profits of the top 500 retailers and restaurant chains' profits against the overall inflation rate since Covid - I think I know which one increases more.
And the thing that really annoys me is all the franchises at Motorway service stations, the Chunnel at Folkstone etc all charge the same for a mediocre coffee and it is also 25% more expensive than a Costa in the high street . No such thing as a free and fair economy where a captive audience is involved.
Police Sirens.
They seem to be everywhere, all the time.
Back in the day if you heard a siren you'd race up the drive to watch the Flying Squad whizz by....."I heard a siren last night!...cor did you, I bet it was the Post Office being robbed - lets go and see if there is any stripey tape around it!!!!" etc etc
These days even in my small market town in leafy East Sussex there seem to be crimes being committed every five minutes. The summer night air sounds like an episode of Hill Street Blues. I drive to work and there are glaring blues and twos racing past me almost every day. Are they ALL necessary? I think not. Also, the cops drive like idiots.
I drive to work and there are glaring blues and twos racing past me almost every day.
Just checking; you're not a bank robber by trade or anything?
Being unable to fill in the work IT survey as the network is on a huge go slow
Oh, and people who call the police "cops". It's one of those Americanisms that just sound wrong in an English accent. See also "asshole", "goddamn" and "butt".
It's like when Americans use the word "pub". I don't know why, but it never sounds right.
Police Sirens.
They seem to be everywhere, all the time.
Tinnitus, maybe?
Are they ALL necessary? I think not.
No. It's an individual risk assessment, though
Also, the cops drive like idiots.
Some do and some are. They get found out at their next assessment, assuming nobody complains before then
Back in the day if you heard a siren you'd race up the drive to watch the Flying Squad whizz by
BITD we didn't have sirens on beat cars, just blue lights, so you wouldn't have heard as many
The Flying Squad was always a covert unit gathering intelligence from surveillance. They wouldn't use sirens unless absolutely necessary; too much 1970s telly watching 🙂
"Heritage" style brass door knobs that use a grub screw. I've got to go and find an Allen key now; Allen keys didn't exist in Victorian times, FFS!
The number of people driving on motorways in lanes 2 and three thinking they have no obligation to pull left into lane 1, even when it's clear for long distances. Especially pronounced on 4 lane sections. This is not the USA. This is not a highway. Pull the **** over and help everyone get the free flowing capacity we've all paid billions in tax for.
Especially annoying when an extra lane has been added at huge expense and with great disruption, only for 90% of people to use exclusively lanes 3 and 4, and leave two empty lanes. I had this misfortune to need to drive south of Lancaster on the M6, against all my principles, at the weekend, so became refamiliarised with this.
Thing with the USA is, in my experience, the system there is "drive in whatever lane you like, and try another one if you want to go faster"... And I find it much more relaxing.
They wouldn't use sirens unless absolutely necessary;
Kind of proves my point!!
Ironically, most of the emergency services vehicles I see, especially ambulances use only their lights and despite probably really needing to be somewhere quickly are driven in a much better manner.
Oh, and people who call the police "cops".
Look in the Oxford Dictionary and the Cambridge dictionary at the primary meaning for Cop. If its good enough for them its good enough for me! Also the US appropriated the word from us, not the other way round. People were using the word Copper in the UK long before US TV shows.
I drive to work and there are glaring blues and twos racing past me almost every day. Are they ALL necessary?
Back in the day there was less traffic for the emergency services to fight through and the size of vehicles was much smaller which left them more space to squeeze through.
Less need for sirens to force people out of their way.
Ironically, most of the emergency services vehicles I see, especially ambulances use only their lights and despite probably really needing to be somewhere quickly are driven in a much better manner.
It's a lot easier to appear safer in a slow-moving 3500kg top-heavy van that's more visible much earlier. That's assuming you don't have have someone standing up in the back trying to stab someone with a needle while protecting their broken neck 🙂
Trust me, a well-driven emergency services vehicle is equally safe, regardless of the service. Pursuit, a uniquely police thing, is the biggest problem
Look in the Oxford Dictionary and the Cambridge dictionary at the primary meaning for Cop. If its good enough for them its good enough for me! Also the US appropriated the word from us, not the other way round. People were using the word Copper in the UK long before US TV shows.
I know it (cop) is an abbreviation of copper (which in itself comes from 'to cop', meaning to hold/seize), but it sounds wrong spoken with an English accent. Copper sounds fine.
People who message me on Teams to tell me that they've sent me an email.
On a sirens related note, the two drivers behind me last night who had not seen/heard the big, loud, blue strobing Police car behind them, so overtook me when I found a nice clear straight bit of road where we could all pull over to let it past.
Following drivers who've left the rear-wiper going when it's been dry fro a while/not raining. To my mind it indicates either one, or both of two possibilities. 1 They haven't looking their rear view mirror recently and seen the wiper going, or 2, they have, but don't know how to turn it off. Both of which makes me glad that that car is in front of me where I can see it, and treat it with the caution/suspicion it's driver deserves.
"treat it with the caution/suspicion it's driver deserves"
Its. Its. ITS. There is no apostrophe in the possessive form of it.
On house numbering. People that can't grasp the concept that it's sequential. By a quirk (2 big properties - a school and another on the other side of the road), the houses opposite us are numbered in the 90's and we're in the low 100's.
More than a few times we've had people at the door asking where 120 is, because we're 121 and yet 120 isn't opposite. See them opposite..... 92, 94, 96, 98, then a school....maybe follow on from them and after the school will come, I don't know, 100, 102 and so on?
I even had a driver one time had got the parcel out and seemed miffed he couldn't leave it with me. Presumably they thought 120 was a Brigadoon like entity, only visible to locals at specific times
It's never takeaway either.
Someone in the vicinity of my house putting a cardboard box on my doorstep with my recycling.
Except the box wasn't collapsed and it was full of polystyrene and plastic packaging.
In a further riveting instalment of "ParasolGate", the new part arrived, bolted in without issue and we unfurled our mighty 3m erection. I am disproportionately cross because the LEDs which I confidently predicted would be "about as much use as equipping a fish with a hang glider" have proved to be only just on the disappointing side of magnificent 😉
Out of shot is me looking for some custard to help down the large humble pie I appear to have in front of me.
Oh and while I'm here, I've mostly made peace with the reality of bot-based customer service, but Admiral's chatbot is clearly still from the 90s. It's a rubbish front end for the FAQs available on their website.
Recognising this they provide a link to a "live" chatbot. Which takes you to the same place. But because they are a sharing and caring customer focussed company, you can still ring them up. Assuming you're happy to wait "because while your call is important to us, we are experiencing a high level of demand, you could try our chat bot" at 8p a minute.
I am not. No way I'm rewarding such poor customer service (original issue: change something on policy you can do through the app only to be told they need more info and you have to waste a few days of time trying to get hold of them) when the policy is due to change in a month or so.
Quidco compare, here I come. That'll learn 'em 😉