Absurd requests/demands

[weeblewobble]

CAUTION: Discussion of animal bodily functions.

(Let me know if I should highlight/hide potentially offensive terms and I will be happy to.)

There is a common/green space area in the middle of my parents' neighborhood.  It's small, maybe one square block and has been designated by the HOA as "OK" for the residents to use to walk their leashed dogs as long as the owners pick up after the dogs.  (The HOA even provides a little dispenser with plastic "pick-up" bags and a trash can, which I think is nice.)

One of the homeowners living right across the street from the green space has decided this is NOT OK with him.  My mom was walking her dog a few months ago and he came running out of his house yelling, "You can't do that!"  Mom, confused, thought maybe he thought that she was leaving the dog's droppings behind, so she said, "Oh, he doesn't have to go.  But if he does, I'll clean it up."

"No!" the guy yelled.  "You can walk your dog here!  My children play on this grass.  And even if you clean up the droppings, the dog's still peeing in the grass and I don't want my children stepping in that!  They get it all over their shoes and track it onto the carpets!  You're the third person I've had to tell today! Why does everybody think it's OK to just let their dogs pee EVERYWHERE?"

"So you don't want the dog owners to use the area the HOA has approved for dogwalking because there's a chance your children could step on spots of dried dog urine while wearing their shoes?"  Mom said. 

"YES!" the guy cried.  "It's disgusting!"

Mom gave him absolute dead-expression face and said, "You need to take this up with the HOA."

And of course, while Dog Pee Guy was wailing about he shouldn't HAVE to take it up with HOA, the dog owners should just do what he tells them, Mom's dog lifted his leg on a nearby tree.

[CrochetFanatic]

Hahaha!  I guess we know what the dog thinks of all that. 

[Iris]

^Bahahahaha Impeccable timing, dog. PLEASE tell me that it is a highly trained dog and had received a secret hand signal from your mom.

He was that worked up over his children stepping on dried dog urine in their shoes? Hope no-one ever tells him where his tap water has been...

[jedikaiti]

Man alive! You people have had some terrible bosses. How do these people function? What actually goes through their minds. Can you just imagine what it would be like to be married or related to these people.

Yep. They're probably like that towards their family members, too. My Dad would threaten to drop me from the health or car insurance if I didn't do whatever unreasonable thing it was he wanted done. When I got old enough to pay for those things myself and have my own policies, he tried to get me fired from my job if I didn't do what he wanted (we worked for the same university, but in totally different departments. Needless to say he did not succeed).

How did he keep HIS job after that stunt???

[jedikaiti]

Just saw this one today... This bride is full of unreasonable demands: http://gawker.com/5948725/reasons-why-you-cannot-be-a-bridesmaid?post=53208787

That's just...wow.  The nicest thing I can say is that at least she's very up front about it.  The only thing I expected from my maids is that they showed up for the rehearsal and wedding.

Mom asked me about MOB responsibilities for my wedding. I said, "Show up. Wear a dress. Bring Dad." So, you know, what she was doing anyway. I'd have said the same thing to my MOH, too, but as soon as I told her there was a wedding on the radar, she said "Can I throw you a bridal shower? Please?"

[jedikaiti]

Evilsiamesecat thinks it would be  fabulous if ALL 10 prospective bridesmaids declined to participate in this wedding.   

I'd be tempted to reply to all stating that I intended to have a life and a job during that time period, and must therefore decline. I'd also be tempted to send her links to websites for modeling agencies that could perhaps rent her some bridesmaids who would be happy to be wherever she wanted them, whenever she wanted them, for a small fee.

Maybe I should start a rent-a-bridesmaid service.

[NyaChan]

Sad thing is that at least some of them probably just went with it.  My own best friend from college has 2 sisters planning a wedding right now.  She shared that they are already acting bridezilla-like with the weddings scheduled 1 and 2 years away from now.  When I mentioned that it is a good thing that she's always known how to stand up for herself, her response was "Oh but I'm a bridesmaid/MOH.  My job is to just say 'Yes. Ma'am' and give them whatever they want."  I had no response to that.

[Jocelyn]

last time I checked, having a family is NOT a good excuse to do something for one employee over another.

That was the reason, many decades ago, why it was acceptable to pay a man more than a woman for exactly the same job.  He was supporting his family.  She just spent her income on fripperies like clothes and makeup and magazines.   Or else she just worked to "have something to do" instead of lying on the sofa eating bon-bons and watching soap operas.  Because some man was really supporting her, you know, either her husband or her father.  Self-supporting single women were myths.

In the early 1970s, a divorced mother of three who taught with my mother, found out that a single man on the faculty was being paid a 'head of household' bonus. When she inquired about why she was NOT, she was told that single male teachers needed that bonus so they could afford to court their future wife, but she did not need it although she was supporting 4 people on her salary. If she was having trouble making ends meet, well, she shouldn't have divorced, should she?

[Jocelyn]

2. Some deer crossing signs are on tricky curves or near busy intersections so should be placed where one can see better and where there is less trafiic.

It always amazes me that there are city folks who think that the deer actually read and obey deer crossing signs.
Ranks right up there with those who believe that there's some way to keep livestock from producing smelly manure.

[Jocelyn]

They complained about the noise and said that the launch pad was inadequate for a helicopter's needs. 

I'm always astounded at how small a place can be used for a helicopter to land. My hat is off to the pilots.
I used to live right under the approach path to a major medical center. Aside from developing a particular sensitivity to the sound of incoming choppers, a la Radar O'Reilly, it wasn't very bothersome. I actually got pretty good at hearing the distant approach, and then not hearing as they went right over my apartment. 

[Jocelyn]

Most people who asked for my work load figures were very happy with my spreadsheet.

My former boss's boss proudly proclaimed that he could not understand text or figures unless they were in some sort of spreadsheet or table. He once rejected several hours of our department's work (three people) because he just couldn't understand it. My boss called a break, during which I created a table and cut and pasted all the text into it. When he came back in, he was astounded: NOW he could see what we meant!
He drove the AAs crazy with ordering them to use Excel spreadsheets for all sorts of data, with more columns and rows than could be presented on a piece of paper without using a font the size of superscripts... because portrait orientation was the only thing he'd accept. No, they couldn't put it in landscape, because ...well, we never understood why (basically, he didn't LIKE turning the paper on its side to see it). He was mad that, after they all complied, he couldn't read the spreadsheets because the fonts were so small. Somehow, they were supposed to put an infinite number of columns and rows on a portrait-oriented sheet, using a font of 10 or larger. And he really expected them to do it. How? Well, that wasn't his concern, they were the AAs, they were supposed to know how to format a document.

[Pippen]

They complained about the noise and said that the launch pad was inadequate for a helicopter's needs. 

I'm always astounded at how small a place can be used for a helicopter to land. My hat is off to the pilots.
I used to live right under the approach path to a major medical center. Aside from developing a particular sensitivity to the sound of incoming choppers, a la Radar O'Reilly, it wasn't very bothersome. I actually got pretty good at hearing the distant approach, and then not hearing as they went right over my apartment. 

around here they use helicopters for frost protection. It is massively expensive so the orchardists only use it if it is a severe threat so maybe once or twice a year and every time some moaning minny writes into the papers about how their cat was upset or they couldn't sleep. Ok it is a pain but would you rather whole crops are wiped out and the local economy utterly poked just so you can get some shuteye?

My parents had some new people by a property down the road from them and within weeks the woman was going around the district try to get petitions to shut down the bird scarers that protect the grape vines and trying to ban trucks from the quarry driving past her house. Yeah good luck with that.

[Jocelyn]

Don't even get me started on the random strangers who seem to think I'll just drop everything and spend hours of my free time and my materials drawing their wife/husband/dog/cat/monkey/houseplant for free just because they're so gosh-darn special.

If you want a drawing from me, my minimum price is $200.00. And no, I will not make an exception for you.

My quilt guild just had a show. A man came up to the ticket sale desk and said he wanted to buy a quilt. A big one.

 One lady at the table said, 'Are you aware that for the bed-sized quilts in this show, there's hundreds of dollars of materials in them? Not to mention dozens and dozens of hours of working time?'
'I just want to buy a cheap one,' he replied. Apparently he thought that if he explained that, someone would sell him a quilt for 10% of what she spent on the materials....
I told the ladies (out of his earshot) that they should have told him to go to Walmart.

At my sister's church, a man suggested that the ladies of the church should make quilts for the needy. One of the ladies suggested that, instead, they could make a top-quality quilt and raffle it off to buy blankets for the needy. He just couldn't figure out why the women wouldn't want to donate hours and hours of time and hundreds of dollars of materials, to give a quilt to someone instead of a $35 blanket.

[RegionMom]

My church held a charity auction for several groups to receive donations, some even out of the country.  After a bidding war on a lively patterned and boldly colorful quilt, I WON!  And it is now on display in DD's room. 

Yeah, I could have bought something at local StuffMart, but it would not give me warm fuzzies when I see it, or receive compliments from DD's friends.  And it would not have helped others get clean running water.   


back OT-

Would any of you consider a color request from a school for a dance to be absurd?  Say, student council says everyone should wear white or black to the Homecoming Dance?  With two weeks prior notice to buy said dress?  (And shoes, and alterations)

[NyaChan]

With two weeks notice, I would say that is unreasonable and very bad planning.  If that was the plan the whole time along, then it is just another theme, though I don't think compliance or non-compliance should have any effect on the students who attend.