Special Snowflake Stories

[bigozzy]

Did I mention she didn't help me at all? I ended up doing her laundry, cooking for her like she was a little kid, doing the dishes, cleaning, you name it. She even had the gall to tell my son was annoying her because all he wanted to do was watch his show and she wouldn't let him....so he kept trying to change the channel on the TV because he had seen us do that I don't know how many times. AND she would.not.leave. We even had an argument about when dinner was ready and she refused to get off our phone. The rule in our home is that dinner time is phone free time. We either don't answer it, or we tell whomever is calling that we are having dinner and will call them back when we are done. I think dh actually unplugged the phone after that.

So yes...she was a very very very SS indeed.
[/quote]


But I thought she had it out!

[snowball's chance]

It was suggested at my company that the several employees who have "Asst" in their job title to train to be a backup receptionist, so when the receptionist was out, we could split the time at the front desk, so no one person was required to be away from their regular duties for more than an hour.  SS Asst. was appalled at the thought, which is fine to have the preference of not wanting to cover, but she told us, "I didn't go to college to answer phones" (remember: she was being asked to cover for an hour a day, about once a month or two).  BTW, about half the Assts in various departments do have college degrees, but the other two people who have her exact same job do not, so basically she could also say she didn't go to college to do anything that was required of her.

BG: I work for a book publisher, and we accept unsolicited proposals from people who want to get their books published.  I have been here a over a year, and of the hundreds of proposals/queries/manuscripts we have been sent, one book was contracted from an unsolicited proposal.  Let's say that one of the the genres of books we publish is peanut butter, to use a made-up example.  We get a proposal from a guy who worked for Skippy for 40 years, and wants to publish a book about the history of the Skippy company.  The problem was that his cover letter was full of typos & grammatical errors (the biggest one I remember is random Words being capitalized In The letter For no discernable Reason That I could Tell, like The Way I am writing Now), and to top it off he used a display font that you might see on a wedding invitation & think it's nice, but 10 pages of reading it will give you a headache.  The actual proposal was text & photos cut & pasted from wikipedia articles about the Skippy company.  I put the proposal in one of the Editor's mailboxes, left the building for a 10-minute coffee run, when I come back, the proposal is on my desk chair & the Editor has written REJECT at the top. 

So I write the guy an email w/ a standard rejection letter for proposals that probably don't a huge potential in the market - recommend self-publishing.  He starts emailing me incessantly telling me I'm wrong, this book will sell millions (yes, he said millions) of copies, the fact that I didn't send his proposal back to him means I personally must have decided to steal the idea & publish it w/o giving him credit, etc., etc.

Obviously none of these emails were answered by me, so Skippy guy somehow got ahold of one of the other Editors who said he'd take a look at the proposal.  Skippy guy resent it (even though I was already hoarding an identical copy  ), the 2nd editor personally calls the guy & says no it's just not acceptable for us, & the guy says, "Fine!  I'll just publish it myself!"

[2littlemonkeys]

This happened half an hour ago.

I was at the grocery store and get in line behind a Snowflake who is finishing up with a rather large order that required two carts (the total was over $300). No problem, she's almost done and I don't mind a little wait so I set my stuff and on the belt and take my place in line.  And wait. And wait. And wait some more as Snowflake proceeds to go through all her grocery bags and find stuff for the cashier to take off. This went on for a good 15 minutes as Snowflake dug through her groceries like she was the only customer in the place and had all the time in the world. The cashier apologized to me. Snowflake only offered the half-hearted excuse of having a family for why she took so freakin' long.

So just because I'm single I have to wait for people who don't know how make a grocery list or do simple addition and subtraction? 

Aarrrghhhh!!! *tears hair out*

UGH, DH and I were stuck behind one of those last fall.  She rang up $200 worth of groceries (most of which were expensive gourmet items or national brands) and THEN informed the cashier that she only had $100 and needed to take stuff off.  At least ours was entertaining.  In between deciding which items to keep and which items needed to be sent back, she was ranting and raving to the poor cashier about how she should call the cops on the store because they were robbing her blind.  I couldn't help but wonder if she'd ever heard of a marvelous invention called a calculator.  Or store brands.

[thebeckster]

Or coupons.

[Poptart]

Did I mention she didn't help me at all? I ended up doing her laundry, cooking for her like she was a little kid, doing the dishes, cleaning, you name it. She even had the gall to tell my son was annoying her because all he wanted to do was watch his show and she wouldn't let him....so he kept trying to change the channel on the TV because he had seen us do that I don't know how many times. AND she would.not.leave. We even had an argument about when dinner was ready and she refused to get off our phone. The rule in our home is that dinner time is phone free time. We either don't answer it, or we tell whomever is calling that we are having dinner and will call them back when we are done. I think dh actually unplugged the phone after that.

So yes...she was a very very very SS indeed.

oooooh you're good


But I thought she had it out!
[/quote]

[siamesecat2965]

This happened half an hour ago.

I was at the grocery store and get in line behind a Snowflake who is finishing up with a rather large order that required two carts (the total was over $300). No problem, she's almost done and I don't mind a little wait so I set my stuff and on the belt and take my place in line.  And wait. And wait. And wait some more as Snowflake proceeds to go through all her grocery bags and find stuff for the cashier to take off. This went on for a good 15 minutes as Snowflake dug through her groceries like she was the only customer in the place and had all the time in the world. The cashier apologized to me. Snowflake only offered the half-hearted excuse of having a family for why she took so freakin' long.

So just because I'm single I have to wait for people who don't know how make a grocery list or do simple addition and subtraction? 

Aarrrghhhh!!! *tears hair out*

UGH, DH and I were stuck behind one of those last fall.  She rang up $200 worth of groceries (most of which were expensive gourmet items or national brands) and THEN informed the cashier that she only had $100 and needed to take stuff off.  At least ours was entertaining.  In between deciding which items to keep and which items needed to be sent back, she was ranting and raving to the poor cashier about how she should call the cops on the store because they were robbing her blind.  I couldn't help but wonder if she'd ever heard of a marvelous invention called a calculator.  Or store brands.

i hate that.  I generally have an idea of what I'm spending, but lately, with the economy being in the toilet, and so on, I have been combing the weekly flyers, to see which stores have the best deals (the one i prefer is close to my house; the other two i pass on my way home, so no money on gas going out of my way) and once IN the store, now, as i check items off my list, i write down the price, so i can keep a running total.

i don't get folks who, when they KNOW they only have so much to spend, just grab everything in sight!  Do they think the grocery fairy is going to descend upon them and take care of the rest?

I've actually put stuff back if i don't need it then and there.  i've also been cooking a lot more, and making a real effort to bring my breakfast AND lunch every day.  and if i get takeout, its once in a blue moon, and with a coupon, and from somewhere I know i can get a couple of meals out of it.  Like i know i am working this sunday, adn there is an italian restaurant in teh center i work in.  I have a coupon, plus they give you a ton of food.  so i will bring my lunch, and buy dinner, which will give me leftovers for lunch the next day!

[wordgirl]

The Crystal Light thread reminded  me of this one, who I worked with under the sign of the Scarlet Crustacean.

"Bunnie" was a server - very, very pretty and very much aware of it. She would flirt and flatter her male co-workers into picking up her work, and helping her when she was slammed. That was completely annoying to her female co-workers, of course - and to the males who saw through her tactics, but it was enough to get by for awhile.

About a month after we all started working there (this was a new location, we were all hired at the same time) Bunnie decides to skip the middleman. She strikes up a "camaraderie" with the assistant general manager - I don't believe they were actually having an affair, but she was leading him to believe that might be a possibility.

Anyone who's ever worked in a restaurant knows there's a lot of politics involved in who gets assigned to which station. The politics were a little trickier at this restaurant, because nobody had seniority. So Bunnie would constantly pitch a fit to get the best stations. She hated working the smoking tables (we all did) and the tables on the second floor (there was no dumbwaiter, so anyone who had tables on the second floor had to lug heavy trays of food up a "blind" flight of stairs. There was usually at least one spill each night, so the service stairs were RANK.)

Each time Bunnie got a station she didn't want, she'd whine to her "boyfriend." I got booted off some good stations because Bunnie decided she wanted them ....

There was a little revenge, though. After she'd burned through most of the men in the place, including her pet manager, the tide turned. She ended up going to the Big Italian Chain next door and pulling the same tricks.....

[magicdomino]

This happened half an hour ago.

I was at the grocery store and get in line behind a Snowflake who is finishing up with a rather large order that required two carts (the total was over $300). No problem, she's almost done and I don't mind a little wait so I set my stuff and on the belt and take my place in line.  And wait. And wait. And wait some more as Snowflake proceeds to go through all her grocery bags and find stuff for the cashier to take off. This went on for a good 15 minutes as Snowflake dug through her groceries like she was the only customer in the place and had all the time in the world. The cashier apologized to me. Snowflake only offered the half-hearted excuse of having a family for why she took so freakin' long.

So just because I'm single I have to wait for people who don't know how make a grocery list or do simple addition and subtraction? 

Aarrrghhhh!!! *tears hair out*

UGH, DH and I were stuck behind one of those last fall.  She rang up $200 worth of groceries (most of which were expensive gourmet items or national brands) and THEN informed the cashier that she only had $100 and needed to take stuff off.  At least ours was entertaining.  In between deciding which items to keep and which items needed to be sent back, she was ranting and raving to the poor cashier about how she should call the cops on the store because they were robbing her blind.  I couldn't help but wonder if she'd ever heard of a marvelous invention called a calculator.  Or store brands.

I was behind one of her relatives recently.  Cart full of groceries, negotiating to figure out what could be left, two or three extra transactions as cash was found at the bottom of a purse or borrowed from her daughter.  All of this was, of course, the fault of the cashier for overcharging her.  The cashier told me that she does this every week.

[high dudgeon]

Maybe global warming will drive the specialus snowflakus entitleus into extinction? Or melt them? Either way, it would be an improvement.

[Dixie Darlin]

Maybe global warming will drive the specialus snowflakus entitleus into extinction? Or melt them? Either way, it would be an improvement.

Nah, they'll just become specialus dewdropus entitleus.

[Reika]

I work in a call center, so the SS is generally pretty standard, but this one just really stood out in my mind. I work in a supplemental health insurance division of a national insurance company known for it's "awesome appendages" slogan which include disability policies. Our policies state our processing time without needing additional info is 30 days, a few states are longer, but that's average. We generally strive for 10-14 days from the day the claim was received, but we process claims in the order they're received, not when someone went out. It's not fair to the people who file with us immediately to do otherwise.
Also, if a policy is less than 12 months old, we do a standard check to make sure it's not for a pre-existing condition. The pre-existing clause is clearly labeled several times in the policies and even the claim forms state that we may request medical records to verify that it's not pre-existing. Needless to say that can get royally bogged down because most places take their sweet time getting medical records out to anyone. /bg

This call took place last week and made me glad for my vacation this week.

SS in a snotty tone that's not even pretending to be polite: "I want to know why my claim still hasn't been paid."

I look up the claim which we'd only had for about 8 days, we requested medical records on the 4th day we had it because her policy was only 3 months old. I politely inform her (again, because I was the 6th rep in 2 days including a supervisor) of our processing policies. Which of course cued an increasingly vitriolic rant about how evil insurance companies. I've heard it before so I just ignore it while making polite sounds that yes I do hear her, and while I don't agree (in my mind) and I'm acknowledging her complaints.

Then we get to the point where I probably condemn myself to a part of EHell along with SS.

SS: "I'm a nursing supervisor and I never make people wait. If I have 3 people in line and the 4th person come up, I give them their information right away."

Me:   "But what about the first three people? If there's information they need right away, how is it fair to take care of the 4th person before them?"

Cue more screaming about how I don't understand what it's like to not have a paycheck for 2 months (she waited over a month to get her claim in to us) then a phone slammed down causing a painful squeal that made my head ache for the next couple of hours. I was unemployed for 6 months, and then only had part time work for a long time, so I do understand, but I never got nasty to anyone. And well, when we get hundreds to thousands claims a day, the only way we can handle it is first come first serve. Not our fault she waited over a month to get the paperwork in to us, and judging by the dates signed, she just waited to fax it whenever she got around to it.

[Miss Misery]

Not our fault she waited over a month to get the paperwork in to us, and judging by the dates signed, she just waited to fax it whenever she got around to it.

It is to your fault! Special Snowflakes are always right!! 

[Animala]

My sister is disable and with her illness she has varying levels of ability.  Right now it is pretty high and she is able to walk using a cane albeit rather slowly.  Yesterday we went to the fabric store.  When we go to the cross walk the road was clear, but since it take a bit for her to walk a big old truck came up and instead of patently waiting all 60 more seconds she gunned it around us, scaring the life out of all of us.

[Elphaba]

Yes. Almost as weird as my mother's other friend (Sam) who has a phobia of patterned crockery. I'm not dismissing that she has a phobia, phobias are very serious. She has a panick attack if anything is served on patterned plates or cups, especially if it's floral. I didn't know this when she came for a visit... my ears are still ringing.

Fiyero (the BF) has a very similar problem! His dad "passed down" this fear and I feel I'm doomed to boring dishes for the rest of my life! We're trying to compromise and moving into scary territory for him by (gasp!) looking at white dishes with a pattern around the edge, but this is only ok because the pattern isnt in the same place where food goes..

[Elle]

Yes. Almost as weird as my mother's other friend (Sam) who has a phobia of patterned crockery. I'm not dismissing that she has a phobia, phobias are very serious. She has a panick attack if anything is served on patterned plates or cups, especially if it's floral. I didn't know this when she came for a visit... my ears are still ringing.

Fiyero (the BF) has a very similar problem! His dad "passed down" this fear and I feel I'm doomed to boring dishes for the rest of my life! We're trying to compromise and moving into scary territory for him by (gasp!) looking at white dishes with a pattern around the edge, but this is only ok because the pattern isnt in the same place where food goes..

As someone with a wonky phobia* my own (nutcrackers) I'm curious. What is it about the patterned dishes that causes the problem?

*It's not really a phobia. I can cope just fine as long as I know there will be nutcrackers around (during Xmas you expect them,  during July you don't). I just. . . . prefer not be around them.  Vastly prefer.