Special Snowflake Stories

[Azrail]

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..

I actually never thought to ask her why. And she never thought to tell me in advance of her fear of patterned plates! She just assumed I knew! If she had called me in advance, I would have used my plain ones. But I should definately find out why she's afraid of them.

You know... I never thought to ask her! She basically screamed and started hyperventillating and broke out into this huge sweat, and afterwards I was busy apologising to her and getting rid of the offending plates. But then again, she should have told me!

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.

[kareng57]

Confession time, Older Son told me DH got ticket for parking in the "no parking' zone at school during drop off time.  I asked DH what he was thinking?  "It was one time, I just ran in for a minute and I was late for....."  He looked at me and said, "What?"

"Two hundred kids, if every parent just runs in for a minute because they were late for work?"  I asked, "And you have a $75 ticket for illegal parking and you could've gotten another ticket for blocking traffic which is a moving violation?"  In DH's defense, he did pay the ticket and wrote a letter of aplogy to the school principal and Older Son says, it was a one time thing.  No special snowflakes in my house!   

   

Good that he came-clean about it.  But in our jurisdiction, police or bylaw officers don't have authority over no-parking areas at schools.  I certainly wish that they did.

The elementary school principal was also getting fed-up about the number of kids who were regularly 5 or 10 minutes late each day.  And it wasn't necessarily parental-disorganisation.  These parents were doing it deliberately.  They wanted to see their kids walk directly into the school, but of course they were SSs who couldn't possibly park in the parent-lot and stand and wait outside with their kids for a few minutes.

[Night_owl]

Confession time, Older Son told me DH got ticket for parking in the "no parking' zone at school during drop off time.  I asked DH what he was thinking?  "It was one time, I just ran in for a minute and I was late for....."  He looked at me and said, "What?"

"Two hundred kids, if every parent just runs in for a minute because they were late for work?"  I asked, "And you have a $75 ticket for illegal parking and you could've gotten another ticket for blocking traffic which is a moving violation?"  In DH's defense, he did pay the ticket and wrote a letter of apology to the school principal and Older Son says, it was a one time thing.  No special snowflakes in my house!   

   

Good that he came-clean about it.  But in our jurisdiction, police or bylaw officers don't have authority over no-parking areas at schools.  I certainly wish that they did.

The elementary school principal was also getting fed-up about the number of kids who were regularly 5 or 10 minutes late each day.  And it wasn't necessarily parental-disorganisation.  These parents were doing it deliberately.  They wanted to see their kids walk directly into the school, but of course they were SSs who couldn't possibly park in the parent-lot and stand and wait outside with their kids for a few minutes.

Well, DH was being a super special snowflake and when parking in the "No parking" zone manage to also park on the sidewalk ($75 dollar ticket) and therefore blocking the view of drivers pulling out and "obstructing' traffic.  The police officer was either cutting him a break on  the second ticket or just putting a little fear in him.  Doesn't matter, DH was raised better than that.

[kherbert05]

Not quite the same situation - but our elementary school had a horseshoe-shaped drop-off area.  It was definitely not a parking-area.  The idea was that you'd pull up next to the sidewalk, drop the kids off, then merge into the "driving" section.  Of course, what many parents did was to park at the sidewalk and then sit in the car, waiting for the bell to ring, so that they could see the children enter the building.  This forced many other parents to drop the kids off in the "driving" section - hardly a safe situation.  Overall it's the same kind of sitatuation "my kids are more important, it does not matter if what I do makes it less safe for your kids".

And there was a parent-parking-lot available (staff parked in a different lot) for parents who needed to spend a longer time at the school.  It usually had plenty of room, but even if it didn't, there was a city park across the street.

Our principal stopped this. We have a drive like yours for parents. The staff parking lot is used for the day care vans (buses in the back of the school). Some parents didn't like having to wait in line to drop off or pick up so they would get in the day care line. Principal told them they couldn't pick their kids/drop of their kids there because they were causing a hazard for other children. They could move or deal with the cops (smallish town).

Pick up parents are given a color coded card with their child's name. Kids sit on the porch by grade level. Sammy in Red means first grad Jane in green means 5th. We have 4 pick up spots each a star painted on the ground.  A teacher with a walkie talkie is down the sidewalk. She tells the parents what star  - then calls up front and a teacher on the porch calls Sammy first grade Jane 5th Purple star. The kids stand on the star (back from the curb.) Parent pulls up the purple star teacher opens the door and gets the kids in and buckled. Parent pulls away. Parents wanting a conversation are told to pull over to the staff lot, park, and wait for the teacher to finish duty.

[Archer]

My SIL (or Sister Outlaw, as I've privately nicknamed her after she and her DH had their illegal operation busted this year) is a blizzard. I have countless SS stories about her, but that would take hours and traumatize everyone, so here's a little one.

Two weeks before my wedding to her brother, SoL was in Ourtown visiting my SMIL and FIL. She called me and didn't ask, told me that her eldest daughter needed some jeans shortened, and that she was going to drop them off at my mother's to have my mother take care of the job. My mother is a very talented seamstress, and was sewing my wedding dress, my two bridesmaids' dresses and knitting us little shrug sweaters to wear over them, which SIL knew. SIL had met my mother maybe twice at this point, and had talked to her once on the telephone.

"Well, that won't work right now, SIL, because she's really busy finishing up the wedding clothes," I said, thinking that even if she'd forgotten that my mother was extremely busy with this huge gift for me, it was pretty presumptuous for her to assume that Mum would leap at the chance to do busywork for a near-acquaintance.

"Oh come on, she doesn't have 10 minutes?" SIL snapped.

"Not right now," I said truthfully.

"Fine, thanks," SIL snarked, and hung up.

10 minutes later, I get a phone call from my Mum.

"Did I tell SIL that I would do her kids' mending?" she asked, genuinely puzzled. SIL had called her after hanging up with me, and attempted to badger her into doing the job! No "please," no asking at all even. Just "I really need this done," with the distinct attitude that my mother was the "help." Fortunately, Mum has never had a problem with "no" as a complete sentence, but she was baffled at the entitlement.

(SIL has a history of staging bizarre crises just when large events are happening in others' lives. DH and I just bought our first house, so right about moving time, she'll call for something, I just know it.)

[otterwoman]

Oh, I have one!

Years ago, I managed a One Hour Photo shop in a mall. One day, it should have been a slow day, midweek. Instead, we were slammed. We had about 50 rolls of film dropped off by 1:30pm. We were already backed up, with the earliest pickup time at 4:30pm. I was the only person printing in the lab, and there were two young ladies at the registers.

Enter Special Snowflake. She did wait in the line to drop off her roll of film, but when she was told that the pickup time was 4:30, she exploded at the associate. Her film was important! She needed it faster!

I had always told my staff that they did not get paid enough to deal with screamers. If someone started yelling, they were to find me. I'd deal with the screamer.

So, the associate came to the lab to get me. Now I'm standing at the counter listening to the SS rant how her film is important, which means I'm not printing photos. Hence, falling further behind. I wait for her to take a breath, and tell her that the earliest pickup is at 4:30. Take it or leave. Then I walked back to the lab.

Special Snowflake followed me down the store towards the lab yelling at me," You don't have your priorities straight! Other people's vacation pictures have to wait! My business pictures HAVE to come first!"

I snapped back, "I do have my priorities straight. First come, first served! And these people got here before you!" I pointed to the 50 rolls of film waiting. "If you don't want to wait, go to (competitor)!"

She left her film. It had 12 pictures of the outside of a house.

She came back at 7:30. This time she had a contrite look on her face.  I don't think she was expecting to see me still there.

[audhs]

The mother of one of Mr. Sirius' students wanted to know why he couldn't pick Student up right in front of their home.  This particular student has to be met by a parent/guardian because of their disability, and she was grousing about having to wait on the corner in the rain.  The stop was something like two houses away from their home.  Mr. Sirius explained that he couldn't do that because the bus didn't fit into the narrow cul-de-sac where they lived.  "Why can't you get a smaller bus?"  He explained that he had to have a bus with a wheelchair lift, and they only come in certain sizes.  "Well, why can't someone else pick up the kids in wheelchairs?"  He explained that the child in the wheelchair that he transports lived only two blocks away, and it didn't make sense to have another bus come all the way over to their neighborhood when he could easily pick up both students.  He was very polite; he always is.  But he said he runs into parents like that all of the time, who don't seem to realize that there are other students on the bus besides theirs.   

He could tell them about the winner of a bus driver I had in Jr high school who actually took a full sized school bus into a cul-de-sac and tried to turn it around.   Needless to say she backed into someones car, we were something like 2 hours late for school on the first day while they called the plolice and made an accident report.  Fun times.

[Nurvingiel]

I remembered one the other day.  This is from my DF.

He worked on the corner of two busy, two-lane streets.  One day, a woman in a minivan pulled up to the corner, and began turning right.  But she wasn't really turning right, she was pulling over.  Her turn had angled her car so that she fully blocked the right-hand lane and partially blocked the left-hand lane.

She then put the car in park and turned off the engine.  She got out of the car and went around the back door and opened it, getting her young daughter.  This would all be fine if she had parked somewhere, but she was blocking two lanes of traffic!

The woman took her daughter's hand and walked down the street, away from the car.  Meanwhile, drivers are honking, merging into the left lane, and then slowly going around the minivan.  On-coming traffic slows because drivers have to cross the centre line by a bit in order to move around her car.

Oblivious to all this, Special Snowflake Driver walked off.

It's quite likely that there wasn't one parking spot within a three block radius.  But what Regular Snowflakes do is they drive around in a circle until a spot opens up, or they park ten blocks away.  They do not park in the middle of the street!

I like to think my reaction would be, "Hello, information, I need the number for a tow company in Neighbourhood," but I wasn't there.

Special Snowflake Entitledness aside, anyone who doesn't notice complete chaos on the road and the cause thereof should not have a driver's licence.

[geekette]

Here's a SS for you all;
Back when I was still in school (hey, it wasn't that long ago!), I got into an accident in art. Specifically, I cut about 3-5mm (that's about .2 inches for you not using metric) of skin off the top of my finger - not a lot of skin, but it bleed quite extensively . After waiting for my art teacher to be free to show him, I went to the nurse's office - our nurse, however, is also one of the sectaries at the front office.
So, I come in and ask her to bandage my finger, and the other sectary is out, at a dentist's appointment.
In comes a mother who must, absolutely must, talk to the sectary (I think it was about a detention her son got, but I'm not sure - I was a bit woozy), and must talk to her now. Sectary, of course, is busy with me, and assures SS she'll be there in just a moment - but no, her time is much more important than my bleeding.

So sectary continues to bandage my finger while SS demands that she stop. Sectary finishes with my finger, and I insist that she doesn't have to call my parents, I'll go back to class.
Stop at the door, and SS, who was now huffing even though she's been addressed. Then I, in my own E-Hell worthy moment, loudly ask her if her time had become more important than my health before or after her husband had become a famous and very important Australian Cabnit Minister. And promptly bolt out the door before she can answer.

((Needless to say, no one in my family voted for his party at the next election  ))

[Twik]

I remember flying with one back in the late nineties.

She was ahead of me as we checked in for a flight that would take about 2 hours. She looked to be in her mid-sixties, dressed in very casual, though probably expensive, clothes - t-shirt, walking shorts, running shoes. I could tell from the start she was in a bad mood, and seemed to be miffed that the whole check-in was taking, well, as long as a checkin usually does.

When she'd finished, and the nice lady at the desk handed her her boarding pass, she suddenly turned on her and hissed "So, where is my wheelchair? Why are you forcing me to walk to the plane? Don't you know I had arthroscopic surgery on my knee six weeks ago?"

The agent asked, helplessly, if she'd ordered a wheelchair in advance. No, she hadn't - surely it was only reaonable that the airline would see an elderly woman and have a wheelchair ready and waiting for her. Certainly SHE should not have to wait for one. Even if she walked up to the counter under her own steam, with no discernable limp. A trolley was quickly found to take her to her gate, but after she was out of earshot, I heard the agent sigh, "They get mad if we assume they *do* need a wheelchair without asking...."

Well, lucky me, I'm right across the aisle from her during the flight. This was back when short flights actually rovided food. We were given a glass of juice, a fruit cup, and a muffin - fine, I thought, for a flight that left at 9:15 and would land before noon. After all, I'd had enough sense to eat breakfast before leaving for the airport. Anyone would, or at least catch a bite at the airport after checking in. Right?

Well, not Miss Snowflake. She started raising Cain because "I've been up since 5 o'clock this morning, and I expected to get a hot breakfast, not this *()#@! Where is my hot breakfast? I've been waiting four hours for my hot breakfast!" The attendant tried to explain to her that flights after nine only provided a "snack", not a hot breakfast. Another passenger put himself in her bad books by pointing out that if she looked at her itinerary, it clearly said "snack", not "hot breakfast". She kept repeating "I haven't had a bite to eat all morning, and I WANT MY HOT BREAKFAST!"

Finally, the flight attendant told her she was sorry, but there was no hot breakfast on board, and they were not prepared to land the plane to obtain one just for her. I giggled the rest of the flight, imagining the jet trying to get into a McDonald's drive-thru to get her an Egg McMuffin.

[Minmom3]

*giggles at the image of a herd of special snowflakes*

Oh no.  Please say they don't all travel together at some point.  One or two at a time is one thing, but en masse?!  YIKES!


[/quote]

OK, NOW I have an an image of a Dr. Seuss albino reindeer, with certain differences, in large quantities, traveling over and annihilating the landscape as they thunder over it.  The female of the species may be seen sometimes with overdone lipstick, and voicing a loud bray. 
 

[iridaceae]

I went to Trader Joe's the other day. For those of you who don't know, Trader Joe's is is a grocery store, kinda healthy-foody and with reasonable prices.  The woman ahead of me and I foolishly assumed that the little old man ahead of us was nearly checked out: his food had all been rung up and he was paying. Silly us!

Trader Joe's bags are paper. Little old man started having a hissy fit. He wanted plastic bags! Not paper! The clerk was gracious enough to get someone to go in back and see if they could find a plastic bag or three. They opened up a new lane (the lines were getting long) and the woman ahead of me and I hurried over there. He was still there, waiting, all huffy, when I left the store.

[gibsongirl]

When I was 18 I worked for a lumber yard as security.  Basically I stood in a guard shack and made sure that the trucks delivered the right stuff, and the customers took only the amount of bricks for which they had paid.

One day a Special Snowflake truck driver decided to approach the guard shack from the front lane of traffic instead of the back, (I'll try to diagram...)

--------------------------------------Back Fence---------------------------



                 /_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
                / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

                        Stupid bottom Semi Truck Driver


  Entrance                             
                      |               |
                      | Guard      |
                      |  Shack     |


And even though I insisted that he needed to back up, and go to the back lane of traffic in order to make the turn, he decided to not believe the "girl" and said he'd done it before just fine...


Yeah...he took out half the guard shack.     I hate seeing damage to property I'm supposed to be guarding, but I loved seeing him have to deal with my manager, the store manager, and his own company...
                       

[wonderfullyanonymous]

Not quite the same situation - but our elementary school had a horseshoe-shaped drop-off area.  It was definitely not a parking-area.  The idea was that you'd pull up next to the sidewalk, drop the kids off, then merge into the "driving" section.  Of course, what many parents did was to park at the sidewalk and then sit in the car, waiting for the bell to ring, so that they could see the children enter the building.  This forced many other parents to drop the kids off in the "driving" section - hardly a safe situation.  Overall it's the same kind of sitatuation "my kids are more important, it does not matter if what I do makes it less safe for your kids".

And there was a parent-parking-lot available (staff parked in a different lot) for parents who needed to spend a longer time at the school.  It usually had plenty of room, but even if it didn't, there was a city park across the street.

My youngest son went to a school with a horseshoe shaped drop off and pickup. There is a list of SSparents here.

1. Park right in front of pick up area and leave car so it creates a traffic jam as parents who have picked up their kids try and leave.

2. SS parents who are picking up more than one kid and won't move forward when there is room and it causes a traffic jam.

3. The worst ones are in the morning, when there are several cars with SS parents, parked in the horseshoe in a manner that no other cars can get in and drop off their kids, having a 20 minute conversation with their kids.

Drop and go people, drop and go!

Oh, I have one!

Years ago, I managed a One Hour Photo shop in a mall. One day, it should have been a slow day, midweek. Instead, we were slammed. We had about 50 rolls of film dropped off by 1:30pm. We were already backed up, with the earliest pickup time at 4:30pm. I was the only person printing in the lab, and there were two young ladies at the registers.

Enter Special Snowflake. She did wait in the line to drop off her roll of film, but when she was told that the pickup time was 4:30, she exploded at the associate. Her film was important! She needed it faster!

I had always told my staff that they did not get paid enough to deal with screamers. If someone started yelling, they were to find me. I'd deal with the screamer.

So, the associate came to the lab to get me. Now I'm standing at the counter listening to the SS rant how her film is important, which means I'm not printing photos. Hence, falling further behind. I wait for her to take a breath, and tell her that the earliest pickup is at 4:30. Take it or leave. Then I walked back to the lab.

Special Snowflake followed me down the store towards the lab yelling at me," You don't have your priorities straight! Other people's vacation pictures have to wait! My business pictures HAVE to come first!"

I snapped back, "I do have my priorities straight. First come, first served! And these people got here before you!" I pointed to the 50 rolls of film waiting. "If you don't want to wait, go to (competitor)!"

She left her film. It had 12 pictures of the outside of a house.

She came back at 7:30. This time she had a contrite look on her face.  I don't think she was expecting to see me still there.

How about the SS, I don't care if you are closed, you have to restart the machines because SSjr needs these pictures for a project for school, first thing in the morning.

They don't care that you are almost done with your shift, and that the machines are on a timer, that we have no knowledge of how to override, nor do we want to, and that once it's off, it takes almost an hour to restart.

[DaDancingPsych]

What is it about SS and their pictures?!?  Unfortunately, I have mentally blocked the stories that I have from working the one-hour photo during one college summer.  (Too painful.)  However, I always loved the ones who demanded that you fix their blurry picture.  Seriously, the negative wasn't clear, there's nothing that I could do.