Special Snowflake Stories

[siamesecat2965]

Not any one ss story, but generally, having to do with communal laundry rooms....So its Saturday morning, and as I was lazy last night, I didn't do any laundry.  I decided to do some of it this morning, even though weekends in my laundry room are not fun!  It opens at 9; I go down about 8:58 and hear the washers already running.  No biggie as sometimes maintenance will open the room maybe 5 or 10 of 9.  Nope, when I get in, 4 of the 8 machines are running and almost done with their 30 minute cycle. (and 2 are broken)   And there is another couple waiting.  Not only that, but 4 of the 6 working dryers still have clothes in them from yesterday as do three of the carts!  So the woman who had the washers going comes down, and me and the couple decide who needs how many, and it all works out.

I go back down to put my stuff in the dryer, and the maintenance guy is in there, cleaning, but with the door closed and smoking!  I hate smoke, it gives me a headache, and I also don't want my nice clean clothes to smell like it.  So I took one of the carts, still full of someone's clothes from yesterday, and propped open the door.  Its chilly, and he gave me a look, but hey, too bad.  You don't like it, put it out.

Then I had to empty out someone else's stuff from a cart, onto the bench in there, so I could use it.  UGH!  I really don't like touching someone else's clothes, even if they're clean.  It just skeeves me out for some reason.  I don't understand the leaving of the clothes in the washer, or dryer, or in the carts.  Do folks really think that its just going to sit there, when others need to use them?  The stuff in the carts was most likely left in the dryer, and someone else took it out to use them.

And don't get me started about all the detergent spilled all over the tops of the washers, the lint in the dryers, and the used dryer sheets scattered all over the floor.  Is it really that hard to put your detergent in without spilling it, and if you do, COME BACK with something to wipe it up with...and when you take your clothes out, empty the lint filters, and throw away your dryer sheets! 

Fortunately my stuff is now in the dryer, and i plan to go down about 10 minutes before its done, since I hate anyone but me touching my clothes.

[otterwoman]

Quote; "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.  "

Don't you know it's your fault. You must have dropped the roll of film and shaken it up!
Someone told me this once, I nearly died laughing!

[Fidgets]

All the doctor's office stories reminded me of this one.  Last year, July 3rd and I'm sitting in the orthopaedic surgeon's office to get the stitches pulled out of my knee and to do the surgery follow-up.  The office is **jammed** since it's the day before a holiday and the 4th fell on a Friday, so the office was going to be closed for 4 days.  The receptionist warned me when I arrived that they were running late because they'd jammed the schedule full trying to take care of as many people as possible so the patients wouldn't have to wait 4 days before being seen.  And they were giving everyone the opportunity to reschedule if they couldn't wait.  End BG.

I'm sitting near the desk when SS walks up. She starts demanding that they see her husband.  No, of course she doesn't have an appointment for that day.  The receptionist just doesn't understaaaaaaaand!  Her husband was in pain and had to have the cast changed on his arm right now!  Of course they could fit him in, they just didn't want to.  On and on and on....by this time, everyone in the waiting room looks like the Olympic Synchronized Eye-Rolling Team.  The best part?  The reason they didn't have an appointment?  Husband had broken his arm a week or so before.  Husband (and wife) were told to make an appointment to have the arm re-wrapped after the swelling went down.  They did so.  For two days previously and the wife explained that, well, she forgot (!) and it wasn't that big a deal for them to just fit her in when it was convenient for her!  The receptionist called their other office to try and find someone that could see the guy that day and then we got 15 minutes of why it was so inconvenient for her to drive less than 5 miles away to get her husband taken care of.  Didn't they understand that she had other things to do and they were being inconsiderate and inconveniencing her and surely someone else could just wait......... 

I'm surprised none of us in the waiting room sprained our eyes that day.

[Pinky830]

I posted once-it might have been on the old site-about a horrific Saturday morning I had at work. I work in a 24-hour animal hospital that sees overnight emergencies, so at any time while the waiting room looks relatively tranquil, we might be tending to several critical hospitalized patients. On this particular day, we had two in hospital that crashed within minutes of each other. We worked like fiends on both of them for nearly an hour but tragically, they both died.

Afterward, I found out that an appointment had come in. The receptionist had told them that we had dire emergencies and they would have to wait for what might be quite awhile, or they could reschedule. They went NUTS and tried to insist that we drop what we were doing and see their dog because by golly, they had an appointment!

Their appointment was for a tiny mass on the dog's eye that had been there for two weeks.

[Fidgets]

I despise parking lot vultures; specifically the ones with delusions of high importance (Snowflake Syndrome?).

The one nice thing (or so I thought) about the visit was that we landed a great parking spot.  After we finished loading groceries in the trunk, I started buckling the kiddo into his carseat.  At this point the lady who had followed us from the front doors of the store to our parking spot and had been waiting for it this entire time became impatient enough to honk at us to hurry up so she could take our spot.

This made me giggle.  I can't remember where the heck I read it, but a gentleman was tired of waiting at red lights and then getting honked at a split second after the light turned green (his not having jumped on the accelerator, I suppose).  Anyway, the next time someone did that, he turned off his engine, stepped out of his car, slowly locked the door with the key, slowly ambled back to the person who'd honked, asked them to roll down their window and said, "I beg your pardon, did you wish to summon me?".  After getting a negative, slowly back to the car, slow unlock of the door, slow everything.  He said it was kind of pleasant making the "honker" miss 3 green lights.   

[kherbert05]

I posted this before. We were at the zoo. I left Loren's stroller by the trunk, while I strapped her in with the AC on. Suddenly my trunk closed. This family of Special snowflakes had collapsed the stroller and put it up. So I had to open the trunk, haul the stroller out, uncollapse it, get the insulated bag with her bottle and my coke out and then put everything up. It also scared me that I hadn't been aware they were there.

Another time we were at the zoo, left and were going to go on the park train. Loren needed a change. So I took her to the car to change her. My Cousin C and her son were with us. This car followed us, we waved them off. The still sat there at the end of the car. So Cousin C went over and told them we weren't leaving just changing the baby. THey told her we had to leave. Thankfully a cop on horseback came by and told them to leave. He told us he would be around and keep an eye on them and my car. There is another lot that we passed on the train - it had plenty of empty spaces.

[wonderfullyanonymous]

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.   

Photo labs have the best SS stories.

Yours reminded me of this one...

One Saturday morning, we were being slammed. Even with 4 people working we were having a hard time keeping up to the 1 hour time limit. Then someone comes in with a memory card from their camcorder full of pictures. Something like 800 pictures, and they wanted them all. We jump our time up to 1 1/2 hours because there was no way we were going to be able to keep up with the volume. The pictures start coming out of the printer, and they are awful. Grainy, pixeled, out of focus. A few hours later, SS come in to pick up their pictures. Oh my, they raised Kane. It was our fault the pictures were bad, it was a new camcorder, they had spent a lot of money on this thing, and the camera feature on the camcorder had a megapixel quality, there was no excuse the picture were this bad, we must have done something to them.

They were convinced, that because they spent all this money on the camcorder, the pictures should have been fantastic, even if the quality was just 1 megapixel.  We ended up eating that order because they didn't take one picture.

[audhs]

ISo Cousin C went over and told them we weren't leaving just changing the baby. THey told her we had to leave. Thankfully a cop on horseback came by and told them to leave. He told us he would be around and keep an eye on them and my car. There is another lot that we passed on the train - it had plenty of empty spaces.

It's the logic of SS that I just don't get. Seriously when people make statements like this one I always want to ask why in the world they think that what they are saying is true.  And on that same thought why in the world do they think you'd acutally beleive them.   Oh I'm sorry sir I didn't know that I had to leave just because you want my spot here just let me pack up my stuff and I'll get right out of your way.     

[Sirius]

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.   

Or the ones who want you to move the cow so they can see what their great-grandfather looked like.  I've got a picture like that; I took a picture of my uncle when he was taking a picture of me, and it shows him with a camera in front of his face.  Maybe I could ask to have the camera moved so I can see his face... (I know enough about photography to know that if they moved the camera there'd just be this big blank camera-shaped hole in the picture and no uncle.  So I wouldn't ask something like that.  But you can bet that every photo shop has been asked a question like that at least once.) 

[Keres]

Or the ones who want you to move the cow so they can see what their great-grandfather looked like. 

I'm to blame for my step grandmother thinking that is possible.  She had a picture of her father with an awesome backdrop and a lot of other family in the picture.  Unfortunately, her father's face was obscured by his brother's hand.  I went through her album and found another picture of her father, scanned both pictures, and spent about an hour photoshopping one pic over the other to get it to look just right.  Printed it out, and it looked like the brothers were standing there with their arms around each other rather than one grabbing the face of the other.

Unfortunately, step grandmother, though sweet and loving, really isn't the sharpest crayon in the box.  She found another picture with an obscured face, took it to a studio, and ended up so angry she was crying and convinced they were discriminating against her due to her Louisiana accent.  Cause obviously it was possible, as her high school age grandchild had done it, so it should be easy for these professionals, right?

Of course, this is the woman who, until age 31 where she finally witnessed the truth for herself, was convinced that the sun rose in the west in California. 

[sisbam]

I has one!  

Last night Brobam and I were on an adventure looking for a store of the novelty persuasion (oddly enough, this is pertinent to the story). We leave the store and get in our car. As we lock the door and turn on the engine, a guy walks up to the car and asks BF to roll the window down. Now, I wanted him to apologetically shake his head and drive off, but he decided to roll down the window and talk to the guy because "there were two other people in the parking lot looking at him, so I knew he wasn't gonna try anything." In other words, there were witnesses.

So, the guy's from New Orleans - a Katrina victim. He and his family got kicked out of their house here because of asbestos and he's staying in the hotel across the street. He has five kids and they've been hungry for two days. Could we help him out, etc etc...

Brobam replies, "I'm sorry man. I've got no spare cash on me."

Man: That's okay. You can go to the Wendy's right here and get them some dinner.

Brobam: Ummmm, Here's a dollar.

Man: Man, I've got six kids. I can't feed them with a dollar. I'm just being real with you.

Me: *becoming increasingly irritated by the second* Well, we can take our dollar back. If you're not appreciative, we'll just take it back.

Man: Ma'am, I am appreciative but I'm just sayin'... *walks off*

We both shake our heads and head home.

Questions:

1) If your kids are really that hungry, why are you harassing people in the parking lot of a *novelty* store instead of pleading your case to the patrons or workers at Wendy's?  

2) Isn't there a grocery store near here? Can't you get like ten packs of Ramen for a dollar? It's food.

3) You're inconveniencing us. Shouldn't you be grateful for whatever money we can spare - that is, if you really need it? I know Brobam was enabling with the "go away" money, but goodness!

I'll go to ehell; I'm okay with it...

[Suze]

sisbam - I'll lay you odds that there are NO kids - he has never been near New Orleans in his life and that he normally makes "*** good" money doing this.

It's an old scam - one people have been using, I think, for a zillion years.

My kids are hungry - help me feed them.

[Drunken Housewife]

I've met lots of Special Snowflakes over my life, but here's just one quick anecdote:

I was in the hospital with meningitis.  I had a 2 bed-room to myself for a few days, and then an elderly Special Snowflake was admitted.  At the time she was admitted, she made a big scene with the couple admitting her that she was going to die in the hospital and never see them again, crying and screaming.  I could tell from their completely unfazed and harassed looking lack of reaction that they'd been through a lot of Deathbed Scenes with their Special Snowflake before.

As soon as this couple left, her tears turned off like magic, and she started harassing the nurses.  She was constantly ringing the call button, bugging the nurses to bring her more blankets, turn up the TV, find the remote, get her this, get her that...

What irked me was that I'd asked for another blanket nicely and was told, "You're not really cold; you're in a lot of pain and that makes you think you're cold" and was NOT given one, but the Snowflake got extra blankets ASAP because she was such a pain.

Then the Snowflake, with all her blankets, decided she needed fresh air and that she was hot.  She asked me to open the window, as my bed was next to it.  IT WAS SNOWING.  I said, "It's snowing.  I'm NOT opening the window." 

She could not believe I wouldn't open the window and let snow drift in over me during a major storm (it was Maine in January). 

After a few more hours of her, I checked out of the hospital against doctor's orders and went home early, feeling still very, very ill.

[Bharris]

Maybe we could ship all the Special Snowflakes to the North Pole and save the polar bears!  Then they'd be special, indeed!   

[extranormal]

Maybe we could ship all the Special Snowflakes to the North Pole and save the polar bears!  Then they'd be special, indeed!   

Though something tells me polar bears deal swiftly and harshly with line-cutters.