Special Snowflake Stories

[Diane AKA Traska]

I am so so happy to have the van during the week again because I hate grocery shopping on Saturdays. Loathe it with the firey passion of a thousand suns.  Remember Miss Scarlet from Clue? "Flames...flames...on the side of my head..." Yeah, that much.

I apologize, and I cannot stop myself... but it wasn't Miss Scarlet (played by the lovely Leslie Ann Warren), it was Mrs White (played by the incomparable Madeline Khan).  It's one of my favorite movies, and that was perhaps my favorite scene.  And one I quote.  A lot. 

[RingTailedLemur]

I don't really get how it's being a Special Snowflake to thimk that something isn't art.

I think the snowflakiness is in trying to set him/herself up as the last authority in what is or is not art.

[Piratelvr1121]

I am so so happy to have the van during the week again because I hate grocery shopping on Saturdays. Loathe it with the firey passion of a thousand suns.  Remember Miss Scarlet from Clue? "Flames...flames...on the side of my head..." Yeah, that much.

I apologize, and I cannot stop myself... but it wasn't Miss Scarlet (played by the lovely Leslie Ann Warren), it was Mrs White (played by the incomparable Madeline Khan).  It's one of my favorite movies, and that was perhaps my favorite scene.  And one I quote.  A lot. 

Oops! Sorry, I always get the names of the women in that movie confused!  In fact when you mentioned Mrs. White my first thought was that Mrs. White was the older lady but then I realized that was Mrs. Peacock.  But you're right, Mrs. White was Madeleine Kahn!  That's one of my favorite movies too. 

[snowflake]

I saw this on Yahoo - they asked people to submit stories about how the recent political election divided their families.  I don't want to link to the story because I don't want to even suggest that this is a red vs blue issue - this was just a very SS daughter. So, to summarize the story:
Daughter (who is the one telling the story) finds out her parents have put up a very large sign on their yard supporting the other candidate.  She makes a big deal of them not telling her during their regular phone conversations and when she finally confronts them, the mother is "ashamed" and tries to justify it because there is another large sign for daughter's candidate across the street.  Daughter then informs mother that as long as the sign is up, she will not visit them (keep in mind that she never saw the sign because she hadn't visited in all that time, so it doesn't strike me that she regularly visits them).  In the end, the sign went down because of Sandy.

11/14/12
I have a better one then that

True story, there was a candidate running   for an office  in our town and one of the candidates neighbors had a sign on their lawn for the opponent and the candidate called the brother of the neighbor and the brother called his sister and told her to take the sign off of her lawn.

The sister told the brother that it was her house and she would support who she wanted to.

Quite a few of the neighbors had signs for the opponent on their lawns, HHHMMMMMM I wonder if that was telling the candidate what they thought of the candidate.

IC


So, SS Daughter takes her parents political views a little too personally and tries to deny them the right to show their support of their candidate because she doesn't like it.

This reminds me of a couple of years ago.  Current housemate used to own a home in another state with her now ex-DH.

For years they'd displayed a sign in their front yard near election time for Candidate A of Blue Party.  Then, over the course of time, policy changes, scandals, so on, they no longer supported Candidate A, and when he asked if they wanted a sign for the upcoming election, they declined.

Candidate B for Red Party was door-knocking in the area, and asked, after talking to them, if they would display his campaign sign, which they agreed to.

Candidate A, being a bit of a SS, got annoyed when he drove past their house and saw the opposing candidate's sign, so he reported them to the local council for displaying illegal signage on their property.  The equivalent signage of which he'd been supplying them for many, many years.     He also apparently reported everybody else that had a sign for Candidate B. 

Housemate and exDH copped a big fine from the council...  which they referred to Candidate B who paid it for them.

This reminds me of something that just happened with the US election.  My friend attends a special interest group for her particular hobby.  At some point she realized that 90% of the people in this group were voting for the X candidate.  She is a supporter of Y and just didn't mention it because she is not confrontational.

Then close to the election, some X voters discovered that another attendee was voting Y.  She was cornered and they demanded that she answer for herself.  She was pretty nice about it and gave some valid reasons and acknowledged their reasons for voting X but said that she thought the issues she liked were more important to her personally.  They were a little dismissive in response so my friend spoke up to support the other Y voter.

Now, to be fair, most of the X supporters were being respectful.  But there were a couple that just started going off on some odd reasoning that anyone who participated in their hobby SHOULD support X because it just fit the stereotype more.  They further said that they participated in that hobby specifically to meet other X supporters and they felt that they had a right to attend meetings without having to meet any Ys who would "ruin things."

Uh, so in a country that is pretty close to 50-50, you expect to go out in public and just have everyone agree with you?  Um, no.

(And this hobby has NOTHING to do with politics BTW.)

[Midnight Kitty]

The thread has disintegrated into a profane screamfest about how much baby carriers weigh (it started when someone said, this is why I wear a baby sling, and someone else responded 'CRUD MONKEYS! I BROKE MY BACK WHEN I WAS 17 WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!!!!!' and descended from there).

This is why I love eHell :-)

Anyway, yes, from what I understand it was a counter situation, not a regular register, so one would expect to take a step backwards before turning to step away.

No it hasn't.  I can't find posts saying what you claim. Did I miss something?

[wolfie]

The thread has disintegrated into a profane screamfest about how much baby carriers weigh (it started when someone said, this is why I wear a baby sling, and someone else responded 'CRUD MONKEYS! I BROKE MY BACK WHEN I WAS 17 WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!!!!!' and descended from there).

This is why I love eHell :-)

Anyway, yes, from what I understand it was a counter situation, not a regular register, so one would expect to take a step backwards before turning to step away.

No it hasn't.  I can't find posts saying what you claim. Did I miss something?

I think she means the original thread that she pulled the story from (on a different board) has descended into a screamfest. Not this one.

[Midnight Kitty]

The thread has disintegrated into a profane screamfest about how much baby carriers weigh (it started when someone said, this is why I wear a baby sling, and someone else responded 'CRUD MONKEYS! I BROKE MY BACK WHEN I WAS 17 WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!!!!!' and descended from there).

This is why I love eHell :-)

Anyway, yes, from what I understand it was a counter situation, not a regular register, so one would expect to take a step backwards before turning to step away.

No it hasn't.  I can't find posts saying what you claim. Did I miss something?

I think she means the original thread that she pulled the story from (on a different board) has descended into a screamfest. Not this one.

Oh ... D'oh!

[Hillia]

The thread has disintegrated into a profane screamfest about how much baby carriers weigh (it started when someone said, this is why I wear a baby sling, and someone else responded 'CRUD MONKEYS! I BROKE MY BACK WHEN I WAS 17 WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!!!!!' and descended from there).

This is why I love eHell :-)

Anyway, yes, from what I understand it was a counter situation, not a regular register, so one would expect to take a step backwards before turning to step away.

No it hasn't.  I can't find posts saying what you claim. Did I miss something?

I think she means the original thread that she pulled the story from (on a different board) has descended into a screamfest. Not this one.

Oh ... D'oh!

Yeah, what Wolfie said    If anyone on ehell went off like people on that list are (every other word an F bomb) they would be banned so fast their heads would spin.

[icfrugal2]

I think the point was that they were in Customer Service, not at a register.  In the States, where I'm from and live, most CS desks work by having a line, one behind the other, and just the counter in front.  You would need to turn left or right to exit, and I could see why someone would need to back up a little.  Why she missed the lady putting her carrier down?  Single file, plus focused on talking to the CS rep at hand.  Putting the baby directly behind the little old lady was rude, and a trip was nigh on unavoidable.

Ooops, you are right.  I just conflated "in line" and "counter" with a check-out counter.

Still seems odd the EL did not notice the mom putting _something_ down behind her (whether a baby or a heavy bag of dog food etc.)  But like I said.. I don't like people "right" behind me so would be looking to see what was going on. I also try to give the person in front of me some privacy so am not right on their heels.  I like that personal space bubble very much!

The mom was rude and why she wanted the baby on the floor instead of set over the seat/in the cart we will never know. *SMH* at someone who could have seriously hurt another person by being careless.

Some people have vision problems, my friend did in her early 60's, could drive ect but if she was not expecting something on the floor I could see where she could trip.

You cannot assume that everyone's vision, attention is as good as yours. I would not expect someone to put a baby in a carrier on the floor behind me.

[rain]

Can we get back to snowflake stories, pretty please?

[weeblewobble]

I braved the Giant Retail Empire today for a few last minute items.  I got to the baking aisle and was bottlenecked into placed by a pair of employees with a big rolling rack of holiday baking items, restocking shelves.  There was no getting around them, because an elderly woman had parked her cart beside them and was ranting about recent union issues the Giant Retail Empire was having, and how the employees were oppressed, lowly and treated "lower than dogs."  The employees were insisting that their store's management treated the employees very well and they were long-term employees of the Giant Retail Empire, and were very happy.  That only made Chatty rant more, insisting that they were too ill-informed to know how oppressed they were.

Meanwhile, I was waiting for the conversation to wrap up, because myself and about four people behind me needed to get down the aisle. There was no room to turn around.  A similar line had built up on the opposite side of Chatty. Chatty's husband had noticed this and was trying to nudge their cart along, so they would be moved out of the way and we could all get down the aisle.  The more he moved it, the harder Chatty clung to the cart, dragging it back to the position by the big restocking rack.  "I'm giving these poor women some very important information!" she would hiss at him, dragging the cart back into place when he tried to push the cart along.

Finally, he pried the cart out of her hands and pushed it down the aisle.  I very quietly thanked him for moving and he muttered under his breath, "Hasn't stopped talking in fifty years" and winked at me.  All the while the wife was following behind him, chastising him for interrupting her when she was giving "those poor women" such important information.  She was still yammering at him as they turned the corner to another aisle. 

Because clearly, it was much more important for her to make the employees feel appropriately disenfranchised than to consider that there were other people around her who didn't want to be trapped in pre-Thanksgiving shopping heck.

[siamesecat2965]

A minor one, more funny than SS, but I was going "huh?" inside.  My store processes checks electronically, so the customer gets it back. So there really isn't any need to write it out. But i don't tell customers that since every now and then it won't process electronically, and we ahve to keep it, and deposit it, and it does need to have all the necesary info filled in.

had a customer the other night pay with a check.  Some people still aren't aware they get them back, so I always mention it.  Well, you would have thought I asked her to kick a puppy!  She said "OH NO, if I'd known that, I wouldn't have filled it out, what a waste of a check!!!!!' Um ok, if you say so.  Then she said it again.  And a third time. All I could do was apologize, but really? She also commented on how she could have used it again had she simply given me a blank check (no, because even if its not filled in, we still put it through and its franked).  Plus I'm pretty sure you can't use the same check number twice, although I could be wrong. She finally left but really? Such a teeny thing to make a fuss over.

[Kaora]

I don't really get how it's being a Special Snowflake to thimk that something isn't art. It may be rude or hurtful (and pretty unnecessary) to tell your friend that her work isn't art but it doesn't seem that SS to me. How are they implying that the rules don't apply to them because they're so special?

(I also don't really get what effort has to do with art. Solving a million piece jigsaw puzzle isn't art even though it creates an image and takes a lot of time and you can even frame it in the end)

I think a part of art is the creativity and spirit put into it, and making an original product in the end.  Saying that you put that same spirit into an original work but you can't claim it as yours because everyone else did it (then why doesn't the photographer credit Deity/Hydrogen for their pictures?) is pretty Snowflakey in itself.

[Shalamar]

I'm not sure who was the bigger SS here, the customer or my boss.   I used to work for a dinner theatre, and one night I got a call in the ticket-booking office from a prospective customer wanting to know details about the show.  I hadn't seen it (we employees didn't get free tickets, and they were too pricey for me), but I answered as best I could by reading the program.   The customer seemed satisfied and hung up.

A few days later, the theatre received a blistering letter complaining about how ignorant I was and how unhelpful I had been.    Luckily, she hadn't gotten my name - because my boss was absolutely furious about the letter and vowed to fire whomever was responsible.   

[Sanity Lost]

Another driving one!

I was in the left turning lane waiting for a break in traffic (I had a green light). There was a steady stream of cars going in the opposite direction; but 5 cars down there was a decent break coming. Apparently the lady behind me felt I should have zoomed through even with oncoming traffic and started honking and waving and yelling. I simply waved back and pointed to the (still) oncoming cars. Once the break was there, I went through and she zoomed around me (still yelling) to pull into the parking lot of the stores on the corner. Total time she had to wait from when I arrived at the light...2 minutes 

Sorry lady, I am not causing a horrific accident so you can get to the store a whole 2 minutes sooner. I like body parts to still be attached.