What little things drive you completely up the wall....?

[ladyknight1]

People backing out of things last minute.

My girl scout troop is going to an event this weekend.  We had 3 parents sign up with their daughters and an additional 3 girls sign up without parents.   It's been less than a month since we signed up, so not exactly forgettable.

Now I'm taking 5 girls by myself, and had to spend time trying to get the whole car pool thing worked out.

I wish I could say this was unusual, but it seems like every planned event is like this.

Mine is the Boy Scouts, but same problem. Leaders/Committee members are supposed to commit to attending a camp out (that they planned and put on the calendar!), but we have a lot of people who travel for business, etc. This coming weekend is a camp out (on the beach) the Scoutmaster's son planned. Only 4 youth are going and if they don't get another adult, it is canceled.

[BabyMama]

Melodrama!! Last night DD (who's almost 5) decided she "hated" the dinner we were having, even though she's never had it before and didn't even look at it before she decided that. (Stuffed peppers and scalloped corn, for anyone wondering.) DH made her a plate and scraped the meat and rice out of the pepper, so it just looked like rice. Nope, still hated it. She was literally (ha) sobbing as she spooned each bite into her mouth. But then she'd look up and say something in a perfectly normal voice. I'd remind her to keep eating, and on came the waterworks again. You'd think I was feeding her her last meal. 

[ladyknight1]

Melodrama!! Last night DD (who's almost 5) decided she "hated" the dinner we were having, even though she's never had it before and didn't even look at it before she decided that. (Stuffed peppers and scalloped corn, for anyone wondering.) DH made her a plate and scraped the meat and rice out of the pepper, so it just looked like rice. Nope, still hated it. She was literally (ha) sobbing as she spooned each bite into her mouth. But then she'd look up and say something in a perfectly normal voice. I'd remind her to keep eating, and on came the waterworks again. You'd think I was feeding her her last meal. 

Is there a junior theater group you could enroll her in? DS, who is 14, is just starting to get out of the dramatic phase. I am paying for my raising.

[Diane AKA Traska]

When people ignore local etiquette/custom.  Around here, it's considered correct to be able to "save" a parking spot.  (A lot of cities, especially the lower to middle income areas, are like this, especially when street parking is all there is.  We live in a rowhome, which means that the width of our house, which is 20 ft, is all the parking space we have.).  I go downstairs to check the mail, and find that someone has moved the garbage can from its save spot so they could park.

Now, I know legally they can park there and it's a public street and yadda yadda.  But, in this area, it's considered bad etiquette to move someone's placeholder and park.  It just isn't done.

[siamesecat2965]

People who complain about stuff a. we have no control over, and b. stuff that really, compared to others, is pretty darn good.  I'm talking about open enrollment for health care.  My company is smalll, but for the size, and what we pay, our benefits are pretty darn fabulous.  I choose the PPO plan, and pay, for medical, dental AND vision, for myself, the grand total of $60 a month.  My dr. co-pay is $15, and my prescriptions run anywhere from $12-50, depending on whether its generic, brand name, or non-formulary.  As someone who is pretty healthy, and only goes to the dr. a couple times a year for checkups, I have no complaints.

But our co-pay is going up to $20 next year, and supposedly our premiums will increase, but we don't know by how much.  I'd guess for a family, here, its about $300 or so a month.  In contrast, my friend and her hubby pay $500 a month for 3 of them, and their co-pay for office visits is $40.  And he works for a large, multi-national company.

[Sirius]

This just happened:  I'm a remote medical transcriptionist who works at home, and I work with others who also work at home. 

Someone who was scheduled to work didn't show.  Since they were new I was inclined to chalk it off as confusion over schedules, etc. but we didn't get so much as an e-mail from them.  The next day we got an e-mail from the lead person telling us that the person was quite ill and wouldn't be able to work all week.  Now, I'm sympathetic, having been there.  But it would have been nice to know about this early enough so that I could have started earlier myself and/or planned my own work load better, since I got stuck working by myself.  Fortunately someone else who had worked all day came on for an hour and helped me get finished.  I'm hoping it was a breakdown in communication in the management of the business I work for (they're sometimes bad about getting messages to the rest of us) and not that the employee herself just didn't bother to tell anyone.   

[Piratelvr1121]

When people ignore local etiquette/custom.  Around here, it's considered correct to be able to "save" a parking spot.  (A lot of cities, especially the lower to middle income areas, are like this, especially when street parking is all there is.  We live in a rowhome, which means that the width of our house, which is 20 ft, is all the parking space we have.).  I go downstairs to check the mail, and find that someone has moved the garbage can from its save spot so they could park.

Now, I know legally they can park there and it's a public street and yadda yadda.  But, in this area, it's considered bad etiquette to move someone's placeholder and park.  It just isn't done.

I know what you mean, as our area is very similar.  Not everyone has a garage and the ones that do usually just have a one car garage.  Now some folks choose to park behind their house, as we have alleyways that allow people to drive behind their homes and park in the back rather than on the street.  We have this option too, though we seldom use it unless DH has just bought stuff for the yard/garden/pond and it's just easier to unload that way.

We usually park in front of our house though. Tricky thing is we live across the street from a dairy that is well known in town for their ice cream. I mean this is one of those old dairies.  I have one of the glass bottles they used to use back when they used to do that kind of thing. Now they sell ice cream and stuff like salads, sandwiches, hot dogs..that kinda thing. So people park on the street when they're visiting cause this place doesn't have a parking lot. 

And as you know, come winter, people spend all this time shoveling out their car when it snows so they "mark" it with trash cans, chairs or traffic cones, whatever.  Like you said it's perfectly legal for people to park there but it's annoying when you spend the time to shovel out your spot and it gets taken.  We actually haven't marked "our" spot right in front of the house but we do kinda sigh and just see if we can find somewhere else to park.

[Emmy]

When people say to give 110%.  100% is maximum, you can't give any more than that.

[violinp]

When I wake up in the morning, turn over, and the sun is right in my eyes! I hate having blinds...at least curtains block the sun out evenly.

[Betelnut]

This was my Dad's but has become one of mine.  When sports announcers say, "There is no score" when a game has been going on a while.  Uh, yes, there is, it is 0 to 0.

[Diane AKA Traska]

This was my Dad's but has become one of mine.  When sports announcers say, "There is no score" when a game has been going on a while.  Uh, yes, there is, it is 0 to 0.

YES YES YES!  Thank you!

"It's the bottom of the third, we're still scoreless."  No, scoreless would mean there's no score *at all*.  You have no points, so I believe you mean to say you're pointless.  (As if their scoreless comment didn't make them being pointless clear.)

[Betelnut]

This was my Dad's but has become one of mine.  When sports announcers say, "There is no score" when a game has been going on a while.  Uh, yes, there is, it is 0 to 0.

YES YES YES!  Thank you!

"It's the bottom of the third, we're still scoreless."  No, scoreless would mean there's no score *at all*.  You have no points, so I believe you mean to say you're pointless.  (As if their scoreless comment didn't make them being pointless clear.)

Or, they could say, "no one has scored."  But "scoreless?"  Bah!  There IS a score, right?  Sigh.  I'm glad someone else has this same peeve!

[Diane AKA Traska]

This one has rankled me for YEARS now.

So M applied for a Big Box hardware store charge card.  (We were looking to buy a ladder, and HOO BOY are they expensive anymore.)  We applied, M was turned down, and we waited the 2 to 10 business days to find out why.  The reason?  (Some of you have guessed it already)

"Insufficient credit experience."

We don't have credit cards, because whenever we apply we get this!  You can't have a credit card because you don't have a credit card.  Now, if you were to get a credit card, then we could give you a credit card.  Still, until you get a credit card you can't have a credit card.

I swear, charge card companies are all junior high school boys at their first school dance.  They line up, waiting for one of the other boys to make the first move.  But because every boy is waiting for the other boys to do so, nobody makes a move, and nobody gets to dance.   

[JennJenn68]

We don't have credit cards, because whenever we apply we get this!  You can't have a credit card because you don't have a credit card.  Now, if you were to get a credit card, then we could give you a credit card.  Still, until you get a credit card you can't have a credit card.

I swear, charge card companies are all junior high school boys at their first school dance.  They line up, waiting for one of the other boys to make the first move.  But because every boy is waiting for the other boys to do so, nobody makes a move, and nobody gets to dance.   

And yet, at frosh week in every university in Ontario, "Campus Credit Packages" are handed out like nobody's business, and if you're a student, it's almost guaranteed that you'll be approved.  Insane--most students are a) struggling under a monstrous debt load; the last thing they need is a credit card to run up, and b) young kids away from home for the first time who have insufficient world experience to realize that no, a credit card is not "free money" and perhaps one really shouldn't go on a spending spree at the nearest <insert major chain of expensive clothing store here 'cause I'm an idiot about fashion!> outlet...

My husband, in a foul mood, apparently filled in the forms on the "Campus Credit Package" with nothing more than his name and "none of your business" in all of the spaces--and still got approved for three cards, which he promptly cancelled.  Yet when he finished university (debt-free) and got his first entry-level job, nobody would give him a credit card for years and years.  Unreal.  (This really should all go into the "Brain Hurt" thread, but I'm too lazy to type it up again.)

[Diane AKA Traska]

We don't have credit cards, because whenever we apply we get this!  You can't have a credit card because you don't have a credit card.  Now, if you were to get a credit card, then we could give you a credit card.  Still, until you get a credit card you can't have a credit card.

I swear, charge card companies are all junior high school boys at their first school dance.  They line up, waiting for one of the other boys to make the first move.  But because every boy is waiting for the other boys to do so, nobody makes a move, and nobody gets to dance.   

And yet, at frosh week in every university in Ontario, "Campus Credit Packages" are handed out like nobody's business, and if you're a student, it's almost guaranteed that you'll be approved.  Insane--most students are a) struggling under a monstrous debt load; the last thing they need is a credit card to run up, and b) young kids away from home for the first time who have insufficient world experience to realize that no, a credit card is not "free money" and perhaps one really shouldn't go on a spending spree at the nearest <insert major chain of expensive clothing store here 'cause I'm an idiot about fashion!> outlet...

My husband, in a foul mood, apparently filled in the forms on the "Campus Credit Package" with nothing more than his name and "none of your business" in all of the spaces--and still got approved for three cards, which he promptly cancelled.  Yet when he finished university (debt-free) and got his first entry-level job, nobody would give him a credit card for years and years.  Unreal.  (This really should all go into the "Brain Hurt" thread, but I'm too lazy to type it up again.)

What really toasts my buns is that when M went to get a used car, the car loan places wouldn't give a car loan because of this.  But the car lot we went to is awesome and actually arranged in-house financing for us.  But *because* it was in house, the credit bureaus don't count that as credit experience.  We made all of our payments on time and STILL don't have any credit experience!  Yeah, I kvetched earlier about M's parking spot being taken... I have a pretty good idea where I'd like to park the minivan that we apparently didn't get a loan on.  (Hint: involves the phrase "darn near killed 'im!")