I just want to sound off about the appropriate etiquette for the office fridge:
1) To the person who continuously leaves the half full, unopened can of diet 7-Up in the door of the fridge – Get with the program Spanky! I hope you don’t pull this stunt at home, do you?? Maybe you do, but let’s consider the health risk of this……Your saliva and skin cells from your lips are in the can and on the outside of the can where you sipped from. Not to mention where your hands held the can while sipping. I take issue with a few things here:
a) Your hands are probably not clean, therefore the germs are invading the fridge from your can.
b) Your germs are in the can, also invading the fridge.
c) Your germs are multiplying like crazy in the can (now a petri dish) which will also invade the things next to your can.
If you are looking for your can from yesterday or last week or from the at least 30 times you have done this so far over the course of the last 2 years, they are in the garbage.
Same goes for those left-overs you stacked on top of the cans of soda without a cover, stinkin up the place. (see previous post on stinky food in the office.)
I love white elephant gift exchanges. They are most always fun and filled with laughs. The thing I like the best about them is you can give any gift you want!
The best and by the funniest gift I have seen was the body condom. It was this package that was wrapped in a shirt box. The unsuspecting person who received it never got a chance to trade it away as no one wanted it!
The least funny I saw was a pair of thong underwear. Really not a good gift to give to anyone except the significant other.
This years gift for the exchange will be a fine selection of cheap wines and liquors from Around the world.
This is a post about manners and the lack thereof. If that bores you, move on. If not, stay with me on this.
Last night I took the family out to dinner at the local Frankie, Johnny and Luigi’s for a nice Italian dinner. The food was great as usual, the service was somewhat slow and the price was right.
While waiting for our food and in between fending off crayon attacks from my son, I noticed a group of 4 people sit down at the table across from ours. They were obviously there for business, probably a work function. In eavesdropping (I know I know) I realized that it was a training dinner. The infamous training dinner! Many memories I have around these but what I observed last night was the best display of poor manners I have seen by a “leader” of the training dinner in some time. The leader was in her late 20’s to early 30’s. I will guess 31.
I listened to her cut off conversations, interrupt the new trainees, and when two that were running late sat down, she reached across the one in the middle to get to the new arrival and shake her hand. This to me was very rude to the lady in the middle. I mean she was sitting there talking with the person across from her and all of a sudden the “leader” sticks her hand across the table in front of the lady next to her to shake hands! I thought, wow! What an Idiot! I could tell the lady in the middle was thinking same thing too, judging by her body language. She also kept incessantly clearing her throat and talking in a tone above everyone else at their table.
I felt sorry for those folks to have such an unaware person as what is probably their trainer for the next week or so.
I am going to rant for a moment about how hard it is to find a gas station that has a good area to inflate your tires. I have searched around my house within a 10 miles radius and they all want from $.25 to $.75. What a pain. Now I have to BUY air?? Well, the place I went to tonight to check my tires was a 76 station. I went inside and asked the guy if he could turn on the air for me…..they have a “freebie” switch they can push for you to avoid the fee apparently. The thing with the freebie route is you have to ask him 4 times to turn it on. Let me tell you, on the fourth time, I felt like I was bothering him. But I saved at least $2.00.
All gas stations should have the following for their “Tire Inflation Area:”
1) A clean well lit area.
2) An Air Hose at no charge-push the button and it turns on.
3) A compressor that at least fills the tire, not the other way around or deflates it.
4) A working, accurate tire guage attached to the air nozzle.
5) Paper Towels.
6) Squeegee with soap and water.
That’s it. If I could find a gas station with that, I would even buy my gas there. Why can’t they all have this set up? As much as we pay for gasoline and the rate the prices are rising, they should definitely have it.
I own a second gen, 20 GB Apple iPod. (No, not the one where the wheel actually turns) The one after that when the folks at Apple got smart and changed it to a touch wheel, that doesn’t turn. It, like a touch-pad on a laptop, senses the position of your finger and responds accordingly. I wonder what it would do if it knew I was flipping it the bird last night?!
I Digress. I loved my pod, until alas, the audio jack broke for no apparent reason. (No, I didn’t try some other audio jack in there other than the right one.) So I ask a friend of mine, that has a friend who works for an Apple Store. He checked with said friend who in turn recommended two things:
2) Go to the local Apple Store and ask around for a local repair shop.
I chose #2 first so I wasn’t out any money and didn’t have to send my pod anywhere for diagnosis. (I knew what it needed anyways….a relacement audio jack soldered to the board.) Well, the guys at The Apple Store (They were all guys, no women in sight) were completely useless. The word dolt comes to mind fairly quickly. I asked 5 of the employees where I could get my pod fixed and clearly they had been trained to just fall back onto, “If I were you, I would get a new one”. Upon asking how I could get my music transferred over to a new pod after I entertained their corporate rhetoric, they had no idea. They just said, “Itunes will recognize the new one and old one. ”
Wallah. Yeah right. I wanted to run for the hills.
iTunes is the mini-me of Windows. Very controlling and a POS to work with when you have more than one pod. My wife and I can’t even share the music we have purchased from her Mini 4 Gig Pod to my 20 gigger. It would be really nice if I didn’t have to use one of the iTune ripping programs to achieve seamless usability.
Come On Apple, stop acting like a Granny Smith and be a Golden Delicious!
I was sitting in my office today wondering why the retail industry calls the supposed best shopping day of the year “Black Friday“. At first thought, I didn’t think it was too politically correct especially with all the heat that WalMart has taken lately. (I know that place is going to be CROWDED on Friday at 5am)
I asked some of my colleagues and then it dawned on me that the retail industry named it as such because the retail stores lose money for most of the year until the day after Thanksgiving. This is the day when retailers go from losing money to making a profit; they go from “in the red” to “in the black”. I mean it really does make sense now that I look at that way. Afterall, what are they going to call it, Profitable Friday? Heck no, that sounds too greedy and corporatized.
Are you going to spend more this year on gifts for friends and family or less? Over the last 3 years consumers have spent 5% more over the previous year, and yet foreclosures are up for the first time in 3 years as well. Go figure. I guess that makes when you buy more than you can afford, especially with those negative amoritization loans they have these days.
I signed up with WordPress less than a week ago and today I received a message to wait for 5 minutes as they are updating their servers. This lasted every time I tried to post from 8am until now, when I am updating at 9:20pm.
I was checking out some info on the net neutrality issue that has not received enough attention. It is a big deal; if you like surfing where you want when you want, check out this video.
First of all, the Stanford team was sloppy at best. (I know) It was just a scrub game against the San Jose State Spartans that the Cardinal could have won by a wider margin had they left in their starters all night, but they didn’t; thank god cause they looked like a winded bunch. I was secretly rooting for the Spartans to mount a comeback ( I am a fan of the inherent underdog).
In between the action, I overhear this lady ask, “so what EXACTLY is the 6th man anyways Bob?” I wanted to scream. (I know I know) This lady is at a preseason scrub game, and rightfully so, she would never be admitted to a regular season game (actually no one would give HER their ticket) with that little league level of basketball knowledge, or so I would hope.
Come on Alice! Basketball typically has the 6th man, football has the 12th man. Next!
You should check out the video series I found. It is too funny. Sometimes true, salesmen do sell smoke and mirrors, but usually not. I mean really, there has to be an ROI and value behind the purchase right? Absolutely!
