The Ranting Room

For those of you outside the UK (poor souls), we have a TV programme here called "Grumpy Old Men"; in this, a selection of celebrities 'of a certain age' are allowed free rein to rant to their hearts' content on those parts of living in the modern world which really get their blood boiling (one of the more entertaining of these is our own Rick Wakeman). The first time I saw this programme, I thought it was a party political broadcast, and actually got excited at the prospect of, at last, a political party whose policies I could 100% support.

With the above in mind, I thought it may be beneficial to this site to have a room where we could let off steam without fear of contradiction at those things in modern life which annoy, irritate and generally bug us.

That said - any indication of racism, xenophobia, religious intolerance etc will be pounced on immediately, and I'll ask for the thread to be removed - THIS IS A FUN THREAD, let's keep it that way.

OK - I'll start...

+++deep breath+++

Where should I start?

The general populace's lack of even the most common of courtesies?

TV News reporting being dumbed down to the level of the lowest common denominator (thank the gods for John Humphries & Radio 4)?

The cult of celebrity - Jade Goody releases an autobiography?

Ah! I know!

Football shirts...

These items of apparell are perfectly acceptable - on the football field; those who are not playing soccer, or do not play soccer at all should be forbidden by law to wear them - under threat of capital punishment, if necessary!

Car Indicators!

All modern cars have these fitted as standard; they are NOT a luxury item or optional extra...

USE THE BLOODY THINGS!

Ooh, Ooh, Yes...

Dithering!

Finished what you're doing?

Great!

Well Done!

NOW GET OUT OF MY WAY!

+++nurse's voice+++

"Mr Garten has begun to foam at the mouth; I've given him a small injection, but he'll be unable to continue for a little while"


    

    
    
    

Edited by Jim Garten - May 12 2006 at 07:41

Well on my ranting radar of late is 'HR Speak' Let me clarify: 'Human Resources speak'

Now, every company has a HR (or personel) dept, but where I work they have so much clout it's unbelievable. Business trends come and go, and at present the trend is for touchy feely training courses, spin and double speak. The latest course was called 'Frameworks - For Leaders' I attended this two day session in a country hotel and was subjected to having to bare my soul to people I hardly knew, draw pictures that represented me as a child, a teenager and an adult, and partake in what we call intuition walks. These entail walking around the grounds of the hotel - in silence - with a note pad recording your feelings. After the walks we assemble in a circle, and have a 'Check In' This is where we each, in turn sum up our feelings in no more than three words at a time. When the session ends, one of the 'facilitators' sticks on an Enya CD to chill us out. These 'facilitators' are of course external consultants and earn more money than most of us will see in a lifetime.

While some young graduates are reasonably open to all this bogsh!te, us oldies have seen it all before in one form or another, and are living testimony to the fact that nothing ever really changes for the better. After years in the same company all you will ever witness is downsizing, streamlining and rationalising of processes; all euphamisms for repeated waves of sackings!

In fact we are no longer allowed to use the word 'redundancy' as it has a negative conatation, so when,last year we SACKED 130 people from our site, the site manager justified the depressing event thus (and I paraphrase):

'There is no true consolidation of past success without sacrifice. My heart, though heavy, is hopeful. As 130 of our valued colleagues leave the fold, I challenge you to think of this not as an end, but as a new beginning both for the company and for the individuals concerned. It's not the case that they are undervalued, or surplus to requirement, but I liken this sad excercise to me pruning the vines in my garden. There's is nothing wrong with what I prune; it's perfectly healthy, but the plant as a whole requires their sacrifice in order to flourish'

I sh!t you not!

So now of course when we go to the toilet to have an 'Armitage Shanks interface defacation scenario' we think of that rich t**ser and his house in Tuscany, as we pull the chain.

I dedicate my last paragraph to Prof Rideout so he can now rant about poor sentence construction in modern culture...

How's this for NHS-speak?

"Probable Negative Care Outcome Scenario"

In other words - "he's probably going to die"

True

+++sound of head banging on desk repeatedly+++

My biggest beef at work is the sudden appearance of so-called "Action Team" employees (usually female and under 30) who's brief appears to invite you to loads of briefing meetings for about a week,completely change tried and trusted procedures (best practices ---ach!Manager Speak) that work,so that nobody knows what they are doing anymore and then promptly disappear following a meeting with the Operations Director. When will these silly little floosies ever learn?

My tactic for cold calls:

Syzygy wrote: My tactic for cold calls: When they ask to speak to whoever (the homeowner/Mr some approximation of my surname) I say "Is this about the heron?" Whatever the reply, I continue with something along the lines of "I've been having a problem with a heron on my allotment, and you said you'd call back and give me some advice." As they stick rigidly to their script, I continue with "No, that's not the problem. This heron keeps on digging up the carrots on my allotment. There's a goldfish pond nearby, and I think it's confused because they're the same colour." Some persistent individuals carry on, so I keep returning to my theme "Well that's very interesting, but I don't see what it's got to do with wading birds" "We're getting nowhere here. Are you sure you're a qualified ornithologist?" "I just need to know how good a heron's colour perception is. Can you answer my question please?"   And so on. Most cold callers hang up after a minute or so, but some continue long after any sane individual would have given up and moved on.

sleeper wrote: My big beef is with sales calls, usually in the midle of a film, motor race, program that I'm watching only to find that they barely speak English as they calling from India, and those that do speak English have learnt it from Eastenders (if you call that English!).

They always get me just when I get in from work, around 5.30 (I guess it's a logical time to call) I was starting to average about 3 a night, before I set up some nuisance call deal with BT. They stopped then, but you have to renew it every year or so. When the deal was up for renewal the calls came again. This Indian guy would always be ringing me on a really bad line shouting something about saving money. I got so fed up with him I said 'Mr Robinson doesn't live here. In fact he died six months ago. I was his lover and I dont want to talk about it, now kindly update your database accordingly and f**k off!'

'Oh dear' he replied and hung up.

He never called again.    

You can also register mobiles on TPS but you should check the warnings on their web page.

Blacksword wrote: sleeper wrote: My big beef is with sales calls, usually in the midle of a film, motor race, program that I'm watching only to find that they barely speak English as they calling from India, and those that do speak English have learnt it from Eastenders (if you call that English!). They always get me just when I get in from work, around 5.30 (I guess it's a logical time to call) I was starting to average about 3 a night, before I set up some nuisance call deal with BT. They stopped then, but you have to renew it every year or so. When the deal was up for renewal the calls came again. This Indian guy would always be ringing me on a really bad line shouting something about saving money. I got so fed up with him I said 'Mr Robinson doesn't live here. In fact he died six months ago. I was his lover and I dont want to talk about it, now kindly update your database accordingly and f**k off!' 'Oh dear' he replied and hung up. He never called again.

That reminds me, they also tend to call at just gone 6 o'clock when we've just sat down to have our dinner, the b*****ds