Category Archives: What Annoys Jeff this Week?

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Faxing. It’s the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Twelve. There is absolutely no reason why anyone should need to do business via fax. Better yet was the suggestion that if I couldn’t find a fax machine, I could just come in and sign the paperwork in person any time between 8AM and 4PM. Seriously? Did I suddenly wake up in 1989? Maybe you should just scan it into a pdf and email it to me like a normal person so I don’t have to scour the building looking for fax machine to blow the dust off.

2. Banker’s Hours. Look, if you’re in the service industry working from 8AM and 4PM and then only on weekdays might not be your best-ever idea… Especially if you want other working people (you know the ones with jobs and disposable income) to actually be able to use your service. You might be the best in the business, but I’m not leaving work early just to talk to you. Instead, I’ll go with your next best competitor who has office hours on Saturday or who can be available in the evening after working stiffs wrap up for the day.

3. Rental Car Agencies. Have you ever tried renting a car on short notice on a Saturday? Here’s a bit of advice from your kindly Uncle Jeff: Don’t bother. They’re not going to have anything available. Then they’re going to refer you to one of their sister offices a few miles away. That office won’t have any cars either. By the time they refer you to the fourth office that’s 37 miles away, you’ll have lost interest. So yeah, if you’re going to need a rental car in a hurry, make sure you identify that requirement at least two days in advance of knowing that you’ll need it. Schmucks.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Waiting. Some people, God bless them, are able to sit all day waiting on something to happen. Me? Not so much. Blame it on computerization, the Internet, youth or whatever else you blame such things on, but the bottom line is I’m not a patient person. When something is supposed to happen, I want it to happen right the hell now. Maybe that’s something I should work on, buti don’t think I have the patience for that.

2. Alarm clocks. On any given weekday morning, the alarm built into my phone goes off twice. I don’t remember the last time that work me up. About ten minutes later, my normal alarm clock sounds. That one might wake me half the time. The third and last line of defense is the rediculously loud alarm I picked up from Amazon. That one is still getting me up, but it’s taking longer and longer to get my attention. Another month or two and I’ll probably be immune to that end too. What I’d really like is an alarm that wakes me consistently without needing to set three or four different clocks. Sure, it seems like overkill, but it’s barely getting the job done. Surely there’s a better way.

3. Parking garages. This is America. We drive big vehicles here. Many of us have full sized cars, trucks, and SUV’s that are not only tall, but also wide. While I completely respect your efforts to cram as many parking spaces as possible into that fancy seven story garage you built, what I’m going to need you to do is widen up those spaces a bit so I don’t have to use two of them, every time I come visit or leave a big chunk of my vehicle hanging precipitously far into the travel lane. This is really something that I shouldn’t need to mention in the country that decided the Hummer would be a good ride for in and around town.

4. Bad coffee. If you’re going to charge almost $3 for a 20 ounce cup of regular, no frills drip coffee, there’s no reason you can’t make it from legitimately good grounds. Whatever you lose in the margin will be more than made up for by people who don’t go seek out your competition for the next cup.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. The Maryland Transportation Authority. Dear Asshats, if you’re going to chance what lane collects which kind of toll it might be a good idea to go ahead and let people know that in advance instead of surprising everyone with the new and improved layout during afternoon rush hour. That would have saved you from receiving many of spontaneous hand gestures and it would have saved us from sitting on the bridge banging our heads against the steering wheel while everyone at the front of the line tried wrapping their tiny little minds around what was happening.

2. Retirement. If I had to figure out the most talked about issue I’ve heard discussed since joining the workforce it would be retirement without question. It’s possible that it’s a national obsession. I’m looking forward to that happy day when I can tell The Man to shove it just like everyone else, but I don’t have an overwhelming need to talk about it at every opportunity. Maybe it’s because even after eight years I’m still usually the youngest guy in most rooms, but I don’t get the obsession these old codgers have with agonizing over every detail of the how’s and what’s. Check back with me in about 27 years and 332 days and maybe I’ll be singing a different tune, but for now, I think just quietly disappearing one day may be the best approach.

3. Donald Trump. Does this really require an explanation?

4. Thursday. For no other reason than it’s so close to the weekend yet still not Friday. It use to be passable back when Thursday was thirsty, but now that it’s just laundry night most of its allure has worn off. Now it’s just a second helping of Wednesday and there’s nothing cool about that at all.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Neck Ties. I completely understand that there are times when we all need to look just a little more formal. On an average day, though, when I’m going to spend 6-7 hours sitting behind a keyboard or going to meetings with people I see every day, putting on a tie is really just a pointless exercise. That’s why I don’t wear one unless I absolutely, positively, can’t avoid it. Certain men’s fashion magazines will tell you that it’s all about “self expression” and having “good fashion sense.” Meh. I express myself using things like the English language and I can’t remember a time I ever gave a tinker’s damn about anything involving fashion. Hard as it might be to believe, it’s just not something that ever seemed worth the effort to be interested in. As long as everyone shows up freshly laundered without body parts hanging out, I’d say we’re good to go. If I’m going to court or taking a meeting with the president, I’ll probably manage to find a tie that isn’t stained (too much). Otherwise they’re going to continue hanging in the closet in case I ever need a tourniquet. If companies like Apple and Amazon can make a gagillion dollars without anyone wearing a tie, I think it’s safe to say that a colorful piece of silk hanging around my neck like a noose isn’t going to make anyone more productive or professional. Mostly it’s just going to get in the way and make me uncomfortable until I pull it off and stick it back in my desk drawer. Thankfully, I’m winnowed the activities requiring a tie down to about one a week… and even then, I ditch the damned thing before going to lunch.

2. Fakes, flakes, and liars. There’s really only one standard of conduct I try to live by; do I do what I say I’m going to do. Most of the time, I do. Occasionally I miss the boat. Sometimes that’s intentional because the situation has changed and other times it’s because of circumstances beyond anyone’s control. That’s a long way of saying that I don’t always practice what I’m trying to preach. Most people, on most days, are trying to do the right thing and despite being a pessimist by nature, my natural inclination is to give people the benefit of the doubt. At least until they intentionally drop a steaming pile on my head. Then… Then they’re irredeemably dead to me. You’d think by this stage of the game, I would have learned to manage my expectations and not be caught by surprise. Still, from time to time, someone weasels through the gaps and catches me off guard.

3. Taking big bites. Sometimes biting off more than you can chew is fine strategy. It gives you something to work towards. The other side of that, of course, would be that sometimes the only thing a big bite does is get stuck in your throat and leave you sucking for air. Facebook, Twitter, jeffreytharp.com, a few other sites and blogs I contribute to, ebooks, email, and a few other odds and ends have been consuming a ridiculous amount of time and attention lately. Through in the probably misguided desire for all those interactions to be substantive on a daily basis and, well, you tend to end up taking very big bites. All of those things are voluntary, of course, and as I wrap up a few current pet projects I’ll be doing my best to limit new things I take on in those areas. In the meantime, I’ll be doing my best not to choke. If I start really feeling frisky, I might even decommission a few of the social media accounts I find myself not really using enough to justify having around. Yeah. That would probably be a great first step towards a more sane Jeff.

4. But wait, there’s more! I could go on, and on, and on, and on about the small things that are annoying Jeff this week, but I’ll spare everyone the administrative minutia. As my mother would say, I’m “in a mood.” In all probability, this mood will resolve itself sometime after 4:00 tomorrow afternoon. I’m more than ready to get into something that doesn’t require the application of more than two or three brain cells at a time.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

By popular demand, I’m pleased to post the 15th installment of What Annoys Jeff this Week. I promise, unless I’m cut down by another bout of the sickness, that I’ll do my best to keep up with it as a regular feature.

1. Primary Elections. The field of potential candidates starts out vast, but by the time a state with a real population gets around to voting the field has already shrunk to just a handful. By the time the great State of Maryland gets around to holding its primaries on April 3rd, it’s a pretty good bet that the field will have already narrowed down to one. Letting the party unite behind a single candidate early is great… for the candidate and for the party. It’s pretty crummy for the voters, though. If we can all agree that our national general election day is always going to be the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, surely we can come up with a similarly convoluted methodology for holding primary elections all on the same day. So, you know, my vote here in Maryland is worth as much as the ones cast in New Hampshire or South Carolina. I’ll hold my breath waiting on that good idea to take hold.

2. Sub-freezing Weather. Sure, I know everyone complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it. This is a blog after all, so it’s only real mission in life is to serve as a voice box for all the bitching and complaining I can come up with… Which is why I’m going to announce my official opposition to temperatures anywhere below 32 degrees. The only purpose of being that cold is to enable snow production and if there’s not going to be snow (and the accompanying day off from work), then it has no business being below freezing. There. I said it.

3. Ground Coffee. I’d be willing to say that my daily intake of coffee is probably higher than the average person, but that’s a topic for a different discussion. All I really want is just to be able to buy a pound of ground coffee. I don’t want a 12 ounce package, or God forbid, the 10.5 ounce size that I almost picked up. One pound of coffee gets me exactly through one week. It’s the perfect proportion of requirement to availability. 10.5 ounces, on the other hand, gets me to about Wednesday… for the same price I was paying for a full pound back in the “good old days”… You know, four or five years ago. I’m sure someone ran a focus group and said people would rather get a smaller size for the same cost than get the same size for a greater cost, but what that didn’t take into account was the people in that focus group were apparently morons. Seriously. Just give me a pound of coffee and if you have to charge me $12 instead of $8, I’ll live with that. I’m perfectly comfortable with the idea that decreased supply means increased price and with the notion that inflation drives up the price of everything over time. Trying to pull a slick one with packaging, though, just makes you look like a bunch of tools.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

And here is your regularly scheduled installment of What Annoys Jeff this Week…

The Federal Hiring Process. I just received an email notice that an agency I applied to work for back in April (yes, that’s 8 months ago), has finally decided that they’re not going to hire for that vacant position. Really? I took some jackwagon eight months to decide that hiring into the teeth of massive budget cuts wouldn’t be a great idea? Brilliant. Give that man a promotion. This has got to be one of the top two or three reasons that people don’t list the federal government as one of their “wishlist” places to work. The process itself makes you question whether you’d want to work there in the first place.

Automatic Faucets. We have faucets at the office that turn on automatically when you hold your hands under them. It’s a neat bit of tech. Unfortunately, now I find myself standing in front of “old fashioned” sinks shaking my hands furiously wondering why the water isn’t flowing. Even though I use automatic doors from time to time, I still seem to be able to let myself in and out of the old fashion kind without any real trouble. You’d think the same basic technology applied so something I use as often as a sink wouldn’t leave me standing around pondering what the problem is on a regular basis.

The National Transportation Safety Board. As a group, Americans can be pretty dense… and we’re at our collective dumbest when we get behind the wheel of a car. I applaud the NTSB for wanting to keep is all safe, but will need them to do a reality check. In 2009 about 6000 people were killed by “distracted” driving. Four times more people die in this country die every year from unintentionally falling down. Falling. Down. Seriously. In terms of the big scary ways to die that are out there, distracted driving doesn’t seem like one that I’ll be spending an inordinate amount of time worried about. Besides, even if I weren’t texting, it’s just as likely that I’d be distracted by changing the radio, scratching my butt, talking to a passenger, or scarfing down a Big Mac. Then again, those are probably the next things the fine deciders at the NTSB will want to ban.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

Wannabe Wordsmiths. The written word is a subjective thing. Just because something isn’t written using the same style and manner you would use doesn’t necessarily make it bad, it just makes it different. There are plenty of other legitimate reasons for writing being bad, so let’s focus on stamping those out before we start getting hung up on the stylistic differences, shall we?

Wood Floors. Yep. That one was a surprise to me too. I’ve always wanted them. I wanted to like them. But the truth is they’re cold as blue hell at 5:30 in the morning no matter how warm the rest of the room is, and even worse now that the weather has taken what’s probably it’s final turn towards chilly for the year. And don’t get me started on the enormous hairballs wood floors seem to generate by magic. At least with carpet, the dirt has the common decency to hide until I was ready to do something about it.

Alec Baldwin. Even when I was a smoker, I somehow managed to rein in my addiction for the couple of hours it took to get the jet across the continent. That fact that this asshat was too engrossed in his game of Words with Friends to turn off his phone, well that’s not addiction, that’s just flat out stupidity. If I was king of homeland security, I’d put him on a watch list and never let him within spitting distance of any vehicle that travels faster than Greyhound.

Cell phone cases. How the hell can we launch a probe to the outer edge of the solar system, but can’t seem to come up with a cell phone holder that I don’t destroy in a matter of weeks. I’ve spent more on these damned things than I did on the phone. Then again, that’s probably the point. And that annoys me even more.

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

After a brief hiatus due to Thanksgiving induced laziness, What Annoys Jeff this Week is back by popular demand. As always, here they are in no particular order:

Lame news headlines. In the age of digital media, I get that what qualifies as news might not now be on the same journalistic level as was expected in the heyday of newspapers and network news broadcasts. But really, a banner headline screaming “THANKSGIVING TRAVELERS HEAD HOME” seems like one of those things that should pretty much be expected the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I mean was anyone expecting large numbers of people to go away for Thanksgiving and never come back. I’m not asking for much, just a little journalistic perspective and common sense. Oh yeah, I guess I am asking for too much. Never mind then. Carry on.

Shouting. Yelling across a room full of cubicles to ask a question is not a substitute for the old fashioned intercom system. Actually, it’s not a substitute for anything. We have phones, email, and instant messaging at our desks. In a pinch, we could even walk the 20 feet to ask a question if we really had to, so wall to wall shouting is really unnecessary. Especially at 7:45AM. Maybe I’ll start wrapping notes around small rocks and winging them in the general direction of people when I need to get information to them. That would be at least as effective and much more entertaining.

The Internet. The internet really should be a privilege and not a right. I’m all in favor of people having a difference of opinion on important issues. That’s good. That’s healthy. But only when it’s an informed opinion. When it’s not, well, you’re just left with a large group of incoherently rambling lunatics whose only justification for anything is “that’s just what I think.” While that might be good enough for Jesus and you mother to keep loving you, the rest of us think you’re an asshat.

What Annoys Jeff this Week…

Posted on by

Starting the week on Tuesday threw me off this week. In case anyone is wondering, that’s why What Annoys Jeff this Week didn’t make an appearance as scheduled this week. It’s a couple of days late this time around, but you surely didn’t think I’d pass the week without anything annoying did you? It’s been a short week, so the annoyance has been limited, but here’s what made the list:

The United States Postal Service. I assure you the 1 ounce of paint I’m trying to purchase is not intended as a weapon of mass destruction. All I want to do is touch up a ding on my rear fender. Call it toxic and hazardous if you want, but there’s no reason it should take a small package anywhere between one and three weeks to travel from Oregon to Maryland.

People who don’t take non-verbal hints. As a general rule, if you’re talking in my general direction and I’m not making eye contact I’m trying to give you a subtle hint that you can stop talking at any time. Same goes when you sand behind me and sigh hoping I’ll turn around and look interested. I’m a simple man. If you have to ask yourself if I’m interested, it’s a fair bet that I’m not.

Comcast. Your DVR sucks. It has sucked since the day you brought it here, but it especially sucks lately. As much as your helpdesk likes to think that powering off and waiting is a magical resolution to every problem, I have to tell you that it isn’t. I’m going to give you one chance to make things right and then I’ll call DirecTV. Lord knows they have their own issues, but I’ve never had the service problems with them I have with you.

What Annoys Jeff This Week?

Posted on by

Penn State. The Board of Trustees made a chump move in firing Joe Paterno. Instead of standing by their historic coach, they gave in to the easy solution of throwing him under the bus instead of putting the blame where it belonged: on the vile bastard that committed the crime. This was a situation that called for nuance, not an “off with their heads” bloodletting as soon as a scapegoat appeared in the crosshairs. In the media age, apparently even higher education doesn’t have the attention span to manage nuance. Maybe the guy doesn’t deserve a total pass, but after a storied career spanning half a century he deserves a hell of a lot better than this.

The Republican Party. I’ve watched half a dozen debates now and can say honestly that I have no motivation to support any of the bozos my party has put forward as presidential candidates. Looks like it’s going to be another election where I hold my nose and check the box for a candidate that smells the least like shit. A couple of lunatics, a smattering of religious zealots, most who have said they want to freeze my pay or fire me, and one or two reasonable guys who come with so much baggage they’ll never make it through the primaries anyway. Geepers, what’s not to like?