My Dad’s pissed off

I love my Dad (and my Mum, but she doesn’t have a blog I can link to) – and he’s pissed off. He wrote a blog entry about all the things that are pissing him off at the moment. They include:

• Because I have had over 2 dozen emails this week containing viruses – all addressed from names like admin@{domain}, accounts@{domain}, register@{domain}, I ignored a number from bandwidth@{domain}. The latter were genuine – warning me I was about to exceed my bandwidth allowance on my account. So the site went down for a bit yesterday until my internet host server (Ben) sorted it out for me. Spammers are perverse sickies.
• A neighbour is installing a new shed of some sort – the roof of which is higher than the fence and spoils our otherwise completely uninterrupted view of garden and neighbourhood trees from our breakfast room window.
• I returned a bunch of flowers I bought from M&S because two had completely blossomed and blown while the rest remained as unopened buds
• The M&S staff was very friendly and polite – immediately inviting me to select any bunch of flowers from the display as a replacement while she went to get my money back; no opportunity to complain there then.
• Also while I was out, I returned a food item to Holland & Barrett which had been sold with an expired sell by date; they told me it wasn’t out of date – the date stamp said 06 not 05. When I said ‘so you’re telling me I’m wrong’; ‘yes’. I did rant and left the shop saying I wouldn’t return – ‘that’s your prerogative’.
• Sainsbury didn’t have any Danish pastries today
• The checkout till wouldn’t process my purchases to produce a transaction slip for me to sign; after five minutes waiting I was sent to Customer Services – who said oh you need a bypass on this card don’t you. I don’t need a bypass – your computer system does.
• Sainsbury staff told me, yet again, I would have to use a PIN number (rather than sign) for purchases on my card ‘in a few weeks’. I know it will not become mandatory to use a PIN number until December 2005.
• I saw a family friend as I was leaving Sainsbury – he sociably enough wanted to chat about ‘the kids and the family’; I was so irritated already I had to really curtail the urge to say piss off but managed to cut short the conversation as quickly as possible. (Well he hadn’t done anything so I felt he didn’t deserve a share of my feelings)
• London Underground has sent round a letter telling us about refurbishment to our local tube station – reassuring us services won’t be interrupted – some works will be carried out between 1 and 5 am. I decided this is a subtle way of fore-warning us there will be construction noise in the middle of the night. I rang the Information number given in the letter – a call centre of course. She immediately wanted to know my telephone number, my name, my initials. I hung up. I called her to ask a question and she asked me three questions before I could get anywhere. I also suspect the questions were preparation for telling me she didn’t know the answer – speak to someone else or someone will call me. Meanwhile the stats get racked up showing good customer service and responsiveness to customer concerns.

It’s very funny. I’ll probably be just like like it when I’m his age too :). In fact cynisism breeds in the family, some people say I’m the most cynical person they know.

And I can just imagine my Dad telling someone to “piss off” as he came out of Sainsbury’s because he was feeling grumpy. Ahh, bless him. He’s just like my Granddad (his Dad, in fact) who once told a charity worker who came to his door collecting at his door: (in a old man-ish Canadian accent) “Ahh piss off kid, I’m old and I’m going to die soon anyway”. Lol!

(My Dad’s feeling iritable these days because he’s on some serious medication for his Hep C treatment. I’m only repeating this stuff because he’s put it on his blog. I’m not that much of a b*****d.)