The Room 101 thread - for things you hate or just having a bloody good moan

[Achtung Englander]

The price of books.

I went into Waterstones today, just to browse and to see what's new. I was staggered to see some of the RRP of paperbacks. I know hardbacks are all north of £20 but good grief I was not expecting some history paperback books to be £12.

I am so used to buying books for my kindle when they go on sale that I was taken aback by how expensive new books are.

[Alan]

Theres a charity shop next to me thats basically 80% book shop that does 3 paper backs for £1 and I've come out with armfuls Just because its so cheap I've ended up with a few I really enjoyed that I would never have otherwise. For less popular authors I like I do prefer to pick up a new copy but when I get something like Stephen Kings Institute for 33.3p a month after it came out, I'm fine with that




So! Fucking ebay!
Sold something, they claimed it was faulty. I knew it wasnt but I just accepted the return to avoid any headache. They didnt return it, they instead opened a claim via ebay, ebay said "you need to return it" and gave him more time. He didnt return it. Now he has opened a dispute with his bank. Ebay sent me an email to... and get this... "prove the item sent was as it was listed" and I have to prove that with ONE jpeg thats under 1mb in size. How in the fuck? The guy also told me in a message he was a well known streamer and I nearly fell off my chair laughing.


While I'm here, the automatic sinks in Tesco's toilets. They squirt out soap, run water for a period so short you cant even rinse the soap off in time nevermind actually wash your hands, then the hand dryer comes on and blasts your still soapy hands for a paltry few seconds. What you have to do is get your squirt of soap, wash your hands for around 5 secconds, swipe one hand over the sensor of the sink next to you, return to your own and get the last of the water while the second squirts out soap into the drain. When your sinks water ends jump to the next sink just as its water is starting and then on the third sink up swipe your hand to start its soap. When you hopefully finish rinsing your hands your dryer, sink 2's, will start. Dry as much as you can but watch for the water in sink 3 finishing then as soon as it does jump over onto sink 3 and finish your drying. If you dont jump to sink 3 as its dryer comes on it will detect no hands and immediately turn off.

You're welcome!

F.F.S!

[Rossell]

Sorry to hear about your eBay troubles that's pretty shitty.

You are most correct on those sinks though.

[Solitaire]

I might start taking a hint from the Hitchhiker's Guide and bring my own towel while out & about

[Wrathbone]

Found out this morning that one of my closest childhood friends has died. We hadn't seen each other for nearly 20 years after I moved away from Yorkshire but we got in contact again last year, and now it's hard to accept that we won't be able to meet up and have a beer like we said we would. Like they say, it's not usually the things you do but the things you don't do that you regret.

He was an old-school, anti-establishment punk with a heart of gold and better taste in music than I could ever hope to have. RIP dude.

[Mantis]

Sorry to hear that man.

We always dwell on the things we regret when we lose someone. But it's the great times we had with them that should be the real focus and how lucky we were to find good individuals to create the memories with.

[Wrathbone]

Cheers man. I'll never forget the school football match we were forced to go to (complete with many parents in attendance), despite having no interest in football, so mid-match he declared "fuck this" and mooned the entire match before leaving.

[Snowy]

Found out this morning that one of my closest childhood friends has died. We hadn't seen each other for nearly 20 years after I moved away from Yorkshire but we got in contact again last year, and now it's hard to accept that we won't be able to meet up and have a beer like we said we would. Like they say, it's not usually the things you do but the things you don't do that you regret.

He was an old-school, anti-establishment punk with a heart of gold and better taste in music than I could ever hope to have. RIP dude.

I will raise a glass to that man, RIP dude.

[Snowy]

IVR systems, honestly what fuckwit designs these.

Me, right now:
<Ring Ring for about 20 seconds>

"Thank you for holding. We are particularly busy at the moment but we expect your call to be answered shortly"

<Ring Ring for about 20 seconds>

"Thank you for holding. We are particularly busy at the moment but we expect your call to be answered shortly"

<Ring Ring for about 20 seconds>

"Thank you for holding. We are particularly busy at the moment but we expect your call to be answered shortly"

I mean seriously what kind of Edwin... Do you think I am a goldfish? That after a few rings I can't remember why the phone is ringing? And that is after I have impatiently roared my way through their stupid fucking automated questions, and input the 52 6 element of my postcode via the keypad about 5 times before it worked out what the 3 numbers actually were.

Now lets talk about the 20 minute wait. You, Lloyds Bank you unutterable cunts, are paying your London fucksticks massive bonuses again. Spend some of that fucking cash on employing people to work in your call-centres rather than flap your automated gums at me about how busy you are. Higher call volumes mean employ more staff, don't fucking keep me waiting and expect me to be mollified by platitudes...every 20 fucking seconds!

Cunts!

[Raid]

As someone who sits on the other side of one of those IVRs, believe me the call to have more staff is mutual. I don't think the problem is necessarily the hiring, it's the turnover. Of the ten people I trained with when I took the role, 4 have left, and 5 of us (myself included) have had time off for health reasons. It's just so insanely controlling, oppressive even, it's no wonder that they can't get enough people manning the phones. I heard a figure that there can be up to 20% of the reps off work ill at any one time.

I went part time this week because I simply can't do a full work week in that environment (I'm using the extra time off to train myself in something I actually want to do). If it were just the actual work, I really don't think I'd have a problem - I'm good at what I do, customers like me, but there's a constant nagging at the back of my mind the whole time I'm there of having to rush literally everything I'm doing for hours at a time and it's utterly draining.

[Snowy]

Worked in a similar environment Chris, so I never take it out on the folks on the other end of the phone. Honestly, when I think of all the endless fuss we go through designing web apps, the focus on UX etc, how telephony gets so ignored is beyond me. I was in a foul mood when I eventually got through, not a good way to receive a customer. Well, ex-customer, as I was calling to pay the balance on the mortgage, but that's beside the point.

[Rusty]

I was calling to pay the balance on the mortgage

Gratz!

I had to restart my mortgage life after my divorce so I still have 15 years to go.

[Rossell]

I worked a collective 3 and a half years on phone lines (never again that's me done) so I'm always polite to people in call centres unless they're dickish.

[Raid]

how telephony gets so ignored is beyond me.

The frustrating thing in my company's case is that it isn't (although as with every bank we're still pushing people towards internet banking). We deployed an extremely expensive voice identification system (ie: it identifies the customer, not one of those IVRs that you tell what it is you want) a few years ago and it saves the bank hundreds of millions of pounds a year in fraud. It makes our jobs a lot easier too, so it's not like the investment isn't there. It just feels like the staff policies have been written by someone who never worked as a call centre rep before - we're treated like part of the software. They can spend as much as they like on clever security measures, but if the staff that actually do what the customer wants are miserable then they're not going to be as alert, or as helpful.

[Wrathbone]

Hello Fresh, and their insistence that the minimum meal plan of 3 meals for 2 people is still perfectly feasible as 6 meals for 1 person. It isn’t. While things like meat and veg are easy to separate for an individual meal, the sachets for sauces, stock and other stuff are not, meaning you generally have to cook 2 meals at once. Why they can’t cater for single people or at least be honest about how suitable their current offering is for a single person is beyond me.

I was also annoyed that you can’t actually browse and choose their meals until you’ve signed up and paid for your first delivery. It’s frustrating because the actual concept of having the correct ingredients and portions delivered along with recipes is good.