Category: Annoyances

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I swear, I cannot win with people anymore. I used to have a good, unloseable Spanish accent when saying people’s names. I started losing it on purpose when I royally frelled up speaking to someone who outranked me at the Dungeons & Demons job, and it’s pretty much gone. I wince when I hear myself say “manual” for “Manuel,” but at least I don’t confuse the person on the other end of the line.

Like today. I called a place for info on the file of someone whose last name I’ll say is Rivera. Like a good little white girl, I said it rih-VAIR-a.

“Oh, Mr. ree-VEH-ra?” asked the receptionist, and I conceded. The place called me back later and asked for a return call, and when I got the receptionist again I asked for the person who’d called, on the file of Mr. ree-VEH-ra.

“Sorry, what was the last name?”

*sigh* “rih-VAIR-a.”

“Oh, ree-VEH-ra. Let me transfer you.”

Like I said. No winning.

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OK, one of my pet peeves is people who refuse to walk 50 feet out of their way to a crosswalk, instead dashing across a busy street where cars are more likely to hit them (or swerve and hit other cars, buildings, etc.)

But the number of people who jaywalk from the courthouse to the Starbucks across the street just amazes me. Especially since the courthouse is at the corner. The point where people cross the street is close enough to the intersection that the left turn lane has already opened up.

I mean, talk about a triumph of laziness over self-preservation. Saving ten seconds vs. risking life and limb? And flagrantly violating traffic laws in front of the courthouse?

I just don’t get it.

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We got home tonight, after a good round of beer therapy and poking fun at the evil that is casual dinnerware, and found that we now live in Aliso Springs. They didn’t change the city name, mind you, just the name of our apartment “village.” We’d been wondering how they were going to handle having painted over the metal number plates affixed to our doors. Now we know: artsy little ceramic number plates affixed to the stucco, using slightly eastern script for the “Aliso Springs” and that much-too-popular raggedy calligraphy one for the numbers.

Gag me. These people need to get a clue. This place was never high-class and it’s never going to be. And, considering how frelling expensive it is to live in the kind of place they want to turn this into, it shouldn’t be, not in this area.

I think I need more beer therapy.

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I am honestly in complete confusion as to why all wedding vendors and personnel seem to feel it’s necessary to rebuke us for not arranging everything a year in advance. Sure, we procrastinated like nobody’s business, but we were already getting this at T minus 6 months. What do they do with people who have 6-month engagements, tell them they’re really getting off to a bad start planning their lives together? It’s not like we can say, “Oops, my bad, we’ll remember that for next time.” This is a field where what everyone says doesn’t always go, and the 10% who don’t follow the rules seem to have the best time and come out the least scathed. So it’s natural that I, as one of the 10% in most other arenas, would attempt to bull my way through this. In retrospect, that was a bad move, if only for the flood tide of social censure I’m enduring just because bouncy people make me nuts and I like to avoid them.

But anyway. Do these people not talk to each other? Do cake decorators never speak with dress shop attendants and find out that all their wedding planners give people the same advice? More importantly, do they think this is in any way endearing to the customer, or that it’ll make them want to recommend the facility to someone with better planning skills? Especially when the customer is sick to death of being told how insufficient she is and just wants the thing around the corner to knock her cold when it comes at her out of the promised nowhere so she can wake up after the wedding and go on with her life.