Punctuality

As a business major, and as an arrogant person, I look at every business I walk into and see what I would do better if I ran the place. This could be anything from switching the location of a certain piece of equipment to completely firing the staff and starting fresh.

One of the biggest things that gets to me is late employees. At my workplace, this is probably my biggest pet peeve. Don't get me wrong; I understand that there are circumstances that keep you from coming in at shift start time on the nose. It happens to me all the time. Traffic is bad, your kid makes a mess you need to clean really quick, an appointment runs a little over. I get it.

But...

If you consistently show up 30 minutes late with no valid reason, or if you have a valid reason but don't forewarn those affected by your tardiness, this is a sign of irresponsibility, and a business has no place for this. I have a lot of shifts that end right when the next begins. Again, if you are five minutes late, that's not a big deal. I'm probably wrapping up something anyway. But if I leave, and you aren't there, guess who tends to get in trouble for leaving the area unattended? Not you, the latecomer, but me, the abandoner. If you can't make a certain time of day, change the hours you are available so you won't be scheduled at a time you aren't able to work.

Even worse is when your shift starts an hour before mine ends. Ten minutes till I have to leave, you're still not there? What is this? Bad practice. Management, fire this person. If nothing else, discipline them like policy says to. Please. Please? No? Fine. I guess I'll just blarg about it.

Sigh. I guess when I'm in charge, I will look back at this and see how wrong I was. Again. I understand life happens, I just wish I had a little warning life was going to happen every couple days.

Stupid Drivers pt 2

So, as I mentioned the other day, I hate stupid drivers.

Downtown DC has solidified this for me, once again

Today, my beautiful wife, Sadie, and I, decided to take our two kids downtown into downtown DC to see the cherry blossoms we had heard so much about (We missed them, btw. Sad panda) and walk around to see some of the sites. On the way into the City, there were some stressful points, but nothing really worse than you would find in bad traffic anywhere (Except this was light traffic).

We had a wonderful walk around the Tidal Basin, enjoying the time outside and the sunshine, stopping to take pictures whenever the mood struck. Great Day!

Until...

We went to leave to meet my uncle at his hotel and go to dinner, which was a welcome surprise. It was a grand total of 3 miles to get there. 3 miles. 3. Due to drivers deciding that lanes did not matter, traffic lights were mostly optional, and the plethora of one way streets and, my favorite, streets that you can only turn on during certain parts of the day (which did not apply at that time, of course), it took almost 45 frustrating minutes to go... you guessed it! 3 miles! Then, in what should have been a 7 minute jaunt to Georgetown to get dinner, we ran into more stupid people and even worse taxi drivers, extending the trip to another 40 minutes. Thank goodness my kids are cute and my uncle was pretty good at entertaining them, or else this whole ordeal would have been even more hellish (screaming kids don't make bad situations better).

Beyond just the bad drivers, I discovered that jaywalking and crossing streets is the sport of the city. You wouldn't believe how many people would just dart into the streets, causing far too many people to stop abruptly or swerve. My personal favorite was when I'm watching as a large group of pedestrians waits... waits... waits... (red walk light) then as I approach the intersection, they move, as a whole, into the intersection and attempt to cross the street (walk light still red). I couldn't believe it.

Sigh. I knew DC was full of morons, but this is something new. Common sense is becoming far less common. What a shame.

Stupid drivers

Stupid people bother me, but stupid drivers are the worst kind of stupid people. I don't mean fast drivers, or even aggressive drivers, which are their own breed of animal I won't touch on today ; I mean stupid drivers. To me, there are two types of stupid drivers that bug me the worst.

The first is a group of people I will refer to as "weavers". These are the people you see darting back and forth between lanes, generally going 15 MPH faster than everyone else. They do this to get to wherever they are going faster than the rest of us, apparently driven by some concept that the highway is nothing more than a Mario kart track. The worst, and probably most ironic type of weaver is the traffic jam Weaver. These poor saps believe that I by switching lanes back and forth in congested traffic, they will actually work their way to the front of the line. Just this morning I witnessed one of these morons maneuver through traffic, endlessly swapping lanes, only to be slowly, steadily gained on, and then passed, by myself. I took the opportunity to smile and nod to him as I crept by, hindered by the same traffic he was, but consistently moving forward. The ultimately ironic part? About a quarter mile after I passed him, traffic opened up considerably and I was able to accelerate to a reasonable speed. He was still stuck.

But weavers are not the worst. I can't stand when people don't use turn signals. I ask you a simple question. When you are driving, are all of your fingers unremovable from the steering wheel? Do you find yourself unable to drum a rhythm to whatever song your listening to because your fingers are completely attached to the steering wheel the entire time the car is in gear? If yes, I sincerely apologize for the misunderstanding. If not, please be courteous enough to lift ONE finger off the wheel to flick your indicator stick on. It doesn't have to be a big one... a pinky will do. But it takes so little effort and time to turn this indicator on, I don't know why anyone would neglect to do so. I understand, sometimes a light is out and the light literally does not work. But to not even attempt to turn it on shows one of three things, none of which are good. The first is a reckless disregard for safety (bad... duh). The second is sheer ignorance and/or stupidity, neither of which are acceptable on the road. The final reason is the epitome of laziness. Being so lazy as to not raise a finger to hit a blinker... that's a sad sign for the world.

Anyway, if you belong to any of the above categories, please seriously consider looking deeply into your life and questioning some of your life choices. I will admit that there are exceptions to each of the described things, but not nearly to the extent I see them.

Happy driving!

Explanation

Hello Everyone!

THIS... is my blarg. This is a site dedicated to all the silly little complaints one might have about life. Most often, these will be spawned from my life and the life of my family, but I will not be able to take full credit for everything that goes in here. There will be stories, gripes, anecdotes, complaints, episodes, tales, lamentations, squawks, sketches, stinks, whines, and yarns from the lives of those I interact with. Everyone has something to complain about!

My ultimate goal with this blarg is not to be a pessimist. PLEASE don't think that I am a negative person. What I really want is to take these complaints and look back at them and realize how small they are. There may even be some humor taken from these. Actually, that's what I really intend to do, now that I think about it. I want to take these complaints and turn them into something funny. I think that's what makes comedians so funny; the ability to take all these small gripes about life and turn them into something that we all can laugh at.

So please, enjoy this blarg. If you have anything you may want to share with me, please feel free to do so, but be ready to endure a little (or a lot) of ridicule should my mind take me there. By sending me your stories (and synonyms shown above), you agree to have them be shown, and made fun of, publicly.

Happy complaining everyone!