One thing I observed was that many who worked in research and development at Ford had other makes of car, even though a huge discount was available on Fords. Said it all.

Entering my 4th consecutive hour on Zoom calls. My spirit is breaking.

How can this possibly be productive?

**** Zoom, and **** any of you ***** who talk endlessly because you've got **** all else in your life.

*****.

Be assertive and question the value of the meetings. Some people default to a one hour zoom appointment when they could just send you a message in chat

Im questioning my life instead.

Start playing with there heads by Freezing and unfreezeing yourself. Our spe.k w.th words cut..g out. Great fun and you can blame it on the “internet”

I toyed with the idea defacing the presentation using the annotate function. At the last second I thought it just check to see if everyone else can see it.

Turns out they can. That was close.

Yep, subscription models for functionality they've already built in to the car can get in the bin

BMW are doing the same in the US for things like heated seats....absolutely ridiculous.

On a similar note, I was referred to King's Oral Medicine for idiopathic facial pain after dental work. Part of that process was a consultation with an oral medicine Dr who told me not to continue any work and that he would make me an appointment with their Dentistry department to see if any was needed other than cosmetic.

I got the all clear from the dentist there, but I overheard a discussion with the dental consultant and his patient a few cubicles down, he had refereed his private patient to his NHS clinic to do some pre implant work he was going to do privately.

To get discharged I had to see the consultant and for him to look at my teeth, all very pleasant but like a well-oiled machine, he was probing to find out what I did for a living he then seamlessly slipped in to selling me private implants.

5 hours and 10 minutes.

I wanna be a postman instead.

The French.

You could fill a forum, never mind a thread with annoying things about them, but in this instance, it’s two holidays in a row of lengthy flight delays due to their air traffic folks striking and whatnot.

He's obviously in cahoots with the specialist and vice-versa. They have an absolute field day if they find out you have medical coverage. You'll stroll in for an annual check up; tell doc that you feel great but that you did have a terrible headache one morning a month ago, after drinking 12 pints of an 9% IPA. Straightaway doc refers you to his brain surgeon mate he hangs out with at the student nurse bar, and before you can say Connor Wickham you are undergoing a barrage of brain tests that have to be repeated every week for the next six months. Plus a day a week at an alcohol dependency clinic run by the chap he sat next to at medical school.

The use of the term "learnings" as in "we can take certain learnings from that experience"

Talking about tasting. I did the Guinness factory tour in Dublin once which included a tasting session. We were asked what we could taste in the Guinness and I said 'rhubarb and custard'. They didn't really have a response for that. I suppose I could have also said Guinness just to be even more perverse.

Probably got paid for another appointment.

Presumably, you are actually talking about work/business rather than just generally chatting about the weather and the Palace performance against Leeds?

Yeah sure he claimed for it from the payment plan thingy. We are not the worst but neither my wife nor I have great teeth. Mainly due to a barrage of fillings from when we were younger that have had to be replaced with the modern fillings and the odd crown over the years. Our son is approaching 40 and never required anything to be done at all and so I am hoping he can sustain that. Our parents had lost most of their teeth by retirement age. Quite a significant change and I assume mostly driven by change of diet as much as anything?

Well it's better than walking the streets.

50/50. I could handle a bit of Palace chat. Unfortunately it’s work with random conversations in between.


It’s that knowledge that your Callander is now empty for the rest of the day, only for the dreaded Zoom jingle to start playing as someone (a senior manager) invites you to an impromptu discussion.

Don't you use company mobiles?

No, actually. Company phones aren’t really a thing anymore. I find people use Zoom as an excuse to try and validate their thinking on issues. Rather than having the bollocks to make a decision based on their experience and knowledge, they’d rather talk a topic to death and offload as much responsibility as possible to others on the call.

I’m so mentally drained today. I can’t do another day like that. I know I moan on here, but it’s actually really, really upset me. I’m just an engineer.

Most brilliant manager I ever had years back costed meetings per hour by those attending and always asked was this worth it and how can we reduce time spent on meetings. some managers justify their existence by the number they implement and attend, particularly in the NHS. Have you some form of 'suggestion box' to raise why their are so many?

The company is just far too big.

They did actually introduce a policy for scheduling Zoom calls that states that the host had to satisfy three criteria first: what the topic of the meeting was, why it was a priority and why it had to be that person. They created a template that had to be filled and send with invites. Naturally it lasted about 2-weeks before people (seniors) just sent invites with the criteria left blank.

Another initiative was “Zoom-free Fridays”; You can see how well that went.

Anyway, I’ve had my whinge and calmed down. I just need to get my degree done and **** off into different sector entirely.

Idiots who think they're competent... f*ckin' idiots... f*ckin' annoying idiots... who pretend that you're a problem because you're not an idiot

Those that say that, and those that are forced to listen to it, might prefer the term 'lemmings'.

I also reckon that your exact point was brought up on here several months back.

I’m just a cook

(Call be Ryback)

How much was that manager paid to waste time evaluating the costing of meetings. I assume that the overload of meetings still took place. Therefore, you not only have the waste of time and money of the meetings, but also a manager ineffectively analysing them.

It appears to me that the brilliance of your manager can be measured by the amount of salary he got paid over the years by adding nothing to the organisation. And yet, you use this anecdote to bring up the cliche of the NHS.

The solution is to not have meetings, not to have meetings to discuss the time and money being wasted in meetings.

That is bureaucrazy.

very much in the same boat Martin.

I have terrible teeth, and a mouthful of crowns which hides many sins. All really stems from bad oral care in my teens and early 20's I guess. Hard to blame anyone but myself really, but I can't help wishing my parents had got on to me more, but like your parents they had bad teeth also, and false teeth long before the age I am now, so I suspect it was just a given. British teeth has long been the brunt of US comedians jokes, but I think this is now a thing of the past (like your son proves).

I've been going to the same dental group out here for 40 years now, and the original guy has long retired (and died), but he sold his practice to two young guys, and the transition was seamless. One of them really did his back in and had to quit dentistry, but i still see the other one, who is no spring chicken himself anymore.

He is always amazed how my amalgam fillings from the 60's/70's are holding up, and he has only replaced a few of them or fit crowns.

Great thing about sticking with the same guy is he is not trying to do work on me that is not necessary. Pretty sure if I went to a new dentist they would be wanting to whip out all those old fillings.

I always say, if I had my life to live again, looking after my teeth would be one thing I would do differently given the chance.

Was Oz Clarke the guy who did the TV wine tour of California with James May? (It was... thanks Google).

That was a lot of fun, and I consider myself the James May of wine... I seem to recall even he was converted to a wine snob by the end of the series.

That's worthy of a thread all of its own - I bet there are some massive regrets for a lot of people.

Yes... there are a few things I would do different.

I may start a new "things" thread... but isn't that Maidstones Job? :supergrin:

Warning: First world problem.

Our cleaning lady of many years went back last November to Guatemala, to get her immigration papers sorted. Apparently they are being arseholes and dragging their feet.

We had two new ladies in today while we wait for our good friend to return.

Chaos and mayhem ensued. Spent the rest of the day fixing everything back to how it should be.

Very annoying...

Weren't all dentists NHS when we were growing up and as such were paid by the filling? I am definitely of the belief that my mouth was filled (literally) with unnecessary fillings. Every visit meant another filling. Seemingly every time, regardless of how much I brushed my teeth (it can't have been every time, but it felt like it - and my memory remembers it that way).
The upshot is those of us that went to unscrupulous dentists back in the 60's and 70's are paying for it in our old age. My teeth are a disaster area, mostly destroyed by dentists, requiring re-filling and/or crowns to replace weakened teeth.

You are so lucky....if I, or others on here, ever admitted to having a cleaning lady there would be hell to pay....but you can get away with it :grrr: :)

My dentist, of similar vintage, always gave me a filling. Absolute wanker!! The only consolation is that with few exceptions they have all held up for donkey's years

Totally correct. They proved it quite a while ago when they found that most people (who most likely didn't need them) had fillings on the right side of their mouth. Reason being most dentists (like the general pop) were right handed.

Good point. My teeth on the right are worse than on the left, but I do mostly chew on my right side so could be the contributing factor.

I guess I shouldn't bring up the fact I'm thinking of getting a Porsche then...

(Joking)

I though it was Cullinan :)

I'm not in Wilf's tax bracket yet...

No, I resurrect threads.

I was just thinking of posting something along similar lines. I used to know a person who was thick as mince and confused everyone he spoke to combined with an inaudible level of speaking made everyone look stupid to him This made him think he was more intelligent than everyone else and to this day he is probably wondering why the doors of opportunity don't seem to be opening to him like he thinks they should. The ****!

One of the various offshoots of the Dunning - Kruger hypothesis?

Debbie McLean, she's mine.

This will be annoying a lot of people locally... LOL a KFC without chicken...

KFC without chicken would be a massive improvement :supergrin:

Office brown nosers. Jesus, a senior director or one of the executive team turn up and the usual suspects swarm over them like flies on shit. Have some self-rickocking-spect ffs

Jesus turns up at your office?

He’s head of the Mexican division.

edit - not Liga MX before some wag does a “funny”

TBF it is Easter.

He literally did it on the back of a fag packet in an instant as he knew exactly off the top of his head what each person cost. He had been a royal navy submarine commander and a NASA rocket scientist before becoming a college principal. He invented the whole idea of MIS systems for the FE sector. Learnt more off him in 27 months than off every other chief exec I worked for. Don’t make assumptions about his impact on meetings as we did not waste any time and to this day no organisation I have looked at has come close to not wasting time or money like he did. You sound as if you have plenty of experience of pointless windbags who love the sounds of their own voices.

Did you resurrect him and all?

Nice, deserved that :D

Feeding the 5,000 (sheet shredder)

I'll see if there's a "Things that resurrected Jesus" thread

Britain's Got Talent.

Trying to find a betting slip I threw away thinking my wife’s horse on the grand National didn’t win. Turns out it came 6th and she gets a place as played a pound each way.

Found it eventually….phew

Hallelujah, praise be the lord and I will be passing the bucket

There's one thing, money.

Some silly bastard having a fag in hotel room, that set off a alarm that woke every fukker up at 5am, and meant we had to evacuate.

Stupid Tassimo machine only makes half an average sized mug of coffee with each pod. What is this, a coffee machine for ants.

I had the same, might it need a descale and piercer/funnel clean ?

I’ve suffered that. I wonder if they get some kind of fine. I recently they should arm the other guests with rotten fruit and then point out the culprit in the car park

The local Macdonalds ran out of beef burgers the other week!

When I was uni we used to often have fire alarms in the night. The worst one was it going off at 3am by someone drunk pressing the press here button and could not be turned off. They needed someone from the manufacturer to come and do it. In the end it went off at 5:20.

To be made?

yup loads and mostly tax free :)

I went to Subway once and they didn't have any rolls! Flatbreads, and that was it.

Went to a Subway in Woking last night and asked for a Sub with herb and cheese bread. I was told they didn't have any herb and cheese bread so I would have to choose an alternative. Okay I said I'll have the multigrain bread to which the server said sorry we only have brown bread. Hmm...Somehow I think we could have cut out some of the padding in that conversation?

Today in Boots Pharmacy at 3.32PM
"Hi Have you got any Brolene?"
"No we are out of stock"
"Seems to be the case everywhere, any reason?"
"Yeah problems with supply from the manufacturer"
"Any idea when you are getting any in?"
"No"
"Is there an equivelent?"
"Yeah Golden Eyes"
"Can I have some othat then please."
"No"
"Why?"
"We're closed"

:wallbash:

.

Most hotels/motels over here charge a cleaning fee if you smoke in your room.Mate of mine got done on an away trip one year was fuming. Said he was going to write to the papers his MP still had to pay the $200 though, :supergrin:

Planning to cycle to work in the morning, and then laying in bed unable to sleep.

Happens everytime.

**** it, working from home instead.

Still awake

Count sheep…

Seriously, do some people know it is 2023 not 1978.








;)

Take a torch with you or you’ll never see the little blighters.

Had similar back in about 2007, staying at the Tower Hotel on the River. Fire Alarm went off THREE times between 1am and 3am, meaning a walk down from the 9th floor, and back up again, three times.

It was eventually traced to a couple of piss heads in the bar who thought it would be fun to set the alarms off every time they went to the bog. :veryangry

You should have kept banging on their door when they slept it off :)

The trend of saying ‘super’ replacing ‘very’ to add emphasis to another term.

Ie - ‘it was super important’

You get the notion that the speaker feels cute or something by saying it. Its completely widespread now. What annoys me the most is when I hear it from an intellectual speaker as why have they succumb to using it rather than ‘very’. Seems very valley girl lingo to me.

I got a 'naughty boy' letter under my hotel door recently because someone on my floor had been smoking. It more or less said, "you are a c***, stop f****** smoking, we will evict you and charge you thousands of pounds - oh and if it isn't you that is smoking then please ignore this letter".

That does sound super annoying.

This is very popular in Spanish too

People (usually young men) who drive around in their cars with the windows down with music blaring out - mostly crap wrap. Turn it down! Grumpy old man here!

.....the dumbing down of major issues on the BBC and other media on important and complicated topics like wars, gun control, important social debates....."insert topic" in 30 seconds" or "a simple guide to xxxxxxx" type videos or articles.

Wonderful pic of Braverman with horns in that story.

Thank goodness, I checked my mis-reading of your post.

Shouldn’t that be in the guilty fancies thread

Meanwhile, in the movie review thread.....

Giles Coren.

I'm not sure using the word "cute" in that context is without criticism...

Babies are "cute, not figures of speech.

Would "Valley Girl" lingo not be "It was totally important"? :supergrin:

Classic 'look at me' syndrome :jerkit:

I don't give them the satisfaction of acknowledging their existence and furthermore, what they don't seem to grasp is that no-one is remotely interested in hearing it.

Not sure that annoying is the right word for that c~nt.

Scott mills on radio 2. The way he gets callers to sign off with “love you bye”. Sick making.

I really don't have a clue who he is so looked him up on Google.

He appears to one of those guys like frank Lampard who think it is cool to look like you always need a shave.

How/why do they do that? Either grow a proper beard or shave off that bum fluff every few days.

In fairness, Paddy McCarthy seems to have the same affliction...

Tests that allow their dogs to back all day and night.
Then rage at you for having a go about it

It's been rumored for years that Garth Crooks doesn't watch matches he just glances through the reports and then announces his, TEAM of the Week.
This week he left no doubt. His goalkeeper of the weekend was Man Utd's David DeGea, who faced a total of zero shots against Forest.
His defence when questioned, was something along the lines of, "he always looked alert and you always felt that if anything had came his way he would have saved it.

Tests?


Pests
Twats
Tarts
Tuts


Anyhoo...this is the definition of unsociable chavvy neighbours likely with a tendancy towards sorting things ouy with violence or atr least becoming even more vindictively unsociable.

Similar to the Boots post earlier, went in to a Superdrug near Bank last week. Went up to the counter where a staff member was wiping the counter surface. I asked him where the pharmacy section was and he said “ I’ve finished for the day”.

Did you complain?