Things I don’t understand

All real life examples, most are from this week:

• Posting incredibly detailed information about your health condition, along with your symptoms and the drugs you’ve used to treat the condition—on Facebook no less.
• Posting racist comments anywhere.
• Ignoring rules or laws because you don’t like them (why hello, Ferals, I am most certainly talking about you)
• Not using spell check on a presentation to a client. Lest you think I am being nit-picky, I’m not talking about using then instead of than, or even about poor writing. I’m talking about wrong capitalization and use of parentheses (Are “Businesses” . . . ) plus misspelled words (business savy). 
• Holding a cell phone conversation in a restaurant after you are seated—on speaker phone.
• Taking up two parking places with your car . . .

And as long as I’m being crotchety, I will never understand what passes for business casual dress in the work environment. If you’d wear it to the beach, it’s not business casual. If you’d wear it to go clubbing, it’s not business casual. If you’d wear it to work out, it’s not business casual.

Sheesh. 

Um thanks but

Memorial Day isn't the day to thank veterans for their service. In fact, Memorial Day isn’t about me or any of the other veterans still living. It’s to honor those who died while serving in the military.

Those of us who served have a day already: Veteran's Day. If you still want to thank me, give me a shout on November 11.

You can read more about Memorial Day here, here and here. 

For Veteran's Day information, go here, here and here. 

I just had to get that off my chest. And for those who already thanked me this weekend for my service, you're welcome and really, you don't need to thank me any more. It's all good.

Garbage in, garbage out

Dear City of Boston,

Why must you make trash pick-up so difficult?

When we moved here, I was initially delighted that our trash is picked up two times a week. That’s especially important since almost no one has a garage so storing trash between pick-up days could get both smelly and difficult. Not to mention, we live in the city and there are rats, both human and otherwise, who like to dig through the trash.

But now our condo association received a fine from you because apparently you have regulations about what kind of trash bags we must use—and we have to use different bags for trash and for recycling. (Don’t get me started on how you no longer provide recycling bins. Even Kansas City, that so called cowtown by your standards, provides recycling bins AND handy charts showing what can go in them to people who move there. Big fail on your part, Boston.) Apparently our trash bags must either be the big black bags or they must be a certain thickness. And the recycling trash bags have to be clear. I guess that’s so the homeless people who tear open our trash to dig out recycling can see exactly what it is they are digging for.

So we’ll be double bagging with our white bags that fit our tall kitchen trash can—the large black bags would never fit in our can and I refuse to throw away perfectly good trash bags because you need money. And since we scoop cat litter every day and don’t want that smelly stuff in our house, we’ll have to find a way to store it out on the patio until it can be tossed in our double bagged regular trash.

As for recycling? The day you take it seriously and quit letting your trash haulers just toss it in with the regular trash is the day I’ll bother sorting the few cans we do get.

I won’t hold my breath.

Sincerely,

Unrelated rantlets

Rantlets are tiny little rants hardly worthy of the word rant. So here we go:

I’m tired of the meme first world problems. Yes, I know others elsewhere have it a lot worse than I do. I get it. But these are my problems and hey, guess what—I live in a first world country complete with first world problems.

I’m also tired of applying for jobs with companies that use antiquated web sites. I'm talking about web sites that can't accept documents in Word 2010 and won’t run in Chrome. Hey, a job application is also a chance for me to evaluate you, company who has the job posting. So don’t use Web 1.0 technology and do update your site so I can upload my resume into the dark abyss of your company never to be seen or heard from again.

Also this week I ran across a company with a career section of their web site that was in such bad shape regarding security certificates that both Chrome and Internet Explorer had absolute fits about me going there. And yes, this was one of the companies whose site flat wouldn't work in Chrome. Please for the love of God join us in the 21st century and make your web site compatible with the major browsers.

That leads me directly to the dark abyss of no answer or response to a job application. Seriously, it’s not all that difficult to set up a script to let all the non-winners know you filled the job. If tiny companies in Iowa can get that script up and running, so can you, big giant companies in major cities. It's the polite thing to do.

Finally let’s talk about the TSA. Ah the joys of either getting virtually strip-searched or else patted down before I can fly. I guess I slept through the  biology class that covered the parts of the human body, because for the life of me I never heard of a body part called resistance. The TSA sure has and they love to karate chop me there every time I fly.

Tsk tsk

Oh athletic clothing makers, do you not realize there are those of us who actually wear sports bras and have zero interest in your useless shelf bras you put in every single athletic top? And that in fact your shelf bras only add another layer of heat-trapping cloth?

And while I’m at it, did you not realize that some of us intensely dislike the plastered-to-your-torso effect in said workout tops? Also, did you know that not all of us are long-waisted waifs?

I dream of a day when I can buy a yoga or running top without the stupid shelf “bra,” and that doesn’t come down to the tops of my thighs, and isn’t imitating cling wrap. Until then I will use my el-cheapo tank top from Target and my decidedly not el-cheapo sports bra that actually works. And if I stay unemployed much longer, I may tackle workout clothing as a sewing project.