OT: Sens Lounge LXXVI | The One Where the RedBlacks won and it was a good day.

[DrakeAndJosh]

Wow. So some guy tries to buy something that is $25 plus tax with just $25. He was like "I'm not going back. American money is worth more anyways." **** it's $25 plus tax man, not whatever you want

I had a guy yesterday that said he didn't pay sales taxes because he lives in Oregon. I kindly told them that here in Ontario, we pay taxes. He snarled and walked out.

 

[BonkTastic]

I had a guy yesterday that said he didn't pay sales taxes because he lives in Oregon. I kindly told them that here in Ontario, we pay taxes. He snarled and walked out.

Good. If he's going to act like that, let him go and whine about it somewhere else.

What a doucher.

 

[Do Make Say Think]

It's rather amusing that the guy thinks that because he doesn't pay sales tax at home that he should be exempt everywhere he goes

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

Retail really doesn't pay enough to make it worth dealing with customers. You really see the nasty side of people doing that job.

 

[DrakeAndJosh]

Retail really doesn't pay enough to make it worth dealing with customers. You really see the nasty side of people doing that job.

Ya I would never be able to work retail as a career. It's been a great part time job for me throughout high school and now into university though. It's also a large company so when I move to continue school in a few years I should be able to just transfer to another store. I also have great management and have been there long enough that I make a pretty good amount hourly for the type of work that I do. My first few months working customer service I was shocked by how entitled and rude some people could be, I even took some of it personally. After a while ridiculous customers just become a funny story to tell later and I just try to make it through the transaction without laughing out loud.

 

[BonkTastic]

It's been a great part time job for me throughout high school and now into university though. It's also a large company so when I move to continue school in a few years I should be able to just transfer to another store. I also have great management and have been there long enough that I make a pretty good amount hourly for the type of work that I do.

Sounds a lot like when I worked at IKEA.

 

[MainDotC]

MRSA really scares me.

 

[Do Make Say Think]

What's MRSA?

 

[MainDotC]

It's rather amusing that the guy thinks that because he doesn't pay sales tax at home that he should be exempt everywhere he goes

Unfortunately this behaviour expands to different states as well. I used to work at a gas station (Fastrac on 500 N. James St in Rome, NY) and for some reason we'd get a high influx of people from North Carolina. In NY the sales tax raises a $4 pack of cigarettes up to $11. I don't know how they get away with this but in North Carolina there's very little tax on cigarettes so it's usually around $4 - $5. And of course you can go out to the Oneida Indian Nation reservation and pay the same. People from North Carolina would come in and get all offended when I announced the price of a pack of Marlboro's. I mean some of them wanted to either get into a fistfight or escalate to the corporate office right then and there. It was as if I was playing the role of a bill collector and I showed up telling them I'm foreclosing on the house and they have to be out in an hour. Unfortunately idiots feel they are entitled to anything and want to throw down with anyone who doesn't agree with them.

What you said is true - you don't like it go back to Oregon. Please continue to recognize these fools for their idiocy and not their national origin - thanks!

 

[BonkTastic]

MRSA really scares me.

A lot of our medical future scares me.

Right now, living in a ~88% Muslim country, my big medical fears are all the people who went on pilgrimages to Mecca over Ramadan and brought back MERS with them.

 

[MainDotC]

What's MRSA?

I was on page 26 and did not realize it had already reached page 27...I was responding to Fuhr's mention of the Ebola virus. MRSA is Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus. I actually thought it meant "Medically Resistant" but either way it's a very strong form of mutated bacteria that can easily kill a human once it gets under the skin.

Staph keeps heading this way in greater numbers because staph has mutated so much over the years that humans cannot defeat it with their own immunity system. MRSA is the kind that can't even be defeated with (to my knowledge) regular antibiotics and sometimes surgery is needed to remove infected tissue, IF that works. I base these assertions based on an episode of Frontline that I watched - you may choose a different source of information.

 

[Do Make Say Think]

Stupid is indiscriminate

Stupid doesn't care if you are left wing, or right wing, what race you are, woman or man

The Ebola thing is probably overblown due to media being the media: African countries have a hard time dealing with these kinds of outbreaks but we have the manpower and bureaucracy that can effectively deal with something like this should it reach North America (bureaucracy has advantages too!)

 

[Harbinger]

Yep, we have much better resources to deal with an out break.

 

[MainDotC]

Stupid is indiscriminate

Stupid doesn't care if you are left wing, or right wing, what race you are, woman or man

Is this in response to something I typed like the guy who didn't like paying taxes to sask

 

[MakeOttawaGreatAgain]

I was on page 26 and did not realize it had already reached page 27...I was responding to Fuhr's mention of the Ebola virus. MRSA is Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus. I actually thought it meant "Medically Resistant" but either way it's a very strong form of mutated bacteria that can easily kill a human once it gets under the skin.

Staph keeps heading this way in greater numbers because staph has mutated so much over the years that humans cannot defeat it with their own immunity system. MRSA is the kind that can't even be defeated with (to my knowledge) regular antibiotics and sometimes surgery is needed to remove infected tissue, IF that works. I base these assertions based on an episode of Frontline that I watched - you may choose a different source of information.

Mrsa is awful. It has almost ruined my life. I've been hospitalized a bunch of times because of it, and I go to the hospital 5-6 times a year from it for about 8 years now. When I first got it (from a really minor soccer injury) I almost needed my leg amputated. It haunted me for my entire gr. 8 year. I almost went bald because I kept getting infections on my scalp, I got them on my face, my legs, I couldn't think or move and I looked like a freak. Eventually they found some antibiotics which worked for me, and I've been getting better at keeping it at bay. I now usually just get it on my lower body and the doctor just needs to drain it. The infections or super painful (9/10 if they get bad) and they affect your mood, moral, and movement. It also has something like a 35% mortality rate.... So despite everything, I consider myself really fortunate.

 

[PoutineSp00nZ]

Unfortunately this behaviour expands to different states as well. I used to work at a gas station (Fastrac on 500 N. James St in Rome, NY) and for some reason we'd get a high influx of people from North Carolina. In NY the sales tax raises a $4 pack of cigarettes up to $11. I don't know how they get away with this but in North Carolina there's very little tax on cigarettes so it's usually around $4 - $5. And of course you can go out to the Oneida Indian Nation reservation and pay the same. People from North Carolina would come in and get all offended when I announced the price of a pack of Marlboro's. I mean some of them wanted to either get into a fistfight or escalate to the corporate office right then and there. It was as if I was playing the role of a bill collector and I showed up telling them I'm foreclosing on the house and they have to be out in an hour. Unfortunately idiots feel they are entitled to anything and want to throw down with anyone who doesn't agree with them.

What you said is true - you don't like it go back to Oregon. Please continue to recognize these fools for their idiocy and not their national origin - thanks!

I was working at gas stations in Kanata when the price of gas started soaring over a dollar. People got so angry with me. I'd just ask them if they really thought that the drone behind the cash at a gas station getting paid 10 dollars an hour was the one behind the escalating gas prices. If someone happened to drive up as the price was being raised I knew I was going to get yelled at.

I think some people just need to elevate themselves over others to feel superior and powerful. These people probably don't get that sense from anything else.

It's funny though, I'd recommend that everyone work a a retail job at some point in their lives, just to better understand the lives of others.

 

[Do Make Say Think]

Is this in response to something I typed like the guy who didn't like paying taxes to sask

YEs because you basically said it was a good thing that we didn't just call him a dumb American

It's my usual retort to people who label others as a way of calling them stupid

 

[MainDotC]

YEs because you basically said it was a good thing that we didn't just call him a dumb American

It's my usual retort to people who label others as a way of calling them stupid

Agreed - thank you for confirming

 

[Caeldan]

I was working at gas stations in Kanata when the price of gas started soaring over a dollar. People got so angry with me. I'd just ask them if they really thought that the drone behind the cash at a gas station getting paid 10 dollars an hour was the one behind the escalating gas prices. If someone happened to drive up as the price was being raised I knew I was going to get yelled at.

I think some people just need to elevate themselves over others to feel superior and powerful. These people probably don't get that sense from anything else.

It's funny though, I'd recommend that everyone work a a retail job at some point in their lives, just to better understand the lives of others.

I skipped working retail... did my tour in human inconsideration doing tech support at an inbound call centre instead.

 

[MainDotC]

Mrsa is awful. It has almost ruined my life. I've been hospitalized a bunch of times because of it, and I go to the hospital 5-6 times a year from it for about 8 years now. When I first got it (from a really minor soccer injury) I almost needed my leg amputated. It haunted me for my entire gr. 8 year. I almost went bald because I kept getting infections on my scalp, I got them on my face, my legs, I couldn't think or move and I looked like a freak. Eventually they found some antibiotics which worked for me, and I've been getting better at keeping it at bay. I now usually just get it on my lower body and the doctor just needs to drain it. The infections or super painful (9/10 if they get bad) and they affect your mood, moral, and movement. It also has something like a 35% mortality rate.... So despite everything, I consider myself really fortunate.

I'm so sorry to read this and I praise you for your perseverance. For a while I was getting staph infections in my ankle and it haunted me as well. I would get hit with severe flu-like symptoms and pain, and the staph would attack my leg with full force. It would turn the ankle a deep, ugly purple with pulsating veins, and you could tell it would start to extend to other areas when they'd turn a deep red. At first I took the antibiotic and and shook it off. Then it came back again, and then a 3rd time, and they needed to increase the level of antibiotic.

The doc warned me that although it goes away it just learns how to fight the antibiotic and comes back even stronger, and that really freaked me out. I felt targeted - and I also saw it was very easy to die from this if left untreated. And if I kept getting it and they had to keep giving me these strong antibiotics it would just stave off for a few months and then come right back to attack me.

Finally I started to take notice that it was somehow getting under my skin, and they advised that the skin around my shin and ankle is very tight (because I was fat) and my skin would dry out and crack, creating an entry. I lubed up my legs everyday and dropped about 50 lbs over the course of a year and I haven't had any infections since.

I don't think I can understand how difficult it must be to deal with MRSA but I certainly did feel threatened and targeted by an entity that felt like it couldn't be stopped. Who knows - maybe it's still hanging around my ankles waiting for another chance.

 

[Do Make Say Think]

I currently work for Health Canada in an inbound call centre

I deal with some of the worst scum in Canada

 

[MainDotC]

I was working at gas stations in Kanata when the price of gas started soaring over a dollar. People got so angry with me. I'd just ask them if they really thought that the drone behind the cash at a gas station getting paid 10 dollars an hour was the one behind the escalating gas prices. If someone happened to drive up as the price was being raised I knew I was going to get yelled at.

I think some people just need to elevate themselves over others to feel superior and powerful. These people probably don't get that sense from anything else.

It's funny though, I'd recommend that everyone work a a retail job at some point in their lives, just to better understand the lives of others.

This is absolutely hilarious, but unfortunately very true. I used to change the price as well, and I remember my boss giving me the plastic numbers to go out to the street sign and everyone would start firing questions about how much, quickly pumping as much gas as they could before the numbers changed, frantically glancing back and forth between the numbers on the street sign and the digits listed on the pump as if it was a race to disarm an detonator. Then they'd come in to pay and drop all their little one-liners to try and make me feel ashamed. How I loved being the only one behind the register at 11 o'clock at night.

I agree everyone should work some form of customer service. You do get a good glimpse of the level of idiocy in society - not only from the customer but also from corporations. For instance we had a policy of not keeping any more than $75 in the register at any time. I'm near the end of working an overnight shift, the manager came in at 5:30 AM and has set the safe for open (takes like 20 mins to open once the code has been entered), I just dropped what I could into the safe to keep me around the $75 mark, and some guy comes in and gets $10 of gas before going to work and hands me a $100 bill. I can't withdraw money from the safe because it's on a 20 min delay and this guy just goes flipping insane because I can't change his $100 bill. I could understand his frustration because our company is so irresponsible with cash that they had to implement these ridiculous policies to inconvenience the customer. Yeah we have up that "No bills larger than $50" sign but no one reads those and besides if you have legal currency and a business refuses it then the business can go find $10 somewhere (imho).

So anyway I think it's good to work one of those jobs not just for seeing how stupid people can be but perhaps if enough people worked those jobs there'd be a lot more understanding and hopefully a lot less stupidity. I don't even know if it's appropriate to label people as stupid but either way it's an eye-opening experience. I also think you get (if you don't get shot) some of the best stories to tell. I always thought of developing a similar forum devoted to retail employees with a focus on gas station clerks. Try googling stories of people who worked at the Avis or Hertz counter - absolutely hilarious.

 

[MainDotC]

I currently work for Health Canada in an inbound call centre

I deal with some of the worst scum in Canada

Call centres are the best - I used to work at a Verizon Wireless call centre in Utica. I took some of the most memorable calls. It really piques my interest when I see a customer service call gets leaked to youtube. I remember one guy with whom I worked (srsly - this is not me!) would purposefully drop little berating remarks to the customer so they would get worked up and demand a supervisor, and then the supervisor for that shift would take the call while the guy who sat next to me would be allowed to sit there and listen and basically get free time to chill. There was also a girl on our team who would call all sorts of internal numbers and sit and listen to static, put people on enormous holds, or leave her phone in "after-call" (basically keeping the receiver off the hook) all to prevent any incoming calls.

I have a good job now - I fantasize about picking up some part time hours at one of the local call centres here and try to find a way to record some calls and upload them. Here are some of my favourites:





FYI - this one has some bad language:

 

[MakeOttawaGreatAgain]

I'm so sorry to read this and I praise you for your perseverance. For a while I was getting staph infections in my ankle and it haunted me as well. I would get hit with severe flu-like symptoms and pain, and the staph would attack my leg with full force. It would turn the ankle a deep, ugly purple with pulsating veins, and you could tell it would start to extend to other areas when they'd turn a deep red. At first I took the antibiotic and and shook it off. Then it came back again, and then a 3rd time, and they needed to increase the level of antibiotic.

The doc warned me that although it goes away it just learns how to fight the antibiotic and comes back even stronger, and that really freaked me out. I felt targeted - and I also saw it was very easy to die from this if left untreated. And if I kept getting it and they had to keep giving me these strong antibiotics it would just stave off for a few months and then come right back to attack me.

Finally I started to take notice that it was somehow getting under my skin, and they advised that the skin around my shin and ankle is very tight (because I was fat) and my skin would dry out and crack, creating an entry. I lubed up my legs everyday and dropped about 50 lbs over the course of a year and I haven't had any infections since.

I don't think I can understand how difficult it must be to deal with MRSA but I certainly did feel threatened and targeted by an entity that felt like it couldn't be stopped. Who knows - maybe it's still hanging around my ankles waiting for another chance.

Sucks that you went through that, man. I agree that being healthier definitely helps, but I also have eczema haha, so the staph just loves me. I eat so much omega that I'm surprised the ocean still has fish. I found its helped with both the mrsa and the eczema.

 

[MainDotC]

Dave not to be insensitive to your latest post but just wanted to post that im in the line for Guardians of the Galaxy: