Other What's ruining your life right now?

just saw the price for FF7 remake over on epic.

someone is taking the piss.

 

Not life-ruining, but a surreal situatuion...

I've not long got off a call with my biological father - a man I've never met and until earlier this year knew nothing about. My mother got back in touch with my biological family earlier this year and I've been putting off making contact for pretty much all of this year. He actually tried to call me earlier in the week, but I was out on the piss with work at the time! He lives in Canada and is 7hrs behind, hence the late-night call - I suggested he call at 0100GMT, and I have no idea what possessed me to suggest that.

Where the hell do you start?

Yeah, I was reading about that earlier, that's an absolute dickpunch.

I was really peeved when I learned that the "Intergrade" edition would be next-gen exclusive and not coming out on PS4, and now they want £70 for the PC release.

 

New workstation arrives, it's working, yay.

Monitor dies on first try.

 

A fitting end to this Curry’s based rant.

So after still not hearing anything back from anyone - complaints team, the store, nobody - the store was showing as stock available for collection so I decided I would just drive 40 mins there and demand one. I wondered if there would be a “computer says no” problem taking stock off the shelf to fulfil a different type of order, but had a trump card reserved in that event, basically just going full Karen.

So I got in store, and there are dozens of controller placeholders on the shelf, and dozens of equivalent actual controllers behind the till. I saunter up to the order collection counter and hand over my paperwork:

“Have you had a call to say it’s in?”
- No but I can see dozens of controllers behind the till and having waited 3 and a half months for my call, I was done waiting
“Ah I’ll have to check whether the order is in the warehouse, give me a moment”
- Urge to Karen increases “I mean, I’ve driven 40 mins so if they’re not then a refund will do as well”
“So I’ve talked to the warehouse and they don’t have any in, and y’see the ones here are for retail so we aren’t supposed to use them for this order”
- Urge to Karen reaches breaking point, she senses this and jumps back in…
“But… I think I have another solution, give me a minute”
- She walks over to the counter, takes one of each colour of controller, comes back offering a selection of the three and job done.

If she was fudging stock levels in the name of common sense it didn’t matter which one I had, so already having two white and one black, I had a nice red one instead. Small victories.
And I would have been waiting for stock coming into the warehouse for a loooong time because stock has been going straight to store instead, presumably because they’ve not been able to keep many on the shelves. There was nothing in place that actually told whatever stock control system “hey this loser has been waiting for a controller since August shall we set one aside?”

So nil points to Curry’s, but fortunately full marks and then some to one special Curry’s employee that could see common sense over Curry’s nonsense.

 

Many years ago (2005) I did a Christmas in a Currys. Back then anyone with a manager log in could take retail stock, open up the computer, scan the barcodes and apply those items to a waiting online or telephone order. It would take said items out of stock and depending on what the manager picked from a drop down the mail order would either be cancelled or become part of the store's retail stock when it arrived. When I say manager I mean me, the teenage temp because the 360 had just launched and we were doing that every day.

I find it hard to believe their systems have regressed. But I can believe the floor staff have no idea it can be done. I could also believe the managers are too lazy to do it unless someone's refusing to leave.

 

Could be, though I'm quite sure there's been more than one vendor swap and rework of their stock control system since 2005 - pretty sure this was a simple case of saying "fsk it, I don't want this to be my problem, and it shouldn't be this guys problem, so let's make it currys problem". After speaking on the phone with someone about warehouse stock her body language said "WTAF" as opposed to indicating she was taking in details of how to transfer stock or that it was possible. She also flagged down someone who I assume was somewhat managerial to ask after getting off the phone and again the body language there was less "ah so here's the thing you need to do" and more "yeah this guy is out of luck"

And with me waiting for a white one and being offered a selection, and picking the red one that's £5 more at Currys, definitely stock fiddling going on in this case.

 

Face to face cash on collection. Less faff, does mean you have to face an army of retards though. Something about selling stuff online that brings out the utter dregs of humanity.

 

Got a £60 'clean air zone' fine from visiting Birmingham a few weeks ago for a job interview (guessing it hasn't panned out as they haven't had the decency to contact me since). What is the point of that sh!tehole? All it does is cause traffic on the M5 and M6. If anything, the council should be paying ME for psychological stress brought on by going there.

Remind me to bomb Birmingham first when I get access to nuclear weapons.

 

Ah yes, all types:

- The "I think you're my new best friend" type
- The "I know we said £100 but how about a tenner" type
- The actual factual ghost
- The "Can you hand deliver it 100 miles away instead?" type
- The thinks they're going to get a washing machine into the back of a mini type
- The "hope you don't mind if I pay in coppers" type
- The standoffish assuming they're getting ripped off in spite of the fact they literally have the item in hand type
- The "I just send a 1 wd txt msg evry 24h m8" type

Who have I missed?

 

The ultra-rare type.

Asks all pertinent questions and agrees on price in advance, turns up at the agreed time and exchanges cash for goods or services, before driving away never to darken your doorstep again.

Maybe 1 in 20 actually do this. It's why I generally despise people.

 

- The I took it home and smashed it now you owe me a refund type
- The pretended not to notice the clearly visible scratch and wants half off the asking price type
- The I only brought £20 and I won't leave until you accept £20 type.
- The I'll threaten you for a discount type.

 

- The 'there was an implied lifetime, no quibbles warranty on the £50 spares or repair laptop I bought from you' type

 

Why do you think he has a £100,000 Range Rover?

We used to get that type when I worked on the building. So we'd crap in a bucket, then put them in bags and toss them in the skip. Then just sit back and watch.....

 

Log4j, and a second AWS outage in the last fortnight.

Fun times.

 

I'm PC only and I will not pay that. I will wait. I'm patient.

 

All the best for you and your women. Hope you don't catch it too! You got a good reason to hide in the shed now I suppose? Not saying you needed one, but now you can lean into it. Family or gaming backlog? Hmm the doctor says games.