Tuesday, December 14
Just Don't Give Me Any Stella
Two things are currently irritating me. One, in fact, is infuriating me. Infuriating me to the point that I want to go out and kick a kitten or something.The relatively minor irritant is the lack of timekeeping by a few of my friends. I'm fed up with being at a designated meeting point right on time and having to wait 15 minutes for them to turn up. I usually rush myself to get out of the house on time and catch the bus, so it can get very annoying to know that that rushing was in fact not required.
I used to be the latecomer to everything a few years back, but I've made a conscious effort to put that right. Yes, there are still sometimes occasions when I'm a couple of minutes late, but they're getting ever rarer.
Oh, and another thing that's annoying me at the moment: My fucking bastard of a phone.
It doesn't like German SIM cards too much, and has a habit of what I call 'throwing a tantrum' every so often. By that, I mean it decides to switch itself off (usually in the middle of a call or whilst trying to send a txt) at random intervals, and then refuses to switch on properly for a good 20 minutes or so.
It also toys with you by turning itself on when it's back in your pocket, after you've given up trying to turn it on. I say it toys with you because it seems as if it is finally working properly, but then switches back off again as soon as anything is required of the SIM card.
That is so annoying, because you can type out an entire message, thinking the phone is working properly again, only for it to crash on you as soon as you click Send, activating the SIM card.
To quote The Streets from 'Such A Twat', "Ah, fucking phones man!"
Anyway, that was something that sprang to mind as I was writing. The following is the single most infuriating and intensely annoying thing I have come across recently:
The phone system at HSBC.
Why can you not just ring you fucking branch directly?! I've been trying to deal with someone at the branch in my hometown, but to speak to her, my call had to be routed through a call centre in fucking India!
And that's after listening to the myriad of options and instructions they give you. Oh, and the type of 'Hold' muzak which makes you want to march up to HSBC's head office and cave in with a brick the face of the 'creative' bod who came up with the idea in a meeting of "Hey, what about THIS piece?" when deciding what muzak HSBC's phone system should have.
And then jump up and down on him until his sides rip open and his insides are on the outside, followed by pouring 12 kilos of salt into these open wounds, as well as a few litres of hydrochloric acid for good measure.
Then, and only then, will he know just how fucking infuriating that piece of music is.
It's so annoying not being able to ring a branch directly. I knew about the re-routing system, so I tried to work around it at first by googling for the Melksham branch and a direct telephone number.
I found one on various local websites, and rang it. No answer, of course. I resigned myself to the prospect of "pushing star to talk to an operator" and being told that "our operators know that you are waiting".
It's not as if these calls are free, either. They may be in the UK from a landline, but using an English mobile in Germany is very fucking expensive. I even have to pay to receive calls on it, which is why I switched to a German pay-as-you-go SIM card a few months back.
However, calling England is even more expensive with that, so I use my English SIM card for such calls. Plus I can guarantee my phone won't cut out whilst using the English SIM card.
Ah, fucking phones man!
1 Comments:
I know what you mean, mate. People who are usually late are bascially saying that their time is more important than mine. Drives me mad.
Re: banks - Doesn't your bank have an email system through your online account? Mine does. If I have a problem, I just email them.
By 
MrTeacher, at 7:53 PM
