(no subject)

[sebastienne]

Places I have no intention of ever going again:

The bitch-whore from hell at Edinburgh station ticket office

Emma and Sian(speaking to the same woman but on different days): I have an open return to Cambridge (to get to cambs from ed one changes from the main line at peterborough). I want to go to Haywards Heath / Oxford. Can I have a single from Peterborough to there, please?
BWfH: Can't sell you that. There's regulations.
E+S: What reguations? You are a ticket-seller. Perhaps I am naive, but I would like to buy a ticket, please.
BWfH: Can't do that now you've told me that you plan to BREAK THE LAW.
E+S: The fuck? We just want to go home!
BWfH: You can't break an open return. You have a ticket to Cambridge, and you will stay on the train to Cambridge, even if you colapse or a fire breaks out or Cambridge is obliterated by a terrorist atrocity.
E+S: Even though we have to change at Peterborough anyway, and not riding the connection to Cambridge frees up seats that people who actually WANT to go there can sit in? Given that, having already bought this open ticket, and then not using all of it, we are in effect giving your company money for nothing?
BWfH: Still not selling you a ticket.
E+S: We'll just buy them online then, yeah?


The Gloucester Arms

Emma: Collapses, after 8.5 hours on public transport with only a carton of custard for sustenance, in a pub that sells plentiful cheap food. They are not selling food, so she drags herself to get take-away, and Ashley gets the drinks in.
Robotic Barman: You can't eat that in here.
E: But I checked before I got it, you aren't selling food.
RB: You can't eat that in here.
E: (exhausted, starving, drags herself to her feet) I'd understand you not allowing me to eat this in here if you were serving food, because it would mean I wasn't spending the money in your pub. But you weren't.
RB: You can't eat that in here.
E: I get that, but I was just wondering if you could explain why? There doesn't seem to be any logic behind it - you obviously don't object to food in your pub, as you sometimes serve it; I'm just sitting in the corner eating chips, which in fact, you serve; my eating this in here means I've spent money on drinks that I otherwise would not have bought due to being somewhere else eating my dinner; I am not, in fact, doing anything that is damaging to your person, your company, or your premises - please, I just want to understand why this rule exists!
RB: You can't eat that in here.
E: Goes outside to eat chips. Collapses back into chair, leans onto Ashley, exhausted.
Old Git: Alright cheerful?
E: ignores
OG: I said alright, cheerful?
E: ignores
OG: goes on to be incredibly rude about my weight and my non-existent "drunkeness", tell me off for being rude by not responding to his taunts, and then for being rude in my response to them, to bring his friends over to stare at the Lesbians, to poke Ashley with his fscking walking stick...


Tigerlily

Emma: I'm looking for a couple of black 16-guage ball-closure rings with 3mm balls.
Hot piercer: Uhh, we've got these.. holds up 18-guage
E: Yeah, ok, can I have a look at one?
HP: Sure.
E: Takes one holds up to ear Yup, they'll do for what I want.. looks at other ring hey, isn't that ring a bit bent?
HP: Oh yeah, sorry swaps it for another one that's £8 please!
E: pays.. takes jiffy bag with BCRs in.. oh wait, one of the balls is now bigger than the other! turns back without even having left the shop
E: Hi, excuse me, I just bought this pair of earrings but they aren't a pair at all - look, one's a 3mm and one's a 4mm.
Clueless Emo Girl: What? I don't think so.. uhh.. I can measure them for you?
CEG: does so.. finds a mm difference
CEG: Oh, uh, yeah. But you've bought them now and they're body jewellry, so there's nothing I can do.
E: thinks: actually, under LAW, you've sold me something unfit for its purpose, as I specifically asked for a pair and for 3mm balls.
E: decides, based on the other two experiences detailed above: fuck this shit, I'm going home.


Have people always sucked this much, and I've only just noticed?

Comments

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

knirirr's half-sister used to work for TigerLily. I'm not sure they were always that crap, though I've never bought body jewellery from there...

[stronglight.livejournal.com]

I hate regulations like that - I bought some underwear from primark, it didn't have a size label on and i was tired and it was on a row with other packs in my size - got home to open it and find it was too small, but oh, no, they don't do returns of underwear even though i hadn't worn it, hadn't even tried it on. Clearly they think I have STIs on my fingers... It's frustrating - I mean, I understand why rules about underwear and body jewellery are in place, but there are some situations where it clearly makes no sense to uphold them - I mean, esp if you hadn't even left the shop! Grrr

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Gah. Clueless fscking jobsworths. The rule I really hate is the one saying you can't buy a railcard ticket without presenting a railcard, EVEN THOUGH THEY CHECK RAILCARDS ON THE TRAIN AND YOU CAN BUY RAILCARD TICKETS ON THE INTERNET. That said, the ticket-sellers are mostly so clueless there's no often advantage in talking to a human being anyway, so I might as well buy all my tickets over the Internet.

[skibbley.livejournal.com]

Just found your LJ as a fellow bi / poly [come to Polyday (http://www.polyday.org.uk/)?] / sm interested person.

My working hypothesis for the train companies is that they are actively malicious but also incompetent in their malice so sometimes the service works well.

[mrkgnao.livejournal.com]

*blinks* *boggles*

Woah that is a tremendous run of ill-fortune.

[sushi-radical.livejournal.com]

*doesn't like being poked by old gits with sticks*

[frodomorris.livejournal.com]

The Gloc rocked much more a few years ago (i.e. when I was working there, and a popular decision that was too). It still rocks, but not to the same extent (due to less barman rockage). I only ever buy sewy-patches from Tigerlily, I've found a better shop for doing the same but it's in Stuttgart.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

and that is an utterly fabulous icon.

[mrkgnao.livejournal.com]

Why thank you.

It's really hard to iconise screencaps from The Libertine because it's shot in this really horrid grainy-cam so you have to flood them with some other colour. Possibly I shouldn't have chosen yellow because the poor old Earl is looking just a wee bit jaudinced there :(

[distorted-prose.livejournal.com]

Hell is most definitely other people.

By the bi, might not be the best of times to ask, however - you're studying psychology at Oxford, ne? Might I ask what you did for A / AS-level and if it had any impact on your course?

Um (thanks in advance) :)

Em

[cheekybrit.livejournal.com]

mmm... a carton of custard :D

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

Nah, it's not actually a bad time; despite the above I'm in a great mood, simply through being in Oxford and happy and, uh, stuff.

I did English, French, Physics, and Classical Civilisation. I did them because I enjoyed them, even though I knew Biology or Maths would be "better preparation" for a psychology degree. And it definitely worked for me; I enjoyed my subjects, and got the grades I needed to get into Oxford. But it's a good idea to check if the courses you might wanna do at the unis you might wanna go to have any specific requirements - there were some Ox colleges I couldn't have applied to because they required Biology. I only applied to places with no requirements, or that simply specified "a science" - and I got offers from all 6 of them. So it really can't be all about how "suitable" your subjects are for your degree.. or at least it wasn't in my case.

[cheekybrit.livejournal.com]

Not all of us low-life, service industry people are useless! I'm so nice I make myself sick.

...and the customer is rarely right. :D

[distorted-prose.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you :)

(Just I've been raiding websites nearly all day and some courses/colleges/etc are spec and some are non-spec but I've been steadily falling in love with St Hugh's for a while and I think (for PPP) they would very much like [a science] with maths on the side thankyouverymuch. Which worries me just a little as maths can be Oh So Very Temperamental a subject depending on my mood x.x)

[/end academic freaking-out]

[cheekybrit.livejournal.com]

I think the law should permit us to commit acts of violence against the rude and irretrievably stupid.

[billyphatu.livejournal.com]

Train companies are cunts. Actually, most basic services in this country are cuntish. Aren't the British supreme at doing everything in a half-arsed way and making do with it? And then British people love to bitch and moan about it when it affects them.

Anyway, good to see you're alive. I was starting to worry!

[half-of-monty.livejournal.com]

But you ARE allowed to break the return leg of an open return ticket! The outbound journey no, but the return yes. I've done this quite a bit recently, on expensive jouneys so I checked carefully. Everyone always told me this is fine. Your evil Edinburgh ticket seller was talking arse. (Note my usepic shows, hilariously, that I am also a talking arse. This is also reflected in the fact that I appear to think I understand the British train ticketing system... insert hollow laugh.)

[ex-leighwoos982.livejournal.com]

Was the barman in the Gloc the short one who doesn't wear skirts? I never got good vibes about him, so I only let Monkey go an play there when I knew the nicer, taller one was on duty.

Sometimes people just want to enforce stupid rules for the sake of it, because they are pissed off or poorly trained or don't have the brain power to negotiate a better solution. It has nothing to do with the rules, just the enforcing. If, for example, the robotic barman really wanted you to not eat the chips inside he could have said: 'I'm sorry, but our insurance means we can't allow you to eat food that we haven't prepared because if you got food poisoning on our premises we'd still be liabel for the health and safety checks' (which is true, in some cases). And then you would have understood and said okay and stuff. A similar problem is not being able to admit that you don't know the answer to a question and trying to cover it up, like the tiger lilly person. Smart people would have seen the futility of trying to guess what you'd want and said something like: 'Piercings aren't my thing, but if I show you the selection would you be able to spot what you wanted?' and then you would have seen the right sizes of ring and no conflict. Simmilarly if she had a few functioning neurons she would have realised that swapping (and if ness. binning) the uneven pair for a correct one would have meant repeat custom, which is far more important saving the cost of a piercings that can't be resold. But no...some half remembered statement from a training session months ago was all her head had room for and so she did a lousy job of representing herself and her store.

I hate weirdo strangers who talk to you in pubs, like the pointless-made-up -rule enforcers they seem to lack the brain power to understand that they haven't actually got a good reason for cutting into your day so, by definition, are wasting your time.

[countess-rezia.livejournal.com]

Sorry you had such a run of bad experiences m'dear.

I never got on with TigerLily, I must admit.