Minor things that bother you

[ZLoth]

Doesn't Walmart on line let you pull into a local Walmart and you don't even have to get out of your car?  Your merchandise is brought out to you, I am to believe. Or is that another service?

Yep, but that's not the point here. People order online to have it delivered so they don't have to go out to begin with.

With brick-and-mortal stores being in the process of phasing out physical media, often Amazon has the more niche titles on CD and DVD/BluRay. In addition, while the local Microcenter has some pretty good specials on computer parts, their everyday prices tend to be higher than either Amazon or NewEgg. Plus, lacking a truck, some large items have to be delivered to my home.

[hbelkins]

I get my mail at a post office box, so anytime I order something that won't ship to a post office box and I want to be sure I get it, I have it delivered to work.

But there are problems with that. Increasingly, I find eBay sellers that explicitly don't ship to PO boxes. Yet the items get delivered by USPS to my post office box. There's apparently some sort of collaborative effort between USPS and third-party shippers that the third-party (UPS, FedEx, etc.) handles all but the final delivery, which is done by USPS.

Another thing is not knowing which shipper a company uses. Walmart used to use ground delivery (UPS or FedEx). Earlier in the year, I ordered some liquid weed killer from WalMart after the local store ran out of its inventory. I expected it to be shipped by ground so I put my home address as the delivery address. That package showed up at the local post office. There's no rhyme or reason to it.

[gonealookin]

I get my mail at a post office box, so anytime I order something that won't ship to a post office box and I want to be sure I get it, I have it delivered to work.

But there are problems with that. Increasingly, I find eBay sellers that explicitly don't ship to PO boxes. Yet the items get delivered by USPS to my post office box. There's apparently some sort of collaborative effort between USPS and third-party shippers that the third-party (UPS, FedEx, etc.) handles all but the final delivery, which is done by USPS.

Another thing is not knowing which shipper a company uses. Walmart used to use ground delivery (UPS or FedEx). Earlier in the year, I ordered some liquid weed killer from WalMart after the local store ran out of its inventory. I expected it to be shipped by ground so I put my home address as the delivery address. That package showed up at the local post office. There's no rhyme or reason to it.

Oh can I relate to this.  USPS does not deliver to residences at all here (there are lots of second homes that are unoccupied much of the time).  We have to pick up our mail at the post office, where USPS gives us a free box with annual proof of residency, such as a utility bill.  If USPS receives something with only a street address they return it to the sender as undeliverable.  Meanwhile, something shipped by FedEx Ground or UPS Ground that only has the PO Box address on it will be rejected as well.  You're right, there are quite a few packages, usually little ones, handled by FedEx and UPS that are handed off to USPS for last-mile delivery, and those do go to the PO box if they have the PO box address on them.

Amazon is good about telling me when I'm placing the order that an item can't be shipped to the PO box.  In that case I either use the street address or send it to the Amazon Locker at Whole Foods.  One way around the problem is to add the extra four digits to the zip code of the street address; that tells USPS which PO box the item is supposed to go to, but not all shippers accept anything beyond the 5-digit zip code.  I can also put *both* the street address and PO box in the shipping address, but again not all shippers will accept that.

If it's possible to call a live person and find out which shipper they are using I can give them the right address to use.  Good luck with talking to a live person in many cases, though, and even then you get "sometimes we use USPS and sometimes UPS so I can't tell you"  .  The end result is that I buy from Amazon in many cases because I know there won't be a shipping snafu that way.

[vdeane]

Minor annoyance of the day: FedEx/UPS/other delivery services that leave packages out in the rain without wrapping them in plastic and without either knocking on the door or ringing the doorbell (that is plainly visible directly above where the driver left the box). In this case it's minor because the video doorbell told me someone was outside and I looked and saw who it was, so I went and retrieved the box. No damage done. The box contains some reasonably pricey electronics and we have over two inches of rain in the forecast, yet the idiot driver just left it on the stoop fully exposed to the weather with no plastic wrap or anything. They always used to wrap packages in plastic on rainy days. I guess it's yet another sign of the demise of customer service.

They're being pressured to make more deliveries in less time amid worsening traffic conditions. Blame the company, not the driver.

It takes all of one second, if that, to hit the doorbell once you leave the box on the door.  And with the rise in package thefts, I would think that would be an incentive to ensure that someone who's at home would know the package is there.  Plastic might take slightly longer, but not THAT much.  Perhaps we need a law saying that delivery companies are 100% liable for stolen or damaged packages.

How can they be liable for stolen packages if they're not there when it's stolen?

Presumably the same way construction companies in NY are 100% liable for all gravity-related injury cases no matter what.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaffold_Law_(New_York)

[Scott5114]

We had to set up a new checking account about five years ago when bill payments were stolen out of our curbside mailbox less than an hour after we put up the red flag.  Since then, we've had other bill payments fail to show up on the relevant accounts after being dropped into USPS blue boxes at either the Dillons supermarket near us or the downtown post office (where I suspect there is video surveillance).  We are all but certain mailbox fishing is going on.

I changed all of my accounts to online payment and billing after I had an electric payment go missing when mailed from our curbside box. However, I suspected USPS malfeasance rather than theft; this occurred right as news of Louis DeJoy's cost-cutting measures were first circulating, and I had a low-value package in that shipment (a cloth COVID mask) that likewise failed to make it to its destination.

[Big John]

I get somewhat the opposite.  I live in an apartment with an intercom system at the entrance.  It has a button for every tenant showing the last name for each button.  There are several delivery personnel that feel the need to press every button instead of reading the name on the package.

[vdeane]

I get somewhat the opposite.  I live in an apartment with an intercom system at the entrance.  It has a button for every tenant showing the last name for each button.  There are several delivery personnel that feel the need to press every button instead of reading the name on the package.

Reminds me of how back in my old apartment, I would often get deliveries (and mail) from everyone who live in the building.  The first floor apartments all have direct outside doors rather than centralized ones, and mine was right on the stairs from the main parking lot, so a lot of dumb delivery drivers would assume that my apartment was actually an entrance to the whole building (it didn't help that my apartment number was the same as the building number).  So annoying.  Even the post office would mess up on occasion.  To make matters worse, many tenants didn't clue in to the fast that the house number in the address is the building number, and would attempt to list both the building and apartment numbers at the end.  The problem with that is that automated address parsers couldn't handle it, so the address label would be printed as "Apt [building number]", leading to a delivery at my apartment.

[tmoore952]

Unbelievable numbers of TV graphics that are misspelled on the news shows on my local stations.

Two of many: "morning a loss" (should be "mourning")
"extenguishing a fire" (should be "extinguishing).

I'm not sure how this happens. Some computer program translating voice commands, or someone typing?

As mentioned, these are two of many. If I'd been keeping a list, I'd probably have filled an entire page.

[1995hoo]

^^^^

Heh, the other night on Channel 4 Amelia Draper had a graphic about "gutsy winds" in the coming days. I suppose it more or less means the same as what she meant.

[GaryV]

Newspapers aren't any better. There's always typos, incorrect or weird word choices, headlines that don't make sense because they have to make them fit, etc.

[thenetwork]

Newspapers aren't any better. There's always typos, incorrect or weird word choices, headlines that don't make sense because they have to make them fit, etc.

And yet, spelling and grammar check features are just a click away on the very same computers they use to type out these words...

<SMH>

[hotdogPi]

Newspapers aren't any better. There's always typos, incorrect or weird word choices, headlines that don't make sense because they have to make them fit, etc.

And yet, spelling and grammar check features are just a click away on the very same computers they use to type out these words...

<SMH>

They don't always work, especially when the word you accidentally typed is also a real word. Some of them even make sense as a stand-alone sentence but are wrong only in context, such as "formally" for "formerly".

[roadman65]

When you hear of something off the forum that's newsworthy to a discussion on here. So you open the thread to see if anyone here yet, is talked about it. You then check the latest posts to see if it hit here yet and find nothing so you post it. Then you get a snarky response back that it was posted over a month ago and I'm supposed to know that the source who gave me the topic was given old information or something.

Of course shit happens and I'm fine with that, but when I inform the user to just simmer down some and not get upset (as he was far from polite about it), another user who is known throughout the road community as being egotistical , gets involved does bother me some. Especially when the third party was sympathetic to the blunt poster, but if the roles were reversed and I lashed out on someone here for posting old news, that same third party user would definitely come down on me for being rude and out of place for pointing out a simple mistake and sympathize with the first person for not knowing it.

[vdeane]

When you hear of something off the forum that's newsworthy to a discussion on here. So you open the thread to see if anyone here yet, is talked about it. You then check the latest posts to see if it hit here yet and find nothing so you post it. Then you get a snarky response back that it was posted over a month ago and I'm supposed to know that the source who gave me the topic was given old information or something.

Of course shit happens and I'm fine with that, but when I inform the user to just simmer down some and not get upset (as he was far from polite about it), another user who is known throughout the road community as being egotistical , gets involved does bother me some. Especially when the third party was sympathetic to the blunt poster, but if the roles were reversed and I lashed out on someone here for posting old news, that same third party user would definitely come down on me for being rude and out of place for pointing out a simple mistake and sympathize with the first person for not knowing it.

Apparently we have different definitions of "recent".  I would consider anything within the last page or two to be "recent".  You apparently don't even consider the post you're quoting to be recent, as a recent post of yours concerning the I-295 missing moves project attests to (as does the one time where you didn't even respond to the correct thread).

[Scott5114]

When you hear of something off the forum that's newsworthy to a discussion on here. So you open the thread to see if anyone here yet, is talked about it. You then check the latest posts to see if it hit here yet and find nothing so you post it. Then you get a snarky response back that it was posted over a month ago and I'm supposed to know that the source who gave me the topic was given old information or something.

Of course shit happens and I'm fine with that, but when I inform the user to just simmer down some and not get upset (as he was far from polite about it), another user who is known throughout the road community as being egotistical , gets involved does bother me some. Especially when the third party was sympathetic to the blunt poster, but if the roles were reversed and I lashed out on someone here for posting old news, that same third party user would definitely come down on me for being rude and out of place for pointing out a simple mistake and sympathize with the first person for not knowing it.

Every user is responsible for posting content they believe others will find enjoyable. Part of that is ensuring that they aren't posting content that has already been posted by someone else. If one refuses to do the due diligence required to avoid that beforehand, they should hardly be surprised when their posts get a negative response.

(Vaguing about it in this thread an hour and a half after another moderator went through the thread to delete all of the arguing is probably not the best way of stopping the argument, by the way. )

[D-Dey65]

Pay walls on news websites.

Does Wikipedia realize how many reference links have been rendered useless because of this? And they still urge editors use them to cite sources.

[Scott5114]

Pay walls on news websites.

Does Wikipedia realize how many reference links have been rendered useless because of this? And they still urge editors use them to cite sources.

Yes, and current practice involves citing news websites by way of archive.org or some other means of keeping the text publicly accessible.

That being said, Wikipedia policy merely states that references must be verifiable, and not that said verification must be possible to be done easily and instantaneously. One can cite print-only sources, after all. With newspapers, it's entirely possible that an article may only be accessible on microfiche in the paper's city of origin, and that is considered sufficient to allow the source to be verified.

From time to time someone will actually do the legwork to track down one of these obscure sources and find that it doesn't actually say what it was used to cite.

All the more reason to use the AARoads wiki when possible.

[roadman65]

Trying to pull apart to open plastic dog poop bags in colder weather. Whenever the temps drop below 60, the dispensers that have poop bags are hard to separate from the spool or pull apart as static electricity forms between the layers of plastic. So when you need a bag in a pinch, you have trouble in opening.

[formulanone]

Trying to pull apart to open plastic dog poop bags in colder weather. Whenever the temps drop below 60, the dispensers that have poop bags are hard to separate from the spool or pull apart as static electricity forms between the layers of plastic. So when you need a bag in a pinch, you have trouble in opening.

A pocket knife helps a little with this task, though not easy to balance while they're in the act.

Sometimes we get a roll of bags which require a cut near the mechanical perforation which has shut the bag rather than assisted in making it easy to open. So I tend to "pre-open" them with a small knife cut, so you're not fiddling with opening them while balancing the leash(es) of an Australian Shepherd and/or Border Collie.

I've shopped at a few grocery stores where trying to fiddle with their bags is equally frustrating, but I feel that pulling out a knife in a store is...not recommended. 

[GaryV]

I've shopped at a few grocery stores where trying to fiddle with their bags is equally frustrating,

One downside of mask requirements during Covid while shopping was the inability to lick your fingers to open the produce bags ...

[Rothman]

I've shopped at a few grocery stores where trying to fiddle with their bags is equally frustrating,

One downside of mask requirements during Covid while shopping was the inability to lick your fingers to open the produce bags ...

Baglicker.

[Big John]

I've shopped at a few grocery stores where trying to fiddle with their bags is equally frustrating,

One downside of mask requirements during Covid while shopping was the inability to lick your fingers to open the produce bags ...

gross

[plain]

I've shopped at a few grocery stores where trying to fiddle with their bags is equally frustrating,

One downside of mask requirements during Covid while shopping was the inability to lick your fingers to open the produce bags ...

One could just temporarily move the mask down and do that...

[Scott5114]

I've never understood what the purpose of produce bags is other than giving you something else to throw away.

On occasion we do Walmart pickup for our groceries and they'll put the bananas in a produce bag. Gee, it sure is nice of them to make sure the bananas stay together, since they don't come off the tree attached to each other or anything... 

[1995hoo]

We have some reusable produce bags.