Minor things that bother you

[1995hoo]

Hey, my item is finally on the move—and it's shown as being in Rochester. Maybe I should send webny99 to go find it for me. 

(The item is not a custom, long lead time product, FWIW. But I did place the order on February 11, which is part of why I was irritated to get a tracking message eight days later that simply said "label created.")

[webny99]

Hey, my item is finally on the move—and it's shown as being in Rochester. Maybe I should send webny99 to go find it for me. 

(The item is not a custom, long lead time product, FWIW. But I did place the order on February 11, which is part of why I was irritated to get a tracking message eight days later that simply said "label created.")

I'd be glad to if not for the distribution centers being on the other side of town, and the fact that your package will probably be on the move again well before I'm up tomorrow morning. 

[jeffandnicole]

Speaking of hair color...

My wife has been going more and more grey around her temples lately.  She's not too happy about it, especially because it runs in the family to go basically total white.  Anyway, last time she was at the salon, she mentioned to her stylist.  Her stylist replied:  "You know what, a lot of people pay me a lot of money to make their hair exactly that color in exactly that spot."...

There's a co-worker of mine that had her hair dyed like this during the pandemic.  When we came back to work, I didn't even recognize her for a few days until I clued in who she was.

[Scott5114]

In my experience, customers ordering custom, long lead time products usually start demanding tracking numbers twelve minutes after they order it.

To the extent this was serious, if that's really happening, either there was a misunderstanding about the nature of the product/service being provided, or you're targeting the wrong type of customer.

I see you've never worked customer service.

Suffice it to say, if you can come up with a way to force a customer to read and understand anything important, you'll become a millionaire.

[webny99]

In my experience, customers ordering custom, long lead time products usually start demanding tracking numbers twelve minutes after they order it.

To the extent this was serious, if that's really happening, either there was a misunderstanding about the nature of the product/service being provided, or you're targeting the wrong type of customer.

I see you've never worked customer service.

Suffice it to say, if you can come up with a way to force a customer to read and understand anything important, you'll become a millionaire.

I have, actually, though mostly with recurring B2B customers, so that probably comes with a different set of viewpoints/expectations.
And of course - that's the whole goal of sales.

[JayhawkCO]

Hey, my item is finally on the move—and it's shown as being in Rochester. Maybe I should send webny99 to go find it for me. 

(The item is not a custom, long lead time product, FWIW. But I did place the order on February 11, which is part of why I was irritated to get a tracking message eight days later that simply said "label created.")

I had an item that I ordered last Saturday get a label on Monday, but not ship until today. I feel your pain.

[Scott5114]

In my experience, customers ordering custom, long lead time products usually start demanding tracking numbers twelve minutes after they order it.

To the extent this was serious, if that's really happening, either there was a misunderstanding about the nature of the product/service being provided, or you're targeting the wrong type of customer.

I see you've never worked customer service.

Suffice it to say, if you can come up with a way to force a customer to read and understand anything important, you'll become a millionaire.

I have, actually, though mostly with recurring B2B customers, so that probably comes with a different set of viewpoints/expectations.
And of course - that's the whole goal of sales.

B2C is a whole different animal. B2B, especially a recurring B2B situation, is cognizant of there being a "business relationship" between two companies—if a customer shows their ass and  a vendor chooses not to do business with them any longer, that might actually impact business operations to the point that the customer loses money. And one could theoretically lose their job for not scrutinizing the terms a vendor is offering.

Meanwhile, B2C customers are accountable to nobody but themselves, and so don't feel any need to read the terms of the deal they're entering, and assume that anything that generally doesn't go according to the version of it that happens in their head (without informing the vendor of what that version of events is!) is automatically the vendor's fault. And they generally don't see any reason to alter their approach because they don't generally realize that a vendor is free to cut them loose if they're too much trouble (due to most large companies they do business with having a policy of rarely doing so).

Hell, I've run across people who can't even be bothered to read the text on the credit card terminal and just blindly tap the screen in the vague area where they believe a button that does what they want should be, whether there's one there or not!

[Rothman]

Hell, I've run across people who can't even be bothered to read the text on the credit card terminal and just blindly tap the screen in the vague area where they believe a button that does what they want should be, whether there's one there or not!

To be fair, the number of terminals I've come across that just tell you to tap your card without indicating exactly where is surprisingly high.  Or, blares "please swipe.or tap" on a big screen, only.to have a small tappable spot in a corner (marked with the logo).

But, yeah, if someone just starts punching random buttons...yeesh.

[kphoger]

In my experience, customers ordering custom, long lead time products usually start demanding tracking numbers twelve minutes after they order it.

To the extent this was serious, if that's really happening, either ... or you're targeting the wrong type of customer.

The type who wants what he's selling and is ready to buy it from him?

To be fair, the number of terminals I've come across that just tell you to tap your card without indicating exactly where is surprisingly high.

This drives me bonkers.  I tap whenever possible, but I hardly see any terminals nowadays that actually show me where to tap.  So I just rub it all over the screen and hope for the best.

(I mean I rub the card all over the screen, you sicko.)

[webny99]

In my experience, customers ordering custom, long lead time products usually start demanding tracking numbers twelve minutes after they order it.

To the extent this was serious, if that's really happening, either ... or you're targeting the wrong type of customer.

The type who wants what he's selling and is ready to buy it from him?

If it's a long lead time, custom product and they're expecting tracking information immediately, that falls under the part that you conveniently snipped out.

[GaryV]

To be fair, the number of terminals I've come across that just tell you to tap your card without indicating exactly where is surprisingly high. 

I've seen one, don't remember what store, where the video screen came up with a "swipe, insert or tap" message with the tap logo in it. It was bigger and more prominent than the logo on the actual spot to tap.

[J N Winkler]

No help.  I've disabled Microsoft Teams in the Task Manager Startup tab more than once, and it keeps re-enabling itself.  Yesterday, I needed to restart Windows Explorer again and, when it restarted, Teams immediately popped open.

AARRGGHHHH

Looks like this is a recognized problem of fairly recent standing:

Stop having Microsoft Teams add itself to startup

Unfortunately, no-one seems to have a good solution short of uninstalling Teams.  If you can't do that but do not use Teams often (if at all) and have editing rights to the registry, I'd go with the registry change that prevents Teams from launching.

If you do use Teams and have access to the registry, an option to investigate is writing a batch file to remove it from the list of programs that run at startup and then creating a scheduled task to run that batch file every time you log out.

[kphoger]

In my experience, customers ordering custom, long lead time products usually start demanding tracking numbers twelve minutes after they order it.

To the extent this was serious, if that's really happening, either ... or you're targeting the wrong type of customer.

The type who wants what he's selling and is ready to buy it from him?

If it's a long lead time, custom product and they're expecting tracking information immediately, that falls under the part that you conveniently snipped out.

I guess my real point was that annoying and demanding customers are still paying customers, and it might not be good business practice to avoid them.

[webny99]

In my experience, customers ordering custom, long lead time products usually start demanding tracking numbers twelve minutes after they order it.

To the extent this was serious, if that's really happening, either ... or you're targeting the wrong type of customer.

The type who wants what he's selling and is ready to buy it from him?

If it's a long lead time, custom product and they're expecting tracking information immediately, that falls under the part that you conveniently snipped out.

I guess my real point was that annoying and demanding customers are still paying customers, and it might not be good business practice to avoid them.

I guess I was thinking about it, as previously stated, from a B2B perspective, but this is fair for B2C sales.

[Scott5114]

With ecommerce in particular, you may not know whether a customer is annoying or demanding until after you have their money, anyway.

[wanderer2575]

I got a garlic press this year for Christmas and will never cut garlic again.

The late Anthony Bourdain's opinion of that, in his book Kitchen Confidential:  "Misuse of garlic is a crime.  Old garlic, burnt garlic, garlic cut too long ago, garlic that has been tragically smashed through one of those abominations, the garlic press, are all disgusting.  Please, treat your garlic with respect.  Sliver it for pasta, like you saw in Goodfellas, don't burn it.  Smash it, with the flat of your knife blade if you like, but don't put it through a press.  I don't know what that junk is that squeezes out the end of those things, but it ain't garlic...  Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screw-top jars.  Too lazy to peel fresh?  You don't deserve to eat garlic."

[JayhawkCO]

I got a garlic press this year for Christmas and will never cut garlic again.

The late Anthony Bourdain's opinion of that, in his book Kitchen Confidential:  "Misuse of garlic is a crime.  Old garlic, burnt garlic, garlic cut too long ago, garlic that has been tragically smashed through one of those abominations, the garlic press, are all disgusting.  Please, treat your garlic with respect.  Sliver it for pasta, like you saw in Goodfellas, don't burn it.  Smash it, with the flat of your knife blade if you like, but don't put it through a press.  I don't know what that junk is that squeezes out the end of those things, but it ain't garlic...  Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screw-top jars.  Too lazy to peel fresh?  You don't deserve to eat garlic."

Anthony Bourdain is the person in this world that I've never met who has had the most impact on my life. On the topic of garlic presses, he and I agree to disagree.

[1995hoo]

I have a garlic press I use frequently (and it came with one of those roller things that is surprisingly effective at peeling the garlic, something with which I had always had trouble), but I don't always use the press. It depends on how I want to use the garlic. Last night I was cooking shrimp and I wanted to use the garlic to flavor the oil, so I sliced it instead of using the press because the pressed garlic would have cooked too quickly without adequately flavoring the oil before the shrimp went in.

[kphoger]

Well, as long as you just want to use your available space just to keep stuff around, so be it.

They're flat things.  They take up about a foot of storage space under the sink, total.  I think we'll be OK.

I counted and measured.  I've got somewhere around 20 cutting boards, and they only take up 8 inches of under-sink storage.

[kphoger]

But this is the dumbest two person interaction I could have ever heard:

Person A: "How are we today?"
Person B: "We're great thanks. How are we?"
Person A: "We're great too."

I was out for dinner with my family Friday night.  This was an order-at-the-counter, food-delivered-to-your-table kind of place.  As we were sitting at the table, I told them about this whole "we" conversation.

Later, when most of us had finished our food, the young lady came over and asked, "Is it about time to start stealing some plates from us?"

We all had to bite our lips pretty hard.

[Rothman]

Well, as long as you just want to use your available space just to keep stuff around, so be it.

They're flat things.  They take up about a foot of storage space under the sink, total.  I think we'll be OK.

I counted and measured.  I've got somewhere around 20 cutting boards, and they only take up 8 inches of under-sink storage.

What other stuff are you holding onto?  Inches add up...

[Rothman]

But this is the dumbest two person interaction I could have ever heard:

Person A: "How are we today?"
Person B: "We're great thanks. How are we?"
Person A: "We're great too."

I was out for dinner with my family Friday night.  This was an order-at-the-counter, food-delivered-to-your-table kind of place.  As we were sitting at the table, I told them about this whole "we" conversation.

Later, when most of us had finished our food, the young lady came over and asked, "Is it about time to start stealing some plates from us?"

We all had to bite our lips pretty hard.

"If you insist..."

[kphoger]

I got a garlic press this year for Christmas and will never cut garlic again.

The late Anthony Bourdain's opinion of that, in his book Kitchen Confidential:  "Misuse of garlic is a crime.  Old garlic, burnt garlic, garlic cut too long ago, garlic that has been tragically smashed through one of those abominations, the garlic press, are all disgusting.  Please, treat your garlic with respect.  Sliver it for pasta, like you saw in Goodfellas, don't burn it.  Smash it, with the flat of your knife blade if you like, but don't put it through a press.  I don't know what that junk is that squeezes out the end of those things, but it ain't garlic...  Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screw-top jars.  Too lazy to peel fresh?  You don't deserve to eat garlic."

Anthony Bourdain is the person in this world that I've never met who has had the most impact on my life. On the topic of garlic presses, he and I agree to disagree.

The only time I need garlic that's smaller than what I can cut by hand is if I'm making garlic butter.  The only time I need to make garlic butter is to make garlic toast.  Whenever we decide to have garlic toast, we just buy a loaf at the grocery store with the garlic butter already on it.  Ergo, I never use the garlic press.

[1995hoo]

I got a garlic press this year for Christmas and will never cut garlic again.

The late Anthony Bourdain's opinion of that, in his book Kitchen Confidential:  "Misuse of garlic is a crime.  Old garlic, burnt garlic, garlic cut too long ago, garlic that has been tragically smashed through one of those abominations, the garlic press, are all disgusting.  Please, treat your garlic with respect.  Sliver it for pasta, like you saw in Goodfellas, don't burn it.  Smash it, with the flat of your knife blade if you like, but don't put it through a press.  I don't know what that junk is that squeezes out the end of those things, but it ain't garlic...  Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screw-top jars.  Too lazy to peel fresh?  You don't deserve to eat garlic."

Anthony Bourdain is the person in this world that I've never met who has had the most impact on my life. On the topic of garlic presses, he and I agree to disagree.

The only time I need garlic that's smaller than what I can cut by hand is if I'm making garlic butter.  The only time I need to make garlic butter is to make garlic toast.  Whenever we decide to have garlic toast, we just buy a loaf at the grocery store with the garlic butter already on it.  Ergo, I never use the garlic press.

Last night I was making this cod recipe* that calls for five minced cloves of garlic. It gets mixed in with lemon juice, olive oil, and melted butter and then poured over the fish, so I didn't see any reason to spend the time mincing the cloves when I could just use the press and get smaller pieces of garlic in a lot less time.

*Note, the linked page is one of those that has way too much introductory text prior to the actual recipe itself.

[kkt]

Well, as long as you just want to use your available space just to keep stuff around, so be it.

They're flat things.  They take up about a foot of storage space under the sink, total.  I think we'll be OK.

I counted and measured.  I've got somewhere around 20 cutting boards, and they only take up 8 inches of under-sink storage.

14, but that includes a couple that are wood and more for serving than cutting.  6" width in an upper cabinet.