The pet peeve thread

[oblong]

My favorite local deli was bought in January of this year. The owner died in 2023 and the kids didn’t want to keep it. No problem there.  But now the new owner is a young guy and is on the surface keeping it the same but now their social media is about getting the influencers. They are hyping up DoorDash and uber eats. The counter is littered with business cards from local people. That cheapens it to me. This is a place that’s been around since I was in high school. It’s a legend among Ford workers at lunctime. And frankly any “infuencer” not familiar with this place is an amateur foodie.  This guys is acting like he discovered something.  And I know they have changed suppliers because the pickles are different. The napkins are. Even the wrap on my sandwich is a little off.   I’m giving them a few more weeks before I bail on my Tuesday tradition.  This was literally my favorite thing to eat all week.  
 

 

[CMRivdogs]

38 minutes ago, oblong said:

My favorite local deli was bought in January of this year. The owner died in 2023 and the kids didn’t want to keep it. No problem there.  But now the new owner is a young guy and is on the surface keeping it the same but now their social media is about getting the influencers. They are hyping up DoorDash and uber eats. The counter is littered with business cards from local people. That cheapens it to me. This is a place that’s been around since I was in high school. It’s a legend among Ford workers at lunctime. And frankly any “infuencer” not familiar with this place is an amateur foodie.  This guys is acting like he discovered something.  And I know they have changed suppliers because the pickles are different. The napkins are. Even the wrap on my sandwich is a little off.   I’m giving them a few more weeks before I bail on my Tuesday tradition.  This was literally my favorite thing to eat all week.  
 

 

Not in the same boat but our favorite local winery changed hands about two years ago. The owner and founder was in his 80s and it seemed his sons had no interest in continuing the enterprise. It was and still is a nice upscale place with a small hotel and nice restaurant. It was also a nice place to hang out on a Friday afternoon or take out of town guests to lunch or dinner.

The principal owner is an investor type, he owns another winery on the other end of the state that is just starting to produce wine. He also owns the minor league hockey team in Norfolk. It's being managed by a former Marriott resort manager in Virginia Beach. It's all well and good, the atmosphere has changed however. The original winemaker also left, I'm not sure if he was pushed out or left on his own. He had been there since Patrick opened the winery in the 1980s.

The new guys want to do big events, prices have gone up, and things like the member tasting room and the outdoor tasting areas have changed. As have the members tastings. That started to change near the end of Mr Duffler's ownership and instead of informative talks from the winemaker it seems that most of those who attend now just want to see how much they can consume.  
  We ended up not renewing our membership, we had too much wine on stock anyway. The wine maker has moved to a winery closer to us and it will be interesting to see what direction that place heads.

[oblong]

I understand that part of the change could be a reaction to needing more revenue. In the case of my deli and with most small businesses that change hands… the new owner has to cover two nuts now. The purchase plus themselves.  Someone spends a lifetime building something and they need their payoff, rightfully so.  Just doing the same old thing might not be enough.  

[oblong]

I get Taco Bell every Sunday for my 95 year old mom.  I use the mobile app.

I go in... there's a shelf for mobil orders.  They do not put them there.  I get that.  People probably take what's not theirs because they are idiots and can't read.  No issue there.

My order sits on top of a thing about 10 feet away.  I walk in.  Not one person makes eye contact.  All they have to do is just hand me that bag.  That's it.  Everyone doing their thing in their silo.   Usually I get it from one guy making food who is smart enough to recognize he sees me every week with the same order at 1 pm.  He's going places.

When I worked cust service and retail we were taught to always ackowledge the customer even if you can't immediately help them.  Just say Hi, be right with you.  The flip side to that is people are rude and will then expect them to stop helping the customer they are working with to address THEIR issue because it's all about them.  So consider that a broad peeve on both sides.  We can't have nice things beacuse people are idiots all around.

[CMRivdogs]

1 hour ago, oblong said:

I get Taco Bell every Sunday for my 95 year old mom.  I use the mobile app.

I go in... there's a shelf for mobil orders.  They do not put them there.  I get that.  People probably take what's not theirs because they are idiots and can't read.  No issue there.

My order sits on top of a thing about 10 feet away.  I walk in.  Not one person makes eye contact.  All they have to do is just hand me that bag.  That's it.  Everyone doing their thing in their silo.   Usually I get it from one guy making food who is smart enough to recognize he sees me every week with the same order at 1 pm.  He's going places.

When I worked cust service and retail we were taught to always ackowledge the customer even if you can't immediately help them.  Just say Hi, be right with you.  The flip side to that is people are rude and will then expect them to stop helping the customer they are working with to address THEIR issue because it's all about them.  So consider that a broad peeve on both sides.  We can't have nice things beacuse people are idiots all around.

I wonder how much of this goes back to store or even franchisee management. I worked fast food nearly 45 years ago and it was drilled into us to the point it became part of our DNA. 
Back then we used to have an older gentlemen come into the restaurant on Sunday mornings around 11 AM or so (Arby's), same order 2 roast beef sandwiches, potato cakes and a cup of coffee. Sunday mornings were a bit slower (except for coupon weeks) so as soon as we saw the car drive in (no drive thru then) we would start the sandwich, make the coffee and make sure the potatoes were warm. 
Now the majority of my Sunday mornings are spent at the CW Visitor Center, most of the volunteers are retirees, all in our late 60s, 70 or older. It's not hard to do a good greeting and even try to answer some of the silliest questions. (I do bite my tongue sometimes when I get the folks who are just passing thru and say they have about 2 hours to kill)

[oblong]

I used to work at a place on Sunday mornings and we had the same thing on Sundays.  Post church, a widower.  You could tell it was a big part of his day.  There he'd come in his brown suit, beautiful white head of hair.  Always in the same seat.  

[LaceyLou]

On my way to the airport to go home last Thursday, we passed a building with a lot of different kinds of aircraft outside of it. The taxi driver told me it was an Air Force armaments museum and that it was free of charge.

It sucks to find out about things like this when it's too late to go visit. Oh, well. 

[chasfh]

On 4/21/2025 at 9:16 AM, oblong said:

I used to work at a place on Sunday mornings and we had the same thing on Sundays.  Post church, a widower.  You could tell it was a big part of his day.  There he'd come in his brown suit, beautiful white head of hair.  Always in the same seat.  

When I was in between colleges I worked at a place called Duff’s Smorgasbord, a competitor to Sveden House. It was located on Van Dyke between 11 and 12 Mile. People would pay an admission price to come in, find a seat, then go to the food wheels to pick up their dinners o and sides and desserts. It was all you could eat all the time, and there would have up to half a dozen bussers (or “busboys”, if your prefer) walking around at all times passing by tables looking for dishes to clear. That was me. I was about 20 or 21. Again, in between colleges.

My favorite day to work was Sunday, because the black churches in Detroit would let out about 100pm or so and a lot of folks would come to Duffs in their church finery for a family meal. I saw so many regulars that I learned their names and stories over time. I could ask follow-up questions based on what we talked about weeks before. I remember they were such fun people to talk to, so genuinely nice and friendly. Or at least it seemed so—it was the early 80s, so maybe their antennae were up higher then and they may have been more cordial to me because of my whiteness, but I think they also appreciated that I was so into chatting and joking around with them that it felt like true friendliness to me. It was not a place where people tipped, but some of them would throw me a buck here or there. It was my favorite grunt job of all, and i had a whole bunch of those before I started office work when I was 25.

[oblong]

Black church is different than white church.  They had a good time and were in a good mood.  I overheard a co worker the other day talking with her husband, she's black, about whether they were going to another friend's church, also black and a pastor. 

 

[LaceyLou]

Water damage-need I say more?

[CMRivdogs]

2 hours ago, LaceyLou said:

Water damage-need I say more?

Sorry, unfortunately as a wise man once said “Water always wins”

[chasfh]

21 hours ago, LaceyLou said:

Water damage-need I say more?

Been there. Twice. You have my empathy.

[chasfh]

This has bothered me for decades and I have never quite known just how to articulate why, but, I saw another example just today, so, here goes.

This is from the story about Mickey York leaving the fanduel networks:

Mickey York, an on-air personality for the network for 25 years, most recently as a reporter and anchor covering the Detroit Pistons and Detroit Tigers, officially announced his exit from the regional-sports network Tuesday  ... York's exit, which is position effectively eliminated, follows the retirement of John Keating, who spent nearly 29 years with Detroit's RSN ― first PASS, then Fox Sports Detroit, then Bally Sports Detroit, then FDSND ― before hanging it up at the end of the Red Wings' season. Between York and Keating, they spent more than a half-century on Detroit sports broadcasts. Tigers legend Kirk Gibson also exited the Tigers broadcasts this season, after 15 years, over two stints.

Ummm ... no. Between York and Keating, they have spent less than three decades on Detroit sports broadcasts. Keating was on for 29 years, and York was on for 25, and York's tenure 100% overlapped with Keating's. That means were on the network 25 years together, not a half-century. Keating started in 1996. Unless I ripvanwinkled my way to the year 2046, they have not spent more than half a century on Detroit sports broadcasts together.

I know, I know, they mean additively. I get it. Keating was on Detroit TV for 29 years; York was on 25; that adds up to 54 years, which is more than half a century. I get what they're trying to put across. They mean they have more than half a century experience when you add it up. But what kind of sense does that make? Experience isn't additive like that. It's not as though Keating was there 29 years, and then when York started, he immediately started building on Keating's 29 years and added 25 years of his own, and taken together, they now have the same experience and knowledge as one person who'd there 54 years by themself. It don't work like that.

Imagine if General Motors added up the years of experience in the automotive industry each of the 250 or so members of their senior executive team has and tried to promote that as, "Our senior executive team has over 5,000 years combined experience in the automotive industry." I mean, come on. Five thousand years experience in automobiles? Do you buy that? YMMV on this, but that makes my eyes just roll.

[oblong]

That’s a great point. I love stuff like that. It’s filler that adds nothing of substance to the situation and is meaningless.  

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

I know, I know, they mean additively. I get it. Keating was on Detroit TV for 29 years; York was on 25; that adds up to 54 years, which is more than half a century. I get what they're trying to put across. They mean they have more than half a century experience when you add it up. But what kind of sense does that make?

To be accurate - they should say 'combined experience', but that syntax is so common today that people understand the semantics. Total 'man-yrs' when talking about labor input is a standard construct.

But I'll take Devil's advocate here to in defense of the guy that wrote the story.   Two guys each with 25 years is a deeper experience base than one guy with 25 because there isn't going to be 100% overlap in what they were doing. In fact it may amount to more than one guy with 50 in certain ways, so if the idea is to impart how much depth of context the team can bring, I think that syntax is OK. Because there are multiple ways experience can be relevant.

If I have a baseball guy with 50 years he saw Kaline etc in person, but maybe that guy never covered basketball - so two guys with 25 you maybe have 25 yrs of baseball and 25 yrs of basketball. Does that add up to more or less 'sports experience' ? Depends - they each a different value. One 'depth' isn't really better than the other - just different, but it's fair to count both to express the overall experience depth of the group if that's what you want to highlight.

[oblong]

Trevor Thompson is also out at FanDuel. Tony Paul must have read your critique because in pointing out Keating and Yorks departures he mentioned their “more than 75 years of experience”. 

[gehringer_2]

34 minutes ago, oblong said:

Trevor Thompson is also out at FanDuel. Tony Paul must have read your critique because in pointing out Keating and Yorks departures he mentioned their “more than 75 years of experience”. 

You have to feel bad personally for anyone out of a gig  - but I have to admit that seeing Thompson always made me reach for the mute button.

Shannon Hogan is my "don't know what you've got till it's gone" for people in the Host/reporter role. I never thought much one way or the other about her being a particular talent, but it amazes me that in a generation as  video savvy as the one moving into these gigs that it could be so hard to come anywhere close to someone as good.

Edited May 7 by gehringer_2

[oblong]

During one of the playoff seasons I had seats right off the aisle in the upper deck. Some lady came and squatted next to me. She was dressed…. Well… leather skirt. Nice too. I could see fancy hair.  “I don’t care how cute you look, you can’t do that” was my thought.  Then I looked at her face and it was Shannon, getting ready for a report.   She looked more stunning in person, if that’s possible.  And beyond that she was a damn fine reporter as you say.  
 

as for Fan Duel…  maybe they were bloated.  They gotta cut costs and 75 years of experience is probably expensive.  I watch more of the network during hockey season than I do baseball to be honest.  Just circumstancial due to being stuck inside for winter.  I will miss those guys. 

[CMRivdogs]

They've cleared lots of land nearby for additional building in our subdivisions. Over 10o acres of trees gone. I get it, I knew about this when we bought here. That's not exactly my peeve. It's the after effect. In recent weeks we've seen numerous birds trying to get revenge.

There are two robins who constantly attempt to fly into or thru the house, banging into our door to the patio and perching on the furniture.

The one that really gets me is one particular bird (I assume) constantly leaving deposits on our car. It's a good thing we have an unlimited pass to the local car wash 

[gehringer_2]

3 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

They've cleared lots of land nearby for additional building in our subdivisions.

 

I hope you also have lots of mouse traps.

[chasfh]

20 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

They've cleared lots of land nearby for additional building in our subdivisions. Over 10o acres of trees gone. I get it, I knew about this when we bought here. That's not exactly my peeve. It's the after effect. In recent weeks we've seen numerous birds trying to get revenge.

There are two robins who constantly attempt to fly into or thru the house, banging into our door to the patio and perching on the furniture.

The one that really gets me is one particular bird (I assume) constantly leaving deposits on our car. It's a good thing we have an unlimited pass to the local car wash 

Somewhat related to this, I really hate when a construction project starts and then sits idle for months. There’s one nearby for which they are rehabbing an ice cream place that was supposed to reopen by now, but instead they fenced it off and did about half the gutting job this past fall, and since then it’s been just sitting idle all through winter and now halfway into spring. The building has since been tagged to Kingdom Come since the project appears like it’s been abandoned. It makes the neighborhood look totally sketch. 

Edited May 9 by chasfh

[oblong]

This is the series of text messages I got, in order, for our new kitchen cabinets.  This began 15 minutes AFTER my wife sends me photos of them stored in our garage and dining room. 
 

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, oblong said:

This is the series of text messages I got, in order, for our new kitchen cabinets.  This began 15 minutes AFTER my wife sends me photos of them stored in our garage and dining room. 
 

well, at least better that they thought they hadn't delivered them when they had than vice versa!

[Motor City Sonics]

This ****ing Weather...............I mean, come on, man.    This is brutal