Wishing the ground would open up…

Ever been in a situation where you wish the ground would just open and swallow you up… I have – about an hour ago infact…

I had to do a quick trip to the shops to get some last minute bits for my mum’s 60th ‘do’ tonight but when I went to pay – at the very full till with a queue of at least a million behind me – my card was rejected!!! WTF…

Now I KNOW there’s money in there – and the reason I know this is that it was refused last night in a resaturant too and when I phoned up the bank to find out why I was told that it was ‘just a bit of extra security’ and ‘not to worry about it’. Well if that’s the case then why in god’s name is it happeneing again today? (Actually it was not refused as such – it just came up with a request for authorisation but rather than cause a delay I just paid with another card.)

At least last night in the restaurant though it was quiet… Not today – oohh noooo.. today it was bloody heaving in the shop and I had to stand there for 15 sodding minutes while the assistant fannied around with my card before then asking me to go to the cash point and pay with proper money!!! How f***ing humiliating. I can never EVER go in there again. I left red-faced with embarassement feeling like a criminal – nice way to spend your lunchbreak eh?

Anyway, so I called the bank again and was told that the reason it was refused this time was that it was still waiting on the authorisation request activated last night… Apparently once these ‘requests’ are in the system the only way to get your card working again is to phone up the fraud unit and get it cleared.  Well ok – that’s no problem and at least I now know what to do but it would have been really useful if the stupid cow on the phone last night would have let me into that little secret!

Customer services in my bank obviously leaves a HELL of a lot to be desired!!!!

C’est la vie – but not happy about it!

Am feeling very grumpy today I keep getting stupid emails from the events office at work inviting me to lots of jolly excursions over the next couple of months but I really wish they’d bugger off as I’m not very happy with them at all!

A couple of months ago an email came round promoting a weekend jaunt to Paris. The deal was that you travel on Eurostar to Paris on the Friday morning, have most of friday, all saturday and most of sunday in Paris and then get the Eurostar back on Sunday evening, all this for a bargin price of £145. Great, I thought, a nice weekend break for myself and darling boyf before the hecticness that is the festive season starts in earnest

I happily paid the £50 deposit and then started planning what we would do and see in ‘gai paris’. However, about a month ago we got an email saying that, owing to the fire in the Eurostar tunnel at the beginning of september, we would now be travelling by ferry from Dover! Huh!!! They only advertisised this trip AFTER the fire and sold it as a Eurostar trip… Also when they took the deposits they impressed upon us that this was ‘non-refundable’ as it was being used to secure the Eurostar tickets yet I’m now being told that Eurostar aren’t taking any bookings…! My cheque has deffo been cashed so where the blinkin’ heck has my 50 quid gone if its not bought me 2 rail tickets! Seems like there is something dodgy here…

So anyway, I emailed the events office asking for more details. Don’t get me wrong – its not that I’ve got an aversion to ferrys or anything like that, but even I know that the journey down to Dover, over the channel and then from Calais to Paris is gonna take a hell of a lot longer than just hopping on the train in London and alighting in the middle of the french capital… How long are we actually supposed to get in Paris now? Timing-wise it looked like we’d get to the hotel early friday evening and have to leave mid-afternoon on sunday, so our trip had shrunk from 3 days/2 nights to 2 nights/1 day!!! Not so good value now!

I therefore asked that, if we decided not to go anymore, could we have our deposit back – seeing as it had been taken to secure the Eurostar tickets and the fact that we weren’t going on that anymore should ‘negate’ the non-refundable situation…? After not hearing anything for over a week a generic email went round apologising and saying that due to the amount of complaints received they had decided to cancel the trip. Fair enough, it wasn’t good value anymore anyway so what did they expect, but the bit that really pee’d me off was the final par that said we were not actually entitled to our deposit back as alternative transport had been offered… eh?… That would be like me advertising to sell, say, an 8-bedroom mansion, taking a deposit of £100,000 for it and then saying “Oh, actually I don’t own that mansion but I can sell you a 3-bed semi, however if you decide you don’t want the semi, you can’t have your desposit back as I did offer you another property!”

The reasoning apparently was that the deposit had been used to secure the hotel instead – NOT what it said in the contract guys!!! Luckily, thanks to the stirling work of our events officer, we have been promised our deposits back… but that was 3 weeks ago and so far – no money!!! Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no way blaming our events office… I’m blaming the actions of the company that was organising the trip in the first place – seem like a bunch of cowboys to me!

So anyway, back to my original statement, while I’m STILL waiting to get my 50 quid back I would really appreciate NOT hearing from the bloody events office about the great trips they have planned for the next couple of months… Grrrrr… Talk about rubbing salt in the wound!

Say what???

OK – its official – I’m addicted… to The Apprentice.

In one of my blog posts last week I mentioned the possiblity of this happening and now, after watching episode 2, its a foregone conclusion. My wednesday nights for the forseeable future will be planned around watching The Apprentice follwed by The Appretice: You’re Fired.

Last weeks’ episode – which I watched last night – was the dry-cleaning business one where the boys team shone in comparison to the god-awful girls’ team led by the bitchy and bullying Jenny. I thought these people were bad last week but this week they really outdid themselves!

Nevertheless, my addiction is such that I’ve been scanning the programme’s website - sad I know and I have to say that the stuff the candidates are saying on the website is even worse than the bull that comes out of their mouths on the tv!

The cream of the comments so far has to be from Dublin-born Jennifer who states in her profile: “I can sell anything. I can sell pieces of paper for £50 and make a living out of it.”

Ehhhh??? Bank managers do that too luv… the pieces of paper are called £50 notes and they’re worth – yep einstein, you got it – £50!!! Someone give that gal a 6-figure job in sales!!! Jesus… is she for real? Now that’s what you call entertainment!

King of the road?

Just a question, mr cyclist who decided to ‘cut me up’ on a very busy roundabout this morning on the way to work, do you have a death wish that involves you being splattered over some car on a beautiful spring morning??? If not then take my advice and learn to ride a bike safely – or better yet, get off the bloody roads!

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against cyclists in general - in fact darling boyf cycles to work every day – but when a cyclist has less road-sense than a 3-year-old hooning round the garden on a trike then I have to admit that it really pees me off!

Take this morning for example, I overtook ‘idiot cyclist’ (in the proper manner, signalling and giving him plenty of room… (have to take into account the inevitable ‘wobble factor’ here… that’s a point, why is it that cyclists can be riding along all nice and steady but as soon as a car – any car, not just me – overtakes them they wobble like mad… in a 30-mile-an-hour zone it can’t just be the force of the wind rushing past!) Anyway, in a bit the traffic slowed and ‘evel knievel’ reappeared, weaving in and out of the traffic like a lunatic… he got level with me just as I was approaching a roundabout and then, without warning he decided it was a good idea to shoot out in front of me and cross over into the middle of the road just as I was pulling onto the roundabout… IMBECILE… If I hadn’t braked then he would have been rolling across my bonet and, much as I have to admit the idea of not stopping appealed (just to teach him a lesson you understand), I decided that my beautiful car would look better without the addition of ‘king of the roads’ blood splattered all over it!

As I said – I have no problem at all with people cycling but when you live in a town that has ‘red-ways’ (designated cycle paths) running parrallel to pretty much all of the main roads it beggars belief as to why these idiots a) don’t use the cycle paths and b) – if they really are ‘too cool’ to use them, don’t at least learn a bit of road-sense! Hmmmm… there’s a thought, if all the cyclist are on the roads maybe I should take to driving my car down the deserted ‘red-ways’ – it would probably be much quicker and at least I wouldn’t have to avoid the pillocks on bikes!

So anyway, mr cyclist, back to my original question… if you don’t have such a death wish, really really do take a little bit more care when cycling on the roads, the size of your balls will not equate to the fragileness of your skin should you take such silly risks again… maybe the next driver won’t be able to stop quite so quickly!

Ain’t no Russel Brand!

Why is it that, in every walk of life, you will generally find a self-appointed commedian or ‘funny guy’ who actually is more hurtful than anything else? One guy I know is just like this, he tries to be funny but quite often the comedic jibes have quite a sharp edge and vicious bite.

If I’m being completely honest I s’pose I find him less than amusing (to say the least) because quite a few of the jibes are directed at me. As I don’t particularly get on with this person I’m probably more sensitive than I would be if it were a friend taking the proverbial but that’s really no excuse for someone to be hurtful toward someone else.

Its like – ‘ok we get it, you think you’re funny’ but really, you ain’t no Russel Brand so give the bad jokes and cruel jibes a rest!

Its not the winning, its the taking part that counts… NOT

People always say that don’t they… “it’s not the winning, its the taking part that counts”.

Usually this pearl of wisdom - spouting from the mouth’s of mums comforting their little darlings when someone else beat them in the school annual egg-and-spoon race - is, I guess, on the whole quite right… it doesn’t matter if little katy or jimmy beat you… the race was just as much fun whether you won or not… BUT… (and yes, there’s a ’but’ – in fact its a huge one!) there are some instances when the winning IS what matters – and when the prize that you get for winning is of the utmost importance.

Last week a colleague and I got talked into attending an internal IT event at work – the idea to find out about all the techie stuff that we should be adopting in our work (yawn). So we showed up and noticed that the organisers had a competition running – an incentive to get you to go round all the different stands and actually pay attention to what was being said I s’pose. You had to fill out a questionnaire about everything you learned and the winner got an MP3 player as a prize. ‘What the heck’ we thought, we’re here so we may as well enter.

I didn’t think anymore about it until my phone rang on monday and this very polite IT guy explained that I had actually won the competition This was a source of great excitement as I have never - and I really mean never, ever - won anything in my life!! He didn’t tell me much about the prize but, hey - they’re the IT dept, surely they will know about decent MP3 players right…

WRONG… my player arrived just before I was leaving work yesterday… MP3 player… I don’t think so, it would be stretching the truth to even call this device a memory stick! I think it just about has the capacity to hold about 25 songs and runs on a AAA battery – its even been corporate branded! In fact its so bad that when I showed darling boyf when I got home he just burst out laughing

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not normally an ungrateful girl but the fact that I have never won anything before meant that I was really excited, and then to get a prize that – to put it bluntly – is complete and utter crap, means that I’m left feeling very hard done by. I can’t believe the IT guy actually had the audacity to say ‘Congratulations’ like it was someting to be pleased about. Honestly, they must have got change from a fiver when they bought it!

So anyway, to all those people who say that the prize doesn’t matter, may I just suggest that they enter the staff competitions at my work then, maybe they won’t be so disappointed!

How the Grinch(es) ruined Christmas…

OK – I’ve had enough now… am soooooo sick and tired of grumpy ‘grinchey’ colleagues trying to steal my christmas cheer.

Girly pals and I are still frantically trying to organise last minute details for our work xmas do, its a time of chaotic activity but nevertheless should still be quite fun… However a couple of our colleagues seem to have been body-snatched by the grinch and are actively trying to drive us – previously festive and happily girlies – into an early grave with all their difficultness…

Guys, if you happen to be reading this then please do us all a favour and either give the grinch his personality back or don’t come!

’tis the season to be jolly…

Something’s been bothering me for the past few days, I can’t seem to get my head around it and for some reason its really started to pee me off… The subject of my consternation… What is it about this time of year that seems to bring out the worst in people? Surely, in the approach to Christmas we should all be full of festive cheer, thinking happy thoughts and wishing goodwill to all? But nooooooo, it just seems to make some people grumpy, selfish and, sometimes, downright rude.

Take for example our office ‘xmas do’. I thought that this year it would be nice to organise something a bit different for everyone and in my naivety volunteered for the job – big mistake, big… HUGE!

Not only do you have to deal with responses such as “I will not be coming – at all – no matter when it is or what you do”, fair enough… but you also have to cope with the people who are happy to let you do all the work but then just criticise at every step of the way. Most people are happy that someone is actually doing the organising and will go along with whatever is decided, but its the odd one or two (and I do mean odd in all senses!) that just make you feel that you wish you hadn’t bothered! It doesn’t matter how far backwards you bend, they’ll always think they could have done better. Well lesson learned, next year I’ll let them do it!

I’m still going to have a good time with plenty of festive spirits and to my criticisers I’ll just raise my glass – or maybe my finger ;-) 

 Christmas… bah humbug!