Monday: My GPS makes me feel guilty.

Last year for Christmas, Ken bought me a GPS. I don’t mean this past Christmas, I mean Christmas two years ago, technically. I never installed it, because a) I have an innate sense of where I’m going b) I lie about my innate sense of where I’m going, so I use Mapquest a lot, and c) I hate winter, so it was always too cold to put it in my SUV, and I only ever thought about it during the winter. But a few weeks ago, Ken decided that I should have it in my new car, just in case I got a job in Toronto. That sounds like a weird long shot, but it turns out I DID get a job in Toronto, which just goes to show that Ken is prophetic AND practical. Anyway, he installed it, or at least tried to, in my new Chevy Sonic. But there were some significant issues with the Tom-Tom, which is a stupid name anyway, and always makes me think of Jacob Two Two, and his Hooded Fang, because the GPS is just like having a Hooded Fang in the car anyway. The first sign of trouble was when it kept coming un-suctioned from the suction cup attaching it to my console. I’d turn a corner and the whole thing would fly through the air at me like a pissy poltergeist was controlling it. Then we actually tried to use it, and the real problem made itself abundantly clear: its sole purpose was to make me feel sad and guilty, because the voice of my GPS was a very pleasant woman—well, pleasant at first, but don’t cross her, because she can be pretty tyrannical. Everything was going fine for the first little while, with her telling us to turn right, or that there was an intersection coming up, but then we made the fatal mistake of GOING A DIFFERENT WAY. Then she was all like, “Turn right here”, trying to redirect us back to the route SHE had picked, and she started to sound more and more sulky. Then things started to get really dramatic, and we somehow ended up in Ajax instead of Toronto. Well, not really, but according to her, that’s where we were supposed to go , and if we didn’t want her advice, well screw us, we could just rot in Ajax. For the record, I don’t even know where Ajax IS, but if it’s my punishment for defying the GPS, then I don’t WANT to know. Anyway, a couple of days later, I was driving with Kate, and we decided to try the GPS lady again, hoping she had forgiven me for my past cartographical transgressions. We were going into Kitchener, and wanted to practice programming it, and thought we had done everything right, when the whole monitor part went crazy and started flying around the car. The next thing we knew, she was trying to direct us to Stratford, and kept yelling at us about going up some Regional Road every time we came to an intersection. Let me just clarify here that I actually KNEW where I was going, since I drive the same way to work every day, but she was f*cking relentless about us taking a road that looked like it went through some kind of swampland. The more we ignored her, the more insistent she got, until finally, I just yanked the plug out of my cigarette lighter thing-y. Kate calls this “rage-quitting” and I think it’s an accurate description of the way you feel when you get sick of being manipulated by your passive-aggressive GPS. (Ken just told me that he was “fiddling around” with the GPS the other day, which sounds slightly infidelity-ish, and that you can program it to talk with a different voice. I said unless it sounded like Darth Vader, or Bane from Batman, or my mother, there was NO WAY I was taking directions from it. And if it DID sound like my mother, it would keep asking me why I wasn’t wearing a scarf because it’s cold out, you know. Now it’s in his truck. I hope she makes him happy.)

Thursday: OMFG, could I be any more awkward?

On Thursday after work, I decided to go shopping for a dog coat for Titus. Ken likes to take him on long walks, and although he never complains, I worry that he’s too cold. Titus, that is, not Ken. Plus, he would look awesome in a black leather jacket, or a tweed Burberry style pea-coat. I went to Petsmart, and all they had were tiny tutus for tiny dogs, and cutesy sh*t like that, so I gave up and went to Winners. I found a coat that was dark brown with a snappy corduroy collar that looked like it was big enough for a gigantic dog. Also, I found some shoes and a matching top. For me. Hey, if Titus gets a new outfit, then so do I right? I went to the checkout line, and I found myself behind a woman who was holding and rocking a tiny, TINY baby. The baby was wearing an adorable outfit and had one of those headbands with a bow on her head. I was staring at the baby when the woman noticed and turned around to face me. Which is when I realized that she was actually breastfeeding the baby while she was standing in the checkout line. Now, I have no issue at all with people (well, women) breastfeeding in public, and I think boobs are great but then I got worried that she maybe thought I was staring at her exposed breast rather than at her cute baby. So I did what anyone would do—I struck up a conversation with her, which, as you know, is never a good thing, considering my social awkwardness with strangers. But she was very friendly. The baby was just three months old–time had flown by so quickly, she said. Just wait until you have a sixteen-year-old–you blink and suddenly they’re taller than you, I said. And so on. Still, here’s the problem. It was virtually impossible not to look at her “lady-friend”. It was like someone telling you NOT to think about rhinoceroses. It was there, like a pale, life-nurturing beacon, and she kept referring to the breastfeeding process, like, “Oh, you’re so hungry, aren’t you?” (to the baby, obviously), until I just kept trying to make eye contact while giving what I hoped were casual glances at the baby/boob in an effort to make HER feel comfortable, especially since the woman behind me in line, who smelled liked she had just smoked 15 cigarettes at once, kept throwing her the evil eye. Finally, there was a free cashier, and off she went, suckling baby and all. I breathed a sigh of relief, then I saw the cashier do a double-take, and I sent out sympathetic vibes to HER, as she tried not to talk to the boob.

Then I was reminded of my other very awkward conversation this week, when I was talking to a colleague who was getting text messages from a friend. “She’s my spiritual friend,“ she informed me, but I was a little distracted so I replied without thinking (as per usual), “Oh, is that like a girl crush or something?” She looked at me curiously, at which point I thought maybe I needed to elaborate (turns out I didn’t), so I said, “You know, like the female equivalent of a bromance? Like a friend you would…” She replied, very thoughtfully, “No, more kind of a life coach. We do yoga together and go to spiritual retreats. She gives me advice about big life decisions and things like that.” Then I felt like a bit of an idiot, and I was grateful that my colleague is a really awesome person who is not judge-y at all. The world needs more people like her, and less like the cigarette-smoking woman who apparently DOESN’T like boobs.

*I am currently over the quarter-way point towards a whole year of inanity. Huzzah!

Friday: Conversations with customer service representatives are getting more and more difficult.

I don’t know why, but it seems like lately, the quality of people who work in customer service is going downhill. Last night, it took me ten minutes to order pizza. I was at my aunt’s house, and we were hungry, so I called Pizza Pizza. For some bizarre reason, they have a call centre, instead of letting you call the store you want to get the pizza from. The guy taking my order was NOT a native English speaker. And that’s ok with me, as long as he could actually speak English. But this, apparently was a challenge. Shouldn’t the most important criterion for hiring someone to take pizza orders be that the person can understand the language the pizza orders are mostly going to be in? He asked for my address at least 5 times. I said it, I spelled it. He said it back, he spelled it back. He was wrong each time. We went back and forth like this for a few minutes, my aunt looking terribly amused in the background. When I finally said, with a certain amount of frustration, “It’s Keats! Like the poet!” she laughed out loud and said, “There’s no way THAT’S going to help.” I hadn’t even gotten to the food part of the order yet. Don’t get me wrong—it has nothing to do with what country someone comes from—in fact, I had even more trouble trying to order something from a Sears rep. who was from Quebec, and whose English was also virtually non-existent.

But face to face can be just as bad. Today, I was in an antique mall, and I found an old historical atlas of Oxford County in one of the stalls. I was really excited, and opened it up to see the price, because most responsible antique dealers pencil the price inside the cover to avoid damaging the outside. It said $12.00. Awesome! Then I looked at the outside cover, and it said something MUCH more expensive, on a nasty sticker. Well, I wanted the atlas, and the booth was 15% off, so I took it to the counter. I showed the woman the page with $12.00 written on it and said, “Can you remind your vendors to remove the price they paid from their items before they re-price them?” then I showed her the price tag on the cover. She looked at me and said, “What?” Actually, it was more like, “Whuh?” I don’t know how much clearer I could have been. I keep thinking of variations but they seem to all sound very Neanderthalic, like “Old price good, new price bad. Old price go away. Me buy book.” That makes even less sense. Maybe she didn’t know what a ‘vendor’ was.

Wednesday: Ken pushes my buttons. Literally.

Ken and I were driving in my (relatively new) car on Wednesday, and he was in one of his moods. It’s like, he knows I’m sick, so he does his best to try and annoy me. Which he did today, by pointing out each button on my dashboard and console, and asking, “What does this do?”

Ken: What’s this button for?
Me: It has a car, skid marks, and the word ‘OFF’. What do YOU think it does? Use your imagination.
Ken: I don’t know. If I push it, will the car start to skid?
Me: Do you think it’s a good idea to try?
Ken: Ummm…
Me: It’s to turn off the TRACTION CONTROL! It’s winter–why would you EVER want to do that!!?? Don’t touch it!
Ken: Oh. Okay. What’s this button for?
Me: It has a picture of a child inside a lock. Take a guess.
Ken: To lock your kids inside the car?
Me: *sigh* Yes, that’s right. To lock K in the car. You know, you have the exact same button in YOUR car.
Ken: I don’t know what it’s for in my car either. What does THIS button do?
Me: I’m going to cut off your fingers if you don’t stop touching things.

Friday: I have second thoughts about Buy and Sell sites

So, if you remember correctly, I am the proud member of several buy and sell sites. I like a bargain, but unfortunately, the bargains come few and far between sometimes, and I’m getting a little fed up. Today, I lost out on a really nice purse by about 5 minutes. And I could have had it, except for some really random rules, like “the first person to respond has first rights”. Really? What about the person (me, for example) who will pay extra money for that purse? But that’s considered poor etiquette, to try and outbid someone, and then you get called names. Called names, you ask? Yes, because the seedy underbelly of buy and sell sites is that there are certain protocols governing the procedures of buying and selling, and if you contravene them, your ass is grass, so to speak. Case in point: not long ago, a woman on a local site complained that a seller was ripping people off by charging high prices for second hand goods. This led to a litany of comments directed at her, which she, in turn, chose to respond to in the way that only a 19 year-old with a limited vocabulary can do. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such ‘imaginative language’ in my life—there were references to body parts that I didn’t even know existed. Then other people got in on the act, including a woman who claimed to be a police officer, but whose knowledge of the law was a little suspect. So I did what any normal person would do. I took screen shots to show Ken. The insults are so crude that I can’t even share them with you, except to say that speculation about the young lady’s occupation, and placement of her lady parts versus her brain, was referenced several times. She responded by concluding that her detractors seemed to enjoy cannabis and other drugs, as well as recreational sexual activities involving animals. Yes, the internet certainly brings out the best in people. I thought this was a one-off, until the other day when another young lady complained that she had purchased an item that was not in the condition it was described to be in. Without hesitation, someone immediately called her an “asshole” for not checking it out thoroughly herself. Really? That’s your first response? Can you imagine this kind of behaviour happening in face to face activities? Like, you’re at work, and the photocopier isn’t working again, and your first response is to say to the person trying to clear the jam they’ve created: “I can’t believe you broke the photocopier, you asshole.” Sure, I know we all WANT to say this, but we don’t. Would you tell your boss in person, “That’s a stupid idea, you crackhead”? Depending on the profession, most likely not. So why is it OK for people to talk like this to each other on the internet? Especially when their NAMES AND PICTURES are attached to their comments? I‘ve complained about this before, I know, but I still don’t get it. Me, I like to stay away from the drama of overpriced, used clothing, open bags of dog food, damaged furniture, and snow tires. (*I just got a message from the purse-lady asking if I was still interested. This is because I had commented “Second”, which apparently guarantees my place in the purse-buying line. I’ll keep you posted.)