Ideas of hell (lighthearted)

[lilacao]

Lighthearted thread, prompted by trying to return a dress with no returns form. If there is no returns slip included, it tells you to contact customer care. This puts you on an email/text/whatsapp automated loop where you’re sent a standard response about how to return a dress, which you’ve already explained has stated you need to contact customer care if there wasn’t a return form, who then ask for all the details again, who then send a cut and paste, who then say will contact you as unexpected volumes of people contacting them, who then contact you etc etc. Driving me insane.

Some other things:
— lengthy hold times where you go through endless options, each leading to more hold times and no answers

•as above, but someone answers and gives you another number to call. Process above repeated. Extra points if direct you back to first number

•stuck in a traffic jam, especially if need the toilet

•kids homework / last minute dress up requests from school that involve procuring stuff online or trekking round shops at the last minute

• a loop of icebreaker exercises

•the fight for 8am call to doctors. Bring back some pre-bookables 🙏

•stuck with the person who takes ten hours to tell a five minute story.

What are some things that are your idea of hell?

Popups / page reloading or moving 92 times etc, moving ads that scroll with me. I had 10 seconds to check something and I've just lost 35 and I'm still no closer to finding out the thing I want to know but am filled with incandescent rage instead.

Soft play centre with a hangover

Well, those kids shouldn't have been drinking in the first place... 😝

Bingo.

Wickes Customer Services are currently getting right on my wick 🤪

And when someone has just finished reading their self-published poetry, or is wrapping up a boring meeting, or a dull wedding speech, and you think 'Thank god, sweet freedom, I can almost taste thee...' Then someone gets up on their hind legs and announces: 'If I could just ask a question...'. 😩

(And the question is never a real question, it's just something they want to yap on about in the spirit of 'Dullness Top Trumps', and it takes another 45 minutes)... 😵‍💫

Or ‘this is more of a comment than a question really’ and they then proceed to offer a contribution only slightly shorter than the original presentation, that no one has any interest in hearing.

Edited to add that I somehow managed to speed read your second paragraph. So have ironically offered my own unnecessary version of your post. Just as thread readers are thinking of heading to the bar.

Hen dos, people not using headphones on public transport, manspreading on public transport, watching any sport.

Oh yes baby showers. See also-
Hen nights
Mlm people pestering you
Wedding talk
Gender reveals
Football fans being over excited
Enforced fun ie, party games
Fucking board games

Cats that like catching animals but then bring a vole thing inside the house which is still alive, then sit there watching you trying to catch this vole for a whole half an hour and when you move the cat to try and re-catch, it walks away and carries on watching you.

Lorry drivers on a dual carriage way, going into the over taking lane taking a mile to actually over take the other lorry BECAUSE THEYRE GOING THE SAME SPEED

Karaoke. Specifically karaoke at weddings and parties, where there's no place to go and sit elsewhere. Most people who get up to sing really shouldn't...

I agree on all those too

Oh God! Do we work in the same place?
Maybe not as at my place it normally takes 10 minutes for the speaker to work out how to get the PowerPoint working before they start and involves a frantic call to the IT team first while everyone sits there bored shitless 😄

Oh god I accidentally joined a 'wild swimming' FB group when I pressed the wrong button half asleep. It's horrific! Not only do these people go swimming in the sea/ponds/lakes in the middle of winter, they also chastise other group members who say something like 'it's sub zero so I'll give Weston Super Mare a miss this week'. Like, 'you're not showing enough dedication! You can't pick and choose when to wild swim!'

It's like a cult. I have no intention of wild swimming in winter so should probably leave the group but it's weirdly fascinating 🤣

But yes, swimming in Weston Super Mare or the ponds in our local parks in -1 is my idea of hell!

People telling me about their weight loss “journey” and people who invite me to join them
people telling me about their IBS symptoms. I seriously can’t believe how many times this has happened to me
The last few minutes before my shop shuts and the customers who don’t take the hint and piss off

Nothing to eat but tinned baked beans 🤢 🤮

The trainee I was helping to supervise at my last job was asked a very simple research question (the answer would have been maybe two sentences - I could have done it myself in 30 mins or less but wanted to give her a learning opportunity)

She took a month to do it and came back with a 30 slide PowerPoint in random fonts with weird stock photos and typos and booked me and my own manager for a one hour meeting to present it to us.

That was painful.

No seats on a crowded train. Or someone just took the last one.

I will say that most trainees I work with can do amazing things with a PowerPoint.

Although one type of hell is realising that you’ve now got a team who recognise not one single cultural reference you have, and describe YouTubers as iconic.

anyone’s hair touching me. It’s sensory hell and I am blessed with daughters with long hair.

being desperate for a wee on a train when there is already someone taking a mega shit. Leaving me wondering do I wet myself or risk missing my station.

And the OP definitely met my Dad. God the long boring stories

Disneyland and other theme parks
Having a phone conversation
Dealing with a ND teenager (or 2)
Being cold at work when it's nice and sunny outside (they put the AC on, HATE IT)
Making polite conversation with boring people at social or work events. There I am thinking I don't have time for this. They are probably thinking the same of me.
Raining on holiday
Public toilets

Benidorm
Someone wanting to talk to me on a plane, train or bus just fucking leave me alone
A neighbour wanting to pop in every five minutes, as above

🤣

But it's true though, isn't it? Never a real question, they've just been waiting for the other person to stop talking so they can spill their brains... Have to say, it's most often a particular kind of man who sees a woman speaking and it upsets their world view...

Parking pay stations where they’re either cash or one of those phone numbers that you call/text. If you have no cash then it’s the phone number. Paying by text? Text park to the following number, but then it doesn’t recognise the number plate or the payment details. So then you scan the code and try and pay online but have run out of data so you can’t do that. So then you decide to phone the actual number and your phone battery goes flat. Which blithering idiot came up with this nonsense? Why not have a card payment option? Honestly, the mind boggles.

Lengthy "networking" sessions at conferences. Why would I want to stand around awkwardly trying to make small talk with strangers? I tend to go back to my room or get on with some work.