Life is riddled with a procession of minor impediments

[Mikey]

Heh! The old lake shelf routine eh?

That fort looks amazing - whereabouts in D'gal is it?

M.

[Proudhuff]

That looks like somewhere Slaine would stay....

[uncle fester]

He would indeed. Alas my namesake and ancestor, (not Fester obviously), met his end courtesy of an enemy smiting in this very place. It's near Ardara (on the coast about half way up).

[Peter Wolf]

I cleared the church garden of another carrier bagful of litter today.

Filthy useless lazy trash just sit on the benches and eat their lunch and just drop their litter on the lawn even though there is a bin provided.They are given a green space to use for their own enjoyment yet they dont know how to treat it with respect.

[Noisybast]

I've been on the brink of going to the post office for the last hour and a half.
The only thing stopping me is the sudden and mysterious disappearance of approximately five or six rolls of sticky tape and a pack of envelopes, all of which are generally in the way and cluttering up every drawer I look in when I don't need them...

[House of Usher]

Jobsworth shop assistants.  

In B&Q looking at expensive lampshades (I need one for the landing, okay? and then I never need buy a replacement, ever, because it'll never wear out or go out of fashion). I notice the only stock item in one of the designs I'm looking at is broken. Knowing what I know about B&Q's disastrous inventory system, I know that if it doesn't sell they won't get in a replacement, and if I decide on that lampshade they'll never have a not broken one for me to buy.

So I take the item to a member of staff. They can write off the lampshade as damaged goods and send it back and a replacement will be ordered. "You need to take it to a member of the decorating section. I only work on kitchens. I can't give you a price on that." I tell her I don't want to buy it, I just want it removed from stock so they'll get a good one in in case I want to buy one of the same design. She refuses to deal with it - not her department. "Okay" I say, "I could spend my time looking for a member of staff from decorating. There's no-one there, and you're the first person I found. Alternatively I could just go and put it back on the shelf." She agrees that yes, I could indeed do that. Fine.

I still had it in my trolley when I got to the checkout and explained the situation. The checkout lad confirmed that another shade in the same design would not be ordered until that one is sold, and that the most they can take off the price of the damaged one is 20%. That's not actually true, but I wasn't going to haggle because I didn't want the bloody thing!

So there you have it: B&Q staff put damaged goods back on the shelf and lose sales because the shop doesn't do customer orders (that's so 1980s!), they don't routinely reduce damaged items for sale and remove them from stock to get new, unbroken goods in, and staff are not expected to be concerned about the profitability of the business as a whole, just the little corner of it they work in.

Maybe I'll try a lighting shop on the Internet instead.

[TordelBack]

B&Q's shelf-stacking policies are mind-blowing.  Not once, ever, has anyone there been able to tell me if they're getting more of any given item in, and Usher's experience rather explains why.  

Example:  I was buying a small mountain of paving slabs last year, but they didn't have quite enough of the style I was looking at.  Would they be getting more in, I asked.  No idea.  Well is it possible to order some more, because I won't buy any of them unless I can get enough.  No idea, they just get what comes in.  Ah well, 'bye then, I'll just go to a builders' supplier instead.  Probably best.  

[House of Usher]

You know when you buy wallpaper, you want all the rolls to have come off the same batch so there's no difference in shade when you hang it? I reserved 20 rolls online, then went to the store to collect it. Customer reservations come from stock, they aren't ordered in specially. So they offered me 13 rolls from one batch, 4 from another, and 3 from a third batch. The next delivery would bring in however many rolls of yet another batch it took to make the stock number up to 30.

Needless to say, I wasn't paying £240 for a bunch of odds and sods.

[maryanddavid]

I rarley buy in the likes of B&Q or Woodies, most items are overpriced and as mentioned the staff generally (however helpful) dont know what they are talking about.
Better to to to locally owned merchants, most times they are cheaper,the staff know what they are selling, they generally have a wider and different range since its not centerally supplied.
B&Q annoyed me this year, I was in the market for a ride on mower, checked the B&Q site, they had a good mower for around £1100.00, I went into the store to see about getting it, they wanted €22000.00 for the same mower, no one could tell me why  the difference in price between here in Mayo and in Belfast. Ended up getting a secondhand one, one year old, only 15 hours work for €800.00.

David

[Roger Godpleton]

I was cleaning my ear with a cotton bud and there was blood on the bud.

[JOE SOAP]

I was cleaning my ear with a cotton bud and there was blood on the bud.

that's cos your getting fucked in the (r)ear.

[Mike Gloady]

Is it wrong of me to point out that under no circumstances are you meant to use those cotton bud things to clean your ears?  

Her exact words were "never put anything sharper than your elbow in your ear"

I'm only saying it because an ex-girlfriend of mine was a medical student and she nearly lost her life one morning when she spotted me doing just that.  People have lost their hearing like that and it actually compacts the goo in there making regular syringing more and more necessary.  Drop a spot of olive oil in there regularly, it'll keep it soft and the corner of a flannel while in the shower should take care of any loose gunk.

I'd gone for a huge chunk of my life without knowing this, so I figure I ought to tell anyone I can.  Within reason obviously.

[COMMANDO FORCES]

Yep that's true, but you can't resist a good old poke in the ear with one of those cotton buds. What's life without a bit of danger now and then!

[Mike Gloady]

True.

And nothing beats an ear-canal itch like the tip of your little finger.  Bliss.

[SamuelAWilkinson]

I was cleaning my ear with a cotton bud and there was blood on the bud.

Possibly a sign of an ear infection, and definitely something you want to check out with your GP. It may be nothing, but take it from one who knows, it's not worth potentially losing an ear's worth of hearing.