Di and I voted simultaneously on the SPOTD today when they decided to get in touch with us.  At 5:30am, the phone beside the bed rang loudly once and then didn’t ring again.  Seriously, if you’re ringing people at that hour of the day, check the number BEFORE you dial, not AFTER you’ve dialled - quickly hanging up does not avoid waking us.  Grr!

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The people at Birdseye frozen foods recently had a promotion in a local supermarket - buy one packet of frozen fish and get a packet of frozen chips for free.  Sounds good.  Sounds like a meal solution right there, doesn’t it?  Until you get home and realise that the fish needs to be cooked at 190C but the chips need to be cooked at 230C.  Why?  Why would the same company make two foods that belong together but apparently have to be cooked in separate ovens? Because they’re SPOTDs…

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Standing in line at the supermarket tonight, we were waiting to load groceries onto the conveyor belt at the checkout and the line was taking forever to move forward.  All the other checkouts were full, but ours was particularly slow.  We watched with annoyance as others joined the checkout line beside us after we had joined our line and progressed more quickly through their checkout line.  We debated jumping into another queue but figured that the hold-up was going to clear in a second and we’d be moving again.

The delay was being caused by a woman with two kids who was paying her bill with as many coins as she could muster, it seemed.  As an extra bonus - as it turned out - she had evidently waited until all her groceries were scanned and only then decided she wanted to buy some cigarettes as well.

The store is set up so those who want to buy cigarettes can do so from the main service counter which she had to pass on her way out.  However, oblivious to the glares from everyone else in line, this SPOTD decided to combine it into her purchase and demanded the checkout operator call another staff member to go to the service counter, get the packet of cigarettes, bring it back to the checkout for her and then she could finalise the bill.

Sure love, no problem.  We’ve got all the time in the world.  Clearly we have no better place to be than standing in line waiting for your belated demands to be met. Given that, as a smoker, she’s destined to lead a short life - it did seem strange to us that she would want to spend a considerable portion of it in a checkout queue.

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Just had the following conversation with a SPOTD who lit up a cigarette directly underneath the No smoking in this area sign hanging outside my building.  It was reasonable that he may not have seen the sign because it was hanging from the ceiling and the path he’d taken to get there meant he might have missed it so I didn’t go on the attack immediately.

Me: Excuse me, this is a “no smoking” area.

SPOTD: Well, woop de doo.  How about that?

Me: So if you could just move out of this enclosed area, that’d be great.

SPOTD (taking another big drag): A “no smoking” area, you say?

Me: Yes.  Because it’s a covered area beside office windows.

SPOTD: Well then, I’ll just stand one metre away and everything will be perfectly okay.

Me: Actually, if you could just stand three metres away, you’ll be in the path of traffic and it’ll be much better for everyone, I’m sure.

Grr.  I can appreciate that he might not have seen the sign initially because it was hanging above him but still, there’s something about nicotine that just gives people the sort of mentality that you usually only find in a bin of assorted by-products out the back of an meat processing plant.

Categories: SPOTD
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Walking down the street this afternoon I was in a hurry and moving at my top walking pace which is quite fast. I was preparing to cross the street, looked over my shoulder at the traffic to make sure it was clear and then began to cross. I was at an intersection so used the pedestrian area of the intersection but had not waited for the “green man” signal to appear thus I was jaywalking. Suddenly, from behind me, I heard a man urgently call out “HEY!” at me in a rather frantic tone - the sort of warning tone that suggested to me that I’d somehow not seen a car and was just about to be hit. I immediately stopped, slightly panicked because I still couldn’t see the danger I was in, and stepped back quickly to the gutter because standing still in the middle of the road was obviously not the place to halt. Still not able to see the cause of impending death, I finally turned to the man who had yelled out to me and, staring at him rather blankly, asked what the problem was.

SPOTD: You’re not setting a very good example.

I continued to stare at him blankly for another few seconds then it all made sense. Beside the man stood his wife and family, and me walking across the road without waiting for the lights was a poor example to his children. Now, credit where it’s due, he was teaching his children right from wrong. I regularly rant about people who don’t do that, yet I was furious he’d scared me into believing I was going to hit by a car. Sure, teach kids right from wrong but don’t yell out at me. Wait until I’ve crossed the road then quietly talk to your kids and say “that was a bad man, he didn’t wait for the lights”. You’ve got your lesson and I’ve not had my life interrupted.

My brain immediately raced for a response as I stared at him. What could I come back with? How could I pick on him for not being a good example? Was he committing a crime of fashion? Did he have a mullet? What could I set upon him with? That’s when I realised that he was gift-wrapping my response - he was smoking a cigarette!

Me (becoming increasingly angry): How dare you?! How dare you lecture me on not being a good role model for your children?!? Firstly, it’s not my job to raise your children - that’s your job. Secondly, you dare to have a go at me for crossing the road without the lights yet you stand there smoking? You’ve got three kids under the age of ten, one of them is in a stroller and you fill their lungs with passive smoke? You continue to kill yourself with cancerous chemicals and poison the environment around you? How dare you?!?!

I never gave him the chance to respond. I spun and stormed off across the street once more, vowing that when I get to be the ruler of the universe, there’ll be laws against stopping someone for no good reason. Grr.

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I attended a seminar for work in the city this evening and walked down King St on my way back to the office. Over the past few years King St has changed from hosting a lot of nightclubs to hosting a lot of “gentleman’s clubs” so there are always dodgy looking “lads” lined up to get inside these venues. As I strode past one club, one of the lads decided to comment on my hat because, well, he was a SPOTD.

SPOTD (pointing at me): He thinks he’s from the country.

Me (pointing at him): He thinks paying a girl to show him her bits will make her like him.

SPOTD (angrily): Why don’t you go get f***ed?

Me: Perhaps I will, but at least I won’t have to pay for it if I do.

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As a follow-on to yesterday’s SPOTD report, I attempted to locate the details for the Hungry Jack’s head office via their website, without any success. It turns out that to view the website, you need to have a very recent Flash plugin installed in your browser. I definitely have a Flash plugin installed but a more recent version must be required. Why the website designer did not include a HTML version for users who don’t have the latest Flash plugin is beyond me. Accessibility is obviously not an issue Hungry Jack’s… All I get is a black page with the blunt message to “Get Flash”.

I was able to guess the website address for the feedback form based on the link I located for the employment applications. Again, the Hungry Jack’s unofficial slogan of “that’s close enough” seems to have been woven through the form with multiple errors:

• The company name is spelled Hungry Jak’s [sic] in the title bar.
• There’s no store in Campbellfield listed in the store locator menu.
• A store in Fawkner is listed, though there is no store in Fawkner.
• Sugguestions [sic] are sought.

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There are several reasons you may choose to work at Hungry Jack’s, though apparently “I take pride in my employment” is unlikely to be among them. The most likely reason is likely to be because you’re 15-18 years old and it’s a way to earn some cash. The downside of this is that many Hungry Jack’s experiences typically leave the customer wondering how some employees able to tie their own shoelaces without choking to death on their saliva. Today’s experience at the Campbellfield store was even more disturbing than normal.

A man and two young sons sat down at a table near us. One of the boys, about 5 years old, reached for his drink and promptly knocked it onto the floor so a large puddle of Coke was created. To the child’s credit, he immediately apologised to his father and the father told the boy to alert the staff so they could mop it up. Dutifully, the lad fronted up to the counter and told them he’d spilled his drink on the floor to which the female staff member rolled her eyes dramatically at him then called out to a nearby male staff member that a cleanup was required. That male staff member was, regrettably, too busy joking with his coworkers to do anything so he further delegated the task to an employee out in the dining area.

Who didn’t do anything…

Five minutes later, the puddle was spreading (the floor is uneven) and beginning to flow across the walking path so the father went to the counter and reminded them that they needed to come and clean up. The manager of the store was working nearby, filling drive-through orders because of the eight staff we could see, four of them were goofing around in the children’s birthday party room, two were chatting, one girl was absently staring into space whilst attending the till with no customers and the eighth was the only one staff member doing work, cooking out the back. The manager, though evidently unable to get the staff to work and fill orders, told the nearest chatter to go get a mop and clean it up.

The chatter went over to the birthday room where one staff was using a broom. As he attempted to enter the birthday room, three of the staff blocked his access by pushing against the door to prevent his entry. Undeterred, he walked through the restaurant, out into the play area and around to the other door but by the time he got there, the three staff had rushed to that door and again blocked him access. Unable to get to the broom nor convey the need to cleanup, he laughed and then walked back behind the counter to continue his chatting.

After twelve minutes the puddle had spread and was now about to flow under our booth but we were so captivated by the dire levels of cleaning that we had to stay to see how it ended. The goofing around eventually finished in the party room and one of the staff went wandering through the restaurant aimlessly. We were unable to determine what his intent was since he was walking past tables littered with empty wrappers from previous customers, so can only suppose he was avoiding walking behind the counter because that may subsequently being required to perform some duties in exchange for his payment. Suddenly he stumbled on what was now a 2-metre by 0.6-metre puddle of Coke and stopped dead. He stared in amazement at it for a full eight or nine seconds, as though he had inadvertently discovered a deceased tutu-wearing walrus before turning to us, wide-eyed and breathlessly uttered:

Employee: Whoa! I’m going on my break…

Di caustically pointed out to him that this spill should not be so surprising because they’d been told about it twice but that going on break seemed to be the appropriate response for a Hungry Jack’s staff member. Broken from his reverie, he wandered off to the back of the store where the “Great 2007 Hungry Jack’s Hunt For The Mop” commenced. The store was soon filled with the calls of employees to one another:

Employee 1: “Where’s the mop?”

Employee 2: “Dunno. Hey guys, where’s the mop?”

Employee 3: “Dunno.”

Employee 4: “The what?”

Employee 2: “Mop.”

Employee 4: “Oh. Dunno.”

Three minutes later, one of them eventually found the mop and brought it out into the dining area where he promptly leaned it against the nearest bin and started to clean up the serving trays he found where previous customers had left them. After a minute of doing rather unrequired cleanup he eventually wandered over to the puddle with, not the mop that was such a focus of the hunt, but a soft floor broom instead.

Much of the time we’d been there, one of the goofing-around employees had simultaneously been using the broom to sweep the restaurant in what could best be described as a haphazard fashion (but at least it was more work activity than several other employees were contributing). This broom was now placed into the puddle of Coke and the entire puddle swept with great vigour until an area 2.5-metres by 2-metres was covered in sticky syrup. Additionally, the broom was now soaked with Coke so it was useless for sweeping anywhere else in the restaurant until cleaned. As he swept, we watched - along with the original family and four other patrons who had since come into the restaurant - in fascinated horror at the stupidity of increasing the affected area. One of the other customers commented that it was probably his age that made him use the broom - as a male teenager he’d probably never done any cleaning up at home so didn’t know what to use.

After placing a “wet floor” sign to one side of the mess (it only took fifteen minutes to warn customers of the risk) he then wandered back to the mop, forced to walk through the large slick he’d created and teetered twice, his shoes losing traction on the slippery mess. Having created a series of wet footprints across the restaurant since he’d left the mop several metres from the original puddle he then commenced mopping the entire floor - starting in the area well away from the puddle.

Another family entered the restaurant at this time and the children immediately made for the playground door. Seeing the staff member mopping on the south side of the restaurant they raced to the north side, only to find a dirty Coke-slick spread in all directions. Since he was unable to perform two tasks simultaneously, we allowed the staff member to continue mopping and we warned the new customers to take care when walking because it was slippery. Tentatively the children and their grandmother progressed through the slick, with the grandmother slightly sliding as she walked until she got to the nearest table out of the slick and sat down.

Finally, the staff member came over and began mopping the floor where the puddle was. However, he didn’t plunge the mop into the bucket of water he’d brought out with him so he was essentially just pushing it around the floor, albeit diluting the mess more effectively than the broom had.

The puddle finally removed converted from a medium brown puddle into a large transparent puddle, we left the store only to find the employee who had spent all the time sweeping the rubbish in the store had conveniently swept it into a large pile of refuse at the front of the store so the first and last experience for patrons was a large unattended pile of rubbish on the floor between the door and the ordering counter. Obviously all the other employees were too busy avoiding work to then scoop it up and put it in the bin.

So who do we award the Stupid Person Of The Day (SPOTD) award to? There was no way to single out an individual in this saga so it’s a group award today, dedicated to the entire cretinous and apathetic staff at Hungry Jack’s, Campbellfield. The blurb surrounding employment at Hungry Jack’s states:

For many people, working at Hungry Jack’s ® is their first employment experience and they are given world class training.

All I want to know is: Which world are they talking about? It’s certainly not mine…

Categories: SPOTD
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One of the Awesomes drank so much last night that she was still rather unwell in the morning. Rather than miss out on the game drive she boarded the truck with everyone else but seemed to forget that the track would be rather bumpy.

Ten minutes into the game drive she was looking decidely unwell. Within twenty minutes she was throwing up into an air-sickness bag someone else had the foresight to hand her. And she was off to climb Mt Kilimanjaro the next day…

Thankfully, we shall not cross paths with her again (Awesome!) to see whether she made it or not but we suspect that the preparation for climbing the largest mountain in Africa might not include getting so drunk you can’t stand up, then throwing up the next day.

Categories: Travel, SPOTD, Africa 2007
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Still in Tanzania, we managed to end up (against our wishes) trapped for six hours in a 4WD vehicle exploring the Ngorongoro Crater with Zoe (yesterday’s SPOTD) and three girls we referred to as “The Awesomes”. It was a hellish experience, primarily due to the fact that they were incredibly immature 22yo girls who:

1. had developed a vocabulary based on Paris Hilton so everything was either “awesome” or “hot”, and
2. thought the Lion King was a documentary.

Every rock we saw must, of course, be Pride Rock. Every male lion was Simba. Every female lion was Nala. Every time we saw a warthog all three of them would identify it as Pumba. There were also 15 hyenas in the crater. This was a fact burned into my brain because EACH AND EVERY TIME we saw a hyena the following “Lion King” dialogue took place…

Awesome 1: Awesome! A hyena!

Awesome 2: Mufasa!

Awesome 1 & 3: Oooooh! Do it again!

Awesome 2: Mufasa!

Awesome 1 & 3: Oooooh!

Awesome 2: Mufasa! Mufasa! Mufasa!

Awesome 1, 2, and 3: *hysterical laughter*

Repeat fifteen times…

We knew we were in trouble when we began the descent into the crater with Zoe and the Awesomes all merrily screaming out cheerleader chants from the “Bring It On” movie which they knew word perfect. Di and I slumped a little lower in the seat as the driver of the vehicle looked incredulously at the idiots we were riding with.

During the game drive the driver mentioned we were going to stop for a meal break beside a lake containing hippos (because Zoe was carping about wanting to see a hippo out of the water). One of the Awesomes asked if there would be a chance to go for a swim because it was so hot (thermal reference, not Paris Hilton reference, for a change!). The driver chuckled and promised she could go for a swim. He explained that hippos were one of the most dangerous animals in Africa but only if you got between them and the water because they would crush anything in their path to get to the water. Since they would be in the water already, they would obviously not be dangerous.

Di and I chuckled along with his amusing joke, but shook our heads in disbelief with the driver as we all realised the Awesomes and Zoe now had plans to go swimming because they were discussing where to get changed and whether there would be toilet cubicles nearby for modesty when changing. The driver, realising he would be legally liable for telling people to swim with hippos, quickly had to explain he was only joking and they could not swim after all. The disappointment was palpable in the air for quite some time and we got the impression were it not for the crocodiles in the lake they might have tried their luck with the hippo swim anyway.

Categories: Travel, SPOTD, Africa 2007
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