Christine the Curmudgeon

Today, Christine the Curmudgeon is going to rant about people who do not properly plan ahead – specifically large groups of people.

Several years ago, Mr. Curmudgeon and I dined at a restaurant in Portsmouth, NH called The Stockpot.  It is no longer there…too bad, it was a pretty good place.  Anyhoo, it was kind of a small place, at least the one non-smoking room was (at the time, smoking was still permitted in NH bars and restaurants).

We were there on a Saturday night in the summer, a busy time in Portsmouth and other seacoast towns.  Since it was just the two of us, we were able to walk into The Stockpot and get a table right away.

As we were sitting there, drinking our beers and enjoying our dinner, this group of nine people walked in.  The hostess told them that she could not seat them all together at the time, and that they’d have to wait.  The leader of the group started screaming at the poor hostess, as if this were somehow her fault.  But there was nothing she could have done, she did her best to calm this person down.  They left for a while, but then came back, probably because they realized that there was nit a single restaurant in all of downtown Portsmouth that could seat a group of nine people together on a Saturday night.  In the middle of the summer.  With no advance notice.  They were still waiting when we left, and they were loudly bitching and moaning about it all as we walked past them.

I was reminded of this incident by one that happened more recently.  I’ve been becoming a regular on the 3PM Boston Express Bus from Boston’s South Station to Manchester, NH, at least once a week.  This is because we go to a lot of New Hampshire Fisher Cats games, and for the weeknight games, it is easier if I go up on the bus, and Mr. Curmudgeon meets me at the stadium after he gets sprung from work.  His office is about halfway up I-93 between our house and the ballpark, so it makes no sense for him to have to drive home, get me, and them backtrack north again.  We’ll have season tickets for next year, so I’ll be using Boston Express Bus all the more; I hope they come out with monthly passes by then!

Anyhoo, these buses come equipped with free WiFi, as well as electrical outlets at some of the seats.  These are clearly marked, but you need to get in the queue for the bus early so you can get on sooner and snag one of these seats, if you need one.  Since I never go anywhere without my cell phone, Amazon Kindle, and iPod (and sometimes I bring my netbook if I need to do some work), I always get there early enough to get an outlet.  I always seem to have SOMETHING that needs to be charged up!

So I was on the 3PM to Manchester last Friday, sitting in my seat with the power outlet, my phone happily charging away.  At exactly 2:58, this large group of older ladies got on the bus, and once they saw that the bus was nearly full and that there was no way they could all sit together, they started bitching and moaning loudly about this.

Some people actually got up and moved so at least some of them could sit together.  I was not among them.  I was the one who planned ahead because I wanted access to a power outlet; although I do charge things up at home, using mobile web on a phone sucks up a lot of juice.  But that’s not the point – the point is that I knew what I had to do to get a power outlet seat, and I made sure to get there in time to board the bus and get one.  It’s not my problem that this bunch of old biddies didn’t plan ahead to get to the station early enough to be the first to board and get their choice of seats!  This is NOT the same thing as refusing to give an elderly person a seat on an MBTA bus or train, now that I would do.  The Boston Express Bus only sells as many tickets as there are seats, so nobody has to stand.  This was just a case where the old bats all wanted to sit together, and it wasn’t going to happen.

One of the old biddies sat next to me, but I put my iPod earphones in and ignored her as she glared at me.

Next time, get there earlier!  Sheesh!  If I ever act like this when I become an old bat, somebody please shoot me!

What is it with men and whining about being sick?  Christine the Curmudgeon just doesn’t get it – you feel sick, you take some meds for it.  Right?

So why is this simple thing such a Hugh Jass production for Mr. Curmudgeon?

Over the 4th of July weekend, we went up to New Hampshire for a few Fisher Cats games.  On Sunday we went to lunch at this place in Manchester called Cactus Jack’s.  Mr. C ordered the seafood gumbo, which he said was very good, but the spices upset his tummy and made his nose run – apparently his sinuses were dripping into his tummy, which was likely the main cause of the upset.

So I offered him some Sudafed (the real stuff that you have to sign away your life at the pharmacy counter to get, not the crap that you can just pick off the shelf, that doesn’t work).  I told him that it would dry him right up in there, and then he’d feel well enough to go to the ball game that evening.  But he resisted, he swore up and down that this stuff doesn’t work for him, and went on acting like an overgrown baby.  Sheesh, you’d think I was forcing him to reads endless apidexin reviews and such before taking something. What does he have to lose by taking a couple? If they don’t work, they don’t work.  But if they do, then at least he’d feel better and I’d no longer have to hear all the whining.

So he finally agreed to take some.  After lunch, we went to the CVS next door, where I bought some more.  We went back to the hotel, and he started feeling better in about half an hour.  He took some more right before we headed out for the game, and everything was fine.

See?  Was that so hard?

Srsly.  Even Christine the Curmudgeon cannot make stuff like this up!

So we have this jerk on Planet Feedback, who wrote a letter complaining that he was unable to get the Saturday Dinner Special, the chicken tenders, for $6.99. He was told that the special only went until 10PM, and he showed up at 11:30PM.  He also claimed that he had been given the special price at that hour in the past.  And now he is screaming bloody murder, and wanting to call his attorney and file a class-action suit, yada, yada, yada.  Read the letter here.

I had never heard of this restaurant, so I Googled them to find their website.  Here it is.  No wonder I never heard of them, they are nowhere near here.  In any case, I looked for anything about these specials, found nothing.  So this guy does have a valid complaint, if the start and end time of the specials is not printed nor posted anywhere.  This I don’t know, as I’ve not been inside the location he is threatening to sue.

However, they did have a .pdf version of their menu on their site.  That is where I saw that the full price of this chicken tender dinner thingy is $8.49.  Yep, just $1.50 more than the special price!  If this guy is so hard up that he can’t afford to pay an extra $1.50, he needs to take an apidexin, shut the hell up, and eat at home.

He is also whining over being made to pay $2.11 for a Pepsi, that, by his own choice, did not drink.  I swear, somebody needs to take a picture of this guy with their cell phone, post it up somewhere where all of the servers can see it, with a message underneath saying, “IF YOU SEE THIS GUY, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO WAIT ON HIM.  YOU HAVE OUR PERMISSION TO THROW HIS ASS OUT OF HERE.”

If he is indeed working seven days a week, as claimed, and is making such a stink over a few bucks, how does he have money for an attorney?  I think he’s just blowing hot air out his ass.  If he doesn’t like the policy of the restaurant, he can go elsewhere.

What a jerk!  There are a lot of places that piss me off, but never enough to threaten to sue.  I just write bad reviews about them, and not go back.  But I still wouldn’t do even that over $1.50.  It would have to be much worse than the specials expiring.  Woe to any restaurant who runs out of the special two seconds before this guy walks in, before anyone had a chance to erase it off the board or spread the word among the servers that it was “86ed” (restaurant lingo for running out of something).

This guy should be blacklisted from every restaurant in the area.

Srsly.  Christine the Curmudgeon just saw this on the local news:  Absent Student Banned From Framingham Prom

The rules are the rules.  I don’t care how much money she spent on the ticket, the dress, shoes, makeup, acne treatment, etc. If you are too sick to go to school that day, you are too sick to go to prom.

I don’t even know why this sort of thing even makes the news.  The news people should be embarrassed to even have to report this sort of crap.

If Christine the Curmudgeon has to pay taxes, then so does everyone else.

Damn, but I am SICK of those commercials for tax attorneys that are aimed at rich people who do not wish to pay their taxes.  I mean, if you make so much money that you owe $40,000 in taxes, you should be able to afford to pay.  These lawyers who do nothing but help the wealthy get out of paying their fair share all need to be locked up, right next to those who don’t pay their taxes.

These wealthy people can afford fancy cars, homes, jewelry, boats, acne scar removal…the whole nine yards.  So they can pay their taxes, too.

Maybe if everyone actually paid their fair share, the damned government wouldn’t be so broke.  but the way it works now, the only people who the IRS can get any money out of of regular people like me, who can’t afford these fancy attorneys.  And besides, those attorneys won’t work with people like me anyway…they specifically say that they only work with people who owe tens of thousands or more in taxes.

So…if we here at The House of Curmudgeon have to fork over the $600 we owe to the IRS…then every-damned-one else who owes needs to pony up, too.  I’m sick of being made to pay, while people who have a jillion times more money than I do get off nearly scot-free!