Taxi Drivers

I’ve been a good boy lately, and tried to focus on some positives, but I need to let off some steam today. And after all, the name of my blog is GRUMPYAussie, isn’t it.

Today’s rant comes to you courtesy of Brisbane’s taxi drivers. In my opinion, half of them should have their f**king licenses taken away, and the other half should be made to get one.

In only the last three days, I have seen shit on Brisbane’s roads that would turn your hair white (if it isn’t already). Sure, there’s the usual crap of taxi’s cutting in and out of traffic without indicating, into gaps about three quarters the length of the vehicle.

Then there was the guy today who was reading a newspaper. Or the Pakistani/Indian bloke yesterday who was incapable of driving in a straight line, crossing the line on both sides of his vehicle. But he was on the phone, so I guess that’s ok. Maybe he was telling his Mum he loved her, or co-ordinating the rescue of a bleeding child – you just never know.

And why is it that they never do the speed you want? If you’re in a hurry, they’re doing 15 kph under the speed limit. If you’re more sensible and prefer the speed limit, they think they’re Juan Fangio (if you don’t know who he is, look him up). I’ve lost count of the amount of taxi’s I’ve been in, where the driver has two speeds: flat out, and stop.

I know you know what I’m talking about. The light goes green, his foot goes flat to the floor, and you take of like you’re in a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier. You go from standstill to flight speed in 2.4 seconds. Naturally, you get to the next intersection just as your neck snaps back into place, he slams on the brakes and 2 nanoseconds before your head hits the seat in front of you, he’s back on the gas trying to set a lap record.

Tell me you’ve never been in a cab with one of these idiots. I DARE you.

I’m just never quite sure how these guys (or girls) get a driver’s license, or a taxi license. It’s obvious some of them haven’t achieved one or both of these milestones. I’d like to see someone do a random check on some of the taxi companies and check whether the drivers are licensed or not.

Inconsiderate colleagues

As much as I try to get along with the people at work, there’s a couple of stereotypes that I know we’re all dealing with. Let’s face it, there’d be very few people who go to work because they prefer it to being at home, so why do we put up with these people?

Exhibit A: The person who microwaves their lunch, but then decides that 2 minutes isn’t EXACTLY how long they want their food in there. They really only want to microwave it for 1 minute 57 seconds. So they open the door with 3 seconds to go. Let me start by saying I have no problem with this. Occasionally, I too have punched a time-frame that was a bit long, and on my return have found a melted lid and steam/smoke filling the oven. BUT, I press that little CANCEL button. It’s not hard, and I don’t have to push my next meeting back to fit it in. BEEP, we’re done. So why is it so F**KING hard for others to do the same?

Exhibit B: The loud phone talker. This is the genius who hasn’t yet grasped the technology of the telephone. Sure, in the days of tin cans and string, you had to raise your voice a little so the sound would travel. But not, they have these things called microphones, right? So why, does this Einstein YELL in to the phone? There is one guy at my work who is so f**king loud, you can hear him as you enter the building. Luckily, I’m not known for my tact, so I pass his workstation, I put my finger to my lips, and give him a SSSShhhhhhh. If only I didn’t have to do it 5 times a day.

Exhibit C: The guy with no life. You know who I mean. Everyone has someone at their work who never seems to leave. He’s there when you show up in the morning, and he’s still there when you go home 30 minutes late. Even when this guy is on leave, he shows up anyway. I have one such offender in my workplace. We have threatened several times to chalk his tyre, just to make sure he goes home at night. With Christmas fast approaching, most of my colleagues have started their holidays. And even though this guy has been on leave for a week, he has been in every day, doing work. He’s been working harder on holidays than I do when I’m working!

Exhibit D: The person who fails/refuses to pass on information. Sadly, my work seems to be BUILT on these people. There’s less than 40 people in my workplace, and our role is quick dynamic, so our tasks change regularly. In that kind of world, everyone needs to know what’s going on at all times. The office space we occupy is so small, any individual could literally step outside their office and shout “Hey, there’s a meeting after lunch in my office!”, or “Tomorrow, I need everyone to make sure they’re wearing a bikini”. Not literally, but you know what I mean. What we have, is people who either walk around to everyone individually and tell them, or who wait until the morning and then say “By the way, we’re all wearing bikinis today”. Idiot.

Exhibit E: The person who can’t use the internet. How, on God’s green f**king Earth, in this day and age, can someone who has a job, NOT be able to navigate the internet? Seriously! And I don’t mean design a web page, or anything technical. One colleague yesterday not only didn’t know how to get to, or use, google maps, but when I tried talking him through it, and started with “Right, open Internet Explorer”, he couldn’t even really manage that. He did that thing where you don’t double-click fast enough, and then the icon title highlights. But he sat there, staring blankly, unable to even resolve THAT little problem. Moron.

Have I missed someone? I’m sure there’s more of these people out there, but I now need to take a few deep breaths and finish my bourbon. Let me know if there’s someone at your work who drives you nuts.

Stupid doesn’t hurt anymore

I’ve mentioned this before, but a colleague of mine always says “Stupid doesn’t hurt anymore”. What he means by that is that those of us with more than a modicum of common sense have to have our lives filled with rules and restrictions so that the idiots don’t kill themselves. Whatever happened to natural selection??

One of my BIGGEST hates on the road is RED RIGHT ARROWS (RRA). As much as I try, I can’t come to any conclusion as to what purpose they could possibly serve, other than to stop f**kwits from killing themselves. And let’s face it, if you’re stupid enough to drive your car into the side of a truck, maybe you SHOULD drive your car into the side of a truck.

Let me just quickly remind our American friends again that our lanes work backwards over here. So our red RIGHT arrows would be the same as a red LEFT arrow for you guys. Now you see what I mean? Exactly!

In Brisbane, we all get sit at traffice lights with RRA. And wait. While there’s no on-coming traffic. What…..The…..F**k. The compounding issue here is that the line of traffic waiting to turn right grows longer and longer for no logical reason. So when that RRA goes away, only about 4 cars get through, and then the rest get stuck – at the arrow, with no oncoming traffic.

If our governments stopped thinking along the line of protecting the dullards, and let those of us with more than a handful of brain cells think for ourselves, I wouldn’t spend 20 minutes of every hour waiting to turn right. Maybe then some of these morons might start to be removed from the mortal coil, and the rest of us could live in relative happiness.

Just think. If these people slowly disappeared, maybe you wouldn’t need all those shitty little warnings you see everywhere. Like having to reduce the speed limit by 20 – 30kph at “roadworks” when there’s actually nothing restricting the flow of traffic. Or maybe the fact that if you fall down a flight of stairs, you won’t be able to sue anyone any more. After all, if you fall down, that’s because you f**ked up, right?

Here’s another example – and yes, this is true. At my work, we needed someone to install a lite-pro on our ceiling. All the cabling was down when the building was built, but for some reason we needed a custome bracket for the hardware. So the guy shows up, climbs his ladder and drills a couple of holes in the ceiling for the screws to go into.

When he’s almost finished, he realises he left a couple of screws in his truck, so climbs down his ladder and grabs what he needs. When he gets back inside, some Inspector has arrived, to make sure the “workplace is safe”. The guys has – literally – two screws left to put in and the 3 hour job is done.

But Miss Safety-first inspects the guy’s ladder. “It’s out of date” she tells us. It seems that someone hasn’t inspected this guy’s ladder recently, so she deems it unsafe (despite the fact the guy has been up and down it for the last 3 hours). The guy comes back with “No problem, I have another on in the truck”.

He retrieves the ladder, but it turns out THIS one has NEVER been inspected! OMG! So Miss Safety-first deems this one an abomination, and the whole job comes screaming to halt. Even though, after 3 hours, we just need two screws installed.

I have nothing against the bloke – he’s doing his job. But I work on the theory that some genius once fell off a ladder – because he (or she) was being stupid. So now, EVERYONE has to have their ladders inspected at regular intervals to make sure that WE can’t be sued when they kill themselves.

Why can’t we just let these idiots kill themselves? And then the rest of us can go back to the way life was in the ’80′s, where everyone used commonsense. And if you stuffed something up, it was YOUR fault and you couldn’t sue someone. How I long for those days!

Bloody Drivers!

I don’t WANT to go on about Queensland drivers, but they give me so much material, it’s bloody hard not to.

I managed to have a weekend away with my significant other this weekend just gone. The drama is getting south of Brisbane on the Pacific Highway on a Friday afternoon. What is usually a 2 hour trip very quickly can take all night.

Thinking I was clever, I arranged an EKO (Early Knock Off) from work, and we left Brisbane around 2:45pm. What a shame the rest of Brisbane had the same idea. The highway very nearly became a car-park. And why do you think that is?

Because some genius has decided AGAIN that it’s his (or her!) God-given right to do 20 kph under the speed limit in the right lane. Even though my work colleague reminds me that it’s a speed LIMIT – not a CHALLENGE – I’m a big believer that the slower you go, the further left you should be (Americans please note, our lanes work in reverse over here).

I tried to count the cars on the highway on Friday night, but stopped when I reached 25,567,355 because I couldn’t work out if that lowered blue Commodore with the HUGE exhaust, HUGE wheels, MASSIVE rear spoiler and thumping stereo was one I’d already counted or not. The problem is that it only takes one idiot to do 20kph under the speed limit, and traffic comes to a standstill.

Don’t get me wrong, there are legitimate reasons why someone can’t manage the speed limit. Maybe their car is a little old, or maybe they’re waiting on parts for repairs. Maybe they’ve got a boot load of quails eggs. Or maybe the driver is just old, or lacks confidence. But if any of these apply to you, I’m telling you now – on behalf of every other driver out there – MOVE LEFT. FOR F**K’S SAKE!!!!!!!!!

And there’s one more thing. Can I just point out, for all the rocket surgeons out there, that the 1 second gap I leave between me and the car in front – which equates to slightly more than one car length – is NOT my invitation for you to slot yourself and your hotted up, 4 cylinder (two-stroke) piece of shit, into said gap – particularly if all the money you spent on your f**king stereo left you no cash to buy indicators!

In my 2-hour journey on Friday night, two (yes TWO) such surgeons decided that they absolutely HAD to be in that space. I responded by forcing my entire body weight against my horn for around 27 minutes to alert the drivers that I was not quite prepared for their strategic maneuvre.

This seemed to suddenly make ME the bad guy, and I’m sure I was the proud recipient of the one-fingered salute and a tirade of verbal abuse, of which I could not hear, or care less about.

Once again, this proves that driving a car seems to push some people to their performance limit. But there’s no sweeter justice than when you see that same car, 5km up the road, pulled into the emergency stopping bay with the bonnet up.

Drivers who can’t colour in

I don’t want to get into the habit of going on and on about drivers every day, but if I wasn’t meant to, I figure more of them would know how to drive.

What is it with these morons who continually cross the white line? Whether they’re going round a bend in the road, taking a corner or even just driving in a bloody straight line. Some idiots seem to be unable to keep their car inside the lines.

So it got me wondering…….. are these the kids that failed colouring-in at Primary School? Maybe it’s a reflection of how hard it is to be a teacher these days. Maybe if the Education department focussed more on making sure that a child stays in the lines when they colour in a picture of a dog, we wouldn’t have morons putting lives at danger by being mentally unable to keep their two-tonne killing machine inside the designated lines on the road.

But enough. I’m going to have a drink and try to forget about these ass-clowns, and hope that the guy I had to avoid today isn’t on the road tomorrow.

Let it all hang out

Welcome to the wild ramblings of a 30-something bloke in Australia who’s about as grumpy as Jeremy Clarkson (Top Gear fame) and as “what’s-happening-to-the-world-today” as your Grandpa. A bloke that believes in old fashioned values and living in a world larger than a 2-foot bubble around my own body.

What you’re going to experience from here on in is the rants, raves and ramblings of a guy who probably complains too much and expects too much from society these days. You’ll cop an earful on behalf of every idiot who cuts me off in traffic, every nancy-boy who can’t change a tyre and every sales person who seems to think they’re doing ME a favour by LETTING me buy from their store.

But of course, you’ll have the chance to let me know what YOU think. I want to hear whether you agree with me that the world is going to Hell in a handbasket or not, and whether you agree with my pet hates.

So read on at your peril. The language might get a little colourful. My posts might make you laugh, yell, scream or shout “EXACTLY!”, or they may get you as angry at me, as I get at others. Let’s ride this rollercoaster together and see who’s still alive at the end, who vomits and who can’t handle the truth!