Pet Peeves

I need to vent. There’s nothing in the way of serious content here today. Read on … or not.

I have a lot of pet peeves. I think it comes with getting older. Most of the time I’m able to shrug them off but here in the last week or so, they’ve been cropping up in droves:

Customer service seems to be nearly nonexistent. With my husband’s blessing, I decided to buy a ring I’d had my eye on for awhile. The company’s most recent snail-mail catalog still displayed the ring so I went on their website to order it. I couldn’t find it by item number, description or scrolling through their entire jewelry section so I emailed them. Naturally, I received one of their impersonal automated “thank you for your inquiry” emails that said I’d have an answer in 24 hours. It’s been more like 192 hours and I still haven’t received a response. Not even what I assume would be a “sorry, no longer available”.

Along the same lines, I still don’t have my stock of my most recent book. Apparently, hurricane Irene hit the printer and they didn’t bother notifying any of their customers for 2+ weeks. I really do understand natural disaster and dealing with the aftermath but to not find a way to notify anyone your production is down? And, why did Amazon and Barnes & Noble have copies before I approved the printer’s proof?

Secondly, do they not teach spelling in school anymore? I admit there are occasional typos in my writing but they are rare and usually occur when I’m in a hurry. I try to take time to proofread my work – even if it’s just a comment on a Facebook post. In today’s world of spellcheck and online dictionaries, you’d think it would be better but it seems to be getting worse. (Spellcheck won’t catch everything, either.) I see it in books I pay good money for that, in theory, have had a professional editor and proofreader go over the manuscript before production. It’s all over the Internet, too. I visited an acquaintance’s online shop this morning and counted four typos on just one page.

Perhaps it’s just that media is more pervasive than when I was younger, but tolerance seems to be at an all-time low. Religion, class, skin color, sexual orientation, you name it. It’s all being attacked. I was raised by a woman with prejudices whose chose not to pass her bias(es) on to me. I was taught to accept everyone. If I didn’t agree with someone about something, I didn’t have to be friends with them. But they were entitled to live their lives however they chose, just as I was free to live mine. Whatever happened to live and let live? Personally, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous society. It would be boring.

Lastly, why can’t my husband scoop the litter boxes more often? It’s supposed to be his chore, he’s in the basement every night and yet when I go downstairs (only once or twice a week), the first thing I have to do is clean. Otherwise my eyes water from the aroma.

End rant. I feel better.