What Irked You Today?

[BlackSheep214]

It used to be you can get a flu shot anytime at your local Walgreens. Now, you need to make an appointment. Why? There’s no line at the pharmacy line! Stupidity and a waste of time..... 

[Rob Hall]

9 minutes ago, BlackSheep214 said:

It used to be you can get a flu shot anytime at your local Walgreens. Now, you need to make an appointment. Why? There’s no line at the pharmacy line! Stupidity and a waste of time..... 

I made an appointment a couple weeks ago for the flu shot at my local Walgreens, even with the appointment, I had to wait about 45 min.  Seems they were understaffed in the pharmacy. 

[ewetwo]

3 minutes ago, Rob Hall said:

I made an appointment a couple weeks ago for the flu shot at my local Walgreens, even with the appointment, I had to wait about 45 min.  Seems they were understaffed in the pharmacy. 

My local Walgreens has lost many employees. Walgreens is the Walmart of pharmacies. When it was Right Aid. Everytime you went in the employees were all happy and fun. But now that it's Walgreens, the companies expectations are strictly money. None of the pharmacy's employees smile anymore. And when I got my booster and flu shot a week or so ago. The pharmacist told me Walgreens now expect no less than 70 covid vaccinations in a day. Up from 30 a day with no new hires. Beside doing all the insurance paperwork that goes with that. They still have to produce with the regular pharmacy's prescription work. Sad. I love my girls at my store. I even make them a huge container of cookies at Christmas time. To show my appreciation. 

[TonyK]

My wife and I go to Walgreens every year for our flu shot and did it within the last month. Noticed they were busier than usual with people getting the shot which is good so we had to wait longer than usual. The employees seemed to be happy enough but they're always VERY busy.

[Smoke Wagon]

11 hours ago, TonyK said:

Obviously had just been hit.

One of the things I genuinely hate, are people hitting pets and animals and gravely injuring them, not even stopping or slowing down to check (not speaking ill of your wife, that was not her fault and would’ve been dangerous for her to intervene). About 5 years ago, a few days before Christmas, a driver ran over our family dog, a puppy named Dink, and sped off even faster than they were already going. I was about 10 feet away from Dink when it happened and their side mirror came inches from hitting me in the head. My stepdad had to grab a rifle and put Dink down on the spot, I’ll never forget seeing her twitch, all mangled like that. Silver Kia Soul, I wish I could’ve seen the plates.

Edited October 24, 2021 by Smoke Wagon
Typo

[Tom Geiger]

12 hours ago, TarheelRick said:

This past week I got "invited" in to speak with my supervisor about a pay raise.  Once he finished the required BS about how much we (school bus drivers) are appreciated and how he recognizes the difficulty we face daily, he went into a spiel of how he had worked for the past three weeks on developing an effective pay scale for drivers. He than told me the good news of how much I was going to get: from $15.38 an hour to a whopping $15.60 an hour.  This is my 9th year driving for this school system.  The offer of $.22/hour increase in pay was one of the most insulting points in my life. I let him know the meeting was a waste of my time.

Rick- there’s a big shortage of school bus drivers.  Check around. Here in PA and NJ they’re advertising in the $20s per hour plus sign on bonuses.

[1930fordpickup]

1 hour ago, Tom Geiger said:

Rick- there’s a big shortage of school bus drivers.  Check around. Here in PA and NJ they’re advertising in the $20s per hour plus sign on bonuses.

Here in Michigan they are having to make the parents drive the kids to school , because of the shortage.  

[BlackSheep214]

3 hours ago, Tom Geiger said:

Rick- there’s a big shortage of school bus drivers.  Check around. Here in PA and NJ they’re advertising in the $20s per hour plus sign on bonuses.

 

3 hours ago, Tom Geiger said:

Rick- there’s a big shortage of school bus drivers.  Check around. Here in PA and NJ they’re advertising in the $20s per hour plus sign on bonuses.

It’s all over NY. Our Utica school district superintendent sent a letter asking our governor to send National Guards to drive the school buses. Even that news broke on MSN a few days ago. Sad thing and the real story is Birnie bus got outbidded by an outside bus company Durham with a signing bonus of $1500. Well, that fell flat because 12 bus drivers were promised that bonus money. They never got it and Durham bus company stalled on the bonus money. so they all called in sick. End result? They got fired. Oh it’s a mess here. Had the superintendent kept Birnie Bus, none of this would had happened. Other districts are offering 2, 3, 4 times more for sign on bonuses. All new hires got it except Utica CSD bus drivers. 

I’m just glad my kid graduated from high school this past June.

[TarheelRick]

There is a nationwide shortage of school bus drivers.  We have had a few take the class and get their licenses, but once they drive a couple of days and realize the pure h e double hockeysticks some of these kids raise on the bus they quit.  There are a few major issues in my county: 1. really stupid pay scale, 2. unruly kids, 3. no discipline support from the school system, all the way from the school superintendent down to the individual principals. There is no concern shown for the bus drivers. A neighboring county's drivers threatened to go on strike for better wages and a couple other issues.  When they met with the school board, with a news crew present, they were asked to talk in a private session.  Once you go into a private meeting with politicians and no cameras or recorders, then you are fed male bovine excrement and a bunch of hollow promises. No doubt the lack of drivers is a critical situation and until we are removed from underneath the totem pole it will stay that way.

[Snake45]

My county needed school bus drivers a few years ago, at a point where I was unemployed, so I checked into it. They have a policy that if you've EVER had a DWI, you can't drive their bus. I had a DWI in 1981, only two speeding tickets since, but I quit drinking in 1984 (that's 37 years ago) and haven't had a drop since. No bus for me. 

I wonder if they're still so particular today? Not that I'm interested in coming out of retirement to do it today, y'unnerstand. 

[TarheelRick]

16 minutes ago, Snake45 said:

My county needed school bus drivers a few years ago, at a point where I was unemployed, so I checked into it. They have a policy that if you've EVER had a DWI, you can't drive their bus. I had a DWI in 1981, only two speeding tickets since, but I quit drinking in 1984 (that's 37 years ago) and haven't had a drop since. No bus for me. 

I wonder if they're still so particular today? Not that I'm interested in coming out of retirement to do it today, y'unnerstand. 

There are several restrictions concerning prior driving records and, at least here in NC, they do a pretty thorough records check. The first day of our training the instructor said, "If any of you have had any of this list of violations there is no need for you to come back tomorrow." The next day he told four people to leave the class; I guess they didn't believe him.

[Mark]

Pretty tough to find drivers without any sort of violations, as every area has at least one locality with a Barney that's got pen and ticket pad at the ready.  When I did HR for a roofing company, more often than not the incoming employee didn't even have a drivers' license.  Roofer-ese "Oh, I don't have it with me" usually translated to the English "I haven't got one".  But they got hired anyway.  The drug testing there was very short-lived...

[SfanGoch]

1 hour ago, TarheelRick said:

There is a nationwide shortage of school bus drivers.  We have had a few take the class and get their licenses, but once they drive a couple of days and realize the pure h e double hockeysticks some of these kids raise on the bus they quit.  There are a few major issues in my county: 1. really stupid pay scale, 2. unruly kids, 3. no discipline support from the school system, all the way from the school superintendent down to the individual principals. There is no concern shown for the bus drivers. A neighboring county's drivers threatened to go on strike for better wages and a couple other issues.  When they met with the school board, with a news crew present, they were asked to talk in a private session.  Once you go into a private meeting with politicians and no cameras or recorders, then you are fed male bovine excrement and a bunch of hollow promises. No doubt the lack of drivers is a critical situation and until we are removed from underneath the totem pole it will stay that way.

Unfortunately, driving a school bus isn't a high income job in most locales. School bus drivers in the NYC metro area earn an average of $43,652/yr. The cost of living in Hamptonville, NC is -41.8% lower than in Rockaway Park, NY. Anyone moving to your area to drive a school bus would have to earn a salary of $25,409 to maintain his/her current standard of living in NYC. Employers in Hamptonville, NC typically pay -20.9% less than employers in my location, Rockaway Park, NY. The same type of job in the same type of company in Hamptonville, NC will hypothetically pay $34,512.

[TonyK]

Daughter-in-law became a school bus driver last year since they were offering good pay, free training, signing bonus, health coverage, 401K, etc. She doesn't take any "stuff" from the kids and a couple of times a parent complained about something but everything is monitered with cameras so the proof backed her up that the kid was disobeying rules. She loves the job and is always taking on extra duties for overtime pay.

I always tell her I don't know how she does it with the kids and the crappy drivers out there but she's fine with it.

[Mark]

I take it the buses are automatics nowadays.  Back in the olden days, every missed shift or clashed gear met with a chorus of "grind me a pound"...

[ChrisBcritter]

1 hour ago, Mark said:

Back in the olden days, every missed shift or clashed gear met with a chorus of "grind me a pound"...

I remember one of the buses we rode in as kids had a Dymo label stuck on the dash reading "NO DOUBLE CLUTCHING".

[Suburban_Hooligan]

im having one of those drop everything in the floor kinda days today.  pretty sure i could drop something in zero gravity right now.  and do to a few things iv dropped, my temper is flaring pretty good.  

[MrMiles]

Got cheeseburgers for dinner tomight from local restaurant. Now im sick as a dog.

Unrelated, maybe, but im guessing its not a coincidence 

 

 

Also the wotker at the restaurant worked like he was in slow motion. He was as slow as a sloth. I have never seen anything like it. I could see his coworker was getting annoyed because she started taking over stuff he was doing

Edited October 27, 2021 by MrMiles

[Russell C]

$148 parts & labor bill from my VW mechanic today,  $100 towing yesterday evening because the emissions tester yesterday late afternoon somehow managed to yank my shifter out of gear while on the rollers and then get it jammed into reverse gear, disconnected from the rest of the linkage. My mechanic was totally baffled on how the guy could do that, and had to disassemble all the linkages to get it unbound out of reverse. New link today with that ball makes it shift more crisply, but the mechanic said the cracked ball wasn't the failure. Wish me luck that the emissions people will accept my protest that it was the tester's fault and reimburse me for the towing and repair costs.

[slusher]

10 hours ago, Russell C said:

$148 parts & labor bill from my VW mechanic today,  $100 towing yesterday evening because the emissions tester yesterday late afternoon somehow managed to yank my shifter out of gear while on the rollers and then get it jammed into reverse gear, disconnected from the rest of the linkage. My mechanic was totally baffled on how the guy could do that, and had to disassemble all the linkages to get it unbound out of reverse. New link today with that ball makes it shift more crisply, but the mechanic said the cracked ball wasn't the failure. Wish me luck that the emissions people will accept my protest that it was the tester's fault and reimburse me for the towing and repair costs.

That would really irke me..

[cobraman]

Gas prices. Filled up my wifes Kia Soul at 3.40. Went back two days later to fill my F 150 and it was 3.50. I know some of you must be paying more but what will it stop at 4.00 ???

[espo]

No Ray I don't think it will ever stop, just sort of goes up every time they can find a new excuse to raise the price of gas. We had gotten a CostCo membership long ago and one of the upsides is that their fuel prices seem to run ten to fifteen cents less a gallon than at the chain service stations in the area. 

[NYRich72]

1 hour ago, cobraman said:

Gas prices. Filled up my wifes Kia Soul at 3.40. Went back two days later to fill my F 150 and it was 3.50. I know some of you must be paying more but what will it stop at 4.00 ???

Heck, here in my Manhattan neighborhood regular (BP) is up to $3.56 with premium at $4.06. I'm pretty far uptown and I'd bet that midtown prices are even higher. Makes me happy that I gave my car to my daughter when I moved here.

[Ace-Garageguy]

2 hours ago, espo said:

...just sort of goes up every time they can find a new excuse to raise the price of gas...

It's necessary to look critically at the actual reasons for the spiking prices, not just accept what we're being told by most talking-heads.

There are causes, real legitimate causes, but I can't elaborate due to certain topics being verboten here.

Bottom line: do your own research, pay attention, and think things through.

[TonyK]

Amazing how many people don't realize that the majority of gas we use is from right here in the USA. Then from Canada. We recently exported more than we imported so it always amuses me when the excuses tossed at us are something to do with the Middle East, etc.

Not trying to start anything; just informing anyone who might not know.