Rant Thread

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Felonious Crud

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I have SO MANY BA horror stories....

I have a few (but with over 1m miles flown and over 86 days airborne with BA that's hardly a surprise). I also have examples of where they have been brilliant, but that tends to be down to the cabin crew and whoever you're lucky enough to get on the phone rather than because BA is institutionally fantastic.
 

MAF260

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I have a few (but with over 1m miles flown and over 86 days airborne with BA that's hardly a surprise). I also have examples of where they have been brilliant, but that tends to be down to the cabin crew and whoever you're lucky enough to get on the phone rather than because BA is institutionally fantastic.

I found one member of BA's cabin crew to be so good I decided to keep her!
 

MarkMas

Chief pedant
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100172100173

The Rant Thread really need two different 'Angry' buttons - one for 'I share your anger at this terrible thing' and one for 'I am angry with you for posting this'.
 

CatmanV2

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Not a rant but shaking head sadly:
Contract with Virgin Media is due to expire. Phone man calls:
We can give more of everything and take more money (although less money than if you go out of contract). So £20 for the new deal of more vs £50 extra for the same deal out of contract
Nope, says I
Tough says yonder droid and hangs up.
Figuring it's getting close, end up on a Whatsapp chat.
Pracitcal upshot of everything the phone man offered on a new contract for £10 a month less than I'm currently paying.

Would have been cheaper for them just to offer that in the first place....

C
 

MAF260

Member
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7,662
Not a rant but shaking head sadly:
Contract with Virgin Media is due to expire. Phone man calls:
We can give more of everything and take more money (although less money than if you go out of contract). So £20 for the new deal of more vs £50 extra for the same deal out of contract
Nope, says I
Tough says yonder droid and hangs up.
Figuring it's getting close, end up on a Whatsapp chat.
Pracitcal upshot of everything the phone man offered on a new contract for £10 a month less than I'm currently paying.

Would have been cheaper for them just to offer that in the first place....

C

I’ve had a very similar experience in the last 24 hours. Currently getting 350mb for £41 per month. Contact about to end, they’ve pushed it to £60 with no consultation or opportunity to discuss. 9 calls and 4 hours on hold, didn’t get through. Entered into a WhatsApp convo over 5 hours throughout the day yesterday where the guy offered me the same package for £39 per month. He managed to call me the wrong name, gave incorrect information and then effectively threatened me with a protracted and difficult cancellation period. Unsurprisingly I told him to fcuk off and cancel my service! I received the cancellation confirmation etc yesterday and started to look at alternative providers.
They rang me this morning full of apologies and very keen to retain my business. I was offered the same 350mb for £26 per month but eventually settled for 1gb for £32 per month, fixed for 18 months. Just goes to show that persistence pays off!
 

RSM Masser

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2,437
I notice with ever increasing frequency the need for people to express themselves fully and include pronouns in their email signature block

just why someone feels the need to put “Him/His/He or whatever after their name is actually beyond me. I have never really understood why some people want to identify as a toaster or other inanimate object - I’ll call them by their name.

As an old SQMS once announced during a particularly long and cold exercise whilst dishing out bacon sandwiches and hot soup “Right, any Vegetarians, Vegans or any other F##king Wierdos?”
 

AKCH01

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I notice with ever increasing frequency the need for people to express themselves fully and include pronouns in their email signature block

just why someone feels the need to put “Him/His/He or whatever after their name is actually beyond me. I have never really understood why some people want to identify as a toaster or other inanimate object - I’ll call them by their name.

As an old SQMS once announced during a particularly long and cold exercise whilst dishing out bacon sandwiches and hot soup “Right, any Vegetarians, Vegans or any other F##king Wierdos?”
 

RodTungsten

Member
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I’ve had a very similar experience in the last 24 hours. Currently getting 350mb for £41 per month. Contact about to end, they’ve pushed it to £60 with no consultation or opportunity to discuss. 9 calls and 4 hours on hold, didn’t get through. Entered into a WhatsApp convo over 5 hours throughout the day yesterday where the guy offered me the same package for £39 per month. He managed to call me the wrong name, gave incorrect information and then effectively threatened me with a protracted and difficult cancellation period. Unsurprisingly I told him to fcuk off and cancel my service! I received the cancellation confirmation etc yesterday and started to look at alternative providers.
They rang me this morning full of apologies and very keen to retain my business. I was offered the same 350mb for £26 per month but eventually settled for 1gb for £32 per month, fixed for 18 months. Just goes to show that persistence pays off!
Sounds like XLN Telecom. Avoid this organisation. At risk of possibly offending a fellow owner XLN has been the worst provider for, shall we say, cancellation antics.
 

MarkMas

Chief pedant
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8,795
I notice with ever increasing frequency the need for people to express themselves fully and include pronouns in their email signature block

just why someone feels the need to put “Him/His/He or whatever after their name is actually beyond me. I have never really understood why some people want to identify as a toaster or other inanimate object - I’ll call them by their name.

As an old SQMS once announced during a particularly long and cold exercise whilst dishing out bacon sandwiches and hot soup “Right, any Vegetarians, Vegans or any other F##king Wierdos?”


OK, here goes.

Gender seems to be really important to most people. Small children have a strong sense of whether they are boys or girls, and many insults and other parts of language are strongly gendered, “Come one, don’t be a girl, finish your pint” etc. This does not seem to be specifically about anatomical differences – people do seem to have an internal / mental sense of their gender. The very gammons who are saying, “It is obvious, I just know I am a man” are actually being accidentally woke and saying, “Gender is not just anatomy, but a mental construct.”

If you are a trans person, where your anatomical appearance is different from your mental gender, this is very challenging, given the strength of this feeling we all have about gender, and the power of gender definitions in society. The very gammons who are saying, “We must fight to maintain that there are just two genders, men and women!” are actually being accidentally woke and saying, “Gosh, given the weight we put on gender, it must be really hard if you find you are trans!”

English, like many languages, has gendered pronouns (although not adjectives – apart from blond and blonde, for some reason). So calling a man ‘she/her’ or a woman ‘he/him’ is both grammatically incorrect but also quite insulting for most people.

If you are a trans person, where (for example) your anatomical appearance is superficially male but your mental gender is strongly female, you are likely to be referred to as ‘him’, but find this difficult to accept, as it is just as uncomfortable as misgendering anyone else. This is especially troubling if it is done deliberately, so not due to someone’s appearance but as a deliberate rejection of their gender identity.

So trans people, where their appearance does not match their internal gender, really do need to tell (English-speaking) people their preferred pronouns (and other forms of address) in the hope of being addressed in a manner they are comfortable with.

Non-trans people frequently also express what their preferred pronouns as well, which is a bit unnecessary if their visual appearance is unambiguous, but they do it in ‘solidarity’ with trans people so they are not having to stand out as exceptional, if everyone does it.

This is, obviously, nothing to do with some nonsense like, ‘people want to identify as a toaster or other inanimate object’, which is just an insulting ‘straw man’ attack.



Also, yes, vegetarians and vegans are forking wierdos, but the mystery is why people feel they need to insult or attack them, just because they don't want one of your delicious bacon rolls.
 

CatmanV2

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So calling a man ‘she/her’ or a woman ‘he/him’ is both grammatically incorrect but also quite insulting for most people.

And while I totally agree with nearly all of what you've said, being called 'she' or 'her' would bother me not at all. Which is perhaps the root of the problem

C
 

Oneball

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11,069
It also helps with people called Chris or Nic or Joan (that one might seem odd to most of you but I work with a lot of Spaniards) that you’ve only communicated by email with.
 

MarkMas

Chief pedant
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And while I totally agree with nearly all of what you've said, being called 'she' or 'her' would bother me not at all. Which is perhaps the root of the problem

C

I think that's quite unusual. Done in the pub for a laugh is easy to shrug off, If someone was just consistently misgendered - say at school, the workplace or at home - I think many people would find it corrosively upsetting.
How would you have felt if the bullies had decided to do this to you consistently when you arrived a secondary school?

We should just all speak Estonian and the problem would go away.
 

MarkMas

Chief pedant
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It also helps with people called Chris or Nic or Joan (that one might seem odd to most of you but I work with a lot of Spaniards) that you’ve only communicated by email with.

Yes, I have a cousin called Shane, and she signs off her emails with "Shane Jones (Mrs)".

In my work (mostly with academics) I like to address people as "Dr" in emails as it avoids gender and they are never insulted, even if it is a bit of a promotion or downgrade.
 
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