The Bitching Thread 2.0

The back to work soon depression has finally hit. The two weeks I've had off has felt like a month though. Now I can start counting down to February vacation.

Having a few extra bucks laying around from my last paycheck, I decided to treat myself to a couple Wrestling figures from Japan. When it comes to avoiding duty fees, Canada
Post and DHL are pretty safe for the most part. FedEx and UPS on the other hand? Completely different story.

In the span of three days, I had two parcels arrive. Each containing two figures per box. The first parcel landed me $24 in duty fees. The second: $23 bucks. Ouch.

Oh, well. Thems the breaks for being a niche Wrestling fan these days...

Ordered another Kabuki figure (right) from Japan. Of course the seller has to go with FedEx.

Usually, FedEx is cute and tells you how much money you owe in duty fees as soon as the seller sends your tracking number.
So, I checked the tracking and had no invoice. "Guess I'm lucky for a change" I thought.

Item arrives a couple of days later. Delivery driver hands me said figure and still no invoice. I was relieved.



Fast forward a week later and I get a letter in the mail. It's an invoice from FedEx to the sum of $14.74.

On behalf of The Great Kabuki and myself, dear FedEx:

That time I was threatened over an aquarium.
- by Shadow Master.


Dealing with the general public has always been a pet peeve of mine. You really don't know what to expect when arranging local sales with people around your neighbourhood. Some people vow to avoid selling on local classified sites, others have been able to generate a tidy little income on the side. Anyway, here's one of my horror stories:

Several years ago, I was selling an aquarium on Craigslist. To attract buyers, I listed the aquarium for a couple of dollars less than the competition and hoped for a response. Sure enough, a few hours later, my wish was granted. The first email read:


"lol this is not a huge aquarium"


I wrote an informative response to the interested party listing the dimensions, hit send, then instantly got an email notification error. Turns out, I should have read the user handle more carefully before writing my message. The handle the user left was "notahugeaquarium@hotmail.com".

I had just encountered my first craigslist troll. But the story doesn't end there. Some time later, I get another reply:


"Will you take ____ less for it? Reply back if you're interested".

Now keep in mind, all of my listings state "price is firm" boldly in the description. Most of the time, that little sentence keeps the lowballers at bay. On this particular evening however,
it did not. So, since two wrongs don't make a right, I shot back a snotty response to the tune of:


"Had a bad day?"


Next thing I know, the interested buyer is firing back with aggressive emails shouting "I TOLD YOU NOT TO RESPOND TO MY EMAIL UNLESS YOU WANTED TO ACCEPT MY OFFER!!!". A handful
of texts later, the interested buyer is now interested to meet up at a designated spot so we could fight "MAN TO MAN".

I never knew people got so incredibly violent over a $30 fish tank.

Oh good, found out today work is discontinuing the perfect attendance bonuses. Ten years or working sick and hurt to get my $200 attendance bonus and now the 10% of employees in the plant who actually made the perfect attendance list get a nice middle finger.
My father worked 25 years before he took his first sick day and when he retired he mentioned that to his boss. All he got was a "So what?"

So I'll be using my sick days from now on.

Those bogus 'get paid to play games' apps in the Google Play store. The ones with the cheesy ads like:

"Download now and I promise to put $100 into your Paypal account just for signing up!"
"Get paid every three hours"
"Could you use some extra money? I know I did!"


They're all bullshit. What's even worse, the few that actually do compensate players issue the equivalent of 10 cents per week.

I'm not kidding.

With rates like that, it's easier getting a frickin' full-time job! One really scummy version subjected me to the following:

1) Watch the equivalent of an hour's worth of ads during gameplay to earn $100.

2) In order to earn my $100, I had to sit through another hour's worth of gameplay/ads to 'verify'.

3) Once the criteria was met, I was entered into a queue, with my number set at 98472. Every 30 minutes my placement
     in the queue was bumped up a spot.

4) While waiting for my 'payment' the game actually had the balls to suggest playing more games/watching ads
    while my imaginary payment was loading.

5) Turns out these games remain in 'early access', so they can't be reviewed by other players who were dumb
    enough to fall for this scam.

The old saying "well, if it's too good to be true..." certainly applies to these bullshit games. The textbook equivalent of a
carrot on a stick, bundled together with deception.