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Archive for the ‘I See Stupid People’ CategoryBeing child-free makes you “cold, calculating, sad and mad”, apparentlyThursday, May 21st, 2009They say you learn something new every day, and today I learned something about me. I learned I am “cold, calculating, sad and mad.” Also “lacking in essential humanity”. Oh, and just plain “weird”. Can’t forget that one! Why am I all of these things, I hear you ask? (OK, not really, but let’s pretend.) Because I don’t want to have children. And according to a certain columnist for the Daily Fail Mail (a newspaper I hate with every fibre of my being), this makes me all of the above, and more. I read Carol Sarler’s piece on Why bosses are right to distrust women who don’t have children this morning (I know, I should know better to read anything in the Mail, but there was a link on Twitter, I clicked…), and spent the next ten minutes or so ranting angrily to anyone who would listen (sorry, Terry and Rubin) about how women like Carol are the reason we’ll never have true equality with men: because as long as women insist on putting so much time and energy into tearing each other down, calling each other names and being holier-than-thou about every little choice other women make, we’ll always just seem like a bunch of cats fighting in a sack. And we will never, ever be taken seriously. Here’s the part where I prove my point by tearing Carol Sarler down and being holier-than-thou. But where to start? How about at the very beginning:
This is a test of my snazzy new image gallery…Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 Posted in I See Stupid People | 10 Comments »
Telephone and email ettiquette, revisitedTuesday, April 28th, 2009One morning last week, Terry and I returned home from the gym to discover the light on the answerphone flashing. Amongst the usual work-related messages that had been left (for Terry, obviously, not for me. Because I don’t actually “do” phone calls.) was a message from a Mystery Woman. “Please call me back,” said the Mystery Woman, in heavily accented English, before giving her number and then hanging up. It was actually quite thrilling, to be honest, like the start of an adventure novel which sees our intrepid, titian haired heroine travel the world, battling against the clock to solve the Mystery of the Mysterious Caller. Oh no, wait… I’m confusing myself with Nancy Drew again. Sorry. Where was I? So, the Mystery Woman left her number. And that was it. No salutation, no indication of who she was, or what she was calling about – nothing to even tell us which one of us she was trying to reach. I mean, it could have been Rubin for all we knew. He gets a lot of calls like that: some of his friends have no manners AT ALL, really. Well, Terry and I thought about this for about two seconds (and I Twittered about it, obviously), and decided that, nah, if it was THAT important to her, she’d surely call back. And she did. And do you know who our Mystery Caller was? She was a telemarketer. Yes, she wanted US to call HER, so she could try and talk us into buying something we didn’t want or need. Seriously, how cheeky is that? Very cheeky, I’d say. It’s bad enough that they call us all day long (Yes, we signed up to the Telephone Preference Service, but it doesn’t apply to business numbers, which ours is, and it also doesn’t stop people calling you from foreign call centres.) but expecting us to call them back? Seriously? I thought this was a one off. But then yesterday night, an email flooded in. The subject line said “Can you call XXXXX?” (Company name removed to protect the very guilty) The body of the email contained… well, nothing, actually, other than the email signature of the person who sent it, which included the person’s phone number. Well, of course I COULD phone that company. But the thing is, I didn’t want to. Not with my new knowledge of the way certain telemarketers have apparently started to operate, anyway, and actually, not before then either, to be honest, because I think it’s just horribly rude for a complete stranger to demand that you call them without saying why. No? Instead, I emailed the person back to ask why they wanted to speak to me. This one turned out NOT to be a telemarketer. He was, however, a journalist who wanted my help (in the form of some quotes) for an article he was writing, and he went about asking for this help in just about the rudest way possible – and I say this as a former journalist myself. My rule of thumb when dealing with people like this is that if they can’t be bothered to be even reasonably polite when they’re asking for my help I can’t be bothered to help them. So I stopped replying to his emails, and when I got home from the gym this morning, I discovered that he had tried to call me no less than nine times. NINE. TIMES. Because, as we all know, if someone is out when you call them, phoning back repeatedly, at three minute intervals, is the best way to make them magically re-appear. Only not really, obviously. The lesson in all of this? It pays to be polite. Also, if we didn’t have to have a phone for business reasons, I’d throw ours out of the window. Twice. “You need me. You need to get a brain cell. You really do.”Wednesday, March 11th, 2009There’s a full moon tonight. If recent circumstances hadn’t made this fact painfully obvious to me already, I’d have realised as soon as I received this email, earlier today:
I’ve removed two words which may or may not have been the author’s name from this literary feast (it was hard to tell due to the basic lack of writing skills) to protect the guilty but the rest is exactly as I received it, including font and funky yellow highlighter. I think it becomes even more amusing when you realise it was written in response to this post at WritingWorld. Just in case you can’t be bothered reading it, it’s a post about its/it’s confusion, and I used an advert by a major publishing house as an example of how even the biggest companies sometimes get it wrong. It was the advert text that my correspondent is quoting here, and obviously, I’m not the best person to judge my own writing, but I thought it was pretty obvious that the incorrect “it’s” was an example, and wasn’t written by me (although I’m happy to admit that I get it wrong too, sometimes, even although I’m perfectly well aware of the correct use of the apostrophe). Apparently not, though. That aside, I find it both shocking and amusing in equal measures that someone would send an email like THIS to ask me to employ them. Because, oh yeah, I’m going to totally want to take on a member of staff who wrote to me to slag off my website and try to make out that I’m an idiot who can’t spell! Doesn’t everyone want employees like that? More importantly, though, if I WAS looking for a freelance editor (which I’m not, by the way), I’m thinking I’d probably go for one who wasn’t such a stranger to capital letters and punctuation, you know? One who, perhaps, knew that “ayieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” is not a word, and that “help” only has the one “p”. Sadly, these kind of emails have become the norm for me recently, and to be totally honest, it’s kinda killing the Internet for me. If it’s not people writing to hurl abuse at me, or treat me as their own personal Google, it’s people commenting here to tell me they don’t like my face and that I should change it, or leaving nasty comments at The Fashion Police because a post from two years ago is now – surprise,surprise! – out of date, and the dress in question is no longer available. (Quite how this is my fault is beyond me, but apparently it is. I’m slowly starting to realise that almost EVERYTHING is my fault. Everything.) And if THAT isn’t enough, people are still confusing me with Rihanna, and writing to me AS IF I AM HER. (Note: I am not Rihanna. NOT. RIHANNA.) Tags: email fun, freelance writing, I See Stupid People
Posted in I See Stupid People, Work Stuff | 32 Comments » I Am Not a Shop. Seriously.Monday, March 2nd, 2009On Friday, a very disturbing email flooded in: —–Original Message—– I have a friend who has “problem feet” and wonder if you could supply tights for her to wear flip flops. Then there was a phone number for me to call with news of the tights-for-flip-flops. Now, straight away, I can see two problems with this: 1. I AM NOT A SHOP. No, seriously, I’m going to say this again, because the message is clearly not getting through: NOT. A. SHOP. Over the past few weeks there’s been a dramatic increase, not only in the “where can I buy the Topshop dress you featured three years ago?” emails, but in the “I want to buy your [insert product here], when can I get it?” stuff. Honestly. I mean, I’m no brainiac myself, but surely it’s not THAT hard to figure out that TheFashionPolice.net is… wait for it… NOT A SHOP? Apparently not. 2 . If I WAS a shop, I would not be selling these:
(Picture via this post which, you may notice, contains a link to the website selling them. Which is not run by me, needless to say.) Now, I know about Tabi, and I know this unfortunate woman whose friend emailed me has “problem feet” which apparently make tights-with-flip-flops the only option (WHAT IS THIS CONDITION?), so I will say no more about this other than that the thought of actually wearing those individual nylon “toes” bothers me for reasons I can’t quite articulate. But moving on… I replied to the tights-seeker, and I told her that no, I can’t supply tights for flip-flops, because I do not have a shop. And she replied:
And then I took out the gun I keep under my desk and I shot myself in the head. Because almost every day now there is some variation of this exchange. Almost every day. I spend so much of my time having to spell out to people that no, I do not sell anything, I just write about stuff, that I’m actually thinking I may as well start selling stuff. I mean, I seem to have a ready-made customer base waiting for me, if only I could find out where to bulk-buy tights-for-flip-flops and dresses from three years ago. (Note: not an invitation to contact me offering job lots of Toe Tights). Gah. “Blinglish” – the type of English used in blog commentsTuesday, January 27th, 2009Terry pointed out this morning that my last post here was not only several days ago, but was also a post in which I insinuated that if there were no further posts, er, I was probably dead. Whoops. Well, I’m not dead, although thanks for the massive outpouring of anxiety, folks! I’m just lazy busy. Also, The Voice hasn’t spoken again since, and if I can’t give you tales of mysterious voices which speak in my bedroom, then what can I give you? Absolutely nothing has happened recently. It’s just been all work and no play, and you know what that makes Amber, right? Yes, it makes her a CHUNKY MONKEY. I know this because someone very kindly left a comment on The Fashion Police to that effect this morning. The full text of the comment read:
Geniuses walk amongst us, folks, they really do. And just imagine, there’s a dress in the world that looks like ALL my faces! Wow! Not just one of my faces, ALL of them! And I are a chunky monkey – sorry, monkeys, plural, whee! Another excellent comment from today, this time concerning one of my “Ugly Prom Dress” posts:
Omg omg omg omg omg, indeed! Because a bad dress is totally good reason to kill yourself, “naw”? ASAP! After some consultation with my Twitter followers, I have decided to give this bizarre type of English used by tween blog commenters a name. I am going to call it “Blinglish” – the type of English used in blog comments. And, having named it, I am now adding it to my list of Things I Would Ban If I Ruled the World. A further example of “Blinglish” can be found here, incidentally). I’m quite liking being a Chunky Monkey, though. I don’t know “nothing”Thursday, December 4th, 2008I’m feeling a little better today. Only a little, but hey, at least I wasn’t up all night waiting for the sweet release of death, so that’s something. In a break from our regularly scheduled “Woe is me!” programme, then, I present an email I received this morning from one “Cathelina Waldron”, who I can only assume has stumbled across one of my posts on the subject of 80s fashion over at The Fashion Police. Cathelina writes:
(Spelling and grammar as in the original. Imagine the text of this email in bright pink to get the full effect.) So. Obviously I had no idea I was supposed to run all of my opinions past this woman, who clearly has the authority to tell me that I “have” to love certain things. This has seriously concerned me: I wonder if there are other things out there that I “have” to love, but don’t, because Cathelina hasn’t written to me yet to tell me what my opinion should be on them? Maybe I should ask her to give me a list of all the things I “have” to love? Hmm. All sarcasm aside, though, can you even IMAGINE getting THAT annoyed about someone’s opinions on shell-suits and puffball skirts that you feel the need to email them an ugly rant? Seriously, I have no idea what Cathelina’s problem is, but I really hope she’s getting help for her obvious issues… I also hope the wind blows really hard and messes up her hair. Tags: email fun, the fashion police
Posted in Fashion, I See Stupid People, Pro-Blogging | 29 Comments » Under InvestigashunThursday, November 13th, 2008Remember how earlier this week I was getting in a little bit of advance worrying about tonight’s full moon, and the generous helping of Crazy it would no doubt bring to my life? I was right to worry. This morning I woke up to an email from Companies House, who, for the benefit of those of you who don’t like in the UK, or, indeed, run your own business, govern all activity by limited companies in this country. If you run a business you have to be registered with them, and there are all kinds of rules you have to abide by if you don’t want Very Bad Things to happen. Anyway, as I was saying, this morning I woke up to an email from Companies House, in which they informed me that my business is now under investigation for a possible breach of “Section 82 of the Companies Act 2006″. So, obviously I immediately died. When I revived myself, I read on, and discovered that I was being investigated for breaching this Act because a concerned member of the public had reported me for it. So I died again. A couple of coffees later (and, OK, brandy), I read on. Helpfully, Companies House had not just started a new email to tell me I was – insert Drum Roll of Doom here – Under Investigashun. No, they had just forwarded on the entire email conversation they’d been having with the person who had reported me. A person who, I was to learn, was accusing me of: a) owing her money and b) being a taxi driver It was at this point that alarm bells started to ring. I feverishly read the email again, and – YES! – there it was! The woman had not reported me AT ALL! In fact, she had reported a COMPLETLY DIFFERENT COMPANY to Companies House, and OK, it’s a company that has a similar name to mine, but the woman had supplied them with the Company Number AND the website address (which, just to be clear here, was NOT MY WEBSITE ADDRESS), both of which made it perfectly clear that they done got the wrong person. The right person being someone who is NOT ME. And who has nothing to do with me. Whew! What is totally bizarre about this, is that, having been supplied with the URL of the company the woman was complaining about, Companies House didn’t just visit that URL (I did, and it works) and contact the company in question. No, they apparently hit up Google, searched for a completely different company with a similar-sounding name, and then contacted that person instead. (That person being ME.) Freaking GENIUS, no? Oh, and as if that wasn’t enough, they also forwarded me a private email conversation between them and the woman who originally contacted them. I now know her name, her email address, and all about how much money she is owed by a third party. Whose details, including their company number, I now ALSO have, thanks to Companies House. I bet that company is thrilled to know that I, Magic Amber, am now party to their dispute! A good morning’s work by Companies House, then, who have, thankfully, replied to the “WTF?” email I sent them earlier this morning with a “Whoops! No, it’s not YOU that’s under investigation!”. So that’s something. Incidentally, the woman who wanted to know where her Heidi Klum skin care order was? Never did get back in touch. Magic Amber is pleased to have been of service… Amber the OmniscientTuesday, November 11th, 2008Lately I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in the number of people mistaking me for God. By that I don’t mean they’re getting down on their knees and worshipping the wonder that is Me, or even that they praise me like they should, just that they think I know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING. I know, I know: it’s an easy mistake to make. Am authoritative figure, obviously! So every day I get a whole bunch of emails via The Fashion Police , saying stuff like, “Dear Magic Amber, OMG, I really want a pair of boots that you wrote about in 2006, I have seriously looked at every website on the internet for them, and I can’t find them anywhere, but I know you will be able to find them for me!” And I’ll be all, “Umm, no, I won’t. Because I am not made of magic, and if you’ve already looked EVERYWHERE with no luck, it’s unlikely I’ll have much luck either, on account of the fact that previously hidden boots do not suddenly become visible to the All Seeing Eye of Amber the Omniscient”. And also because the boots are always from somewhere like Topshop, or Dorothy Perkins, or some other high street store, and trust me, if THEY don’t still stock their own boots three years later, no one else will, either. Because I am all about helping people, though, (Am benevolent Divine Being), I will generally try and suggest alternatives if I can think of any, before giving in and saying, “Dude: eBay.” (The ones who email me saying, “OK, I’m looking for thigh high boots that are purple with orange spots on, and come in a UK size 12 with a square toe, a heel that is exactly 4.2″ high, but which don’t look trashy, and are also really comfortable. Oh, and I’m a man, so they need to have extra-wide thighs. Where can I get them?”, on the other hand, I tend just to send directly to eBay. They should pay me commission). So, the “where can I find X” emails, I don’t mind. After all, I know only too well what it’s like to find yourself desperately in need of a certain coat/shoe/dress/purse-shaped-like-a-bichon-frise, only to discover that you can’t find it anywhere. And when that happens, you will try anything, even emailing bloggers, if you think it will help light your path to The Prechus. No, it’s the “I can’t tell the difference between someone selling an item and someone just writing about it” emails that bother me. The Fashion Police gets its fair share of these, but most of them come to Hey, Dollface, which, for the benefit of those of you not obsessively following my every move, is my beauty blog, which I use to review beauty products, write about beauty products I WANT to review, and generally worship at the altar of Sephora. Now, back in March of this year, Heidi Klum released her own skincare line, and I totally bet she was up for weeks on end, mixing potions, gathering ingredients by the light of the full moon and chanting incantations over a cauldron, in order to produce a face cream that claims to make you look exactly like her. OK, not really, but that would’ve been a helluva lot more interesting than what I actually wrote about this event, which can be read here, but which basically says, “Heidi Klum has released a skincare line. There are face creams in it.” (Incidentally, the only comment on that post is also good for a laugh if you’re bored.) This morning, I received this email:
So, either this woman thinks I am Heidi Klum, in which case my life’s work is complete, or she thinks I can look inside the minds of the un-named company who sold her this product, and find out where her order is. And that I can do this without any other information whatsoever on this, not even an order number or anything. (I somehow doubt the company in question, whoever they are, only sold one product on Sunday, October 28th, and are able to track that product knowing only the name of the person who bought it). Because I am magic.
Of course, I replied to the email, letting the woman know that I have no freaking idea where her order is, or, indeed, why she’s even asking me about it, but I somehow doubt I’ve heard the last of this. After all, Thursday is a full moon, and you know what THAT normally means…
Seriously, though, I get this kind of thing ALL the time, along with slight variations on the theme, such as the company who are currently hell bent on trying to get me to bulk-buy “police gloves” from them, because they apparently believe The Fashion Police is a real police force, that is in need of gloves. Either I fail really badly at making it clear to readers that I am not a retailer/actual “police” officer, or a lot of people are… not all that bright.
I’ll let you decide which it is. In the meantime, I’m off to make myself a tinfoil helmet in preparation for Thursday’s full moon… |
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2009: now with added idiots
Sunday, January 4th, 2009Just in case anyone out there was worried that 2009 might not contain quite as many idiots as 2008 did, I present the evidence to the contrary, courtesy of a comment someone tried to post on the The Fashion Police yesterday:
So! Yet more evidence to present when I submit my “people should have to pass an intelligence test before they’re allowed to use the internet” case to the powers that be. Whoever they are.
Luckily the spam filter did its job and stopped this work of genius from being published, but it took the brainiac who wrote it a further six attempts to post it before they realised it wasn’t going to happen. Still, I guess that’s more or less what you expect from someone who gives their name as “YOU SUCK BALLS”, although I must admit, I’m curious to know just what grammar and spelling did to this person to make him/her want to abuse them so thoroughly.
Of course, this comment has set the bar pretty high for 2009. How on earth will the other idiots out there manage to outdo this one, I wonder?
Posted in I See Stupid People, Pro-Blogging | 15 Comments »