Minor Annoyances (Vol 2)

[Tamura]

Just down the road from me practically every other shop is a takeaway, this documentary series explains why and why they prefer cash.
 

Spoiler

Takeaways, like other cash heavy businesses, are excellent for laundering your profits from heroin dealing

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p07bn33z/hometown-a-killing

 

[SuperBacon]

Any excuse to post one of the greatest videos ever. 

 

[air_raid]

In this day and age where everything costs more all the time, I absolutely don’t begrudge small businesses like takeaways staying cash only rather than paying for card tech, any more than I would a market stall or family run butcher etc. Ultimately that cost is going to get passed on to me if they do get card payment tech.

I was actually somewhat taken aback when I went to my mums local chippy for the first time in years not long ago, to learn that not only could I pay by card but they had an online presence for pre order and collection. I pondered as I scoffed, how even in a sleepy West Midlands suburb we’re getting one step closer to kebab meat by replicator.

 

 

However, I do get petty annoyed when a corner shop of the Premier, Go Local, Nisa, McColls nature etc has card payment, but imposes a minimum transaction limit. Usually this limit only becomes apparent on the rare instance you’re in dire need and quickly of only one item, on the first time ever that the cash machine adjacent is out of service.

Edited February 7, 2022 by air_raid

[BomberPat]

19 hours ago, Keith Houchen said:

Quite a few takeaways and cafes near me are cash only. One guy was telling me it was because of how much it would cost him to have a card machine with all the monthly fees so that’s why it was cash only. I suspect it may have had more to do with how the place changed name every few months but had the exact same staff every time. 
 

Plus where they’re all located is colloquially knows as Four Banks due to there being a bank on each corner of the crossroads, so cash points aren’t exactly a mile away. 

Other than all the dodgy reasons already mentioned, my mate owned a café and didn't take card until a couple of years ago, because of the costs involved. Can't remember the specifics, but it was to do with the fees on small transactions - the same reason a lot of places have a minimum transaction value, because otherwise their profit margins wouldn't be good enough on anything below that. So if you're a takeaway or coffee shop and a lot of your transactions are only going to be a couple of quid, there's a lot of reasons why it would be better to use card.

I actually get more annoyed the other way around - when places are strictly card only - even when I rarely actually carry cash now myself. I just think it's further disadvantaging already marginalised people to put them in a position to need a card to access sometimes very basic goods and services (like how, in London, the buses don't take cash). I just think if someone is homeless and unable to set up/access a bank account, if someone is in an abusive relationship with a shared bank account and unable to access their own finances, or if someone is working in a job that pays cash (which, again, is more likely to affect people already more marginalised anyway), you're unfairly excluding them from a lot of society. I understand the push from banks, from businesses and so on, and why it's more convenient for a lot of people, but any suggestion of going completely cashless doesn't sit right with me unless there's a concurrent effort to include/uplift people who would be most affected by that change (and that won't happen)

[Chest Rockwell]

Yeah I mean it's obvious that the pandemic was engineered by Stripe to force small takeaways to get card readers. That's what @BomberPat is saying anyway. I'm a hundred percent behind you, mate.

[Carbomb]

Something I've found a bit disturbing about the drive towards a cashless society is the subtle promotion of a culture in which we assume that it's perfectly reasonable, and even necessary, for every transaction we make to be recorded, and that any desire to remain cashless must be because of clandestine, illegal activity, rather than from a simple, well-founded mistrust of a global financial sector that looks to make profit from every single fucking thing it can, usually with devastating consequences.

Edited February 7, 2022 by Carbomb

[Keith Houchen]

On 2/3/2022 at 3:44 PM, Keith Houchen said:

The nonstop grifters that are Captain Toms family. I’m at the stage where I hope it comes out he was a nonce or something so his family can’t milk his corpse for all it’s worth anymore. I fucking hate them. 

Quelle fucking surprise 

 

[Lenin]

She reminds me of Ricky Gervias' wife in 'Special Correspondents' in as much as she give the vibe that it wasn't really about the cause for her. Unsurprising all the same that it's come to pass. 

[Keith Houchen]

I totally understand why a charity needs funds for things like wages and admin. After all, most of us know what it’s like to work in an office with the cheapest equipment and software and how much it costs on productivity. I also have no problem with CEOs of charities getting big wages, I think it was Oxfam (bad example now) who had a top bod on 300k and people were losing their shit, as if he should’ve been doing it for nothing. Under his stewardship, donations to them, and paid out by them, went up tenfold so he more than justified the salary. 
 

But these cunts haven’t been brought in to maximise donations or increase revenue, they set it up on the back of the almost cult like admiration for their dead dad and using it to line their own pockets. I fucking hate them. 

[Jesse]

As a fat lad only getting bigger I occasionally get blisters on my inner thigh from them rubbing together or sitting on the toilet too long or something - but currently I've developed 5 or 6 blisters in the same spot that are all clustering together to form one kind of super lump and now just moving sparks a not insignificant amount of pain. As such every time I want to waddle to the fridge for a drink I'm having to walk like a crab through my own home and be laughed at by my wife.

Suppose I should be lucky I don't have any financially insolvent relatives asking me to do 100 laps to the fridge and back to kickstart their embezzlement scheme

Edited February 8, 2022 by Jesse

[simonworden]

Reminded by the dry up thread and a photo I saw online, Steak restaurants that insist on dividing up what should be all served as one dish into multiple items you have to buy separately. Absolutely no point to that other than a cash grab. If I'm ordering a steak I definitely want at least one carb and some sort of veg with it. Someone said it's so people can have choices and cheaper prices but it's not as the steak is usually still the same price. Give people options but Include them in the price. 

[air_raid]

Latest menu annoyance. Pizza places just putting “parm” instead of parmesan has become par(m) for the course, but I just had to Google what they mean by “evoo” for a topping, and it’s extra virgin olive oil. A double piss take, as I probably wouldn’t have had to if they’d have capitalised it denoting an acronym.

[dopper]

Movie posters which show the main cast all stood in a line, with all their names listed… in a different order.

 

[Tommy!]

The most annoying thing on that last one is the placement of "and" so it reads like "Betty And-White" rather than "And Betty White".

Im no graphic designer but surely that and should be further left at least. 

Also Sigourney Weaver appears to be midway through discreetly chewing a toffee. 

[Nick James]

When restaurants don't publish their prices on their online menus. It's the lads 4th birthday on Friday and we are planning a day out which will include food somewhere, we are trying to budget for the day, but when I'm looking at online menus to get a rough estimate of how much lunch will cost, can I balls find any pricing. 

I have to go to a third party site to try and find any sort of pricing. I get there will be a reason behind it, but all it does is make me think 'fuck it, I can't be arsed', and just end up at fast food.