Skepticism

AI: arse/ass chafing

I am plagued by bureaucracy at present.

Like death and taxes, administration is unavoidable, but it’s been a near full-time job in itself for me of late. Banking, visa applications, paperwork, forms, emails, phone calls, letters.

It’s chafing my arse.

What’s chafing your arse/ass?

The Afternoon Inquisition (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Skepchick community. Look for it to appear daily at 3pm ET.

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53 Comments

  1. WOW Elyse, maybe I can help you with that ;)

    Now that the inappropriate comments are out of the was, I hate red lights. I don’t mind 1 or 2, but I hate it when I’m stuck at every red light, it’s frustrating beyond belief

  2. All of the rigamarole and waiting and processing and paperwork and MONEY involved in taking care of my car having been broken into.

    A split second of window-smash, and I’m stuck with police reports and fingerprint techs (what kind of dumbass radio thief leaves a beer can in the car they’ve just broken into?) and insurance and auto glass shops and AAAGGHGHHH.

    Also, driving in silence is gonna be weird.

  3. People who believe stupid things. It’s not that Bill O’Reilly and Bill Maher say stupid crazy batshit stuff -it’s that people listen to and believe them!

    Oh, that, and how complicated and expensive they make it to get divorced in NYS. Maybe it should be more difficult to get married and simpler to get divorced…

  4. I’m in art school…so critiques!
    Specifically the one that is tomorrow for a piece I’m only half done with.

  5. The semi debate I had last night with the christian evangelicals, mostly because I think I could’ve performed better. I think I need more practice.

  6. Pointless small talk. About the weather, about what kooky things your kids do and the cute way they say certain words. Calling me in the middle of supper to ask how things are.Saying how we gotta get together sometime when you both know you have absolutely NO intention of doing so . Irritates the hell out of me.

  7. @frenchy: I totally agree with your position on pointless small talk, granted that position of mine is partly why I don’t interact with people very often and it may have to be a position that I need to change.

  8. Cars. I don’t like them and I think they know that. They’re always trying to run over me. Rebecca too. The run over bit, at least.

  9. There was a special offer at the supermarket on Friday, six-packs of these yoghurts I really like on a 2-for-1 sale, and I only just noticed that I’ve filled my fridge with a dozen tubs of the stuff that’s due to expire today. Dammit.

  10. @cubiksrube>
    Most of the expiration dates listed on stuff are really premature. If you have a decent sense of smell/taste, you can probably trust that to tell when stuff is actually going bad, but it should be good for at least a couple days past the expiration date, if not longer (so long as it’s still sealed).

    As for the chafing… failing to find employment.

    Even more so when people tell me that it should be extremely easy for me to get a job because 1) I have a degree no one wants, and 2) I have no experience. Srsly, I was told by more then one person that it’s easier to get a job when you have zero experience. I’m glad I thought I misheard/understood them, cause if I caught what they were saying immediately, I would likely be on assault charges now :/

  11. @ryk: Yeah I remember going through that. It took a major stroke of luck and chatting with a friend in the industry I was trying to get into to finally get me a job.

  12. @BonnieBeth: Wow, that must have been the same person who stole my car a decade or so ago. When it was recovered two days later (at the site of another stolen car, which apparently was recovered at the site of another stolen car), it contained half a Powerade, two packs of crackers, the socket wrench used to break the window, the screwdriver used to pop out the ignition switch, and a cheap cloth briefcase. Come to think of it, I still have the socket wrench, screwdriver, and briefcase. I may have even come out ahead since I never replaced the broken windows or the ignition switch.

  13. Davew: Cars! Absolutely. In a mid-sized town known for an outdoorsy athletic population, the fact that so few use bikes here and that so many cars have one occupant, just chaps my hide, Pilgrim.

  14. @Trotter Jelly: Oh, sorry, forgot the several hundred dollars in towing and storage fees for the car, since it took me several days to arrange traveling fifty miles to get the car (seeing as I no longer had a car). Come to think of it, my insurance company suddenly claimed that the fire and theft I’d been carrying on the car had become unavailable without comprehensive coverage a few months earlier (of which they hadn’t informed me), so I couldn’t make a claim. The more I think about this, this is chafing my ass again however many years later.

  15. On the flip side my wife gave me the okay to give away her car so I don’t have the pain of owning one of the infernal contraptions any more. Yay! As I read through the comments here I recall what a giant pain and expense it truly is.

  16. A mother who is 66, shuns my oldest (26, married, with a 5-month-old), tries to be buds with my son (22, college, at home) and de-friends me and my husband on Facebook … all because we came clean that we are atheists. My son says he’s agnostic. I guess she thinks there’s hope she can still save him. *&$#@@(#$#(*%&)(@#&#^!^

    Thanks for listening.

  17. Battle buddies. I’m right now in advanced training in the army, and one of their newer ideas is battle buddies. I can’t go ANYWHERE without a battle buddy. And due to a recent male-on-male sexual assault, I can’t go anywhere without two battle buddies.

    So now that I’m getting passes that allow me to leave the base for the day on weekends, I still can’t go without finding two battle buddies who want to go to the same place.

    I’m 42, they’re kids. I want to go to museums, they want to go to the mall.

  18. @weatherwax>

    hahaha. srsly though, I’m sorry, I was overseas for a bit, and always had to have a ‘buddy’. As much as I like drinking, I do enjoy doing other stuff from time to time. Unfortunately, I think I was the only one. In another country, and I was completely unable to find someone who wanted to do something outside of getting drunk and visiting the local red-light district.
    On the other hand, it was easy enough to ‘sneak’ out (wasn’t really sneaking, it was just walking out the gate without drawing attention to yourself). And, it wasn’t like I was going to run into anyone who would report me in the spots I was going to.

  19. @Vengeful: The “question” about our eternal plans came via letters at Christmas time. But, they were after the initial friending where the Big A was out in plan sight. The letters were completely passive aggressive to make us come clean. Chaffing, chaffing, chaffing … Gold Bond just isn’t helping!

    @weatherwax: “Oh, and yes, that includes the latrine.” And an ear worm crawls in … Beans, beans, the musical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot. The more you toot, you buddy feels ill. So eat more beans to end the deal!

  20. My family (for lack of a better word). At my husband’s restraining order appeal, they gang up to tell the judge I’m a manipulative liar, but it backfires spectacularly. If anything they helped my case through their innapropriate behavior, demeanor and obvious cluelessness. I was expecting it to go the way it did, and in my mind this appeal was about standing up to their drug & alcohol-fueled passive-agressive narcissim more than proving my husband’s abuse again.

    In the past 4 days I’ve received 5 calls and 4 emails/fb messages from them, b/c they still want to remind me we’re family… for my daughter’s sake. WTF?

  21. Patrons. All of the idiots who refuse to follow instructions, and especially the moron who has been in almost every weekday for a year now and still doesn’t know how to save something to his flash drive.

  22. @mark> work in a library, i take it?

    it’s amazing how people will spend so much time in libraries when they are functionally illiterate :/

    putting signs up in a library has got to be one of the biggest exercises in futility

  23. People who text while behind the wheel of a car( I’d say driving but it generally doesn’t qualify) Hang up and drive!

  24. My wrist has been broken and in a cast for 7 weeks. It’s going to be broken and in a cast for 5 more weeks. Scaphoid fractures suck. And this one’s literally chafing my ass, as I wipe with this hand!

  25. London’s roadworks. Every morning I leave 10 minutes earlier, and every morning a new hole opens in my route to work, adding 15 minutes to my journey. And they’ve got rid of the bus lane at the junction of Waterloo Road and The Cut, meaning the buses have to merge into regular traffic to corss the junction, only to open back out into a bus lane on the other side, which added to the inadequate traffic-light phasing that favours the minor roads over the major one, means my journey to work is an increasing nightmare.
    Well, you asked.

  26. Professors who think their class is the only class you could possibly be taking this semester. I mean really is it necessary to write three 10 page papers and do a group project in one class? (And that is just the big stuff not all the little stuff during the semester).

  27. WordPress, for eating a really long post on the Eugenics debate, telling me it couldn’t be posted because I wasn’t logged in. I was logged in half an hour before? :(

  28. Me. Life would be so much better if I wasn’t such a lazy ass procrastinator. Realizing this tends to bother me so much I stick my head in the sand and actually get less done.

  29. @BonnieBeth:

    Wow, you’re lucky. My car was vandalized 4 times while I was in college, and no police ever investigated. They filed a report for my insurance, but they have a policy of not even showing up unless something has been stolen.

  30. @Bjornar: Dude, I was gonna say that! If there were an advanced degree in procrastination I would be in line for it. Of course, I’d never actually finish all the work needed to get it, but I think that’s the idea.

    Also, the check-engine light in my car. It’s not an old car and only has 75,000 miles on it, but the check-engine light just comes on at odd times, stays on for a week, then goes off. Totally random. Three different mechanics have looked at it without a clue as to the origin of its on/off tendency. Unfortunately, if it’s on, the car can’t pass inspection. Argh!

  31. House shopping. FYI to all the would-be sellers out there- No one wants to climb over your collection of sports equipment to see your den, or smell your 3 gerbils and a rabbit when looking at your master bathroom. Clean the house up, for Thor’s sake!

  32. Being asked: “What are you thinking?”
    When you just want to lie there and think of nothing.

    If you say “nothing”, the response is usually “you can’t be thinking nothing, you must be thinking something”.

    An argement ensues…..

  33. @catgirl: I don’t know about Chicago’s “policy,” but my stereo WAS stolen (and they smashed the window and destroyed the dash to get it). I had to call back three times, but the cops did show up. But it then took nine hours and three additional phone calls to get them to send the evidence techs I was instructed to wait for… geniuses left a beer can in my car, thus fingerprints. The ETs never did come, but the cute cop who showed up instead took the can in for evidence. I don’t expect much from it, though. The shop owner across the street is interested to find out if it was the same kids who robbed his store and smashed up the place.

    Further ass-chafing: my insurance company, which is unlikely to cover this anyway since I have minimum coverage but I’ll hold out a bit of hope, was closed yesterday (Sunday) and today (holiday!). I was busy from 9am – 8pm today, with similar hours for the rest of the week, which are also conveniently the hours of operation for local auto glass shops. I’m supposed to drive 2.5 hours to visit friends this weekend. Pretend I’m making some kind of untranscribable sound of frustration here.

  34. Cammie: Good advice, but unfortunantly if no one is willing to go with me, I can’t go.

    I should also mention that in training, the whole platoon gets smoked for every individuals screw up. Smoked meaning “corrective physical therapy”.

    Again, they’re kids, I’m 42. They fuck up alot, but can do alot of push-ups. I just get that much closer to heat exhaustion.

  35. @Doctor Whom
    London roadworks, tell me about it, I live in Camberwell SE London and work all over city/west end. Those roadworks breed I tell you

    @Tessa K
    National chocolate week, nobody told me. Everyone here, it may be an English day, but join us, eat chocolate

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