Pardon me while I rant

These are stupid and petty, I know, but it is what it is.

Exhibit A for Rant #1:

As part of our ongoing efforts to ensure the safety of our customers’ information, this month we will implement a series of security questions for all online users.

Once this feature is implemented, you will be prompted to select and answer four security questions of your choice. For example: What is your favorite fictional character? What is your favorite car? These questions will be used in the future to confirm your identity…

That’s from an e-mail I received from Citibank regarding an account I never plan to use again because they won’t give me any money for school. So that is going straight into the trash, but reading it still got my dander up.

I may have gone off on this before, but it’s the gift that just keeps on giving. I CANNOT STAND “SECURITY” QUESTIONS ABOUT FAVORITE THINGS!!!!! Why? Because I don’t have a reliable favorite anything! Ask me what my favorite something is one time and I’ll probably give you a different answer the next time? Because I pretty much just go with whatever comes to mind first if I am absolutely pressed to answer. Then I rationalize some reason why it is a favorite to maybe help me recall it later, but that never works. Favorite things do not identify me!

I’m sure this idea works for a lot of people, but it just doesn’t work for me. I have a hard enough time remembering how I answered “what city were you born in?” because I can’t remember if I included the state or if case matters and if so which case I used, etc. There are just way too many variables there and way too many systems asking such questions for me to remember what I answered where. And the last thing I want is to get locked out of some stupid system because I couldn’t remember my answer to a stupid question that I had to make up an answer to in the first place.

I think the only solution to this is going to be picking a single word to use as an answer to all questions, so there will be no more guess work. It may not make any sense, but that is my only hope at surviving these questions. Hell! It may even be more secure if it doesn’t make any sense!

At first I was just annoyed when these questions started popping up, but I nearly always had the choice to choose something like my birth city that could never possibly change or be forgotten. But now they require more questions, so these favorites are becoming increasingly unavoidable. And I am getting closer and closer to getting violently angry every time it comes up. I can’t even think about it without getting angry. It’s irrational and ridiculous, I know. I’ve just had it with this stuff.

I spoke up and complained about it the one time when I thought I might have some influence over the system because it was an internal system here at work. But, as usual because I am the odd-ball, I was basically just told to deal with it.

On to Rant #2: Girl Scout Cookies or whatever else

I probably have only half of a leg to stand on for this one, but that’s okay. I am what I am, and it is what it is.

I was taught that these fund raising sales have two purposes:

1. To raise money for the organization.
2. To give kids an opportunity to practice selling/earning money.

You probably already see where I am headed with this: WHAT THE HELL EVER HAPPENED TO THE KIDS DOING THE SELLING? I am talking about parents bringing in order forms for their kid’s fundraisers and doing the selling for them.

I had to deal with this same problem when I was a kid trying to do fund raising because both of my parents had blue-collar jobs. So I didn’t have a mommy or daddy to outsource the selling to. I had to go door to door selling my wares if I wanted to even make the minimum goal of selling what I had stocked. I had to choose what sold the best because I didn’t want to be stuck with left over inventory that I would have to pay for myself.

I never had a chance in hell of being a top seller and winning any prizes because the kids who had parents with white-collar jobs would always out-sell everyone. So what lesson did I learn? Working hard doesn’t pay off because there will always be someone who finds a way around the system to out-do everyone. My biggest customers where my parents who couldn’t resist peanut butter cups.

It bothers me even more now when I can I see exactly what parents do at the office. They come in, set the box out, write a little plea for help and let the stuff sell itself. It’s not even like they made the kid try to sell it at all first and we just see the leftovers. No, this is their entire marketing campaign. I would even be okay if they just said, “hey, my kid is selling these, and I thought I would bring some in just in case anyone was interested in either [insert product here] or helping out. My kid is done going door to door, we just need to offload the rest.”

Girl Scout cookies are really tasty and there is an order form posted in the snack room for them right now. It’s not like I’ve never ignored my principles and indulged in buying from these things, but it still bothers me. I’m sure any boycotting I do from here on in will go unnoticed, but I have to draw the line and stand up for what screwed me as a kid some day. Maybe it will bring some other kid in blue-collar family just a little closer to being a contender and feeling like all of the hard work actually paid off.

I have something about Mother Theresa after my Ethics class last night too, but I’ll have to save it for another time.

I’m starting to notice that I’m just plain cranky today.

*edit* (I didn’t have time to finish this earlier.)

Now, I’m sure not going door to door is safer, but there is such a thing as supervision. When I was too young to go out alone, my mom would go along with me.

And another thing: Don’t pester people trying to go in and out of stores! I have turned around and walked back to my car or not even stopped my car at stores I had intended to shop at. I will drive to another store to avoid any kind of solicitation even if it’s for a good cause. I just can’t stand it.

I am cranky today and probably due to too much caffeine after eating half a box of Crackheads at the end of a stressful week. And I find myself leaving my Ethics class every Thursday night with the desire to wring my professor’s little neck. So Fridays are just not good days.

My boss got on my nerves this afternoon too with his eating salad at a meeting. It’s bad enough when people take their lunch to meetings, but salads are noisy and he smacks when he eats. And he takes long pauses between words in a sentence because he stops mid sentence to take a bite. Not only that, but he gets buffalo wings on his salad and stops to suck his fingers after he finishes each one. How uncouth can you get???

Oh, one more thing before I go. I have been using Blackboxsearch.com to search google because I would rather google not collect data on me even if I have nothing to hide. Well, now that site is being blocked by the firewall at work, and thatjust started today. That wasn’t happening yesterday. I was already annoyed that they blocked Opera’s translation URLs that redirect to translator sites. It’s really convenient to be able to highlight some text and send it off to a translator in a couple of clicks, but I guess that’s just too damn handy to have around. So much for trying to expand my language skills.

I think I just need a Dammit Doll.