Boo, hiss.

Wow, i am so mad right now.

Someone sent me a "message" on Yelp, which basically poked fun at a shitty situation i had recently at a local photography shop. i didn't know that making an 8x10 print would result in the picture (from the negative) being cropped. So sue me. i never said i was a member of MENSA, okay? Nor am i a professional photographer. It just simply didn't occur to me that this would happen; i had never done it before, and i was rushing. The print in question was to be a christmas gift for my dad, so it was also kind of important to me.

When i went to get it re-done, they were totally haughty, and alluded that it was my "fault", or that i had mis-communicated or something. But the thing was: i wasn't trying to lay any blame. i went in there practically with my tail between my legs because i hate having to point out a problem with anything, ever. All i wanted was for them to re-do it, and they didn't offer to once. (i would have paid, obviously!) They brusquely offered me my money back and didn't explain any of the process to me. So i took the refund and high-tailed it, vowing never to return.
(For those of you that have heard this story before, my apologies.)

So the "message" i received on Yelp was this smug little nugget:

"I had to laugh at your review of [ ]. You show me a way to make an 8x10 print of something originally in a 2x3 format without stretching it or cropping it and I'll buy you dinner every night for a year! Not their fault. Think before you review and look foolish. I think offering you a refund was more than fair!"

Uhhhh, yeah. Message received, dude. You might as well lock arms with the employees, point at me and laugh. Seriously, is this how you spend your time? Making other people feel stupid? What a gem you are, sir, truly. Can't wait to meet you some day, then we can talk about how much better we are than everyone else! It'll be great to make fun of those who don't possess the same specialized knowledge that we do. Yay for us!

So i sent him a hot-headed reply, probably not the wisest thing to do. But hey, i was bristling. This episode already embarrassed me, and to then have someone treat me like we're back in 4th grade, after the fact, was just too much. As i pointed out, nowhere did i say it was "their fault"- i was merely upset at the level of arrogance and indifference i noticed among the staff there. And judging from some of the other reviews, i am not alone in this view.

Oh well. Guess we can't all be perfect, and this guy's message finally made me realize that. Everything seems so much clearer now, now that i know i am sub-par. "Think before you review and look foolish"? Wow. Yes, sir. Aye aye, Cap'n. Duly noted, motherfucker. How about this one: "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all"?

(although, to be fair, my review of the shop wasn't exactly nice, but that's not the point, dammit!)



Alrighty, that's enough of that. This is such old news. Time for heather to simmer down a little. Time for a bike ride, fast-like, while listening loudly to something appropriately angsty or even just angry: maybe a little Adam Ant, or Bauhaus, or some old PJ Harvey. Possibly even Elastica, Faith No More, Fugazi? ::mosies away making a playlist::

~~~~~~~~~~~

In other news: Some excerpts from an interview with Andrew Bird that i found:

"I've always been obsessed with moss and moose's horns. The number eight, the sort of roundness of the number eight," he says.

and

"I think of like, when I was a kid, and I would get my Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass and throw myself down in a pile of mulch or something and go in there and pretend that I was microscopic," Bird says. "I wanted to capture that kind of woody, mossy, decaying kind of sound."

::sigh::

Why couldn't the world have just revolved a little differently, and he and i could be dear, dear friends?