What Grinds your Gears?

[Watt2159]

God I feel like I live in hillbilly country now lol.

 

[Crumpet]

The fact that I still can't reach the top shelf in the kitchen Grinds my Gears.. And it turns out to be the one with all the candy.

 

[SVX]

I wish I knew what a ricer is. I'm going to guess that it's some form of Japanese car....

Sound a bit racist to me.

Ricer is a car that has parts to make it look faster. Like HUGE spoilers and tacky rims.

 

[mattythedog]

The fact that I still can't reach the top shelf in the kitchen Grinds my Gears.. And it turns out to be the one with all the candy.

Just eat lots. You'll soon grow taller. As for me, I have no problem reaching tall cupboards, as I am very tall.

 

[E28]

I wish I knew what a ricer is. I'm going to guess that it's some form of Japanese car....

Sound a bit racist to me.

Ricers are basically cars with hideous DIY 'go-faster' mods. Unfortunately, the victims of this are normally Japanese cars.

 

[W3H5]

The fact that I still can't reach the top shelf in the kitchen Grinds my Gears.. And it turns out to be the one with all the candy sweets.

Free education in English how we speak it in England, the country you're residing in, from Shem. You're welcome.

 

[Crumpet]

Just eat lots. You'll soon grow taller. As for me, I have no problem reaching tall cupboards, as I am very tall.

I'm 6.1 at 13, and still can't reach..

Free education in English how we speak it in England, the country you're residing in, from Shem. You're welcome.

Knew that you would point me out on that, I just like the way the word sounds.

 

[Borna12345]

Those 🤬 things.
I have about 15 in my room and I can't walk around in the fear I'll step on one and, you know... start feeling the smell.

 

[W3H5]

Arrrggghhhh....stink bugs!!!

 

[Borna12345]

I know, I hate those... things with a passion.

 

[Crumpet]

I never even heard of those! I sure hope we don't get them over here.

 

[E28]

I never even heard of those! I sure hope we don't get them over here.

They are especially common around Manchester.

 

[Cowboys965]

Ricer is a car that has parts to make it look faster. Like HUGE spoilers and tacky rims.

In the McDonald's parking lot I saw a mini-van on big chrome rims

 

[CrashBandicoot]

The fact that some kid that lives around me and his car grinds my gears. Almost every early moring or at night, he has to rev up his dumb Fart Can, which means a person who adds a exaust to his car like a civic or integra that sounds like the car is farting when he or she steps on the gas. Wakes me up all the time.

 

[W3H5]

GT had ground my gears tonight but I don't want to talk about it here. Full details are already in another thread.

 

[Submerged]

One thing that has lately been grinding my gears:

People who ring up the boss at the last possible moment to say that they cannot make it to work for that day.

A bit of background. I do swimming teaching on a cover basis. So basically the "boss" (swimming co-ordinator) has to contact other causal/free swimming teachers on their payroll (me) to find out if they can quickly come in and cover the lessons. Lately, because the co-ordinator knows that I am generally free most of the time, he gets into touch with me (first) to supply me with work.

Which I gratefully receive. And I'm happy for the work. As I do enjoy it.

What annoys me the most was yesterday, I get a phone call from the co-ordinator saying: "Submerged! Can you teach today at 4pm?! The teacher has just rang me to say that she's not coming in!!!". This was at 3:20pm (I wasn't able to work due to having other plans, which was vexing).

Who, in their right mind, would call in sick 40 minutes before they were due to teach? In the afternoon? If you have been feeling dodgy all day, you would contact the employer as soon as possible and advise them to arrange cover in case you're not actually going to be there......

Also, last night, another call at 10pm advising me that instead of assisting the lessons this morning (as agreed previously), it would be properly teaching a lesson(which I am qualified and experienced to do), as someone else rang the co-ordinator at 9pm, to say, surprise surprise, that they're unable to work on Saturday morning.

Their excuse: "a very sore back" (history of bad backs? No idea)

Normally, it doesn't bother me, as I know stuff happens and you just get on with it and do the teaching, but it just seems that the other full-time based teachers or contracted teachers just basically dump the co-ordinator in the mud at the LATEST point POSSIBLE and leave him to ring around at the most frantic point possible to arrange teaching cover as quickly as possible. And re-arrange other people's days. Kinda smacks of selfishness and not actually thinking their actions through. It does happen quite a lot at one place I do cover for.

The other three places, all inform me of possible work at least two days previously, if not more than that....

Still, I need the money.

 

[F1 fan]

They are especially common around Manchester.

Yeah. I've only been to Manchester once, and I can remember seeing some crawl out of the drains.

GT had ground my gears tonight but I don't want to talk about it here. Full details are already in another thread.

Link?

What grinds my gears? The royal mail. On wednesday, my girlfriend and I go to the local post office with three postcards for different members of her family in Japan. On Thursday, despite being clearly marked "To Japan", despite being postcards of places in Scotland, despite having a Royal Mail Airmail stamp on them and despite having our address written in the clearly marked "return address" section, two of the postcards came back to us.

I go back to the post office, who say "We can try again". On Friday morning, one of the postcards comes back to us. Again, I take it to the post office. This time, the woman behind the desk claims that the postcard keeps coming back, because the recipient address is written in Japanese. She scores out our address until it is barely readable. But the "to Japan" is clearly visible. Every day, thousands of items are sent via royal mail to Japan. Besides, if we sent the postcard with the address written in English, it would probably fail to get there as the Japanese postal system is very complicated.

This morning, my girlfriend wakes me up and asks what I want for breakfast. We head towards the living room, pass towards the hall and the ****ing postcard is hanging through our letterbox.

This time I took it to a different post office, and told the man behind the counter, who was shocked. I asked him to send it by airmail, and told him if it comes back, I will be lodging a complaint (not about him).

 

[W3H5]

Who, in their right mind, would call in sick 40 minutes before they were due to teach?

er......I....wouldn't....know......

To be honest Submerged, I've done this before but not in the afternoon.
Woken up after a rough nights sleep with serious stiffness bordering on evil pain and phoned in about an hour before class.

Look at the brighter side, it's quids in for you and not them, plus if they drop their position you might get even more work from the co-ordinator.

Link?

Sorry mate, it's in the in-field section.

It was along the lines of lots of crashing and restarting and internet connections and so on and so forth. I'm not touching GT for a week.

OK, maybe I'll just sign in to get my paints and bonus.

 

[AOS-]

Who, in their right mind, would call in sick 40 minutes before they were due to teach?

One time, a friend told the teacher he was going to be absent the next day.
What was his reason? "I'm going to be sick that day."

 

[W3H5]

One time, a friend told the teacher he was going to be absent the next day.
What was his reason? "I'm going to be sick that day."

My office actually prefers if I do that then call in on the day.

If I'm feeling rough and tell them I'm coming down with something they're fine with that. If I call in on the day they'll ask why I didn't tell them earlier.

It is hard to say when I'll be getting ill as it's not the kind of thing I plan in advance.

 

[TB]

It is hard to say when I'll be getting ill as it's not the kind of thing I plan in advance.

Suuuuure... Like you don't know when you're going to have the bottle flu...

 

[W3H5]

Getting it right now......bottle flu, that is.

The office know that I'm a boozer and accept that. As long as I'm not late for class, however hungover I am, the appreciate my effort to make it in.

 

[AOS-]

Ohhh man, I had this one teacher who's a boozer back in high school and his classes were hilarious... he'd let out profanity (not directed at others) without even knowing.

One time, we finished a test and we were taking it up while some students who didn't write it yet were sent to the room next door to complete it. When we took up about half the test, he remembered he left the door open and goes "Oh S***! They can hear us!" and runs to get the door closed

 

[W3H5]

Both of my co-workers are Canadian. They also double as my drinking buddies. Must be a teacher thing.

 

[F1 fan]

I had a dodgy teacher like that. He always reeked of booze and to quote Bill Bailey, he was like an "uncontrolled ball of fury". We would be in the classroom, waiting for the teacher to arrive. Talking with our friends and he would walk in, slam the door shut and scream "Sit down and shut the **** up".

One day, he stormed into the classroom and said "shut up. Now, write this down in your notepads. A cat is kicked off a cliff. The cliff is one thousand meters high. The cat weighs 5 kilos. How long does it take for the cat to die?"

We all burst out laughing. Scary thing is, he seemed like the kind of guy who would do that.

 

[W3H5]

My physics teacher was the same F1 fan, would show up in yesterdays shirt stinking like a brewery. Funny thing was, when I left school and became a frequent drinker I would see him in the pub almost every night. We would talk about astrophysics and stuff and it turned out he was a really, really smart guy, well too clever for senior school level physics, but his alcoholism put a stop to him achieving anything worth while. Shame.

 

[Submerged]

er......I....wouldn't....know......

To be honest Submerged, I've done this before but not in the afternoon.
Woken up after a rough nights sleep with serious stiffness bordering on evil pain and phoned in about an hour before class.

Look at the brighter side, it's quids in for you and not them, plus if they drop their position you might get even more work from the co-ordinator.

Its not the fact that she rang 40 minutes before the lesson, its the fact that the lesson was at 4pm. Every day, its from 4pm onwards. Everyone knows that in this leisure centre.

So in my mind, if you have any doubt that are quite serious about not potentially going to work, ideally you would inform the co-ordinator asap so that they can plan for that and contact a cover teacher to be prepared to go if required. Then if the worst happened, you got a backup plan and it doesn't matter and the cover teacher knows about the lesson and can expect what level of students they can expect. Its harsh when you get informed 30 minutes before the lesson and have to spend 20 mins driving, 2 minutes getting changed into wet teaching clothes, finding out the folder with the register in it and knowledge of the levels of the students and so on all before the lesson starts.

And the set up time.

This time, because it was so late, all the other lessons got re-arranged and filled with new teachers (as some had to be moved or cancelled).

I am not saying that it is not on or anything, its just that this particular leisure centre don't seem to have very conscientious staff at all, in terms of just suddenly saying: "Oh, I'm sick....." when it suits them... or so it seems.

And most of the lessons are the young kids variety, which is more challenging for the cover teacher to do, as these young kids tend to get a bit shy and scared of a big young man in a wetsuit that looks like a MASSIVE MAN MOUNTAIN to them (note: I'm 5ft 9. Weedy legs. Wide shoulders. No real muscle. Slim.). So its a toss-up between them crying their eyes out, running away from you, not listening to you because they've got the "rabbit in headlights look" or just wanna splash all the time.

Every time I teach there, I enjoy it. I like the teaching, its good and it has its challenges. Its just that the management at that particular place does leave a lot to be desired.

And I do know that real-life always throws up problems at the last possible minute, with very little warning.

Just.... try and give more warning.... being over-cautious is better (for cover attendance) would be better than being over-confident.

And the current co-ordinator is more than happy with my teaching skills and may consider asking me to do some longer term work in the next few weeks....

Ah, money is nice when you have it. Not so when you are working now, to guarantee a fatter paycheck in three weeks time!

 

[W3H5]

(note: I'm 5ft 9. Weedy legs. Wide shoulders. No real muscle. Slim.)

Something that grinds my gears....

From what you're saying sound like we kind of have similar build types. I'm very slim but 6ft 1 with it. My shoulders aren't huge but moderate and my legs are like twig until the thighs where they look like fire extinguishers on steroids (from the uphill riding).

People are always commenting on how 'skinny' I am. Compared to most westerners I am slim, yes, but my metabolism is in a class of it's own. I burn energy slower than anything I can imagine that isn't a Galapagos tortoise yet eating 4000cal a day won't see me gain weight unless I ride it onto the muscle.

Is it jealousy on the part of these commenters, concern or just plain curiosity? I don't know.

I generally don't take it offensively as I'm not unhealthy to the death camp extent but just lack a bit of bulk and need a new liver. I'm a lean, mean, lightning quick machine. Aerodynamic is the term I mostly use.

I used to box for a hobby, South-paw, 55kg at the time. Could only spa because anyone bigger than me in a bout was too slow to land one....generally. Saying that, if they did, I'm sure it would be catastrophic to my body. I doubt my head would feel anything with a skull like a dinosaur!

EDIT: I've got a movie lined up so I don't roam the whole forum talking drunken anecdotes when the beer gets me merry. Still only 2 bottles down.

 

[itsbenjibrand]

How intense the Club 'M' races are in GT4. My heart is about to jump out of my chest. Its gear grinding fun.

 

[Submerged]

Find some creatine and hit the weights. Or even, just do some circuit body weight training and use creatine supplements.

They were the ones that really gave me some mass and definition (you need to drink a ton of water) after trying for a long time with swimming and weights to get some muscle on my body to improve my speed and power.

Creatine does make you feel like you have a lot of energy after a session and when you do power work, you feel like you can properly EXPLODE like a bullet out of a gun. You do need to drink water, increased risk of cramps and also the supplement retains water in the muscles very well (gives an impression of bigger muscles/mass).

Although, whey protien would be better....

And the creatines used to be a gear grinder for me because I would get the feeling of intense power and speed... stop using it and it would feel a ton harder....