u/BusyBullet

I stopped by Goodwill on the way to work this morning and I was there at 9:56. They open at 10:00 am.

There was an older man and woman waiting for the place to open and the man loudly said“ “Four minutes! Four minutes!”.

I didn’t respond verbally, just nodded so he said it again and then “They don’t open for four more minutes.” I really just wanted his loud ass to be quiet so I thanked him.

Then he starts trying to make small talk by looking at my legs and saying “You don’t get out in the sun much, do you?”

I responded that I try to avoid it because it can wreck your skin. Then I noticed his leathery old face that looked like a well worn baseball mitt that had been buried under the porch for a few years.

He started blabbering on about something and then went back to my lack of a sun tan.

I had had enough and told him again that I try to avoid spending too much time in the Sun. I then said I also try to avoid making unsolicited comments about strangers and their appearance.

I guess he got the hint because he looked a little huffy but at least I’d have some peace quiet until the place opened, or so I thought.

He looked past me and loudly yelled “Get out of that tree!”.

I didn’t take the bait. I didn’t look or anything. A couple of minutes later another boomer walked up and the first boomer said “Who were you praying to? The clouds?”

The guy looked confused and explained that he was just smelling the azaleas and now the conversation is about whether azaleas have a smell.

The azalea smelling guy didn’t want to be in this conversation any more than I did so I turned to him and said “You’re out here just trying to smell some flowers and you got some guy who doesn’t even know they have a scent yelling at you about it.”

I was so happy when the doors opened and I could get away from this nut job.

In the 90s I worked at an office where we handled employee benefits for a Fortune 500 company.

One afternoon they showed us a short film about the early days of Fed Ex. In the film, one of the their delivery vehicles was stuck on top of a mountain and was snowed in.

All roads were closed and the packages were going to be held up for an undetermined number of days so two employees rented a helicopter and flew to the truck and got the packages back to their distribution center and everything got there on time.

The film was all about going to extra mile to get the job done.

Well, we got back to our desks and the afternoon mail delivery hadn’t happened yet. Usually it was there around 2:30 pm and it was almost 4:00.

We had a couple of urgent inter-office packages from corporate that we needed to finish our work. It’s boring stuff but just know that the high-ups on the Fortune 500 company’s office in New York always threw a hissy fit when these particular reports didn’t get done on this day of the week.

Apparently, it held up whole departments and caused huge problems on their end.

Anyway, our company occupied three buildings in an office park so I called someone I knew in the next building over and she said the mail delivery was there but it was hung up in their mail room because one of the two people that sort mail was out sick that day and the other guy was way behind and wouldn’t be able to get to it until the morning.

I went to my boss’s office and said “Hey, the afternoon inter-office mail drop off hasn’t happened and it won’t happen until to tomorrow. I called over there and they said I can come get it as long as I sign off that I received it. I’ll be back in about ten minutes.”

Note that the building was about 750 feet from our building and they are connected by walkways.

He lost his mind “We can’t have our employees going over to the next building, we need you to finish the reports.” (The same reports that could not be finished until the mail packet was received).

I explained to him that we need the mail to do the reports but he was adamant that we can’t have our people doing someone else’s work so I told him I would direct any complaint calls to him.

So he got some calls the next day and I didn’t rush to get the work done.

I used to work as a cashier at a grocery store and I hated when women would pull wet bills out of their sweaty bra and hand them to me.

If I wanted to interact with your bodily fluids on a hot summer day I’d ask for your number.

My new band has a private party gig coming up and the guitar player wants us to use my Horizon monitor wedges.

Problem is, his PA puts out 800 watts and he says it doesn’t have a monitor out. Only A and B.

I haven’t seen his PA in a couple of years so I don’t remember much about it.

I’ve asked him to get me the specs. My wedges are either 140 or 190 RMS - I need to look at them to remember which one. Also, if I remember correctly they are 8 ohms.

He believes that since his PA “doesn’t put out 800 watts all the time” we will be fine.

My not completely informed opinion is that we’ll F up my speakers.

Assuming my numbers above are correct and assuming my worries are based in reality, how do I explain to him that it won’t work?

Or explain to me that it will work.

Edit for clarity:

He has an entire PA that we have used for several gigs - head, speakers etc.

He just wants to use my wedges as monitors but I think his wattage is too high.

No, I can’t Google the equipment because I don’t know what brand and model PA he has.

No, I don’t need to rent speakers or a PA. We have a complete working PA system. He just suddenly wants monitors.

No, we don’t really even need monitors for this gig.

Pulled my wedges out of storage this morning and they are rated for 140 watts RMS. I still don’t know the actual rating for his system.

I’m going to tell him if we suddenly need monitors then we’ll shop for some monitors that will work with his setup.

I met this guy many years ago when he wanted to work for me and get backstage at Welcome To Rockville.

I clocked him as a complete weirdo and noped out of that tomfoolery pretty quickly.

Two examples:

1. I bought a spray nozzle attachment for one of my garden hoses at a big box hardware store. It wasn’t the same as the one that I was replacing but it looked fine.

I took it home and it was anemic. The thing just spritzed water out in a weak stream no matter what setting I had it on. I connected my other working one and it worked just fine. I connected both sprayers to my other hose and the results were the same so I took the new one back.

The guy at the store tried to tell me that my water pressure was just too low. I explained that I tried both sprayers on both hoses and the new one just wasn’t pushing out a significant amount of water.

He stuck with his low water pressure explanation but refunded me anyway.

2. Playing a show and hooking up my vocal microphone only to have no sound.

I swapped the cable - nothing. Swapped two different mics and the cable in every possible iteration and still got nothing.

The guitarist we hired for this one show insisted that all three microphones and both cables must have failed since rehearsal two days prior.

Oh, and everything worked in another channel in the PA system but yeah, it was all of my mics and cables suddenly not working.

Look, I understand you want to help but please try to think rationally and make some kind of sense.

Five pieces of musical equipment are not likely to suddenly fail at the exact same time and my water pressure isn’t going to increase and decrease in perfect time with my swapping out spray nozzles.

I’ve been skeptical of AI music but seeing the massive support it’s getting here, I think the world is ready for an AI music festival.

I spent years working in the music festival industry and I’ve also put on live sci-fi and comic cons and other similar events.

I can get a decent sized outdoor venue and I have access to people on the music business.

We can get some financial backers if we can show them that this has a chance of this kind of festival succeeding.

Post videos of you performing your AI songs at shows in front of a live audience to show them how it can work and let’s get this thing rolling.

You’re watching a show or film that you enjoy but then something happens that doesn’t make sense or it’s just lazy writing or whatever so you say something like “Why do the Klingons suddenly look different?” or “Wait a minute…Connor McLeod and the Sean Connery character actually knew each other before and they’re from another planet…?”

Somebody will inevitably say “It’s just a movie”, like you’re just supposed to accept garbage writing, production limitations etc. that take you out of the story.

I understand when someone delves way too deep in Elvish philosophy and takes things to an extreme but when a show can’t get the basics right it’s puzzling.

Then someone else wants you to just ignore the fact that the writers have chosen to ignore every rule that have been working with from the beginning.

I guess they’d be totally cool with Columbo being a robot bounty Hunter from Mars with a sever peanut allergy for one episode and then never having that plot twist come up again.