Letters to People I Hate

Annual Credit Report Request Service

PO Box 105283

Atlanta, GA 30348-5283

May 1, 2011

Dear Dickbags,

            If you extend people the ability to view their free credit report then you need to also provide them with the time to review said reports. My session timed out before I had a chance to fully view the information. Each agency has a different set up and if I haven’t looked at my report in a while it takes time to find/read all of the information I have available.

            I know you have no control over the differences in these websites, but you do control how long I have to look at them. I had no idea there would be a time limit and was pissed when I learned that I had exceeded your arbitrary restriction. What is it anyway? Ten minutes total?

I also had no way to compare information from all three reports at once. To go to the next reporting agency I had to return to your mediocre website first. By the time I printed the information I thought was relevant from two of the agencies I was no longer logged in to your shitty system.

            I was able to fill in my information again and view the final report but unable to look at the previous ones for a proper comparison. The information I had printed was of some use, but I do not have all of the information I would like to have had. Information I have access to once a year unless I want to pay.

            I understand that you help provide a free service, but that doesn’t give you permission to do a piss poor job. I would have had to pay to get the actual credit score anyway, so it is by no means a full description of my credit history.

            Your comments system is of course broken and you have no phone number for inquiries or complaints. I am sure this letter will do no good and I will probably not receive a response until a year has passed and I will be able to view my reports again anyway.

Sincerely,

Kelly

Dear free gift wrap girl,

You called the store today and asked if we had complimentary gift wrap during the holidays. I informed you that we offer free gift wrap all year round and there would be a table devoted to wrapping closer to Christmas. You asked if you could bring something into the store to be wrapped. I asked you to clarify.

“Can I bring stuff in for you guys to wrap? Like can I bring in presents?”

Uh, no. I told you we only wrap items we’ve sold. You were not pleased.

“Well that’s dumb.” 

I apologized for the inconvenience and told you we sold gift wrap in the store.

“Well can I come to the store and buy something there and then have you wrap something else?”

No. You would still be asking us to wrap an item from another store. That is a stupid question. At this time in the conversation I had a customer in the store waiting to ask me a question. I wanted to stop talking to you.

“So, I can’t like, buy something there and have you wrap something else? I’m still buying something in your store. Can’t you just wrap a different gift?”

I repeated that we can “unfortunately” only wrap items we sell in the store. Then I glanced at the customer in front of me to let her know I would be with her shortly. She laughed at what I had told you. I gave a slight eye roll while you yammered on and on.

“Well could you wrap both of the things? Like what I bought there and another gift if they’re for the same person?”

I repeated the very easy to understand fact that we ONLY wrap items we’ve sold from OUR store. The customer laughed and gave me an eye roll of her own. She thought you were an idiot too.

You were pissed.

“Well then I guess I won’t be buying anything from your store then,” you said and hung up.

Oh no, you won’t be buying the cheapest item in the store and then unloading a car full of presents for us to wrap for free? Fuck! I really screwed the store out of business today, didn’t I? Don’t be so goddamn lazy. That conversation should not have taken so long. Truly, that conversation should never have happened in the first place. I am not a fan of the “It never hurts to ask” policy. It hurts me down to my very soul when I have to explain a simple concept to a cheap ass customer while a paying customer waits for assistance.

Wrap your presents in newspaper and call yourself a hipster, just be sure to leave me alone.

Sincerely,

Kelly

Dear Matthew DiBenedetti,

I walked past your book in the store the other day and I got all excited. It’s called “I Hate Everything” and when I saw it I let out a girlish squeal. It seemed perfect for me, I hate everything too! I was going to read it, and buy it, and we could be lifelong friends.

Then I opened the book and was instantly disappointed. It’s amazingly stupid. I know I write letters to people I hate, but I have reasons, and arguments, and humor. Your book just has one liners about things you hate. Like how there’s no good place to pick your nose. WTF? Pick your nose at home when no one else is around. Problem solved, jackass. Your book is a cheap knock-off of Shit My Dad Says. That book has a guy hating everything, and it’s fucking hilarious. It has a story and a place on the bestsellers list. Your book is made up of things an old man would mumble to his nurse as he fades away and dies.

At first your cover was funny - a rainbow, a cute penguin, a bright yellow smiley face - but it got old after two seconds. Ohhh, irony, how fucking original. I hope your book gets lost in the humor section and then sent back to the publisher when no one buys it.

I may have equal hatred for the idiot who wrote a review for your book on Amazon. It was “funny and an easy read”, really? What humor book isn’t an easy read? Are Dave Barry’s sentences so long you forget how they started by the time you hit the period? He said he couldn’t stop turning the pages, it’s not a difficult task to fly through a book when there are an average of 9 words on a page. 

You’re ruining the art of proper hate. It requires technique and finesse. You aren’t providing a funny “slant on those everyday events we often overlook but are just plain Funny!” (sic), you’re a crotchety old bald guy one step away from talking about how airplane food sucks. Maybe you do “write” about that in the book, I didn’t have the same page turning compulsion as your rave reviewer.

I hope next time you’re driving and picking your nose you do get rear-ended and your finger lodges somewhere in your brain rendering you unable to type. That way I won’t have to see “Everything Else I Hate” six months from now.

Sincerely,

Kelly

Dear book flippers, 

Really this is how you choose to impact the world? People are starving, no food, no water certainly no books to read. You live in a place where you are lucky enough to have books to read, even if you borrow them from the library. You can use them to learn about different things, to vicariously live through other people in their adventures, to connect with well written characters. All of this reading is bound to give you some opinions on what you like and don’t like about books. You will certainly gain opinions about what you like and don’t like about other people and what other people read.

I, for one, do not like Nicholas Sparks books and correspondingly, I am not a great fan of or friends with people who adore his writing. But for me it stops there. For you, you book flippers, who feel oh so powerful and almighty in your opinion, you feel it is ABSOLUTELY necessary to show the world what you think about a certain book and possibly make it harder for someone who adores that book to find it. You feel the need to flip the book to its back cover - hiding the front so that it’s difficult to see which book it is. This is your powerful (and passive aggressive) hate? It is SO goddamn obnoxious.

The people who turn the books back around (you didn’t think they turned themselves did you?) are the book store workers. Like me, jackass. It’s not the authors or the readers. I have enough tasks to occupy my time and I don’t need to spend twenty minutes rotating all of the Stephenie Meyer books back to their original position. Your passive aggressive actions cannot make you feel empowered, what is the point? There isn’t one.

I can see you being the type of person who has a lot of time on your hands. You would be bored and think to drive to the mall, remove every book in a section (say 200 books), then place them back on the shelf with the pages out instead of the spine out. I’m sure you’re unemployed. If I found out you had an interview I would take the day off and tell your interviewer about your fucked up past time. You hate a book/author. I get it. I hate people too, right now it’s you.

Is it some sort of cause? You want books you deem poorly written or inappropriate off the shelves? Turning the sex books around doesn’t make people not want to buy sex books. It makes booksellers swear like sailors and look around for someone to set on fire.

You want a cause? How about the destruction of the rainforest for fucks sake!? Honestly when was the last time you and your damn opinions thought about the rainforest? Look at how many question marks you are making me use. It’s fucking ridiculous. Think of all those tress and unknown species dying slow, painful deaths, you could care about that. In fact I don’t care what you decide to have opinions about, just do more than make my job harder.

I love it when people have strong opinions, like me on this subject, but really you’re going to use up all your angry energy to turn some books around? Hate Nicky Sparks and Stephi Meyer all you want. Write them a fucking letter, they don’t know you turn their books around. Organize a protest about shitty books, volunteer at a school and get kids to read quality books, have a hunger strike and don’t eat until your local book store removes all the titles you don’t like. Then you can die your own slow, painful death. Remember the rainforest?

In the meantime take your passive aggressive grumpy little hands off of the books and find something else to look do. 

Sincerely,

Tiffany (and Kelly)

***A few spoiler alerts for summer show finales, deal with it***

Dear producers and writers,

Let me just say that I was going to watch your show next season for sure. You didn’t have to “kill” main characters in the season finale. 

White Collar - I didn’t think you were going to have Neal get shot in his apartment. I figured that chick he was hanging out with was a good guy and you were building the suspense a little heavy handedly, but I wasn’t concerned. Even with the slow motion purse reaching. “OMG! What if she pulls out a gun!?” did not cross my mind. I wasn’t concerned because I thought you were better than that. Then you shot Mozzie. Why? I promise I will tune in next season, I was already going to watch the show. I like the show. I do not like senseless shooting of adorable sidekicks.

Rizzoli & Isles - You shot Rizzoli. Okay, Rizzoli shot herself. In a pretty badass way. It was very Die Hard 4. A little too Die Hard 4 to be honest. Enough sentence fragments. I was going to watch this show too. Miami is sooo over, I’m on to the Boston shows. I really liked this show, I thought it was a girlie cops show but my husband thought it was dark and creepy. I think it can be both and I adore it. I do not adore TWO characters being shot and dying in the finale. That’s right, I didn’t forget about the other Rizzoli you shot. One wasn’t enough, you have to pretend to kill of two characters. Of course the other Rizzoli is the title character’s little brother, he’s kind of an adorable sidekick.

Gossip Girl - Chuck? Really? You shot him in Prague or somewhere protecting the gorgeous engagement ring he bought for Blair. I know this isn’t a recent season finale, it’s from the Spring, but it still irritates me. I like Gossip Girl, don’t love it, it’s more of a guilty pleasure show. But I was planning on watching again. Don’t shoot people.

Here’s why:

We know the main characters you shot won’t die. Maybe they’ll be in the hospital. Maybe other characters will think they are dead and their true feelings will come out. But they won’t die.

Unless it’s Kal Penn going to work in DC. But suicide is different. And that episode sucked.

Prove me wrong and have these people die. Mozzie won’t get found and poor Neal will have another breakdown because everyone he loves is dying. Change Rizzoli & Isles to just Isles. Kate Gosline did it, screw the title character, so long as you have one of them you’re good to go. I already know Chuck lives. I wasn’t worried about him and I’m not worried about the other “fatalities”. It’s a stupid cliffhanger that we all see coming. Stop it.

Sincerely,

Kelly 

Dear crabby neighbor,

Well, well, well, I thought I would have to search for an asshole for today’s letter, but you found me. Thanks?

I was mulching our new flowerbed when a police car rolled up and parked in front of my car. My car was parked in my front lawn inches from the street because we don’t have a wide street here. We also don’t have curbs or sidewalks. The officer asked if the car was mine and would I please move it into the driveway (where the pile of mulch was currently residing) because a neighbor had complained. Really?

He then asked if we had had someone come out to speak to us before regarding the parking situation. I said no and told him that we had a couple of parties and some officers had come by then about noise but had said nothing about parking. They also said we weren’t being too loud. 

I’m pretty sure you called about the noise/fight you said broke out that there was no evidence of because it didn’t happen. You are way too picky. My husband gives his co-worker a ride and he parks on the lawn so he doesn’t block me in. If this bothers you, come talk to me. I would say speaking to me is easier than speaking to the police, but you probably have their number on speed dial. You seem like that kind of person. I hate that kind of person.

But the cop seemed nice, so I pulled in the car and continued to landscape. Then I saw that the cop had driven down two houses and was talking to a group of people in the front lawn. I was too busy being irritated with you to worry about what they were in trouble for. It turns out they’re nice. The neighbor drove by to point out your house and say you were probably who called the police about all of this nonsense. He also told me that the police officer told him (hearsay, I know) we were not friendly and threw a lot of parties. WTF? We have lived here a year and had two parties.

Two.

We told the neighbors on both sides of us about the parties well before they happened. One set of neighbors came out to the party and enjoyed themselves. The neighbor who talked to the cop said we weren’t loud at all and he had noticed only one party.

You need to get a life. Loosen up a bit, take the “No No” dog pooping sign off your lawn and stop sweeping the street. Talk to us before calling the police. The car wasn’t on cinderblocks. We don’t have trash cluttering up the place. We cut down the dead tree and are making improvements. If we park on the street when we have people over it will drastically narrow the road. That seems unsafe to me, but if you would prefer it, fine.

If you keep up this behavior my friends are going to start volunteering to poop on your front lawn. I’ll be hard pressed to find a reason to stop them.

Sincerely,

Kelly

Dear Stephen King and Dean Koontz,

I shelve the horror section at work and generally I like you two. Sure King is way better than Koontz, but you both write horror as opposed to the vampire lust fest that is Laurell K. Hamilton. I’ve read your books and have seen the movies, I couldn’t watch “Scrubs” when it first came out because Dr. Cox still scared the shit out of me from his stint in “Intensity”. I guess I’m trying to say I like what you do.

I even own some books. My mom is trying to get me all of the Stephen King books. She buys them at thrift stores and flea markets and the old school dust jackets are great. Since I own these books and I’m generally described as cheap, it’s safe to say other people own them too. Which mean you guys have money. With all of the movie deals you have loads of money. I believe “shit tons” is the technical term.

And now you’re greedy. You have both started re-releasing books. I’ve shelved the section for a little over a year. First came the 2010 edition of “Danse Macabre” by Stephen King. You had added a new forward. Okay, cool. I didn’t have any versions of the book, mass market ($7.99) or quality paperback ($14.99) so I happily put it on display and made sure one was on the shelf.

Then came “Cujo” for $4.99. It was a special price and of course it was printed on the spine, so I got to shelve two copies of the same book at different prices. People have enough trouble trying to determine if the content of the mass market and quality paperback is the same (hint: it is), why are you making it more difficult by having a cheaper mass market? 

Then you pulled out another “new” book, King. I got a hardcover and quality paperback, set to “hit the shelves” on the same day. The book was “On Writing” and the cover was black and white. I already had this book on the shelf. It has a creepy picture of a cellar door surrounded by dirt and flowers. I own this book. You put out another version, so I checked to see if it was a “new” edition with a bullshit 2010 introduction. Nope. How about a 2010 epilogue, maybe a little info on what you’re up to right now. Nope.

It had a new cover. That’s it. What the fuck? Now I have three copies of the SAME BOOK taking up room on the small amount of space I have allotted for horror. 

Koontz, don’t think you’re getting off easy. You are filling the shelves with “new” mass markets. We’ve got “Your Heart Belongs to Me” and “House of Thunder” in duplicate. “The Taking” is your newest. The book came out in 2004. Now I have it on the “new” mass market table and next to its “old” partner on the shelf because you felt the need to re-release it. AND to make matters worse you decided to not only change the cover art, but to make it in the large mass market size. These new books are slightly taller than the usual mass market books and $2 more expensive. Two dollars for a quarter inch of book. Your entire Frankenstein series is in tall mass market. I hate them.

Our shelves were made to fit the normal mass markets with ease. The tall ones fit, but don’t come off the shelf without a little effort. People have to tug at the spine to remove them from their place. The tugging pulls at the paper covering the spine. This paper rips. No one wants to spend $9.99 on a book with a torn cover, so we have damaged books we have to send back to the publisher. All because you two wanted more money on anniversary editions. You two (especially you, Stephen) write long books. Thick books. Tomes. Epics. You take up enough space on the shelves already. How about sticking with one style per book from now on.

And if you’re going to re-release something, write a new goddamn intro. It’s the least you can do.

Sincerely,
Kelly 

Dear Psych producers,

I miss the pineapple.

For the uninitiated Psych is a hilarious show about an observant goof-off who pretends to be a psychic to help the Santa Barbara police solve crimes. While the criminal element isn’t particularly scary or clever, the show is great, with lots of inside jokes and repeating themes. Every episode, along with crazy names for Gus, Shawn lusting after Juliet, and Lassiter drawing his gun, there is a pineapple. Maybe someone was eating one, or offering one as a gift, or using one as a conversation starter. Then you decided to change things.

Suddenly finding the pineapple became a game. You could win stupid prizes by seeing the hidden pineapple in one of the scenes and texting usa network/psych. When did TV become something you have to work for? I loved seeing the pineapple in each episode. Now I have no idea where it is. And it’s hardly a pineapple anymore, you have pineapples on a shirt, or a pineapple statue. I hate it. They don’t even talk about the pineapple anymore. You took away all the fun. I want to sit back and enjoy the show. You removed an inside joke and encouraged people to start stupid websites devoted to pineapple finding.

I don’t want my TV to be interactive. I’m not a toddler watching Blue’s Clues or Dora the Explorer. I’m not going to shout, “Behind you! There’s the pineapple!” I just want to watch a comedy and chuckle a bit. Are producers so desperate for ratings and visits to their shows’ websites they have to make watching the show into a contest? What happened to doing things without a cellphone in your hand or a laptop next to you on the couch? I’m relaxing at the end of the day and thanks to my DVR I rarely watch a show as it’s recording, so even if I do find the pineapple, I doubt I’m getting my prize four days later.

Bring back all the parts of the show I love. What’s next, instead of Shawn giving Gus a nickname there will be a long pause and we have to text in a funny name ourselves? Stop with the interactive crap and give me back my delicious fruit.

Sincerely,

Kelly

Dear readers,

Oh no! Another skipped Sunday letter and a very late Tuesday letter, which isn’t really a letter at all, because I love you guys. Apparently I cannot hate on a schedule. Yes, I tried to write the letters in advance and have them post on the days I promised, but I ran out of people to hate. 

That is only partly true. But the letters are getting redundant. Dumb customers asking to talk to a specific manager, then leaving the store for 30 minutes, and asking all grumpily when they get back, “Well, is she here?” WTF? No, she came over here and then went back to work. You LEFT THE STORE!! Was she supposed to follow you to the Gap? Did you want us to call security and ask them to page you? Because I’m not sure they do that. I’m not sure what they do.

This gets old. Horrible drivers gets old too. Even the guy who stopped in the middle of the road when he saw the hot girls handing out free Monster at a gas station so he could turn right from the middle lane after traffic cleared. 

So what’s an adorably witty blogger to do? This is where you come in. Send me your crappy people stories and I will write them a letter. You can even print it out and mail it to them. I would love to hear any follow up stories on that course of action.

If you send a story (short or long, specific or vague “I hate when…” complaints) I will do my best to write a letter. I will sign it “Sincerely Kelly on behalf of (Your Name)” and I will finally get some new material.

Post in the comments or email letterstopeopleihate@gmail.com

Do it now or else you will have to deal with another dry spell. 

Sincerely,

Kelly

Dear morons trying to turn left,

There were four of you on my way home today. Everyone driving my route home was lucky not to be involved in a head on collision. The first one of you I encountered decided it would be fun to turn left from the lane next to the left turn lane. While a driver was in the left turn lane, turning left. You tried to turn into the left of the two lanes in the cross road and were dismayed to find a car there. Swerving occurred and then we all went on our merry way. I sped past you, worried you might change lanes with no notice and run me off the road.

The next two idiots had separate cars, but were making the same bad choice. The road we were driving on was four lanes, two heading in each direction. You two were driving east while I was driving west. Then you both decided to turn left, a common decision for the night. Unfortunately, you picked the left lane on my side of the road, mistaking it for a middle turn lane. It’s not. It was actually one of the two oncoming traffic lanes. Oncoming as in head on. It is not a left turn lane. There is a left turn lane in the general area, and I can see the second moron blindly following the first, but you are both still idiots. We all had to get in the right lane and drive around you. The people who wanted to use the left turn lane got to make a sharp turn into the actual left turn lane after passing you jackasses.  

The fourth person making a big fail out of a left turn might have been the best. By this time I was driving on a four lane one way road. One block south is a four lane road going in the opposite direction. The neighborhood roads connecting the two are not one way roads. You were in the wrong lane, it seems to be happening a lot today. I’ve been driving before and realized the I’m about to pass the road I wanted to turn down. I try to get over and failing that, go up a block or so and loop around. This is because I have a brain in my head and I like to use it from time to time. You are different. You had to get over two lanes to turn properly. Since you didn’t have time to do this you came to a stop. At 6:20 while people are trying to get home. So yes, we were speeding a bit and going between 35 and 45 mph. And you were stopped. After enough people had passed those unfortunate enough to be stuck directly behind you, you turned left. Across three lanes of traffic. Goddamn drivers.

My husband drives 90 minutes to work and even he thinks my 25 minute drive is horrible.

Sincerely,

Kelly