I came into Pep Boys because it is just a few miles from my house. Recently I came to Pep Boys for tires and an oil change and received insane wait times and crap service. Like a fool, I came back for another oil change because I am in their system…or so I thought.

I drove up to their “Drive Up Service” area and waited for a service writer. And waited. And waited. And gave up, parked, and went in. The service guy was a bit testy and immediately said, “I’m busy. It’ll be a while.” I waited patiently in line and waited and waited. After about 10 minutes he asked me to wait outside and a service writer would meet me.

I went back out and waited by my truck and no one came. Another 10 minutes go by and I go back inside and wait in a line four people deep. Both service writers are on the phone and won’t even look up at the growing line.

One then says loudly, “our oil change guy is going to lunch so if you are waiting for an oil change it’ll be over an hour before we can get to you.” one guy leaves angry and the rest of us wait.

After another 15 minutes I get to the front and tell them I need an oil change and have a fleet card. This info is met with a sigh and reiteration of the lunch schedule of the one mechanic who knows how to change oil.

I know what you’re thinking, go somewhere else. The sad part is, the closest alternative is over 15 miles away and it would probably work out to be the same amount of time once I got there in traffic.

So I sit and wait in the “lounge” with uncomfortable chairs and some lady who is screaming into her cell phone and reading her mail to someone. “I’m approved for a credit card!” “I got something from Pam. You remember Pam. She was the one who’s sister died” and so on. She is waiting for a tow truck to come get her and tow her truck to the dealer. She is one of those people who let themselves get so fat that they need a walker and/or wheelchair and/or scooter to get around. This and her incessant yelling into her phone is grating on my nerves. So I wait…

One hour and fifteen minutes after I originally walked in and still my truck sits untouched in the Pep Boys parking lot. There are five mechanics and two cars in the garage. Mechanics stand around smoking and chatting with each other. I guess they are not savvy in oil change techniques so they have nothing but time.

Another customer has been here over four hours waiting on his alignment. He’s more pissed than I am. He says he’s not coming back again. I think I’ll make the drive and not let location be a deciding factor over service.

Hour two and the “oil change guy” is back from lunch. My truck just got pulled into the service bay. They finally finish. Total elapsed time for a “29 minute oil change”: 2 hours 45 minutes. Thanks for screwing another day for me Pep Boys.

There has to be a breaking point when it becomes okay to scream at beggars and panhandlers – using our outside voice, of course – to tell them that the only thing we can spare is the Employment section of a newspaper.

Guilt is nothing but life’s gag gift. It’s just an unfunny way for the universe to laugh at us for one thing or another. However there are some times when you can return that unwanted poorly wrapped swag bag. No one is – or should be – stupid enough to feel compelled to offer their hard earned funds to people whose hardest [and only] job is to beg for spare change. The average person would be more than happy to oblige sparing an ass whooping, but there’s not much one can buy with that.

“Dear Mr. & Mrs. Beggar, I wish I could help you this time but I really don’t want to.”

Seriously, enough is enough! As if watching those horribly sad Save the Children infomercials weren’t enough to guilt us into giving our last dime, here you come bombarding us with your liquor-stained breath as you attempt to make your sob stories even more saddening than the poor kids over in the mother land who suffer from kwashiorkor. And on top of it all, you come begging with an asking price! It’s no longer $.50. You ask for anything anywhere between $2.00 – $5.00. That’s just enough money to go out and by yourself a ½ or whole pint of gin, vodka, or any cheap brand of dark liquor.

With the economy the way it is now, who the hell can afford to make ends meet and buy your booze? Sure, you may want us to believe that you’re not an alcoholic but trust me, the smell of liquor seeping out of your pores is a dead give away! And you try to mask that scent with a heart wrenching, “Excuse me sir, can you help me buy a sandwich?” HELP YOU BUY??? What are you bringing to the damn table?

Look, don’t get me wrong. I’m not encouraging people to put a pad lock on their wallets and spray ‘Begger-Begone’ all over themselves like it’s some kind of insect repellant. What I am encouraging is for people to realize that they don’t have to be bamboozled into paying for someone else’s bump. Especially if they’re not at a nightclub getting someone all liquored up in hopes of getting lucky later on. Believe me, what you won’t give them, some poor, unsuspecting and obviously affluent fool will. Whether that fool is you or the person standing next to you, you can rest assured that it won’t be me! Even if I have to try really really hard to be tight with my change, I find comfort in knowing that 90% of any effort is getting started.

For more funny rants like this one, be sure to visit www.HottywoodHelps.com!

This post was submitted by Hottywood Helps.

The subway system isn’t just a land full of grumpy caffeine-deprived workaholics and disrespectful school-aged kids who curse out old people before stepping foot onto school grounds. It’s also a place where people go to get their purses snatched, where trains go to rest in the middle of rush hour and where the completely misunderstood accidentally fall into the train tracks. It could be quite a fun experience if you’re able to omit the violence, schedule delays, train collisions and hiked fares.

Even with all the chaos of the morning and afternoon rush and the uncertainty of your safety when night has covered the day sky, metro seems to be charging us more money to cover up their lack of proficiency in the safety and convenience of its riders. Personally I never took interest in this situation because I have pigeon wings on the soles of my shoes. It just so happened that as I was strolling along in a wrong place at a wrong time, one of my shoe wings was attacked by a savage stray alley cat, which of course caused temporary damage and is now preventing me from flying my ass to work just before the tardy bell sounds. But that’s a whole other story.

As I sat uncomfortably between the smelly old guy who donned white socks and black dress shoes and the woman who had cookie crumbs peeking at me from her cleavage, I learned something about myself. I learned that I’d probably be a little more open to poking my eyes out with a spork [half spoon-half fork] versus sitting on a hot ass train with a band of weirdos. Beam me up, Scottie. I don’t belong here!

Trying desperately not to punch the old guy in his big toe or stare at the woman’s chunky crumbed breasts, I dreaded the end of my metro experience as the voice from the loud speaker informed me that the escalators weren’t working at my destination point. Naturally, I thought this was a perfect end to a hellacious trip. “Dear Metro, you need to get this sh*t together.” It’s so hard to believe that a system so seasoned to perfection can be so damn flawed. And yet with broken wings, there I sit awaiting my doom, way below 6ft under. How fitting is that?

The underground ghetto, aka the subway, is a very unpredictable place. You never know what awaits you at the next station stop: an electrical fire; the country western polka group playing a small concert to uninterested spectators; the wino who hopped the metro gate or the employees who complain very loudly about their dead-end jobs. As entertaining as it may be to witness the sights of metro’s public access riders, no truer phrase comes to mind than that old saying that goes, “It’s a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.”

For more funny blogs like this one, be sure to check out www.HottywoodHelps.com!

This post was submitted by Hottywood Helps.

Today I went to Sombrero Mexican Food on W. Main St. in El Cajon, CA. Upon walking up to the register I notice that the cashier has her back to the restaurant and is gossiping with the drive-thru cashier. They proceed to yap and yap and yap for about 5 minutes before the cashier helping walk-up customers notices me. Denise, the cashier, turns and sees me and says snottily, “what do you want?”. I order my burrito and hand her my credit card. She takes it and asks to see ID. I show her my ID and she rips the paper receipt from the credit card machine and slaps it down on the counter with a pen and slides it toward me not saying a word. She really appears pissed that I interrupted her conversation by ordering my food. Silly me, it is a restaurant. What was I thinking?

Sombrero has awesome food and when I am in the area of one I usually stop in for lunch. This one will now be passed up so I can spare Denise the inconvenience of helping a customer.

This post was submitted by Steve Z..

The overhyped, overrated, overDRY “sandwich” didn’t kill me as expected.

That is all.

This post was submitted by DeShawn.

I reserved the location months ago without issue. On a Monday, a week before we were to arrive, Ashley from the marketing department/concierge department called me to confirm my stay, accommodations, and to see if there was anything she could do to make our upcoming stay better. I asked Ashley a few questions and she was very helpful. A major question I asked was whether or not we (as a family with kids) could watch the fireworks from the rooftop pool. Ashley confirmed that yes we could.

One week before we left, on the Friday before, I called Ashley again to RE-CONFIRM that we could watch the fireworks from the rooftop pool area with the kids. Once again, Ashley said, YES WE COULD WATCH THE FIREWORKS FROM THE ROOFTOP POOL AREA. She even went as far as to suggest that we get up early and get a cabana to the family can enjoy the day even more.

This is a week before mind you.

We arrive and all is good. The bell staff and valets are very helpful and nice when we arrive early. They get our baggage out of the car and store it for us and even suggest places nearby to hang out while we wait for our room to get ready. We come back when they tell us and wait in the overly long line to check in (even though we already pre-checked in) for 35 minutes. We check in and we are in our villa.

The villa is nice and decent size and more than good for our expectations. We get settled in and everything is nice. Then comes Independence Day.

I woke up at 5:30am in Vegas. You read that correctly. I woke up at 5:30am in Vegas. I got upstairs to the rooftop pool and brought coffee to accompany me while I sat and saved a cabana by the pool. I waited there for hours while the rest of my family slept because Ashley said it would be a good idea.

The rest of my family came up later that morning and spent time at the pool (3’ and pretty damn cold) and jacuzzi (not very hot). We spent all day there and had a blast. The view was perfect for the fireworks that were coming (Mandalay Bay Hotel and Flamingo Hilton and more) because we could see all hotels perfectly from our rooftop oasis.

Then it all came crashing to an abrupt halt. Security came through and told us that we couldn’t be in the pool area after 5pm unless we were grilling and everyone in our party was over 13 years old. My kids are 9, 5, and 1. We had to go. I informed them of what Ashley told me TWICE. It didn’t matter.

I called the security office and asked to speak to a supervisor or manager. I got a lackey who listened to my grievances and was understanding but said that all he knew was that 5pm was the rules…no matter what. The manager/supervisor I asked to return my call never happened.

Soon after, Carlos from the front desk called my cell phone to say that he heard about my “situation” from security and told me that this was all a misunderstanding on my part. Nice right. Customer service matters a lot at Polo Towers. I regurgitated my information from Ashley in marketing/concierge and what she recommended and my response was that I was misunderstood. I was misunderstanding the situation even though I checked and double checked.

Carlos was NO HELP AT ALL. He merely stated that he was sorry that I was unhappy and that was it. No attempt to rectify the situation or offer any suggestions to help save the now ruined 4th of July.

My kids don’t understand that we had to leave. They don’t understand that we were lied to. They don’t understand that we were misled. All they understand is that we didn’t get to see the fireworks. No fireworks. Nothing else.

Polo Towers screwed my family out of their Independence Day. This was supposed to be a great experience and it didn’t happen. Instead, we spent the night walking the insanely crowded Las Vegas Strip with three kids who kept asking, “Why can’t we stay at the pool, Daddy?”

Try explaining this to kids who had their hearts set on watching fireworks from a rooftop because their Dad said they would. I sincerely recommend that everyone boycott Polo Towers in Las Vegas. Diamond Resorts International and Polo Towers do not have their shit together and could honestly care less about anyone, especially kids on major holidays. Not cool.

This post was submitted by Steve Zanco.

I went to see Knight and Day with my wife last night. We had wanted to see a few other things, but the movie ticket seller dude highly recommended this movie over the others. I can only assume he gets a commission of some sort from ticket sales of the Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz Shatacular because it was a horrible movie of epic proportions. From the extremely drawn-out opening sequence to the chase scenes to the shoot-em-up scenes, the movie was predictable and made our skin crawl because of the cheesiness. This had to be a movie studio quota filler because it was by far the shittiest movie I have ever sat through. Ever.

My wife openly talked shit at the screen during the movie. She never does that. This movie pissed her off that much that she (normally a quiet and mellow woman) had to verbally berate the screen. Tom Cruise had to write this shit. He was in nearly every scene and kicked nearly every ass. The dude was impervious to bullets, explosions, and fists. Nothing stopped him and he had jokes and witty banter in every scene while dodging bullets and assassins.  We were so pissed we wanted to leave the theatre but were invested in it and paid $22.50 so we were staying. Needless to say we were more than pissed and raging about the time suck.

Overall, this movie was worse than Big Top Pee Wee. It was worse than Joe’s Apartment. It was even worse than Paul Blart Mall Cop. This movie made me hate Tom Cruise and envy him at the same time for now being on the Eddie Murphy level of high budget suck that he has become. I am sure he made his $30 million per picture and Cameron Diaz made her $10-$20 million. It will probably be #2 or #3 at the box office for a few weeks and make it all back. God Dammit!

Many older people in the theatre laughed and laughed at the cheesy lines thrown about by our hero and heroine. They didn’t see them all coming and thought the suave spy thing was great. Maybe I am the asshole here. Who knows. Bottom line: don’t go see this movie. Don’t support this shit. You will only be encouraging the studios to make more canned crap. You’re welcome in advance.

One of the days we were there, the housekeepers/cleaning crew came in while we were out. They gathered up the bed sheets and towels and exchanged them for fresh ones. During this routine cleaning, they took my daughter’s blankey that she has had since birth.

We called the front desk and they directed us to Lost and Found which was closed. This was the second to last day of our trip so we tried calling again when we were driving back out of town and got an answering machine. We left a message and didn’t hear anything back.

When we got back home, I called again only to be told that they are closed again. They directed me to the website where I found an email for Lost and Found. I emailed them and have yet to hear anything back.

It has now been a week and a half since we first called. I am guessing that the blankey is gone and that it is a lost cause at this point. It would have been nice for them to at least acknowledge my message and email and respond in some fashion. If it is lost, then we can cope. If we don’t know then my daughter still misses it when she goes to bed.

Excalibur gets the finger for their crappy service in this instance. I really hope they step it up. What if we had lost something more valuable, would they care then?

This post was submitted by Steve Z..

This was BP’s ad campaign in 1999. I doubt they had any idea how haunting and literal it would become. Tens of millions of gallons of oil have polluted the Gulf of Mexico since the spill and an estimated 800,000 gallons continue to spew into the Gulf daily. BP is now attempting a new idea to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico; cutting the pipe. Wait, what!?!

Their next brilliant idea is called LMRP, Lower Marine Riser Package, cap containment system. This has never been attempted in anything deeper than 200 feet of water. The pipe is over 5,000 feet below the surface. This is an exact, detailed plan that uses diamond-tipped blades to cut the pipe cleanly. This will, of course, force up to 20% more oil through the pipe into the Gulf as it will then be unobstructed. Sounds like a winner so far… Then, they will force hot water at the hole while attempting to place the cap on the pipe. This is a finely-tuned procedure that is relying on robots and machines controlled from the surface with little to no visibility by a team that has never done this before from such great depths. How can it possibly fail?

Color me cynical, but really BP??? Really, U.S. Government??? This is the best you got? Apparently, there is an ever-expanding crack team of scientists, professors, consultants, military personnel, Government officials, and movie directors that are brainstorming options. Yep, you caught that correctly, and movie directors.

James Cameron has been added to the team of brainstormers. The Avatar director has offered his expertise in underwater filming and his personal submarines to help the effort. Maybe he can come up with something that will work…

There are many ideas from many people. None of which have ever been attempted from such great depths, so they are all shots in the dark (literally). Because of the extreme cold at 5,000 feet and the ever-decreasing visibility, the efforts are all falling short of their mark. As a result of this continued failure, BP is single handedly destroying our ecosystem one day at a time.

The economy in the Gulf was heavily damaged by Katrina and the levees failing as well as the housing crisis. Now, with this mess, the fishing and shrimping in the area has come to a halt and may take years to be repaired. The oil spill and the other chemicals used to disperse the spilled oil are destroying wildlife and aquatic life in the area. In an area so heavily reliant on seafood and the fishing industry, this is especially devastating. Many people in the area will continue to eat seafood that is tainted by the oil and chemicals that will result in future health issues.

There appears to be no end in sight to this eco-fuck-up of BP. To put the spill into perspective, www.ifitwasmyhome.com has made a map where you can enter your area and see what the spill would look like if it happened where you live. It is a real eye opener. I hope someone can come up with a plan to fix this before it is too late.

I am trying to write a paper for school but my stupid laptop PC keeps downloading updates and takes forever to reboot. The damn thing ALWAYS has a friggin’ update or updates. It takes almost 10 minutes to start the Piece of Crap up and when I need to restart because of more updates, it takes even longer.

I am trying to use it for school but it is counter-productive. I am spending more time waiting than typing. Every other computer I own is a Mac and there are no issues with that shit. If there is an update, it happens in the back end and doesn’t interrupt my work. If I need to restart, it happens later and not immediately. I can get stuff done without being held under arrest of Windows.

If I didn’t need the program to write my papers in the ridiculous format APA, I would use my Mac’s. That is another rant in itself though. If more software would be made for Mac, then we would all live in a far more productive world.

This post was submitted by Steve Z..