The pet peeve thread

[oblong]

My favorite local deli was bought in January of this year. The owner died in 2023 and the kids didn’t want to keep it. No problem there.  But now the new owner is a young guy and is on the surface keeping it the same but now their social media is about getting the influencers. They are hyping up DoorDash and uber eats. The counter is littered with business cards from local people. That cheapens it to me. This is a place that’s been around since I was in high school. It’s a legend among Ford workers at lunctime. And frankly any “infuencer” not familiar with this place is an amateur foodie.  This guys is acting like he discovered something.  And I know they have changed suppliers because the pickles are different. The napkins are. Even the wrap on my sandwich is a little off.   I’m giving them a few more weeks before I bail on my Tuesday tradition.  This was literally my favorite thing to eat all week.  
 

 

[CMRivdogs]

38 minutes ago, oblong said:

My favorite local deli was bought in January of this year. The owner died in 2023 and the kids didn’t want to keep it. No problem there.  But now the new owner is a young guy and is on the surface keeping it the same but now their social media is about getting the influencers. They are hyping up DoorDash and uber eats. The counter is littered with business cards from local people. That cheapens it to me. This is a place that’s been around since I was in high school. It’s a legend among Ford workers at lunctime. And frankly any “infuencer” not familiar with this place is an amateur foodie.  This guys is acting like he discovered something.  And I know they have changed suppliers because the pickles are different. The napkins are. Even the wrap on my sandwich is a little off.   I’m giving them a few more weeks before I bail on my Tuesday tradition.  This was literally my favorite thing to eat all week.  
 

 

Not in the same boat but our favorite local winery changed hands about two years ago. The owner and founder was in his 80s and it seemed his sons had no interest in continuing the enterprise. It was and still is a nice upscale place with a small hotel and nice restaurant. It was also a nice place to hang out on a Friday afternoon or take out of town guests to lunch or dinner.

The principal owner is an investor type, he owns another winery on the other end of the state that is just starting to produce wine. He also owns the minor league hockey team in Norfolk. It's being managed by a former Marriott resort manager in Virginia Beach. It's all well and good, the atmosphere has changed however. The original winemaker also left, I'm not sure if he was pushed out or left on his own. He had been there since Patrick opened the winery in the 1980s.

The new guys want to do big events, prices have gone up, and things like the member tasting room and the outdoor tasting areas have changed. As have the members tastings. That started to change near the end of Mr Duffler's ownership and instead of informative talks from the winemaker it seems that most of those who attend now just want to see how much they can consume.  
  We ended up not renewing our membership, we had too much wine on stock anyway. The wine maker has moved to a winery closer to us and it will be interesting to see what direction that place heads.

[oblong]

I understand that part of the change could be a reaction to needing more revenue. In the case of my deli and with most small businesses that change hands… the new owner has to cover two nuts now. The purchase plus themselves.  Someone spends a lifetime building something and they need their payoff, rightfully so.  Just doing the same old thing might not be enough.  

[oblong]

I get Taco Bell every Sunday for my 95 year old mom.  I use the mobile app.

I go in... there's a shelf for mobil orders.  They do not put them there.  I get that.  People probably take what's not theirs because they are idiots and can't read.  No issue there.

My order sits on top of a thing about 10 feet away.  I walk in.  Not one person makes eye contact.  All they have to do is just hand me that bag.  That's it.  Everyone doing their thing in their silo.   Usually I get it from one guy making food who is smart enough to recognize he sees me every week with the same order at 1 pm.  He's going places.

When I worked cust service and retail we were taught to always ackowledge the customer even if you can't immediately help them.  Just say Hi, be right with you.  The flip side to that is people are rude and will then expect them to stop helping the customer they are working with to address THEIR issue because it's all about them.  So consider that a broad peeve on both sides.  We can't have nice things beacuse people are idiots all around.

[CMRivdogs]

1 hour ago, oblong said:

I get Taco Bell every Sunday for my 95 year old mom.  I use the mobile app.

I go in... there's a shelf for mobil orders.  They do not put them there.  I get that.  People probably take what's not theirs because they are idiots and can't read.  No issue there.

My order sits on top of a thing about 10 feet away.  I walk in.  Not one person makes eye contact.  All they have to do is just hand me that bag.  That's it.  Everyone doing their thing in their silo.   Usually I get it from one guy making food who is smart enough to recognize he sees me every week with the same order at 1 pm.  He's going places.

When I worked cust service and retail we were taught to always ackowledge the customer even if you can't immediately help them.  Just say Hi, be right with you.  The flip side to that is people are rude and will then expect them to stop helping the customer they are working with to address THEIR issue because it's all about them.  So consider that a broad peeve on both sides.  We can't have nice things beacuse people are idiots all around.

I wonder how much of this goes back to store or even franchisee management. I worked fast food nearly 45 years ago and it was drilled into us to the point it became part of our DNA. 
Back then we used to have an older gentlemen come into the restaurant on Sunday mornings around 11 AM or so (Arby's), same order 2 roast beef sandwiches, potato cakes and a cup of coffee. Sunday mornings were a bit slower (except for coupon weeks) so as soon as we saw the car drive in (no drive thru then) we would start the sandwich, make the coffee and make sure the potatoes were warm. 
Now the majority of my Sunday mornings are spent at the CW Visitor Center, most of the volunteers are retirees, all in our late 60s, 70 or older. It's not hard to do a good greeting and even try to answer some of the silliest questions. (I do bite my tongue sometimes when I get the folks who are just passing thru and say they have about 2 hours to kill)

[oblong]

I used to work at a place on Sunday mornings and we had the same thing on Sundays.  Post church, a widower.  You could tell it was a big part of his day.  There he'd come in his brown suit, beautiful white head of hair.  Always in the same seat.  

[LaceyLou]

On my way to the airport to go home last Thursday, we passed a building with a lot of different kinds of aircraft outside of it. The taxi driver told me it was an Air Force armaments museum and that it was free of charge.

It sucks to find out about things like this when it's too late to go visit. Oh, well. 

[chasfh]

On 4/21/2025 at 9:16 AM, oblong said:

I used to work at a place on Sunday mornings and we had the same thing on Sundays.  Post church, a widower.  You could tell it was a big part of his day.  There he'd come in his brown suit, beautiful white head of hair.  Always in the same seat.  

When I was in between colleges I worked at a place called Duff’s Smorgasbord, a competitor to Sveden House. It was located on Van Dyke between 11 and 12 Mile. People would pay an admission price to come in, find a seat, then go to the food wheels to pick up their dinners o and sides and desserts. It was all you could eat all the time, and there would have up to half a dozen bussers (or “busboys”, if your prefer) walking around at all times passing by tables looking for dishes to clear. That was me. I was about 20 or 21. Again, in between colleges.

My favorite day to work was Sunday, because the black churches in Detroit would let out about 100pm or so and a lot of folks would come to Duffs in their church finery for a family meal. I saw so many regulars that I learned their names and stories over time. I could ask follow-up questions based on what we talked about weeks before. I remember they were such fun people to talk to, so genuinely nice and friendly. Or at least it seemed so—it was the early 80s, so maybe their antennae were up higher then and they may have been more cordial to me because of my whiteness, but I think they also appreciated that I was so into chatting and joking around with them that it felt like true friendliness to me. It was not a place where people tipped, but some of them would throw me a buck here or there. It was my favorite grunt job of all, and i had a whole bunch of those before I started office work when I was 25.

[oblong]

Black church is different than white church.  They had a good time and were in a good mood.  I overheard a co worker the other day talking with her husband, she's black, about whether they were going to another friend's church, also black and a pastor.