There is always another side. Another story. On the other end of the phone line or behind the deli counter. The sullen neighbor, taking out his garbage can. Or the truth behind the man or woman who disappears from your life without explanation.
There are overworked employees at the big company who screw up. Maybe they’re resentful about their workload at lower rates of pay, and they have to bite their tongues to keep their jobs.
There’s always another side, another version of truth.
But it doesn’t change how you feel. How you really feel, though everyone expects a smile on your face and a show of positive attitude.
Then there are the constant proclaimed reminders of everything you have to be grateful for. And you are grateful. But you also want to scream and you’re sick of pretending otherwise. The Complaint Department that you desperately need is apparently on break. Or on strike. Or closed, permanently.
Do you want to scream now? To let loose? Because then you might actually feel better?
How many people do you know who are in a bad mood, putting on a happy face? How many people do you know who need to let out the angry, the ugly, the legitimate NASTY because life is unfair, because they’re caught in difficult relationships, because of unemployment, random illness, or sheer exhaustion with kids who fight everyday just because they’re kids?
Life is a winding road
Of course. You know the tune. Life is a winding road. Every day is a winding road. But wouldn’t a little venting help? Don’t you want to bitch, just a little, and feel like it’s okay? Oh hell, I do.
Let me be your fine example. I think it will be therapeutic. Let’s acknowledge our bad moods, our irritation, our fear. Let’s strip away the pretty façade we’re required to wear in order to keep a job, to remain a responsible parent, to not piss off the spouse you genuinely love (or at least, like, most of the time). Let’s step out from behind our respective curtains, our veils, our personas protecting the reality of vulnerability and fury – and let’s be real!
Life throws us curve balls. Constantly. We struggle to survive heartache, financial problems, betrayals by people and institutions and ideologies. And yes, there are extraordinary individuals who surprise us, who stick around to support us, but it doesn’t wipe away the hurt.
I say let’s take it to the Complaint Department! Remember those? When someone cared to redress grievances, and there was a place to receive complaints? Someone to listen? Perhaps the complaints were valid, and customer service meant (dare I say it) – customer service?
Complaint Department
I’ll help you get started. I’ve got a few items to complain about. Here goes.
- I know I actually resemble Salma Hayek. Or was supposed to. Why can’t anyone else see it? Where’s my groovy Salma Hayek life?
- The family court system failed me nine years ago, and has continued to do so. Likewise, health care.
- I feel like crap. Every. Damn. Day. I’m over it.
- I’ve been looking for a lower gravity planet for nearly a decade. My ass is approaching terra firma, and we won’t even discuss the boob situation.
- Yes, French lingerie is well engineered. Thankfully. But why aren’t my tax dollars working on something important – like the Gravity Issue?
- My cable company fucked up again. They do, every time they change something. Then it’s weeks to resolve it. One more ingredient in my Irritation Stew.
- I loathe automated menus when you call anywhere for service. They wear you down until you give up. Whatever happened to people answering phones? I know, I know. Recession. I get it.
- Internet dating sucks. S-U-C-K-S. Where’s the Patti Stanger for the non-millionaires?
Honestly? I don’t recognize my life, and I’m angry. Oddly, this morning – just because it is morning – I feel a little better. Or maybe it’s this. Bitching.
Yep. I feel better. A little venting goes a long way.
Your turn: My Customer Service Department is now OPEN
Are you angry about something?
You want to complain, but you don’t, because you think you shouldn’t. Or it’s unattractive. Or you catch more flies with honey, or whatever the expression is.
Fine. Good enough. I get that, too. If you complain non-stop, you get nowhere. You know it’s true, right?
But never complain? Feel guilty about your right to own your negative feelings? Doesn’t suppressing negativity lead to health problems? The all important link of emotion and well-being?
Maybe you’ve been well trained to keep mum. Or you medicate, or overeat, or exercise until you’re too exhausted to speak. Or you drink, just a little too much. Can’t quit the cigarettes entirely. Or you cry, when no one is around.
Among our cultural dilemmas: success versus failure; perception versus reality. Fake it until you make it. Um, is that working for you? For me, not so much.
Care to bitch?
Speak up. Here. Now. I’m open for business. My new career ambition: a functioning complaint department. No grenade when you take a number. Listening service. No charge, but sponsorship appreciated. (Hello Microsoft? Coca Cola? Billionaire philanthropists?)
Perspective
Of course I’m grateful. I have plenty to be grateful for – especially my two kids, both healthy, and doing well. I’m grateful for the angels in my life, that my injuries in the accident three years ago weren’t worse, and that my son was unharmed. I’m grateful for this community of readers and writers, who have enriched my world immeasurably.
But enough already. Life sucks too much of the time! Can’t we just say it now and then? Yes, we can always find someone worse off, that’s true. But that comparison diminishes our feelings. Are there book deals in positivity? Sure. But it’s false consolation under the guise of gratitude or the pretext of perspective. It’s behavior that siphons off anger which can serve as fuel – legitimate indignation that could lead to change or at least, avoid ulcers. Feelings need their out, and with no exit, they fester and grow toxic.
We live in a culture that seeks perpetual pleasantness. But reality is something else; life is hard for all of us at certain times, and we’re afraid to share that.
Who cannot say, at least some of the time – I’m afraid, I’m furious, I’m inconsolable, I’m tired of hurting, I’m at the end of my rope?
Every day is a winding road
And on a “positive” negative note – not only is this “Complaint Department” open for business, but here’s Sheryl Crow to provide a philosophical approach to the issue of life as a winding road. . .
Oh, where to begin…
I hate people that tell me I look like I am doing great because I don’t go out in the world to complain about all the shitty things going on that I don’t complain about out loud.
I want to complain about people but I don’t want to name them so I am just angry they are around.
I can’t stand all the ignorant people across this county that get their info from the likes of limbaugh the fat and beck the crazy and say that health care for everyone will hurt the economy, when the opposite is true.
Providing health care for everyone would lift such a financial and emotional burden for so many people, it would inspire our country and economy.
…
Oh Jason. I hear you…
Well, this is a tall order. What am I upset about? I’m upset about injustice and stupid people who really shouldn’t be allowed to have success. I’m angry at a specific person who isn’t as smart as he thinks he is yet his entire persona rests on the assumption that he knows better than everybody else. It’s the smugness that has lead to his failure, but he doesn’t realize it. Not that he couldn’t pull it together, he just can’t because his ego is in the way. He deserves to be successful for all the hard work he’s put in, but he also doesn’t deserve it because he has yet to understand a fundamental truth in life. That is that mistakes are part of life and you have to completely own them to move on. Not in a tangential sort of “it’s my fault that I didn’t notice this other person was an idiot” sort of way. Completely own every mistake. Anyway, his brilliance is overshadowed by his arrogance. That angers me.
I anger me too. I’ve made so many stupid mistakes in these past two years and put myself in such a hole that climbing out is quite difficult. I’m angry that I haven’t been able to give my kids everything they want and to provide them all the opportunities they should have — because of money. I’m angry at my shortcomings.
I’m also angry at my wife for missing opportunity after opportunity because of laziness. That sounds bad, and I guess it is, but I’m angry about laziness, and my wife has fallen into that category recently. Oh well — you said to vent, right? 🙂
Ok, I think I’m done now. That actually felt much better. Thanks! Hope I didn’t just bum you out. I guess the lesson here is that none of us really has it together and we all battle for our places in life and it never goes like we wish it would. I’m no exception, but it still makes me feel crummy and pissed.
Smugness, anger at our own shortcomings, missed opportunities. Absolutely. Good people at the bottom of the well, not for lack of trying and working hard. It sucks. Not burnt out. I’m listening.
Mean people suck. Mean and vindictive people double suck.
Men who are in their 40’s who cannot stand up to their mothers suck. Some of the time. Other times, I’m sure they’re awesome.
Children who refuse to be potty trained suck. Spending (between the 2 kids) almost 9 years dealing with excrement sucks.
My cat, who woke me at 5:30 on a Sunday morning? Sucks.
Putting away the laundry sucks. Ditto unloading the dishwasher.
Thank you. I feel better now.
Ugh and ugh. (Can the cat unload the dishwasher?) Yeah. Lots of suckage.
Keith just put me in check. Not because I know him at all, but because I think my husband is irritated with my laziness. While he isn’t ambitious for himself, he is ambitious for me. He wants me to take advantage of every opportunity because he relies on me to have them. No opportunities are coming his way. It’s a lot of pressure!
All my rants would be about myself. My lack of motivation, my laziness, my disappearing creativity… Ugh!
Rants are good. 🙂
I’ve just got a little thing today. (Worry not, Complaints Department, I will unload the big stuff at a later date.) Why, oh, why can’t my local Fox station get their signal together? No House? No Bones? I’m going out of of my mind. And Hulu? Too much damn trouble. Arrgh.
I am stifling a smile. Perhaps we share the same cable company, Stacia?
I’m angry that the guy I’ve been dating has taken the possibility of a relationship off the table before we even get to that point. All I said to him was that I wanted to see him more than once every two weeks, and it turns into a whole crap load of crap about how he’s not ready for a serious relationship, blah, blah, blah… Note: I did not even mention I wanted a serious relationship, then I got a whole back story which I’m still trying to decipher, he either doesn’t have time for me or he is too scared of me… I get mad at myself when I catch myself sitting around thinking about him, trying to figure him out, what a waste of my time!!~!! Now I feel like I can’t be myself around him for fear he might take anything I say as innuendo to a serious relationship, jeeeeeesh!
Oh yes. I empathize. (It’s the contemporary version of “sitting by the phone.” )
For you, BLW, I offer a gift: http://gethuman.com/ They provide phone number shortcuts for 1,733 companies so that you can talk to an actual human being when you call customer service.
My main complaint today: judgmental people who talk about how they never judge anybody. Blech.
Wow. And the number I need is on the first page! Thanks, Kristen!
LOL! Am I wrong to find this humorous? Give us permission to unload in a safe place and we’ll do it every time.
I could rant about my daughter’s college roommate being a complete manipulative bully. I hate bullies. What my daughter shared with me the other night made me want to drive up to the university and, well, make life really miserable for the collegiate bully. Fortunately, my daughter called me off. Sometimes, being a mom is just hard.
Oh, also, I hate when people act all nice and “professional” and then work overtime to destroy what really is an otherwise very nice work environment.
My biggest gripe? People who won’t do more than the minimum to get by. I get that sometimes we can be in a place where that’s the best we can do, but when people capable of doing more don’t, that really irks me. These people should not be allowed to reproduce.
Just sayin’.
I loved this post and I loved everyone’s rants. Thanks for agreeing with all my other rants I would have posted here, except you all had it covered! 🙂
OMG you make me laugh (the not allowed to reproduce comment). Trust me – listening to others’ irritations and anger makes me feel less loony-tunes. We should all have somewhere we can gripe, don’t you think? But I also get angry for those who are being manipulated and hurt. The man-woman thing is so tough to figure out. And not just for women. For guys, too. All the game playing and stringing along. It sucks.
Um, I should hope there was a teeny tiny bit of humor in there. I’d like to think the humor gene hasn’t gone underground entirely. . . And I think this should be a “Free Ranting Zone” besides. We really don’t get to vent in “the real world.” SPRING BREAK for The Wild Mind! (Beach Blanket Bingo? Headed to Ft. Lauderdale to pah-ty?
And, BLW, look! It’s Spring Break! I’m back!!!!
I have a rant that starts now and ends about three days from now, give or take an hour. In it I will excoriate stupid people, policies, places and myself.
In addition I’ll kvetch about the idiots who complain about Democrats and Republicans. I’ll point out that most people haven’t an inkling what they are talking about and base their arguments upon arguments that are flawed and unsound.
If you want to know if your position merits real support blog about it. Just writing it down will demonstrate that you have made arbitrary and illogical decisions. I am not immune from that.
Like Keith I have made some choices that weren’t as wise as I’d like so now I get to live with that.
Ack, I am too irritated to list them all. This is the hand I have been dealt and now I’ll figure out how to make it a winning one, or at least fake it.
My mind went to a recent trip to the dentist. I arrived at the end of a long week, guilty that I’d done more blogging than flossing as of late. The first thing she said was that I looked tired—I hate being told I look tired, it makes me only more tired. Don’t get me wrong, I like my dentist, but she elbowed me in the head, hard, when cleaning my teeth and said that that’s never happened to her before. Being a shrink I had to start wondering if she was in a bad place or something, being passive aggressive… and I hated having to think about anything at all. And then she told me I had cavities, my teeth were eroding and needed some sort of highway work, and I needed a crown which is way more than I have spare money to pay for—and wanted to cap it off with some x-rays that I know are giving me some sort of extra chance at cancer in the future while making me contemplate the physics of the gag reflex in the here and now.
Overall, I feel very blessed, but thanks for letting me vent a little. It does feel good.
BTW, do you have a bureau of silly walks?
Frankly I can relate to several of your complaints, most notably to the droop (where or where did the droop come from all of a sudden and why in hell has everything changed shape?) Also, why am I so damn tired all the time. I’m young dammit, where is the energy that is supposed to come with my age? I think perhaps I shouldn’t really get rolling, but my, oh my, how it feels good when we just take an opportunity to let it all out! Thanks for this post, honest and fun all at the same time. (Is it weird that complaints can can be so entertaining?)
Christine, I think gripes can be as unifying as sharing anything else. And sometimes, our anger or annoyance is illuminating. As when we examine choices, or give voice to displeasure with ourselves and our partners (especially with reasons), we learn.
You know, they say that “men try to fix problems” and “women listen.” I don’t know that I think that’s 100% the case, but sometimes, listening is enough to help. And I think when we realize that many of us are frustrated or worried, we don’t feel so alone. And why not with a little humor, if we can?
(By the way, Jack – excellent point about writing things down to see if you have a cohesive argument. And Bruce – ouch! Breathe in that night jasmine…)
When some Representative yelled “babykiller” at Rep. Bart Stupak on the floor of the House last night, and Tea Partiers called venerable Congressmen the “n” word on Saturday, I was furious.
Voicing your opinion is one thing — but when did we lose the ability to civilly disagree?
Whether they are truly trashy or just acting trashy, their behavior was disgusting.
My rant for the day — thanks for encouraging us! 😉
Civil disagreement. There’s a concept! 🙂
Okay – I have two this morning. First is why do companies try to mimic name brand products if the off brand is not going to work the same? I needed more face wash last week. Was short on money as usual so read the ingredients on a name brand and a store brand. Bought the store brand as the ingredients were the same, same order. Now, I have a face that is breaking out and no face wash to use. I hate store brands. Should have known better.
And the big one, what the heck makes my 25 year old think I won’t notice he isn’t going to work? He got laid off last Friday but didn’t see fit to tell me even though he is living in my house and was paying me rent. UGH!
Because I’m caught up in health care discussion right now, I hate that no one actually talks about what the health care bill IS and ISN’T! I’m finding a few needles (read: actual substantive info on what the bill says) in the haystack of media coverage, but very few and far between.
I don’t pretend to put a happy face on a bad mood, but I also know that wallowing in anger gives energy and life to moods I don’t want to have. So I will pass on the screaming, and I will continue to cultivate good where I can. Everyone’s different. You have your way, and I have mine, and I respect our differences.
We aren’t wallowing, DM, we’re expressing – and isn’t that healthy? And Eva, April – yeah, bullies bite, cable companies incite, and media coverage isn’t always very bright! Nicki – you must’ve been a sight!
Oh, this is a treasure trove of bitchin! I’m loving it – so many complaints I can relate to. Cable company, yes. Bullies, yes. Lazy people, yes. Rants are so therapeutic!
My complaint is about telemarketers who use the tactic of talking fast without breathing so I can’t interrupt to tell them I’m not interested. Even though we’re on that Do-Not-Call list, we get plenty of calls from the companies we “have a relationship” with.
Kristen @ Momalom, I love you! I’m bookmarking that “Get Human” page right now, and forwarding to all my friends.
Are we allowed to curse here with our complaints? Because I’m not sure I could probably complain without cursing.
Fuck this fucking job and the idiot people who work here.
Fuck having every single little thing that needs to be done for my house, myself and my kids on MY mind all day long, every day, without fail. Not to mention my husband. Why on earth do I have to have HIS shit on my mind, too? I mean, really.
Fuck the morning routine. And the dinner routine. Just gimme the nighttime routine of mommy with a glass of wine.
Fuck the finances.
Fuck feeling guilty, and blue, and wanting more, needing less. Fuck it all.
And Fuck the people who look at me like I’ve got three heads when I’m out in public with my three boys.
Fuck the babysitter for telling me how bad fruit snacks are. DO I LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT LADY? I KNOW THERE’S NO FRUIT IN THERE. I’M JUST TRYING TO GET FROM HERE TO THERE IN THE CAR WITH A BIT OF PEACE AND QUIET.
Am I supposed to feel better? I don’t feel better yet.
But I’ll refrain from any more cursing, as I’m pretty sure I’ve already offended some…
But FUCK to that, too.
If “French” were disallowed in this particular complaint department, that would be very sad indeed. I’m with you. On all of it. (Would you pass me a bad fruit snack please?)
Ah, Sarah, I love you! I love the Fuck word. I love swearing like a sailor. And sometimes, any word less just wouldn’t do the job.
Amen on the fruit snacks. Tell that babysitter to shut her yap.
Ha ha! I often think bitching is one way to start a revolution. I happen to think it’s a great word and feel privileged to indulge. For me, my all time complaint for anybody who’ll listen is hypocrites. Who’s buying their bs and where do they get off?
The big H. Definitely!
I’m a little late, but my complaint is this: I HATE the dead zone. The dead zone happens approximately 20 minutes after I leave my home or my office. The dead zone gets us every time Sarah and I finally have a moment to catch up or brainstorm or connect or WHATEVER. I hate the dead zone. It is rude. It interrupts my thinking. And my sister time. It makes my drive seem longer than it is. I hate it.
So there.
Oh yes! The dead zone – at the worst possible time. It sucks!!
I hate fourteen-year-olds who mutter imprecations and “shut up” under their breath when they don’t like what their mom has to tell them. (who could that be?)
I hate when I tell my husband that this house is filthy and we’ve really got to clean it and his response – every single time – is “the kids should clean it.” The kids are not going to clean the fucking house.
I can’t even talk about my sisters because this tracks back to me. (Oh how I wish sometimes for anonymity…) I’ll just say that something is gnawing at me and it’s not good.
Oh yeah. Hate to tell you, at 16, it’s the same. But hey – it’s under their breath! (Are there kids who clean houses??? On which planet, and how do I get there?)
So does this help? A place for a little zero-consequence kvetching? If yes, I’m thinking we need a permanent location for the Complaint Department shingle. (Going to have to figure that one out.)
BLW, totally need some kind of Bitch and Kvetch website! My god, girl, you can make bazillions of dollars. Anonymous kvetching, organized by topics.
I’ll take over the sister category…
OK. Now I have a complaint, and I’d like to know if anyone shares it. I hate being called “dear.” I hated it when I was 15 (it felt belittling). I hated it when I was 25 (it felt belittling). I hated it at 30, 40, and I still hate it. It feels belittling!!
No, I’m not talking about Great Aunt Hattie who’s 50 years older than you are, and says “oh you look lovely, Dear” or “pass me the marmalade, Dear.” I’m talking about strangers – your age or younger. Or people who hardly know you, and they refer to you as “Dear.”
What’s up with that?
Happened to me today. Perfectly nice, normal, helpful person. I had to bite my tongue not to snap at him. Anyone else hate these so called terms of en-dear-ment???