Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Thursday, April 27, 2006

It's rantin' time

Pin It Now!

I’m as brutal a blog-writer as I am a housekeeper.

But I have a couple of rants to share with you….

1) GAP. I bought a cute dress yesterday to wear in Mexico.



Now my rant is that I’m not sure what the heck size that model is wearing, because *I* had to buy a size zero, and the model is about half as wide as I am. What is with the ridiculous sizing in that store. I am an 8. I have been an 8 for nearly 10 years. I have NEVER been a zero. So seriously, wtf. I grabbed a 6 off the rack (because gap sizes are a little big), and then felt like a dumb-ass getting the sales associate to bring me increasingly smaller sizes. What a load of crap.

Even better is that they change their sizes, but they don’t change their damn size chart…according to most size charts I’ve seen, I’m a pretty solid size 8…but not at gap. They want me to think I’m a zero. And what are smaller people supposed to do? Anyway, I just thought that was dumb.

2) OC Transpo and the city of Ottawa.
I will preface this rant by saying that I have taken the bus to work for the last three years. For the most part, I don’t mind it – relatively quick, relatively reliable, much cheaper than a second car would be. I used to take two buses to get to work, but with the advent of the newest schedule, I take one bus all the way to Blair station, and then walk to work from there. It’s only about 20 minutes, and it gets my lazy wobbly behind moving. Not bad, eh?

Well, yesterday my bus was about 15 minutes late. I can live with that – things happen, not a huge deal, because since I only take one bus now, it means that I’ll just be a bit later to work than usual. Except Mr. Dumb-ass-I’m-so-cool LOSER driver was too freaking lazy to finish his route. He decided that the route should stop at Hurdman (about 4 stops short of where I was going).


I board the bus west of Lincoln Fields, and Blair is about halfway between St. Laurent and Orleans. So…it’s crappy when the bus doesn’t continue. A lot of them stop at Hurdman, but I take the particular bus that I do because it goes ALL THE WAY to Blair. Had the bus been on time, this wouldn’t have been a huge deal – there are quite a few buses I can take to go from Hurdman to Blair (and even one that goes right to my work…but of course that one had already left yesterday). As luck would have it, I had to wait a further 10 minutes at Hurdman station, and then four buses rolled up going to Blair (seriously, I think the 95 is the worst bus ever, because even though it’s supposed to come every three minutes, you always end up with a big gap and then a whole whack of them coming).

So I was EVEN later for work thanks to the stupid lazy-ass driver. By no means is this meant to be a reflection on all drivers – my regular driver is an awesome person, as are most of the drivers. Just this particular belligerent jerk (who ignored me when I twice politely reminded him that the bus was supposed to continue) who got a nice little complain letter yesterday.

My second OC Transpo Rant.

To the fuckwits designing the new O-Train.

Here is a picture of current express, rush-hour transit in Ottawa:
1) I (and thousands of others) walk a very short distance from my house, hop on an express bus, and it takes me right downtown. It’s less than 30 minutes for me, a little longer for the Kanata folks. Pretty easy, pretty efficient.

Here is what the O-Train fuckwits want to do:
1) People either drive or take a bus to where the train starts (fair enough, it obviously has to start *somewhere*
2) People hop on the train (again, still no problems)
3) People, instead of going straight downtown, go south of it.
4) South of downtown, they get off the train, and then get onto another train.
5) The second train takes them downtown (and it’s like a freaking streetcar, so it’s not like it will actually be any faster to go through downtown).

This is so ridiculous. For people to take public transit, it needs to be simple, fast and reliable. They are taking what is right now ONE step, and making it into three. I know for a fact that the more transfers you have to make, the length of your trip will grow exponentially. Let’s face it, this is Ottawa. These trains aren’t going to run every 3 minutes. So if you miss a transfer train, you will have to wait like 15 minutes. Do they seriously think that anyone is going to want to LENGTHEN their commute to what cannot possibly be less than an hour when you can do it in 20 minutes by car (if you time it right). What a bunch of dumbasses.

What they need to do is have the route start at a central point in the suburbs, and then follow an efficient route downtown. Because if you make people get on and off thigns….they’re just going to say screw it, and hop back into their cars….because in the suburbs…they’ve all got ‘em!

So those are my rants. This whole O-Train thing is a disastrous mistake if they cheap out and take the ‘path of least resistance.’ Do it once, but do it RIGHT.

3 comments:

Jen(nnn) said...

I can't relate to the public transportation rant since I don't live in Ottawa, nor do I take the bus to work.

However.... the GAP is RIDICULOUS! Do they think we are too stupid to know that they've inflated their sizes? And what happens below size 0? Does it go into negative sizes? Sizing really needs to be standardized if you can be an 8 in one store and a 0 in another. How are people supposed to buy you gifts? I mean, REALLY! On principle alone, I am reluctant to walk into any GAP. Any store that is not-so-covertly trying to pull the wool over my eyes does not deserve my business.

Cute dress btw.

~trannifer

Torie and Erik said...

Don't get me started on public transit...

I haven't lived in Ottawa for a long time, but I've recently discovered the joys of the public transit in Paris, and I don't know what we're going to do when we move back to Toronto. It's so frustrating when cities won't invest the money it takes to create a decent system, but then complain that people won't leave their cars at home! The people who make these decisions are obviously not taking the bus!

Good luck (and the name O-train always made me think of O-town, the really bad, made for tv boy band that was around near the time the O-train was born).

Torie
(excitedinTO from WeddingBells, btw)

Anonymous said...

Ok... so I totally relate to your OC Transpo rants... I'm in Orleans... they're planning on building an O-Train that starts at Trim Rd. (won't be going to Place) and will run down Innes Rd... - I don't exactly know how it plans on getting downtown from there but I bet we'll have to transfer! Right now I take ONE - ONE bus downtown to work - I have the choice of 3 different buses and they're going to take all that away! SUCKS! As for the GAP - personnally love being a couple of sizes smaller being a regular 14 and fitting into a 12 is awesome! ;)

Related Posts with Thumbnails