Rant of the Week #1

Since one of my fellow bloggers have started doing Joke-of-the-Weeks, I thought I'd do the blog a favour by balancing the laughter with some good old fashioned rage. I know I already bitc - er, blog about many issues, but most of them are kind of weighty. So I'm going to make it a point that the Rants of the Weeks are going to be about stuff that isn't going to make the world stop spinning if something isn't done about them. So dear bloggers, if there's something out there that the rest of the world considers benign, but it really grinds your gears, send me a message and I'll rant about it. (It probably won't take care of the problem, but at least you can take comfort in knowing that someone out there (yours truly) is as ticked off as you are.)

So the first subject to be clawed, chewed, killed and then left for vultures: the lack of debit machines at Tim Hortons. Okay. Now I'm mad.

Firstly, I've worked at one of these places. The hardest job to be done there as a cashier (other than spitting in cups without getting caught) is to say the following to a customer: "I'm sorry, sir/madam, but we don't take debit. Only cash and MasterCard." Because the conversation that follows always goes like this:

Customer: You don't take Visa either??
Cashier: No.
Customer: ... Why?
Cashier: Tim Hortons and MasterCard have an unholy alliance. They plan to take over the world by 2011.
Customer: Of course! It all makes perfect sense now!
Cashier: If you would like, there's an ATM 20 miles from here. Why don't you go there and return? Hopefully, your coffee'll still be warm enough not to choke on.

Don't ask the cashiers why they don't take debit or Visa. These poor people are overworked and underpaid; it's a miracle I got through work without hijacking the store with frozen timbits. The true jerks here are the Tim Hortons Headquarters in Oakville, Ontario.

Why are they doing this?! Excuse me if I sound like a five-year-old comparing my toys with those of my snotty rich neighbour, but Starbucks even has Wifi! WIFI! Why is one of Canada's icons insisting on staying in the technological dark ages? Tim Hortons, you know that wierd thing that you see all around you? It's called the 21st Century! JOIN IT!!!

Alright, I'm now going to leave you with the one and only reason that we put up with this: