Raaaggghhh, make it stop

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I suppose some time ago. McDonalds put out a commercial featuring a fish singing "Gimme back my filet o' fish, give me that fiiiissssshhhhh" over and over again until you want to shove a couple sticks of dynamite in your ears and blow your head to Kingdom Come.

If I've seen this commercial, I've purged it from memory.

Somebody someplace got the bright idea to make a toy out of this thing. It's a little plastic plaque with the fish mounted on it like a trophy you hang on the wall, and you push a button and the fish breaks out into song.

Somebody up at the clearance swamp corporate office thought this would be a great item for us to carry (Uggghh, did you learn nothing from the Christmas of the many singing dancing toys? ) and ordered a shitload to send out to all the stores. Ours are on a display tower near toys, where I work every truck. Which means I frequently get subjected to the following:

SC: Hey look! That fish from the McDonalds commercial! I wonder if it really sings....
Me: *don't push the button, don't push the button, don't push the....*
Fish: Gimme back my filet o' fish! Gimme that fiiiissshhhhhh....
Me:

If this keeps up, those fish are going to have an unfortunate accident involving the trash compactor.

[bainsidhe]

Well on the bright side, they aren't butchering a good song.

[AnaKhouri]

I hate those damn things. The worst part of working the kids' register was that there were always those stupid toys that sing or make noise when you squeeze them or whatever.

One day this woman (WOMAN, probably in her 40's, NOT a kid) came up and saw a basket of stupid Easter chicks that clucked when you squeezed them. She squeezed every single fucking one of the things, then wandered off, leaving me to the cacophony of clucks for a good 5 minutes.

Bitch.

[Pagan]

That makes me twitch just thinking about them.

Several years ago the store (which is somewhat upscale, mind you) decided to not only have those damned singing trouts, but the singing tunas, singing lobsters, and singing turkeys.

The trout would sing, "drop me in the river". We wanted to drop-kick them down the escalator.

And it wasn't kids that were the problem. Oh, nooooo. It was adults that would find it necessary to push. every. single. damn. button. on the displays.

[Reyneth]

One day this woman (WOMAN, probably in her 40's, NOT a kid) came up and saw a basket of stupid Easter chicks that clucked when you squeezed them. She squeezed every single fucking one of the things, then wandered off, leaving me to the cacophony of clucks for a good 5 minutes.

Oh gods, I'm sorry. My mom's best friend does that. Sometimes my mom will too. No matter how much I tell them/her to stop, it's not funny to the people subjected to it day in and day out.

[Jester]

I work at a restaurant/bar, and get lots of aggravating stuff.

Self-important assholes. Check.
Impatient pricks. Check.
Obnoxious children. Check.
Negligent parents of said children. Check.
ID-less idiots. Check.
Cheap fuckers. Check.
Drunk morons. Check.
Unfunny "comedians." Check.

Singing toys? Hmmmm....nope. Not a one.

Life is goooood!

[Sheldonrs]

Maybe if they scale back on the supply, you won't have to keep carping about this and feel like your floundering at work.


Fin.

[dalesys]

Fin.

Sheldon, your tail has an appointment with a Moray....


(love bites, don't it?)

[Mnemjian]

Who even buys those freaking things? If I went over to somebody's house and they had one of those as decor, you can bet that I'd be reconsidering our friendship...

[KitterCat]

Sorry cant help myself.

He reached out and pressed an invitingly large red button on a nearby panel. The panel lit up with the words Please do not press this button again.

[MadMike]

I'm afraid I was guilty of something like that, and worse yet it was as an employee and not a costumer.

Back at the home improvements store, every so often I'd sneak into the Housewares aisle, to the shelf where they had a bunch of timers, and set them all to go off at once. My department was halfway across the store, and I could hear them go off.

Then again, it seemed to annoy the customers a lot more than the employees, so maybe it wasn't all bad.

[Jester]

Mike, I think most of us have done something silly or obnoxious like that.

I once stole the "do not disturb" signs from a hotel. ALL of them. In my defense, I was young. I pulled that stunt at the very tender age of.... 29.

[Plague*Star]

I work at a restaurant/bar, and get lots of aggravating stuff.

<...>

Singing toys? Hmmmm....nope. Not a one.

Life is goooood!

....A singing, stuffed duck walks into a bar....

I once stole the "do not disturb" signs from a hotel. ALL of them. In my defense, I was young. I pulled that stunt at the very tender age of.... 29.

That's very disturbing behavior!

Where I work, we have a selection of what I call "kitties 'n' doggies", which actually a generous selection (for a small bookstore) of stuffed animals. Unfortunately, some of them make noises. Obnoxious noises. *Irresistible-to-children* obnoxious noises. Of course, as some of the parents "catch up" with old school pals over coffee, inevitably they send the restless, sugared-up offspring to the bookstore to "shop" ie squeeze all the stuffed animals and then play floor hockey in the glassware aisle.

P*S

[bainsidhe]

I'm one of the annoying idiots. I've worked retail in the presence of such awful toys, so I surely know better. Yet I can't help myself. The irresistible pull of annoying music and dancing animals, it calls to me. I catch myself setting off ten of them, then walking away.

I saw-ry

[Tama]

Hey, I kinda liked that song, (you remember that the guy eating the sandwich had no clue the fish was singing about him? ) but I guess if I had heard it for the jillionth time I'd probably despise it too.

I'm getting pretty tired of The Way You Make Me Feel, though. There's this TV set up in Malmart near the registers, and it's playing bits and pieces of This Is It....I get to hear that, Beat It and Billie Jean over and over and over and over.

I really don't want to hate those 3 songs, I'm an MJ fan...but I'm getting very tired very fast.