Week 15: An Open Letter to Sodexo

We're trying something a little different this week. In lieu of my normal listicle-style blog post, I've written an open letter to the trash-food serving catering company that calls itself Sodexo. Enjoy:

To whom it may concern,

Sodexo serves garbage on a paper plate. If I had a nickel for every day I've walked into the food court and stood at a loss as to (literally) which poison to pick, I'd have a nickel for every day I've been at this school. Read: a shit ton of nickels. You know it's bad when Taco Bell is one of the more luxurious options in the dining hall. It may cause firey-hot diarrhea, but at least it's consistent. Your standard Sodexo food is bland, greasy, oftentimes cold, and wreaks havoc on my stomach like I've never felt before. The freshman 15 is nonexistent at South Carolina because nobody here wants to eat the food.

Another issue is the price. In what world is a single, plain cheeseburger that's been sitting on the grill for 2 hours worth $6.50? In no world. Do you know how much an identical cheeseburger costs at Five Guys, a vastly superior burger restaurant? $5.09. By those standards, you should be paying me to eat your butt-burgers. By the way, this ridiculous price includes neither your grossly under-cooked french fries nor a drink. Nope, those will push the price for the meal over $10. For lunch. For a burger that I watched your "chefs" take out of the freezer and throw on the grill two hours ago.

Somehow, dining services at the University of South Carolina was ranked number 23 in the country earlier this year. This was touted all over campus, with signs displayed everywhere and t-shirts made for every single dining hall employee to wear every day. I can't fathom how bad the food at every other university in the country must be, because our food is absolutely horrible and we have the 23rd best food in the nation. This is beyond ridiculous and bordering on the insane. I have no clue what slightly-more-edible-than-usual trash you served the critics, but it certainly couldn't have been anything that I eat on a regular basis. Is there a post-consumption ranking? Like maybe they ranked us #23 for taste, but #4,000 for what the food does to you once it's actually inside your body. Even that's a stretch, though, because I can't imagine you guys being within the top 100 for taste.

If one were to peruse Sodexo's website (something they might be compelled to do after having one of your cheeseburgers stop them up like a shaken champagne bottle) they'll see that you claim to be dedicated to improving quality of life for all of your consumers. I think I speak for everyone when I say the only thing that would improve our quality of living would be to not have Sodexo food at this school. I think I'd rather eat peanut butter and jelly with doritos every day for the rest of my tenure here than be subjected to the gastrointestinal train wreck that is your food. But alas, I have a meal plan and I must continue to use it. I'll see you tomorrow, Sodexo, with a grimace on my face.

Sincerely,

Remarkably Dissatisfied

Week 14: Today

Today was a great day. The sun was shining, the grass seemed greener than usual, it was warm, bright, and beautiful. HAH, just kidding. Today blew. Here's why:

The Pollen: It's now spring, which is the shittiest time of the year. Walking outside is a recipe for instant death for anybody who, like me, was born with an unfortunate allergy to plant sperm. The yellow crap covers everything. Want to get into your car? Enjoy battling through a layer of plant shit. Step outside? You'll instantly be coated in the stuff. I have to shower every night and every morning to ensure that I look like a little bit less of a zombie when walking around campus during the day. Today was particularly bad because I didn't have a tissue during my finance test, and I was about half a second away from blowing my nose into the freaking scantron before turning it in. I don't know why evolution was able to give us opposable thumbs but wasn't able to keep us from being allergic to the outside.

NO DON'T TOUCH THE DEATHDUST. NEVER TOUCH THE DEATHDUST

The Heat: It's getting to that time of year again: the "famous" Columbia swamp weather. That means it's climbing to 90 degrees and 50% humidity. Enjoy, residents of Columbia, as you can't walk more than 100 yards without looking like you just hopped out of the shower. Today was one of those days. I had backpack-shaped sweat marks on my shirt by 11:30. It was horrible, and it just reminds me that I'll be sweating out of my ass for the rest of the semester.

Preach

The Muffins in the Business School Cafe: I like muffins. I like to enjoy a muffin between classes. About a month ago, the cafe in the business school replaced their regular sized muffins with mini muffins. Um, what the fuck? I don't know what over-indulgent, self-control-lacking asshole had that idea, but they don't deserve to have muffins of any size. If you can't buy a muffin and only eat half of it, then stick to water and celery. There's no need to ruin everybody else's enjoyment. This was pertinent today because I bought a muffin and, once again, they were still miniature. A little part of me hopes every morning that they've gone back to the regular sized muffins, and that same part of me dies every morning when they're miniature. I pay a lot of money to go to this school. I know they can afford some damn muffin trays.

This here is what we call a bullshit muffin

The Fact That it's Thursday: Admit it, Thursdays suck. It's just the day you have to get through before Friday. Thursday is like the salad you have to eat before your mom will let you eat your ice cream. It tastes like shit, and you can't imagine why anybody would enjoy it.

No explanation necessary

I hope you all enjoyed your pollen filled, hot, mini-muffined, shitty Thursday. I didn't. See you all next week for an all new complaint.

Week 13: People on Airplanes

As we all either return from spring break or get ready to leave, a lot of us will be boarding planes. Fair warning: it's going to suck. I've been traveling the skyways my entire life because, like many others, I'm a privileged white kid. It has very rarely been a pleasant experience. There always seems to be someone talking too loud, grabbing my seat, taking up too much space, or just generally being the worst. I've summed up those four types of people below.

Seat Grabbers: These people, either due to obesity or severe lack of self motivation, are unable to get out of their seat under their own power. This means that in order to use the rest room, which they must do six times during your one-hour-long domestic flight, they have to grab the back of your seat and heave themselves up. This would all be well and good if the seats were made out of concrete, but as myself, you, and other rational human beings know, they are not. So when Jabba the Hut behind you decides it's time for bathroom break number four, they hang onto your seat for dear life and it rocks more than your least favorite high school friend's head at a Nickelback concert.

Worst place on earth. Also probably a seat grabber's nirvana

Seat Shakers: You've heard of restless leg syndrome? Well these people suffer from restless life syndrome. I had a seat shaker in front of me on my flight to Las Vegas, and she single-handedly made those some of the worst four hours of my life. These people adjust their sitting position endlessly. Now, getting comfortable isn't an issue. We're all crammed into a steel and aluminium tube for a number of hours, so by all means get into a position that lends itself to bothering me the least. However, when these people adjust their sitting position, they do so with the force of a dump truck dropping off a load of smaller dump trucks. She almost spilled my drink several times and made it nearly impossible to keep anything on the tray table. I really had no way to combat this other than to mention her in my blog, so here we are.

Can't blame the kid. That guy looks like a textbook seat shaker

Loud Talkers: When on an airplane, please keep your annoying conversation and your cackling laughter to a minimum. This really applies anywhere, but the difference is that on an airplane I can't leave (no matter how much I may consider it). Nobody wants to hear about your Aunt Lauren, your coworker Darrel, or your cats. Keep to yourself and we all may just make it through this with a shred of sanity. Also, this is unrelated, but please, for the love of God, keep your feet in your damn shoes.

You should be ready to sit the hell down, Kristen Wiig

Your Roommate Who's Only Flown Like, Three times: If you have a roommate who has only taken planes on three different trips (before this one), let's call him Carter, don't take him with you. He will call connections "connectors." He will look out the window the entire flight and point out things on the ground. He will insist that you download the American Airlines app so you can receive flight status updates and view your boarding pass (even though you get it via email). He will talk about the quality of the landing for three hours. Do not take him with you.

He also might look like this

Planes are some of the worst places on earth. They charge you hundreds of dollars for a few hours of misery and take you to a place you'll probably hate. My advice? Stay home and watch Netflix. That costs $8 per month and you don't need anybody else around to use it. Perfect.

I hope you all enjoyed this two-blog bonus week. Have a great, flight-free weekend and I'll see you all right here next week.

Week 12: Las Vegas

I bet you're all wondering why I posted this on a Monday instead of the usual Thursday. Well this past week I spring broke and traveled to the faraway land of Las Vegas, Nevada. A far cry from the place of glamour and riches that Hollywood has made it out to be, Vegas is actually the land of cigarette smoke, public drunkenness, and overpriced everything. There was so much to complain about in Vegas that I began to question why anybody would travel there at all. I've laid out my four main points, in typical fashion, for your benefit. Take them or leave them, but don't expect to experience Vegas any differently.

The Drunk People: For those of you that don't know, Las Vegas has no open container laws. This means you can walk around on the sidewalk with a beer, margarita, shot of Everclear, what have you. For most people, this is great and it makes Vegas unique. However, it also means that there are drunk people around all the time. And I'm not talking about slightly tipsy, giddy drunk. No, I'm talking about dancing on tables, stumbling down the sidewalk, throwing up in trash cans and yelling at telephone poles drunk. At 10 am. We were walking around one night and we heard some drunk guy yelling at a group of people. This is what he said, verbatim, at a full-blown scream: "MONEY'S NOT A PROBLEM. I'VE GOT MONEY. I'VE GOT 480 BILLION IN MY BALLS." Now I've thought about this a lot since I heard said 50 year-old man brag about his balls, and I'm still not sure if he was talking about his sperm count or if he's got the world's most expensive testicles. Either way it was a pretty jarring thing to hear on an otherwise uneventful (as far as Vegas goes) night. That's just one example of how crazy the drunk population of Las Vegas can be.

Yeah

The Ridiculous Prices: Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, in Vegas was ridiculously overpriced. We went to McDonald's one night for a "cheap" dinner and to our dismay, the dollar menu had been replaced by the "McValue" menu. Everything on the McValue menu was two dollars. That was upsetting to say the least. We went to Subway a few days later and the footlong sandwich I typically get was $12. Do you know how absurd that is? That's $1 per inch. If you break that down it's about $0.25 per bite. That better be the best damn Subway sandwich I've ever had in my life. A beer that costs a dollar at a bar in Columbia costs an average of $9 at a bar in Vegas. If math isn't your strong suit, that's an 800% price increase. Pretty much the only thing that's truly free in Vegas is walking around on the sidewalk, but we tried to avoid that at all costs.

Home of the $10 Big Mac

The Slow Walkers: Those of you that read last week's post know how I feel about slow walkers, and Vegas is like Mecca for those people. Walking down the strip (the main street with all the hotels and casinos) should be considered a form of torture. At one point my roommate commented, "I could move faster with concrete blocks attached to my feet." I think the only difference is that with concrete on our feet we would've actually gotten some exercise walking at that pace. Nobody should question why our country has an obesity problem when they can go to Vegas and watch a bunch of people walk down the street slower than the tectonic plates are moving under their feet. I thought huge groups of people walking slowly on college campuses were a problem until I went to Vegas. We spent more time behind herds of people than we did doing nearly anything else. And it doesn't help that it's impossible to walk down the sidewalk without being hounded by hundreds of people trying to get you to go to their nightclub or pay for an escort. We were walking across a pedestrian bridge and a guy came up to us and said, "strippers and midgets?" How do you even respond to that? We just looked at him and said, "um, no thanks?" We spent the entire week behind a bunch of slow walkers and constantly got approached by club promoters. It's a wonder we were able to get anywhere on foot.

New Year's Eve or a typical night? Impossible to tell

The Smell of Vegas: Vegas reeks of cigarette smoke and regret. Unlike most other civilized places in the US, you can smoke pretty much anywhere in that city. This includes your hotel room, casinos, bars, bathrooms, taxis, restaurants, clubs, you name it. You don't truly realize the value of personal space until you've walked through 70 clouds of cigarette smoke in the span of an hour and a half. By the time we left, my entire suitcase smelled like a 65 year-old chain-smoking former stripper, and that was just from being present in the city for a week. There's not enough laundry detergent in the world to get that smell out. I had to save clean clothes for the plane trip back so people didn't think I was sneaking cigarettes in the bathroom.

Are you really playing slots if you're not bothering everyone around you?

Vegas is unique, there's no question about that. There's nothing like it anywhere else in the world. You know what else is unique? North Korea. That doesn't mean I want to go there.

I hope you all enjoyed this Las Vegas edition of Cole's Complaints, and on a Monday too. How exciting. I'll see you all later this week for yet another complaint.

Week 11: Slow Walkers

This is it. The crown jewel. The reason this blog exists, for many of you. This is the original complaint, the reason I'm a crotchety old man trapped inside a 21 year old's body. This is why I grumble, why I seemingly always have a furrowed brow, and why I'm always in a bad mood. The reason? Completely self-unaware people that my 87 year-old grandmother would dominate in a footrace. Slow walkers.

There are four basic problems we face with slow walkers. As I move through them, I want you all to reflect on your walking habits and please, please ensure you don't commit any of these sins. Do whatever it takes (more cardio maybe?) but please don't be a slow walker.

Walking slowly: This one seems obvious. "Oh, slow walkers walk slowly? No shit, Cole." Yeah, well, you'd think if it were really so obvious then half the freaking population wouldn't do it. There is nothing more aggravating than walking at a normal human pace and having to come to a grinding halt when you nearly run into the back of snail-pace Samantha. It must take her longer to get to class than it took for Leonardo DiCaprio to win an Oscar. These people are so self-unaware that they don't even notice it when I cut around them on the grass while audibly questioning how I got to this place in my life. I would rather shove toothpicks under my toenails and kick a wall than be forced to walk behind them for 10 minutes.

Damn girl are you a sloth? Because you move really slowly and I need to get around you to get to class

— Cole Kynoch (@colekynoch) September 1, 2015

^Every day of my life

Walking in groups: I don't care if you have friends. I'd prefer if you didn't, but in the grand scheme of things there's really not much I can do about it. But please, for the love of God, don't walk with your friends. When you walk with your friends, not only do you screech about things nobody cares about (O.M.G. did you hear that Jeremy and Hannah totes hooked up last night?), but you walk slowly and block the entire walkway. This eliminates the option of passing you respectfully. Nope, this means I have to shove my way past you, and you'll definitely hear my complaints because they won't be grumbles. You will be tweeted about. If you want to walk with your friends, walk in packs of two. Still super annoying, but manageable. Alternately, move a little faster than an ant with no legs. Maybe then we won't have a problem.

But only if it targets people who walk in groups

Not moving out of the way: Look, if you and I are both walking down the sidewalk towards each other, and I'm walking on my right and you're walking on your left, you have to move out of the way. You walk down the sidewalk like you drive down the road: always on your right. It's really not that challenging. I'm not going to run into you if you're walking down my side of the sidewalk, however, because then I would be forced to interact with you. Additionally, I'll be the true winner knowing I'm the one who's actually a functioning member of society.

Self explanatory if you're not a moron

Standing in the walkway: Here's a helpful hint: don't stand in the middle of the sidewalk. If you so desperately need to have a conversation with your friends, tie your shoe, text your drug dealer, call your grandma, or ponder life, either get off the sidewalk or keep on moving. Short of collapsing from a heart attack (in which case, good on you for walking fast enough to have a heart attack), there is no reason to impede the flow of foot traffic by stopping. Winded from that exhausting 200 yard hike you just took from one class to the next? Great, how about instead of causing a societal collapse, you move off to the side to catch your breath, champ.

This is what happens when you impede the flow of foot traffic

Slow walkers are the worst. There's absolutely no question about that. They're completely self-unaware, useless members of society who would be better off staying home than going about their daily routine. All they really do is impede the progress of productive people who know how to walk. You'd think people who have had at least 18 years of practice, ergo everybody on this campus, would be a little bit better at walking. Similar to the "erasing bad 6th grade habits" class I suggested in week four, I think every university should consider a class on how to navigate the scary, scary sidewalks of the real world. Heaven knows people could use it. I should really just write the curriculum for first-year students.

Thanks for tuning in this week to listen to yet another rant. See you all next week.