On the list of phrases La hates, “blessed”, as in, “I’m so…”, is right up there. But spreading its sanctimonious skirts to sit atop the shoulders of “blessed” is this hussy: “Well, that’s a first-world problem.”
Eagle-eyed readers would know the motto of this virtual home of La Triv is “it’s fun to sweat the small stuff.” Small stuff is often the kind of stuff that gets up the noses of the First-world Problems Brigade. So let’s do this.
Today, La’m outing and owning privilege. Specifically, first-world privilege. For the length of a bloggy we’re parking gratitude, becoming smaller people and strapping on the whinge rod. Here, in no particular developed or developing world order, is a list of first-world problems that right now are a pain in my particularly well-fed first-world arse.
The slimness of the Apple TV remote. This. Shits. Me. To. Tears. In fact, its teeniness — and subsequent propensity to disappear between sofa cracks — almost made me cry two nights ago when I wanted to finish watching Ozark and had to make do with temporarily morphing my iPhone into the remote. That’s clearly a sub-standard solution that belongs firmly in the second world.
When the help fights. This morning I had laser on my pigment-infested face. (This could explain the mood.) It was free. I was a guinea pig for a training session. Lucky me — blessed. However, I was supremely irked that the French instructor lady and the derm man kept bickering with each other about the widgets and settings. Total buzz-kill! Then one of them forgot to point the cold-air hosepipe at my freshly burnt visage. I KNOW! As if getting hundreds of dollars of free laser on your face isn’t difficult enough to sit through.
The dinky handbrake button in la car. What happened to a totally yankable, proper, grown-up handbrake? This flicky little piece of cr*p makes me mad every time I get in the car to drive to my well-paid job or chauffeur the loin fruits to their cushy schools.
When waiter dudes take away my glass / cup while there’s still a swallow in it. Faaaaark! Will these minimum-wage embryoes never learn? This almost makes me want to wail. Or slap their skinny little un-pigmented hands.
That the shelves at Coles’s self-serve checkout aren’t big enough to sit my reusable shopping bags on. I am a freakin’ legend for saying no to plastic. More people should be like me! Reward me with a decent-sized platform for my eco-bags. Bloody revenue-generating supermarkets, channelling so many of those megaprofits back into my super fund. Get it right!
When the hair-washing apprentice gets water and shampoo on the bits of my face that have make-up just before my blow-dry. This is one la really feel in la feelings. The messiness of the aim. Small and accurate hand movements are appreciated closer to the face. Pride in all aspects of your work, young people! I know you feel (are?) underpaid now, but the financial rewards will come! (Hopefully the cost of housing will come down too for you, but only after I’ve cashed out.)
Those dumb bits of looped fabric that allegedly keep the clothes on the hangers in the shop but which then have to be cut out when I get the garment home. Manufacturers, why do you make your workers in the second and third worlds stitch these in? Do you have ANY IDEA how hard it is to find scissors on-demand in the average family household? Generally they’ve been pilfered for toenail grooming, canine roo-chew chopping or some dumb educational project demanded by the cushy schools. Temporarily tucking these jinglejizmos into the bra-strap doesn’t cut it. Cut it — gaaahhh! Clearly, this is one of those debilitatingly circular first-world problems.
Car park exit pay terminals that keep saying reinsert your card. Waaaaaahhh! Was it in there too long? Not long enough? Why can’t this machine have PayPass?!? Poor first-world me, stuck here at the boom, shouting at a machine!
When the local Palace Cinema doesn’t have Veuve by the glass. Srsly, when will operators learn that if something’s on the menu it also needs to be on the premises? These young people have no idea how hard it is to work at your well-paid job all day, care for the first-world loinies, then have to enjoy the latest independent feature film without champagne. Reading subtitles is harder stone-cold sober.
When people can’t spell your name first go. What are you, from another country or something? It’s L-A T-R-I-V-I-A-L-I-S-T-A. It’s even a bit foreign too!
See? Life is hard! Just as well Seriousimo is good at unearthing scissors, lending me his car, crawling around on the dusty Palazzo floor to find remotes and giving young waiters a subtle look that says, “it’s possibly just a smidge too early to take away her glass…”
Otherwise I could just DIE.
*winks*
La Trivialista 