This Side of the Pond

It’s common for newspapers to publish a “review of the year” each December or January – you may have seen exactly such a thing a couple of weeks ago in your very own Sundance Times. I was not, however, expecting journalists across my homeland to simultaneously come up with an unexpected twist on the old classic.

For reasons I haven’t been able to ascertain, a number of local newspapers in Britain have eschewed the usual wrap-up of important local events and replaced it with a ranked listing of the angriest people in their neighborhood over the last year.

Some of the entrants should probably have been dissuaded from contacting a newspaper before it was too late, while others may not have been entirely in the right, but there’s one thing that does bind them together. All of these people took a stand in 2020 for the things they believed in.

It didn’t seem to matter what it was they’d decided to believe. Some were fuming over missed food deliveries, others were livid because the local council had failed to fix sinkholes in the middle of their back yard. Whatever the level of seriousness that should be applied to their complaint, these people had a shared dedication to achieving justice.

Take, for example, the woman in North Devon who ordered a huge meal from KFC for her teenage kids. When it arrived, she felt the pots of Southern Rice were conspicuously less full than they ought to have been.

“We ordered two and they come in little plastic pots with the big KFC on the front – the rice didn’t even come up to the bottom of the letter K,” she told her local newspaper. This does seem a travesty, though perhaps not quite the level of misbehavior that deserves its own article.

Nobody likes to be short-changed on their comfort food, so it’s not that I blame her for feeling aggrieved. I’m also pleased to report that KFC did the right thing, so this particular complaint was met with justice.

“With great chicken comes great responsibility and the last thing we want is for our fans to go hungry, so we’re in touch with Stacey to make things right,” said a spokesperson.

Talking of being answerable to one’s poultry-based sins, a vegan takeout in Plymouth attracted our second complainer’s ire. Epic Vegan Chick was forced to apologize after serving chicken to one of its customers – an ingredient that you might recognize as not featuring on the approved vegan diet list.

The customer apparently ordered her usual takeout of nine “vegan tenders,” but thought they looked a little different. She didn’t question it at first because the restaurant only serves vegan food, which seems reasonable. I, too, am wondering why they had chicken in the freezer in the first place.

Our third story also involves takeout, and once again it seems the chicken must bear the blame. A man in Stoke-on-Trent ordered a sandwich from McDonald’s, only to find a cockroach in his meal.

The restaurant did offer a refund and an apology for “falling short” of its “high standards.” One wonders how low the bar must be in that particular outlet that “cockroach instead of chicken” is considered only slightly below the ideal.

In my favorite example of a complaint that really didn’t need to make it as far as a newspaper headline, we have an online shopper from Tunstall who ordered two packs of white bread rolls from the supermarket. When his delivery arrived, they had been substituted with a two-pack of cheese ciabatta rolls instead.

I would not describe this as an earth-shattering failure, nor the type of drama that needs to be anywhere near the front page. The supermarket meanwhile pointed out that he’d been shown the substitutions when he accepted the delivery and he didn’t seem to think it was a problem then.

I’m not sure what justice would actually be in this case, but it doesn’t appear that anyone’s going to get it. No word on what our poor online shopper managed to scrounge up for his dinner.

Next on the list we have the dad from Barnsley who is furious with his snobbish neighbor. Though he’s not sure exactly who is responsible, someone shoved a note under his front door demanding he remove the awful artwork from the side of his house.

The problem with this demand is two-fold: it was designed to celebrate the National Health Service, and it was created by a five-year-old. I’m not sure what exactly this neighbor was expecting from such a young artist, but there’s nothing offensive about chalk hearts and I vote no to the removal of this masterpiece.

And finally, a frustration shared by anyone who has tried to own a vehicle while living in a city that doesn’t have enough parking. The owner of a private parking space near a fishing quay in Salcombe was frustrated when someone plonked their flashy sports car in it.

The Aston Martin Vantage is a pricey investment, but money apparently doesn’t buy decency. It was left in that space for ages – long enough to get two separate parking tickets from the council.

Some of the stories on these “angriest people” lists show that justice can be achieved when you’re willing to stand your ground, but in this case it was never going to be offered willingly by the perpetrator. But if you ever find yourself in a position where you’re looking to balance the scales, you could do worse than the owner of that parking spot, who avenged themselves by covering the entire $160,000 sports car in rotten fish.