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Thursday, June
29, 2000
Home Edition Section:
Business Page: C-6
THE CUTTING EDGE / Focus on Personal Technology
YOUR INTERNET GUIDE; Click Here /
A roundup of recommended Web sites
Oh, Be a Cry Baby By: ROBERT BURNS TIMES STAFF
WRITER Would you like a little cheese with that whine? People
love to gripe. To write a gripe is even better.
And, thanks to the Internet, the gripes no longer need to be vetted
by publishers or newspaper editors. The Net lets anyone complain
about anything at any time. Sigh. Today's little surfin' safari
takes us to Negativeville, the land of complaints. We'll start
with the universal truth that work stinks. And trust us, there
are a lot of people out there who won't let you forget it. The
poster child of the disgruntled is, of course, the postal worker.
The Disgruntled Postal Worker (http://www.disgruntledzone.com/index.html)
delivers the dirt on our heavily armed friends. It's mostly a
comedy site, but malcontents can submit their own non-postal workplace
gripes.
* Temps have their own site at Temp 24-7 (http://www.temp24-7.com/LIVE/issue/current/splash_frames.html),
but there's no telling how long it will be up.
* Waiters and waitresses have Fly in the Soup (http://www.flyinthesoup.com).
You feel their pain, and you may never eat out again.
* At http://www.disgruntledhousewife.com you'll find the Disgruntled
Housewife. (Yeah, it is a job, you got a problem with that?) It
has gripes about guys. Bad man. Bad. The confessions section has
gems such as this: "I have over 30 tubes of red lipstick, but
I can't pay my phone bill." There's probably a whine spot for
almost every job.
Employees also complain about individual companies. Some of those
sites are password protected. Some have faced legal action.
* Flame Broiled (http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2645/index.html)
showcases one really angry ex-Burger King worker.
* A more political site is Face Intel (http://www.faceintel.com),
created by a former engineer at the chip-making company who now
says he wants "to influence positive human resource policies."
OK, we feel a little guilty looking at it with our Pentium-powered
PC. When we're not at work, we're shopping, and Consumer Complaints Remove Ripoff Report
are just as common.
* EComplaints (http://www.eComplaint Repair) is a well-organized
compilation of complaints against consumer companies and includes
company responses. You can search by industry or by company name.
* Complaint Repair (http://www.Complaint Repair) is organized by product.
Unlike EComplaints, though, companies are told to respond directly
to the complainer.
* Our favorite gripe at consumer site Gripenet.com (http://www.gripenet.com)
is that Gripenet is too hard to find on the Web. But enough about
bad customer service. What about the real whiners--people who
just live to complain? There are plenty of outlets for them, too.
* At Gripes.org (http://www.gripes.org) there are forums for every
peeve. And it's very thought provoking. "Where do all these cars
come from?!?!" complains one contributor. Yeah, traffic's a pain,
guess we'd better post it on the Web in case no one else has noticed.
* Groovy's Gripe Gallery (http://www.dndwebdesigns.com/gripes)
has more of the same. We like the mother whose complaint is: "I
totally detest when my kids yell, 'Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!' and I'm
looking right at them!" We totally detest when kids steal for
their heroin habits, but it's probably all a matter of perspective.
There are a lot more sites to complain about, but all this griping
is bringing us down. * * *
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