Several Rants for This Week

A short round-up of rants from this week...

1. The fish food I always buy has went from $1.99 (a price it has been forever) to $7.99 over the course of a couple months.  Why???
   
2. I was waiting for UPS to deliver a package and it arrived at 9:15pm (!) the driver was on hour 14 of his shift.  That is not safe for the driver or anyone on the road with him.
3. I was at Ross this morning and there were two cashiers and more than 30 people in line.  The line went all the way to the back of the store!  Crappy staffing or lack of workers?
4. Staffing at restaurants has been pretty sparse too.  Either restaurants are staffing at half their usual level on purpose or they can't find staff.
5. I can't find ammo at any of the regular stores I go to (Walmart, Bass Pro, etc) and it has been this way for more than a year.  I haven't been shooting in ages but I don't want to deplete my supply of ammo without being able to replace it.  It seems like shortages is a new way of life these days.
   
6. It's hot AF outside.  Not much to be done about it and we live in a place that is hot most of the year but we have lots of friends and relatives in normally cool areas who have never seen 100+ temps and they are miserable.  I only have one friend in Washington State who purposely added central air when she built her house; usually central air is uncommon there because in the past it never really got too hot for too long there.  Is this something else that will become a new normal?
   
7. We were tossing around the idea of buying a new van.  We have alot of guests (three separate families are coming to visit just this month) so I checked the dealership that we usually go to and they had a total inventory of 4 (!) new vans with an average price of $42k.  Literally five years ago this same new model of van was $25k.  That's insane!
8.  One of the grandkids is deciding on which university to attend and he called to ask about my alma mater.  When I looked up the annual cost for this school (which I hadn't done in decades) it was $70k. WTAF???  $280k for an undergrad degree???? That's insane too!  How on earth can they expect a CHILD to saddle themselves with that sort of debt for a four year degree??? I told him to become a plumber or electrician.
9. Food prices in general seem to be skyrocketing.  We always shop sales and loss leaders and shop at ethnic stores which have good prices on produce so we don't seem to be spending a lot more on our groceries but in general prices seem really high especially for meat.
10. Then there was this article about hotshot firefighters making only $13.45 an hour.  Hmmm...flipping burgers for $15 an hour or risking life and limb for $13.45...  what a choice!

Maybe I am just getting old and cranky but there seems to be a sea change happening when it comes to the everyday things we used to take for granted like getting good service when we shop or go out to eat, paying reasonable prices for the stuff we buy, and just basic social things like treating employees reasonably well.