I’m sure you would know better than I, but is it possible that the person didn’t hear you the first couple times?
My irrational pet peeve is people parking next to my car. Of course, they’re entitled to do that. But I generally park in the farthest space possible, often with 5 spaces on either side of me and an empty row behind me. Then when I get out of the building, often after being in the building for only 10-15 minutes, I come back to find a car parked right next to mine. With the other spaces all around still empty. I get completely baffled, then mad because I can’t figure it out.
My daughter is studying Interior Design. When people find out, each and every one of them says, “Would she like to practice on my living room?” Well, the room changes. But every freakin’ person thinks it would be a great idea for her to give them some free advice.
One person wanted her to come over and tell them whether or not a wall in the basement was weight-bearing. ?? How about calling an architect or maybe the city engineer? I mean, she learned about building codes and stuff, but she can’t give advice like that while she’s in school.
Yeah, I’m paying thousands of dollars for my daughter to learn how to decorate your house for free.
And another thing. My husband and I have a tandem. We have had it, let’s see, 27 years. When people find out they ask me if I just sit on the back and let him do all the pedaling. Every single person asks me that.
Ha ha. It’s just so funny. Exactly where would I put my feet? Idiots.
On the other hand, I just got a new nano (hot pink!!) and I can’t figure out how to keep my husband’s songs off of it because we use the same computer, because I did what it said on a website I found and it is not working, so I was going to email my friend Sue who is an expert and I realized–that’s not nice. All I ever do is ask her for help. So I asked her how she was doing instead. Great save. Now she is puzzled and I’m waiting a polite amount of time before I ask her how to do it.
Amusing related story: I have a niece who is a fairly successful beautician/stylist. Her mother (my SIL) is a dental hygienist. One morning, prior to a family gathering, my SIL called her daughter and said “Oh, and could you bring your shears with you today? Your uncle needs a trim”. And my niece (I do love her!) said “Sure. Could you bring your equipment with you? My husband needs his teeth cleaned!”
No one in the family ever asked her to bring her shears to a family event again!
My husband does go to her to get his hair cut, but he goes as a client. She gives him a discount (her father was my hubby’s brother), but he pays. As should be the case for any professional.
After I finished my landscape design course, I gave my sister and brother-in-law a free design for their yard as a housewarming gift. I learned a valuable lesson from that; if people don’t pay for something, they don’t value it (after I spent weeks chasing after them, trying to get them to sit down and tell me what they would like to see in their yard, then having them not like the design I did on my own because they wouldn’t make time to meet with me). I would suggest your daughter respond to everyone who asks her for services by quoting a price.
My unproportional irritation is all commercials having Boomers in them (and being aimed at Boomers) now. I get the reasons for it, but it still irritates me.
Definitely the “Smile!” sayers. I may be wrong, but this seems like a passive agressive insult to me.
They’re expressing hostility while seeming to be nice (at least to them). I mean, does anyone here not feel at least mildly annoyed by that?
Doubtful. For one, the instances I’m thinking about are in not terribly loud places - a commuter train, a theater before the show - and I’m saying “Excuse me” from just a couple of feet from their head. Add in that I’ve generally had to pass through a row of people to get to where I wish to sit down. If the person has not heard, then they are being almost aggressively clueless.
Moreover, if you only paid for 1 ticket, then I feel you ought to be at least minimally aware of the possibility that someone else might wish to sit in the second seat you are occupying/blocking. If you spread out such that you are occupying more than one, well, it’s nice if you can get away with it, but you oughtta be damned ready to slip back to your allotted space as soon as someone else wants to occupy the space beyond the boundaries of your seat.
In the incident I described before, my wife and I passed in front of maybe 5-10 people to get to our seats, which were the only 2 empty seats before the next several occupied ones. I’m not sure how someone fails to notice someone passing through the row in front of them. When we got to our seats, my wife sat in the furthest one along, leaving only one available for me. Yeah, maybe I’m a jerk. Or maybe I’m just too darned nice! But it seems to me that if you choose to go out in public, you are obliged to pay at least minimal attention to the fact that other members of the public may be using the space as well.
Oh yeah - 5 pages. WOOT! Ain’t we the furious bunch!
And another thing. Being a musician is a blessing and a curse. I can’t go to a wedding and just be there. “Will you play for my (82-year-old) mother to sing at my daughter’s wedding?” (last weekend) “Will you accompany my nephew while he plays the cello at my son’s wedding?” (in November)
My mother even wants me to play at her funeral I said no. But I might do it.
This used to happen to me all the time when I worked at home. I’d also have family members calling me or asking me to do things for them because, “It’s not like you’re really working.” I think they assumed I was just sitting around eating bon-bons instead of, you know, operating the business I’d created.
Mine is really, really petty: it pisses me right the hell off whenever I’m denied food. At restaurants I’m fine, since I’m not making the food and I almost always have a backup option in case something’s not available. At home, though, it’s different.
A few weeks ago, I made pasta to eat in front of a movie. I set it down on the coffee table, then went to get a drink. Suddenly, I heard the clattering of my bowl and silverware. I raced to the family room only to find that my cat had knocked the entire bowl face down onto the carpet. Since I was home alone (not to mention PMSing out the wazoo), I flew into an absolute rage. I know I should’ve put the cat in the basement, but goddamn it, it had taken me nearly half an hour to make that pasta, and I was starving. :mad:
Then, the other day, I made 2 cans of Amy’s tomato bisque soup for my boyfriend and me. Since it was more filling than we’d originally thought, we ended up putting the leftovers in the refrigerator. The next day, I found that I had an enormous craving for this soup, so I went to the fridge, only to find that my relatives visiting from out of state had taken it and eaten it themselves with other leftovers. I tell you, it nearly made me homicidal.
One more: the very next day, after the soup incident, I made spaghetti with my boyfriend, and brought out the parmesan cheese. We had two kinds: a shredded kind, and a grated kind (I like to put both on my pasta). But, when I went to use the grated kind, I found that my boyfriend had used up the rest of it. He couldn’t have known that I wanted to use it, and it’s such a minor detail, but I got annoyed anyway.
I was actually going to post about this before. I’m a little bewildered by it. When someone tells me to smile, I think of it as concern or something done out of niceness. I don’t remember an example for myself, but say someone is really working hard and they’re really taking the thing super seriously and someone says, “Smile!” I interpret that to mean that the person wants the other person to see that the situation isn’t that serious.
If someone said that to me, I’d take a deep breath, remember that whatever I’m doing isn’t so important that it’s worth losing my happiness over and that might make me spontaneously smile.
So I don’t know if this was a rhetorical question, but yeah, I’m not annoyed by someone telling me that. Or if someone tells me to “Breathe!” Same thing.
But now that I know that it bugs so many other people, I guess I won’t be saying it to other people.
That doesn’t sound like what the posters here are saying. Having someone yell “Smile!” at you when just walking down the street is different than them trying to calm you down when you’re working intently on something.
The beginning of this video is the behavior people object to.
I like to watch the local news, but I could really do without “we now take you to a random idiot we found on the street, who is going to say something completely obvious, adding nothing to this story.” I think it gets to me because they do it like 45 times in a 22 minute newscast.
Actually, I’m not being fair. The true idiots are the people who put the newscast together.
What the fuck is it with me putting things away and then finding them gone when i want them next?
I put my mp3 player in a bedside chest of drawers and it’s been lost for more than two months. I put some boxes of crayons on a cart and when i wanted them on thursday, bupkis.
What next my skull, or my liver? Why me?
Agrreed with the “Smile!” schmucks. I hate them all and one of these days i’m going to give them a verbal smackdown to fuck them up if i get a chance.
The line to get out of Fry’s Electronic’s/CostCo any other place that wants to look at my receipt before I leave the store. Really? You’re going to look through $500 of groceries to see if I’ve hidden a 4 pack of pianos or a 12 pack of camcorders in the stuff somewhere? No! It’s stupid and wastes my time! I get angry every fucking time I have to wait for the cattle to get their little pink mark on their receipt that took all of 2 seconds for Barney Fife to mark (and a smiley face for the kids oooooh HOW CUTE) when it’s a USELESS GESTURE!
I just get so angry about this useless ‘security’ measure I get quite close to making a scene every time.
And people describing their (non-erotic) dreams. I just want to say “Shut up I don’t care no one cares dreams are boring just shut up SHUT UP!!!” Descriptions of erotic dreams are fine though.
People who type ‘loose’ instead of ‘lose’. I can take most other typos but that one just really angers me.
Although this hasn’t happened in a long time, my name is close to a lead singer of a popular band. In high school I would get OH SO WITTY REFERENCES to being in that band all the time.
But it seems to me that if you choose to go out in public, you are obliged to pay at least minimal attention to the fact that other members of the public may be using the space as well.
