Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving. Ideally I like a little break between Thanksgiving and the Christmas onslaught–say, until December 1–but I’ve given up on that crazy dream.
The trend around here now is that a lot of places put up their Christmas trees on October 1 and decorate them with pink balls and other pink things for Breast Cancer Month. Then, on November 1, they take all that off and just decorate them for Christmas.
This makes me want to go into full-bore Hulk rage. I feel like I ought to be at least somewhat over it by now, but every year I just get stabbier about it.
After a yearly review, I went back down to our office, walked to the corner where the Operations Group lurked (that’s Production, Maintenance and Quality, I was part of the Quality team) and said “excuse me one minute, I have a question I’d like y’all to answer for me. Just a minor doubt. Has any of you ever been told that he or she needs to be ‘nicer’ at work?”
The 25yo guy needed an explanation about why everybody else had burst out laughing. But yeah, I’ve got 5/5 or N/A on pretty much every single item we get evaluated on, and the boss tells me I “should be nicer”? Of course, the only other person who’d been told that was the other female.
While that sticks in my craw big time, I don’t think it’s disproportionate to be angry that, in my work as an engineer, one of the factors being evaluated is my crotch.
I usually say “Clearly you just did” and keep on walking.
Mine I’m actually a little ashamed of because it is so petty and I have no idea how it developed. You know how you will, when driving, delay a bit to allow someone out of a parking lot? Or wave someone through an intersection. Or back off so they can change lanes? All those various things we do driving just to be basically polite. If you do one and the other driver doesn’t raise a hand or somehow acknowledge you, you should be allowed to kill them. OK – maybe that’s a little extreme but you should at least be allowed to hurt them.
In person, face to face, I say “thanks” and “you’re welcome” and 90% of the p[eople I cross paths with do the same. But in cars people just figure manners don’t apply. And they tick me off to no end.
kopek I agree that those people should be killed. I think I’m worse than you in the petty-games, though. What gets me is when you’re at a four-way stop and you wave the other person on, and then he/she WAVES YOU ON. GRARGH! Then you get in to that little wave-on standoff! Do you realize we’ve now just wasted the tiny sliver of time that I was trying to save you? JUST FUCKING GO ALREADY!
Lines at grocery stores. My blood starts to boil if I don’t see an open checkout line with no one in it.
The problem gets compounded when there are lots of people in line but few registers open, or when I’m stuck behind some person who takes forever to pay. :mad:
Similarly, at the bank: it seems like whenever I’m just there to cash a check, every teller in front of me is occupied by the customer who wants to withdraw money from their grandson’s trust fund’s CD and wire it to a bank in India. :rolleyes:
People who presume that because I smoke in my house they can smoke anywhere in my house. You will find ashtrays in the living room and basement only for a reason. I detest smoking in the kitchen. Ashing in the sink makes me see red. My b-i-l once decided to light up in the bathroom. WTF? Are you jonesing that bad for nicotine that you can’t wait? Missy smash!
I also hate cigarette butts tossed in the yard. The bin is right around the corner. Stub the damn thing out and throw it away.
My first name is akin to MaryJo/ BobbyJo/ SusieJo. It’s not uncommon for people to suddenly have a fake super southern accent and ask if my brother-cousin is BubbaJoe. This usually gets them The Stare. “What’s your problem? It’s just a joke! hyuk hyuk!” I hate “What’s your problem?” as much as "Smile!
I do the laundry here. I wash and fold, putting TheKids’ clean laundry in a basket, ready for her to put away in those miracle inventions called closets and dressers. Open her door the next morning and all that I had spent time folding is now on the floor, mashed in with her dirty clothes, wrinkled. Why do I bother?
People, in this day and age of CheckCards / DebitCards, still waiting for the cashier to ring everything up, then pulling out the checkbook, digging around for a pen… Oh look! A coupon! Where am I at? What day is it?
The ones who are just getting a single ticket bother me not in the least, but those are never the ones I’m behind in line. It’s always the guy who’s playing 15 sets of numbers for himself, then he’s got to get these other tickets for everybody in the county and his dog. Oh, and he needs three or four of every type of scratch-off, too. It makes me want to throttle him, everyone else he’s buying tickets for, and the clerk for allowing him to block up the line for 10 minutes.
But the ones thatreally make me want to grab 'em by the neck and slam their heads against the counter several times are the scratch-off players who scratch off their tickets right there on the counter. I don’t why it drives me so crazy. I think it’s a combination of them being right up there at the counter so that even when they’re not in my way they’re still sort of in my space, and the fact that they always leave their little piles of scratchings either on the counter or swept off onto the floor for someone else to clean up.
I’m too old to get infuriated by anything. These days I’m just used to it all. The things that I would get infuriated by if I still got infuriated by things include:
discarded chewing gum
discarded cigarette butts
the people who can take 5 minutes to use an ATM
the people who can take 20 minutes to check in at the airport once they’ve reached the front of the line. I travel a lot, and usually checking in takes me about 45 seconds. Hand passport over and verbally confirm where I think I’m going; place suitcase on the conveyor; inform the clerk that I have just this one case and one piece of carry on (which I show so she can see the size is OK); answer all the ‘did you pack a bomb today’ silly security theatre questions; wait to see the clerk actually puts the luggage tag on my suitcase. Leave. 45 seconds. Maybe 90 seconds if they are having computer glitches. What takes 20 minutes?
when the only way to contact a company is to use a premium rate phone line, especially if it’s to give them information THEY have asked for or need, or to complain
the division between dealing with customers and devising company policy. The people who devise the policy are never available. The ‘customer-facing’ people you actually deal with have no choice but to do as they have been told, even if it’s manifestly stupid. It’s no use arguing with them, because they can’t do anything else. Very much a curse of the modern world
the fact that people can still earn money as astrologers, in this day and age
the idea that war, death, disease, crime, disaster, famine and droning politicians collectively constitute ‘the news’. All of those have their place and are part of human existence. But what about all the great, good, admirable and delightful things people all over the world do and achieve every day. Why aren’t they news?
the gulf between what democracy actually is and what we could have, and the limp, dissatisfactory mockery of it that exists in my country and many others.
people who can’t/won’t stop talking during a show or a lecture.
people who say they want to meet up for a drink or a coffee, and when we do, they spend 50% of their time staring into their iPhone or Blackberry. Meet me, or stare into your electronic toy. One or the other.
militant vegetarians. It’s not enough for them to decide what they eat. They want to tell everyone else what to eat as well and, where possible, deny any other choices.
It’s lazier because we have perfectly good phrases for discriminating between your presented opinion and your presented fact. As people mash the two concepts together, we will lose the language that makes that discrimination easy for your listener.
It’s like when words that once meant different things start to mean the same thing in common usage. The old differences between chastity, celibacy, and abstinence are one example. These days all three words are commonly used to mean sexual abstinence, and we’ve lost the easy ability to discriminate between (for example) a chaste wife and an abstinent one.
Someone actually threw a lit cigarette out of a pickup AT my car once, at a stoplight. We were side by side; I don’t think he realized I was there. I was so pissed off I laid on the horn and yelled at the guy to GET OUT OF THE CAR AND COME OVER HERE AND PICK IT UP. To my astonishment, he did, apologizing all the way.
People (of any age) who repeat the same thing more than once. (“Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” or “Over…and over…and over…and over…” That sort of thing). I just get increasingly more full of rage with each repetition. Bonus rage if every repetition is uttered with exactly the same tone and inflection.
People who mockingly repeat or paraphrase something I say back at me, especially if they try to imitate my voice while they do it.
My spouse’s last name (which I don’t use) is apparently difficult to pronounce. So I hate it when people call us on the phone and say, “Is this Mrs. <mangling of spouse’s apparently unpronounceable name>?” First of all, I don’t ever go by Mrs. Calling me Mrs. is a mini-rage inducer in the first place. But when they then proceed to mangle the name without even making an attempt to pronounce it correctly (it’s not that hard, people!) Part of what makes me so mad is that I don’t know how to respond to it. If I say “yes” then I’m sanctioning both the hated title and the name-mangling. If I say “no” then that gets awkward. Usually I just say “close enough” and let them make their own inferences. Since it’s almost always a telemarketer, I can get rid of them in a hurry anyway.
People who put their kids on their shoulders at concerts, then refuse to take them down when the people behind them complain. I came the closest I’ve ever come as an adult to getting into a physical confrontation with a guy over this one time in the 80s.
Wow, these make me sound like an angry person. I’m really not. Most of these little hot button things don’t happen very often, and when they do I deal with them. But you asked.
Are you vexed by persons who refer to the nation across the strait from France as Britain rather than the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island?
Or the routine from the old Marty Feldman’s Half a Comedy Hour with the British taxi drivers dressed and acting as RAF pilots. Every time one nailed a pedestrian he would stamp a little broken figure of a person on the side of his cab door. If I remember correctly, Blemings didn’t come back from the one mission though ------ he was swarmed by a bunch of children and nuns outside a Catholic school.
These ARE ultra-annoying! I’ve found the best response to the line “Can I ask you a question?” is “No!”. It surprises them, and is closest to my actual inner thoughts.
Similarly, when someone on the street asks me “Do you have change?”, I say “Yes!” and keep walking. It’s the truth, after all.
the people who can take 20 minutes to check in at the airport once they’ve reached the front of the line. I travel a lot, and usually checking in takes me about 45 seconds. Hand passport over and verbally confirm where I think I’m going; place suitcase on the conveyor; inform the clerk that I have just this one case and one piece of carry on (which I show so she can see the size is OK); answer all the ‘did you pack a bomb today’ silly security theatre questions; wait to see the clerk actually puts the luggage tag on my suitcase. Leave. 45 seconds. Maybe 90 seconds if they are having computer glitches. What takes 20 minutes?
[QUOTE]
I fly perhaps 2 times a year. The self checkin at DIA (Denver) never work. It’s pointless to even try.
