No, 6.25%. One chance in 16.
My answering machine beeps if you have new messages. If you’re screening calls, and pick up, it saves the message, and considers it new, and beeps constantly… while you’re still on the phone. So annoying I had to turn off the beeping feature, which I really liked.
This system is pretty much the standard in the UK, but you still get idiots getting to the barrier having forgotten to pay and/or having lost their ticket. I agree that it’s annoying. My own special talent is for paying at the machine, slipping the paid ticket into my pocket on the way back to the car, and then having to scrabble about in four or five different pockets, while sat in the driver’s seat, at the barrier. And it’s never in the same pocket I put it in, I swear. (I also do this with cinema tickets, between purchasing them and walking to the ticket checker. How does it happen?)
This is probably a bit past due since everyone is going to plasma, LCD, and projection sets however…
When the most popular sets out there used to be the 32" and 36" picture tubes was it too much trouble for the designers to design a way to actually lift a 100+ pound object without using your fingertips? A scant few (make that a couple I’ve ever seen) actually designed handles into the moulding of the TV. Everybody else struggled to get these behemoths onto TV stands by hugging them like giant boulders.
The other problem with these sets was the piss-poor design of the coaxial cable interface. The inputs on these sets were non-flexible and soldered directly to a circuit board. Nudge the set the wrong way or put some tension on the cable and you’d risk cracking the circuit board in half. Repair cost? Hundred of dollars.
The comapny I used to work for literally threw away TV sets that were returned with broken coaxial inputs because the repair cost outweighed the cost of the tv.
Lotus Notes.
Have these people ever interacted with any OS before?!
Yee-gods yes. That has been a pet peeve of mine forever. God forbid you should not have the arms of a basketball player to wrap lovingly around the set as you mincingly walk to the entertainment center…
Another one for alarm clocks, for the alarm itself.
Most portable clocks beep at a very low volume, and very high frequency, that ring right in the middle of my getting-older-hearing-loss frequency band. Most I can’t hear from more than 2 feet away. I’ve stopped wearing watches for this reason also, since the alarms and beeps are nearly inaudible to me.
Thankfully, my cel phone with programmable ringtones is perfectly audible with the right selections of songs. Ironically, the same Ramones songs that probably blew out my hearing are now the ones I can hear the most clearly 
My car’s headlights are pretty annoying. I have a 2000 chevy malibu. It has daytime running lights and a photocell for turning the lights on when it gets dark. As soon as you put the car in gear the photocell is active with no way to turn the lights off. No stealth with it whatsoever. During the winter when I want to let my car run while I run in my house or something my headlights are shining on the neighbors house. I’ve found I can shut the headlights off only by turning the car off then back on. Why couldn’t they just give me the option of turning them off when I didn’t want them.
I once bought a universal remote at Radioshack. Intead of buttons it had a touchpad; different virtual buttons would display for the different gizmos it could control. It also had miscellaneous programmable buttons. It took some effort to set up but once you did, you had a universal remote that was, by god, universal.
The only problem was, instead of the 2 AAs most remotes use, this one used 2 AAAs. The touchpad used a lot of power, so I had to change the batteries every 4-6 weeks.
That would have been all well and good, except for the other only problem, which was instead of the simple slide-off battery lid like other remotes have, the lid to this remote was held in place with a teeny tiny little screw.
And with the teeny tiny little screw, of course, was a teeny tiny little spring, and no matter how carefully I was everytime I opened it, with a teeny tiny “twing!” the teeny tiny screw would go one way and the teeny tiny spring would go another.
Another ATM complaint: Why not have envelopes available in a little bin instead of making me request one from the machine every time I need to make a deposit? Then I can grab a few and have them filled out before I get to the machine instead of sitting there trying to scribble my info using my steering wheel as a desk and holding up anyone behind me. Especially when the GD machine beeps at you for the entire time between when you take the envelope from it and when you give it back. So annoying.
Most of my complaints are misplaced “ergonomics” that are supposed to make life better, but they only work if you’re in the middle of the bell curve.
ATMs: The outdoor ATMs (and gas pumps) often have shades to keep the sun off the screen. Cool if you’re 5’2" (with or without eyes of blue), but when you’re 6’4" tall, it means you can’t read the top line or two unless you bend over and wave your butt at the person behind you.
Scissors: When I was growing up, we had scissors. Mom was a leftie and Dad was a rightie, and I learned to use scissors with both hands. Now we have “handed” scissors, so I need to buy twice as many, and ambidextrous folks like me can’t just grab them with whatever hand is handy (so to speak).
Airplane seats: They added a spiffy little headrest that works spiffily for people who are just the right height. Should you happen to be taller than that, it hits you in the shoulder blades and produces one heckuva backache. My short daughter reports that it hits her too high and causes her head to tilt forward. What was wrong with keeping the seatback straight and offering us pillows? Or if they can afford to add a video monitor, speakers, and a phone to each seat, maybe they could make it adjustable!
My oven timer: Push “timer.” Then push the minute or hour buttons to set the time you want. That’s the way my last one worked. With this one, it won’t actually start until you push a start button. My wife, my son, and I have all walked away at least once thinking the timer was set and had it burn. Why can’t the thing just start automatically if you haven’t pushed the button in a couple of seconds?
Actually, the “sleep” function is the opposite of alarm. If you want to go to sleep while listening to music, you turn it on and set the sleep for 30 minutes (or whatever). It plays music for the specified length of time and then shuts off.
I have long hair. My daughter has longer hair. The beater brush on the vacuum cleaner picks it all up and winds it around and around and around into a dense mat that eventually becomes large enough to stop the brush from turning. I’m okay with that, actually. I figure it’s part of the price of having long hair. But it means that every single time I use the thing I have to get a Phillips head screwdriver, take out four screws, remove the cover plate, cut the dense hairy mat off the brush, replace the cover plate and reinsert the four screws. Which makes vacuuming an even bigger pain than it intrinsically is. Put a coupla release clips on the faceplate already, willya?
Volume/noise level issues really bug me. Different channels are set at dramatically different volume levels, which means I’m always frantically grabbing for the remote to adjust the volume levels. If I’m watching late at night, I cringe everytime I inadvertently tune to a loud channel after watching a quiet (and in the case of the local CBS affiliate, vewy, vewy quiet) channel. I have cable, but I doubt that’s the source of the problem – although I wonder why the volume levels aren’t evened out by the cable provider.
Then there’s the issue of the decibel and sound-profile crapshoot that you go through when buying many things, such as hair dryers, ACs, refrigerators, PCs, leaf blowers, and lawn mowers. I’d welcome new federal regulations for some products requiring decibel levels to be accessible to the consumer before buying the item in question – with information placing that information in a medical context re. safety of exposure. Screening for annoying tambres and frequencies would be much trickier (and perhaps subjective), but perhaps a system could be worked out to identify dominant “notes” by frequency, or somesuch.
For example, a leaf blower might have an overall noise level of 128 decibels, with a pronounced dominant note at a high-pitched 16,200 Hz, and pack a Surgeon General’s warning that the user should use ear protection or risk possible hearing damage after, say, 15 minutes’ use.
Even when hearing damage isn’t an issue (like with refrigerators), getting one with a quiet compressor or a more-pleasant-sounding one can make for a much more pleasant home environment – like when you’re cooking and trying to watch a TV from the next room.
Also, and this is a minor gripe – why do some DVD cases have two little flip-top locks on the top and side, instead of just being pried apart on the right edge (two clasps, internally), like most DVD cases?
Same here. And it also has an obvious camera shutter sound when it goes off. Imagine how you would react when someone around you suddenly without obvious reason makes a camera shutter sound.
My complaint is Weber charcoal grills. For years I had a cheap knockoff Weber kettle grill, worked great, all I had to do was buy a new grill every couple of years. Last year at work I am rewarded with a brand new Weber grill. Take it home, put it together, fill it with charcoal and start grilling some burgers. First thing I notice, I can’t prop the lid open a crack, the lid will slide off unless it is fully seated. Then I notice the bottom vent will only open half way, it is spring loaded and Weber thinks it only needs to be fully open to clean charcoal ash. The catch tray for the ash takes two hands to pop off the little spring clips. While manuvering around the grill, I accidently bump the side and over goes the grill. It only has 3 legs, my cheap knockoff has 4. Listed it on Craigslist the next day for $20 and sold it in 15 minutes. My old 4 legged, easy to clean grill that lets me prop open the lid a few inches still works great.
My other complaint is about my Samsung microwave. It has 8 preset buttons, put your item in, hit one button and your cooking. The problem is the popcorn button, it is preset to 1 minute, 30 seconds. A normal bag of popcorn takes one minute longer. The instruction manual says to reset the preset time, just push set, then popcorn and change the time to what I want then hit set again. The problem is, the microwave does not remember the preset time. If you want to use it, you have to change the time every time. It’s much easier to just punch 2, 3, 0 then start.
“Did your pants just click and whirr, or are you just happy to see me?”
Gas pumps. I mean, fuck! I just want some gas! Let me pick up the nozzle labeled 87 and squeeze! No I don’t want a damn car wash! Where’s the “No” button? Does cancel count?! Do I have to lift up where the nozzle was sitting or not?! Could this LCD screen be any dimmer? See attendant for assistance?!?! Now even that old lady at the next pump is looking at me like I’m a toddler with a busy-box! I’m too pissed off to even make this rant coherent.
And those kids! On your lawn again! 
What unhappy memories this brings back! One of the clumsiest pieces of crap I’ve ever used. I haven’t used this in years and am surprised it survives to this day.
My annual bugbear is with clock radios that can only be altered forwards. That’s OK in spring when the clocks go forward but in autumn when they need to be put back, it means going forward 23 hours. Stupid.