Or be nasty, and go buy a 4-pack of valve-stem removers for $1.09 at a car parts store and keep one in your pocket. Loosen the stems and walk away-- and when the poor bastard tries to refill 'em, they won’t
Och, I can be a right bastard sometimes.
Actually, it was SkipMagic’s idea (he was with me). I was all for the keying. 
Along the locked door lines, I get a kick out of people that have to re-push the elevator button. Like the elevator is counting how many people are waiting for it and it is going to get there faster because you just walked up and pushed its button again.
The elevator KNOWS!
I’d like to add a complaint against the people who flip their lids if the store is not open at exactly one second past the hour according to their watches. I don’t care if you have a freakin’ psychic link to Greenwich, we’re opening according to OUR CLOCKS. It would be utterly irrational to poll anyone waiting outside, compute the average of their times, and open according to that schedule.
Yet about every third morning, I get someone honking in the drivethrough and yelling, “Seven o’clock! Seven o’clock!” Then, a few minutes later, once they are paying for their food, they proudly and firmly show me their wristwatch. Yes, very nice. I regret to inform you that your watch does not tell time based on a universal satellite broadcast into which our clocks are also connected. So calm the hell down.
This is really quite clever. I shall be adding it to my arsenal. Kudos to SkipMagic.
Related to locked doors and closed stores:
I work at a consignment store, and I frequently face people leaving stuff outside when we’re closed. It’s bad enough to have a bag of clothes outside the front door and a pile of sleds (yes, sleds. In May.) outside the back door, but why would anyone throw their things in a random dumpster out back and just assume it’s a drop box? The other stores in the plaza have come to realize that it isn’t employees doing the dumping, and they take it with good grace, but it still annoys me that they’re paying for someone else’s garbage. I can’t imagine what the Salvation Army workers face when they go open up in the morning, but I can’t imagine it’s pretty. Look, wait until we’re open, or go somewhere else.
I also detest those people. I had it happen just this morning. I was on my way to work at my summer job at the university, and I caught the elevator up to the ground from the train platform. It’s a fairly long elevator (about six or seven stories), and it doesn’t exactly move at a high speed either.
So I walk up to the elevator and push the BIG RED BUTTON THAT LIGHTS UP AFTER IT’S PUSHED. People continue walking up, and there’s a fair-sized crowd waiting. And waiting. And waiting. I can hear the elevator coming though (it pings as it passes each level on the way down), so it’s not like the elevator is out of order. Then this woman walks up and makes a huge show out of pushing the button, and Lo And Behold, the doors open. Of course, it had just arrived. Then she gets this huge self-satisfied smirk on her face.
I felt like kicking her teeth in, or perhaps making some witty comment. But it was too early in the morning and all I could do was seeth for the next five minutes.
BULLETIN: Pushing the button does not make the elevator come faster. It’s already coming people. Think. Please.
I was going to make the door comment too. In school, this shit used to always happen. You’d walk to your class and there would be a huge group waiting, so of course you assume that there’s still a class in session, so you wait with them. Then some brave soul comes along and opens the door a crack and lo and behold, the room is empty. Everyone giggles nervously and avoids contact with one another as they file in the room, everyone feeling like a dumbass.
Then of course you’re on the other side of it when you’re in the classroom if a class is actually in session. The door keeps cracking open every two minutes because no one bothers to tell the 10 brave souls that arrived within 2 minutes of eachother that there is in fact, a class in session. It’s really quite annoying.
Can’t win. Good thing I graduated.
The car “keying” idea is genious. I’ve got to remember that, because I would never want to actually do something to someone elses car, for fear of bad car karma, something I can’t afford right now, but having them think something’s been done is deliciously, yet harmlessely, evil.
I love it.
d’oh! That should be genius, not “genious”.
Of all words to misspell…
:rolleyes:
How about saying “You’re all waiting, right? Has anyone tried the door?”
You should look proportionally less dumb-assy to the extent you assume they’re waiting, and it’s quite possible that they ARE just standing there waiting for someone, or that they arrived 20 min ago, too early to try the door, but now might be a good time to try it again.