A very mild rant in which I complain about people that are getting on my nerves here as I cannot in real life for various reasons, and ask them to rectify said behavior:
My housemate D: It may just be my personal peeve, but I think bedrooms are private places whose doors should be kept closed. Especially when said bedroom door is right next to the bathroom, and do to the position of the tv you are always facing out. It’s just really creepy having someone staring out in your general direction whenever you want to go to the bathroom. I’m afraid I’m going to develop some kind of neurotic fear of peeing or something. If my annoyance overcomes my apathy I may surreptitiously try and figure out a way of making your door close on it’s own.
My housemate W: I won’t even bother to say. You have a boyfriend now, with an apartment. Please go move in with him.
My housemate W’s boyfriend. Yes, we all enjoy a good poop. Please use your indoor voice when expressing said enjoyment of poop. Or people will think you are masturbating in there.
My mother:
Please do not try to have conversations with people who are not in your direct line of sight. Or at least in the same room. In general, remember to use your ‘indoor voice’ or you will become a caricature of yourself, like your Aunt, or Wolowitcz’s mother on Big Bang Theory.
Please actually listen to people when they talk with you. Do not skim their sentence for a key word for which you have an automated response. Instead please respond in a way that would make sense for someone who actually heard what was said.
Do not phrase every response as an apology or excuse. Especially since everything everyone else says to you is not an admonishment or judgement.
Tone down the emotional content of the things you say. It really is possible to convey information about good or bad news such that all news does not sound like utopia or armageddon. Most things are only a little bit bad or good.
If you must insist on an inappropriately dramatic tone, do not expect others to respond with an equally dramatic reaction. Especially if you have been dramatic about 7 minor things this week, do not be surprised when I can’t muster up a proper reaction to something actually worthy of a reaction such as a funeral.
A lot of those questions were meant to be rhetorical. Don’t look expectingly for an answer.
Don’t constantly be expecting validation from others about every little thing. Validate yourself.
After the 80th story this week about someone who Did You Wrong I have to wonder if maybe you are somehow contributing to the problem, or exaggerating the offenses.
When telling me story of someone who Did You Wrong, do not use me as Surrogate EvilDoer, telling me off in a loud voice as though I were that person. I am not an effigy.
Do not call me multiple times in one day. If you do need me, leave a message on voicemail. Do not leave a long meandering message that takes forever to get to the point. Do not leave a message saying merely ‘call me back’ without a clue as to what the topic is. Do not merely page me with your number. Do not say “hello? are you there?” as though voicemail is an answering machine.
Do not use your generosity as a panacea. Yes you are very generous. No, that is not a magical bandaid for everything else. I’d rather we had a functional family and that I really enjoyed your company, than that you threw money at my and others’ various problems.
Grandma:
Similar to Mom, do not try to hold conversations with others who aren’t in the same room, as yelling across the house is obnoxious, and in your case you still can’t hear what we’re saying so the conversation will consist mostly of you yelling “what?”.
When we knock on the door, do not yell “who is it?” as the screeching hurts others ears and you can’t hear the response until you are right next to the door anyway.
When I buy you groceries and put the dog outside in the back yard briefly so I can leave the door open to bring the groceries in, do not yell across the house asking if you can let the dog in - the dog is fine and will not die from being outside for 30 more seconds. I will let the dog in myself as soon as I get all the groceries inside.
When I’m putting away groceries is not the time to visit with me, even though the flurry of activity may seem so very enticing to watch. It’s much quicker to put them away when you aren’t standing in the middle of the kitchen or walking to the dining table with your walker. Just sit in the living room and enjoy your tv shows and I’ll let you know when I’m done. It doesn’t take that long, really.
In general, please get a hearing aid. But even then, wait until someone is near you to have conversations and use your indoor voice.
Do not put things on the grocery list that you know you are not allowed to have. This means anything with sugar or excessive salt. If your legs swell up again I will likely be the one having to take you to the doctor’s office. And more importantly I will have to hear my mother bitch about it. If something has already been forbidden, do not put it on the list a month later thinking I will have forgotten. Do not get creative with your food definitions. Cocoa Puffs is 90% sugar, regardless of whether or not it’s marketed as a breakfast food. Just thank your lucky stars that your daughter hasn’t banned the peanut butter and jelly that you eat all day and is probably reinvigorating your sugar intake.
Every week I come over on Thursday to watch tv with you and get your shopping list. Every Thursday morning your home aide is around to help you write your list. Every Thursday that I don’t call to remind you, the list is either unwritten or incomplete when I get there. It doesn’t matter that that I’m not shopping on Thursday. If you don’t give me the list then, I have to make an extra trip back to your house before I go shopping. You are no longer able to write legibly, and you can’t see well enough to avoid writing everything on the same line, so you really need your aide to write the list for you. Or maybe this is some kind of trick to add more stuff to the list that the aide knows you can’t have. In which case, grow up. If you want to eat crap until you die, hire someone to buy you crap and to take you to all the various extra doctor appointments you’ll have to be taken to as your body becomes slowly destroyed long before you actually die. Be happy that I’m going to the store for you and do not start fights with me over what my mother tells me the doctor says you are allowed to eat. If you want to get something verboten have my mother approve it first.
Dear Coworker Who I Put Up With Even Though You Regularly Working my Nerves:
You were really close to getting a total smack down yesterday. Really close. Yes, my sister didn’t breastfeed her oldest daughter. No, bitch, that doesn’t make her lazy. If you must know, she was working a million jobs at the time, and WIC was a godsend for her. And even if she hadn’t been working, there are a lot of good reasons why a mother doesn’t breastfeed. None of which have to do with laziness. But because you are a judgemental, overly-opinionated, big-mouth moron, you felt the need to blurt “LAZY!” before I was even finished with my sentence. One day you’re going to interupt the wrong person and they WILL beat your ass. I hope I’m there to see it. And I hope you’re unable to squeeze milk out of your breasts when you’re a mother, just so someone can call you lazy and make you feel like the dried turd you are.
And by the way, you insulted my mother as well, you ignorant whoremonkey. I wasn’t kidding around when I told you we were going to have a problem if you were calling my mother lazy. That expression on my face? That was my I’m-Sick-of-Pretending-I-Like-You face.
True. I meant a random selection of the larger group of people that annoy me. But that’s probably not true either. It’s more like a selection of the people who are annoying me who I haven’t had a chance to vent about previously, or who were particularly on my mind this week. “Arbitrary” is closer, although still somewhat inaccurate. “Ad hoc”? Maybe I will just stick with “random” and tell you there must be a definition that you weren’t previously aware of
I’m sorry about the bedroom door thing. To be honest, I don’t see you when you go into the bathroom, just your shadow. I’d totally keep the bedroom door closed but I get tired of waking up at 3AM when the dog wants to come in or out of my bedroom. It’s more her house than ours, I’m afraid.
Ya, when I ask you, “Is that gum good?” I’m not really looking for a yes or no answer. It’s my attempt at not-quite-politely saying you should shut your stupid cud-chomping mouth.
I do not care if you say hello or goodbye to me. It doesn’t matter, so withholding these small politenesses does not cast me into the pits of despair.
You are not as good at Data Entry as you think you are. Yes, you are miles and miles better than I am. Data Entry is not my job. Bragging on yourself just makes me smile quietly on the many occasions I have to submit an edit request for you to correct your errors.
Your moodiness is annoying. If you are in a bad mood please don’t feel you have to share. I am not sure why most everyone is in awe of you, but the tension in the workplace when you are having one of your fits is giving me a headache.
Maybe because being nice to people makes doing my job easier?
And because if I tell her how I really feel, then I’ll be perpetuating the myth that women in the workplace are all mean bitches who just can’t get along?
jackdavinci, if you ever have any luck retaining your mother to only talk to you when she can see you, please let me know how you did it. Mine gets mad when you point out that you can no longer hear her when you’ve gotten two rooms away. And yet, most of my life she’s complained about asking people to do things and them not doing them. Were we in the same fucking room? No? Then how the hell are we supposed to know you wanted X done?! Grrrrrrrrrrrr.
Sad but true. That catty shit can spiral out of hand really quickly.
I feel kind of fortunate in that I’m a guy and it gives me a bit of a pass in terms of dismissing or completely ignoring the kids who irritate the shit out of me at work.
Stop it with the Fucking Texting. You are adults goddamnit. This has to be the most inefficient form of communication since Morse Motherfucking Code. Gaaaaahhhh, it’s annoying. Why? Because you act like getting a text is an urgent communique from Jesus Hussein Christ himself. Right in the middle of a conversation you’ll snatch your phone and stare at it like it’s the Book of Bleeding Kells. It can wait! You spend half your lives walking around with a fucking phone in front of your face like a retarded zombie.
Roger D Smythe
4115 S 280th St
Auburn, WA 98001-1312
:
I don’t know you at all, and you were in fact a combination of randomly generated names that showed up in the internet white pages. However, I find your name unnecessarily anglophillic, and your insistence on living in a rainy state near Canada also gets on my nerves.
If you can, sit down with Grandma and make a deal with her. Tell her that you’ll buy the salty snacks if she promises to get someone else to drive her to the doctor’s.
I would suggest, too, that even though it’s annoying to you when she wants to visit while you’re putting away the groceries, it might be because she doesn’t get enough social interaction. I don’t know if you feel that’s your problem or not, but I offer it as a suggestion.
I have run out of grandparents, so perhaps I feel a bit more sympathy for them. Hell, my parents are quite old enough to be great grandparents, if their grandchildren would decide that it’s time to reproduce.
Oh, and my apologies for the above post if either Mom or Grandma has already played the “I’m not going to be around forever, you know” card too many times.
Only if their head is within a foot of the ball. Otherwise, it’s unnecessary. If, on the other hand, they’re not rolling away, feel free to drop the boots anywhere on their body, regardless of their political slants.
