So knowing you have these handicaps, and knowing there are other people in stores with you, do you make it your usual practice to stand off to the side of an aisle or always pull your cart off to the side, rather than just leaving it wherever? Do you make an effort to not stand in doorways or stop at the end of an escalator? If you do all of these things, then you’re probably not the kind of person we’re talking about (and I don’t see any reason why everyone in society can’t make these things their habit).
The best ones are those who immediately stop moving once they step off an escalator. There is *literally *no place for me to go other than right into your back and it’s not like I can stop moving or go backwards!
Or how about the people (usually early-twenties aged women) who stand in the stairways leading down to the NYC subway, to gab on their cell phones. I **really **want to see someone crash into them and have their cell phone go flying down the stairs. I have pushed past & yelled at them to get off the fuckin stairs in the past, and I will continue to do so.
I try to. I won’t claim that I always manage to remember to do so.
In my case, it’s because the waiting driver hasn’t left enough space for me to back up enough. So I pull out a bit, wait for the other driver to realize that I need more space, pull out some more, wait for the other driver to realize that my car nose STILL can’t clear the cars surrounding me, and repeat until the waiting driver finally backs up enough for me to safely pull out and then leave the parking space. I try not to make people wait for my space, however, I do need a certain amount of time to put my purse in the seat in a way where it won’t fall to the floor when I make a corner, and I also need to position my walking stick so it won’t fall on my head when I make a turn.
The solution is the Snatch & Throw.
One smooth motion on your downward walk, grab their phone and release on the forward motion, causing their phone to fly/bounce/crash down the stairs.
That’s pretty sad and selfish really. If I’m in my car, about ready to go and I see someone wants it I usually make en effort to leave quicker so they can have it. I have plenty of better things to do then aimlessly sit in my car, such as masturbation.
I’m sure that this is illegal. I’m also sure that if it went to jury trial, there would be a classic case of jury nullification, assuming that the jurors get out in public at all.
My wife does this, but in her case it’s just cluelessness. She’s one of the most considerate and polite people I’ve ever met. If we’re out at a bar or something, standing where the servers are trying to get past the bar folks, I’m constantly putting my hand on her elbow and saying “honey, watch behind you” or some such. She’ll look and quickly step forward, apologizing. Five minutes later, same deal.
I’ve developed a way that my shoes make a loud slapping sound as I stop behind someone who’s in my way. (step, step, step, SLAP, SLAP) I get about 80% success with them turning quickly and finding someone so close, being a little surprised, and moving right away.
On sidewalks, I have no qualms about shouldering someone who’s hogging the sidewalk by being side-by-side with someone else. They’re in the way, and there’s no chance I’m moving into the street for anybody. It helps that I have a quick smile and a funny giggle, if they seem to have a problem, I say “oopsie!” and smile and giggle. Maybe they think I’m crazy at that point, I don’t know, but so far no altercations and I’m satisfied.
I also have no qualms about elbowing people in the back if it’s an escalator-type scenario, and if it’s a party-type thing where I may actually know or am at least acquainted with the person, I’ll put a hand on each shoulder and move them over.
I’m one of those who’s constantly aware of her surroundings, and I’m usually aware of things others don’t seem to notice. I get annoyed at people who don’t notice, and am always trying to be conscientious about not being in other people’s way or holding them up - which makes me more annoyed at people who don’t do this.
It didn’t happen that night of my OP rant, but allow me to add one other person to my list of Rude, Clueless or No Peripheral Vision question;
What makes people who suddenly laugh loudly decide it is a good idea to jump backwards two feet and sometimes even flail their arms when doing so? I can’t tell you how many times I have lost a drink to these idiots in a crowded bar, and is that even natural? Do you jump backwards when you laugh?
If I’m walking through a crowded airport and a person some distance in front of me (and usually pulling a suicase, lugging a shoulder bag and talking on the phone) suddenly stops for no apparent reason, I just know there’re going to just as suddenly veer into my path without looking as soon as I get close. I also see a lot of “side-lookers” at the airport – people who are walking very briskly in one direction while staring quite intently at something at a 90-degree angle to their vector. I chalk it up to cluelessness more than rudeness, but I sometimes wonder how these people manage to go through life without constantly running into other people – or getting hit by buses.
A couple weeks ago, I stepped off the Skytrain (light rail) found that the steps leading down to the street were occupied by two twenty-somethings hat decided that this was a good place to take a load off.
I don’t know how very busy steps (the station connected with a shopping mall, for christ’s sake) looked like a nice peaceful place to sit down, and they seemed bothered not at all by the dozens of people trying to squeeze through the little bottleneck that they were creating at the top of the stairs.
“Look at me!” I exclaimed as my turn to try to get through came, “Stepping on the lounge. What an asshole!”
Let’s not forget the massive outbreak of deafness that affects people in public buildings. When you’re walking two or three abreast, completely blocking the corridor, someone is coming up beyond you and you fail to make room for them - well, that’s got to be part of the epidemic of deafness.
There truly is a counterpart to road misbehavior, which I think of as sidewalk rage. People lay claim to turf on sidewalks and in corridors, then others make competing claims. Pretty soon we’ll reach a saturation point and there’ll be widespread scuffles breaking out and little knots of people rolling around struggling on the ground.
I suggest a chapter entitled, Walk On the Right, Pass On The Left.
As a cashier, the ones I hate are the ones who wait until you’re nearly done ringing up their stuff and then say “Oh! I forgot to get _____.” and then just walk off to get it, leaving their trolley (shopping cart), their stuff, me and a queue of other customers waiting. Last variation I had on this, Stupid Woman waits until I’ve scanned all her stuff and then asks me about large scale poster printing, having noticed the sign above the print department that says we do it. I answer her basic questions about price and so forth but then she starts asking specific questions about the job she wants done and I tell her they’ll be able to answer her questions in more depth and more accurately at the print department desk, so she says “Ok, I’ll go talk to them” and just walks off. I’m left with all her stuff, her trolley and an unfinished transaction on my screen. There was nothing preventing her from paying me and taking her trolley with her to the print department, she just didn’t bother and didn’t care that she was making a nuisance of herself.
I also hate clueless people who ignore me when I say “Oh please, if you pass that to me I’ll put it away” and just dump the courtesy baskets into display stands next to the register. I had a customer change her mind recently about an organiser she’d brought up to the register and she just swept it off the end of the counter and into the display box of pens. Again, I said “Oh please, if you pass that here to me I’ll put it away” and she completely ignored me. I had to leave my register to go around when she left and get it out. The weird thing was that she wasn’t a rude or nasty customer. She just didn’t seem to get that maybe the store didn’t want concertina organisers in the pen box, and didn’t seem to hear me ask (several times) if I could put it away for her.
I’m still pissy about the clueless mother and child I encountered while shopping in a department store recently. Child was sitting on the floor in the middle of the aisle surrounded by books, mother was standing over him looking bored. I pulled up short - with my trolley, I couldn’t get by them to reach what I needed (without it, I still couldn’t have passed - they were blocking the entire aisle). My mother would have said “Cazzle, move out of the way! The lady wants to get through!” (not that my mother would let me spread a selection of books across a department store aisle in the first place), but this woman just stood there for a bit longer and then snapped “Hurry up and choose one!”. The child began to whine so she spun around and walked off past me. The child sat there a little longer, then he grabbed one of the books and ran off after her. I had to walk around and pick the books up myself so I could get down the aisle. I should have taken the books and pelted them at her. If cluelessness hurt, maybe they would start to get a clue.
Another vote for totally clueless. I always keep a track of my surroundings but walking the streets of Stockholm, where I live, can be a pain in the behind as I seem to be the only person who does. Everyone else walks along in their own personal universes it seems. I have no idea if it’s a Stockholm or big town thing and my growing up in the boondocks has made me insecure in crowds or if it’s my impaired peripheral vision.
This one is a special case. I once complained to someone about it in the course of a conversation and she told me that she just had to because she had a very bad spatial sense and needed to look around to get her bearings.
Different.
The person waiting for the parking space has no reason to expect that the driver’s going to leave immediately.
The person trying to use a sidewalk or get into a store has a reasonable expectation of being able to do so.
Put another way - if you’re parked, you have exclusive use of that parking space until you decide to move. If you are in a doorway or on a sidewalk, you have no reasonable expectation of exclusive use.
Hi, honey. Why didn’t you tell me you were a Doper?
It should be legal to shoot People Who Stand in Doorways to Chat.
I think the escalator/stairs stoppers are the same people who, while driving, have no concept of pulling into the right lane to make a right turn (instead just turn from the driving lane, forcing all the traffic behind them to slow down/stop), or getting onto the off-ramp and then slowing down. I don’t think it has ever once occurred to them that there are ways of doing what they want to do without inconveniencing other people, and if it ever did, they wouldn’t care, because they don’t care about inconveniencing other people. I blame the way they were raised, that thinking about other people and how you affect them wasn’t given any importance.