Strange prejudices you have

The more Christian-related paraphernalia on a vehicle, the worse the driver behind the wheel. The absolute worst are those with vanity plates that mention Jesus in some way. If I see one near me, I know that they will inevitably cut someone off or nearly cause an accident.

I don’t think that’s so strange, but it’s a bit too narrow. The more anything (religious, political, feminist or prolife, environmental etc) plastered to the back of a vehicle, the more I worry about someone behaving squirrelly behind the wheel. The plastering on of messages seems a bit manic, so…

Anyway…
If someone I’ve thought of as intelligent starts talking about their favorite shows, and they turn out to be mostly/all reality shows, I find myself startled because I have trouble believing that smart people waste their time on things like American Idol and Jersey Shore.

If you are at Wal-Mart and you have more than two children in tow, you probably beat your kids.

(To be clear, I am sharing this as an irrational prejudice that I have, and not as some kind of fact.)

I’m wary of people who don’t like chocolate. It’s sinister, also people with no necks (ok very short necks) give me the willies.

Yesterday, I made a stop at the public library. The parking lot was pretty crowded (it’s tiny) but there was one free space in front of the door. The space was on my left, I was stopped in front of it with my blinker on, ready to turn in. A car came from the other direction and stopped so it was blocking my way to the space. There was a very long pause. I pointed at the space as if to say “hey, can you move, I want my space.” The car promptly pulled in.

Of course, the library is in a strip mall, so it was a short drive to some empty parking spaces. When I walked up to the car, I noticed a large crucifix hung from the rearview mirror. And I thought, “How unchristian to steal someone’s parking space at the library!”

Drivers of Beige Buick Sedans. Somehow, they always seem to be pure evil in that Angus Scrimm kinda way.

I saw this mentioned in another thread and I have to say I agree with it: smoking. If I see someone smoking, I think less of them. That could change after I get to know the person, but to me smoking is a sign of weakness.

Also, poor grammar and writing skills in people who are native English speakers are signs of lack of intelligence.

Finally, unless they are research scientists who spend more than 12 hours a day in a lab, or children too young to understand, people who don’t know what is going on in the world are absolute idiots. An example would be if I mentioned what’s going on in Egypt, and the person said, “Is something happening there? I don’t watch the news.”

These prejudices used to be much stronger. As I’ve grown older and made intentional steps toward becoming less judgmental, they’ve eased up quite a bit.

Pretty much anyone who answers the phone at a foreign customer service call center.

Oh, sorry about that. The topic is STRANGE prejudices.

I cited the prejudice EVERYBODY has.

I don’t think the prejudices I listed are really all that strange, either.

Another one: I am prejudiced against men who wear baseball caps everywhere. They are fine at the beach, on the ball field, on a fishing boat, but otherwise, they make men look childish.

Any adult who orders a soft drink at a restaurant (at supper, during non-work hours) automatically goes to the bottom of my list. Pop is for kiddies.

I apologize in advance to anyone that owns one, but IME anyone driving a Prius is a douchebag. At least as a driver, I don’t know as a person.

Yep. That’s one of mine, too.

Also: people who drink white zinfandel or who drink only white wine.

I feel like I never see either a pickup truck or a minivan that’s being driven by a sane person. Either they tootle along ten miles below the speed limit, or they tailgate and pass and generally act like they have the bladder control of a two-year-old.

Buicks, of course, always tootle along ten miles below the speed limit.

People that come to work wearing suits and carrying backpacks. They might as well have their relaxed-fit chinos hiked up to their sternum and pop the collar on their freebie corporate-logo embroidered polo shirt.

That’s baffling to me - is the only appropriate dinner beverage alcoholic? For a typical dinner out, I normally order water (because I’m too cheap to pay 2.50 for an iced tea). My husband gets a diet pepsi. Neither one of us are big drinkers (and back to the cheap thing, I’m not a huge fan of paying 10.00 for a cocktail or 9.00 for a glass of wine). Drinking 2-3 alcoholic drinks each is a fast way to run up the bill 50.00 (which we have friends that do, and it makes splitting a check a bit of an adventure, since we definitely don’t want to go 50/50).

For a nice dinner out, we would probably each get a glass of wine. When that’s gone, I would drink water and my husband would order…a diet pepsi.

What about recovering alcoholics or designated drivers, are they also targets of your scorn?

To be fair, I think **Leaffan **would consider water or tea to be perfectly adult.

That said, I drink Diet Pepsi almost exclusively. I also order chicken fingers from time to time. I like them. If you have an issue with that, I don’t care. I have far more important things to worry about than some stranger’s perceptions of what I’m eating.

The whole point of this thread is strange prejudices. To me, that means things we realize we shouldn’t be prejudiced about but are. The whole “drinking soda with dinner/supper” thing is something that invokes what is most likely an unfair reaction in me. That said, a sweetened or artificially sweetened drink with dinner would seem to me to adversely affect the taste of the food. It doesn’t mean you have to drink an alcoholic beverage; water or unsweetened/lightly sweetened iced tea would work, too.

I also think people who drink coffee during dinner are weird. That reaction in me is strange.

My boyfriend likes only sweet wines and drinks Coke or Mountain Dew in the morning instead of a hot caffeinated drink. I think that’s weird–I’m a bit prejudiced against people who do that. But it doesn’t mean I’m going to break up with him or anything. I just shrug and think “that’s weird” and go on my way, because I know it’s unfair of me to judge him for that, even though I still do. That’s what’s strange about it.

Can you expand on this? If it’s not broadcast on television, is it okay not to know about something? Do you know what’s going on in, for example, Georgia, Russia or Sri Lanka?

What if someone just doesn’t care? I know what’s going on in Egypt these days, but I don’t particularly care, and if I had no TV I wouldn’t know about it.

OK. People who drink Pepsi, period, diet or not. I went out to dinner with a group and one woman ordered two large glasses of Pepsi and gulped them down during the meal like nectar, like she was dying of thirst in the desert. I can’t help it, I consider Pepsi a low-class drink, and gulping it (or any soft drink, really) down even lower class. It seems more acceptable to drink any kind of soda a lunchtime, but at dinner at a nice restaurant? No, it doesn’t seem appropriate for an adult. JMO, it doesn’t make you a bad person, and to each his own.

That single mom at the gas station/food mart with ugly home-made, hand-carved wobbly tattooes on her arms and hands. Who also has three kids at age 22. Nice enough girl, but to me it shows she has poor judgment and impulse control and that’s why she’s working a minimum wage job - with three kids.