How to use a turn signal, and how multiple-way stops are supposed to work.
If you have to move heavy objects, gravity is either your friend or your enemy. If the object to be moved is at initially higher position than its final position, then it has potential energy which can be used to your advantage, and means that, in theory, you need to exert no energy to move it. Never waste that energy. You need to carefully analyze the situation and use your knowledge of mechanics to maximize your advantage. Never fight gravity unless you absolutely must. Move objects laterally without bending.
If you have to move something against gravity, examine the situation to determine how you can use the laws of mechanics to minimize the forces you must exert. The simplest situation is a box which must be moved to a higher level. It has negative potential energy. You will want to raise one edge to tilt it 45 degrees so that the center of gravity is now higher before you lift.
If you are carrying a heavy object with another person, give 'em the old Portuguese lift. Never heard of that? Apparently neither has Google. In my old warehousing days, it could often require two men to move an object. If both men carried the load at the same level, their weight was the same. If, however, one man lifted his load to a higher level, part of his load was transferred to the other man. Everyone knew this, of course, so it was only used on new guys. Of course, they eventually caught on, but some would take quite a while, as long as you weren’t too blatant about it. THAT, my friends, is the notorious Porgy lift. 
This is not clear to me. I don’t understand what “far side”, “near side” and “at the back” mean.
When entering the freeway, get your god damn car up to traffic speed before merging in front of somebody. Merging at 30 mph is just asking for trouble. Also, if you see somebody entering the freeway up ahead, try to move over one lane instead of zooming up on someone’s bumper as they enter.
It’s easy on flat ground, especially if you imagine holding the trailer’s hitch by hand and maneuvering it like a cart, and then make the car do that job. But, at the local dump, I had to back up around a curve, part of which goes over a berm. The trailer drops from view for several feet of travel. The challenge is to anticipate where it will be when it reappears, but it’s an inherently unstable situation, because once it goes off a little the error rapidly increases with time. That would often mess me up. How much it messes somebody up, though, depends on vertical details of the view their car lets them have of the trailer. I think this is so hard it’s actually… well, unfair.
And for gods’ sake never, ever, ever stop at the end of an on-ramp.
Since we’re throwing out driving tips…
If you’re going to an unknown or new destination, look at a map BEFORE you get in the car. Honey. 
When moving something long, like a couch say, and you have to take it round a tight corner, like the turn on a stairs, tilt up the couch til it stands on its end. Now you have a much shorter turning radius that will go round the corner with room to spare.
Some people think the only response to any traffic situation is to slam on the brakes. I have a friend like this who is an incredibly timid driver. I was a passenger in a ride with her for a couple hours once (freeway driving), and by the end of the two hours she had only just got up the nerve to hit the speed limit. I try to never ever ride with her if it can be avoided.
Jumping on the traffic bandwagon…
When two lanes are merging into one:
- one car from lane A
- one car from lane B
- Go to step 1
Why do so many have to screw this up?
Don’t get me started on grocery carts.
Yep, likewise. But I do notice a difference and it is a tad easier with an automatic. It’s most apparent on vehicles with high rolling resistance or when coming to a stop uphill. When driving in San Francisco, you pretty much have to give the car a bit of gas when coasting a car uphill to a stop. To be honest, this is one case where I don’t bother being extra-smooth; it’s not trivial with a manual and I have enough other distractions in the city.
Since driving things are popular, here’s another: turning left. Specifically, turning left from a stop in a turn lane. I see so many people start their turn far too early; they end up making a 45-degree bee-line to the lane they want to end up in. The trouble is, by the time they get to that lane, they’re going pretty fast and their car is at a 45 degree angle to the lane. So they either have to swerve, slam on the brakes, or just veer into the adjoining lane (or drive over the median curb, which I’ve also seen). It’s not a big deal if there’s only one turn lane, but if there are parallel lanes then the cars on the outside have to watch out (which I always do).
The obvious answer is… just follow the road markings. Make a rough quarter-circle. That way you arrive at the other lane nearly parallel to it and you don’t have to make any crazy maneuvers.
Well, not to hijack my own thread, but I just finished reading on this topic in The Cambridge Medieval History. According to that source, one of the primary motivations behind the ban on clergy marriage was a classic case of “one guy screwing it up for everybody”. Well, it was more than one guy, but you get the point. Too many married priests at that point in medieval history were trying to enrich themselves financially in order to have something significant to pass along to their sons. There were also some who were creating little “dynasties” of priests, which went against the idea that the Christian priesthood was not supposed to be a hereditary position. So the Church finally said, “Okay, no more of that.”
The original Mickey Mouse Club TV show (which I watched in reruns in the 1970s - I’m not old enough to have seen it in first run!) used to run a serialized story about a summer camp. The only scene I remember from the entire serial involved a teenaged boy walking along, staring off to his left at the teenaged girl he had a crush on. The result was that he ran smack into a younger boy walking the opposite direction. He looked down at the younger boy and yelled, “Why don’t you look where you’re going?!”
To which the younger boy responded, “Why don’t you go where you’re looking?!”
In one short Spanky and Alfalfa were trying to sneak into an adult only show by having Spanky on Alfalfa’s shoulders wearing a long coat, with a fake mustache made by snipping off Alfalfa’s “personality”. Alfalfa bumped into something.
Alfalfa: Why don’t you look where I’m going?
Spanky: Why don’t you go where I’m looking?
When when trying to catch a hard to catch horse/dog do NOT beat the animal (when caught)
What you’re missing is the millions of users who don’t know “More scrolling wanted, click the bar”. To move down 5 pages they click the arrow two hundred times. They don’t know any other way to do it.
When you’re moving something with wheels over a bump (like a curb or the edge of a driveway), it’s usually easier to pull than to push. If the wheels are different sizes, it’s also easier if the larger wheels go first. Once you’re over the obstacle, you can turn around again so you can see where you’re going.
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen someone trying to push a wheelchair over the lip of a driveway when it would be easier to turn around and pull it. This also applies to wheelbarrows, office push carts and wheeled luggage.
I’m always baffled by the ways people have of opening a stuck jar lid. I just take a screwdriver and gently pry it at a couple of places around the lid. As soon as I hear the vacuum break, it’s loose.
I was in my 30s when I realized that when people left out of their planning things which to me were obvious it was not because they’d considered them unimportant or highly improbable, it was because they hadn’t thought of them.
Case in hand: the coworkers in the Idiot Team have to load a database. The information is linked; if your table B uses data from table A, you need to load table A first. You also need to make sure that any data you want to pull from table A has indeed been added to table A. Idiot Team just found out they never added to table A, oh, about 80% of the items they need for table B. Not only had they not thought of cross-checking the two tables, they hadn’t realized it was possible to have missing data.
Idiots: “but… how did this happen?”
MyBoss: “I’m guessing none of you ever checked.”
Idiots: “Check? Why should we have checked? Checked what?”
MyBoss: “Checked that you had all the data you needed for every table. Who do you think should have checked it?”
Idiots: 
(MyBoss is on loan to that zoo, thankfully she’s good at “not my circus” because otherwise she would have broken the ceiling by now)
Another: sometimes there are two ways of doing something. And sometimes, the best way involves mixing the two. Only, it’s not “the best way” for everybody: I can mix two methods without getting dizzy, but for most people, it’s best to just stick to one method, because mixing two leads to terminal confusion, I/O error, Abort, Retry, Fail? It’s a case of “yeah yeah, that way is faster if you don’t get lost” - what for me is a shortcut, for them is being in the middle of the mountains without a GPS signal.
“Pivot!”
“Shut up!”
Here’s why: assume that lane A is the one that keeps going and that B is the one that “stops.” The people in Lane A don’t want to let anyone from Lane B in because they figure they were in the “right” lane all that time and that the people in Lane B are “cutting” unfairly.