Tell me about great lengths you've gone to to avoid irritating people

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

My favorite responses are crying or telling him my kid has cancer. It’d be dishonest, but he’d not only stop pestering me, but feel like a complete douche too. I considered telling him I suffer from chronic depression. He’d likely feel to bad to keep asking someone who is depressed and/or has a cancer-stricken kid to smile.

Heh. In seriousness, I could say something like "I feel fine, but please understand that not everyone likes to smile. And if he keeps annoying me after that, I’ll just shoot him.

Say no more.

Love this website. I once saw my former company featured on there! I was… oddly proud. Thinking of what kind of passive-aggressive note I could come up with.

What do you mean he tried to “ban” you? Or did he actually try to ban you? I hope not, as I can’t see how he’d try to bar you from entering your own work place in because he didn’t like your attitude.

Holy crap, what a tool. I’d have done the same thing probably.

I always, always make a point of avoiding those hyper-aggressive makeup counter salespeople. If you walk right through them quickly and put on the “not interested” face, they usually won’t bother you, but I find them so irritating, and the god-awful perfume overkill odor to be so irritating, that I just avoid that whole circus altogether.

42

One sentence, “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m uncomfortable smiling on demand, it’s just not me.”

You’re an adult, there is no need to be rude, but what’s so hard about being honest and direct? I see it all the time on this board and it confuses me no end. Those things under your nose are lips, people, don’t be afraid to use them! You’ve been gifted with language - use your words.

I mean, I might avoid eye contact with someone I don’t want to converse with, but using an inconvenient entry, or taking another bus/train? I just don’t get it.

43

As a retail cashier, I have no escape from the half-dozen or so regulars that creep me out or make me bonkers. Most are fine, but some… ick.

Joe

44

There is a guy at my subway stop who hands out free papers in the morning and he got more and more aggressive with me over time until I just stopped using that entrance and started using another. He hates that I don’t ever take a newspaper from him (I guess he has to stand there until he gets rid of all of his papers or something) and yells comments at me as I go down the stairs about how rude I am and how I hurt his feelings not taking a paper from him. I’ve thought of saying things like, “I can’t read, asshole!” or “If I wanted news with a conservative slant and dirty hands when I got to the office I would jerk off Glen Beck on my way to work, TYVM” but I don’t know him and I can’t be sure he wouldn’t escalate the situation or get violent with me so I just cross the street to avoid him now.

45

There is an intellectually impaired woman who hangs around my apartment building and annoys everyone by clinging on and asking intrusive questions. I think she may live here or be friends with the manager, but she doesn’t appear to work and frequently loiters in the parking lot, the lobby, or the strip mall across the street. I will keep driving in circles or sit in the car with my engine off until she wanders far enough away that I can get to the building without running into her, and I have avoided the elevator and gone up 4 flights of stairs when it would mean having to get in one with her. In fact, I try to avoid getting within 6 feet of her because she smells like urine.

46

Not that extraordinary, but recently, I’ve had to change the laundromat we use and go to one farther away when the owners, who we know pretty well, hired a lady to watch over the place and take in bundles. She’s very sweet, but wants to talk ALL the time, and even tries to help me with my laundry. Really, I don’t usually want to talk in a hot noisy laundromat and I don’t need any help, thanks. I still see her to drop off bundles, so I don’t feel too guilty.

47

Like Taomist, the person I needed to avoid was a friend who simply couldn’t take hints that I wasn’t interested. So I avoided him. For a year. He has a very sweet girlfriend now, and we’re friends again, but until then I wanted to be absolutely sure I didn’t continue to give him the wrong impression.

MeanOldLady, print out an article about Botox and people not being able to smile properly, and hand it to him saying “It’s a small price for beauty, you know?”

My mom is under the impression that this sort of behavior meant my grandmother was crazy. But I guess even if does, she’s got company!

48

There is a caretaker for my block of flats who I’ve only met twice, but on both of those occasions he said something which I think he thought was flirty, and I thought was creepy.

If any parcels are delivered to my flat, they ring my doorbell to deliver, find no one there as I’ll be at work, and leave the parcels with the caretaker. He’s only there 9am to 5pm Mon-Fri so if this happens I rarely get the chance to pick them up - most recently I had to get a new router and the provider would only send it to my home address. So it was months before I picked it up as I was always at work between those hours. This was the first time I met the caretaker. He asked a lot of questions about my work, and I was happy to chat with him, until he started saying everyone in these flats is rich and doesn’t care about their belongings - I began to disagree(I’m definitely not rich, and when my bike was stolen from outside the flats I can assure anyone I did care) and asked if he knew that the flats are in two parts - one half are outright owned by rich people and the other half are housing association/shared ownership(my half), he wasn’t listening so I didn’t care enough to argue about it.

Then he said my husband was a very lucky man. (I’m not married, but I did not tell him that). It was how incongruous it was that I found creepy.

Second occasion, he was working late and saw me walking across to my flat, and called out that I was home early, asked if I was working hard. I said ‘always working hard’ and he said that I looked nice, and that I always looked nice.

I should explain, these statements on their own don’t make a person creepy. It’s really just clumsy flirting. It’s more about my attitude to the area - someone was fatally shot just up the road last week; a guy on the bus in the middle of the day last Friday threatened to ‘spill [my] guts on the floor until they’re cold’ as apparently I looked at him funny. I live on my own and I feel on edge. Clumsy flirting makes me very uncomfortable.

TLDR version is that I won’t have anything delivered to my home address, I don’t like to get home before 5pm even if I get to leave work early, and if I see the caretaker I’m going to run in the opposite direction. I’m sure this makes me nuts. But I think that was what the OP was after?? :stuck_out_tongue: :wink:

49

The reason I think you are going to have to say something to the guy is that he is very likely doing it out of reflex. I probably do the same thing with people I see somewhat regularly but know little about beyond the passing in the hall kind of thing. You just latch onto something and stick with it; I doubt he is that worried about your smiling, and you’re not likely the only one he says it to. He might just feel stupid saying nothing at all or just ‘good morning’ every day. It’s gotta be a boring job!

50

I had a cow-orker who talked all day long, every single day. If she wasn’t talking to people in the room, she was talking on the cell phone. There was no peace - ever. I retired a whole year early. Living on rat turds and crackers until my social security could kick in was preferable to listening to her talk for ONE MORE DAY.

51

There’s a janitor at work who tries to flirt with me every time he sees me, and it makes me uncomfortable. I figured out that he usually comes to pick up my trash a little before 1:30, so I made sure to schedule my half-hour lunch for 1:00. It’s hard working from 8:00 in the morning and not eating until 1:00. But it’s worth it not to have to deal with him.

Except for the days that he comes at a random time in the morning. Then I swear inwardly, because not only do I have to try to keep him from lingering around my cubicle, but then I’m hungry until 1:00 for no reason. DAMNIT.

52

I remember going somewhere with my grandparents when I was a kid, and when we got back to their house there was a car in the driveway. Gran said “Oh crap, that’s so-and-so! We can’t go home yet, they’ll never leave!” So Granddad drove around the block a couple times until whoever it was at their house left.

We have some seriously creepy customers where I work that the tellers always try to avoid. One guy in particular would always ask if the teller was married or had a boyfriend every time he came in, no matter how many times he’d seen that particular teller. If the teller said there was no husband/boyfriend, this creep would go on about how he’d be their husband in a heartbeat except he was married. I was proud of one of the tellers when she told this guy “No thanks, I don’t do charity work!” He doesn’t come in anymore, he got fired from his job due to sexual harrassment and now can’t get a new job. Go figure…

53

I quit a carpool because one of the three other guys was incredibly boring with tales of pawpaws and garage sales.

We had a 45 mile commute mostly on rural roads (w/little traffic) and he would not go faster than 52 mph.

It cost me about $100 per month but it saved my sanity (and about 1-2 hour of extra time at home per week). between the extra 20 minutes of commute time every day he drove and the 2-3 days a week one of the carpoolers had to work a few minutes late.

54

WTF is it with security guards, anyway? I encounter one regularly who repeatedly says the exact same phrase to every single person who walks by: “Happy Tuesday!!!” (or whatever day it is). It is always said very loudly and it is always accompanied by the biggest, most ridiculous smile you could ever imagine.
mmm

55

Damn, I was sure I had posted this Saturday night.

He attempted to ban me (as in, told his superiors about the incident etc) and in the past had temporarily “banned” people form the building for a day or two for not having their proper workID’s. This wasn’t high security shit either, it’s not as though anyone would try and impersonate us. And everyone had their photo ID’s on them, had previous signatures in the book, etc. The reason his little shit didn’t work this time was that at the end of his tirade (he followed me up to my office and screamed in front of several people) the aforementioned boss’s boss’s boss walked in and saw the end of it. After he left, she started parroting him.

Apparently he’d tried to ban her in the past because she was “giving him lip” about taking her ID out of one of those plastic see-thru things :rolleyes:.

So she did me a favor and informed the whack job’s boss of his completely unprofessional/insane behavior and I never saw him at the main entrance again. He was relegated to the freight entrance, IIRC.

I’m just glad he was stupid/crazy enough to follow me and scream in front of other people. Had he not I probably would have had to see him often in the future.

56

I stopped going to a gas station near my office, even though it’s frightfully conveniently-located and really very reasonably-priced, because of one creepy cashier. He told me to smile and asked really personal questions about my life that I wasn’t comfortable fielding. I hate talking to strangers anywhere, but more particularly in retail. Give me my shit, let me the fuck out of your store.

So I started going there less and less often. The last time I went there he asked me why I didn’t come by as much, and I made up some excuse about my work schedule changing. Never gone back.

I also changed work shifts in part to get away from an endless complaining, cursing bitch.

57

I could have written the OP. Strangers are always telling me to smile and it makes me so angry that when I work out at the gym and feel myself losing steam, I think of those people. Always fires me up.

Instead of a security guard, my nuisiance is a guy that works at the hospital near me (I assume as much b/c he’s always in scrubs) who often crosses my path on my way to work. On three seperate occasions, he’s told me to smile.

“Smile, it’s not that bad”.

It’s so inane and irritating, and when I have to hear this first thing in the morning (before the caffeeine sets in), it really makes me want to hurt and humiliate him publically. Lately I keep seeing him at a higher than usual frequency and I figure that as long as I don’t get within hearing distance of him, he won’t assail me with his tripe and he won’t have to get cut with my tongue when it leaps out my mouth and disembowels him one day.

So I try to stay on the opposite side of the street when I see him heading in my direction.

58

I’m curious: Do guys get the whole “come on, smile!” thing or is this something primarily directed at women? Because it happens to me a fair amount (and I fucking hate it, btw) but I’m having trouble thinking of any times I’ve heard it directed at guy friends. Maybe I just scowl more than they do.

59

I hid under my desk when a former co-worker visited the office with her new offspring while she was on maternity leave.

Picture Marty Feldman in drag with really bad, small teeth (always lipstick on the teeth). Now picture him trying to be feminine by immitating Julia Child with the volume cranked to eleven. Now picture this Julia Child wannabe carrying the latest best seller or parenting book around all the time (even to office meetings). She never read the book, she just carried the book “as a conversation piece” (she said).

She also had a fully decorated nursery in her house - crib, toys, racks of baby clothes etc. - since her mid-20s (she met her husband and had a her baby in her mid-30s). Everyone knew these things because inevitably some new employee would make the mistake of asking her about her conversation piece and then they’d be flooded by TMFWI (too much fucking weird information).

Anyway, this woman showed up unexpectedly to visit the office. It caused a flurry of activity as people tried to flee before she could find them. My co-worker and I were running for the back stairs. His office was several doors up from me, so he had a head start. Suddenly, we heard a Julia Child cackle from a hall that was between us. My co-worker was by the emergency stairs, but I was cut off. He looked at me wide-eyed with his nostrils flaring like a wild animal, and I gave him a heartfelt “Save yourself, man!” nod, then he bolted through the fire door.

I ran back the way I came, crawled under my desk, and pulled my chair in to hide my legs. My jacket was hanging down so I was counting on that to hide me.

“Celly, darling?” I heard in the voice of Miss Piggy in the role of Miss Havisham, then a disappointed “Tsk.”

The next office over, my other co-worker pretended to be on an important call, but Julia Child waited for her with her doily wrapped baby. That gave me my chance to escape, and I met my co-worker in a sub shop across the street.

We ran into Julia Child on our way back to the stairwell as she was coming out of the elevators. :frowning:

60

My boss frequently complains about the security guard “who always wants to talk.” Next time she brings him up, I’m going to find out if it’s the same dude.

This whole story is hilarious. I love it.