[Bugs Bunny] “I knew I should have taken that left turn at Alamogordo!” [/BB]
I actually learned that a long time ago, too. 
ETA: Also, attend every meeting or you’ll get “volunteered” to do all the crap jobs.
The tuna cannery executive who saved his company a bundle by adding as much water as possible
The other tuna cannery executive who saved his company a bundle by making the lid as thin as possible, so it collapses and squirts mushy tuna into the sink (here puss, you know I don’t like you up on the counter, but this is your lucky day)
Obligatory xkcd link.
As opposed to what? Crawling to the end of the ramp at 40mph, yielding to traffic and then trying to jackrabbit up to freeway speed before you get rear-ended? I drive an underpowered compact; I need the on ramp to get up to speed, and if I need to yield to traffic I can slow down a hell of a lot faster than I can speed up. It’s infuriating to be stuck behind someone who makes me enter freeway traffic at 41mph while they just hit the Turboboost™ and take off like they had JATO units strapped to their rear bumper.
The Holocaust.
I had a professor who assigned a group project. My groupies pretty much flaked out, so I ended up writing most of the assignment (it was pretty small, so no big deal). In part of it we were supposed to assign a rating of 1-5 to something and defend the rating. In the defense, I wrote something like, “I could not find a list of materials in the lesson plan.” I was marked down 5 points on the assignment for using first-person singular instead of first-person plural: it was, after all, a group assignment.
GAHHHH!
In my workplace, however, I love teamwork. It helps that I have a great team.
The entire point of longer ramps IS so that you can get up to the speed limit and merge smoothly with traffic. If you get to the end and are merging into 70mph traffic at 50-55mph, then you’re fucking doing it wrong and presenting a danger to those around you.
The worst things in the world are the wrongs that are necessary, because they will never be made right.
A mosquito buzzing around your ear.
Or maybe having your kneecaps sawed off.
People who argue with me when I know I’m right. I’m not saying I’m right all the time, but when I am (and I damn well know it!) don’t argue! It frustrates me to no end.
Commercials, and how t.v. shows like to dramatically cut to one just before they reveal whatever you’ve been waiting the last 45 minutes for. Just tell me who gets voted off so I can go to bed, dammit!
Yes, it’s frustrating, but it’s even more frustrating to be on the other end with someone who is flat out wrong, cannot admit it and doesn’t bother listening to common sense reasons why they’re wrong.
I had a former friend (emphasis on the word ‘former’) who used to completely misunderstand or mis-hear things and then come up with stupid arguments that, if he’d stopped and really thought about it for a second, made no damned sense whatsoever. Then his ‘argument’ would consist of repeating his point over and over, regardless of what you said to the contrary. The final straw for me was that he straight out admitted that “All I hear is that you don’t agree with me, so I think “how can he not understand this” and repeat my argument.”. In other words, he straight out did not listen to anything you said.
Like for example, in one game, six different pieces took six different actions. He later argued that I shouldn’t have had that ONE piece doing six different things. Well, that would be against the rules and he knows it. But no matter how many times I tried to explain that SIX different pieces were doing one thing each, he’d just pause and say “Well I see what you’re saying, but you still shouldn’t have had that one piece doing six different things.” What a DUMBASS.
So just be sure you’re actually listening to what they say first, eh?
Not being obeyed when I order people to do my bidding – especially total strangers. I mean, where do they get off?
And the people who are getting their items rung up but still aren’t done shopping yet. One item you forgot is fine; disappearing for 5 minutes and returning with armfuls of stuff then going back for more makes you an asshole.
One item is NOT fine – it might take several minutes to get one thing from the back of the store. Get out of the fucking line and go finish shopping.
I was at a math teacher training once, and we were supposed to discuss a test that measured a benchmark “Determine the difference between a number and a multiple of 10.” It’s second grade, and the principle being taught should be obvious with a moment’s thought: if you’re subtracting a multiple of 10 from a number, the ones place doesn’t change, only the 10s place (in this instance, we were still working only with 1- and 2-digit numbers).
Except the test didn’t have anything to do with that principle. I questioned the trainers, suggesting they’d mixed up two different tests. They absolutely insisted they hadn’t, based on the idea that “difference” didn’t mean the result of subtraction, but rather meant “difference” in the nonmathematical sense: how is a number different from a multiple of 10?
I was appalled that these math trainers could put forward such an argument, and stuck to my guns. Eventually they chalked it up to a difference of opinion, rather than admit they’d made a mistake.
Gah! That’s not what a difference of opinions is! They were WRONG!
If your stuff is already being wrung up, finish the job, pay for it, take the shit to your car. THEN come back and pick up that one other item if you really really need it. Hell, the next time through you can take your one item through the express lane.
Then when they ring it up, you can stop, look confused, remember that you actually have to pay for stuff, and start thinking about HOW you’re going to pay for it before eventually realizing you have a wallet with money and credit cards in it just like five minutes ago when you paid for all the other shit.
There have been a few times in my life when, harried, I’ve gotten to the checkout person and realized that I’m missing one ingredient for dinner. If I can see the ingredient–if it’s like 30 feet away, I’ll ask them if I can go get it, and then I’ll do some serious powerwalking to go get the lime or soy sauce or whatever and be back before the groceries are finished being rung up. If there’s any chance I won’t make it, I go through the line twice.
If it doesn’t slow you down, I figure it’s okay, even if the Principle Of The Thing raises your blood pressure.
One item I can forgive. It’s people who are running back and forth from the line, sending their kids off in every direction to pick up other shit while people pile up behind them in line, those people need to be shot in the face.
He has apparently seen my spider dance.
Your spider can dance? Far out, but I still don’t want to see it.