Sounds like the problem here wasn’t with the use of the phrase “it’s not fair,” but rather complaining that something wasn’t fair when it actually was. If a 26-year-old woman is always told to make coffee or bring snacks to meetings for her male peers, is she not allowed to complain about that?
What happened was, there was one day at work where a flock of a dozen or so wild turkeys were just strolling across the parking lot. A coworker a couple of cubicles down from me was from India. A bunch of us were looking out the window and talking about the turkeys and this woman asked her “Do they have turkeys in India?” It was a perfectly legitimate question (which was the point I was making, just like skunks in Jamaica) but it just became this running gag among us.
Ah, I thought the suggestion was that it was a silly question.
Apologies, I got the wrong end of the stick there.
The thread’s “things you shouldn’t need to tell people”; and neither the skunk nor the turkey question seem to me to be something you shouldn’t need to tell people. (At least, unless the turkey question had actually been a misunderstanding about the meanings of the word “Indian”, and the questioner was fluent in English; but that’s according to the explanation not what was going on.)
– I’ve smelled marijuana very frequently in the 70’s and occasionally since then including in the last couple of years; and I’ve smelled skunks. Marijuana does not smell like skunk to me.
Nah, the skunks in Jamaica thing just reminded me of the turkeys in India thing. Sorry for the sidetrack.
Yeah, I agree I was off-base there.
Am I incorrect about them being aware of the situation, or that they don’t think they’re being honked at?
In the case that they’re not aware of the situation (pertaining to traffic that is in front of them) and think they’re being honked at, I’m unconcerned if they think they’re being honked at.
This part. If you are directly behind me and you honk, I am wondering why you are honking AT ME. And as I described above, you have now diverted my attention away from whatever is happening in front of me, if only for a brief moment, potentially slowing my reaction time in moving forward. In this case, I can’t help but wonder if you are unaware of what is happening directly in front of me.
I believe I have explained the mechanics of all of this sufficiently to raise your awareness of how your actions are perceived by others. If you choose to double down on your defense, I can only conclude that you are being deliberately obtuse, and are unwilling to consider another viewpoint.
Would you think that if you were third in line in the left turn lane behind a car which had not moved for ten seconds despite a signal saying they should do so?
If so, apologies, but given the fact the left turn signal is transient I would still politely honk.
Sure - I might as well, after some time. I just wouldn’t be surprised if the car in front of me flipped me off with a “what do you want me to do about it” expression (the answer of course being “honk at the sleeping person in front of you, please and thank you”).
There’s also people whom if the car in front of them was stopped for 6 hours and the people inside were clearly watching TV and on their phones ignoring the light, they would still refuse to honk and just sit there.
Not someone — the entire population of France! “Dinde,” the French word for “turkey,” means “from India”!
Okay, hijack over.
As I recall, the chicken is thought to have been first domesticated in India.
The English word for the bird is the same as a Middle Eastern country because at some early point it was thought to originate there. That doesn’t mean that all, or for that matter, any English speakers still believe that mistaken notion. The same goes for the French.
I know — I was kidding. 
They just did a full renovation of the restrooms at work. As in “strip everything down to the studs and rebuild from scratch” renovation. The first day the restrooms open, the toilets overflowed. The second day the restrooms were open, there were new signs on the doors.
“Do not flush paper towels down the toilet”.
Why the hell would anyone even think to do that? Yes, there was a trash can. And it happened in both the mens and womens rooms. The womens room also got “Don’t flush napkins and pads down the toilet”. Seriously? If you work here you are at least a college grad, which means you’ve been menstruating for at least a decade. No one told you that yet?
I’m skeptical that at least one man and one woman, who had presumably been using the old restrooms without incident, suddenly decided to flush unflushables as soon as the new restrooms opened. It seems more likely there was an issue with the remodel.
Never underestimate the stupidity of people who see something new and immediately want to test its limits.
All I know is the plumbers who snaked out the toilets claimed they found paper towels. It’s possible the towels ended up in the pipes before the fixtures were put in place. The contractors definitely did not calibrate the auto-flush and auto-sink sensors correctly. That took about a week to get working right.
People in vehicles trying to cross or merge into traffic on a main throughfair who refuse to cross or merge when there’s a vehicle a quarter of a mile away in any direction.
Clearly you’d be able cross safely 2-3 times in the span of the car coming but nope, certain people can only turn or merge into traffic when the Lanes are COMPLETELY clear in either direction. How the hell do these people drive in cities or the highway anyway?