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I get seriously pissed off by people who can’t park between the lines. That’s, like, lesson one in kindergarten, people – stay inside the lines! When confronted with this situation, I typically will squeeze into the compromised spot next to them anyway (we have a Tercel, so it’ll fit most anywhere) and if they can’t get into their vehicle ‘cuz I’m four centimetres from their door, well too fuckin’ bad.
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It bugs me when people in the service industry tack “at all” onto the end of every question: “Can I help you at all?” “Can I start you with some drinks at all?” “Can I get you anything else at all?”
No, you can’t help me. At All. Go away and learn to speak more gooder.
I’ve been noticing this lately, too! When I’m walking in a mall or something, and I come up to a group of people just standing there blabbing, and they see me walking up to them, they actually wait until I say “Excuse me” before any of them will move out of the way. I know I’m not dealing with the brightest bulbs on the tree here, but how hard is it to figure out that when you’re standing blocking the entrance to a store and someone walks right up to you, that they might possibly be intending to go into the store?
Oh yeah, that reminds me of the carts in grocery stores, too. You get these same burnt-out bulbs that have to be reminded over and over that they can’t just park their cart across the aisle without impeding other people. How hard is it to realize that pulling your cart over to the side of the aisle is always a good thing? (Obviously pretty hard, because so few people seem to get this.)
You’re getting on the freeway, driving at a reasonable speed. Some guy (yes, it’s almost always a guy) in the left lane, about three blocks behind, speeds up in order to block you off and stop you merging. It’s like their fucking lives depended on it. There’s no earthly reason for it. Are their sexual organs so tiny that they have to prove to this complete and totally disinterested stranger what tough guys they are by forcing me to either brake or run into the ditch? And why do most of these morons drive small trucks? Does the asshole behavior come somehow built into the truck, or do such vehicles simply attract asshole buyers?
People who say “excuse me” on a crowded train platform and instead of walking past, stand on the spot you were standing on.
People who leave their gigantic backpack on their backs on a crowded train.
People who think they are the only one left on the planet. This includes the shoppers who leave their carts in the middle of the isle along with those who suddenly stop walking in the middle of the sidewalk to scream into their cellphones and those lost drivers who crawl down a busy street looking at house numbers oblivious to the four block backup behind them.
Really bad eggs.
1a. People who feel it necessary to turn their bass ALL THE WAY UP at home, at work, or in the car. Bass makes me very agressive. Down with subwoofers!
1b. The fact that the City Fathers of This Fine Town don’t recognize bass as a noise disturbance. Cops won’t come out if the only problem is your neighbor’s bass. Lovely.
2a. The s l o w people walking through my Local Nameless Grocery Store. You are blocking the aisles. Stop that.
2b. The management of my Local Nameless Grocery Store for laying out the store so that all the aisles are too narrow. Then they pile boxes of crap in the middle of the big aisles. I make it a point to knock stuff off of those boxes.
- Whoever it is who decided the parking lots at my apartment complex should be resurfaced rather than paved. Did you know that resurfacing doesn’t help when a lot is prone to flood? You should. Because it doesn’t.
This drives me nuts, too, although not in a college context. I encounter this on the public sidewalks all the time. Sometimes it occurs outside of an attraction of some sort, with people milling around waiting to get in. Sometimes it’s a pack of tourists milling around at a subway entrance. Sometimes it’s just a couple or a small group standing around talking, apearently unaware that they’re right next to something that takes up 1/2 or more of the sidewalk, such as a subway entrance/exit, a fruit and veg stand, outside tables in front of a restaurant, or someone with stuff to sell spread out on a table or a blanket on the sidewalk.
Look, people, the actual purpose of the sidewalk is for people to walk along it to get from one place to another. If you and your friends must mill around gabbing, can’t you at least try to limit the amount of sidewalk you take up? If you will confine yourselves to 1/2 the width of the sidewalk, it will enable us pedestrians to get past you. And, if you’re next to something that’s taking up 1/2 or more of the sidewalk (as listed above), what you need to to is move along a few steps. Would that be so hard?
You might also want to take note of conditions on the block you’re on. Bear in mind that “they can always cross the street” works only if there actually is another side of the street that’s walk-on-able. If the sidewalk on the other side of the street has been completely eliminated by a construction project or something, pedestrians do not have the option to walk anywhere but on the sidewalk you’re blocking.
And let’s not forget the cell phone talkers who stop dead at the top of the stairs, or on the stairs, and gab away. Okay, you realize that if you keep going down, you’ll lose your connection. So, when you find yourself aproching the subway entrance, why don’t youstep aside and finish your conversation without getting in anyone’s way?
Re the people looking at house numbers, a pet peeve of mine is the failure of homeowners and businesspeople to have big, clear, easy to find numbers on their houses and businesses. I’m a non-driver. If I, on foot, can’t find the number, how can people in cars possibly do so? They’re going much faster, and so have much less time in which to find the number.
I have two pet supermarket peeves. One is people who enter the check out line pulling their carts after them. People who do this are in the way of the person behind them. Yes, I understand that you can’t reach into the cart to get your stuff if the cart is in front of you. I can’t, either. In all probability, I’m even shorter than you are. The solution is simple. Don’t push your cart all the way in. Stand beside the cart, just at the entrance to where things get narrow. If you’re beside the cart, you can reach in easily, and you are not nearly as much in the way of the person behind you as is someone pulling the cart after them.
The other peeve is people who, having paid for their groceries, just walk off and leave the cart in the way. Not in the parking lot (as a non-driver, I’m not inconvenienced by that), but in the store, just past the check out line – or just before it, if this is one of those annoying, pull-the-cart-after-them people described above. You need to put the cart away. It isn’t that hard. The place where the cart belongs is only a few steps away. Have some consideration for others.
There are three white cars who do this ALL THE FUCKING TIME in my complex. And the fucking drivers have dinged up my car’s door with scratches and paint marks cause they can’t get in the lines. If all three of them are around, half the parking spaces in front of the building are unusable.
I just came up with another one.
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Excuse me, but you people REALLY think the HOA rules do not apply to you? It says that if you have cats, you aren’t to let them outside. I cannot think of how many times I have almost flattened one or more cats because some moron lets them roam around outside. It’s safer for you cats INSIDE, you ratfelching dick for brains. Not only is your cat safer from getting rolled into a roadpatty by the cars, but there is a lessened chance your cat will get into fights, or contract certain diseases.
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To the person who owns the incredibly ugly and annoying Jack Russel terrier mix–if I catch your dog pooping in my yard again and you don’t even bother to pick it up, I’m taking your dog to the pound and YOU can go get him. I don’t have a dog, so I know the dog poo must be yours. The only person NEAR me who has a dog is kind enough to keep his dog in HIS yard.
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To the idiot parents who let their kids play in the street: You could at least teach them to GET THE FUCK OUTTA DA WAY when cars are coming. If I see your kids give me the finger or a stupid smirk again when I honk at them to get their skinny butts outta the road, you will wish you’d never let them play in the road…ever.
MetalMaven
Having worked retail for some time now, I find myself incredibly pissed off at people who return clothing with the tags cut off or removed. I know, I know, it was a gift and you don’t want your daughter/husband/paperboy’s second cousin to know how much you spent on that shirt you so lovingly picked out. However, when your daughter/husband/paperboy’s second cousin brings the damn thing back because it’s too small or the wrong color or just plain looks like ass, they’re going to find out how much you spent on it. They get something they like, and we get something that’s going to be a pain in our ass to retag, or ring up the next time someone wants to buy it.
I leave the tags on anything I buy as a gift now, if I don’t actually include the receipt. I’m not Gozar the Gift-Giving Master, and when I miss with a gift idea I want to make it as easy as possible for the recipient to take it back and the store to handle it. Further more, since I’m not in the habit of giving gifts to space aliens or people who’ve been trapped in bubble for decades, I know people have some general idea of what a T-shirt or a CD cost.
Sounds like somebody needs a massage.
Hmm. Piddling annoyances.
People who don’t follow through with/outright lie about what they’re going to do:
Just hypothetically speaking, let’s say you borrow a few books from the library. Then, you return them, well before the due date. Then, about six weeks later, you get a letter from the library, hinting at possible collection issues on the book you never returned, and the late return fees that have accumulated in the meantime.
So, you call the library, and tell the person on the phone that you’re pretty sureyou returned the thing on time, and ask them to check the shelves for it. No, you’re informed, it’s really not on the shelf, but someone higher up might be able to help you, if you’ll just contact that person tomorrow.
So, you tear the house apart, ransack the car, and mug your furniture looking for this children’s book, and when all is said and done you’ve found $1.35 in change in the couch cushions/back seat/floor of the car, a toy that’s been missing for a week and a half under the refigerator, and a spot on the rug where the cat must have horked up a hairball behind the stereo sometime in the last three months, but no book to be found.
So, you call back the next day, talk to said higher-up, and find that the book actually is on the shelf, and was just never checked back in properly.
Now, the first person you spoke to makes your list, as she either didn’t actually look for the thing when she put you on hold for ten minutes yesterday, or she had a fit of ennui, and just gave up halfway to the shelves, or something.
So, the higher-up agrees that you’re not responsible for all this, tells you the book will be checked back in properly, and the fees removed from your records, all is sunshine and happiness.
Then, the following day, you take your child to the library, and when you go to check out the books she wants…
[sub]Y’all know where this is headed, yeah?[/sub]
So you have to stand around for another ten minutes, with an impatient child, while the higher-up comes out of her office, and once again has to “check in the book properly, and remove the fees from your record.”
Hypothetically speaking.
If it were a few years earlier I’d do a bunch of follow-up rants on working in the library…ahh yes, the patrons of yore…the ones who mosey up to the circulation desk and announce, with full import usually reserved for heads of state, that their child must do a report on SHARKS! and so where is that special section of the library devoted to SHARKS! By happy coincidence that section is in rough numerical order according to the DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM, whose mysteries are explained via a neat little thing called the CARD CATALOG, and if your CHILD (who’s old enough to have driven herself here) would care to use aforementioned tool, then she could find the fucking books HERSELF, which is, I believe, the point of assigning HOMEWORK, something that is done every day across this great country of ours and has resulted in trips to the library since long before you made your Great Onerous Journey.
I don’t really see any alternative to that last bit. If you’re on a one-lane busy street looking for a house you’ve never been to before, yes you’re going to crawl along looking at house numbers (which can be really tough to spot at times). I’ve done this several times, and it’s just something everyone has to deal with. Oh well 
I hate it when the fewer gray hairs grow on top of my head the more nasty black ones grow out of my ears!
The “leaving carts floating around the parking lot” thing bugs the hell out of me too…especially when there are little cart corrals all over the damned parking lot. You’re too lazy or hurried to walk that extra twenty feet?
When I was a kid, my sister and I would argue over who got to put the cart away. Which involved walking it back into the store and putting it with all the other grocery carts.
Also, the way that developers around here have only put sidewalks in the city itself…and then in the brand new developments outside of the city. The middle ground? NO sidewalks. There’s a shopping center quite literally less than 200 yards from my house, but I’m afraid to walk my kids to it because there are almost no sidewalks…and the (very) busy street we have to cross to get to it? No crosswalks and no crossing lights. I don’t like to drive my car less than a tenth of a mile to go to the grocery store, but I’m scared to walk my kids to it. So…we drive.
Skeezix–Amen, brotha! This happened to me a few months ago. They were SURE they didn’t have the book and I asked them to call me if they ever find it. I wasn’t too worried because I KNEW I had turned in the book and there wasn’t going to be a fine because the library I go doesn’t believe in fines. Two days later, I get a call from a librarian saying they found it. Somebody had forgotten to check it in because upon finding it turned it, they realized it needed some TLC and possibly a new binding. :smack:
MetalMaven
Here’s a mini-rant: I really need a piss but I can’t be bothered to go to the toilet. It’s excruciating.