Heh. I have a number of these pet peeves myself, and am glad to see from this thread that others share some of them.
One that drives me particularly crazy is people in the grocery store who consume their purchases before they buy them. Can they not wait until after they have gotten to the register and paid for them? Compounding my aggravation is when said people are eating their unpaid-for salad which is sold BY WEIGHT. That is effectively theft.
Generally speaking, these are young twenty-somethings from the nearby university, and I try to write it off to their “culture” or lack thereof. But recently I saw a well-dressed middle-aged woman (40’s or so) gnawing on an unpaid-for bagel in line. Having to watch her chew through it and leave her bite marks all over the surface made me sick.
The only thing that saves me from beating these people (or otherwise getting in their face) is averting my eyes and struggling to remain calm until I pay for my own purchases and get out of the store.
I cringe at noises which sound uncannily like gratuitous dubbed-over sound effects such as the ear-splitting crack of the first bite of an apple, the overly luxurious sound of red wine glugging from the bottle, or the hyper-efficient rattle of someone ostentatiously hard at work on a computer keyboard.
And just a little nicotine would cure this I’m sure.
Sports announcers, and when they say things like, “that’s right, [other sports announcer], if [the losing team] wants to put some points on the board they really gotta focus on ramping up their offense”.
I wish I could get paid six figures to come up with as many ways as possible to restate the basic, obvious idea that whoever scores more points wins the game.
I get annoyed when people use phrases like “don’t take this personally” or “no offense” or something like that. They don’t get a simple fact: human social interaction is personal. If you think I’m not a good singer, that’s your belief about my personage. If I am rejected for a job, they rejected me (this is obvious, people) because of certain things they believe about me. Sometimes people take the notion of impersonality to such an extent that it seems like they believe that nothing should be taken personally.
I think we should take more things personally. We are persons. We base decisions on our perceptions of people. I take things personally, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. If I criticize you in some way, or kick your out of my rock band, or reject you for a job, or favor Anthony Hecht’s poetry over your own, or dislike your fashion sense–feel free to take it personally yourself.
I used to hate it when people would walk off and leave their shopping carts willy nilly the store while they ran to get something else.
Now I just add strange things to their carts as I push them out of my way. Hemmeroid cream, a single bagged frozen shrimp, a can of potted meat…whatever’s close by.
I suspect that might be harder than we realize (and any sportcasters with half a brain struggle with it).
Oh, thought of another insignificant thing that drives me crazy - people popping their joints around me. It gives me the heebie-jeebies.
ETA: Your post reminded me of another one, Tequila - when people leave perishables on a shelf in a supermarket. That jug of milk you put on the shelf by the bread is garbage now - you could have just opened it and chugged it for virtually the same effect. If you got it from a freezer or fridge, it has to go BACK to the freezer or fridge.
Whenever I see some douchbag’s nice new vehicle parked in the middle of two spaces to avoid any other vehicle parking within several feet, I want to vandalize it. Makes no difference if there are plenty of other spaces available or not.
I should have written that I pretty much face my door, so I can see people when they need to get my attention; it’s just the point of having to listen to someone think they’re being creative by saying “Knock knock.” Even if I didn’t face the door, I’d much prefer “Hey, <<expletive>>-head” or perhaps having a brick thrown at my head, as a way of getting my attention, to “Knock knock.”
There is always some mom aged lady carrying a bundle of 3 foot long decorative squiggly sticks that she has difficulty with finding a secure place to stow.
Why? You had to buy squiggly sticks in Frankfurt to transport all the way to Minneapolis? They don’t have squiggly sticks in Minneapolis? You really need to take up a whole overhead compartment that no one else can use now with your squiggly sticks?
Ladies I ask, in all seriousness, is it a menopausal thing to gather squiggly sticks and transport them long distances? Sorta like shoe gathering is linked to estrogen?
Restroom doors that you have to pull open to exit. I just washed my hands. What’s the point if I now have to touch the same door handle used by all the idiots who didn’t wash their hands after peeing and pooping?
It’s doubly aggravating when I see this in new buildings.
