Tips for better living...

Tips for better living:

  1. When driving and you are about to miss your turn or freeway exit, you do not have the right to endanger other peoples’ lives in order to ensure that you get where you need to go. Plan ahead. If you know you are going to have to make a right turn, get in the right-hand land ahead of time–don’t swoop across multiple lanes without signaling. P.S. – Signaling at the last second is no guarantee that I can or will make space for your car to merge into my lane as it may be unsafe to do so. Flipping me off doesn’t help matters… you’re rude and can’t get with the program. So you lose 5 minutes circling back to make your exit–it’s not the end of the world. Egomaniac.

  2. When I arrive at work, don’t accost me with a request as soon as my foot crosses the threshold of the building. Please. Give me a minute or two to set my stuff down at my desk, grab a cup of joe and get settled. Type A-hole.

  3. When you call me and ask if I have the time to help you with a request and I say “Sorry, I’m real busy with other requests right now, can you call back in an hour,” DO NOT respond by saying “Oh, well this will only take a second” and tell me what your request is. Why did you ask if I had time in the first place?! Pushy.

  4. If you love to swear, fine and dandy. Just don’t do it loudly and in a public place where children are. I’m a big boy and I can see you for the low-class trash you are, my kids and their friends unfortunately are too young to put your words and actions into the appropriate context. They may believe your crude behaviour to be appropriate. I do my best to set them straight, but your spew isn’t helping. Low life.

  5. If you get into an elevator with me, please don’t stand there and stare at me the entire ride. Elevators force people to invade each others’ personal space enough, without having some freak stand there and stare at you square in the face the whole way. In addition, if it’s just you and me on the elevator, you don’t need to stand so close to me that we’re almost touching. Space can be a good thing. You wierdo.

5a) When you’re getting on an elevator, how 'bout letting the people off first, huh? And if you forget and are standing right in front of the elevator door, waiting to enter when people are getting off, don’t insist on pushing your way through everyone to get on as they get off. The last time I checked, elevator doors stay open for at least a second or two. Pushy jerk.

  1. There’s no law that states that people sitting next to each other on an airplane MUST converse with one another. If you ask me a trivial question or utter a nonsequitor and I don’t answer to your satisfaction… drop it right then and there. The “Why I’m gonna force this guy to talk with me” cause is in no way a noble one. You must be lonely or starved for attention. Freak.

Whenever you’re about to do ANYTHING, ask yourself, “Would I like it if someone else behaved this way towards me?”

Show others a modicum of respect, that’s all the world asks.

-dietrologia

  1. When you’re at the grocery store, please don’t plant yourself and your cart in the middle of the aisle. If you feel you need 2 or 3 hours to pick a breakfast cereal that’s fine, just shove over a litte, huh? Those of us with functional brain cells would like to get on with our day.

Good fucking point.

I agree wholeheartedly. I hate public cursing. Once, while at a restaurant with my girlfriend, two men were at the table next to us having a loud conversation where “fuck” was about every other word. In a not so quiet voice, I explaind to my girlfriend (she is not from this country originally) that people who talked like that in public were from the lower classes of our society; that they had poor upbringing, and lacked the intelligence or verbal skills to express themselves in any other way.

I know this had to tick them off, because they actually looked like businessmen who had just stepped off the golf course at the Country Club. And you know there’s no greater insult for people like that to be mistaken for poor white trash.

  1. There are some important differences between your car horn and a daily newspaper:

a) The newspaper will print the final score of the basketball game in the sports section. It is not necessary for YOU to announce the score by driving up and down Franklin Street beeping once for every point scored.

b) The newspaper has a Letters to the Editor section where you can voice your opinions to your heart’s content. Your horn is not adapted for this purpose. Its vocabulary is too limited, and other people do not have the luxury of ignoring it.

c) Similarly, the newspaper has a personals section where you can describe your manifold attractions and advertise for a compatible partner. Your horn is not the best instrument for doing this, either. First of all, most female pedestrians are not, repeat NOT, cruising. Secondly, when you honk your horn at a woman, you are telling her nothing of interest. So your car is equipped with a horn. Big whoop-de-do. So you’re smart enough to figure out how to operate it. This is not enough to make most women fall down in a rapture of ecstasy, especially when it’s obvious that you don’t know WHEN or WHY it is appropriate to use the horn.

9)I realize that you might not like 80’s new wave or “geek rock” or folk rock or NPR or anything else that I might be listening to while I’m driving. That’s why I don’t turn up the volume loud enough to rock the city with an over-bassed version of “Dead Man’s Party”, as much as I like to hear Danny Elfman’s voice. You don’t have to like my music, and I sure as hell don’t like yours. Please don’t make me listen to it. Turn the volume down on your car stereo. Thanks.

9a)Consider also that if you’d have saved your money instead of spending it on HUGE speakers for the trunk, you might be driving around in a car with a better stereo system that wouldn’t require you to shatter my windows in order to hear “quality sound”.

10)If you live in an apartment house, consider the fact that you share walls with people. Keep your marital disputes to a fucking conversational volume! My kid has to try and go to sleep through that, and frankly, I’d like to live my life without feeling like I’m hanging out at the Jerry Springer Show.

10a)Put your kids to bed at a reasonable time. Say…sometime before midnight. They’re kids. They’re supposed to go to bed. And since I can hear every single noise in your apartment, I can hear them running around and screaming, and my son can hear them running around and screaming, and then he thinks it’s ok for him to get up and run around screaming, and it really just doesn’t make for good neighborly relations. Put the little urchins in bed.

Not just in airplanes, but in any public place. Not everyone wants to be friends with total strangers.

If you have a mobile phone and you don’t like the ring tone, please don’t try to change it in a public place near me. I do not want to be sitting on a bus and listen to your irritating bleeping little tunes blaring out of your phone. Don’t pick a tune as a ring tone, particularly a tune which was annoying before it was converted to that great musical medium, the mobile phone bleep, like the popeye the sailor man theme tune for instance. IT REALLY PISSES PEOPLE OFF. If you have for some unaccountable reason 10 or 20 ring tones programmed into your mobile then it is fairly safe to say that you have NO LIFE. No-one is ever going to call you on that thing. Throw it away now. Thank you.

I am SOOOOO with you on this one!!!

Amen to the swearing one. I’ve got a mouth like a sailor, but I don’t make other people listen to it.

This weekend in Sam’s Club I felt like a fricking hockey goalie, having to deflect attempts to engage me in meaningful conversation. The guy ahead of me made an incredible effort, as I high-fived myself for not taking the bait:

Several minute of mindless mutual chatter about the length of the lines, then:

Desperate Guy: Yeah, last time I just left my cart here and went to straighten out all the Chicken Soup books they sell here.

Cranky: bored tone Yup, they’ve got a bunch of them.

DG: I’m in one of them, you know, so I wanted to see if they were selling that one. hopeful, eager look

Cranky: Ah, so you had a personal interest in it. Tone that says “subject closed”

DG: They didn’t have it, so I guess all my friends bought it up! I’m asking them to order more, of course.

Cranky: weak smile, firm refusal of bait offered the 2nd time

More blather. Then:

DG: Ever bought their electronics? I bought this neat thing here… (long discussion of its features)… and the dubbing thing is very helpful, since I’m in a couple of jazz bands. Pause; hopeful, eager look

Cranky: Sounds like you got a good deal. tone of “subject closed”

DG: Notices Huggies in our cart Have you always used those? Ever try Pampers?

Cranky: Nope.

DG: Well, my daughter used to use Pampers, I mean for her kids, MY GRANDKIDS. hopeful look

You get the idea. It was a long line, and this went on and on. My husband was circling but avoiding rejoining me in line since he he could see what was going on and he hates Chatty Cathies worse than me. I was ready to pinch our sleeping tot so he’d wake screaming and rescue me from further conversation.

  1. When I’m waiting in line at the Grocery Store checkout counter, constantly nudging me with your grocery cart does make things move faster in ANY way. Bump me once and I’ll let it slid no prob. Bump me twice or more and we’re gonna have words.

  2. When you men come up to me at work, please don’t scratch, pull, or otherwise manipulate your crotch with your hand while you’re talking to me. Not only is this distracting, I admit I’m an easily confused man and am not equiped to interpret this properly. Are you that much of a an uncouth rube? Are you in that much discomort? Is this some kind of crude invitation?

  3. I get my hair cut because my hair needs to be shortened. I do not get a hair cut in order to invite comments on my personal appearance. There is really no reflexive need on your part to comment on anyone’s haircut uninvited. If, for some ungodly reason, you just can’t help yourself… I mean, you just HAVE to inject yourself into other people’s personal lives, uttering the oh-so-brilliant comment, “So, you got a haircut, huh?” is REALLY, REALLY a waste of breath.

  4. When you are standing in front of me at a fast-food restaurant and we’re both in a long line, please take the time spent in line to figure out what you want to order. Hey, even go the extra mile and get your wallet/money out if it’s gonna take you a while. DO NOT, after waiting 10 minutes in line, get up to the register and go, “Ummm… lemmee see… ohhh… I’ll have the… hmmm…”, spending two minutes deciding what you want. Do this at a Horse Racing Track when bets are about to close and YOU WILL BE KILLED!

  5. Do not call me on the phone to promote the good deeds of Representative So-And-So of the 16th District and how I should vote for him–I live in the 13th District. When I point out that I am unable to vote for your beloved candidate, don’t argue with me and say, “Yes you can!”–it lowers my opinion of the human race beyond the depths to which I had thought it could sink. It also points out what type of person Representative So-And-So must be to have hired someone like you.

  1. I get my hair cut because my hair needs to be shortened. I do not get a hair cut in order to invite comments on my personal appearance. There is really no reflexive need on your part to comment on anyone’s haircut uninvited. If, for some ungodly reason, you just can’t help yourself… I mean, you just HAVE to inject yourself into other people’s personal lives, uttering the oh-so-brilliant comment, “So, you got a haircut, huh?” is REALLY, REALLY a waste of breath.

Retort for above situation:

(in snotty-sounding voice) “No, I washed it and it shrank.” :rolleyes:

Usually shuts such morons right up…

  1. I’m sure that when you’re on the highway, you are driving at a speed that is perfectly acceptable to you. However, if you happen to notice that you are in the fast lane, and cars are approaching you from behind, move over. It doesn’t really matter how fast you’re going: No one elected you to be the Freeway Pace Car. If you find cars pasing you on the right, take this as another sign that yuo need to move over. Statiscally, the middle lane is the safest, anyway. Dumbass.

  2. As pointed out in this thread, telling me to “Smile!” is not going to achieve the desired affect. I was not put on this planet to conform to your asthetic sense of what everyone’s expressions should look like. I’ll most likely reply to this statement with the question “Why?”. After all, if you’re going to demand that I appear happy, you should have to justify why I should comply. Patronizing, sanctimonious dork.

  3. See (1) in the OP. Read it until it sinks in. The world does not run by your schedule. Take the few extra minutes to drive safely. In a simular vein, when turning into traffic, check to see if the is anyone behind an oncoming vehicle before cutting them off. If you find that you must pull in front of someone, time it so that they don’t have to jam on their brakes, and accelerate to match traffic. Self-important twit.

  4. If you are so important that you must keep your cell phone on in a theater, you don’t need to be at a movie. If you leave your phone on by mistake, turn it off as soon as you hear it ringing, not five rings later. Go to the lobby to have your conversation; the rest of us do not need to listen. Insolent moron.
    momcat: For variety, try replying “Yes. Several.” See how long it takes for them to get it.

Thought the OP on this was great.

Thought a select few of the other points were pretty good.

Thought the rest of 'em were just whiny.

  1. When you’re a newbie posting to a message board forum called “The BBQ Pit”, prepare yourself for one hell of an inferno when you call people “whiny”.

22)When you’re an oldbie posting to a message board forum called “The BBQ Pit”, check registration dates before you start tossing around accusations of newbieness.

This reminds me…

I realize you are from a different culture and we have different notions of personal space. Should I visit your country, I will be happy to stand nose-to-nose with you there. You may have noticed in this country we are more uptight and repressed. BACK THE HELL OFF.

I happen to speak the English language, which includes words like “fuck” and “shit”. If you prefer, I will swear in another language, but these words and their assorted translations and cognates are useful and evocative, and I intend to continue using them.

Oh, and “low class”? Like rich people never swear.

  1. If you cut me off on the highway with no other cars around so that I have to slam on my brakes, giving me the “I’m an idiot” wave does not excuse your behavior. You are still an asshole.

Matt,

Please go ahead and put your thesaurus to it’s original use (propping up the table leg) now.

You make the incorrect assumption that when I mentioned class I was drawing monetary distinctions.

Wrong.

I’m speaking of class in terms of refinement.

Just because words exist you do not therefore have the right to use those words to offend people in public places (intentionally or not). The word “fire” exists in the English language, but you do not have the god-given right to yell it in the proverbial moviehouse.

Swearing may have it’s place, but I argue that this is not in public locations during casual conversation. It indicates a decided lack of etiquette, awareness, and personal respect.

And spare me the witty retort such as “F— you!” which I can smell coming a mile away.