What little things set you off?

People who don’t leave a voicemail.

Example:

Them: “Is Mandy in the office?”
Me:“Yes, she’s on the phone. Would you like to leave her a voicemail?”
Them: “No, I’ll call back.”

Two minutes later, repeat above except Mandy is now either: meeting with a client, not in the office or in a staff meeting. And repeat all of this for two, three hours. Then:

Them: “Well, she’s never available when I call! I think she’s avoiding me!” You can hear the anger.

Me, in sing song polite voice: “If you would leave her a message, she would know you’re trying to call her.”

Silence. Then: “I’ll just call back.” Click.

When you have six or seven people doing this all day, every day, it’s enough to make you pull your hair out. Just leave a message, damn it!

[QUOTE=Lilacs]

Example:

Them: “Is Mandy in the office?”
Me:“Yes, she’s on the phone. Would you like to leave her a voicemail?”
Them: “No, I’ll call back.”
[/QUOTE]
Are you sure she hasn’t already left voicemails? I know that when I am talking like that to someone, it has become evident that voice mails haven’t been effective.

[QUOTE=Happy Wanderer]
Some good ones so far, and God yes on the lottery thing. These guys slow the whole line. Dude, it doesn’t matter which scratch-off you buy. It is still the worst bet in town. Save your money and head to Vegas for crissakes. You’ll get better odds and free drinks.

Anyone that pays with a check in this day and age. They are always oldsters or deranged looking. And it only seems to dawn on them after the order has been fully checked and bagged that they actually need to get the checkbook out and start filling in things. Look, Henrietta, this is not 1971. Agnew is long gone from the White House. You are not at “Alpha-Beta”. “The Singing Strings” instrumental of “The Look of Love” is not on the PA. You won’t be receiving any “Green Stamps” with your order. Put that goddamn checkbook away and pay with plastic like a normal person.

Broke-ass people at the bank that just can’t believe they don’t have any funds. They get all loud and angry and prolong it and hold up the line. “I made the deposit yesterday!” or the ever popular “They did it for me last time!” aren’t going to cut it, no matter how much you repeat it. You can even threaten to close your account, or ask to see the manager. They aren’t going to give you money that isn’t in your account, and you are just embarrassing yourself and making everyone else wait. Or maybe you will be the first person that I have ever seen it happen to. :stuck_out_tongue: So, please, just cut to the chase and walk out in a huff, muttering under your breath.

Fast food folks that are dumb as boards. “I would like a number one with a medium diet coke.” “Ok, a number one, what would you like to drink with that?” “A diet coke” “Would you like to make that a medium or large?” :smack:

Packaging that doesn’t function. Is it too much to ask for a bag of cookies that doesn’t rip all to pieces when you open it, eliminating all hope of reclosability? Pepperidge Farm, I am looking at you. Or the kind of deli goods that come with a built in ziploc. It seems half the time you open the ziploc for the first time, it just rips away from the side of the bag, to hang useless and defiant.

Drivers. Well, to elaborate-

People who when turning left, instead of pulling into the intersection linger at the white line, preventing anyone behind them from turning when the light changes.

People who have 200 ft to get over to the right before making a turn, but instead pull right at the last second, then slow and stop with the ass end of their car blocking an entire traffic lane that must then wait until the pedestrians clear just before the light goes red, at which point there is just time for THEM to squeeze through before opposing traffic floods the intersection. Which leads me into…

Pedestrians that ignore the “Don’t Walk”. Look you stupid ass, you may think “hey, I’ll just walk a little faster and still make it, no harm, no foul” but what you don’t realize you little self-centered moron, is that the “Don’t Walk” also serves the purpose of allowing motorists to actually turn right at some point in the light cycle in this gridlocked city. Sorry you can’t even get it together enough to save the couple of thousand dollars it takes to get a used car, but the fact you are an abject loser doesn’t mean you have right of way. I don’t care if it is raining. If you are walking in LA, you have bigger problems than getting across the street two minutes sooner. You should be re-examining your whole pathetic life, which, by the way, may be over sooner than you think, because we kill a lot of pedestrians in this city.

The yuppie scum that block traffic on Alameda past San Fernando turning into the Trader Joe’s parking lot. You bought a damn SUV, ya think you could traverse the driveway into the parking lot at a speed greater than .03 MPH? Or did the Range Rover fail to proceed and require road service from an authorized dealer the last time you went over a bump?

Pickup trucks. They deserve a whole pit thread. Why does it seem that any guy driving one of those pickups on lifts with oversized tires is probably a spousal abuser? They drive those trucks like they are in an episode of “Rat Patrol” or something. Dude, you are making a left and pulling into a Texaco, not chasing the Desert Fox.

What bugs me the most, though, is why is it that when it is nighttime, even if I am in the middle lane of the freeway and there is no traffic so you are free to just easily pass me on the left, do you come right up on my ass with your overbright headlights glaring, slow down, tailgate obnoxiously for a time, and then roar around me? Are you expecting me to meekly pull out of your way? Ladies, take note. If you date one of these big wheel pickup guys, get ready for a few shiners.

Actually, this doesn’t piss ME off, but today I was cut off by an Armenian who pulled out in front of me so obnoxiously I had to hit the brakes. He then raced up to the next red and came to a stop. As the light turned green, I sailed past him. This put his little Armenian knickers in a twist and he gave it the gas and swerved around me with a mighty engine roar. When it became evident that the next light was changing and the same thing would happen to him again, he thought “damn the torpedoes” and rolled through the intersection a full three seconds after the light had gone red. Cross traffic had begun to enter the intersection.

THIS HAPPENS IN GLENDALE ALL THE TIME. Someday I am going to cause a bad accident by driving like a normal person around these folks. Fortunately, I won’t be involved, except as a witness to testify to the asshattery. What is with Armenian dudes anyway? Drive past one and it’s like you cut their balls off. Must have some real problems in bed, or something. Their manhood seems perpetually challenged.

I could go on for pages but these are the ones that come to mind. Hope to hear some more.
[/QUOTE]

I know I wasting my time, but you have issues and need to seek profession help.

[QUOTE=A.R. Cane]
I know I wasting my time, but you have issues and need to seek profession help.
[/QUOTE]
I know I wasting my time, but you have issues and need to seek spellin help. Maybe grammar too. Also refer to post #52.

[QUOTE=A.R. Cane]
I know I wasting my time, but you have issues and need to seek profession help.
[/QUOTE]
And did you want to rebut a point I made or just engage in Ad-Hominem?

People ‘that’ use that instead of who. :smiley:

Timers that go off every few seconds after the time you’ve set runs out, in case you didn’t hear them the first time they went off. I startle easily, and they scare me. I am also absent-minded, so I am likely to forget to turn them off. I miss the good old days when timers rang once, as God intended…

This probably has something to do with the timers-scaring-me-when-they-go-off-repeatedly thing. The timer on our stove, when it finishes, will say “End” until you cancel it to bring it back into clock mode. It bugs me more than it probably should when someone (yes, YOU, Mr. Neville) leaves it on “End” instead of bringing the clock back up. That timer doesn’t keep sounding, but I suspect that I subconsciously think it might, and that’s why it bothers me when someone leaves it on “End”- on some level, I think it’s going to go off again and scare me.

Voice mail. I don’t mind when people leave messages on my answering machine- I hit one button, and hear the messages. But with voice mail, I have to dial the voice mail number, and enter a password followed by the pound sign. I know this is so that I could access my voice mail from some phone other than my cell, but I have never done this, and I have trouble thinking of a situation where I would want to. I would much rather have one-touch voice mail on my cell phone that can’t be accessed from anywhere else, so there would be no need for passwords.

If you must pay with a check, don’t stand there at the check-writing stand and balance your damn checkbook after you do it. The store gives you a piece of paper- I think it is called a “receipt”- with the amount you paid written on it. Use that to balance your checkbook when you get to your car, or when you get home, and clear out of the way so people behind you in line can pay for their stuff. Believe it or not, some of us have things we’d rather be doing than standing in line at the grocery store.

[QUOTE=Anne Neville]
Believe it or not, some of us have things we’d rather be doing than standing in line at the grocery store.
[/QUOTE]
Are you single? I think we have a lot in common :wink:

I hate dining with friends who incessantly critique every facet of the restaurant experience.

“Does our waiter seem rude?”
“The salad was okay, but I can’t believe I’m paying such and such for it.”
“Where’s my beer?”
“This was much better last time.”

I mean, it’s never going to be PERFECT, so just enjoy what you’ve got and shut up!

[QUOTE=Qazzz]
I hate dining with friends who incessantly critique every facet of the restaurant experience.

“Does our waiter seem rude?”
“The salad was okay, but I can’t believe I’m paying such and such for it.”
“Where’s my beer?”
“This was much better last time.”

I mean, it’s never going to be PERFECT, so just enjoy what you’ve got and shut up!
[/QUOTE]
And, y’know, Chicago has a great dining scene and if you can’t be happy there…

[QUOTE=Northern Thalia]
When someone isn’t paying attention to what is going on, be it a TV show, conversation, whatever, and then they realize halfway through that maybe it is interesting. So they ask you to either start the conversation over from the beginning, or explain EVERYTHING that has happened in the show up until that point, even though they’ve been in the room the whole time! :mad:
[/QUOTE]

ARGH! My partner does this! He’ll be reading a book or playing on the computer while I’m watching something, and every so often he looks up and asks me to explain what’s happening. Look, either watch it or don’t!

[QUOTE=Sublight]
Watching TV with someone who is obsessive over controlling the volume. There are at least a dozen movies I’ve turned off or walked out on halfway through because the moment the action picks up my wife either tells me to turn the sound down or grabs the remote to turn it down herself (by which point the action has usually subsided and I can now no longer hear what anyone is saying). We live in a condo that’s essentially a stack of concrete bunkers: our neighbors on both sides have multiple young kids, yet I never heard a single peep coming through either wall. But still my wife is paranoid over making any kind of noise that might bother the neighbors, even mid-afternoon on a Saturday.
[/QUOTE]

My partner does this too, only it’s when I’m playing my MMORPG on the computer. The room the computer is in (the one I use, anyway) is adjacent to our neighbors’ master bedroom. I’ll be playing at night with the sound at what I think is a perfectly reasonable volume, and he invariably comes to berate me. The walls aren’t that thin – we never hear a peep from the neighbors’ house and they’ve never mentioned anything to us, so I’m convinced my partner is out of his mind.

[QUOTE=Happy Wanderer]
Anyone that pays with a check in this day and age. They are always oldsters or deranged looking. And it only seems to dawn on them after the order has been fully checked and bagged that they actually need to get the checkbook out and start filling in things. Look, Henrietta, this is not 1971. Agnew is long gone from the White House. You are not at “Alpha-Beta”. “The Singing Strings” instrumental of “The Look of Love” is not on the PA. You won’t be receiving any “Green Stamps” with your order. Put that goddamn checkbook away and pay with plastic like a normal person.
[/QUOTE]
It really frosts me when people get annoyed if I pay with a check. When the cashier finishes scanning my groceries, the check is completely filled out except for the amount. I write in the amount and hand her the check. It processes faster than if she had to take my credit card, scan it, print out a receipt for me to sign, get a signature, check the signature, and give me a copy. What is your problem with that?

Another thing that frosts me: I was in California last week. I went to four different places where they took my credit card and didn’t check the signature even though it says “check ID” on the back. In two of them, I didn’t even sign the card–just swiped it. I was highly tempted to call the credit card company. Merchants are required to check signatures for a reason: so that it’s harder to use a stolen card!

One thing that makes me irrationally furious is scooping the litter box. I only have two cats, but they seem to produce insane, unnatural amounts of waste. My partner never scoops, ever; somehow it became taken for granted that it’s my job. To make matters worse, there’s something about a freshly-scooped litter box that’s irrisistible to my cats – they make a beeline for it and immediately stink it up again, and it’s so unbearable that I have no choice but to scoop it again right away.

[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
It really frosts me when people get annoyed if I pay with a check. When the cashier finishes scanning my groceries, the check is completely filled out except for the amount. I write in the amount and hand her the check. It processes faster than if she had to take my credit card, scan it, print out a receipt for me to sign, get a signature, check the signature, and give me a copy. What is your problem with that?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t have a problem with that. I have a problem with the check-writers who don’t start writing the check until the total comes up (or, worse, don’t start looking for their checkbook and a pen until the total comes up), and especially with the ones who stand there balancing their checkbooks afterward. I probably wouldn’t even notice someone paying by check if they did it the way you do.

People who drive slowly in the left lanes and cause bottle necks in traffic make me crazy.

I get irrationally upset and dream of a giant hand sprouting from the roof of my car and MOVING them over to the right.

Here’s a little one that makes me irrationally mad: people squeezing the toothpaste tube in the middle. I think my girlfriend keeps doing it just to piss me off. She’s a keeper :slight_smile:

[QUOTE=Mint Julep]
People who drive slowly in the left lanes and cause bottle necks in traffic make me crazy.

I get irrationally upset and dream of a giant hand sprouting from the roof of my car and MOVING them over to the right.
[/QUOTE]

You’re less violent than me. My fantasies about those people involve atomic land torpedoes.

Now, I’d be willing to settle for a giant bulldozer (or a cow catcher sprouting out of my car) to clear away rubberneckers. I’m sure there will be a picture of that wreck somewhere online- look it up when you get home! Even if there isn’t, I’m sure there are lots of other pictures of car wrecks online that you could look at.

Nope, sorry, I’m married :wink:

[QUOTE=Happy Wanderer]
Pedestrians that ignore the “Don’t Walk”. Look you stupid ass, you may think “hey, I’ll just walk a little faster and still make it, no harm, no foul” but what you don’t realize you little self-centered moron, is that the “Don’t Walk” also serves the purpose of allowing motorists to actually turn right at some point in the light cycle in this gridlocked city. Sorry you can’t even get it together enough to save the couple of thousand dollars it takes to get a used car, but the fact you are an abject loser doesn’t mean you have right of way. I don’t care if it is raining. If you are walking in LA, you have bigger problems than getting across the street two minutes sooner. You should be re-examining your whole pathetic life, which, by the way, may be over sooner than you think, because we kill a lot of pedestrians in this city.
[/QUOTE]

Having trouble picturing this one. If you’re going to make a right turn and there are pedestrians blocking your path, aren’t they crossing, as they’re supposed to, at a walk sign?

Poor table manners- smacking, slurping, chomping really loud. I cannot ignore it and it drives me insane!!!