This drives me bonkers, too. My solution? Quit being an enabler. Let him know that you’re not his mother, then let him oversleep a few times.
As I live in the same area as Happy Wanderer, I can field this one.
It’s the vast numbers of people who completely ignore the pedestrian signals and just head on across the street. If the little red hand is flashing, it means STAY THE FUCK WHERE YOU ARE and wait for the little flashing walky guy.
For me, it’s turning left after leaving work. Almost every day I’m left in the intersection well after the light is red, because I have to wait for a pedestrian who started crossing well into the green light. I’ve lost count of the close calls I’ve seen around here with these oblivious bastards wandering off the curb without the least glance at the street.
What’s happening is that Happy Wanderer is sitting in a right turn lane with a red light in front of him. He’s seeing a nice big chunk of space in the cross traffic, and wants to turn right before the light turns green and the peds can legally walk. Instead, the ped ALSO sees the break in oncoming traffic as a fabulous time to jaywalk, thereby preventing the car from turning right. Light turns green, legit peds block crosswalk until light turns red, lather, rinse, repeat.
I get pissed about that too!
It annoys me when supermarkets shelve the milk so that the sell-by date is facing the back of the dairy case. That makes it much harder to choose the one with the latest date (I’m sure this is why they do it, because it makes it easier for them to sell the ones with the earlier dates). It doesn’t bother me nearly as much when the sell-by dates are facing in random directions (though of course all sell-by dates facing forward is best), because it feels less like they’re trying to manipulate me into not getting the best sell-by date I can.
I thought of a few other things this morning that bug me:
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I can’t stand it when I make a household decision (or a work decision, for that matter) because no one else will bother to do it, only to be asked later, “Why did you decide to do that?!? We should have done this instead.”
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I also loathe people commenting on my parenting style and/or parenting choices. Being told I didn’t “try hard enough” to let my child cry it out is NOT helpful, especially when you don’t live in my house! And, no, I see no reason why I should feed my kid chicken nuggets when he willingly eats grilled chicken instead. You’re welcome to feed your kid that crap on a regular basis, but that type of food remains well within the realm of “special-occasion food” and will not be part of my standard fare at home.
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It also drives me crazy when I have people telling me at work that “well, we need X’s comments by today,” when X isn’t in town, isn’t answering his e-mails and isn’t available by cell phone because he is out of the country. Telling me an extra two or three times that you need his comments today will not make him magically appear from London or Israel or wherever the heck he’s gone off to - it just won’t. So you either accept my comments and push this through or sod off and wait until he’s back.
Stupid cube neighbors who spray STINKY LYSOL and have the nerve to get sarcastic when I complain…
Someone pointed out that people who truly believe and live their life by the creed that they will not take any shit from anybody tend to be truly unhappy people who spend most of their time uselessly worked up into a lather.
Thanks for the replies.
No right turn on red in NYC, so we don’t have the same issue. Cars turning right have to wait for the rush of pedestrians to get across and then slip through the cracks or wait for the yellow light.
I can’t get too worked up over this. I view the flashing light while walking the same way I view a yellow light while driving. Hurry up if you’re close, stop if you’re far.
Unfortunately, they don’t hurry up or stop. Moving at a mosey, never stopping, never looking around.
If there was any appearance of the “Oh shit, I’m blocking traffic! I had better hurry up!” thought process it wouldn’t be as annoying.
Still not as bad as hiccups though.
Let’s see… There’s so much.
At my retail job (for a major video game outlet), I get set off by people who come in, ask if we have any Wiis, and, after I tell them no, point to the display boxes and say, “Well, why do you have those out then? Are you just trying to mess with people?”
At my campus fundraising job, I get set off by people who call us telemarketers and say things like, “Nobody paid for my education! Why should I pay for yours?!” You’re not paying for my education. You’re donating money for scholarships and improvements to the campus so we can get more students here. If you don’t want to donate, just politely say so and hang up.
My neighbors who can’t park straight. We can fit eight cars in our building lot, but it ends up only fitting seven because these tards have no idea how to pull a car in straight without leaving ten feet between each vehicle.
People who put things in my building’s dumpster. Like furniture.
People at the grocery store who stare at the registers trying to decide which one they want to use, and then get pissy when I cut in front of them. Just pick one and get in line!
Professors who don’t give points for attendance, but get all butthurt when people don’t show up to class. What do they expect?
People who look at me like I’m a mutant because I’m sweaty from walking everywhere. People sweat. It’s a good thing.
Do you have a sign clearly stating you have no Wiis or what date you expect to have the Wiis in? If so, carry on and I agree with you completely.
HOWEVER - if there’s no sign saying there’s no Wiis, it’s not unreasonable that the consumers are getting upset. When I go into an electronics/games store (EB, which is where most of my money goes, to be specific), if there’s a box on the shelf and it’s not on the “coming soon” shelf, I’d expect there to be at least one in stock. The boxes are there to display what is available. Posters and “coming soon” shelves are to display what could be, might be or soon will be available.
My local EB has a sign on their Wii boxes saying when they expect them to be in again and offering a pre-order. Not a problem with that. But I have been looking for a Wii. Places with no boxes, or signs - I know they have no Wii, I don’t need to go in there, it’s all good. Places with Wii boxes prominently on display right next to the Wii games, I think “Mmm. They might have a Wii”. I go in, I get told “No, we’re out of stock. Would you like xxxxxx?”. It feels a bit like baiting and I can see how people who’ve been looking for a wii might feel a little unhappy about that.
People saying things about me that aren’t true.
People condescending to me or presuming I don’t know what I’m doing at work (service tons of ‘gifted’ school age kids’ parents, so get this a lot - mostly because if they’re not getting exactly what they want, I must not be doing my job right or Retardedly Simple but Impossible-for-us Idea has never occurred to us, and that’s why we’re not doing it).
Professionally printed wording/signage with apostrophe type mistakes.
You and me both, sister.
Me: “Hi, how are you?”
Rude jackass: “5 LOTTO QUICK PICKS.”
Sometimes, I just want to keep repeating, “Hi, how are you?” until I get an answer.
Bud Light drinkers. Seriously, that’s all you need to know. 
This really irritates me too. The worst part is it doesn’t really get me mad, so I can’t even go off on them about it without feeling bad about hurting their feelings. It just gets me just annoyed enough to lose my train of thought, which then gets me even more annoyed, etc.
This is normal where you live? Auckland sounds like a very strange place.
Your naivete is amusing. Clearly you’ve never been to Southern California.
Voice mail complaints, in two parts.
I hate getting voice mail at work. I hate, hate, hate it. After hating it for nearly a year, I came up with a good solution: in my voice mail message, I tell callers that they should email me and I will get back to them. I spell and repeat my email address very clearly. I tell them that they should NOT leave me a voice mail, that I will be able to answer an email faster and in greater detail…
And then people leave me voice mails anyway. Grrrrrrr!
The second part doesn’t really concern the leaving of voice mails per say, but instead how my cell phone handles voice mail messages. I get a voice mail message and my phone vibrates. I flip open my phone and I dismiss my voice mail notice. Five minutes later, the phone vibrates again, reminding me that voice mail is still there. Repeat every five minutes FOR THE REST OF TIME.
I know, Phone, I know it’s there. I just don’t care.
Having to wake my husband up. He’s 36 years old, surely to fuck he could wake himself – but no, every single morning, I must wake him if he is going to go to work. Fucker.
People overtalking me. Worse than that – people who overtalk me and then when I fall silent so they can talk start saying “hello? hello? did you hang up?” No, you stupid fuck, I didn’t hang up, I am being polite and letting you finish speaking. Seriously, is this something that is done everywhere? Do people really spend their lives talking over top of everyone they meet and getting pissed off when the other person doesn’t talk over them?
GAH! Sorry, that last one is really a pitting that needs done. I hate people.
I get ridiculously annoyed by prescriptivist “grammar nazis”, especially if they feel the need to point out “errors” in my speech that do not in any way impede communication or understanding. It makes me want to launch into a huge rant about language and its roots and uses and how completely irrelevant and invalid the whole “grammar nazi” concept is and … well, I will try not to launch into it right now. I think it’s maybe a linguistics-student thing; I’ve never met another linguist who wasn’t irrationally annoyed by this.
I also get completely disproportionately upset by having to wait in a queue for more than, ooh, about three minutes. (Oh, and LicentiousEctomorph, I sympathise about the cat trays. I also really, really hate cleaning them, and also have cats who feel compelled to use their trays the very second I finish cleaning them.)
[edited for minor rephrasing to be less incoherent]
Glad I’m not the only one! Apparently I’m nowhere near as good at shutting up about it, though–52 posts in 6+ years? Holy crap, dude! 
One thing that used to bother me about working in an office as a programmer: people that call the wrong number, then ask me to transfer them. I don’t have time to pull the phone list out, look up the person you’re trying to reach, then transfer the call. I’m not a secretary.
Then I figured out the perfect solution:
Caller: May I speak with X?
Me: You have the wrong number.
Caller: Oh. <pause> Well, can you transfer me?
Me: Sure! <hangs up>
Well, not everyone has access to email all the time. Suppose it’s a simple question, and the caller is away from a computer?
Also – nitpick – it’s “per se,” not “per say.”