What really stupid things do you think less of people for?

If they say Ex Squeeze me especially on a regular basis, I usually think less of them.

Heck, if they quote *anything *from Mike Myers on a regular basis.

Canadians like you and me tend to “nativize foreign /a/” to /æ/ as in hat (so we usually say “pasta” as /pʰæstə/ with the first syllable rhyming with “fast”). /æ/ becomes /ɛ/ before r, so that Mario sounds like merry-o. In other lects, foreign /a/ is nativized to /ɑ/ (“pasta” is /pʰɑstə/, first syllable rhyming with “cost”), which stays /ɑ/ before r, so the first syllable of Mario rhymes with car.

Hey! I take the elevator to the gym sometimes. I have bad knees (patello-femoral syndrome, to be exact), so sometimes I try to avoid staircases when my knees are acting up. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t go to the gym to lift weights, go swimming, or do low-impact aerobic whatever.

And, yes, there are times when I’ll take the elevator to the gym, only to use the stair-stepper machine. But when I use that machine, I use it on settings that work for me and my knees. Real stairs don’t allow you to adjust stair height.

If that makes you lose respect for me–oh, well.

“People who hold themselves superior to others” are really just trying to compensate for an inherent feeling of inferiority.* It’s actually stupid to do that even when it’s for a non-petty or non-inane reason. But when it’s a petty or inane reason, it’s even more stupid.

  • It’s called snobbery. And those who have a genuinely secure sense of themselves don’t need to try to feel superior to others in bogus ways. (And yes, I believe it’s possible to think less of a person without being a snob about it.)

I know that’s a standard line from a lot of comedians. Many people don’t go the gym in their workout clothes. Some city gyms are located on a high floor and I wouldn’t want to walk up ten flights of stairs in work clothes and dress shoes. People want to park close to the entrance because they don’t want to trudge through snow or get rained on while they entering or leaving the gym.

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Hey! I take the elevator to the gym sometimes. I have bad knees (patello-femoral syndrome, to be exact), so sometimes I try to avoid staircases when my knees are acting up. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t go to the gym to lift weights, go swimming, or do low-impact aerobic whatever.

I truly apologize if I offended you. I am directing my head shaking toward those who take an elevator up one flight of stairs to exercise in a manor which mimics climbing stairs. :slight_smile:

I take the elevator one floor up to the gym because I don’t have a keycard to use the stairs. I always wonder if people think of that comedy routine when they see me get on in my workout clothes and press “2”. :slight_smile:

People who hesitate before/while turning. People with animal trophies on their wall. People who litter and people who spit.

is it okay if its the “Away” shirt?:wink:

Missed the edit window.

But wanted to add my own pet peeve.

I don’t mind people who mispronounce the word Umbrella. But to go and make a song about it gah!!! There is no additional e! It is Umbrella not ever ever Umberella Rhianna!!

There was a guy in NY named Mario that we worked with who insisted that we call him Mario pronouced as “merry-o”, and NOT “mar-ee-o”.

I was out shopping yesterday and bought No Angel by Jay Dobyns, his account of his years as an undercover ATF agent in a Hell’s Angels chapter. I went and bought lunch (all day breakfast really) and read while I ate.

I was thoroughly enjoying it until he, on page 14, wrote, “This is why I believe in God.” I experienced a sort of inward groan and put the book down for a while. When I picked it up again and read on without any further reference to this belief I felt relieved.

So I guess I’m no fan of anyone who openly professes their belief in God although it surprised me.

When someone disagrees with a law or ballot measure they start with the, “First they came for the Jews…” quote.

I disagree strongly with Prop 8 as well. But, as bad as that decision was, it is NOT the same as the Holocaust.

Hmm. Everything we know about child development indicates that those experiences actually do matter.

Both my husband and I served as research assistants to scientists at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. The ISR has done a lot of work on bullying, aggression, narcissism and overinflated self-esteem. The findings, which have been repeatedly duplicated, indicate that people who believe they are superior to others are not compensating for insecurity. They genuinely believe they are better than other people, and will persist in this belief even when given evidence to the contrary. Most bullies actually have very high self-esteem and strong indicators of narcissism. Naturally that leads to more aggressive behavior.

Really? That’s a really interesting discovery… where can I learn more?

Okay, I won’t dispute their findings because I know there are different types of people in the world than just the ones I know. I’ll make a note to self that there are also other types of bullies. I just have a different take on it because I have a completely different experience of it. The bullies/snobs I encounter are invariably like that because they feel inferior and are trying to compensate. Just take away their bogus sense of superiority and they run away like scared little cowards. Or just let them meet up with a similar bully to themselves, or a bigger bully, and they also run like cowards. Or perhaps they join with that other bully in order to strengthen their bullying tactics.

And the full-blown narcissists I know all have terrified little children inside. They are narcissistic only because they are inwardly fearful and are trying to compensate for how inferior they really feel. I haven’t met the other type who is snobby/bullying/narcissistic because s/he is genuinely self-confident. I do, however, think someone can be genuinely superior, self-assured, and intimidating without needing to cover up inherent feelings of inferior.

On re-reading, honestly, this bolded part sounds like a classic personality disorder trait. Being shown evidence of the truth and still couldn’t accept it? Did the researchers ascertain that their subjects were evaluated by mental health professionals to ensure that they were only dealing with psychologically sound individuals?

Erm, maybe I should rescind this comment. Or at least until I find out more about their study I’ll remain skeptical.

They matter because they helped shape us.

I’ll expand this to anybody who can’t be bothered to learn how to pronounce another person’s name correctly. Of course, this is especially prominent in cases where the name is “foreign”. It’s as if a big mental block goes up that says, “OMG! It’s a foreign language! That’s too hard so I won’t even try!” I see this a lot, since my city has a large Mexican population. There’s a Mexican guy at work named Santiago. He’s worked there for years, and there’s a woman who has also been there for years who still pronounces his name “San-tee-ah-go” (first syllable rhyming with “can”) instead of the correct “Sahn-tee-ah-go”. I’m baffled by how she gets the second “a” right, but not the first one.

An even more bizarre example is a Mexican lady I knew for years as Maria. A few years after she married an American man, I heard her mother-in-law refer to her as Criselia. So I’m thinking, “WTF? I thought her name was Maria?” So I asked the MIL, and got the full story. Criselia’s family settled here when she was a young girl, so this would have been almost 40 years ago, when year-round Mexican residents were rare here (lots of migrant agricultural workers, but very few who stayed). When she started going to school, her teacher decided that “Criselia” was just too difficult to say and declared that she would be called “Maria” instead. So from day one, all of her classmates, i.e. the people she would grow up with, learned to call her “Maria”, and that became the name she was known by for the next 25+ years. Eventually, as an adult, she decided she’d had enough of that and asked everybody to call her by her correct name.

Indeed. The “stupid thing” I was going to submit was “Men who feel the need to constantly remind everybody of what badasses they are.” I believe it was Queen Elizabeth II who, in an interview with Barbara Walters, said something along the lines of, “If you have to tell people you’re a lady, you’re not.” I think that statement works just as well if you replace “lady” with “badass”. If you’re a true lady or a true badass, it’s self-evident.

There’s a young guy at work — he’s 25 or 26 by now — whose conversation is a nonstop barrage of braggadocio about how big, strong, and tough he is. Seriously, he almost never lets up from the time he clocks in until the time he leaves. I can see that he’s smart and talented, and he does his job very well, but the constant bragging and posturing got very old a very long time ago. I came to the conclusion early on that he was trying to compensate for some insecurity. And one day I overheard him in a rare quiet moment, talking about his high school football career. It seems he was one of the stars of his high school team, and he was on track to win a full-ride football scholarship to a major university, and of course hoped to make it to the NFL. But in his senior year of HS, he took a hit that almost completely destroyed his knee, and instantly ended any chance he had at a football career. “And now,” he said, “here I am, a piece of shit waiter.” That explained a whole lot to me. Nowadays I just feel sorry for the guy.

His younger brother works with us now. The younger brother was also a badass football player in HS, and if anything is bigger and tougher than the older brother. But to him, football was just a game he played in HS, and he didn’t have any plans to go further with it. Unsurprisingly, he’s a lot friendlier and more fun to work with.

Let’s see, what else …

People who don’t use the doorknob to open and close doors. I share a rented house with a guy who’s my dad’s age. The house is about 100 years old and not especially well-maintained, and many of the doors have the original, or at least very old, doorknobs that no longer latch properly. So turning the doorknob isn’t necessary - you can just push the door open. So half of the white-painted doors in the house have nearly-permanent black smudges about shoulder height from my roommate simply pushing on the doors themselves instead of the doorknob, and his bedroom door has all sorts of black marks near the bottom from him using his foot to push it open.

If a person says Anyhoo or any other silly replacement for anyhow.