I saw this happen to my best friend one time. We’d been waiting in line at a movie theater for a long time. A group of young girls approached us and asked if they could cut in front of us. My friend told them, “There’s a lot of people who’ve been waiting a long time. Sorry, I can’t.”
The girl who had asked was infuriated. Her cutie-pie face crumpled in rage, and she seemed to be rendered inarticulate by the peropsterous notion that someone would deny her something she wanted. “You’re . . . you’re fat!” she finally managed to spit.
My friend looked down at her body with an expression of bewilderment, and then looked up at the girl with an expression of shocked horror. “My God! You’re right!” she gasped.
The whole line behind us cracked up, and little Miss Cutie-Pie stomped to the back of the line.
Actually, manners and etiquette both do both of those things. They put nice people at ease and nasty people in their place, with a slight bias towards the former. For example, there’s nothing like being an absolute, no-sarcasm angel to your ex and their new partner to convince said ex that he/she got the short end of the stick.
Ook! shakes fist I hate those who need to occupy the very space where I am despite the fact that there’s perfectly good space on the other side of me.
This frequently happens when I’m walking down the street with my boyfriend. We typically hold hands and walk side-by-side. I’m typically a nice person, but what really makes me mad is the fact that people like to aim right at me when I’m walking, so that I either have to duck behind my boyfriend, push him into traffic, or get run into. There is no room on the other side of me - there is another person there.
Mind you, I’m not a sidewalk hog. I understand that on a crowded sidewalk, we don’t always have the luxury of walking abreast of one another. We will move into single file when necessary, and a crowded sidewalk situation is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a freaking empty sidewalk, which is nice and wide, and there are a good three feet on the side of me that my boyfriend is not occupying. Additionally, my boyfriend is next to the road. If I do move him out of the way, he goes onto the road or into the parked car. I’m not pushing him off the curb, sorry. So why, Shirtless Man, must you aim directly at me? Can’t you take one step to your right? Just one?!
The last time this happened (the other day), it was at 2 am, and there wasn’t another person in sight. I think people just like to intimidate other people.
I’m too much of a pushover so I almost always let go and duck behind my boyfriend, but occasionally I’ll keep walking and wind up smacking into someone’s shoulder because they moved at the last second. Satisfying.
Also, once in Winners, a woman said “Excuse me” while I was trying on shoes. I moved so she could push her cart by, and she promptly parked it right in front of me and then turned with her back to it, looking at the shoes on the other side of the aisle, effectively blocking the entire aisle. Huh?! I need to carry around a portable La Cucaracha horn. That would be great. Beebeebee beee BOO, beebeebeebee beee BOO, beebee beebee beebee boooo! Poke off!
My husband said, if he were Creaky, he would mount a red button at 2:00 on his steering wheel. The red button would release the sound of strafing machine gun fire.
We kept riffing on it and eventually it got to a crosshairs painted in the windshield, and yellow lights mounted in the grille that flash in time to the red button noises, so you could essentially “strafe” the other car without causing them any damage except bewilderment.
Then we envisioned a road rage discussion as the other guy gets out of his car. “What did you just do to me?” “I strafed you.” “You what??” “I strafed you. Virtually. No actual bullets were harmed in the ma-” “You what? You effing strafed me??” Actual fight starts.
No, on second thoughts, no button on the steering wheel.
In my design there’s a HUD, driver’s side, with targeting software. There’s also an option for those targeting thingies that allow tracking by sight. The big gun would be a 20mm chain gun, with a magazine in the trunk, and smaller, behind-the-grill weapons that can be aimed.
There’s also an EMP option, to fry the electronics of offenders, as well as a posterior weapon option that allows one to release flak to the rear or to severely illuminate the immediately-behind vehicle.
Been there, done that on I-35. As I passed by the woman who thought she was going to get ahead of the game, stopped about 3 feet in front of the “Lane ends RIGHT FREAKING NOW” sign (and about 6 feet in front of the gaping 6 foot deep pit which was the reason for the sign) I looked over at her. She was screaming, face red, in a rage I haven’t seen matched by anyone over the age of two. It was about 20 minutes after I’d seen her zip past me.
About three miles up the road, I was in the right lane with another driver in the left and saw her in my mirror. I waved at him, pointed back, and we sloooooooowed down to 40 in unison.
What I want there to be, in my fantasies, is a set of flashing lights on top of every car, like a cop car’s lights. But these lights should be green, yellow, and red. Everyone gets a scanner/radar gun thingy and you can “tag” other vehicles for profoundly stupid driving (of course, you can only tag so often, and your tags last longer the less frequently you do it). One tag on your vehicle turns the green light on for a while. Tag a green-light car and the yellow light comes on. Now, consider that you can easily identify everyone who’s driving like an idiot today, because their car has a green or yellow light on top of it-- isn’t it easier to guess who’s going to pull out in front of you?
If your car gets tagged while the yellow light is on, the red light comes on, and you have 2 minutes to pull over, at which point the car turns off. Depending on how annoyed I am with the other drivers on the road, sometimes I like to imagine that the doors lock and the windows roll up too. And Muzak plays, or a loudspeaker like an ice cream truck. And other drivers point and laaaaaaugh at them.
Well, yeah, actually, I am. I dunno nothing about video games, so I’m kinda pulling this out of my a$$, here, but: Getting along in society calls for a certain set of responses for various situations; those responses are drilled into you by your parents, your friends, your teachers. Such responses might include, for instance, just off the top of my head, falling back and leaving a space for other drivers to merge, and having the attitude that this is perfectly normal and civilized behavior.
If one spent a lot of time playing a video game where the ‘correct’ response to a driver wanting to merge was to speed up and cut him off, or blast him with machine guns, or (at the very least) resent and take offense at his desire to merge, it seems to me that the correct responses could get overlaid with the incorrect responses, until someday the incorrect response emerges in a real-world situation.
Doubtless many of you will assure me that you are perfectly able to tell the real world from a fantasy world, and I’m sure you are. The thing is, day after day you’re practicing unsocial behaviors…
The problem with the merge lanes (and I didn’t know this until I got into engineering) is that the traffic engineers assume the lanes will stay full until fairly close to the merge when they figure out distances and traffic loads. If everyone merges waaaay in advance, unexpected traffic problems can occur. Premature merging got to be such a big problem at a location here in Austin, that the city was forced to put up a sign asking people to please fill both lanes.
If both lanes were filled and people merged correctly at the merge point, traffic would flow just as quickly and you wouldn’t have stresses about people zipping ahead.
Thank you! I’ve been arguing this point w/ my fellow truckers for twenty + years. Some of them think it’s appropriate to use their trucks to block the empty lane and have gotten ticketed for it. They then want sympathy because the police “don’t understand” the situation.
The merge point has been designated by the placement of the barricades or the design of the roadway, it really makes no sense to merge sooner. If traffic is so heavy that there’s going to be a slowdown then it will occur whereever you merge and it’s more logical for vehicles to use all the lanes up to the merge point and then alternate.
If there is an open lane I’m going to use it and I then expect to alternate in turn, if you choose to merge sooner you’ll just have to live w/ your choice, but you’re completely wrong to resent me for doing it properly.
I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t think playing a video game for say, a total of 500 hours before you get bored with it will trump 20+ years of social training.
I played GTA quite a bit when it first came out. It didn’t change my driving habits. Likewise, I’ve played about a billion hours of Morrowind, and I never considered stabbing someone with a sword.
I whole-heartedly agree. But I am not perfect (unfortunately) and do let it get to me every now and then. But yeah, usually I let people in, I wait patiently for parking spots if I have to, I hurry up when someone is waiting for my spot. If someone flips me off or whatever, I just smile and feel relief that I’m not the one with the anger issues.
The most recent time I lost it was when I was on a freeway on-ramp, where two lanes merged into one. The traffic was bumper-to-bumper, so one car would go at a time, alternatling from each lane. Except, when it was my turn, the woman next to me decided not to let me in. The unfortunate thing was that she was halfway behind me when she decided to do this and I didn’t notice her until we were literally about 1/4 inch from hitting each other. I honked and called her a string of nasty names. She had to turn slightly to avoid taking my sideview mirror off. I hate it when I get like that, but jeez lady, WTF? Is your brain so tiny that you can’t process the concept of alternating lanes? Or are you just being a bitch? And if so, why?
When I’m in The Big Truck ™ I’ll often merge for the folks that aren’t paying attention. Pulling halfway into the ending lane so that the clueless driver in front of me will have a space to pull into.
Ooooooooh! I was in a situation almost identical to this about year ago and the memory is my pride and joy. It’s the only time I’ve reacted to something with exactly what I wanted to do and say.
I recieved the obnoxious ‘Excuse ME!’ in my ear and looked up. An perfectly dressed business man of about 50-60 was standing (far too close) beside me and wanted me to move so he could continue striding along the aisle as though getting the milk home that night was not only going to quench the thirst of his family but also close that big merger deal and maybe save the world. There was more than enough room for him to go round.
I looked at him, frowned and put my hands out - not touching him - but equal to his width as though measuring him.
‘You’re this big.’
Then I did the same to myself.
‘I’m this big.’
Then I lent out and stretched my arms apart as far as they would go, they did not make it to the other side of the aisle.
‘And the aisle, well…’
He opened his mouth again but I cut him off.
‘You are not excused. Kindly fuck off.’
Oh, the glory. He shuffled away with his tail between his legs.
You folks might be amused by an encounter I had a few weeks ago. I’d say she was more clueless and oblivious than hostile and anti-social, but whatever this woman was, she does get points for bitchiness.
I was walking to my car one day after work, using a cane and limping a bit because I’d strained my knee. The building I work in is on a corner and has a mailbox in front of it. The streets around us are usually pretty quiet. As I walked toward that corner, I saw a large SUV coming toward me. As I started to turn the corner, she pulled in front of me, drove up onto the sidewalk and stopped, coming a lot closer to me than I would have liked. I paused for a few moments, trying to figure out what she was doing. Since I couldn’t get past her on the sidewalk, I wound up walking around her vehicle, going out into the street since she had the entire sidewalk blocked, playing up the limp just a tad and looking at her quizzically all the while. When I got in front of her, I realized what she was doing. She was leaning out of her driver’s side window, putting her mail in the mailbox. The kicker, however came as I finished walking to my car. After she put her mail in the mailbox, she drove to the building across the street from us, probably less than 50 feet from the mailbox. I considered walking over to her, offering her my cane, and saying, “Here. You obviously need this more than I do.”
By the way, there weren’t any handicapped stickers or anything on her car to indicate that she had trouble getting around, and the last pick up for the day at that mailbox was three hours before this happened. I suspect she has no idea why I was surprised by what she did.
Personally, I think about stabbing someone with the sword I don’t own, or just running down pedestrians ‘because I can’, or using my ludicrously large arsenal I carry (a la Half Life and which, like the sword, I do not actually own) on the general populace, all the time. I never actually do it, nor do I have even the slightest urge to begin arming myself, but just once I’d like to cycle through my two dozen weapons to choose just the right one to convince people to move to the back of the bus.
A few years back I was driving up from White Plains to Albany at 3 AM. I stopped at a rest stop. There were a few cars, and tons of empty spaces. I pulled in, and saw a truck stopped between two rows of parking spaces. All the while that I drove from the entrance to where he was, about 5-10 seconds, he just sat there.
Now, as I said, it was fairly empty and I am female and I was alone. I pulled in between two cars to park. I get out of the car, and the truck driver jumps out and starts screaming at me.
“What the FUCK are you doing, you stupid bitch? Couldn’t you tell I was about to park there? You took my fucking spot. You bitch!”
I looked around at all of the empty spaces but didn’t dare say anything. No one was around, I mean, the parking lot was well-lit enough, but still. I just apologized and hurried inside the place. When I came back out he was gone.
I suppose he could have been aiming for the spot I took. But there were spots on either side of the two cars! Spots everywhere! To this day I wonder if he feels good about yelling at a woman that was obviously at least 10 years younger and all alone.
We went to a large show in the west end of the city. It was a public show about cottages, etc - grossly overpriced, by the way.
The parking lot was packed and we drive a very small car. We pulled in behind a fellow who was, what we thought, halfway between two spaces, striaghtening out his car. After a few minutes waiting and he wasn’t moving, I got out, politely asked him if he was parking and he said “my buddy is coming soon and I’m saving two spaces for us”.
I started to laugh because I really couldn’t believe someone would actually do that and then had to explain it to the two cars waiting behind us so they didn’t pull in and do the same thing we did.
There were some remarks exchanged between the other drivers and himself before they left.
One of my biggest pet peeves is people who blast their car stereos. When I worked at the Pentagon I had an apartment in Alexandria, VA. It seemed to be an okay neighborhood, but months after I moved in most of the complex was converted to section 8 housing. I should have moved right then. I don’t have a problem with people in section 8 if they need it, I’m not exactly Rockefeller myself, but as I told me wife I want people around me to at least have as much class and tact as I have, since I’m probably the bare minimum of those traits.
Anyway, one of the people that lived under my apartment had a friend with the loudest car stereo ever built. He would park in front of the building and his friend would come outside and they would yak for what seemed like hours…with this monster stereo blasting the loudest rap music they could find. On the second floor, not even near the window and I can’t even hear my TV because of it. I went outside and asked if they’d mind not destroying my eardrums with the unending bass. Of course they turned it down long enough for me to go back inside, and then they turned it up. I was at the point in my life, too nice. I went through this scenario a few times with them, until finally I called the apartment manager and the police about it. I know the cops said something to the guy, but it didn’t really stop…until one day I was walking home from the bus stop and saw both of these guys standing by the car with the Ultra Stereo. The engine was running, the music was ridiculously loud, but the windows were up. Homey had locked his keys in the car and it was running out of gas.
Both of these goons looked at me as I was walking past them and at first didn’t realize who I was in uniform. Then they asked me if I would loan them a wire hanger so they could try to open the door before the tank was empty. With a very large grin I said “Nope.”.
I sat in my window drinking a beer and holding a hanger and watched the engine sputter and die, laughing.
