Innocuous things that make you irrationally angry (a list thread)

the Wendys drive-thru filling the sodas literally all the way to the top with ice

snack girl at the movie theater asked me if i wanted "a lot" of ice... i said "no".. she said "a little?" I said "...no, the perfect amount" and she said "ok"... ?!

people on message boards/comment threads/yelp/mefi/etc that use "we" ("we love this restaurant. we go every friday night!") without ever specifying who "we" refers to. i think it's more acceptable in a place like ilx where close-knit relationships and off-board friendships are the norm. i basically know who you're talking about, because i've been here for ~10 years and i've learned about people's lives. but in a huge, generalist environment, saying "we" without defining it as "my husband and i" or "my family" or w/e sounds really smug. ooh, you get to be part of a "we" -- big fucking whoop.

but even on ilx, if i'm referring to my other half, i'll usually say so.

I like that that makes you angry, because chances are it would just make me sad? I am a sap.

'er indoors

People who just suddenly decide one day to walk their giant ass or ill-tempered dog on your block when they live six blocks away.

Imagine walking your dogs on their usual route, only to have them turn a corner and run smack into a complete stranger who has decided on a new dog walking route...especially at five o'clock in the morning or after sundown when visibility is poor.

a really pedantic one but....people who act like they're in a short one person sized tunnel when they leave a shop to walk onto the street. they cannot look left or right to see if anyone is walking on the street already because the tunnel only allows them to look straight forward. their pace is dictated by the tunnel. i work on a pretty busy street and i swear some people actually avoid looking around them walking out of shops cos they might have to acknowledge they're getting in people's way.

i hate groups of slow walking people in a wide line who weave across the footpath so you can't get past them and then when you finally say 'excuse me' they don't hear you because they're all talking and when say it louder they give you stern looks for being pushy and impatient.

slow walking people, or just those who appear oblivious to basic unspoken ambulatory etiquette, are the WORST

people in tube corridors who fucking amble as though they're on a country walk - just, what? are you really enjoying it that much in here that you don't want to get to your destination quicker? does it not occur to you that others might want to do that?

and people who come along a pavement in the opposite direction to you, so you move over to one side as you approach so you can pass each other, and they...don't even make the SLIGHTEST effort to do that.

all of these things drive me bananas, esp the groups of people blocking the road.

the other one that really bothers me is people who walk all the way up to the tube escalator really slowly, on the walking side, only stepping to the right at the very last minute.

yes!

i just don't know what goes through those people's heads. do they have like an active aversion to the idea of moving at speed?

Usually these horrible underground fell walkers (complete with rucksacks in many cases) have decided to walk especially slowly in the final tunnel to the platform, crawling to the speed of molasses upon sight of an arriving train. They combine this with an almost psychic ability to manoeuvre themselves into any opening you're trying to exploit to pass them, particularly if there is any sense of urgency around getting to one's train. If I had a pound for every train I've missed due to this killer combo, I would be wealthy enough to avoid public transport by hiring a car and driver for the rest of my life.

"okay" drives me crazy since that's not even how it was originally spelled! it's just OK ffs

SUZY OTM >>>>:(

I would say ILX. But that was in the past. lol

The train stations here have just stuck big stickers all over the handrails of the escalators that say something like "safety first: dont stop when exiting". Nothing worse than a peak hour pile of people trundling up the escalator and some numpty gets to the top, stops, and does a Mr Bean "duh where am i?" standstill. Or worse, has a PHONE CONVERSATION.

slow walking people, or just those who appear oblivious to basic unspoken ambulatory etiquette, are the WORST

I am sympathetic to slow walkers who are not clearly tourists because there are lots of reasons why someone might not want to walk as fast as I want to walk, but the obliviousness is infuriating. I read some advice to rubes visiting a city for the first time that said to approach walking on sidewalks, escalators, tunnels, shop entrances, etc., just as you would driving on a road. You wouldn't pull out of a parking lot without looking around you first, so don't barrel out of a shop without looking first. You wouldn't come to the top of an entrance ramp and stop short (well, I guess some people would but most people agree it's a bad thing) so don't get to the top of an escalator and gather in a clump while panicky people behind you (aka me) are wondering if they are about to lose a foot in the escalators relentless teeth because there's no room to step off and get away. And for fuck's sake, just as you wouldn't come to a dead stop in the middle of the highway to check your map or text your friend, don't do so on a sidewalk either! Pull over to the side, and then merge back into the flow.

It was good advice. I want to print out flyers and hand them to tourists.

People who stand blocking doorways/stairs to fiddle with their mobile phones - get out of the fucking way!

guys named Slade

and people who come along a pavement in the opposite direction to you, so you move over to one side as you approach so you can pass each other, and they...don't even make the SLIGHTEST effort to do that.

I have no problem shoulder-checking these people.

I read some advice to rubes visiting a city for the first time that said to approach walking on sidewalks, escalators, tunnels, shop entrances, etc., just as you would driving on a road.

OTM OTM OTM OTM OTM This is exactly what it is. There's a reason it's still called "pedestrian traffic."

Coming out of Grand Central today, passed a visiting Euro family who had a whiny toddler out of stroller, being coddled with some toy, stroller empty and sitting across the lane, and about 5 different adults standing around, watching the toddler rub her eyes and whine. They were probably taking up about 6-8' of hallway width??? HOW IS THIS OKAY ANYWHERE, EVEN IN EUROPE?? THIS IS GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL, FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

Around here people like to signal after their vehicle is halfway into the lane. They also like to get angry at you and honk or flip you off if you happen to be in the lane they are trying to enter, as if it's your fault they didn't see you.

Not innocuous except that it shouldn't bug me to the point where I want to drive to the dude's house and yell at em

ia: when i'm in a store and i just need to grab one item quickly from a shelf, but there's someone dawdling right in front of my item for five minutes, oblivious to the person who's right there next to them in the aisle, waiting for them to hurry the hell up. and then i feel like an asshole for saying "excuse me." the burden should not be on me!

i'm like that but with people in record stores. like it shouldn't take you 20 minutes to browse the A section of a used rack

People who refer to artists or celebrities by their first name in conversation - as if they're buddies. Ex. "I was listening to Miles (Davis) on the train today..." // "Really, Bernard and Neil should've made one more Electronic album, but I guess Johnny wanted to do other things." Grrr...

See I don't think the "Miles" example is that weird, its just a shortened version of the name he actually records and releases music under.

Deadheads are terrible about that. Don't hang out with Deadheads if that bugs you.

There's a fine line. Somebody coming up to me and saying, "I was listening to Miles last night," would instantly be asking for a faceslap, but if he someone said, "Miles asked Coltrane to do this," it would be acceptable.

"Who played that guitar solo, Paul or George?" - YES
"I was listening to Paul and Linda last night." - NO

it seems to be way more de rigeur in the jazzer lexicon but whatever it is still super super annoying

While chatting with coworkers about other coworkers and I said, "Haha,that's like the time Lisa said ______." They were like, Lisa who?

I was referring to Lisa Simpson :-/

My mother does this, but she's referring to her cars and hard-drives.

Girls coming on to my cute boyfriend in front of me. C'mon...it's at a video store, it's not like we are at a bar or a club. Some decorum please.

Not irrational at all, but not sure where else to file this: Cal centres where a robot rings your house a number of times to check if you are a t home before a human finally rings you, so that, as with me yesterday, you get 5 silent, paranoia-inducing calls before some nitwit tries selling you shit you don't want.

They're pretty much explicitly saying 'We don't want to waste a second of OUR time, but we don't at all mind pissing away vast amounts of YOUR time."

This is why I dont answer my landline, ever.

I don't know what I did the other day, but I got one of those calls and just held onto the line. (My passive-aggressive thinking is I'M COSTING YOU SO MUCH LONG-DISTANCE MONEY RIGHT NOW.) Then I hit 0 and it started ringing. A man answered and said the name of the company! Had I not been so shocked, I could've remembered the name and assassinated their character on the Internet.

So that's my M/O now -- smashing buttons until someone comes on the line and then... profit?

Sometimes I wish I did answer, cos I want to get one of those indian scammers who say yr windows pc is virusing up the interwebs and can they get you to run remote access to fix it. So I could mess with their heads. Apparently they get REAL MAD if you say shit like "but I use linux" and call you a liar and say the cops will come.

ha ha! I got a call from them once, wish I'd thought of that response.

Yeah, I had to call the power company, and they had this neat feature where they basically put you in line to speak to a CSR, then call you back when its your turn. Except, they called me back and put me at the back of the line again and this time I had to hold. That's kind of infuriating.

New peeve; the garbage companies who refuse to pick up any garbage if you have one black bag (apparently only white bags are permissable); we just moved and didn't know about that (and the garbage company didn't leave us a sticker or anything). So, instead of just being left with the "illegal" garbage, we're left with like 5 bags of garbage, which obviously the raccoons and deer got into, so we had to do a 90 minute trash run culminating in a midnight Subway dump, barf

Yeah, situations like that can be infuriating. Where I live any lawn waste was picked up for free as long as it was in one of those brown bags you can get at any Home Depot or whatever, until they decided that the city could make money by selling $1.25 stickers you need to place on those bags in order to have them picked up. Fine, annoying and a bit of a hassle when you forget to pick up new stickers, but they did very little to warn people about this change. No bulk mail, no flyer, no email passed on from our alderperson, etc. So when this change came up, suddenly we were all getting little stickers notifying us of a $20 "pick up fee" for not having proper stickers on our yard waste. Fortunately they called off all those fees for the first couple of weeks, due to the deluge of complaints, but how hard is it to let people know these rules?

yeah, they did this at my old place as we were moving out! so we had like 12 bags of garbage after cleaning everything, you used to get 2 free bags (you could sticker the rest), but they decreased that to one bag without telling us. That's even fine, it's just that when you make the change, and we have 2 unstickered and 10 stickered, PLEASE TAKE THE STICKERED BAGS AND GIVE US THE FREE ONE TOO!! Don't just go, "fuck it, I'm leaving them all!" Don't they know how much that sucks for us (the customer)??

a robot rings your house a number of times to check if you are a t home before a human finally rings you, so that, as with me yesterday, you get 5 silent, paranoia-inducing calls before some nitwit tries selling you shit you don't want.

This is the worst! I mean, I guess not the worst ever until you cross a few fatal diseases off the list, but it's pretty fucking bad. We got a real spate of these a few years back, glad I don't get them in my current place.

I just get lots of Srs People asking if I'm some guy called Duncan. They never say who they are and always hang up without saying anything when I say he hasn't lived here for 2 years, so I guess they are debt collectors, and I always worry that they don't believe me - otherwise why would they keep ringing - and I'll find my door kicked in one day.

Then I remember that I may have his phone number but my flat's a new build, so they're probably kicking down the door of some other person who isn't Duncan instead and then saying "we phoned you repeatedly, Duncan, and your woman's voice is most unconvincing."

I hate the photo copy toner scammers and I enjoy eating up as much of their time as possible before letting them know that I know it's a scam and telling them I'm reporting the call to the State's Attorney. They get really shitty with you when you say that.

The scam, in case you aren't familiar: they call and say they are from "the company that provides your toner" (sometimes they know which machine you have, so they say "from Konica" or whatever) and they want to confirm your order or tell you your order has been delayed. I fell for it once on my first few weeks at a new job. The guy said that "John" placed the order, which was a really lucky random name bc my boss is named John. I OK'd the order and received a UPS pkg of 10 toner cartridges and a bill for $500.

As it turns out, my boss questioned the charges and found that toner is paid for in our machine lease. Some people just pay it. Fucking bastards.

They've decided to knock down the car and petrol garage next to my house and build (yet another) old folks home. Building work starts imminently, but until then, they've decided to park a security guard in the car park right outside our bathroom window. He can probably see in. He sits in his car talking loudly on a mobile phone until the early hours of the morning and every 40 minutes his dog starts barking for no reason. Then I can hear him slamming the car door and moving stuff around. It only started recently, but I'm not happy about it, especially since the landlady has just raised our rent. I find dogs barking quite a tense noise at the best of times and I don't like it while I sleep. Is it right to complain, or is this just life?

xp that doesn't sound innocuous at all! I had no idea that was going on. That's pretty clever though

That sounds worthy of a complaint, maybe to the security company. Or maybe you could make a noise complaint to the police. That would be pretty funny. xp

A security guy should get a more professional acting dog, a dog that yowls every 40 minutes does not have a stable temperament. My dog barks at night sometimes but it is very comforting and reassuring.

i've had a couple of calls lately from people who knew my name and address and said that they had money for me because i'd "been in an accident"

i told them no thanks but it occurred to me that my response may have subtly confirmed that the information they had for me was all correct i.e. name, phone number, address

so the last time it happened i said "no, you're wrong, that's not my address" and the guy immediately just hung up on me!

I just get lots of Srs People asking if I'm some guy called Duncan. They never say who they are and always hang up without saying anything when I say he hasn't lived here for 2 years, so I guess they are debt collectors, and I always worry that they don't believe me - otherwise why would they keep ringing - and I'll find my door kicked in one day.

Then I remember that I may have his phone number but my flat's a new build, so they're probably kicking down the door of some other person who isn't Duncan instead and then saying "we phoned you repeatedly, Duncan, and your woman's voice is most unconvincing."

yeah i've had lots of these. the format "ARE YOU XXXXXX?" "no." "IS THIS THE ADDRESS XXXXXXX?" "no." "WHAT IS THIS ADDRESS?" "ummmm" is pretty common.

After I got my new phone number ten years ago, I went to get my oil changed and the guy asked for my phone number to enter into the records. He typed it in and then looked at me curiously. "Are you servicing your Corolla today, Mr. Fong?"