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

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?"

LOOOOOOL. I signed up for a new gym last week and didn't fill in the email/phone number bit even though it was 'required field' on the application; when they asked me why it was blank, I said I don't ever gave out those details and just *looked* at them wordlessly until they moved on.

Cold callers playing 20 Questions with people's personal details before divulging their own is the absolute rudest in phone behaviour - especially from a withheld/unknown number. If one tries to establish my identity using this method, it's all I can do not to shout at them.

PEOPLE WHO DO NOT KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "REPLY" AND "REPLY ALL"

I WILL HUNT THEM DOWN.

How do I shot modern communication?

i have a great deal of ENTIRELY RATIONAL anger in me right now

viz

Twitter C/D
Transport in London is shit

i want to kick some heads in

anyone who works at twitter or TFL will do

anyone

everyone

KILL

MURDER

I HAAAAAATE YOU

God forbid anyone try to change anything!

I really thought you were commenting on the sluttiness of those who work for Twitter and TFL!

anyone who works at twitter or TFL will do anyone [and] everyone [!]

God forbid anyone try to change anything!

making it better rather than making it CEASE WORKING ENTIRELY would seem ideal really

Whenever I read an interview and somebody says they find great sex to be a really awesome thing. No way, really?

lol

Maybe it's the amazement for some people that "great sex" actually exists?

I have the same with people saying they like "good food" though, so who am I to talk?

Interests:

Music: Nothing in particular, just whatever's good!

Translation guide posted elsewhere for middle america:

"I like all kinds of music!" just means "I like Dave Matthews Band"

Interests:

Music: Nothing in particular, just whatever drowns out the screaming inside my skull.

PEOPLE WHO DO NOT KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "REPLY" AND "REPLY ALL"

I WILL HUNT THEM DOWN.

There is a practice area-specific lawyers' list serv that I'm on and I swear 80% of those people are just incapable of figuring this out. Sometimes it's replying to the list serv instead of one person (when the original sender says things like "reply privately") but like two days ago somebody sent a fresh, new, confidential email meant for one lawyer to the whole list serv. I was like oh, thanks for this insider info about this case and also your opinions on why this lawyer is am asshole.

Haha. Can you tell me which email that is? I need to read those more often.

My favorite so far is the one where the lawyer was like "Shhhh! Please don't tell, but Lawyer X, a prominent figure the listserv, is going up against Lawyer Y, the head of the local chapter, in a case! Shhhh!" And Lawyer X is like, "Dude, I can read this, and it's not even correct."

like

Maybe it's the amazement for some people that "great sex" actually exists?

I have the same with people saying they like "good food" though, so who am I to talk?

i think it's a question of priorities. yes, everyone likes good food and great sex, but some people rank those things more highly on their lists of interests.

that applies to stuff people "hate" too. most people "hate" rude drivers, but i hate rude drivers with a blinding, spitting, frothing passion.

How innocuous is library theft? It makes me irrationally angry, anyway.
Perhaps rationally angry? I work in a library, so...