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

plus I always thank em and am never 'rude' about it when I ask. that's the key!

When I get emails with return reciepts.

I hate it when an original (but old) video of a song has the greatest hits compilation instead of the original album listed in the little intro and outro cutline.

Like

David Bowie
"Ashes to Ashes"
Sound + Vision
RCA

when you e-mail someone reasonably early on friday and they don't get back to you on friday, even though they have plenty of time left in the day. and then by monday they've forgotten that you exist.

― dance cook (get bent), Friday, August 12, 2011 7:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

My job lately consists primarily of waiting for people to get back to me. I have an entire separate Outlook folder filled with messages that start with "I'm sorry I took so long to get back to you!"

people who tell you they're horror movie buffs, then you see their DVD collection is stocked with stuff like the Rob Zombie Halloween, Texas Chainsaw reboot, and the Final Destination series...

• when the freshness seal on a jar of peanut butter or whatever doesn't peel off in one piece.

On the e-mail front, I got an e-mail at 10am on Friday with a particularly unhelpful bug report ("one of the files gave us an error", no error text, no indication which file or when, etc) and when I asked for the text of the error message OR a screenshot OR a copy of the file there was silence for the rest of the day.

OK, but I'm on leave next week, and I was going to send out a batch of 100 new files, so if you don't tell me what's wrong with them then all your files next week are potentially going to be broken too, and I didn't want to spend my week off fixing things either.

• search boxes containing instructional text that doesn't automatically disappear when you click on the box. if you don't highlight and manually delete the text, you end up searching for crap like "enter your seaANNA NICOLE CUMSHOTSrch terms here" and getting zero results. stupid.

• people who don't take down their yard sale signs after the sale is over. it's even worse if the signs aren't dated. it's hard to tell if "Saturday 9:00-2:00" means this coming Saturday or four Saturdays ago unless the sign is obviously faded and weather-damaged. stupid.

Hahahaha. But yes, the search text thing is very annoying, particularly b/c selecting and deleting the text is harder when you only have one hand free.

Noisy cold taps, the squeaky grating noise they make.

Are we still talking about masturbation?

--that eBay is still sticking to its ill-advised decision of a few years ago to not let you leave negative feedback for buyers.

Like I understand the whole "revenge rating" thing was going on, but was this really the best way to solve the problem? as it is right now, I'm tired of having deadbeat buyers skate by...even if you report them as having not paid, they can usually skirt punishment by making some excuse, but ain't nobody gonna sell to someone with a legit negative rating.

right now it just makes it easy for people who want to bid on the same item in several different auctions and just pay for the one they get the cheapest.

--when people are supposed to be at a meeting, don't show, and the people in charge indicate they didn't get any conflict from them, but instead of calling or pinging them, just sit and go "well we'll wait to see if they show". like ever think that maybe they either forgot, or there was confusion or something, and that calling them might get them to show up?

granted the person shirking their responsibility is at fault, but when the meeting can't operate without said person, and other people made sacrifices to be there...it's NAGL to not even try to find out where they are.

I hate when people brag about how little sleep they've gotten. I love sleep, so it just comes across as a vain attempt to seem tough. Unfortunately, people tend to tell me this while they are driving me somewhere, which doesn't help.

i hate when people talk about it in exasperated fashion and then you find out they were at home and just stayed up until 4 cuz they felt like it. soooooooo...?

92.4% of adrenaline is wasted on shit that barely rates a raised eyebrow

search boxes containing instructional text that doesn't automatically disappear when you click on the box. if you don't highlight and manually delete the text, you end up searching for crap like "enter your seaANNA NICOLE CUMSHOTSrch terms here" and getting zero results. stupid.

For eight straight years "Enter search text here" was the #1 search on my work's website, meaning people were clicking the search button without typing anything in the box.

now that there is a "shut down the pc every night" rule I have to wait about 15 minutes for crappy windows and mcafee to stop they shit so I can start workin

I hate when people brag about how little sleep they've gotten

i find myself telling people how little sleep i've had but it's never bragging, it's more...pre-emptive. like, forgive me if i a) seem a little manic b) fall asleep

talking of which, my own body clock makes me so angry. i stay up til 4am writing, i don't have to wake up early the next day - hey, body, you can get your seven hours or whatever in! OH NO YOU'RE GOING TO WAKE ME UP AT HALF PAST SIX FOR NO REASON. happens every time.

i can't power nap either, i so envy those people who can sleep at will. how the hell do you do it? even in situations like the above, when i'm so tired i can barely function, if i lie down and try to nap before it's actual bedtime, i just feel so awake and stupid in bed.

I hate when people brag about how little sleep they've gotten

It seems like people do this a lot until they reach like 19 or 20. I used to say this not as a brag but to kind of make fun of myself for my own warped priorities. When you're an adult you look stupid saying "man I only slept 4 hours last night"

So proud of myself for being able to force sleep these days. Like, "oh, I was out late and will be out late again tonight. I need two more hours of sleep. *passes out*"

I even did this in a hotel! Great moment.

how? is there a secret? i would seriously love to know this :(

watching something on TV that you're only half-interested in usually does the trick

I can give you this, and the secret to complete inner peace, for $5 plus postage and handling for my pamphlet.

Also, did you know that if you have "pee anxiety" at a urinal, you can do math problems in your head and you'll start whizzing immediately. I wanted to share this but don't know where to post it.

how? is there a secret? i would seriously love to know this :(

― lex pretend

My "secret" is that it's an incredible relief to lie down and not have nagging pains in my feet, my back, tension in my neck, not have to maintain my posture anymore, stuff like that. My sleeping position gives me the only pure physical relaxation in my entire day. And relaxation puts me to sleep almost immediately.

Was actually thinking over this weekend that if I could have one superpower it would probably be the ability to sleep or stay awake at will. I have real trouble sleeping when I know I *have to* (e.g. if I need to get up early next morning) yet find it impossible to not feel that dozing-off feeling in a meeting where I cannot keep my eyes open with all the strength I can muster.

if you feel drowsey YOU ARE SECONDS AWAY FROM SLEEP! schlaffen sie!

IMO unless you are having sex there really isn't a good reason to be awake at 4am. Put down the bottle! Or maybe do your drugs earlier in the day for Christ's sake.

It seems like people do this a lot until they reach like 19 or 20.

Among my peers, seems to be an early-20s phenom. Actual age doesn't matter because there are plenty of people who still wish they were 22 and treat their body like it.

this is not irrational, but my perpetual offense at this sort of idiocy is. why do i read the internet? http://human-stupidity.com/stupid-dogma/racial-differences-intelligence/race-differences-in-intelligence-how-i-changed-my-mind

what exactly did you find idiotic about that article

The category entitled "Orientals" to start with...

The real question is, is it possible to write about this in any way without being accused of idiocy/ignorance/racism without just saying "these studies are all crap and we shouldn't discuss them"

The thing is that those studies are all crap and we shouldn't discuss them.

what exactly did you find idiotic about that article

Posts very much in character.

yeah thats the kind of response I figured from this place

Please tell us what you took away from the article.

"this place"

How about "these studies are generally dismissed due to their irrelevance in policy-making and their inability to create prescriptivist policy, or do really anything other than engender intolerance and backward thinking"

Like, how are you going to walk away from reading something like that? Deal more carefully with your Asian coworker because he might be outsmarting you? Be more descriptive to your black friends because they might not get what you mean?

Please tell us what you took away from the article.

That sounds like a good idea! I was just thinking about how much I'd love to be misquoted and piled on right now

Were you thinking about that when you made your original "tell me what you think is idiotic" post?

I think you're confusing "misquoted" with "quotes taken out of the context that I see them in, but no one else does, because I know I'm not biased."

btw as far as I can tell this "human-stupidity" site is just a big clusterfuck of documenting stupid, bizarre, or violent things that people do to the exclusion of all else. Why the hell do that unless you're trying to spend all your time pointing fingers?

How about "these studies are generally dismissed due to their irrelevance in policy-making and their inability to create prescriptivist policy, or do really anything other than engender intolerance and backward thinking"

You're right, but I'm not sure how many studies really are revelant in policy-making. I don't think we necessarily have to worry about something like this becoming "dangerous" because as a country we're not really moving in that direction.

Like, how are you going to walk away from reading something like that? Deal more carefully with your Asian coworker because he might be outsmarting you? Be more descriptive to your black friends because they might not get what you mean?

Well I definitely didn't walk away from it thinking "this guy is a racist idiot for even considering this" and in general I really dislike that attitude, I felt like he did his due diligence but I'm not exactly drawing any conclusions off of it, you know? I mean we have determined decades ago that IQ is not really a good indicator of anything.

How about "this guy is kind of a racist for presenting this in the context of a site called human-stupidity that also has an article titled 'Get a lawyer before courting: 34 precautions before risking sex with a woman'"? There are some contexts where going into certain conversations is never a good idea.

I have some level of confidence that as a whole the US isn't moving in a more discriminatory direction, but there have to be a lot of levels of distinction and clarification if you try to go anywhere near claiming a group of individuals is in some way different from others. If you really think that racism, sexism, or homophobia aren't still issues, I think we have at least a few people around here who could testify otherwise!

I'm not saying that they aren't issues, hell I could testify that myself as I recently nearly had my jaw broken over some dumb racist shit. I think that not everything needs to be looked at in the world of subtext and nagl or whatever. For the record I hadn't really looked at the site itself or even the URL, but at the same time I'm one of those guys that'll say that not everything on Cracked is misleading garbage even if a lot of it is.

p.s. that article was presented to me as valid contrapuntal material for a paper i'm writing...!