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

So it's just a stupid question to filter out those who haven't the nous to look up stock answers to stupid questions?

I bet interviewers who ask that question think they are really asking something incisive and revealing. Like how the MPRE or Top Grading is supposed to mysteriously ferret out the truth about job applicants. It's all based in a human's need to make sense out of chaos and thus doomed to failure if you ask me. But I'm crazy cynical about all expects of management psychology.

It's all very well (possibly) to ask an internal candidate, but if you're not working there already, are you really meant to say "well I shall undoubtedly be working for your company, because you people I've only just met are totes gonna hire me and not the other 9 people you've asked this today, and we're going to get on just fine for five years, and wouldn't be cool if I had your job instead by then"?

Blah.

I think when I was asked this when younger I reassured them that I was interested in staying in my fumbling new career path, but a decade later that angle doesn't work so well. But since "more responsibility" seems to mean "doing less of what I actually do and more people-managing", I don't actually want that at all either.

I was reading this self-help/pop-psych book (urgh), and there was a chapter about how the author had designed a psychological evaluation quiz for some insurance sales company, where they asked candidates to agree/disagree with a statements along the lines of "I make awesome things happen because I am awesome" "if terrible things happen on my watch it was some other schmuck's fault" and only hired the people who were most "optimistic" i.e. basically unbearable.

I had some trouble after that liking the author, or agreeing that I had to change myself to be a top 10% insurance sales candidate instead of thinking that things might occasionally be either my fault or cosmically unavoidable

Haha I tried that tactic once on some pre-interview Likert scale (from 1-10) quiz, circling 10 on the ones that affirmed I was awesome and 1 on the ones that suggested I was flawed. At the interview, the guy commented, "You circled '10' for 'I would be excellent at this job.' What makes you think you're a 10?" I never thought I would be asked to explicate on my really arrogant strategy, so I was saying just really vague, "You know, I've had friends who did this job before, and it sounds like it has its ups and downs, but I really think I have what it takes." The job in question was working for a janitorial company that contracted janitors out to work at Albertson's, and I didn't get hired, as it was pretty obvious there was no way I was a 10/10 janitor.

had to ask two different youths today to stand on the other side of the escalator. it's that time of year again, nearly christmas, lots of outsiders who don't understand our ways.

I'd be tempted to answer the five year q'n with "that depends if you hire me, doesnt it?"

I've spoken to a few friends whove had to do interviews. Ppl often get shoved into it cos their boss is busy, they're not that skilled at it, and end up relying on these shitty cliched HR questions because its all they can find online. It means very little, really.

xp young outsiders who don't understand our old-man ways

have always thought the "Stand On The Right" signs were too terse and unobvious. especially given multiple possible meanings of 'stand' and 'right'.

was also a group of about 10 youths, all similarly dressed and haircutted (v short, with shaven curlicues), who didn't have one clue between them. were asking people if the (piccadilly line) train when to piccadilly circus whilst stood *opposite* the route map on the wall.

I've seen airport travelators that have 'stand' and 'walk' painted on the appropriate sides, on the floor itself. They should do this on escalator steps.

of course that doesn't solve the problem of people who walk too slowly on the "walk" side when the "stand" side is free - like people who sit in the middle lane on motorways.

maybe i should chillax.

Maybe theyre from Melbourne? Its stand on the left, here.

Yeah I never understood the "stand on the right" thing in the UK because it clashes with the road rules. Here there's no such demand on escalators (we are savages) so the few people who randomly show some consideration for other human beings intuitively stand on the left.

Fucking hate jackasses who stand on the left next to someone standing on the right. Sad to say, it's pretty much the norm in Chicago. Also, angry to say.

I read on a Canadian news site that for a while one Canadian city's transit system had signs on their escalators that said to stand on the right and walk on the left, but they took them down bc they were opening themselves to liability by condoning walking on the escalator, which, as I've read elsewhere, manufacturers advise against bc the steps on an escalator are higher than optimal climbing distance and they're sharp.

it's health and safety gone mad!

I've probably said this (because tbh this thread is basiaclly ia toward people who block escalators) but these days I give people ONE chance to move before barrelling through them. I'm in a hurry, if you're not and you insist on blocking escalators, suck it.

(occasionally I get a "WELL EXCUUUUUUUUUUSE ME" from the most vile type of entitled rabble who add literally nothing to my existence so care factor)

people are generally very good about this in london. the fact they weren't yesterday was what made it obvious that they were occasional users, in doing their christmas shopping.

A new ia is not being able to get off a tram/train because everyone is so polite that they're all standing in the aisles RIGHT NEXT TO LIKE TWELVE EMPTY SEATS

This isn't really innocuous, mostly anyway, but its causing me no end of frustration. I signed up for my 401k two months ago and am still waiting to be able to log into the account. When I first signed up I had to fill out some information and they'd snail mail my access code. Fine. Annoying, but whatever. Get the code in the mail, oops. Turns out they had my email address wrong, so it locked me out. Called them, got the email address fixed and, of course, new code snail mailed out. Got new code, oops, name spelled wrong. Repeat process. Finally got the latest code yesterday and went to login tonight, still not working for some reason. Have to wait for yet another fucking access code to be snail mailed to me. This is ridiculous. Why are we still snail mailing this shit in 2011?

My retirement plan does that too. Boggles my mind.

My tax return was like that - they'd set it up but rather than leave the postal code blank, so I could put in my correct country, they'd filled it with spaces so it repeatedly told me 'invalid postal code'. DICKS

ia: seeing a facebook pic of a large group of my fellow alums/"friends" from my grad program partying down at a bar. gee, thanks for using any of the many points of contact you have for me to get in touch. also, thanks for never bothering to show up for any of the stuff i've sent you fb invites to. glad you're not above networking with me on linkedin!

http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/110321/kaling_211.jpg

i was always nice and cheerful to everybody. i worked hard on all those group projects and was never a dick about my opinions. but i think they see me as a weird snob because i'm better-read/more aware of history than they are and i have esoteric tastes.

Not sure if this is that innocuous really but a lady at the (outdoors) tram platform this morning, in fairly strong wind, decided to spritz her face with some kind of perfume/face freshening scent/sunscreen (lord only knows). I happened to be walking up behind her. The wind blew a large cloud of mist droplets directly into my face and eyes. NFI what was in it but now I stink of flowers, my glasses have sticky droplets I cant get off, and my eyes are watering like MAD. Thank you, stupid bitch.

i'm allergic to cheap/strong perfume (it has a lot of irritants that higher-shelf scents don't have) and i feel so sick whenever i'm in the vicinity of it.

Yeah I can be too, especially rose oil/perfume, the smell of which makes me nauseous as all hell. Whatever this was it got in my eyes and they are still very irritated.

I cannot type the word "appliaction", it is driving me spare

I love rose perfume. I also love the fact that Firefox now has spellcheck built in.

I can never type commerical
but then I see there are nearly 17 million results on google for "commerical" so I don't feel so bad

The best one is mistyping "account" which used to happen a lot on my old job's tracking system. I'd get bored and put search terms in and the amount of "accocunt" I found in there was a goldmine.

A truly innocuous thing that makes me IA: when I am getting on or off the train with a group of people and there are people in front of me and behind me, and a dude (it's always a dude) in front of me decides to be a Nice Guy and let everybody on or off in front of him without recognizing that there are like five people behind him who are also trying to board or alight the train and getting exponentially more IA with every person he waves in front of him.

Alight is such an unnatural word.

It makes me IAlite.

Alight is great! I think one of the hated Bart signs says something like 'when boarding or off-boarding' which made me irrationally long for the word 'alight'

my favorite CTA phrase is "immediate follower." i'm going to write a song called "immediate follower" someday.

they always say "i DO have an immediate follower"

ia: when there's a meeting where the host conveys lots of useful information and people DON'T take notes. and later on, inevitably, those people ask the same questions that were already answered at said meeting.

i say this b/c i was in a meeting today and i was the only one taking notes.

(i think we're in this strange cultural moment where people learn that you absorb more information by just listening and not taking notes, but in my experience that's not true; ppl these days are way too ADHD to do any pure listening.)

i'm an unreconstructed note-taker; i don't trust my memory at all!

me too!

I also hate when you provide notes for someone on processes that you are teaching them, and they barely look at them when you are teaching, and never refer to them again even though they may ask you lots of questions about everything in the notes. UGH.

^^ Even worse when they just decide to make up their own process for it, which is inevitably completely inaccurate and causes a huge mess that you then have to sort out. Uuggghhh.

IA of the day: I only work one day a week in the office, which is always Thursday. Yet every Thursday when I arrive, I find my desk has been colonised by the guy who sits next to me. His stuff is EVERYWHERE. Coat, notebooks, pens, papers, backpack... all strewn across my desk. wtf is it so hard to remember that I kind of need to use that space each Thursday?

Chicago city buses come in many strange configurations, including one with a raised seat directly behind the driver so that anybody sitting on the inside of that seat could reach forward about a foot and flick the driver's left ear.

Okay so I get on a bus last night and it's that configuration and it's pretty crowded so I'm near the front. The outside seat in the weird raised seat directly behind the driver is open so I take it. The old lady on the inside is speaking to someone very loudly in Polish on her phone, but the bus is loud and crowded so it doesn't even register to me. Anyway, the bus driver turns around and tells me, very curtly, to tell the lady that she can't talk right in his ear like that, which made me IA because dude, I'm not going to holler at old Polish ladies on your behalf. You're the one in charge here so do your own dirty work. When I ignored him, he got a young woman standing next to me to speak to her instead.

There's probably some kind of sociological insight to be made there a la the Stanford Prison Experiment about an average citizen's response when a person of authority deputizes a citizen to do his job for him but I'm no sociologist and it's too early for that.

the word 'automagically'

Static electricity.

The five second delay between the person in front leaving the cash machine, and it allowing you to insert your card.

the five-minute delay between the person in front of you using the cash machine, deciding which options s/he wishes to select D00DS THEY DON'T CHANGE IT HAS THE SAME CHOICES AS ALWAYS

srsly is this just a "subjective perception" issue and do i take that long also? or are some ppl REALLY REALLY slow using cash machines

but yes, the five-second delay is also irksome

DON'T STAND BETWEEN ME AND MY MONEY, WORLD AT LARGE

^^ have often wondered this myself (xpost)

haha this is like that moment when you stop being "grrr this person driving in front of me is really dawdling PEDAL TO THE METAL GRANDAD parp parp" and become " grrr this person driving behind me is really hustling me SLOW DOWN CHILD you have yr whole life ahead of you putter putter"

<3 that post