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

- when people eat bananas on public transportation. The smell of bananas in an enclosed space is so gross.

I hate when my shoes eat my socks! On that topic:

- that those clever little footie socks for wearing with flats only go up to a size 10, which they really don't even go up to a size 10.

ugh i hate bananas in general so yes
xpost

xpost and they fling off your feet like little slingshots when you try to wear them because they're really designed for size 8?
liars

pressing a bus stop bell as we left the busstop before I wanted to get off only to have the driver missing the stop I wanted. I said 'you're missing the stop' he then claiming I only pressed the bell as we passed it. So either the bus driver is a bs artist or the bell isn't working properly.

Reminds me of this experience, which I remember b/c of otto's response:

I think I'll call the CTA. The fucking bus fucked me today. I pulled the cord and it went 'ding!' and said "STOP REQUESTED" but the driver drove on. So I did it again at the next stop. HE DROVE ON STILL.

I tumbled to the front of the bus and said, "Excuse me, why are you not stopping?" He said "The bell doesn't work." Then I blacked out.

― dissonance in the divine accord (unclejessjess), Tuesday, May 9, 2006 2:51 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it would've been better if he said "because you're not on the bus".

― otto midnight (otto midnight), Tuesday, May 9, 2006 2:53 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark

:D

- when people eat bananas on public transportation. The smell of bananas in an enclosed space is so gross.

― carl agatha, Thursday, 23 August 2012 19:58 (Yesterday) Permalink

The smell of almost any food becomes extremely gross in a subway or on a bus. This is not innocuous, it is noxious!

And it's also fucking savage.

A friend and I got on the train at Midway Airport followed by a guy eating a bowl of spaghetti. Besides being wrong and and a weird thing to eat on the train, it's baffling! Where did he get a bowl - not a to-go container - of spaghetti at Midway, which is a terminus?

Had a woman leap onto a bus with several slices of vegemite on toast a couple of weeks ago--that's smelly and dangerous stuff to be waving around as you stumble down the aisle of a moving bus

Last night i was at a grocery store, i had just bought some food and was now out front putting some of it into my backpack for the walk home. There was a bum just sitting on a bench like 50 feet away and when it was clear that i would be in that spot for more than 10 seconds he started shouting "Hey! Hey! Yo dude!" to get my attention. My policy w bums in these cases is to not acknowledge their existence, so i didn't. When he started saying "I know you can hear me", i got so mad i wanted to go over and tell him off.

But i didn't, cos i couldn't hear him, cos he was a piece of shit sitting in one spot yelling at people, so i just walked away.

I don't mind homeless people asking me for money in general, but yeah, it's happened a couple of times when I've been completely LADEN with bags, moving slowly and with no free hands, and I've been purposefully approached because I can't really get away, and I'm just LOOK MATE, even if I *had* any money to give you I wouldn't be able to access it, just FUCK OFF AND LEAVE ME ALONE. In my head, anyway. In reality I'm very apologetic.

When this happens I do tend to liberally abuse the caps lock function in my mind.

(10 hours late post)
Bus drivers who tell people not to get on the bus with their rancid garlic-stinking kebabs are my heroes. But those people always seem to manage to get on the bus anyway, dammit.

When I lived further from town the one late bus home would always have someone who turned up at the last minute with a kebab and then go "c'mon mate, it's the last bus for 10 hours, I just bought this" etc etc every week until they were let on.

Man eating the most delicious-smelling chipshop chips on the bus on my way home when I'm starving hungry *quietly drools behind his book*

Lady at the store refusing to sell me cigarettes cos my license is expired. Give me a effing break!

Once got turned down like that because the cashier thought the three in my birthyear was a 9.

that's such baloney! don't get me started on ID and cigarettes, god they used to drive me up the wall with that shit when I immigrated

My ID is funny in that the geniuses thought putting a second black and white version of my photo in the background behind my birthdate on the license was a good idea. The thing is, my shoulder directly lines up with the year part making a 1 look like a 4

I remember showing my passport and the cashier saying 'oh sorry I can't accept that it has to have your height and weight on it' wtf

do states still put weight on licenses? they cut that from ours.

O the times when someone six years younger than me would be too young to buy smokes.

No kidding, no matter which way my license is interpreted, I'm legal to do whatever.

IL has it on theirs. Mine is 25 pounds off.

It's not on MA. Just height.

Yeah CA has it on theirs, mine's at least 20 pounds shy

I would change it but I'm probably going to end up gaining weight back so maybe it will be correct again.

I'm 31, and I don't drive, and I told her, yeah, I don't drive, I know that's against the law. It's one of those moments where someone just chose to be a jerk about it. Maybe it's common for 15-year-olds to go around using expired licenses to buy $20 worth of carrots, grapes, strawberries, other produce, and cigarettes.

I got refused cigarette papers once. What the hell is wrong with your country

- when people eat bananas on public transportation. The smell of bananas in an enclosed space is so gross.

― carl agatha, Thursday, 23 August 2012 19:58 (Yesterday) Permalink

YES. i once almost puked in a class because someone had eaten a banana and thrown it out. i had to move the trash can out of the room.
the banana ice cream thing disgusts me also. i hate the taste of very ripe bananas and very smooth mushy food textures make me gag.

I had no idea that bananas and their smell were so completely loathed!

Same here!

i sometimes eat on the tube when i'm rushed. now i feel bad about myself.

I like bananas and don't mind very ripe bananas and the other week I took 3 overripe bananas and mashed them and baked banana bread and my whole flat smelt of bananas all day and it brought me JOY

but still, when I eat one and throw out the skin, within 20 minutes I'm reminded to seal or put a lid on whatever container it's in, or it starts to take on a whole new level of smell which is not good at all imo

also I get bothered by long-lasting strong food smells which are not from my own food, e.g. I complained upthread about kebabs on buses and probably also about my officemate eating curry at the desk, but I eat kebabs (occasionally) and curry myself and find curry smell pleasing if it's my own dinner or a quick blast of smell as I walk past a takeaway

ia: the 240 bus goes to devonshire, but the recorded announcement always pronounces it "devonshore." like with an o.

When people refer to their toddlers as going to "school" when they mean "daycare".

^^^THIS

or adults when they mean university

Yeah but that's specifically a UK v US thing. Here school means kindergarten - college for most ppl.

We have school, then college, then university. Then we graduate. I quickly decided to never have a conversation about it with American people as it got too confusing :)

But... what if I'm going to the School of English at University?

Or Harvard College at Harvard University?

Yeah, I know - so confusing! I've sort of got a handle on it now though I'm still a bit iffy on what "college" is tbh.

We have school (elementary and high school) and then college. Colleges and Universities are the same here - they're both what you consider university - the difference between the two terms here is usually just down to the size of the specific school. I think.

lol I should have said size of the specific institution rather than "school" to avoid further confusion.

An answer from the internet:

This explanation is more cut and dry: If you hear a Canadian friend say that he or she is off to university in the fall, it’s not a matter of opting for the bigger word. In Canada, universities are degree-granting institutions, while colleges award only career diplomas and certificates. So while American students group colleges, universities, conservatories, and other degree-granting institutions under the name umbrella term “college,” there is an actual difference in the Great White North.

I'm still SO annoyed about the daycare thing.

My alma mater just recently changed its name from "College" to "University." Don't know that it matters much.

Then there's this Frankenstein's monster, designed to confuse everyone:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/college_guide/images/UMUC.jpg

The point is that in the US we use school or college to describe everything up through post graduate education. You say "so and so is a junior in college" regardless of whether they do to (for example) Bard College or Columbia University and if you ran into said student over the summer you'd say "When do you go back to school (or maybe college)? but never "When do you go back to University?"

Whereas school and college mean very specific parts of school to a person from the UK and most definitely do not mean University.

Fuck yeah, it's just confusing as hell.

My understanding was that colleges (in the US) focused on one particular academic field, and that universities were composed of several colleges.

That's mostly true. Some smaller schools (hah, see what I did there) are colleges but might be a little more multi-disciplinary than they once were. I still am amused that computer science gets grouped with mathematics as a major under the "college of liberal arts & sciences" at my alma mater where computer engineering, the other program it's somewhat close to, was in the engineering school.