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We are all annoyed by the same things - traffic, commercials,
people who don't use their turn signals. I want to share with
you the things that piss me off, but don't seem to bother
too many other people. Happy reading!
Toll booth slugs piss me off. Why, oh why, can't people have their money out before they get to the toll booth? Tolls are not complex transactions. You hand money to the toll collector and they give you change in return. Then you drive through. Some people like to add a few additional steps into the transaction process to delay everyone behind them:
- Search for purse.
- Once purse is found, search for money.
- Hand money to the toll collector.
- Ask for a receipt after toll collector returns change.
Then there are the morons who drive down the automated "EZ Tag" toll collection lanes, only to stop once they realize they aren't authorized to do so because they don't have have the required "EZ Tag" device installed. Nothing like plowing down the EZ Tag lane at 60, only to have to slam on the brakes because some schmuck is stopped right in the middle of the lane!
Clueless ATM users piss me off. Without fail, each week I get stuck behind someone who has never mastered the complexities of an ATM machine. Instructions like "Press for English or Espanol" and "Enter your password" seem to be far beyond their comprehension. Have you ever had to fight back the urge to lean forward and push the buttons for them?
Y2K hysteria pisses me off. No, I'm not a programmer, but I am a student of fads and hysterias. This one has all the markings of a doozy. Before spending your hard-earned dollars on survival gear, do some research. A great place to start is the Year 2000 Computer Bug Hoax. Also check out Debugging the Y2K Story. Here's a great quote by Paul Kedrosky in Rewired: "Y2K advocates (are) like newly hatched mosquitoes: They only have a short amount of time to suck blood before they die." (April 2000 note: See? I told you so.)
Automated telco systems piss me off. With the explosion in the number of new telephone area codes, how many times have you accidentally dialed a number to hear, "We're sorry. It is not necessary to dial a 1 or a 0 when calling this number. Will you please hang up and try your number again." Since the phone company computers are smart enough to tell you this, why the hell can't they simply route your call through? Millions of minutes are wasted each year - minutes that we could have spent doing other, more productive things.
The Miss American Pageant pisses me off. We all know that there are just two reasons for the Miss America Pageant. One reason is for lecherous men to ogle young women in bikinis. The other reason is for women to get all catty as they watch the pageant ("Look at her boobs! She had a boob job.") Regardless, there are few things as stupid as watching a woman with Vaseline on her teeth and wearing 10 pounds of makeup twirling a baton and singing the Star Spangled Banner.
Lawyers who write software license agreements piss me off. By writing in the most verbose, pompous style possible, they ensure that no one (other than their fellow lawyers) can easily translate their literary masterpieces. We've all seen them - 1,500-word screeds in tiny 5-point type, with dense ALL CAPS PARAGRAPHS thrown in seemingly at random. "Fitness for a particular purpose" and "merchantibility" my ass. Why is a 1,500-word wad of legalese any more enforceable in a court of law than something like this?
"We've spent a lot of time and money building this software. Please don't copy it and give it to other people, or we will sue you. And because all computers are slightly different, we can't guarantee the software will work. But we will give you a refund, no questions asked, if you return it within 30 days."
To me, that's a lot less ambiguous than the usual license agreement. (Update! Back in March a developer asked if he could use my license agreement for the software he was writing! Made my day. If you'd like to help bring plain English to software license agreements, feel free to nab the text.)
Theme restaurant chains piss me off. Especially restaurants that make their wait staff kneel at the table when addressing you, then refer to their patrons as "guys." As in (chirping happily), "Hi guys! Would you like to try our fabulous Santa Fe Grilled Chicken tonight?" You can almost hear the ® in their voices as they're forced to mouth the script. But why do they kneel? My theory is management trains them to appear supplicant. This practice is most common in chain restaurants such as TGI Friday's®, Chili's® and Bennigans®. You know what I say to the idiot corporate managers of these restaurant chains? Bring me the damn menu, give me a decent meal, and allow your waitstaff to act like normal people instead of fools.
Speaking of which, waitstaff who ask, "Do you need any change?" piss me off. You moron, did you hear me say "keep the change?" Did ya? Do you think I'm really leaving a $50 bill to cover a $28 dollar tab because the rest is your tip? Just for that, your tip is reduced. (Courtesy William Fason).
Then there are waitstaff who like to play "The Waiting Game", hoping that by taking their sweet time to return your change you'll blow it off and simply walk out. When they want to play The Change Game, I play The Tip Game, and their prize for winning is $0.
Pretentious listings of business phone numbers piss me off. There's an annoying new fad among many American businesses to promote their phone numbers with a "+1", as in "Ring us at +1, 333-222-1111." It's totally unnecessary. It's pointless. In fact, it's downright stupid. The + symbol is an remnant from old European phone exchanges, so perhaps these business geniuses think it makes their businesses look classy. Guess what? It doesn't.
Any Microsoft operating
system pisses me off. I've used
a Mac since 1985, but broke down and bought a PC a few years
ago because Mac's were priced way too high. Windows sucks! I
didn't buy my computer to learn how to install and uninstall
drivers. Why the hell should Microsoft's customers have to worry
about "registering DLL'S"? I hate the fact that you
often can't uninstall a program because there's a chance you'll
screw up something else. I bought a computer so I could do cool
stuff with it, not spend endless hours learning about how my
computer works - as did 95% of us. It's amazing that Microsoft
developers have never learned this fact.
People who don't
pronounce the word "nuclear" correctly piss me off.
It's not pronounced
"nuke-yew-ler". The word only has seven letters. It's
not a difficult word to pronounce.
Forced laughter
on those morning FM radio "Zoo" shows
pisses me off. Every city in the
U.S. with a population of over 100,000 has the usual wacky morning
drive radio guys (with a token female who does traffic, weather
and news). The retarded "Zoo" format is not unique,
nor are the stupid catchphrases that they use as marketing gimmicks.
Here in Houston, some fat dingbat named "Sam
Malone" (Gee, get it? Ain't that a clever radio name?)
uses "See ya!" as his trademark. It seems that a few
choice words always bring squeals of phony laughter to these
radio fools. And say the word "lesbian" to the other
local "shock jocks" Stevens & Pruitt, and these
morons go nuts! (Note: S&P were nuked in 2001 and replaced
with something even worse.)
People who inject their petty political opinions into the course of everyday conversation piss me off. Some folks are really tightly-wound about politics. They know what's right and by God they are going to share it with you!
EXAMPLE 1
You: "There was some decent pop music during the 1980s.
The B-52s, for instance."
Your tightly-wound friend: "Yes, somehow Fred Snyder
survived the greedy Reagan years."
EXAMPLE 2
You: The early 90's had some really great bands. But now everything
sounds like Hanson because the record companies want things that
way. I hate the 90's music scene!
Your tightly-wound friend: "What do you expect when Bill
Clinton is busy trying to defraud the FDIC with shady Whitewater
business deals?"
Escalator statues piss me off. There are two kinds of people in the world: People who walk up the escalator while it's moving, and people who get on the escalator and just stand there right in the middle and block everyone behind them. If you are one of those annoying "standees," how about stepping to the right and let us "walkees" pass?
Wanna mail me? Go for it. Or click here if you wanna go back to WATCHINGYOU.COM.
Vs. 1.4. Last updated 8/31/02.