The Evil Legacy of the Tylenol poisoner. Some older readers may recall that there was a time when one bought a bottle of aspirin, or a jar of mustard, went home, opened it and accessed the contents. 25 years or so ago, some idiot put cyanide in some bottles of Tylenol, and since then, every damn product you buy requires you to use a blowtorch and chainsaw to get through 99 levels of seals, bubble plastic, and assorted detritus, thus giving fuel to the theory that the Tylenol poisoner was in fact a covert operative paid by the waste management industry.
Law enforcement agencies who refuse to buy hats proportioned to smaller officers. Most recent and egregious example, the Public Information Officer at today’s regularly scheduled terralert, a petite lady, dwarfed by a hat the size of the Astrodome.
TV commercials that pump up the volume. If I have the TV on with the volume low, it is for a reason, and bursting my eardrums with exhortations to buy your product, complete with music bought from some desperate pop star of ages past, does not make me sit up and take notice and resolve to go buy whatever you are selling. On the contrary, it causes me to jot down the name of your competitor.
Self serve shoe stores that put only one shoe in the box. If I have to go chasing down and waiting for one of 3 hapless souls on duty in an establishment large enough to place two football fields just to be able to try on both shoes, it is hardly self serve any more, now is it?
Phone trees. Possibly the greatest evil after the Tylenol poisoner in terms of total time wasted. Please listen carefully as our menu items have changed. No, you listen carefully as my tolerance for mechanical voices requiring me to listen to a recitation of 17 different opportunities to listen to more mechanical voices reciting more of the same has not changed. It is holding steady at zero. If I am calling, it is because I want to speak to a human being, not because I want to hear about how I can not speak to a human being by going to your website, where I will be required to wait for a flash presentation to load, so that I can marvel at what a cutting edge company you are, and then be redirected to a page so lousy with web bugs and tracking scripts and garbage and useless images that from the load time appear to be raw scans with size tags, and you expect me to type personal data into this nest of spyvipers. Or I can stay on the line and punch zero, which will take me to another recording about being recorded for quality control, after a hold time of approximately 48 minutes because all your agents are currently assisting other customers during this period of unusually high call volume, which occurs usually during the hours of 12 midnight to 11:59 PM from Monday morning until Sunday night, during which I will be treated to either a pumped up volume commercial about how I should purchase even more goods and services, and thus engender even more phone calls like this, or if I am lucky, 1001 strings playing Inna Gadda da Vida.
Child-proof medicine bottles and cigarette lighters. Please be assured that any children who might have access to either of these items in my possession are not stupid enough to eat pills or start fires. This is because their parents have done the unthinkable and taught them at a very early age that pills are bitter and fire is hot. And no, I do not care to spend another half hour of my life filling out 3 different forms and an affadavit in order to be told by a pharmacy intern named Bree that easy open caps are back order, and if I will just put down a couple more phone numbers they can let me know when they get some in, unless I really need the prescription today. Now there’s a solution. I will just take my aching post dental catastrophe mandible home and let the “discomfort” wash over me. I should have my Vicodin just in time for my post procedure checkup. No, thanks, give me the damn child proof cap, and sometime late this evening after I finally get it open (unless I am lucky enough to find a small child to do it for me in 3 seconds) I will dump the pills in a baggie and put them next to the ashtray and my child proof lighter, and try to persuade the small child to sit there with me all night and light my cigarettes.
You may have some pet peeves of your own, in which case, please post them here, but don’t think for a minute that you are more peeved than I am.
Law enforcement agencies who refuse to buy hats proportioned to smaller officers. Most recent and egregious example, the Public Information Officer at today’s regularly scheduled terralert, a petite lady, dwarfed by a hat the size of the Astrodome.
I couldn’t even listen to the gibberish that was coming out of her mouth, all I could think was “is the bomb in her hat? What the hell IS that?”
shrink wrap.
The assholes who run their SUVs’ engines in the parking lot, simply so they can cool the cab from 75 down to 68 degrees while they’re eating their Big Macs and listening to Limbaugh.
I’ll vote with the phone trees…. and this sentence “or if I am lucky, 1001 strings playing Inna Gadda da Vida” just about made me spit my tea on the monitor….aaaaaccccckk!
“Paper or Plastic” – just put it in the paper bag made from recycled paper and keep those obnoxious little bags under the counter.
CD packaging after you have sealed the thing in a cellophane with a little tape holding it in place inside a plastic holder – why the hell do they need to put more tape stuff on the edge of the CD???
The phrase “Get over it” from youngsters that haven’t seen or done squat yet.
SUV’s in compact parking spaces…..enough said
Okay….this could be a diary by itself if I keep going…. ;^D
DTF…wonderful flourish at the end.
No, thanks, give me the damn child proof cap, and sometime late this evening after I finally get it open (unless I am lucky enough to find a small child to do it for me in 3 seconds) I will dump the pills in a baggie and put them next to the ashtray and my child proof lighter, and try to persuade the small child to sit there with me all night and light my cigarettes.
Just wanted to see it up in lights one more time.
framing.
The phrases and the people who use these phrases:
“I’m not into politics”
“Get over it”
“I don’t have time to think about politics”
“I support the President”
“Fucking Liberal Nazi”
“Just nook em all”
I’m pissed off with the speaker system. During dialogue you can’t hear the actors, mostly because nowadays, they all mutter and whisper their damn lines… and then you jack up the sound and while you’re leaning foward to hear WTF is going on …a battle starts or the film composer decides to blast in a symphonic score and you end up being blasted up and over your couch.
Customer Service people who obviously have a pinecone shoved up their ass and want to share it with you. I’ve worked all my life in Customer Service. I’m VERY nice to those people… but if they are rude or got a tude… oooooooooooohhhh look out.
And here’s one more: People… if you have snarly feet. I’m talking feet fugly… please for the love of all that is holy, don’t wear open-toed shoes. If you’ve got frito-toenails… I don’t want to see them while I’m out grocery shopping or gawd forbid if I’m eating at a diner. There’s this new invention called… Socks.
just about did me in….
It’s time to turn off the Boo Trib and drink my tea in peace…30 more minutes of “working” on a Friday afternoon.
DVDs that are too dark to see unless you have a wall sized flat screen TV. Netflix or somebody should make a warning for this. I am sick of getting all settled in to watch a movie only to see nothing, or maybe a few bright dots, or the occasional shadowy suggestion of an unidentifiable image.
If I wanted an audio book, I would have gotten one. And in the case of movies that are dark AND short on dialogue, if I wanted to sit and stare at a dark silent screen, I would have called my local mental health professional.
ACK! That’s a whole nuther diary. I used to work at a rental store…
“Got any good movies?”
no, all we have is crappy movies
“Is this movie any good?”
no, I and other thought it was crap
“I think I’ll get it”
3 days later and the damn movie is LATE
“Hey, this movie sucked! I want my money back”
Look, I warned you and since I didn’t write the fucking movie nor make any damn profit off it – you aren’t getting anything back from me or this store and besides it’s 2 days late. Late fee, moron.
Customer holds up an unrated version of the raunchiest, bloodiest smutfest movie in the western hemisphere: “Hey, is this good for little kids?”
“Hey, this fucking movie was fucking offensive.”
Like your language, asshole?
“Hey this movie is 3 days late because I left it out on my sundrenched deck and now it’s all melted… do I still get charged a late fee?”
Or…. if the movie is late or broken – they always put it thru the drop box (even if the store is open) or they have a young child bring the movie in.
Speaking of annoying DVDs…I hate that they now make you sit through a bunch of irrelevant previews. No longer can you just flip on your favorite movie…or no, now you have to first sit through 10 minutes of previews of movies you have no intention of ever seeing.
eat Fritos again.
Well, my job here is done then huh? 🙂
Every afternoon around 5pm, someone in our apt. complex is driven home by a friend and while they are probably exchanging the last puffs in their crack-pipe, I am exposed to the base volume of a hip-hop beat that deafens my hearing and reverborates in my sternum. It’s so g-d loud I feel it in my bones and it makes my teeth ache. Ba-boom. Ba-Boom. Ba-Boom-Boom-Boom. Are they deaf already? How can they stand to be inside the car with it? I can barely stand to be a hundred feet away!
Yesterday, in true crotchety old-lady fashion, I went out with a notepad and pencil in hand and made a great show of writing down this cretin’s license plate number. My eyes were all squinty and my lips were pursed disapprovingly and I probably looked like someone who. does. not. like. “young people’s music.” BUT, it didn’t happen this evening so maybe my tsk-tsk Wicked Witch of the West ploy worked.
This happens at red lights, too. Only then it can be Country & Western or even Gospel inflected upon surrounding cars. I have this really great, totally outrageous CD called “MasterBlasters” that I pop in my player and turn up the volume in response. It’s bagpipes, baby, bagpipes, flute and drum corp marching to a hard rock beat. And I laugh like a maniac at the expressions on their faces when my invasive noise trumps their invasive noise. I ain’t my mother’s kind of old lady; I’m a sixties-hardened, acid-etched, in-your-face old lady!
won’t you be my neighbor?
lamented that he thought he could win a stereo war with an apartment neighbor.
Didn’t work. He couldn’t afford a competitive stereo, and loud as his bagpipes were, he could only keep them going half an hour or so.
On the other hand, when he needed to break his lease, he held an eviction party. Starring his whole bagpipe band!
My deliveryperson always seems to throw my NYT in a muddy spot. Perhaps this is his comment about recent events involving the newspaper. Hmm.
Young attractive dumb blonds who drive large SUV’s way too fast on the freeway, while talking on cellphone, while weaving in and out of traffic, losing control and doing a 180 turn and causing everyone behind them to lose their lunch! ( this happened in front of me yesterday!)
GMC Yukons with “W” stickers and Yellow Ribbons!
Folks who believe Rush Limbaugh!
Anny correspondence from Blue Cross-Blue Shield!
Having to wait yet another week for Fitzmas! (if it is to come this year at all)
I haven’t laughed so hard since the last of the “Dear Batshit Loopy Leader of the Free World” letters AND, my husband, who has been in a MOST foul mood, actually cheered up and even laughed a little when I read this too him out loud.
I haven’t ever seen this side of you in diary form!! Exactly what I needed just now!!
And I think I’ll not even get started on my peeves…I’m in too good a mood and still chuckling!!
TV newsheads who look like fashion models. It is clear to anyone who watches the news networks that whatever journalistic talent, analytical ability, specialized knowledge or brains of any kind is secondary to their being indistinguishable from people advertising sportswear in glossy magazine ads.
If I want to watch the news, I do not care whether the head has templated teeth, the latest Dr. Fieldbrush haircut with gel-defined ends, carefully focus-group approved designer clothing and poreless skin stretched over 40 thousand dollars worth of plastic surgery.
If all the head is going to do is read a teleprompter and ask vapid questions of people who may possibly have some actual knowledge of the subject at hand, putting more lip gloss on it is not going to decrease my awareness of that fact. If the head has anything remotely intelligent to say, I don’t care if the head is covered with warts, has any hair at all, or even if it is composed of organic matter.
But the head rarely does say anything intelligent, because that is not its job. It is not there to inform me, it is there to infotain me, and I am uninfotainable.
TV news in the US was not always like this. In the old days, TV news anchors looked like regular people who happened to be journalists. Nobody at CBS ever felt the need to define Walter Cronkite’s ends with gel. In fact, for much of his career, most of his ends had already assumed their spirit form, and I don’t recall that making him any less credible.
He did a fine job of informing the public and projecting calm without having to take massive doses of tranquilizers like Aaron Brown. At least I hope that is why Aaron talks like that. Maybe he has a gel allergy. Or maybe this is not something I should complain about. I am not sure I want to think what Aaron might be like without his medication.
Fun Diary.
Re TV “Journalists”
You have to understand most of them have been under the hot Kleig lights for so long their brains have boiled out of their nose. They are kept at a studio, in a closet somewhere, between shows. This is done out of humanity. If they are allowed to walk around they have a tendency to get run over by a bus, stand at street corners saying, in well modulated tones, “Walk, Don’t Walk, Walk, Don’t Walk” for hours, and other such things.
Dorothy Fuldheim
A face that could turn a wake up an alley, as my Irish friends say, but sharp as a tack. Back when Cleveland was one of the top few media markets in the country.
Thanks for reminding me about Dorothy. Just seeing her picture brought back so many memories of growing up in Cleveland.
My freakin’ dish-washing machine sucks. I always have to hand wash several dishes, glasses, etc. that have just been “cleaned.”
That car in the next lane at the stop light that has the bass cranked up til it rattles my windows. Can’t hear the engine, can’t hear the music even. Just the bass line so loud it makes my fillings hurt.
The misuse of apostrophes (yes, I’m anal retentive)
LOUD people (that means you ^&%^$, my extra loud roommate from hell)
People who lack patience in lines or traffic (you’ll get there when you get there – bitching about it will not get you there any faster)
Liars and hypocrites (we all know who they are)
The inability to wear black very often (thanks cats)
Lousy garage sale signs (I’m on patrol – watch out)
Drivers who have no clue what to do when there is a merge involved (it’s not that difficult – really)
Bad hair days (those just suck)
Snow/cold/winter (hibernation, anyone?)
And I’m with you on the mega loud commercials and child-proof stuff. It’s not like my cats are going to burn the place down by playing with my Bic. Okay – maybe they answer the phone, but that involves a different skill set.
I’m with others on with the tv going up several notches when commercials come on…and speaking of commercials does anyone else think those Burger King commercials with that ‘King’ are just a bit to creepy for words? Oh and add to that playing the same commercial twice in one break.
And I absolutely despise having to sit through some ads for crappy tv shows when you go to the movie theater.
People who think because my voice is very low and soft that that somehow equates to being meek and mild and not being able to stand up for myself..or even that I’m stupid.
People who wear flip/flops or any shoe with out a back and don’t pick up their feet and make slapping sounds or whatever you call it when they walk.
Having some stranger tell you to ‘smile’.
The fact that J-Lo at a the HUGE size 6 is considered full figured by Hollywood standards.
That Jeff Bridges has never won on Oscar and that I don’t I even bear a passing resemblance to Angelina Jolie.
Yes, but I still want to draft him for my fantasy football team. Every time I see that guy, he’s making a big play or scoring a touchdown!
Junk Mail
Almost any vehicle with a “support our troops” magnet (But especially the SUVs that have them)
People that tell you never to call them before 10:00 in the morning or after 10:00 at night (unless it is an emergency), because they will be the first ones too call you before and after those hours for no good reason at all.
they make me laugh currently are:
how good it is that Wilma is staying over Cancun/Mexico because it dissipates the storm and lessens the possible impact on Florida.
Don’t get me wrong, I love our Floridians. But how are they less important and valuable than the Mexicans who are getting the crap beat out of them because Wilma IS staying over Cancun/Mexico? :O
Where is the compassion?????
Just part of the American hubris though, right?
I mean, we don’t even have any idea how many Iraqis have died in our occupation of Iraq.
Non-American lives are apparently not worth as much as American lives. Even though we’re all just people, divided by imaginary boundaries created by other people.
I was in Cancun in March. I hope it is still there after this weekend, I’d like to go back.
I certainly hope you will be able to return, soon, but the damage done is/will be huge.
I captured this estimate from this damage estimate webpage. And from my limited personal experience with this estimation system, it is conservative in its estimates… :_(
that I’ve spent hours and hours visiting the links you dropped in my Hurricane Wilma diary. Many thanks 🙂
I know that I will be able to go back and visit the area at some point. But I worry for the people who are there now. The tourism and climate will return quickly, because they are faceless. But individual people are not so immortal.
I’m glad you found the links I posted fun and informative. They were just the tip of the iceberg…. I’m a hopeless weather hound/geek. I have always been interested in the physical sciences. I have a degree in geology with emphasis in planetary atmospheres and oceans, and I worked my way thru college working as a research assistant for a group of astronomers and astrophysicists. I write dull business-oriented computer programs for a living, but still pursue my real interests in my spare time.
Another pet-peeve: Braves lose in the first round-again! Maybe the Astros will win it all and semi-vindicate our loss to them. Interesting that Leo Mazzone has left to go work with his best friend Sam Perlozzo at the Orioles. Perlozzo managed the AA Jackson Mets in the early 80’s, and won a couple Texas League Championships here, so I know he’s a good guy. Good for Leo. Bad for the Braves.
I went to the announcement festivities for the relocation of the Braves AA team to Mississippi last year, and asked Bobby Cox a question about how Leo impacted the organization, and got a non-answer, so I guess I knew something was up, even then…
that you should put together a Wilma diary this weekend, if you have the time. It isn’t getting any less relevant, that’s for sure.
As for the Braves…yeesh. I don’t want to hijack Ductape’s diary but man oh man. That loss hurt. I really had a better feeling about this year than I have in a while, and it ended up in the same disappointment as always. I console myself by being friends with a bunch of Tigers fans 😉
The Braves will have a tougher time without Mazzone. If ever there was a pitching coach deserving of HoF consideration, it has to be him.
But I still have confidence in Schuerholz / Cox. They’ll keep everything running, especially with all the kids who came up this year (and the ones waiting in the wings).
So hopefully that portends well for the future.
I may have time for a diary on Wilma this weekend, it certainly is a national event if it hits FL as a hurricane. It’s already a crisis of international scale for those poor souls in Mexico who are hunkered down trying to live through it. I don’t wanna hi-jack your idea, though, so if you wanna do it go ahead…I’ll be there to contribute.
One more link for ya! A cool link to a Cancun animated radar loop.
Yikes, that link makes me think that Cancun is getting hit way harder than Cozumel (at least with rain), which is contrary to most of the predictions I was reading earlier.
As for the Wilma diary, either way works for me. I’ll be there to contribute if you decide to throw something together as well 😉
I am not an Irascible Old Man. I am of middle age and slowing maturing, like a fine wine, into vinegar.
1. People who walk into a bookstore containing 100,000 different titles. Come up to the Help Desk and proclaim with great profundity, “I’m looking for a book.”
Gawd. Ya THINK? “Sorry. This is a bookstore. We only sell used cars.”
Calling any company to complain or get help with a problem waiting on hold for 30 minutes and getting India and all they can say is I sorry maaaaaam. How can I be of most excellent service? You can connect me with someone that speaks clear English jacko.
You know, I was reading along, having a quiet chuckle at the things people were writing, and then I came to this. And it was a bit like getting kicked unexpectedly. I’m going to try and explain why what you wrote feels like that to me.
I, too, speak English with an accent that many Americans do not find ‘clear.’ Though because of my white skin, I was usually told my accent was ‘cute’ or ‘quaint.’ My dearest friends there — both of whom came from Bombay and did not have the white skin that would have made their accents ‘cute’ or ‘quaint’ — were told on a regular basis by their students that ‘you don’t speak English clearly enough.’
What all three of us have in common with the people working in call centres in India is that, like most of them, English is our first language.
The British colonised the countries that we came from. Because of that, we have a claim on the English language that is as strong as that of anybody in the world, right up to and including Queenie herself. We may not speak English with the same accent as you. We may sometimes use different figures of speech from you. We may even — and with a great sense of daring and bravado because empires die hard — introduce words from other languages predating colonisation, that are used in the places that we come from. And these words may be unfamiliar to you.
But we do, by God, speak English clearly.
Not ‘cutely.’ Not ‘quaintly.’ Not ‘thickly.’ Nor ‘heavily.’ But very, very, clearly.
It’s just that for you to understand our clear, accented English, you would have to pay attention and listen carefully for a bit. That’s not such a very big thing to ask. After all, it’s only what we have had to do in order to understand your clear accented English.
One of my personal favorites: Americans who, on encountering someone who speaks English with a different accent, immediately raise their voices 20 decibels as if they were talking to dear old deaf Aunt Mina.
I can’t be sure, but I don’t think it is a conscious action. But maybe it is. Maybe it is a folkway or something, maybe they believe that if they shout, it will change the person’s accent. Or, in the case of people who are learning English, that the process will be speeded along by additional volume, that the spirits of English who live in the forests will sprinkle dust on the poor startled gentleman from Tuva and magically teleport him from the hesitant land of his after-work useful phrase exercises to world class oratory.
And if these folks happen to run into somebody who does NOT speak English, the ritual requires that they positively SCREAM, in order to summon the spirits to this alarming emergency.
I am not aware of a single case of instant or improved English fluency, or even accent alteration, having occurred as a result of this noble sacrifice of American vocal chord tissue, though, so maybe the spirits are sleeping.
Or maybe they are, in their quiet way, sending a message.
Another, more universal linguistic-related annoyance are people who do not know, or maybe they have never considered, that at a certain point, complimenting someone on their competency in a second language ceases to be a pleasant and encouraging politeness and becomes a (let’s hope) unintended insult.
As I heard a woman say once, who had heard it one too many times, on being smilingly complimented on her English proficiency, “Good God let’s hope so. I’ve lived here for thirty years, raised four children and worked as an English teacher in your son’s high school until I retired last year.”
I am so sorry if I offended you or anyone that speaks English as their second language. That was not my intent. Maybe I should have included my real frustration with the companies that outsource their jobs. Again, so sorry, I did not mean to offend anyone.
Credit card offers that guarantee I will be approved, yadda yadda. I get one or two a day. I need to start sending them back with a couple sheets of scrap paper inside, make ’em pay the postage. It probably won’t help, but it will make me feel better to know I’m wasting their money.
People who wait until the last possible fucking minute to merge into a slowly-moving, bumper-to-bumper line of cars going onto or off a freeway. They’re just too important to wait in traffic like the rest of us. Inevitably, they drive really expensive cars.
Clothing designers that think we are all the same shape and proportion… you know, like Hollywood actresses. Or who think any woman who wears plus-sizes wants a plunging neckline that shows cleavage in every damned thing she wears.
I’ll agree on the child-proof caps (argh) and the additional sticky labels under the plastic wrap on CDs that are a pain to get off.
The state highway commission that only does major road repair in my neighborhood starting at 11pm and going until 4am. With jackhammers. On a weeknight.
Finally something I may be able to help with!
OK, so here is what you do.
After getting the plastic wrap off of the CD, you have to actually half-take apart the case to get those other stickers off cleanly.
Start by grabbing the bottom of the CD case, and removing it like so:
and then continue to fold the case over the label. You can then just pull the two case parts away from each other to remove the annoying label!
(sorry, I don’t have any new CDs to demonstrate this with…hopefully my meager description will be adequate)
The roughly 13 thousand index-card sized advertisements that are jammed into every other page of a magazine. It does not make me stop and notice the ad for Cialis or $1.00 off Depends Undergarments or your crappy new scent of Glade Plug-ins. It just pisses me off. I methodically rip every one of them out prior to attempting to read the mag.
Cheap newspaper ink that comes off on my fingers and causes sneezing fits and itchy eyes.
Teeny tiny print on medicine labels…okay, I realize I’m over 40 but when my 15 year old has to hold it in direct sunlight to read it to me, it’s too fucking small!
People who have no concept of personal space. And people who leave their shopping cart in the middle of the aisle and stand there comparing labels while you’re clearing your throat, then politely saying excuse me, then just basically ramming their cart with yours.
Parents who let their preteen daughters dress like porn stars.
Babies with pierced ears. Was it really that 2 week old’s decision to staple-gun her tiny ears? Wasn’t coming headfirst down that tiny birth canal traumatic enough?
Having to click “START ” to turn OFF a computer.
Having to press “END” to turn ON a cellphone.
(That is SO wrong.)
Store clerks so busy socialising they scan the same item three times.
Asshats in big pickups and SUV’s trying to crawl up my exhaust pipe.
People who call old people “cute.” (Come over here, sweetie. I’ll SHOW you how “cute” I am!)
Delivery people that don’t.
“Hey, you live on a dirt road.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I don’t know about this, maybe you could take these home yourself?”
“Sure. I’ll just load up my 94 Deathscort with 80 fifty pound bags of wood pellets and trundle off.”
“Well, you could do it a little at time, couple bags a day.”
“And you’ll reimburse me for gas?”
“Well, we’ll try to get them out to you.”
“I’m under fifteen miles away!”
“Can you help us unload them?”
(This from two college students a foot and half taller and thirty years younger then me.)
“Can I get half my delivery fee back?”
and on it goes….
You covered most of mine darn it. I did have one pet peeve…..I don’t like plastic but see it as a necessary evil in many cases. For food storage though in my refrigerator I still have a whole assortment of hand thrown bowls from my early pottery days and a piece of reusable recyclable foil. My husband didn’t like that, because bowls have to be washed and those cute little plastic cheap bowls can just be thrown away. He called me a dinosaur and/or eccentric……..perhaps, I don’t know. Then they announced that all of these plastics have been putting a lot of estrogens into people’s bodies and they believe that men are ending up with smaller testicles and different children seem to be born with male genitalia anomalies from this, and you know I had to say something. When he goes shopping now there aren’t anymore plastic bowls in the bag and he uses the foil cutter on the box like a pro now.
Thanks for the opportunity, DF. . .
Cologne. Stinkin’, space invading, cologne. From the sociopath boss who bathed in Polo every day until it had seeped into every crevice of the office. From the friend who showered herself in so much scent that my car wreaked for weeks. To the employee with the flowery, fruity perfume that stuck to every molecule in the air. To the stranger on the elevator . . .
Finger licking to turn pages. Keep your damn finger licking confined to your chicken eating, and keep your personal DNA (spit) off of the documents we all have to share. If you’re having such difficulty turning pages, wear an effing rubber finger. And for Pete’s sake, wash your hands after using the restroom.
Lotto. This one is dedicated to the woman in front of me at the check-out line earlier this week. You know who you are. The woman who purchased 140 Powerball tickets when I was on the fly and merely needed a loaf of bread. It appears you didn’t win the lottery – and imagine all the things you could have purchased with that $140.
People who leave their small children in the car, with the engine running, while they run into the liquor store. Have you ever heard of Amber alerts? Have you seen the terror in the eyes of individuals who have lost a child to abduction? Oh, I see – that bottle of Merlot for your dinner guests is more important. Or that 12-pack for the football game. I understand that it might take you a couple extra minutes to remove the child from the car seat and bring them inside with you. Time is of the essence and you have your priorities. (And – what would the neighbors think of someone who brings a child into a liquor store?) Well, I’d like you to know of a broken-hearted friend who lost her 5 year-old niece to child abduction two years ago. And I want you to know that I have absolutely no tolerance whatsoever toward anyone who places a child in potentially dangerous situations. (But you know that from the discussion we had after I spent 15 minutes keeping an eye on your unattended car with your unattended child.)
Loud, self-important people. This one goes out to all those people who think everyone around them is enthralled with their conversations – whether it be on a cell phone or with an acquaintance. I don’t want to hear your discussion, I’m not impressed by you, and quit ruining my day with your incessant, loud talking.