Pet Peeves

You gotta like pet peeves. They give you something to do and something to feel superior about. Here are some of mine:

1. People who don’t walk on escalators. I totally don’t understand why otherwise able-bodied people stop walking the second they step on an escalator. They look so stupid standing there doing nothing. For the vast majority of us, time is something we want to conserve. In most cases, we do not need to conserve energy. When you walk on the escalator you are saving time. The moving steps makes the staircase shorter, in essence. You get up them quicker. When you stand there like an idiot, it actually takes longer than walking up normal stairs. For the love of God, people, walk up the freaking escalator!

2. People who write checks. This is something women seem to do much more than men. They go buy a $2 cup of coffee and write a check for it. W.T.F. So first they order and then they take out their checkbox, fill in the payee, fill in the amount, write out the amount, sign it, go to the ledger, write in the payee and amount, tear off the check. Then the cashier asks for ID and they get their ID out. Sometimes they are asked for their phone number. It’s insane. You can turn a 10 second transaction into a 180 second transaction for a cup of fucking coffee. I haven’t carried a checkbook around for at least 10 years. For anything less than $10 or so there is exactly one way to pay and it’s called CASH. Women manage to screw cash transaction up too, though, because they are so anal about putting their coins in their coin purse and their bills in the bills area, sorted by denomination and all orientated the same way. They have to do this while standing in front of the counter, too, they can’t step aside. (Yes, I am unfairly generalizing about women. It’s just the women that do that I’m bitching about.)

3. People who stand in line, like at McDonalds or a coffee shop, and then when they get up to the counter, they don’t know what they want. It takes me exactly 5 seconds to place by order at McDonalds’s or a coffee shop. For some reason I always get behind the person that needs to inquire about everything: “What’s in a Big Mac? Can I see the nutritional information? Is there nuts in that? Hmm….let me think.” IT’S FUCKING MCDONALD’S. YOU DON’T NEED TO THINK. JUST FUCKING ORDER. The same is true at the coffee shop. They all serve exactly the same drinks. If you’ve been to one coffee shop you’ve been to all coffee shops. Decide what you want before you get to the counter. It’s just not that hard.

4. People who don’t concentrate on driving when they are driving. This is just obvious. When you are participating in the most dangerous activity you will ever participate in, pay fucking attention. I was behind a guy once who was driving while practicing the trumpet. I’ve seen people smoke, eat and talk on the phone at the same time while driving. I’ve seen people turned complete around shouting at their kids. I’ve seen old people who can’t see, can’t hear and can’t turn their heads. No wonder your most likely cause of death is a traffic accident. If you are one of these people, quit it, now.

5. People who don’t know how to stand in line. Either they stand right behind you, practically touching you, because somehow they think they’ll get up to the front quicker if they press against you. Or they leave huge gaps in the line, as if they are so cool they needn’t be bothered with normal line standing behavior. This makes the line overflow its normal path and just pisses us all off. When you stand in line you should stand between 2.5 and 3.5 feet away.

Ok, your turn.

One thought on “Pet Peeves

  1. My biggest pet peeve at work (I’m a cahier) is when a customer leaves there grocery cart in the paying isle or in front of the register and leaves without putting it away. It drives me up the wall!! If everyone did that can you imagine what the store looked like “Grocery cart hell”. When I am really busy I cant be putting away the darn carts. We are not that big of a store, it would only be a few more steps to put them away!! ARG!

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