Annoying Things That People Do

Okay, so this is my first actual post.  I can think of quite a lot of things that drive me crazy is specific situations, but most are just things that I find irksome based on the person or the mood I am in, so I don't think those really count.  However, there are a few things that I dislike in general.

Catcalls.  You know when you are at a band/music concert or a recital and people start yelling their friend's/family member's names?  Drives me completely nuts.  I have sat through way too many of these types of performances, and I don't understand why people insist on doing this.  I mean, I know you want to tell someone to do a good job, but is yelling their name right before they have to remember whatever it is they are performing really a good way to help them do well?  No, it isn't.  It probably distracts them because they hear someone say their name, and the automatic response to that is to look up and find the person who yelled, not to ignore them and concentrate on something else.  It would be so much more considerate to yell their name after they have performed, so that you aren't distracting them and they won't be stressed out trying to remember what to do with people yelling their names all the time.

That's all on that subject.  There is one other thing that I have recently found to be really obnoxious.  Now, I didn't realize this until the last year or so, but I don't understand about half of what comes out of college students' mouths.  They talk about something that they think is the best or funniest thing ever, and they I'm supposed to react in some appropriate way.  When I look at them blankly because I didn't understand the reference to whatever they were saying, or I didn't laugh at a joke I didn't understand (not that I laugh much out loud anyway...), they get offended or confused because I didn't think it was "the best thing ever."  Now, I say a lot of things that most regular (normal? aka, not as weird as I am) people don't understand, but if they look at me strangely I say "don't worry" or "you didn't need to understand."  I don't just stare at someone until they ask how that was an amusing joke/story/whatever.  I have a friend at college who just stares at me with a "that was so funny, right?" grin until I ask her what the point was, and she is shocked when I don't get it (and she's known me for two years now...).  So, yeah.  People expecting me to understand everything that comes out of their mouths when they have known me long enough to know better apparently really bug me.  I don't mean to write so much on that.

Anyway, I think this is where I am going to end this post.  I hope everyone has enjoyed reading everyone else's posts this week on the things that bug them.

4chan, on the other hand, is a completely different problem

When I think about things that bug me, many things come to mind: people who don't give straight answers, people who are indecisive, being purposefully vague, making shoddy arguments, people who'll lie to my face, 4chan...

But a lot of that just happens when I've been wronged. You want to know what I can't stand in a consistent manner that's plagued me since I was old enough to know what it was?

Grammar.

Grammar is wonderful. Grammar keeps words together and it makes them convey ideas. Grammar makes sentences clear and I'm going to list a few of the mistakes that drive me up the wall.

First off, less versus fewer. There are a lot of people that argue that this distinction is stupid, that there are no corresponding words for "more," and that the world hasn't fallen apart yet. I think these people are wrong. Let me point you to the sentence "There are more passionate people on the internet." I'm inclined to think it means more people who are passionate, but you really can't tell. Now let's try "There are fewer passionate people on the internet." Ah, there we go. We're clearly talking about the number of people. Clear. Concise. "There are less passionate people on the internet" talks about the overall level of passion. People on the internet are less passionate than people you find in real life. Still clear, but a completely different message.

The next thing that bothers me is elliptical clauses and how frequently they are misused. Elliptical clauses are clauses with an implied ellipsis (A series of three dots [...] is called an ellipsis, in case you didn't know). They're used in statements like "She's prettier than me," except that statement is wrong. She is pretty in a greater degree than...me. Her prettiness is greater than me. It's like trying to compare two completely different things. I'm not a level of attractiveness, so you can't compare them. You may think the meaning is still clear, but hold on. The correct thing to say is "She's prettier than I" because the implied ellipsis replaces the word "am." She's prettier than I [am].


This frequently is important in statements with objects. "He likes her more than me" means "He likes her more than [he likes] me," while "He likes her more than I" means "He likes her more than I [like her]." We can figure out where the rest of the sentence is if you put in the correct subject/object, but putting in the wrong one makes the sentence not actually make sense. In some situations, it's still clear, but in many, misusing this is conveying the completely incorrect message.


Another thing that drives me insane is phrases like "PIN number," "ATM machine" and "HIV virus." As I've said before, grammar is a tool that helps words convey information; the problem is that the information this conveys is that you don't know what you're saying, that you are ignorant of the words coming out of your mouth and what they mean, to the point where you don't understand that saying "Personal identification number number" is wrong. It makes it seem like you don't know what they stand for but you're saying them anyway, and that's terrible. You don't just start calling people loquacious before you know what the word means and you shouldn't say "ATM" without knowing it doesn't need to be followed by the word "machine."

In short, grammar is a tool that helps makes language understood and that makes it wonderful. Obviously, once you learn how to use a tool, you can start experimenting. The phrase "I don't sports" does not make grammatical sense, but effectively conveys your complete bewilderment by sports by implying you don't even know how to use the word. It conveys an idea and that's wonderful, but at the same time, you wouldn't want to throw out a phrase like that if you're teaching an ESOL class. The whole point of language is to convey ideas and when people don't do that clearly, it just infuriates me.

Which, now than I think about it, is exactly what bothers me about indecisiveness, being vague, lying, and, in a roundabout way, making shoddy arguments. Maybe it does tie together after all.

Those Fickle Feelings

When I started making a mental list of the things that bug me, I came to the realization that things only tend to bug me if I think that the intentions behind the action were sketchy.  That, and things also tend to bug me when I’m stressed out or just plain peeved about something (usually something that is entirely unrelated).  Also, past experiences with the person in question also tend to effect whether what they do or say bugs me or not.  I realize that this is kind of fickle, and yet totally typical. 

I'll keep this short and sweet by saying that I can't think of any specific actions that do or don't bug me regardless of my mood and past experiences.  These two factors heavily influence what I think about an individual's intentions.   I've found that it's pretty easy to convince myself of someone's good intentions if all is well and I'm in a good mood.  And on the flip side, I often have a very difficult time convincing myself of someone's good intentions if I'm stressed out or in a bad mood.  So, I'm obviously more likely to get bugged by things on days like that, even little things like someone letting a door close and lock when I was just behind them.  That being said, I'm usually a pretty positive person.  I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt and not let things annoy me.  Even when I'm stressed out, I try my best to not get bugged by things that I can do absolutely nothing about.  Well... it's a goal anyway.                      

  

     

Mosquito Bites, and Other Annoyances

This post has the potential to be fairly lengthy, but for the sake of maintaining interest (and, also, to follow in the precedent set by our previous two bloggers), I'll try to keep it at a manageable length.  ... What -is- a manageable length, anyway?  Whatever, I'm going to write until it doesn't flow easily.

Inconsiderate people.  This is something that I run into, more often than not, at work, and it annoys the hell out of me.  First and foremost on this point are the people who won't get off their phone while I'm trying to help them.  Some people (most people, really) will at least pull the phone away to talk to me, albeit briefly, and some even apologize after they get off the phone.  But there are some people who will stay on their phone and carry on a conversation the entire time they're in the store, and that's just fucking rude.  Particularly if there are other people waiting in line, have the decency to either tell the person "I'll call you back", or step away and carry your conversation on in a place where you won't be holding up (or annoying) other people.  I had a woman stay on her phone earlier today, actually, and she got annoyed at me while I was trying to ring her up.  Why did she get annoyed?  Because I had to ask her things at least twice, because she wasn't listening to me the first time.  Some questions aren't vital - I don't think I offered her a bag for her purchase, and I'm fairly certain I didn't ask her if she found everything alright.  But I do need to know how you want to pay for things, and if you write "See ID" on the back of your credit card, you shouldn't get angry at someone asking for your ID.  ... But, yeah, inconsiderate people piss me off.

Next on the immediate train of thought are the annoying people that want to take up your time talking about... well, anything.  Now, don't get me wrong, if I'm talking to someone that I appreciate and/or have a good rapport with, and the topic is interesting, I'll talk (... well, listen moreso than talk, typically) for ages.  But if you're just spouting random stuff about things that I have no interest in whatsoever, and especially if you're doing it while I'm busy?  We're going to have problems.  No, I don't want to hear about your new strategy for Magic: The Gathering.  No, I don't want to see a YouTube clip of something that you might find amusing.  No, I don't want to talk about how hard it is to find a job and why you'd be perfect to work at Gamestop (though, for some people, those stories are a source of amusement).  I honestly don't think it's -that- hard to tell whether someone's genuinely interested in things that you're saying, or whether they're just acknowledging you for the sake of not being outright rude.  I just wish that more people would take the hint. Most recent case in point?  The cashier in the food court at Target wasted five minutes of my break (... Hey, when you only have half an hour to eat and chill out, every minute is sacred, okay?) with some monologue about... you know what?  I don't even know.  That's how uninterested I was - I didn't even retain a shred of what he was talking about.  But he held up his own line to have that conversation with me.  Why?  I don't know.  I just wanted to eat.

... Both of my things so far are about other people.  I'm not sure whether I'm surprised by that or not, and whether or that's a bad (or telling) thing.  I'm gonna try to get on a different level, though - dishonesty, in general, really bugs me.  Going hand in hand with that would be unethical behavior.  When the two of them combine... ... I want to punch something.  Hell, sometimes I want to punch things even if it's one or the other.  Dishonesty, to me, shows a complete lack of respect for the person you're talking to, and that's frustrating.  I've been the recipient of dishonesty a fair bit over the past year-ish, and it's mostly come from people that I am (was?) close to.  This, as you would expect, makes it worse.  It wouldn't be as impactful if I didn't find out about it, but I always do, one way or another.  I don't understand why you would blatantly lie to something about... well, anything.  Not in a personal sense, anyway.  Some people classify "withholding information" as being better than lying.  I don't agree.  In a way, I think it's almost worse, because it really just seems like lying that you're trying to justify to make yourself feel better.  You might do it with good intentions, but I feel that if there's something that you feel -should- be shared, you should just do it.

Inconsistency in food.  Yeah, I know, that's kind of a 180, huh?  Pizza is something that I eat more of than I should (though I've gotten a lot better about that lately!).  One of the most common things for me to do, if I'm home and don't feeling like either cooking or going out, is to order Domino's.  There are some nights where the order is fantastic, and everything tastes delicious... and there are some nights where it doesn't taste nearly as good.  I understand that this is a fairly minor problem, and that it's to be expected, almost, but it still bugs me when I'm expecting one flavor profile and I get something different.

I've got more that I can write about, but I think I've hit my limit of "easy stuff", so I'm gonna wrap it up here.  Happy rest of the Breather Week, everyone, and welcome, Laura.

Now And Then I Think Of All The Times You Screwed Me Over

I should preface this by saying that I'm a pretty particular person. Even a brief summary of the biggest things that bug me would take thousands of words to scratch the surface of, and I'm aware of the fact that I'm a bit unreasonable. That being said, I'm going to address what I think is the biggest and most appropriate of my pet peeves: screwing other people over by being lazy.

I'm not the best student. It's not all that uncommon for me to just blow off assignments because of stress or fail to study for a test because I'm worried about other things or to settle for a B when I could work a bit harder and pull off an A. I'm prone to doing things that only affect me in a half-assed manner. That's a personal flaw, and it's one that I can accept for myself.

What I can't tolerate is when people take that kind of attitude with any kind of work or project that affects other people. I had a lab group for first semester biology last year that did this. We would set deadlines for everyone to submit their portions, and no one else would adhere to them. I'd always be the one to compile the work, and there were multiple occasions where other people completely failed to prepare their sections, and I would have to redo them at the last minute. The result was usually a shoddy report that we ended up with grades in the 70s for. I got an 88.5% in that class, and about 80% of the grade was group work. I know that I would've had an A in that class if it weren't for that group, because I nailed everything that I did on my own.

I can't understand why anyone would ever screw other people over that badly. Even if the task at hand isn't particularly important to me, if it affects other people at all, then you can bet that I will put 110% in on it. If you agree to do a task that other people are depending on you for, then you should fucking do it. It's not complicated. It's just common courtesy. If you want to be the kind of person that does shoddy work, that's fine. If you're the only person being affected by your poor choices, then that's your business, but don't make that someone else's problem.

Wow, that was a lot more intense and rage-y than a breather week should be. Can't wait to see what John has to say tomorrow. Also, for anyone that didn't notice, we have a new regular contributor this week! Randi's gonna be an occasional contributor now, and the fantastic Laura has taken over for her.

Laziness (or maybe Ignorance)

My biggest pet peeve could be put under the umbrella concept of laziness. I like doing research; I don't like taking stances on topics because I think there is always more information out there that I could consume. If something is in front of you needs to be done, do it. Basically get your shit done, don't be ignorant and I will not be annoyed with you. Perhaps it is not even really laziness, but pure ignorance that bothers me. Or just not thinking about other people around you. Asshole drivers, family members that don't do things until you have to do them, people with opinions that are not well researched. I am a rather logical creature in real life (I amend with real life because games and fictional stories appeal to my emotional side), and I just wish people would take the time to actually try to observe and understand the world.

I like to think I am good at researching. If you can Google well the world is open to you. This post is brief because I really do not have much else to say. I have told you what bugs me. Really, I am a rather content being; very little pushes me to extreme annoyance. It really is ignorance/laziness along with the times that people's actions really bother me (although those are more like specific instances and therefore not really something I would describe under this topic). It is general because I never really like using specifics when talking about myself. I mean, it's general and I could rant on about more specific areas within it, but no, I do not feel like addressing that. So I shall leave it at that and wonder what it reveals to you. 

Week of 6/17 - Breather Topic: Things That Bug You

Hello Everyone!

This is going to be a short post, since the topic is kind of self-explanatory.  This week's topic is things that bug you.  I'm sure everyone has a huge list of things that drive them crazy!  They can be big things or small things, since there is probably a mix that bug everyone.  I definitely can't wait to hear about everyone's pet peeves this week.

Kathleen will start us off tomorrow, and I will come back on Saturday to finish the topic off.