What are some of your pet peeves about your interactions with people?

I hate when people interrupt me when I’m speaking. Especially when they just keep talking and talking louder and louder to drown you out. It’s so rude.

Or when people are rude for no reason.

Or when people think they know so much more than you do when they so obviously don’t. And yet they insist they’re right. So frustrating!

I have a million pet peeves like that. I’m very easily annoyed.

I dislike for someone I’m speaking to look everywhere but at me. He/she doesn’t have to stare into my eyes all the time, but I get annoyed when their eyes roam the room.

People that lack basic manners in conversation, in general, bother me. It really doesn’t take that much effort to be respectful of others. I have very little patience for rude people.

when I catch them in an inconsistency no matter how small. Unless it can be explained innocently, I find it impossible to confide in them at all after that.

When anything I say reminds them of a bigger and better story about themselves.

When you say something to make a point:
“Wow, there were a lot of hurricanes this season!”

…and they respond with 15 minutes of all the other instances in the last fifty years of better examples of that point:
“Well, actually, if you went back to the year 1965, there were on record 78 named hurricanes, all beginning with the letter ‘B’. It was a big year for names beginning with ‘B’, due to the popularity of the Beatles. There was also the time in 1983 that 7 hurricanes all hit Houston at precisely the same time, which was previously thought to be impossible, but was obviously proven to be possible, seeing as they all hit at the same time. It was that year that there were more hurricanes on record than any other year, up until the most recent event of 2005, where the named storms went all the way into the Greek alphabet. So you see, Les, there really weren’t that many storms this year at all.

You were wrong.”

I hate that so much.

On another note, I’ve been gone so long, but YAY! Cak is back! Hope you are well!

The dependent clauses

When they treat me like a second class citizen because I’m wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.

C’mon. I can tell. Y’all are nice when I wear a skirt and pantyhose, but when I have tennis shoes and my football jersey on, I’m not worthy? :/

I hate it when I’m sitting somewhere, by myself, not intending to be interacting with anyone else per se, reading a book (like in a restaurant or on a park bench) and some guy (it’s always a white guy and usually he’s between the ages of 40 to 60— ish) comes up to me and says, “Hey, why don’t you smile? It can’t be all that bad.” It always freaks me out, because like I said, I wasn’t interacting with anybody, I was just sitting there reading my book. Then I have to wonder why was this dude standing there staring at me, who doesn’t know me and have had no dealings with up until that moment.

I also don’t like it when I go into a business for service (restaurant, bookstore, grocery store etc.) and the clerk nevers looks up, never says hello or may I help you, or I’ll be with you in a moment. Or after all that, they ring you up, but don’t actually announce how much you owe. They just stand there. Sometimes I can’t see the register display from where I’m standing, but even if I can, the polite thing to say is, “That will be $4.99 please.” and after I give them the money, they should say thank you, but they often say absolutely nothing and never look up.

Or on the rare occasions in which I go through a drive through, right when I’m placing my order, before I’m finished, the clerk asks, ” Would you like to try a crispy, new such and such?” To which I have to say no and then start over, because they didn’t catch what I just ordered. If I wanted that item, I would be ordering it if allowed the chance to place my order.

I don’t like it when people who are walking in parking lots just walk right out in front of my car without stopping or looking up and I have to slam on my brakes. Or walk down the middle of the aisle and don’t move out of the way of the cars coming toward them. I don’t have one of those quiet electric cars, so I know they can hear my car.

I hate it when people (men) hock stuff up and spit right in front of you.

I’m midly irritated when I bring my own bags to a grocery store, set the bags amongst the items in my order and the bagger starts putting my stuff in plastic bags anyway. I even had one guy take my stuff out of the plastic bag (after I told him that I brought my own) and then he threw the plastic bag in the trash. I had to point out to him that the reason that I brought my own bags was to reduce the waste of using, or in this case NOT using, plastic bags. If he’d already started to use the bag, I would have preferred to take it and use it for something else at home rather than having it thrown away and not used at all.

Not real thrilled when I go to a store and ask an employee if they have any such and such an item and they answer, “I don’t know.” instead of finding out whether they have it or don’t have it.

@Kardamom ; ooh, lengthy! :) That is very strange, that people come up to you and say that… When I’m not interacting with someone I also don’t smile… that’d be weird, just to smile at nothing sitting alone..

@Les; @Supacase; oh, I caught myself doing that once, but then realized how I found it annoying when other people did it, and now I am in the midst of not doing that! I don’t point out that it’s wrong, directly, but I sometimes do tend to bring up another topic that relates but I make sound more interesting than theirs… which I see, is indeed, annoying! >_<

@cak; me too! I dislike rude people! A little act of kindness isn’t too hard!

@Kardamom – In the defense of the fast food drive throughs, many of them have a automatic announcement that comes on when the motion sensor is activated.

Me, I hate small talk. It seems like people hate silence, so they fill it with useless banter that neither one of us is all that interested in.

I would also add that people that do not know the difference between ‘lose’ and ‘loose’ is really annoying.

I hate it when I’m talking about something and the person I’m talking to denies what I said. Examples:

Me: Calculus is hard.
Them: No it isn’t. It’s really easy to understand.

Me: Man, it’s hot out today.
Them: Not really, it’s kinda nice out.

I work in retail and one of my biggest pet peeves is people who don’t let me finish speaking. Believe it or not, but I have to ask you if you want to sign up for our rewards card. Please let me finish speaking before you say you don’t want it.

Another retail interaction pet peeve: People who make counterfeit money jokes. Or theft jokes. Or “I’m going to wear it once and then return it” jokes. You’re not funny. I don’t know how to react to what you say.

@KatawaGrey HAHAHA! My boyfriend does those stupid counterfeit money jokes. I’m always telling him, “You know they hate you, right?” Like he’ll pay with a $100 bill and they’ll check it with the marker and he’ll say, “I just made that. It’s fine.” He’s such a loser, I swear. But he means no harm. I’ve worked with the public since high school, so I understand getting annoyed by hearing the same jokes over and over and over. :)

@lbwhite89: Tell your boyfriend I murder him in my head when he says that.~

Also, we hate people who pay with hundreds unless their total is high enough to warrant it.

I only have one: telemarketers who have been told not to take a breath, not to stop between sentences which forces me to interrupt them to say I’m not interested in their battery operated pencils. They go on and on and on and if by chance they don’t stop they’ve spoken for 3 minutes and then probably become angry because when they finally do shut up I tell them, “no thanks.”
And by that time I’ve wasted their speech when they could have sold the pencils to another sucker.

@Aster – I stop them and say I’m not interested. If they continue, then I hang up on them.

@cletrans2col Do you have any suggestions for what to do when after you’ve told the telemarketers that you aren’t interested, but then they call back repeatedly and sometimes agressively? We always so no thanks and if they persist we point out that we are on the NO CALL list, but to no avail. Anyone have any suggestions?

One company called 3 times this week!

@Kardamom – I would definitely speak to your state’s Attorney General. There is no way they should be doing that!

@cletrans2col Thanks for the tip.

I hate it when people call me on the phone and go rattling off on this or that and do not bother to ask me if I am busy or have time to talk.

When they rattle on and do not let you get a word in edgewise.

When they try to put words in my mouth I didn’t say really hate that i.e. Me: “What do I think? You’d look more polished if you didn’t walk around with your pants sagging half off your butt”. Them: “It is just a style, I am no gangster, why you want to play me like that?” Or me: Well your hips are a bit wide for that type of dress, it doesn’t give you the best silhouette”. Them: ”You are saying I need a diet? I didn’t know you thought of me as fat”.

The repeating of details every 5 minutes because nothing else can be thought of.

@Hypocrisy_Central: I am so with you on the phone thing. When someone picks up the phone, the first thing I do is ask if they can talk. What bothers me is when I ask this, someone says yes, and then halfway through the conversation they say, “I can’t talk right now.” Then why did you tell me you could talk??? Phone etiquette sucks so much these days.