The Meerkat Archives: Things that Make me see Red
I should add an important disclaimer to this post. You see, it was originally published more than 20 years ago, via a long-defunct site called The Site of Sothis, an old moniker of mine. It was shortly thereafter that Darth Timon replaced Sothis, and of course, in modern times I go by Ben Berwick, since I have nothing to hide.
I’m also not hiding the rather terrible state of this original post. I actually wrote it entirely in red, to emphasise what irritated me. I would like to think that my standards of spelling and grammar have improved in the 20+ years since I wrote that post, which I share below. I’ve taken out one element, which relates to a football star’s alleged affair (it was all over the news in the mid 2000s). I don’t feel that’s relevant anymore.
I’m sure all of us have things that make us snarl with anger or irritation or frustration. Well, here are a few of mine…
1. Have you ever been waiting in line a bus stop or in a queue in a store, stuck there as someone at the front of the queue dithers? It’s one of my pet peeves- if you’re paying bus fare or for goods in a shop, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE YOUR MEANS OF PAYMENT READY!!! Transactions should be conducted swiftly and without stopping to chat to the bus driver/cashier, otherwise what happens is that everyone else in the queue will get grumpy.
2. Similar to the first problem, is the problem of cashiers who dither. They process your purchase very slowly, or are having a good old chit-chat to a friend on another till. If you’ve got customers, they want to buy their item and go- they’re not interested in how you spent your weekend!
3. Blockadges. By this I mean, people in an aisle with a trolley (shopping cart to Americans) who somehow manage to stop so they and their trolley are impeding the aisle. DO NOT IMPEDE THE AISLE! It does nothing except piss off anyone and everyone who is trying to get past you.
4. Bots. Specifically, the kind of bot that spams you when you’re using a messenger program. I am NOT interested in it’s sordid little links or attempts to get me to pay to see a webcam girl do things I’ve already seen.
6. Arrogance. People who act like they know it all and who can presume that they can tell you what you know too. People, at the end of the day, no one can tell you what your limits are, or set your limits for you. You are the one who decides what you are ready for and what you are capable of. People who try to do that for you, who presume they have the right to do that, should be ignored.
7. Computer glitches. These drive me mad. Why it can’t be that a computer is made that can actually cope with the rigours of games and the internet. I can’t stand Windows errors and I HATE it when I’m in the middle of a game, at an intense moment, and BLAM! It crashes.
Well, those are seven things that make me see red. Who knows, this page may grow in time. For now, that’s all folks!
Yes, I have shared it in red too, for posterity!
Some of these things don’t annoy me the way they used to, though sources of frustration can be still be found. It is irritating to be trying to get down the aisle at the local supermarket, only to be blocked by people who park trollies at strange angles. If you have the audacity to move their trolley they’ll give you the evil eye, but come on, show some awareness. It’s not difficult.
I think a lot of those early irritants had to do with patience. Whether caught behind someone who wasn’t ready to board a bus, or waiting for the cashier to sort themselves out, or whether I was stuck down an aisle because of oblivious trolley-wielders, a lot of these sources of anger relate to my time being impeded. To be fair, that’s something that still annoys me, though I dare say I manage it better. That said, anything that impacts my free time can be painful to me.
My free time is limited. My days off are precious to me. I work long hours, so whether at the end of the day, or on a day off, what I want is to decompress and unwind on my terms. I appreciate that isn’t always possible, but sometimes I feel like my time is not my own, especially when caught up in queues because both customer and cashier are conspiring to be awkward.
Do I still find bots a chore to deal with? Sure. These days, they don’t get under my skin quite so much. Arrogance remains aggravating, though perhaps not as much. Computer glitches… well, that depends. If it costs me a lot of work and ends up costing me money, you can bet that will piss me off!
‘Kat Comments