Erica's Pet Peeves

Or, all the things I consider Just WRONG...

Grocery (and now drugstore) purchase-tracking "savings" cards. (These infuriate me SO much I should create a separate page for Rants.) "Loyalty," my ass! Why should I be penalized by as much as 150% for refusing to sell myself to their marketing database? For more on this issue, see the very fine nocards.org web site maintained by CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering).

All stores with separate lines for each cash register (or ATM, etc.), so that people considerably behind me can cut over to a shorter line. Banks, on the other hand, consistently set up their teller windows with ONE line feeding all the outlets, first-in-first-out. So do many other enlightened businesses such as bookstores. I can understand how this becomes physically unwieldy with large grocery carts... but when will CVS and McDonald's learn this lesson?

Grocery baggers who put only two or three items into each plastic bag, and/or double-bag everything, so that I walk away with 6 bags for 14 items.

Grocery baggers who look blank when I ask them to use my canvas bags (there was a time not so long ago when more stores would PAY you a nickel to bring your own bags). Or who, if they've have already begun bagging my items in plastic, respond to this request by putting the plastic bag INTO my canvas bag... or remove the plastic bag, but wad it up and throw it into the trash because now it's, ya know, "used." Grrrrrrr.

Web pages that automatically load and play music. This is supremely inconvenient to any user in a public setting... yeah, okay, for me it's usually work (and that's bad enough), but think public libraries, etc.

E-mail forwards that promise cash from Bill Gates, or free merchandise from the Gap, for every person in the forward chain "because Microsoft is beta-testing an e-mail tracking program." ...Guess what? (A) It is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to track the forward path of an e-mail. Don't believe me? Read here and here and here and here. (B) If anyone ever WERE developing software that could do this, you can bet I would not take kindly to the dear friend who sold my privacy to the Evil Empire in a self-serving effort to make a quick buck. Not to mention, (C) Any corporation actually running a promotion on this scale would make SURE you'd hear about it in the major media. Have you? Didn't think so.

People who quote back the entire contents of an e-mail message just to comment on one line (or, worse, to respond with one comment regarding the contents generally). Judicious deletion of irrelevant material is a virtue. The quoting convention was originally put in place to provide CONTEXT. Including the entire original message is reasonable if you're also copying someone else new to the loop... but if it's just me, and I wrote you within the past week -- take it for granted that I still remember more or less what my message was about, and a line or two will suffice to remind me what topic you're addressing.

People who say they "won" something on eBay. I know eBay's cool and all, but here's a news flash: The only thing you "won" was the privilege of buying it! (At, I might add, a price higher than anyone else was willing to pay...)

Drivers who "sneak through" red lights on the heels (so to speak) of the person in front of them. This is one of the habits responsible for creating gridlock. If you're next in line when it actually turns red, and there's room for you to keep going on the other side -- okay, you can get away with that; but if you're second or third, give it up.

Stop-and-go traffic generally. Believe it or not, there ARE scientific methods of reducing traffic congestion. Read and try it, it's quite fascinating!

People who can't separate their recycling correctly. Where I live, you can put mixed containers in your bin, but paper has to be packed separately in paper bags. How hard is this to understand? At least they're making the psychological effort rather than just throwing everything in the trash (a failure too egregious to even qualify as a pet peeve), but it's wasted effort if they're not going to follow even the most basic procedures. It's not like they even ask you to scrape the labels off these days.