Erica's Pet Peeves
Or, all the things I consider Just WRONG...
Shopping
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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).
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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?
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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.
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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.
Netiquette
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...)
Driving
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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.
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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!
General/Public
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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.