When you’re sitting at home sick and shivering with a (slightly less) sick kid sitting beside you, that’s a good time for a post listing some of your biggest pet peeves…
1. Captchas that use nonsense words and/or stretch words so that it’s almost impossible to decipher them. (“Is that an ‘i’? An ‘l’? A ‘J’?”)
2. People who plug things into the top outlet leaving the bottom one open. This became a major pet peeve during our Vancouver trip at the various hotels we stayed at. Shea and I both took our laptops, we had our cell phones and easy access to plug-ins was a must. Especially in hotels where plug-ins are often blocked by beds or bedside tables, this is pretty frustrating.
3. People who say ‘no’ automatically, like it’s a unique form of Tourette’s. I can’t decide if it’s worse when it’s done by a person who comes back later with the answer you needed or having done what you asked making their auto-no into a “yes”.
4. When you have to make two or three trips to do something simple. For example, a store advertises something you want but when you go, they’re sold out so you have to get a rain check then keep checking back. A related pet peeve is picking the wrong line which I did twice in one morning a couple weeks ago – at SARCAN when I tried to judge which would move fastest and lost bad then went to Sobey’s and a lady who’d ended up finishing ahead of us at SARCAN after coming later DID IT AGAIN in the grocery line-up!
5. It’s not really a pet peeve in the sense of “minor annoyance” like the other ones on this list. But trying hard to think of a library-related pet peeve, I’m going to say “people who look at porn in the library.” As much as I’ll defend their right to do so (we all have different information needs, right?), I also sometimes think “Sure, computers and Internet connections are still beyond the means of a lot of people but seriously, getting your jollies at the library? I mean, DVD players are cheap and the videos at Adult Source Video aren’t that expensive either (er, so I’ve heard).” That might be a better outlet for your…needs. (I know there are probably exhibitionist tendencies or undeveloped social skills being evidenced when people do this but still…)
And if five’s not enough, here’s 5000 more.
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