Pet Peeves, Cont.

A few more pet peeves have made it onto my running list. Here are a few that are rattling my chains these days:

Flight Attendants. Most of them are tolerable – if you luck out, some are even pleasant. But the vast majority are either so tired they can’t think straight, irritated that they are even on board, or just plain arrogant. Most have weak personalities and make the flight feel even longer than it really is. And that pre-flight presentation about the fire exits and seat belts just makes me puke. I think it’d be ok if it weren’t for the finger actions.

My shirtless neighbor now lets his kids run around nearly naked, too. The 3 year old boy never has on more than tightey-whiteys and the 5 year old girl is always in a skimpy nightgown or bikini – no matter what time of day or the weather. This creates a lot of uncomfortable moments when my children ask why they don’t wear clothes. Additionally, they just had a garage sale last weekend. This isn’t irritating in itself, except they ran it from 8am to 8 pm and let people block our driveway the whole time.

People who assume that you’ll do things for them when they haven’t even asked. This one guy I work with is notorious for this. He’ll send me an email or a voice mail about doing something I’ve never been asked to do, like I just know what he’s talking about. “I just assumed you’d do it” is his response if I question him on it. I’d be happy to do it if asked, numskull. Until you can ask nicely, assume your secretary will do it.

The self-check line at the store. It's meant to save you time. But the lady inside the machine doesn't recognize ANY of the items you buy, you can't sack anything right, you can't remove any sacks when you run out of room, and that same lady is really dependent on the real person standing three feet away that has to come over every 5 seconds to help you. Next time, I'm standing in line.

Inappropriate attire. Our HR department recently put out a memo going over our dress code, because apparently a few people had shown up in jeans lately when it wasn’t casual Friday. I was sick when that memo came out, and yesterday I came into work briefly to catch up before I went back home to bed and I was wearing very nice dark-wash jeans, a pretty sweater and dressy loafers. A colleague said “you didn’t get the memo yet, huh?” I just stared at her – in a skirt barely longer than her panties, no slip so you could actually see her panties, a low cut shirt and way too much makeup. Well, at least she wasn’t in jeans, so it was ok. I was waiting for her to tell HR so I could tell our (blind, literally) HR guy about her get-up. GAG.

Kansas. There is something in bloom here that is making everyone sick. My entire family is sick. My best friend’s son now has croup. Nearly 1/3 of our company has missed work in the last week with some version of this crud. My doctor even told us to move to Arizona and dry out because something is just not right. Somewhere over the rainbow there has to be good health…maybe if I click my heels together three times I’ll find that place.

Wayne Newton. Ok, that one is pretty random, huh? Allow me to elaborate. He is paired with Cheryl Burke on Dancing with the Stars. Cheryl is my husband’s fantasy woman. He thinks (aside from me of course) that no one could possibly compare to her. He has been a fan since season one. She’s been paired with Drew Lachey, Emmett Smith and Ian Zehring and made it to the finals every season (and won twice). This year just won’t be the same – Wayne was the ONLY person out of all 12 who simply could NOT dance. This means he (and Cheryl) will be kicked off soon, and my husband’s enthusiasm for this show will wane. Stupid ABC.

Whew, I feel better again. I hope all 4 of you who read my blog don’t mind when I vent like that! It’s so good for my soul.