Top 10 Tuesday – You know what really grinds my gears?

December 6, 2005 by paul
Filed under: Uncategorized

Hurrumph! It may be the season to be jolly and all that, but here’s my current Top Ten Gripes*:

Surly staff who are supposed to be providing customer service. I don’t care if you’re only earning minimum wage and that you hate your job/life – pretend to be helpful for a couple of minutes and things will go a lot smoother for both of us.
Dog owners who think they are exempt from the law. Our local park is not a leash-free zone – Toronto has specific areas where you are allowed to let your dog run free, but this is not one of them – so don’t get angry when I (or other people) point this out. Same applies for when you let your dog run free along the footpath; maybe if it gets run over you’ll realise that you should have used the leash that you’re carrying?
The [lack of] job market! (I know, another post where I whine that I still don’t have a job.) What’s more frustrating is when the local news reports how the job market is stronger now than it’s been in quite a while. Hearing that friends are losing their jobs doesn’t convince me that companies aren’t still cutting back.
Spam: whether it’s via email, snailmail or (the most annoying of all) telephone, you’re all spammers. Stop it now! No-one in their right mind will buy from you. I know it only takes one gullible punter to hand over their credit card details to make it all worthwhile, but stop now before we hunt you down and flay you!
Websites/blogs that go on about how Dubya is a great leader, how the Iraq war is justified, and how torture is necessary for the safety of the free world (by which, of course, they mean America). If the US government really wanted to know why so much of the rest of the world hates them, they should try reading some of these sites! I saw one today [I'm not posting a link because I don't want to encourage them] which said that “black site” (the US torture sites hidden in places like Syria) are justified because those people (the prisoners) don’t deserve to be treated like domestic prisoners … never mind they’ve not been tried, apparently being foreign means they’re guilty.
Those who are too lazy to speak English correctly – I don’t mean that non-English speakers should be forced to learn (unless you live in a country where English is the official language), I mean those who deliberately abuse their mother tongue. A common one that really grinds is when someone says they “could care less” when in fact they mean “couldn’t care less” – if you could care less then it means you do care. (I’ve seen three of these today, which is why it’s further up the list than you’d expect.)
Following on from that, businesses which think it’s clever to misspell their name, e.g. “Kwik” instead of quick, or “Foto” in place of photo. If it’s because you can’t trademark commonly used words then think of a new name for your company; stop dumbing-down the language.
Political correctness and “positive discrimination”. Why is it OK to have a women-only event but not a men-only one? Why is it OK to have adverts that objectify/make fun of guys but not women? I’ve seen surveys which collect demographic data ask if the respondent is “African American” (amongst other PC options) or “white” – either use the proper terms (Negroid, Caucasoid, …) or colours (black, white, …) but be consistent! Oh, and there is no such thing as “positive discrimination” – it’s all just discrimination.
Websites/blogs which automatically start playing video/music when they load … or worse yet, those which do that and don’t even give you a way to turn it off! (Another one that’s higher than expected because I’ve encountered about a dozen of these today!)
People who preach tolerance but fail to practice it. Prime example: the Weavers on the current Amazing Race. If you’ve seen them, you’ll understand; if you haven’t, I won’t spoil the fun.