First a few that are from the workplace (a 911 call-center, for those who are unacquainted with some of my work posts):
People who call 911 for anonymous tips (If you call 911 you aren't going to be anonymous, that's the whole point of 911, think about it for a minute.)
People who think its adorable that their preverbal child just tied up a 911 line for 10 minutes.
People who think that its perfectly safe to leave their wallets, laptops, and cds in their car overnight. (On the other hand, your stupidity is my job security)
And for a few more general pet peeves:
Schools sending home materials requests, fee requests, picture envelopes, and anything else requiring the outlay of money, after one paycheck and due before the next
one. If its not in the budget on payday, it isn't happening. And I get paid weekly, but I know a lot of parents at your school get paid weekly or even monthly. What the heck are they supposed to do. Twice I have missed high school picture days because the notice was sent home on Monday for pictures to be taken on Thursday.
This goes for school events as well. Calling on Tuesday to tell us about a family game night on Wednesday is a good way to make sure we won't be there. I want to add how much I appreciated the followup reminder call we got on Wednesday, just about the time the event was ending.
People who assume that everyone has weekends and holidays off, and works 9-5 hours.
Family members who know I schedule my vacations in December for the following year, yet advise a month in advance of the date of their kids wedding/graduation party/shower/other special event; and are unhappy with me if I can't make it.
The relative who keeps forwarding certain emails to me. It's not the mean spirited other end of the spectrum tone I mind, as much as the fact that he is endlessly rerouting glurge that Snopes.com debunked months or even years ago. (And I would like to thank the fine folks at Snopes for the term "glurge")
And I can't go without invoking my favorite grammatical pet peeve, persons who use the word decimate when they mean devastate. Decimate means to eliminate 1/10th of a group and it goes back to the Romans who used to discipline (and sometimes execute) every 10th soldier in a group. After all if you flog everyone there's no one left for guard duty. This has actually become a joke around our house. As soon as we hear a commentator say "The cyclone has decimated this island nation" someone always says "Hey only 10% damages? Not bad."
OK, I've been peevish long enough. I'm going to stop complaining and start thinking happy thoughts about things I like for next week's Theme Thursday. In the meantime, if you want to hear about other people's pet peeves, click on the link below.
I never knew that about "decimate." But I never used it, either, so I'm good. And you know those emails drive me bananas. I'm more concerned about the fact that they're leaking onto Facebook now, though.
ReplyDeleteYou are right Jenn, glurge is even more of a menace of Facebook, where people can spread groundless nonsense with even less effort than it takes to forward an email to all ones contact list.
ReplyDeleteAs for decimate, its just one of those stupid bits of trivia I picked up over the years, from I, Claudius I think. Robert Graves used it in the sense of executing a tenth of the men in a legion, as a punishment. (I think it was Caligula in one of his crazier moments) Like many words its been misused for so long that both definitions now appear in the dictionary. My other nit like that is work related, I have a bunch of coworkers who spell reckless (as in recklessly driving a car) "wreckless" even though that of course means exactly the opposite of what they are trying to say. ARRGH goes the former English major.
I didn't even graduate high school, and I'm still a grammar/spelling/punctuation Nazi (I did ace the G.E.D., though).
DeleteI know college graduates who wlouldn't know Conjunction Junction if they were broken down in the middle of it...so the rest of us have to do our best to keep the standards up.
DeleteThe schools here have an autoattendant that will send out robotic phone calls announcing events. Somehow having my Saturday nap interrupted to find out there is a basketball game planned for the next day irks me. Especially since mine don't play basketball.
ReplyDeleteThat is amazingly annoying. I have been dogged by weekly autocalls about open registration and other events also. Since my kids are in middle and high school, its annoying to hear about things that only pertain to the elementaries. You'd think they could tweak the system a bit.
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