Pet Peeves

[Avatar]

People who don't know me from Adam who peer at my name tag and then adress me by name as though I'm some kind of flunky or they've known me for years.

Change your name tag to read "Slartibartfast."



--A

[peter]

Actually Av, I did think about having my name tag read 'Buddy', because half the people who come in call me that already [and all the other male staff].

Anyway, peeves.......internet links that do not lead you to the page they claim to. Had one this morning on a medical page where I was checking out my cold syptoms that read "Does Vitamin C Really Help You Beat A Cold?". I clicked and went straight to a page that was about dealing with your childrens cold symptoms and made no mention of the efficacy of vitamin C or otherwise. I suspect the power of the vitamin to help dislodge a firmly established cold virus is limited and propose to take an altogether different route - huge quantities of Courvoisier taken on the strength of the maxim 'what brandy can't cure can't be cured!'

[Avatar]

I sometimes take large doses of VitC when I'm sick and it seems to help, but I do not discount the placebo effect. Also, too much Vitamin C is a) pointless because there is a limit to how much your body can absorb, and b) apparently potentially bad for you. This does not however stop me.

--A

[Sorus]

I swear by Airborne, which is often considered to be a placebo/waste of money. Reminds me I should pick some up since there's something going around at work now.

[peter]

Used to be that a cold was a week/ten day affair that took a proscribed course [throat to chest to nose to clear-up] in every cold a couple of times a year. Now the viruses seem ...... different. They come around more frequently, they have this long 'grumbling' stage where you neither have, nor haven't a cold, they hit you in the guts as well us the usual URT sites and when they hit, they hit harder and stay longer often recycling through their symptoms more than once in one attack. There are accompanying headaches, skin problems and even back pains. These are all things I not only have experienced, but have also observed in staff and the hundreds of customers I see weekly. It's always the same story - a cold that lays you really low and won't go away. There is beginning to be tacit acceptance by the medical profession that the nature of the illness is changing [they are always the last to catch on], but the WHO lists the emergence of a 'pandemic' of 'spanish-flu' type virulence as one of the major disasters in waiting for the human kind. Interestingly, one of the first peices of truly modern reportage Thucydides 'Plague of Athens' section in The History of The Peloponnesian Wars describes a progression of symptoms that the above list is beginning to resemble in no small way!

[Avatar]

I tend to be pretty resistant. Only taken 4 days off sick in the last 6 years. I also tend to get over stuff pretty quickly. I'm rarely sick for more than a couple of days.

--A

[peter]

Yes, I don't do sick days ether Av. I'm about equal with you on time actually taken off work, but I pay a price for it. I think population level has much to do with disease levels in a populace. The much higher population facilitates viral transmission and allows the pathogen to circulate and continually reinfect. That and the viruses ability to mutate to evade the body's immune system does the trick. Bastards!

[Avatar]

It's all just life, doing its best.

--A

[ussusimiel]

Here's a good list. Some of these definitely get on my wick, but, annoyingly, I've committed a couple of these less-than-likeable things recently (I thought they were cute) or in the past

u.

[Avatar]

We're all annoying to somebody.

--A

[Sorus]

Some of those are high on my list. Some of them don't bother me.

Some are just baffling, such as:

65. When people go to irrational lengths to keep their middle name a secret.

Is that really a thing? Let alone an annoying thing?

67. People who say "this is she" when someone on the phone asks for them. Just say "Yes."

I was trained to answer the phone that way. It's a bit old-fashioned and formal, but I didn't realize it bothered anyone.

73. People who send emails longer than three sentences, or one paragraph. Call or explain in person. Who has time to read through all of that?

Insert <Twitter-is-ruining-attention-spans> gripe here.

[Avatar]

Oh god yes...I like to send long, detailed emails to people in order to avoid having to phone people. It annoys the hell out of me when they don't bother to read them.

--A

[MsMary]

Some of those are high on my list. Some of them don't bother me.

Some are just baffling, such as:

65. When people go to irrational lengths to keep their middle name a secret.

Is that really a thing? Let alone an annoying thing?

67. People who say "this is she" when someone on the phone asks for them. Just say "Yes."

I was trained to answer the phone that way. It's a bit old-fashioned and formal, but I didn't realize it bothered anyone.

73. People who send emails longer than three sentences, or one paragraph. Call or explain in person. Who has time to read through all of that?

Insert <Twitter-is-ruining-attention-spans> gripe here.

Regarding people who answer the phone "this is she": That doesn't bother me at all. What strikes me odd is when someone answers the phone: "This is." I wonder "This is what? Who is this?" And the like.

[peter]

Films where the dialogue is so sloppy and mumbled that you miss threequaters of what is happening, or where the music-speech volume disparity is so great as to make comfortable viewing almost impossible.

[wayfriend]

Films where the dialogue is so sloppy and mumbled that you miss threequaters of what is happening, or where the music-speech volume disparity is so great as to make comfortable viewing almost impossible.

That's not the movie, peter. That's being hard of hearing.

[Avatar]

the music-speech volume disparity

Ooh, I hate that one.

--A

[peter]

I thought so too Wayfriend, until I realised that I could hear all the old films perfectly!

[Avatar]

They just need to stop messing with the levels.

--A

[wayfriend]

I also noticed that my new flat screen TV, which I listen to with it's native tiny speakers, makes for a similarly bad experience. Turning off surround sound helps a bit.

Silly peter: Old movies sound better because they were made by old people who were hard of hearing, too.

[peter]

Man I hate those baths that pretend they're going to be deep and luxurious and then have the overflow situated halfway down the side so you can only fill it to a foot from the top. What is that all about! My hotel in Bruges had one and what with never having anything more than tepid water in the taps, one of the great luxuries of being on holiday (lying with a book in a hot bath) was denied to me.