Pet Peeves Thread

[Sprinter79]

PP: Soccer, yes soccer. There is no way I'm calling it football. Anyway, the reason it sh!ts me is that they're always falling down, faking, whinging, and the worst thing is that whenever there's a free kick, they take it 5m forward of the point where the free was awarded!!!! And don't get me started about the throw ins...

 

[rhen]

Toothy Sheister
Smiling Corporate Assassin
Flashy Impresario
Corporate Mercenary
Ostentatious Tycoon
Billionaire Swank



The adjectival possibilities are endless with that guy. lol

True. Yet my peeve at this moment is that the man deserves some balance in this lesson on journalism...how about we throw in "Humanitarian Homme du Monde"...doesn't quite have the panache of the others.


The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things.
Jilly Cooper

 

[sam76]

Young peoples lack of respect for all things generally

A smack behind the ears usually sorted me and my mates out.

 

[theasxgorilla]

Right now my pet peev is impatient Swedes. They tailgate like mad on the motorways, they shove in front of you in a queue if you leave even the slightest gap, and they huff and puff and sigh if you keep them waiting for anything. I've never seen anything like it. New Yorkers or Londoners I can understand, but in little old Scania, please.

 

[wayneL]

Right now my pet peev is impatient Swedes. They tailgate like mad on the motorways, they shove in front of you in a queue if you leave even the slightest gap, and they huff and puff and sigh if you keep them waiting for anything. I've never seen anything like it. New Yorkers or Londoners I can understand, but in little old Scania, please.

That blows away my preconception of Swedes.

The Poms are incredibly polite drivers... and they just love a queue. They would quite happily and without complaint spend the rest of their lives in a queue. LOL

My big peeve with Poms is they are pigs with litter. The amount of rubbish that people drop all over the place is disgraceful. Such a shame in such an otherwise pretty country.

 

[sam76]

I agree with the driving, Wayne.

I love the flash of the lights to let you in/out etc....

I wish Aussies would do the same....

 

[dutchie]

Relating to phones -

1. Getting unsolicited calls (to sell you something or build up their data base)

2. Having to hold for a looooooooong time before you actually speak to a person. (IB)

3. Getting a foreigner at the other end with limited English and you need to ask them to repeat what they say and they don't understand you (call centres etc).

4. Getting bounced from one department to another, and having to wait for long periods between each of the transfers (Optus big time!).

5. Having to explain your problem/query to 10 people before you get the right one.

6. Phone companies requesting you to punch in your phone number and then when you get a real person the first thing they ask you for is your number! (Telstra)

Don't get me started.

Service from big companies is probably much worse in other countries but you really have to wonder sometimes whether a company you want to deal with wants your business with their pathetic attempts at (non)service.

Some companies should spend less on advertising to get new customers and spend more on servicing the ones they have already got!

Heres a list of my current companies (and why) - feel free to add your own experiences.

Optus - long waits/department shuffling/drop outs/non action on agreed matters/
Telstra - long waits to get right person.
InteractiveBrokers - looong waits for phone contact/non reply to emails


Thanks Joe for opportunity to get that off my chest

 

[Sprinter79]

I'm pretty sure the reason companies spend more money on attracting new customers rather than concentrating on their existing customers is that they get more money from new customers than keeping existing customers. They also count on the fact that people are generally lazy and don't really want to change companies unless they really really have to.

 

[Julia]

Dutchie, yes, yes, all you've listed is beyond irritating.
But even worse are the companies who use that recorded "voice" which asks you to say what you want. The computer behind the voice can never actually understand what you say, despite your enunciating clearly and using a single word or at the most two words. So then you are asked to repeat it.
Still doesn't comprehend. So then it asks you to "say it another way".
By this time most people's rage will have distorted their voices beyond being comprehensible! Now when I get one of these disembodied voices I just say nothing and eventually a real person comes on.

Re unsolicited calls. By registering with the Unwanted Calls Register you can eliminate these except for the odd charity. It's a great relief.

 

[nioka]

Dutchie, yes, yes, all you've listed is beyond irritating.
But even worse are the companies who use that recorded "voice" which asks you to say what you want. The computer behind the voice can never actually understand what you say, despite your enunciating clearly and using a single word or at the most two words. So then you are asked to repeat it.
Still doesn't comprehend. So then it asks you to "say it another way"

I just say "blah, blah, blah" and they put you through to a real human.

 

[doctorj]

My pet peeve is babies on long haul flights. Come on people! It's tough enough for the best of us to sit still in a noisy, confined space for hours at a time. How can anyone expect a baby that doesn't know what's going on to cope?

Get the Grandparents to come to you. Don't put hundreds of others through hours of pain just so you can show off the product of your loins.

The Poms are incredibly polite drivers... and they just love a queue. They would quite happily and without complaint spend the rest of their lives in a queue.

Come on Wayne! The Pom's aren't happy unless they're complaining about one thing or another. I am firmly of the belief though that if you get three people to stand in a line anywhere in the UK, before long you'll have many happy brits queuing behind you. They'd still be complaining though, it's just the way it is

The only thing it doesn't seem to apply to is the tube or other public transport. A Londoner can't wait more than 2 mins for the tube without moaning about how bad the system is and when it does finally arrive I swear someone must say "crouch, touch, pause, engage" just as the doors open.

they shove in front of you in a queue if you leave even the slightest gap

I've always thought of this as European queing - it's not your position in the line that matters but your proximity to the front. The Italians have it down to a fine art. A queue is somehow a semi-circle centered around whatever the objective is with people jumping in even the smallest gap to get a few inches closer. Patience and personal space are just foreign concepts.

 

[Happy]

I know several intelligent, well educated and very capable people who are woefully inept when it comes to putting words on paper.

Are they saying it is time to upgrade, update and make language easier to master?

Why do we need:

go, went, gone instead of go, goed ?


Looks strange, but once you get a grip, and all words do the same little thing, you can concentrate on what is more important, you could even have more time to learn another language?

 

[Happy]

Get realso what you can ONLY smoke in public in designated ares now?
its not illegal to smoke & walk down the street....

Im sick of the social engineers ring holes,no xmas we might upset other people,no this no that.

Tobacco is legal & highly taxed,which goes into consolidated revenue so dont go on about having to treat people with cancer either,treatment paid in full....tb

What about rights of non-smokers?
Maybe we need new type of apartheid?

 

[Happy]

PP: Soccer, yes soccer. There is no way I'm calling it football. Anyway, the reason it sh!ts me is that they're always falling down, faking, whinging, and the worst thing is that whenever there's a free kick, they take it 5m forward of the point where the free was awarded!!!! And don't get me started about the throw ins...

Funny, calling football games that you hardly ever kick it and socker that you almost all the time kick it.

 

[tigerboi]

As ive already pointed out,its a legal substance....

non smokers can suit themselves,simple as...

not illegal to walk the street smoking,i know all the wowsers would like it to be but until its an offence to do so,non smokers can go to hell..

dont forget non smokers drive cars that pollute the atmosphere,you know the go greenhouse,global dribble etc...

If non smokers give up polluting(hypocrites...same deal as smokers who pollute...tb)

Did you know that during the boxer rebellion in china,smokers where executed..why dont we do that??? lets start with the wowsers,social engineers of this country who are destroying the australian culture,
you all know who they are,the clover (no more xmas decorations we might offend someone)moores of the world,hey you & other non smokers go for your life non smoke all you want,i dont blow smoke in anyones face,i smoke in the places thats allowed,once again its a legal product....tb

Put your $100 up if you like just like julia...

 

[cuttlefish]

My pet peeve is babies on long haul flights. Come on people! It's tough enough for the best of us to sit still in a noisy, confined space for hours at a time. How can anyone expect a baby that doesn't know what's going on to cope?

Get the Grandparents to come to you. Don't put hundreds of others through hours of pain just so you can show off the product of your loins.

This used to one of my pet peeve's as well ... until I became a parent ... you think its bad sitting next to it all, try being the actual parent trying to deal with it.

(and parents like having holidays too, and not all elderly relatives are capable of long flights.)

 

[Prospector]

But even worse are the companies who use that recorded "voice" which asks you to say what you want. The computer behind the voice can never actually understand what you say, despite your enunciating clearly and using a single word or at the most two words. So then you are asked to repeat it.
Still doesn't comprehend. So then it asks you to "say it another way".
By this time most people's rage will have distorted their voices beyond being comprehensible! .

After a few attemtps at trying to make 'the machine' understand what I wanted, I used a nasty word and immediately got a human on the other end!

Recently my son took a call where we had 'won' a holiday; except my son decided to have some fun with the caller. The caller hung up, then rang back to complain that my son had 'messed with his mind'. So I got the chance to hang up on him too!

Another time, we were rung about buying something - cant remember what now. So my son went into Biblical mode, quoting the bible and going off completely in a tangent. Held them on the phone for 10 minutes. And at the very end, said 'God Bless' and hung up. Maybe it was for alcohol?

Peeves - "tributes are pouring in" when someone had died. Where do they pour to?

When something happens to an individual, unless high profile, we never hear about it, obviously. When the same thing happens, to a big group of people, then they are given all sorts of entitlements, benefits etc etc. eg - people are being made redundant all the time, not much of a ripple, certainly no public acknowledgement of their situation; the Mitsubishi people are now being redundant and all manner of public and private funds have been thrown at them, as well as the media voice of public sympathy. Sam Newman was the first man to get prostate cancer.

Soccer players, when injured, carrying on like they have been pole-axed.

Alcohol companies sponsoring car races.

People not understanding that sometimes parents with babies have to travel The peeve is parents who couldn't give a toss whether the baby is bothering others; the ones who deserve sympathy are those trying to stop the baby crying.

Having to go through all kinds of questions when you need to buy Sudafed when you feel like absolute C$#p, just because some idiots use it to make illicit drugs (my whinge today!)

Politicians who refuse to answer a direct question and think we won't notice

Sportspeople and celebrities who think they are above the law; they break the law and then apologise for things that even Joe Blow knows are very wrong.

Um, just a start.....

 

[Happy]

dont forget non smokers drive cars that pollute the atmosphere,you know the go greenhouse,global dribble etc...

If non smokers give up polluting(hypocrites...same deal as smokers who pollute...tb)

Non-smokers fart too, but driving cars and everything else is separate issue.

I couldn't go to pub, but wheels are turning my way now, so no need for bets.

 

[wayneL]

Come on Wayne! The Pom's aren't happy unless they're complaining about one thing or another. I am firmly of the belief though that if you get three people to stand in a line anywhere in the UK, before long you'll have many happy brits queuing behind you. They'd still be complaining though, it's just the way it is

ROFL Tooooooooo true Doc. The Poms have the audacity to complain about driving standards here. Missus and I just shake our heads and giggle and mumble something like "you know not what you say".

You can't stand at a corner for more than two seconds before some driver stops and insists (via a quick flash of the headlights) that you must cross the road before could possibly continue on.

On queues. Ive seen queues of cars waiting patiently behind somebody who's clearly parked on the side of the road... and hilariously, a queue of cars behind a car broken down at a roundabout with AA (equivalent of RAC) in attendance hazard lights flashing etc. True story! Missus and I had the giggles for hours LOL.

 

[bunyip]

Yes, of course it's apt. I'm just pleading for a bit of variety in journalism.
These people are supposed to be wordsmiths. My objection is that every one of them appears to be too lazy to think of some synonym for these oh so oft used words.

Wayne earlier commented on the repetitive use of 'poignant' when Diana died.
I'm on about the same sort of thing.

You - being the crack wordster (is that a word?) you are, could undoubtedly come up with some pretty good alternatives to "flamboyant entrepreneur", I'm sure.

A 'crack wordster' eh Julia? Not so sure about that...but you did manage to put a grin on my face!
Yes, I guess I could come up something better if I put my mind to it, but I doubt I could match Wayne's superlative selection of dynamically descriptive adjectives to flatter the flamboyant entrepreneur.