5 Things That Really Irk Me: Singing Retail Clerks, Socks With Sandals, Escalators, and More

As a crotchety old man in the making, there are many things I out there that annoy me: politicians, telemarketing, people who drive too slow or too fast. The list goes on. But those things are obvious; everyone hates politicians and bad drivers.

The following list, however, features some of those things that maybe go unnoticed or are forgotten, but  still have a way of settling just underneath my epidermis, and probably yours too, if you’re normal like me:

Hip retail clerks who insist on singing in the store. That skinny hipster with the spiky hair, thin beard, tight reddish jeans, and plaid shirt is supposed to be folding the clothes in the dressing room, or getting a pair of size 12s from the back. Instead, he’s crooning in an annoyingly airy falsetto along with some neo-soul song playing over the store’s stereo system as if the store is his stage and the merchandise is his audience.

People who drag their stuff around behind them in wheeled pieces of luggage. Did you really need to pack so much stuff that you’re unable to carry it like a normal person? It’s bad enough that you exist in the space already granted to you by God and nature; now you want the three feet or so behind you, too, all because you’re too lazy to pick up your bag and carry it at your side. I think it would even make more sense to push the thing out in front of you – at least that way you’d be able to see where you’re wielding that thing! And you gotta love when they decide to release or retract the handle – at the bottom or top of an escalator or stair case – right in front of you. Get a clue, and out of my way!

People who whistle their esses. I don’t know what they’re doing differently than the rest of us to form their “S” sounds, but it’s annoying! Maybe they need to their mouths just a bit more, or open them. Or, try moving your tongue away from your bottom lip, or purse your lips a bit less. Whatever it takes! Just please stop whistling every time you pronounce an “S” sound. It’s like you’re calling your dog 50 times during our conversation, or like a stuttering tea kettle that never quite boils! Seriously (that’s not a good word for you, by the way), I find it distracting and impossible to pay attention to what you’re saying. Here are some other words I think you should stay away from until you figure this out.

Succinct, success, sauces, saucy, Sausalito (in fact, never go there), San Francisco (don’t even try spelling that), recess, abscess, sausages, Caesarian, feces, isthmus, secede, sustain, tresses, trespasses, Mississippi, resonance, resistance, persistence

There’s plenty of other ones, and keep away from pluralizing anything!

Socks With Sandals. Thanks Sudoku-playing dude on the train this morning for reminding me of one of great pet peeves. I almost forgot about this one, but I happened to look down and saw those cotton-covered toesies poking out of the sandals’ front holes. But please remember this simple rule next time you decide to violate this simple rule of fashion:

If it’s chilly enough for socks, it’s too cool for sandals.

Sandal season is officially over at that point! It makes sense, doesn’t it?

Listen, if you have some funky foot ailment that precludes you from exposing them in public, we all thank you for using discretion. But sandals over white tube socks do not a fashion statement make. And any….shoe would be better in that situation.

Escalators. For the majority of people I see using escalators, it’s simply out of pure laziness. Most people who use them are young enough, fast enough, and mobile enough to take the staircase. There’s no evidence of time-saving. In fact, I’m sure it can actually take longer, depending on the circumstances, like when that jerk stands in the “left lane” (the escalator passing lane) just so he can talk to his buddy, rather than move over to the right. My real problem with escalators, especially when ascending, is that you’re way too close to parts of people that we spend our whole lives trying to avoid. Who knows what smoky, gaseous emission is about to emanate from the ass in front of you, which just happens to be perfectly lined up with your nose. I don’t take that chance.

Don't Be That Dude: You Put a Calvin Peeing Decal on Your Car?!

Oh my God, dude!

I thought that was your car the other day, but I said to myself, "Even that dude would never be so corny."

Alas, you are. Why did you do it, dude?

Why did you put that stupid decal on your car that shows an evil Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes on your car? It just doesn't mesh with the whole mini-van, two-kids-and-a-wife, picket fence routine.

The worst part is where you placed it. It looks like Evil Calvin is peeing on the similarly corny white stick figures that are supposed to represent you, your wife, your two kids, and the dog. What is wrong with you?

You didn't realize that? Well, guess what? Your wife did.

What's next?

The bull balls under the rear of the car? Or how about those reflective naked women stickers?

Anyway, I'm very surprised at you, dude!

That's just not you! Do you desire to be some musclebound, meathead, Guido who drives around cutting people off, giving them the finger, and spreading ill to your fellow man? In a mini-van?

Hey, look. I'm not saying you gotta put on the bumper sticker that spells out "COEXIST" in various religious symbols. But this Evil Calvin thing has got to go. It's not you. You were never that little mischievous kid who wreaked havoc on the neighborhood. And, sad to say, you never will be.

So, take it off dude.

And, while your at it, get rid of that sticker that says, "My kid beat up your honor student." Just because your kids aren't bright doesn't mean parents shouldn't be proud of what their kids have achieved.

Don't be that dude.

No Good Excuse for Long Island Rail Road

The customers are onto you, Long Island Rail Road (LIRR). Switching problems, lightning strikes, track fatalities, slippery track conditions, signal failures, police investigations — these are just some of excuses you pawn off on us as reasons for late or cancelled trains.

But as far as excuses go, they’ve become tired and lame.

If you’re going to keep us locked up in one of your frozen, stinky cars for four hours or more during a snowstorm, or turn us into crispy hot dogs on the Jamaica station platform as we wait for phantom trains, then we deserve better. We want to be entertained.

This is a more sophisticated, more jaded society Helena Williams, and we will not be treated like children. Don’t pander to us with these lame reasons for the failure of you or your equipment. Give us what we want!

I mean, I was once trapped inside a train sitting at the Penn Station platform, while we waited for a late conductor. No one ever said word, until we started moving, and they said there had been some “confusion.” Oh, truer words were never uttered from the LIRR.

But there is hope.

What the Long Island Rail Road needs is to establish a Department of Excuses. It could sort of be a covert arm of the current, useless marketing department.

Think of it. You could bring in some of the greatest minds we have from sales, advertising, marketing, politics, and the legal profession, and you’ll have yourself one heck of an excuse-creating machine.

You see, you guys have it all wrong. The trick is not less communication when something goes wrong. You have to give the public — many of whom happen to be your customers, not sure if you know that — what we want to hear, and in huge, heaping, triple-shot-sized doses.

We don’t want reality; just look at what’s on TV. No, we want to be entertained, even when our train is going to be two hours late, and we have to shell out $75 to ride in the back seat of a cab driven by a psycho muttering about terrorists.

So, for once give us what we expect. Give us the best damned excuses you can think of, and then beat us over the head with them.

Once this program becomes a success at the LIRR, and I know it will, you’ll have the perfect “excuse” to raise the fares again. The great part is, none of the commuters will complain, because we’ll be magically quelled by some grand excuse. It’s a win-win really. And then you can roll it out to the rest of the MTA, or even franchise it to other companies.

I mean, Verizon has been telling me for 4 years that my landline keeps going out because the copper cable is susceptible to the rain. How lame is that?! They can do better, and so can you.

Let’s start right here, and right now, LIRR.

Hey everybody on Facebook! Guess What? I’m at the Shake Shack!

So, I finally made it to the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park yesterday, with a bunch of friends from work.

It was OK, we left work early enough to avoid the crazy lines. The food did not live up to the hype, but how could it? The burger was fair. The shake, in all its sugary shakiness, was superb, however.

Anyway, when I got back to work and checked my e-mail, I noticed one from Facebook:

XXX tagged you at Shake Shack, Madison Square Park

(the names have been removed to protect the guilty).

Sure enough, the link took me to a little page on Facebook in which everyone who was at lunch was tagged.

Now, it’s really no big deal. I wasn’t trying to hide the fact that I was scarfing down tons of calories, sugar, cholesterol, and fat during lunch. I am dreading having to answer questions from my relatives and friends…”Ohhhhhh, you went to the Shake Shack? How was it? Was it good? I heard it’s good. Are you coming over this weekend?”

I hope this breaking news does not go viral, but I’m sure it will. I mean, who will not be interested in the fact that six co-workers went to the Shake Shack for lunch on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon? I didn’t see anyone else there who fit that profile, so I could see how important it was to post.

Is this really what people do with their smartphones, and Facebook, and all the other groundbreaking technologies that have been invented over the past decade? The hell with curing cancer, feeding the world’s homeless, or improving nutrition choices; I want people to know where I am and who I’m with. So worried are we about the nanny state, but we’re creating it for ourselves.

I shutter, just a bit, when I think about it. Maybe I’m just easing into the role of crotchety old man. Sounds good. Give me a porch, a swing, and a rum and coke!

The Mosquito: One Boy’s Losing Battle

My previous post got me thinking about how much I really despise mosquitoes.

A Hatred I Need
I’ve hated the tiny, bloodsucking predators since I was a little kid growing up in the humid, hot, marshy south shore of Long Island.

I remember doing battle with these parasites almost nightly as summertime established itself in late May through the final days of September. Go out after 6:00 p.m. and you risked becoming a universal blood donor to every mosquito within a 10-radius. Your ankles looked like a red, skin-covered mountain range and the itching could drive you to check yourself in at Bellevue Psychiatric.

My mom always told me I was just sweeter than everybody else, but moms are biased.

Let the Buzzing Begin
And just try to go to sleep at night. As soon as the lights went out, and my head hit the pillow, the buzzing began. Like a dentist’s drill in my ear, the mosquitoes would attack, relying on their keen sense of CO2 emissions, and my inability as a human to function at all in the dark.

A slap to side of my head, hoping to trap them inside my ear. Ha! That’ll show em! And then a slap to the other side. Was that the same mosquito, or are there more than one, I’d wonder. I’d itch all over, convinced that there were scores of mosquitoes plunging their malaria-laced sabres into my young, delicate skin. I’d begin kicking at the covers, as if I were drowning in a see of 200-thread-count cotton.

A Desperate, Foolish Attack
Finally, I’d get the courage to leave the bed. I needed to attack, so I’d stumble to the light switch, flick it on, roll up a magazine, and begin the hunt. They were nearly impossible to track down, crafty little bastards, but after a while I’d become somewhat of expert mosquito hunter. Inside a lampshade, out of reach on the ceiling, motionless and camouflaged on a poster or painting — like I said, crafty.

When I’d finally locate one, I’d creep on it, covert and slow. Gripping the magazine, I took aim and prepared to strike…Thwap! But the S.O.B. would inevitably dodge the fire. I’d return, dejected, to my foxhole bed, covers pulled up over my head and pillow over that.

This process would typically repeat several times before I’d fall asleep. In reality, I was only relinquishing my body to their sick mosquito science experiments.

Can’t We Just Eradicate Them?
I’d always figured that, as annoying and even deadly mosquitoes can be, they serve some small but important purpose in the global ecosystem. Turns out, that may not be so, as this article from Nature.com points out: “…In many cases, scientists acknowledge that the ecological scar left by a missing mosquito would heal quickly as the niche was filled by other organisms. Life would continue as before — or even better.”

To(o) Many Words. Really

 A couple of weeks ago I posted my final original writing post to my Tumblr account. Not by design, or with any forethought, but it became my last notwithstanding.

It all happened because of "To Many Words." Three grammatically incorrect words meant to critique a post I had written about the abuse of the acronym LOL.

The post topped out at 333 words, including the 5-word title -- not terribly long in the old-school world of publishing from whence I have come. So I asked a Tumblr friend of fine, "What gives?"

"Tumblr as a whole is supposed to be more visual," she says. Oh, now she tells me.

To be serious, that kind of confirmed what I had been sensing about Tumblr for some while. I've been pouring my editorial heart out on Tumblr and no one is reading. Great! Well, at least there's a reason. So I switched it up and made Tumblr a photo posting spot.

So, hopefully the "to many words criticism was just from someone trying to clue me on the fact that Tumblr readers aren't really feeling the "longwinded" posts.

What I dread about "to many words," however, is if this is indicative of some greater loathing toward reading by a society more accustomed to 144-character Tweets and staccato, fragment-sentence Facebook status updates.

Really no way to be sure. And if even if that is happening, who's to say whether it's a good or bad shift.

But maybe, just maybe, if people did read more, they would know the difference between "to" and "too" and even "two.

Just my (too) cents.

Shocking Study Finds Americans Love Christmas, and Other Holidays Too

Wow! I never would've guessed this in a million years, so let's all be grateful that Gallup research can finally confirm:

Americans love Christmas Day.

I was listening to NPR last night and heard Gallup's Frank Newport chatting it up with host Sarah Gardner about this groundbreaking study. Gallup asked Americans: "What are the happiest days of the year?" Newport told Gardner.

He went on to explain that not only was Christmas Day the happiest day of 2011; the holiday has ranked number one since Gallup has been conducting this important research. And the surprises don't stop there: Thanksgiving Day and Easter Sunday ranked second and third, and July 4th and New Year's Day tied for fourth place.

It's no wonder that all of our fave holidays involve either stuffing one's face, gorging on sweets, getting and giving gifts we can't afford, blowing things up, drinking heavily, or some combination thereof.

The kicker was when Gardner said that her happiest day of the year is "the first day of vacation." Newport retorted, "Vacations, clearly based on our data, are something people really enjoy. That comes under the category of what we pollsters call a 'duh finding.'"

Seems like this whole study could be placed under that category, no?

Keep up the hard-hitting research Gallup. We need to know, the things we already know.

How Are You? How Are You?

Hey, I just asked you how you were doing. And your answer: "How are you?"

You answered my question with another question, the same question. Did you not hear me, soldier! I said, "How are you?"

Maybe you were about to ask me, just before I asked you. But I asked you first, so now it's time to shift the gears of your brain in a new direction and come up with an acceptable response.

"Good." "Fine." "Beautiful." "Amazing." "Crappy." "Horrible." Any of these would've fit the bill. And, if you wanted to ask me a question, here's one: "How Am I What?" It's a bit sarcastic, but it would do.

Now, by returning my question back over the net to me with the same question, we're caught in an endless volley of "How are you." Way to go, guy! Now, my response can set off the conversation in a thousand different directions. I didn't want that responsibility.

I just wanted to know: "How are you?"

An Appointment, Not Destiny

Appointments, these days, seem to be exercises in theory; like, “…if we hadn’t scheduled all of these other people at the same time we told you to come in, we could’ve honored your appointment.”

No bigger perpetrator exists than the medical professional. Doctors overbook and cross-book patience to maximize revenue, all with the arrogance of knowing that we need them; so we wait, and if we don’t like it, we can leave.

At a recent 5:00 p.m. apointment with an eye doctor, for which I showed up 10 minutes early to complete the annoying paperwork, I didn’t get called in until about 50 minutes later. Now, by medical standards, that’s not bad. But the exam literally lasted 15 minutes. A puff of air, an eye chart, and I was done. So for every minute of that short exam, I had to wait three. Something seems wrong there.

Rental car companies and hotels often commit similar abuses, only they distort the meaning of the word reservation. Haven’t you ever shown up at the airport car rental desk, only to be directed to a competitor because they didn’t have any cars left? Huh? I thought I made a reservation, as in, I reserved a car from you?

And look at what the Long Island Rail Road does to the word schedule. At my connection in Jamaica, NY, the 8:25 a.m. to Penn Station arrives like clockwork, consistently 3 minutes later than the 8:28 a.m., which has already left.

My brain hurts from trying to wrap my head around all these numbers.

I understand. Things come up, and as a member of the public that is being served, I am totally OK with this and am prepared for it. But this shouldn’t be how businesses operate.

Why are we so willing to put up with this behavior?

Lost in Transition

Remember that eye doctor appointment I mentioned in the “Appointment Not Destiny” article? It was all with the intention of replacing my existing, perfectly good pair with something more like what the hipsters are wearing: you know, those big, black, thick-framed numbers that look curiously similar to what my grandfather used to whip out in the 1970s to read the paper. Just another gross case of the Fashion Burrito del Grande repeating and eating itself, I guess. But I do digress!

Practicing efficient time management, my wife and I were able to narrow the selection down to about three frame styles, and by the time the associate came over to assist, we had basically figured out which one we wanted - a funky pair of specs under the Blue Moon label (BM1002 - couldn’t really find anything on the web about it). Thankfully, the associate agreed with our choice, and we sat down to discuss options - the first of which being that I wanted to be able to see. One of the options on the table: transition lenses.

Transitions, in case you don’t know, change from having no tint to practically a full sunglass tint in a matter of seconds when exposed to UV rays. Pretty cool, right? No need to purchase a separate pair of prescription shades, or get those tacky clip-ons. These babies are ready for action.

My only hesitation was cost, so I asked the associate to give me an estimate with and without. The price was pretty unbelievable through my health insurance, so I gave her the go-ahead. Bring it on, Sun! All in all, they’re a nifty piece of technology. In my car, I’m just some nerd with glasses; give me 30 seconds in the sun, and I am too cool for an iceberg!

There’s a problem, though. As fast as they are able to change, I find myself viewing life through a constant state of mid-transition. So, instead of either clear glass or black sunglass, I’m looking out a world that has a purple hue. Violet you’re turning violet, Violet! And, instead of Top Gun, fighter piolet rugged coolness, I kind of have this permanent raccoon look around my eyes. I look like like I just got beat up by Kimbo Slice in some backyard YouTube video.

Plus, I don’t think they’re the best for photography. They kind of give you a false sense of color and light.
But I’m sticking with my transitions. They look sharp, and will help my eyes in the long run. And, when all is said and done, life is change, isn’t it?