Things that should be minor irritants but really get your goat

Also, people who are too cheap or lazy to get babysitters and drag their offspring with them to inappropriate places, like a nice restaurant or an R rated movie. I really resent being subjected to screaming brats in such places.

Why do people do this? I've only noticed it recently and it's absolutely infuriating.

I am not kidding you, the cashier SPIT on this woman. I bust out laughing like there was no tomorrow. It was worth the inconvenience to see something that horrid.

this shouldn't even be a minor irritant it's so tiny but it duz bug me much = no space after the bracket or three dots eg i)like so…and so, when shd be (says my hypersensitivity), ii) like so… and so

"at this point in time" rather than "now" makes my skin crawl... or "at this particular point in time" for the truly irksome.

and newscasts that end with "...only time will tell."

This is hysterical. Actually, I think it's ok to use quotations marks if you're trying to imply the word is being used ironically... however, I hope that's not the case with your donut shop. I long ago gave up being annoyed at the use an apostrophe to signify plural, it's just done so often. Actually, I'm still annoyed at it.

When I first read that, I was like, "Why is Richard eating soap?" I need to go to the school for kids who don't read good.

I really hate people who clog up escalators! They are not rides! This is not Disneyworld! GET YOUR GROOVE ON AND MOVE IT BUDDY! Arrgh. The thing is, in NYC at least, escalators are all made wide enough so that one side is for lazy-arses and the handicapped so they don't have to walk, the other side is for walkers. There is enough room for two people per stair. And you always, always, always get some obnoxious teenage girl standing on the wrong side and going, "Nuh uh, I ain't movin' for NO ONE, ain't no one telling me where to stand" at the top of the longest escalator possible (for example, the E/F stop on Lexington by the Citicorp Center - Tracer, Jimmy the Mod, some NYCer back me up), and at rush hour no less. ARRRGH. I do not miss subways during rush hour.

I also hate the fact that Victoria's Secret's $300 pantyhose rips ten trillion times faster than the $4 kind I get at Duane Reade. I also hate the name "Duane Reade".

One of those minor things I despise, btw, is spitting.

The most irritating occurence of this was when I was trying to do a quick change at Warren Street. The down escalator to the Victoria line was entirely empty apart from a group of three girls half way down. So I ran down the escalator, three steps at a time, expecting them to clear out of the way when I reached them. They didn't. So I made various coughing noises whilst standing behind them and when this didn't work, asked them to move aside. The one on the left did so but only after a bit of fuss. As I finally made my way past her I overheard her say 'but I don't move aside for anyone. I'm from New York!'

And I insist apostrophe misuse is ABSOLUTELY NOT a *minor* irritant. Grrrr. Yes, perhaps it is just the language evolving and I should stop being oldfashioned and trying to impede progress, but I am a Luddite and I insist on being vastly annoyed by it. However, I'm currently on very thin ice as far as pedantry goes, I'm worried about whether that last sentence really needed a parenthetical pair of commas or whether just the latter would have been preferable. (I hate it when sentences only have one comma when I think they really do need either none or two, but this is one of those possible exceptions that worries me.)

But I must timidly mumble in defence of people not packing their bags quickly enough at the supermarket. I mean, I always try to start packing my stuff and pay promptly and finish packing and leave before the next person arrives, and while giving someone the right change is neat if you can do it promptly delaying huge queues to do so is bad (though actually last time I paid with the exact non-round amount at a supermarket the cashier was so confused by having to count it and not give me any change that it didn't help that I gave her the right money instantly), but it's not always possible, and I hate feeling like the entire queue wants me to die just because I still have three tins and a box of orange juice to go or because my purse has decided to ensnare all my paper money on its zip and refuse to let any money out. I suppose what I'm saying is that people who are making no effort to get out of your way are annoying, but don't glower too scarily at those of us who try not to inconvenience you but are being slightly inept. Sigh.

Besides those two things, women with hordes of kids really piss me off.

Oh, you know what else annoys me? York Peppermint Patties. BECAUSE I LOVE THEM MORE THAN I LOVE MY OWN LIFE. I am serious. I think I would face mortal danger for them. Like, throw a peppermint patty in front of an oncoming train and I'd go get it. What is in those things?

Having to endure overly loud cell phone conversations while waiting in line anywhere is really, really irksome.

And I just can't stand it when people eat on the phone. Some people are worse than others, though.

Just as irritating is that there's only a split second where you can express your disgust to them - too early and they say thankyou and you look like a misery guts, too late and they're long gone. A fine art, I'm sure you'll agree.

But on topic, I am really irked by a certain kind of newscaster-ese where they talk in this totally unnatural newsy way with all the same measured inflections, pauses, and emphases. *smack upside the head* (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, I'm looking at you.)

Of course, the major Tube-related irritant is someone trying to board a train before most/all of the alighting passengers have got off. The firm-but-fair shoulder barge is appropriate behaviour here.

Crowds of excitable Spanish adolescents at Oxford Circus are possibly the worst offenders, but they may not know the protocol (though it's really just Good Manners), so it's forgivable. For besuited Londoners at Moorgate during rush-hour it fucking isn't.

I recall once being falsely accused of this most heinous of public transport crimes, after being buffeted half-off a crammed Northern Line train at Bank, and attempting to hold onto my spot within the carriage by gripping the door frame. Of course to those folks exiting the train last, who hadn't seen me board at London Bridge, I just looked like a twat who was muscling their way on. Cue muttered abuse. Oh, the injustice.

Another blood-boiler: littering. Crisp packets, pizza boxes, takeaway remains, empty fag packets - find a fucking BIN or take your shit HOME with you, you SCUM.

"I thought she grabbed the guy by his neck and repeatedly rammed his head into a brick wall?"

"Oh, yes, but she did it because he kept pronouncing "ask" as 'axe.'"

In my experience, this is an afro-caribbean trait, making you a RACIALIST.

I mean, it's just not on. If try = attempt, then surely we don't say 'I'm going to attempt and do this' if we mean 'I'm going to attempt to do this', right?

Also, IN MY SCHOOL there was a concerted effort to stop lazy speakers saying 'tryna' by eradicating 'try and'. As in, 'I'm tryna get some sleep'.

She does tryna. I asked her to write out what she meant. Voila, try and.

'Try and' makes my skin crawl in an I-know-I'm-right kind of way.

My grammar is atrocious! Right up there with Scott F. Fitzgerald. No....or is it F. Scott Fitzgerald!

Oh o! Spagettios! I'm so stupuid!

*crosses arms, taps foot*

I hate being stopped and harrassed about whether I have a pass whenever I'm walking somewhere in the middle of the period at school. If I was going to walk OUT of school, I could do it WITH a pass, couldn't I? It's a pointless irksom policy.

Problem is those of us who are regular tube users (not me at the moment) know this so walk down the NO ENTRY tunnels as a shortcut - probably causing mucho congestion ourselves (Tottenham Court Road Northern Line / central line interchange is a perfect example of this).

I was going to say juggling, but that's a perfectly reasonable object of hatred.

I can't think of a way to use this turn of phrase, let alone a sentence in which it is unavoidable.

That's why I drink.

YES!

Examples:
- interrupting me when I am giving you directions or information
- leaving drawers and cupboards open
- not picking things up when you've knocked them over or dropped them
- bus drivers moaning that they don't want to take a tenner but not actually saying they won't

simon sebag montefiore is on my tv right now, and his mannerisms to the camera bring to mind nothing so much as chris morris presenting a frenzied day today nonsense

Nobody should tolerate an adult behaving like this to any age or level yet im to believe this ass is a noted success

So many things *sigh*