Your pet peeve?

[David Weaver]

- "friends" who think it's OK to hit up people with MLM schemes or "parties" (like candles, kitchenware, etc...). What's even more frustrating is when someone gives you a pitch for something and acts like "oh oh, i just ran into this product". I despise deceptive sales tactics in general. If I have a friend or relative who goes into some random discussion and brings up an MLM or pyramid type herbalife or candle party thing, they are out. Period. Forever.

- most car salespeople. I am buying a car, not entering a contest. I have numbers in mind, questions are yes or no. I don't want to talk about your kids or my kids, and if you switch the subject when I ask a question or answer a different question, one warning, second one, I walk. Lots of people sell cars. (I call ahead now and always notify the sales person I have two sets of keys and they can mail the first set back if they want to play the game where they hold the keys for a long time after the test drive and "don't know where they are, the sales manager has them, and we'll get them back once he's not busy").

- people who claim they are open minded (and make an enormous deal about how open minded they are), as long as your opinion is identical to theirs. If you're closed minded about something, don't be afraid to admit it and don't expect me to be entertained while you argue with me to prove that you're open minded. I don't care.

- people who are terminally late. If you're 15 minutes late the first time, leave 15 minutes earlier next time. It's not that hard, and it's disrespectful, especially if a group of people is waiting for you.

[David Weaver]

Oh yeah, and the loose loud kids at restaurants. I have a small child. She's loud, she likes to get loose and run around and she is afraid of *nothing*. when we're in a restaurant, I keep her at arm's length and keep her quiet. If it ruins my dinner to keep tabs on her, at least it doesn't dinner for 20 other people.

OH, add another one - parents of bad/exceptionally rude kids who either deny that such a problem exists with their kids, or blames everything their kid gets involved in on someone else. It might be circumstance the first or second time. But if you're kid is in constant trouble, the odds are against you.

[Belinda Barfield]

Let's talk about horrible restaurant behavior. LOL...this should be fun. As a rule, my wife and I don't go out to eat anymore, but some time ago we were both very busy and would go out to eat almost every day. We saw every manner of bad behavior I could ever care to see.

And NO, I'm not still working on that. I'm not digging a hole through my meal, repaving my steak, or even painting my vegetables. I don't "work" on my food. If you would pay attention, I will let you know when I'm done by the correct placement of my silverware. Of course, you guys are training an entire generation to NOT know how to communicate efficiently with their waiters because regardless of how I place my silverware, you come over to me and ask, "Are you still working on that?", to which I respond "No" and you immediately take my silverware off the plate and put it back down on the table, dirtying the table and dirtying my silverware.

And for all you Chinese/Mexican/Thai (especially Thai) restaurants: learn what extra spicy means. Don't give me a scale from one to five when you can't deliver a five (you know, the one with the red letters and a picture of the devil himself in flames?). Seriously....5 should scorch my mouth. I know the game so I order a 6. Sometimes I tell you that if it doesn't make me cry, I won't be happy. What do you bring me? I dunno...when my wife takes a big mouthful and says, "tastes mild to me", we have a serious problem. Cut the nonsense. If you can't do it, say so. It's things like this that you get two chances to get right, and then I never go back.

I don't care if you're wearing shorts, a silly hat and speak with a fake Australian accent - don't ever schooch my wife over and sit down at our booth while taking our order. Yes, that seriously happened to me and I was not amused.

Good heavens, it's so nice to walk into the handful of restaurants we still go to, and just have a decent, quiet meal. No talking moose. No bells ringing when someone orders fajitas. No items with the words Poppin', Bloomin', Flamin' or Sizzlin' in the name. A nice polite waiter or waitress. The food shows up. There's a little something wrong here and there. Whatever. It's all pleasant and there's no reason to say anything. Every now and then, someone refills my wine. We pay and dat's dat. This is sooooo much less work and aggravation for everyone involved. I'm not surprised that the ones we tend to go to have been around for many years, and the aggravating ones (often chains) seem to come and go every couple of years.

Thanks for the laughs, John. I don't work on my meals either. That schooch over so I can sit with you thing irritates the heck out of me as well.

Televisions in eating establishments . . . I still don't understand why that is the norm.

Peeve - people who sit at the bar and talk to everyone they know on their cell.

[Bill Edwards(2)]

I don't care if you're wearing shorts, a silly hat and speak with a fake Australian accent - don't ever schooch my wife over and sit down at our booth while taking our order. Yes, that seriously happened to me and I was not amused.

That didn't happen to anybody else that went to the Outback!

I think they've pretty much quit that practice since they found out

how uptight most of America is.

[John Hart]

I hate people who, when you are frying a pan full of bacon in your pajamas, they sneak up behind you and grab the pan and dump the hot grease all over you....then they laugh!!!

That just ticks me off

[Belinda Barfield]

That didn't happen to anybody else that went to the Outback!

I think they've pretty much quit that practice since they found out

how uptight most of America is.

Nope, they still do it here. I eat there at least once a week.

I hate people who, when you are frying a pan full of bacon in your pajamas, they sneak up behind you and grab the pan and dump the hot grease all over you....then they laugh!!!

That just ticks me off

Well I think you speak for all of us on this one John.

[Marty Paulus]

Let's talk about horrible restaurant behavior. LOL...this should be fun. As a rule, my wife and I don't go out to eat anymore, but some time ago we were both very busy and would go out to eat almost every day. We saw every manner of bad behavior I could ever care to see.

Waiters that bring everything out at the same time. No, I really don't want my bread, appetizer, salad and meal all at the same time. Yeah, I know you want your tip NOW. Go away and let me enjoy my meal. It may not be their fault the first or second time it happens. By the third time, they should know what the timing of the kitchen is and take steps to fix it. We now order our appetizer first, should we want one. When we're good and ready, we'll order a meal. Someone has to train these people. I know they're in business to make money. There are plenty of restaurants that treat their patrons well and still make money...maybe they should get into a different business if they can't cut it.

And NO, I'm not still working on that. I'm not digging a hole through my meal, repaving my steak, or even painting my vegetables. I don't "work" on my food. If you would pay attention, I will let you know when I'm done by the correct placement of my silverware. Of course, you guys are training an entire generation to NOT know how to communicate efficiently with their waiters because regardless of how I place my silverware, you come over to me and ask, "Are you still working on that?", to which I respond "No" and you immediately take my silverware off the plate and put it back down on the table, dirtying the table and dirtying my silverware.

I don't care if you don't write down my order. Really....do it however you have to. When it gets botched up and I send it back (not a big deal...mistakes happen) I expect someone back there to prepare the meal properly, not take a knife and scrape off the lettuce and tomato, as well as any sauce and other things that DO belong, and put a soggy, mushed up piece of bread back on my meal. *I* could have done that. What I can't do is re-prepare the bun properly so that it has all the good bits, and none of the bad bits. Get a new bun and get to work. Seriously, I don't want to be here all day sending food back, and you don't want to be serving me all day, so just take an extra 20 seconds and do it right, OK?

And for all you Chinese/Mexican/Thai (especially Thai) restaurants: learn what extra spicy means. Don't give me a scale from one to five when you can't deliver a five (you know, the one with the red letters and a picture of the devil himself in flames?). Seriously....5 should scorch my mouth. I know the game so I order a 6. Sometimes I tell you that if it doesn't make me cry, I won't be happy. What do you bring me? I dunno...when my wife takes a big mouthful and says, "tastes mild to me", we have a serious problem. Cut the nonsense. If you can't do it, say so. It's things like this that you get two chances to get right, and then I never go back.

I don't care if you're wearing shorts, a silly hat and speak with a fake Australian accent - don't ever schooch my wife over and sit down at our booth while taking our order. Yes, that seriously happened to me and I was not amused.

Good heavens, it's so nice to walk into the handful of restaurants we still go to, and just have a decent, quiet meal. No talking moose. No bells ringing when someone orders fajitas. No items with the words Poppin', Bloomin', Flamin' or Sizzlin' in the name. A nice polite waiter or waitress. The food shows up. There's a little something wrong here and there. Whatever. It's all pleasant and there's no reason to say anything. Every now and then, someone refills my wine. We pay and dat's dat. This is sooooo much less work and aggravation for everyone involved. I'm not surprised that the ones we tend to go to have been around for many years, and the aggravating ones (often chains) seem to come and go every couple of years.

When did people forget that how you place your silverware tells your server you are done eating? Most servers don't have a clue.

Seems as basic to me as someone actually counting change back to you correctly! I can count how often that happens to me in a year on one hand! Maybe I am getting old grouchy but really what are we teaching the next generation? We had some friends over yesterday that just finished with a Confirmation for their nephew. The topic of conversation for us was the kids lack of table manners. Not bad but none existant. The mothers excuse was 'we eat a lot of meals in the car due to the busy schedule of the kids sports so they don't get to use their manners often'. I am sorry folks but if you kids schedule is that busy then you have issues.

[David Hostetler]

If I respond honestly to this, they will either lock this thread, or lock me up, so I'll pass thank you very much...

[David Larsen]

People who leave a public gathering (church, movies, public meetings, etc) take one step outside the door and decide to have a long conversation with an old friend they haven't seen in a while. Meanwhile, no one else can get out the door.

Or the variation of this where the people are in the middle of an aisle at a shopping center.

[Dan Hintz]

John,

When SWMBO and I go somewhere, we order the appetizers and meal in the same spiel, but we also specify to hold out on putting in the dinner order until the appetizer comes out. This is usually enough time. We also have our favorite restaurants where the wait staff knows us, and we know them by name... poor service isn't rewarded, but great service is rewarded highly. It's like being on a short cruise... they know how to laugh and have a good time with us, while still managing to get us exactly what we want, even going so far as anticipating what we'll ask for next and having it ready.

Sometimes it pays to foster the right attitude in the waitstaff...

[Doug Shepard]

This one peeves me off once a week, usually multiple times on the same trip to the grocery store.
I really hate aisle-hogs. While searching shelves on one side of the aisle, they leave their cart parked on the opposite side of the aisle forcing everyone else to bottleneck through the narrow gap in the middle that they've left. Fer Godsake - pull yer carts over to the same side of the aisle that yer standing on ya morons.

[dave toney]

Acronyms.
The art of writing and spelling is disappearing.
Even in message boards like this, it is like trying to decipher a text message.
S P E L L I T O U T P L E A S E !

[Scott Shepherd]

People that go into fast food restaurants and think they are ordering from a 5 star establishment.

On the Menu :

Chicken Sandwich (comes with lettuce, tomato, something else) - $2.99

What's ordered? Chicken Sandwich with two top buns, no bottom bun wanted, put some cheese on it, then bacon, and can you cut that in half? Oh, and toast those two top buns lightly, but don't burn then, and can I get the tomato on the side, cut into 3 pieces?

Oh, and I want fries with that too, but I want my fries crispy.


Drives me insane!

I just got back from one of those trips. The special was "2 bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits for $3.00".

They wanted 2 bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits without any biscuit. Well then, it's NOT a bacon, egg, and cheese BISCUIT if you don't want the biscuit, is it? Is it really THAT hard to throw the biscuit in the trash if you don't want it?

[Kent A Bathurst]

1) people that get to the airport convenience store's cash register, after standing in line for 3 mintues to check out, with one bottle of water, two magazines, and a bag of trail mix, and then start to search for $$, to eventually find they don't have that much cash - including sorting through the coins, and their secret emergency cash hidey-holes they emptied 4 days earlier - and then dig out a credit card, and then put the card away, and put away the little bit of money they had found, and then file the receipt in some place they keep receipts, and then carefully put the wallet/purse away, and then carefullly put the magazines in a special magazine holding spot in a zipped-closed pocket on one of their bags, and ...............for cryin' out loud - did you not realize that you were going to have to pay for that stuff as you were pulling it off the shelves? Do you think our mission in life is to stand in line at airport convenience stores?

2) gentlemen that leave the men's room in the airport, and stop....right.....there....to fool around with their boarding pass, or whatever - blocking ingress and egress to one of the most critical functions provided by airports. Just bowl-em' over and say "pardon me" as you move down the concourse....These guys have close relatives that exit the escalator or moving sidewalk and stand...right....there... as they look at their boarding pass and look around to try and decipher the gate signs, while the nomadic hordes of Genghis Kahn are pouring off the escalator/moving sidewalk.

3) expensive crosscut handsaws that are not educated enough to follow the dad-gum straight line scored by the marking knife.

[Lori Kleinberg]

I also have too many peeves to list and couldn't properly describe then in a polite language, so I will sum it up by saying "The more people I meet the more I like animals (as in dogs, cats, horses, ferrets, etc, etc, etc)".