Categories
Lunchtime Poll

LTP: 10/11

My dude and I have been gleefully reading through Tim Gunn’s book Gunn’s Golden Rules: Life’s Little Lessons for Making It Work together in the evenings, and besides being deliciously catty, it’s also a nicely updated general guide to decent manners in a contemporary world. He swears you can wear white after Labor Day and doesn’t give a rat’s ass if you chew gum in church.

But Gunn Almighty does have a few rules about treating people decently, and they got me thinking. What is the one Thou Shalt NOT you absolutely can’t abide others breaking around you? There are, admittedly, a lot of small trespasses that ruffle my feathers, but the one that makes me absolutely boil is when people cut in line or refuse to acknowledge that there even IS a line. What about you?

By Meghan Young Krogh

Meghan had a number of quality writing mentors over the course of her education, which just goes to show that you can't blame the teacher for the way the student turns out. Team Oxford Comma represent.

11 replies on “LTP: 10/11”

Loud chewing/chewing with the mouth open. My boyfriend is so guilty of this. I finally started saying something, and now I just kind of look at him when it’s getting on my nerves, and he apologizes and chews more quietly for a minute and then it’s back to CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP SMACK SWALLOW CHOMP. I think it happens when he isn’t paying attention. I never notice it when we’re in public, maybe because of the noise, but when we’re eating on the couch it’s all I can do not to stuff my face into a pillow and scream.

I also get irate in lines, especially with cutters but also with the people I call budgers, the ones behind you who inch up closer and closer, as if that’s going to make the line move any faster. I get all antsy and just want to shout, “STOP BUDGING ME!!!” I don’t because I’m not a small child, but oh how I wish I could.

You know, the Swedes really have it right. I lived in Uppsala for a semester, and wherever I went where there might have been a line in the US, you’d just take a number. Everybody waited for their turn to be called, there was no cutting or budging or anything, everything was orderly and fair. We need to get more number-taking around these parts at places other than the DMV and the meat counter.

Oh man, that continual line creep drives me up the wall and makes me really antsy too!  I tersely ask the person to back off if I’m feeling really closed in, but otherwise it’s up to stinkeye and judicious purse/buggy/other accoutrements placement to define my personal space bubble (which, for the record, is not huge, but a surprisingly large contingent of people seem to not realize [or care?] that such a thing exists).

The take-a-number method totally needs to catch on here.

When people don’t sign off on the phone – especially for business calls. Don’t just hang up. Say “thank you” or “goodbye.”

I’m also that jerk who hates when people who work directly with the public face to face are chewing gum. It’s gross. I don’t want to hear it, smell it, or God forbid, have to see it in someone’s mouth! Arrrgh!

I am on the phone all day at work, and my least favorite is when someone doesn’t identify themselves properly. It’s like… you know how bad your switchboard is! I am probably in the wrong department, and could have known that if you’d said what department it is, or said “This is Radiology” or something. (note: saying “Radiology, Tanya” does not help because 99% of the time, the first thing you say when you pick up a phone is cut off. I don’t know if this is your phone or because you are talking before the phone is actually near your face. All I know is that I have no idea who you are or what department I’m in.)

I feel kind of blarg about it because I’m calling hospitals, and they are busy, but… ultimately it would save time, because the number of misdirected calls that an average hospital gets in a day is astounding.

Also, I’m never actually calling for the radiology department, but end up talking to them several times a day.

Leave a Reply