10 Things That Really Annoy Me

I've been trying to write a 'real' review for some time now, but I simply can't get my brain into gear for long enough to write more than a paragraph before it all starts sounding like nonsense, so instead I've decided to tell you about some of the things that annoy me (woohoo!). At least then it doesn't matter so much if it all sounds like nonsense, and I get to have a rant into the bargain! So here, in no particular order (you don't seriously expect me to put my annoyances into rank order!?!) are the top 10 things that really annoy me (or at least the top 10 that came to mind at the time of writing…):

1. Stupid comments from strangers. This includes:

-Strangers who pass me in the street and say "Cheer up love, it might never happen"

I'm sure I'm not the only person who finds this annoying, but when complete strangers come up to me and say this it really makes me question their intelligence.

Firstly, just because I'm not smiling doesn't mean I'm miserable, I mean if I walked around with a big grin on my face all the time people would think I was mad.

Secondly, if I was miserable, which they obviously think I am to say it to me in the first place, then chances are 'it' already has happened, so why on earth would anyone with half a brain say 'it might never happen'?

And thirdly, what is it about blokes (yes, it's always blokes) that makes them think it's OK to go up to a complete stranger and call her a miserable cow? Because that's effectually what they're saying, and probably the only reason they don't use those exact words is because they know they'd get a slap.

-People who know nothing about me telling me I'm too good to be working in a supermarket

Why am I too good to be working in a supermarket? What does that even mean? Too 'good'? In what way can you be too 'good' to work in a supermarket? (I know a lot of people who think they're 'above' working in a supermarket, but it doesn't really work the same when you're talking about someone else does it?) Other than what I look like, you know exactly one thing about me; that I work in a supermarket. So how on earth have you managed to come to the conclusion that I'm 'too good' to be working in a supermarket? It defies all logic.

Of course there's also the underlying implication that I'm in the sh*ttiest job ever and should be doing something 'better' with my life. Well actually I quite enjoy my job and I find it much more fulfilling doing a hard day/night of real graft than sitting on my arse behind a desk, which must be the most boring thing ever………… Where was I? Oh yes. I work in a supermarket because I choose to, not because I have to, so please don't patronise me.

2. Ignorance and Discrimination. This includes:

-Racism

There's just no need for it and I really don't understand it. I don't know, maybe it's because I grew up with people of different races that I'm not racist, maybe if I hadn't I would be just as ignorant as nearly everyone I know, but I doubt it.

I've seen racism work both ways. Where I grew up there was a large Pakistani population, and I had a lot of friends amongst them. I didn't see them as being any different from anyone else, they were just my friends. But then there were other kids (and a few adults) on my street who would shout abuse at them every time they saw them, and if I was with them I also got abuse shouted at me for being friends with them. Some of my white friends started being racist as they got a bit older, and I ended up falling out with a lot of them because of it, so in the end most of my friends were Pakistani.

But I also saw the flip side of the coin - When I was about 10 one lad from a Pakistani family who lived a few blocks down from me actually came and punched me, for seemingly no reason, whilst me and some other kids were out playing in the street. My dad went round to talk to his family, and it turned out he'd punched me just because I was white and I was playing with his sister. To be honest I'm not surprised some people react like that after suffering years of abuse from people who think they're somehow superior just because their skin's white.

Now I live in an area where there are very few people who aren't white, or Caucasian, as I believe is the 'politically correct' term. And I got the biggest shock of my life a while after I'd started working at Tesco. I worked with a bunch of very nice women all aged between 30 and 45, and two of them in particular, I honestly thought were the nicest people I'd ever met, the kind of people who'd never say anything nasty about anyone. So imagine my surprise when they all started slagging off 'Pakis' as they lovingly call them, going on and on about how they're dirty and smelly, and they should go back to their own country………………. I honestly just sat there completely gob-smacked at how these seemingly nice people could be so blatantly racist. I've never thought of them in the same way since. And a couple of them now look down their noses at me after I asked them if they'd ever actually met anyone from Pakistan or whether they just slagged them off because it's what all the cool kids are doing.

-Making fun of people with disabilities

This one really gets to me, I just don't understand how supposedly mature adults can think it's acceptable to make fun of people with disabilities. And I'm not talking about jokes about being a 'special' boy, I'm talking full on, nasty p*ss-taking, that quite frankly only serves to show how horrible, pathetic, and downright moronic the person doing the p*ss-taking is.

This is another one superbly demonstrated by the ladies at Tesco. There was a lovely old man who used to come in every couple of weeks and buy tea and biscuits. I recognised him as one of the residents of a care home that I passed on my way to work - some of the residents used to sit out in the garden and always said hello to me when I passed. I assumed this man had had a stroke or something similar as the way he walked seemed like he was partially paralysed down one side and his speech was slurred like my Granddad's had been after he had his stroke, but I could be very wrong. Anyway, he would come in every 2 weeks and ask someone where the biscuits were, and then the tea. And any of the staff who happened to be anywhere near would stand at the end of the aisle watching him and blatantly doing impressions and taking the p*ss out of him. It really made my blood boil and it was at times like this that I used to stand and wonder how it was that I was the most mature person there despite me being half most of their ages.

In short, making fun of the disabled is not big and it's not clever, it just makes you look like an immature prat.

-Being self-obsessed and ignorant of other people's feelings

This is one that can cover a wide range of people, but I'm talking here about a specific type of person. This is the girl/woman who's a size 6 or 8 depending on where she shops, who constantly whines about how fat she is (and somehow most people seem to miss the fact that it's a blatant attempt to get all the guys to flock round going 'oh you're not fat, you're gorgeous' etc. etc.), whilst surrounded by people who are bigger than her, and gives absolutely no thought to how that must be making her size 16 friends feel about themselves. I'm sorry but I do feel very strongly on this one - anyone who's that self-obsessed should be shot.

And before anyone says anything, I'm not talking here about people with eating disorders, I'm talking about the attention seekers who KNOW they're skinny and gorgeous, but just want everyone to say it (over and over and over…..).

-Brits abroad who refuse to learn another language

Now don't get me wrong, I think if you really don't want to learn another language that's up to you. Also, if you find languages too difficult, fair enough. But if you go to a foreign country you should expect there to be people there who don't speak English and you should not get annoyed at them and insist that they should 'learn bloody English'. The people who do this are usually the same people who will go on and on for hours about how foreigners visiting England should learn English, "and how dare they speak a different language in our country that I don't understand and they could be saying anything about me and I wouldn't know and it's just bloody ignorant", and so on and so forth. And somehow they fail to see the hypocrisy.

3. People making assumptions about me

When people see me with my sister, because she looks a lot like me, they automatically assume she's my daughter. She's 12, which would mean I'd have to have had her when I was 12, so you can imagine the comments and dirty looks I get from people (though they're nowhere near as bad now as they were when I used to take her out when I was still a child myself!). Now, lots of brothers and sisters look alike, even cousins and distant relatives can bear striking resemblances to one another, so why, oh why, would you immediately jump to the conclusion that she's my daughter? And of course once that conclusion's been jumped to it's closely followed by the assumption that I was some kind of teenage hell-raiser who must have had useless parents to have gone so off the rails.

I'm naturally blonde, so obviously there are a lot of people who assume I'm stupid anyway, but the fact that I'm also young and female really doesn't help my cause any. The whole young blonde female thing inevitably leads to being spoken to like a child by one half of society, and ignored by the other half because they assume that your opinions/ideas/thoughts are of no value. It's funny how almost all the people who treat me like I'm stupid are of such questionable intelligence that using words like 'obtrusive' confuses the hell out of them.

4. People trying to make me drink when I don't want to

I'm not a tee-totaller, but I very rarely drink. I went through a phase a few years ago like I think most of us do where I went out and drunk way more than I should have done (mainly because it takes A LOT to get me drunk, so my mates would always buy me 2 of whatever they were having in an effort to keep me on a level with them - it never worked, I was still always the sober one at the end of the night pulling everyone out of the middle of the road, holding them up, getting them into taxi's etc.), but I quickly realised that drinking alcohol is essentially pointless and a ridiculous waste of money. Yes, I'll have a couple of vodka 'n' cokes on a night out, but I have absolutely no desire to drink too much and throw up/pass out/sleep with a stranger/get arrested/have my stomach pumped/cause a riot, thank you.

So why is it that some people just will not accept that you don't want a drink?
There are the ones who'll buy you one anyway and then act all offended when you refuse to drink it and say "well I've paid for it now, you have to drink it" - erm, no, moron, you knew I didn't want a drink, the fact that you bought me one anyway is really not my problem.
Then there are the ones who'll say something along the lines of 'Ooh, you're not drinking? You saddo'. They call you boring - actually I don't need drink to give me a personality, I have one all of my own. They make out you're not 'cool' - well let's see how cool you look staggering out of the club and falling down the steps with your knickers round your ankles at chucking out time. Do you really think all this is going to persuade me to drink when I don't want to?

But the absolute worst of the worst on this subject in my opinion, is those people (so called friends) who know full well you're on medication which can not be mixed with alcohol, and they still try to make you drink. What's that all about? If I was severely allergic to alcohol these people would still try to make me drink it. WHY? What damage is me not drinking doing to you?

5. Parents swearing at their young children

This is one thing that I find absolutely disgusting. Far too often I see parents screaming obscenities at children in pushchairs, and I really have to bite my tongue to stop myself from saying something to them. (By the way they treat their kids I'd guess if I did say anything I'd probably get beaten or stabbed to death, so I figure I'm best off keeping out of it). And what have the children done to deserve such a barrage of abuse from mummy dearest? Well, they've usually either asked for something one too many times or tried to get out of the pushchair. Both crimes deserving of the punishment I'm sure you'll agree. There is absolutely no need and no excuse for it, and I honestly believe that anyone who treats their children like that should have them taken off them.

6. Pointless lies

This is something I just don't understand at all. And I'm not talking here about random ridiculous lies said to wind people up, confuse them, or just to see how gullible they are, I do that all the time, like when I've convinced people that blue tigers really exist or that there is a particular breed of monkey that fashion their own clothes out of things they find lying around the jungle (yes I know a lot of VERY gullible/stupid people!). No, I'm talking about saying you've done something when you clearly haven't, that type of thing. For instance, at work there are people who will say they've worked a pallet of stock, but when I look at it I can clearly see it's not been worked. It's a completely pointless lie, I mean they must know that I'll be able to tell if it's been worked or not. If they didn't have time to work it why on earth don't they just say so? Lying about it just makes them look like a fool.

7. 'One-uppers'

Now some of you may be sat there wondering what on earth a 'one-upper' is, but I'm sure most of you know the term 'one-upmanship'. Yes, this is the person who, for some unknown reason has to always have done everything bigger and better than everyone else. They're the person who sits on the sidelines of a conversation, butting in every time someone has a story to tell, bragging randomly about how they've been somewhere/done something so much better, twice actually, and trying to make themselves sound so much more interesting than everyone else. When the hell did life become a competition?! I don't care if you've had 'bigger' or 'better' experiences than the person in question, just let me listen to them without having to hear your pathetic attempts at sounding like you lead an interesting life.

The sad thing is that most of these people are blatant liars, and haven't done any of the things they claim to have done. 'Las Vegas? Oh yeah, well I've been there but when I went I stayed in the penthouse suite at the most expensive hotel and met loads of famous people 'coz I'm so well-connected, then I swam with dolphins and went hang-gliding over the grand canyon and actually I nearly died……'. Course you did mate…..

8. Nosey people

Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking here about nosiness in general, I think everyone's a bit nosey from time to time, it's just a natural inquisitiveness we all possess to some extent. No, this is the people who walk past my house staring in through my lounge windows. This really annoys me. I don't know what it is about my house, but people often actually walk past and stop just before they've gone past the end of my garden, then step back for another look. I've also had people coming up and blatantly peering in my windows, whilst I'm actually there in the room. Do people have no respect for people's privacy? I mean fair enough, I don't have nets up to stop people from looking in, but there's a big difference between glancing in a window on passing and actually coming into the garden to get a better look. I have no idea what it is that's so fascinating about my house, or just my lounge that seems to turn everyone who passes into such a nosey git, but I have actually checked and it is only MY house that they do this to, not any of the others in my street. It's very strange, but at least it keeps my dad occupied while he's round. He delights in sitting in the lounge staring right back and swearing at anyone who dares look in my windows!

9. Rude/Ignorant people in supermarkets

Ok, in fairness a lot of this comes from working in supermarkets, but I've always found these people frustrating when doing my shopping as well. I'm sure you'll all recognise these people.

Firstly, there are those people who, on bumping into their friends whilst doing the shopping, decide to stand in the middle of an aisle, trolleys interlocked and blocking off the whole of the aisle so that nobody else can get past. They can stand there for up to half an hour at a time, completely ignoring everyone else around them, or even sometimes giving other customers a look of total disdain if they dare to say 'excuse me'. These people are bad enough when you're trying to do your shopping, but when you're trying to do a job it's just the most frustrating thing ever. They stand right in the way of wherever you need to be, give you a look that says that yes, they know they're in your way and you're trying to do a job, but they don't care because they're so much better than you and their little chat is so much more important than you and your job.

Then there are the insanely impatient people who, faced with a wait of more than 2 seconds to get round a corner, start literally ramming their trolley into people. I do get this more at work than when shopping because people seem to think that shop staff are there to be abused. The mad thing is that the people who do this are usually the people who actually have all the time in the world to do their shopping, while most who are in a genuine rush would still never dream of being so obnoxious. I've also had a few people repeatedly ramming me in the back with their trolley, and actually standing laughing about it (and I'm not talking kids here, it's usually middle-aged men!). They do it because they know that technically you're not really supposed to be able to say/do anything about it. Which is why they look so shocked when I turn round and say something along the lines of, 'Do that again and I'll have you escorted off the premises' on a good day, or 'Do that again and I'll f***ing lamp you one' on a bad day.

There are also a whole range of other types of rude, ignorant, selfish supermarket shoppers who do my head in, but if I tried to tell you about all of them you'd never shut me up, so I'll leave it at those two for now!

10. Chain messages

We've all had them, the emails or text messages that contains a load of rubbish then says at the end 'Send to 10 friends and me or you'll have bad luck for the rest of your life' or 'Send to 5 people and your true love will text you in the next 5 minutes'. What a load of bull. I'm sick of receiving these things from friends, all of whom know by now that I NEVER reply, NEVER send them on, in fact NEVER do anything other than delete them. And yet they still insist on sending me them. Fair enough with an email it's just another address on the list, but with texts you're just wasting your money/free text allowance by sending me these pointless messages.

Even worse are the ones that contain some story about some kid who's dying or some other harrowing story that tries to make you feel guilty. These usually say something along the lines of 'DO NOT DELETE THIS MESSAGE. Send on to as many people as you can. DO NOT BREAK THE CHAIN'. Why the hell not?! Me sending this message to people is hardly going to achieve anything is it?

STOP SENDING ME CHAIN MESSAGES!!!!!
So there you have it, my top 10 things that annoy me (at least for now). Hope you didn't get too bored reading it, and that you could maybe identify with at least some of them!