More Annoying Things

They say that Americans are fat and lazy, and this is reasonable assessment. We've all been called worse things, so being fat and lazy isn't terrible. I find fatter people are typically considerably happier (up to a point where the happiness transitions into sadness) and lazy people enjoy TV almost as much as me, so if you can't help but be fat and lazy and your health isn't at risk, enjoy what you are.

Because I feel this way, you know there is something really wrong when I find an act to be too fat and lazy.

With some regularity, I walk into a very large cylindrical glass building on the waterfront in downtown Detroit for work purposes. The door into which I walk is actually a bank of four doors; three regular pull/push doors and one electrified door that is intended for the handicapped. The handicapped door is one of those doors with a big metal button about 5-10 feet from it so when you push the button, the door automatically opens. For the dozens and dozens and dozens of times that I have walked through this bank of doors, just about every time but once I have observed some exceptionally lazy human beings pressing the button and using the handicapped door instead of exerting the exceptional amount of force to push or pull the regular doors. There is some strong non-factual evidence that handicapped and other electrified doors are causing global warming. If you ever have the option of using a regular door and you are that person who always uses the electric door, you are probably a jerk and not very many people like you.

The second point of dissatisfaction for the day is that moment where a car and a pedestrian both arrive at an intersection at the same time. Both parties come to a stop and the pedestrian waves on the car, but the car driver instead refuses the wave-on and goes ahead with a counter wave for the pedestrian. Both people have now wasted their valuable time and the world has lost some amount of productivity. This applies to all degrees of trying to out-manner someone. If I hold the door for you, walk through the freaking door - don't take the door from me and then tell me to go ahead. Just walk through the door you idiot! Whoever concedes first, the other person should proceed without question. In the instance of the car driver and runner at the intersection, the lost time will be at a universal minimum if the car driver goes first. If the runner goes first, the car driver will have to wait for the person to go all the way through the intersection before proceeding, and this is wasteful. This isn't about me being more polite than you or you being more polite than me, it's about the whole world doing things that annoy me less.

There is one other thing at which I was annoyed but my furor has since subsided since this post began, and I no longer remember what that thing was. "Don't you hate pants?"