People Annoy Me

[Mike]

[Elle]

Just have to vent a tiny ventation: it is proper to eat asparagus with one's fingers. That is all. I am not snobby about what other people do or do not do - eat it with your fork if you like. I'm just saying what I know.

While we're at it: kissing people's butt for no reason is unseemly. But when you have an opportunity gifted to you on a silver platter to plant a completely discreet smooch on the behind of someone with great power, and doing so is completely in accord with all positive values and goals, then why on earth would you throw that away out of some small need to win your manly dominance game?

Finally, and this is the BIG one of the week: if you think your job is so fucking cushy - so cushy that nobody else who does it has the right to complain about being asked to do work that they shouldn't be asked to do - why then in the next breath did you bitch and moan about having to actually put in some work you didn't feel like having to do, for which you actually volunteered? Also, I have worked in both the private and public sector and human nature doesn't change across this divide, so give me a fucking break with your platitudes.

Whoops, forgot a good one: there you were, nobly protesting for the unborn, ignoring the homeless guys next to you. Because it was probably their fault, and you'd just be encouraging them to do something self-destructive, and the unborn need your money and moral support more than the born, and so forth. By the time someone's a living, breathing adult, fuck 'em, right?

[Mike]

Well, sure asparagus can be finger food. Unless it's soaked in butter or covered in cheese sauce or something. Carrots are finger food until you cook them. Fresh green beans or snap peas are definitely finger food. Less so, depending on how they are prepared.

[Elle]

Sure, and allow me to clarify. If I instruct my child in proper table manners it is not for others to instruct her otherwise. If I say that she can eat asparagus with her fingers because it is the accepted way to do it in all codes of etiquette of which I am aware then by golly it's acceptable for her.

[Mike]

Absolutely. Unless it's your mother or mother-in-law doing the "correcting". They have every right to instruct your child in proper manners. And then afterwards, you just tell your kid to ignore Nana, because she's just a nutbag.

[Elle]

You could hypothetically then vent your complaints here.

[Mike]

Ha! I'm hypothetically clever!

[Elle]

OCD has at least a 1% lifetime prevalence across most populations. One therapy for OCD has been proven far more effective than any other: Exposure and Response Prevention, and even people who receive other forms of treatment, like drugs, should in most cases also try ERP. You would think it obvious that schools training therapists and counselors would include ERP in their curriculum, right? Wrong, apparently. Figure that one out.

BTW, for those of you who might have enjoy the blog Slate Star Codex, my working hypothesis from day 2 was that the author has OCD. Finally I happened to read a bit where he says this is true. Always amusing when one's armchair inexpert diagnosis turns out correct. But sometimes you just recognize weird patterns of thought as your own, and it's very clear.

[Elle]

Someone does not understand FERPA and I am pissed off. That is all.

Also someone sent me a hideous picture of myself where I look like a scary fat clown, seriously. WHY would you do this to someone? Is it a kindness to reveal to me exactly how bad I look, along with the vague threat of making it public that always accompanies someone texting a photo? Why do I always look sort of acceptably normal to myself when I look in a mirror, but in PICTURES I look like a garish, grinning fat clown? It's disgusting. Lifetime of shitty pictures here.

[Elle]

So every month or two my husband takes a wild hair and decides to clean the whole kitchen. He does it very thoroughly, which is pleasing, and always has to waste a lot of my time in the process by causing me to stop whatever I'm doing and solve x or y thing. However, I go along with this method because the results are so positive and I want to encourage his cleaning moods whenever they may strike. My own methods are more like "get it solved in whatever way desperation demands, until tomorrow". His way produces more lasting benefit. So anyway, things are humming along in a "People Delight Me" kind of way, and then he sits down and starts READING THIS ALOUD:



Re-classified!

[Stan]

[Elle]

Not sure. Lots of sleep and an early Saturday work meeting?

By the way, KIDS and PETS know nothing of "fall back" and "spring forward".

[Phoebe]

"Please help me with X"

Yes, I will help you! I have now seen to your issue and helped. Did it work?

"No."

Okay, here are the next steps I shall take to help you. They require you to do something quite minimal. Can you do it?

"No."

Okay, I have handled the minimal thing for you as well. Now we come to a point where I cannot intervene further because I am not literally you and cannot animate your body for you. Can you do the almost-nothing task now required, especially since I have carefully spelled out to you in detail exactly what this nearly nonexistent task consists of?

"No."

Okay, I will save all the emails and my part here is officially over.

"Here is another thing you did to help me when I asked but you didn't help me exactly as I had imagined it in my mind, even though the way I had imagined it did not make sense. I feel the need to point that out now, lest you think you help very much."


Done helping.

[Phoebe]

We could have a substantive debate of this semi-significant matter, except that you, an otherwise intelligent person, appear to be too stupid to understand the fundamentals of logical inference and sentence structures. Or you DO understand, yet obfuscate intentionally to get your way, or you just don't give a shit. The "you" here is plural and it is hard to respect people like this. I will try to respect them, knowing I have erred before and, like, sometimes don't get the Dad jokes, but when dealing with semi-serious matters i do make an effort. I would welcome people disagreeing with me, but if you're too stupid to grasp the subject of disagreement, we cannot even do that much!

[akiva]

I once had an administrator--the one who observes me--tell me that an "observation tool" is objective even when different people using it reach very different conclusions.

[Phoebe]

Well duh. If your observation tool results in, say, a numerical score produced by ratings on a scale, and several different people each use the tool to arrive at a number, then clearly the tool is objective. It doesn't really matter what the content of the observation tool might be, or what the criteria used for the ratings are, much less how they were arrived at. The important thing is that you can be given a number. If you can get a really detailed observation tool with a 20-option rubric, just imagine how much more objective the results will be. So many more numbers!

[Phoebe]

I could fill this entire thread right now so that it went on for pages, but what's the point? Not helpful to dwell on it. There is one species of annoyance I want to put a finger on at the moment - quite a mild one compared to what's really going on, but an easier one to think about. I know several people whose rhetorical strategy is to muddy the water and interject a bunch of shit until nobody can get back on track. If you have limited time and need a lot of time to affect how decisions are made, this strategy is a bitch, especially for women in a professional setting. You have to attack it directly and nip it in the bud, but it's very, very hard to do that without coming off like a bitch yourself. It's hard to think of just the right humor and tone to disarm the offenders and win everyone else over to your side. My husband is a genius at this - it comes to him naturally. He can think of a humorous metaphor or little dismissive joke in an instant - I have to mull it over for days. And the point is, you don't have days - you have to jump in there and deal with someone who is purposely making nonsense noise to throw things off.

Anyway, I hope I'm getting better at it. My strategy is just to plod along as an honest dealer, friend to all, and then when my back gets up hopefully enough people in the room sympathize with me to make it work.

Here's another thing that annoys me: when you have to trust a person who lies to you. Suppose you know someone you need to rely on at a certain time. Something comes up, a decision maybe, or a commitment, a plan... you need to be able to trust the person to make it happen. So you say, hey, I want to trust you, except for this thing that makes me doubt you... And the person comes back with something you know is untrue! I can't have done this thing you think I did, because ---- ---- ---- where the blanks involve something you know is false. Take some trivial example, like suppose I enjoy harassing my neighbor, and the neighbor is like, I want to trust you to take care of my dog, but I don't know if I can. Because you keep driving your truck on my lawn and pretending it wasn't you! And you reply, no way, I can't be the one who drove on your lawn because I don't even have a truck! And even if I did, that's not my license plate number! The neighbor will be like, dude, I have your license plate number on camera. Why are you lying? How can I trust you at all, or throw myself into any sort of alliance with you? Eh, fuck it.

[Phoebe]

Ever since I got married, and especially since having kids, it is my job in life to monitor and deal with the potty functions of other creatures. I am not sure when and where exactly the voice of God rang out and said, Yo, the woman must clean up dog shit in the basement whenever it is found there in the morning hours, since the man must work and cannot have his mind or body sullied or his precious morning time wasted by an encounter with dog shit, and anyway, I made men weaker such that they are sensitive and hysterical and bothered more by dog shit than you are! But God assuredly did spake thusly and it is so. I just want to make clear that MY dog does not poop indoors; this is the result of dogsitting. I also want to make clear that if my dog doesn't like some people as much as he likes others, it's because he's fucking smart.

[Tahlvin]

My I just say, it's your particularly husband that's hysterical when it comes to cleaning up poop. I've done my fair share of poop cleaning around the house, animal and otherwise. I'm sure there are other duties (see what I did there ) around our house, pleasant and unpleasant, that have been divided between husband and wife based on a variety of reasons. That's just the way cohabitation works out.

[Phoebe]

I have heard of such things. Most of the men here, they are feminist men all about the equity thing. And in his own way so is my husband, but the way is different. For instance, his solution to things like "the domestic labor is inherently and radically unequal" is to go hire a strange woman to enter my home and do things for me, like a servant of yore. Call it a "personal assistant" maybe. His reason for wanting this is perfectly good and feminist: because I should be LEANING IN like the champion I am, right? Yet I have not hired such a person because, let us be clear, I do not want a strange woman to enter my home and do things for me like a servant. If I had babies or toddlers and the woman was a nanny or babysitter or maid or something, that might be different. My life would doubtless be improved if I were the sort of person who could take appropriate advantage of the type of husband I have, who likes to shower the wife with money and expensive objects and such. He would spend whatever he earns on whatever I want, I have no doubt of it. Yet I want very little. I like to sit alone in the darkness eating cold baked potatoes and looking like an escapee from the ward. I certainly do not want a strange servant woman in my house, to the point that it's almost more of a dealbreaker in life than other things you'd think would be more likely dealbreakers.

Edited to say that I am so happy I don't have a really big dog. I was told this particular really big dog was potty trained. Indeed one wonders what this dog is fed because when my dog would have a puppy accident, the poop came right up in one intact blob. You had to lysol the crap out of the remnants but they were mere remnants, hard to see. I don't know if this dog had some kind of mental crisis that caused every piece of poop in the entire body to come out, or what. Maybe I was just lucky in choice of dog. The dog chose me. Thank you, dog, for choosing me. Thank you for pooping only small neat piles of poop outside and never stepping in them (by what magic I can only guess) and preferring me to all others.