Major minor annoyances

I would like to think that every otherwise sane individual is driven to claw out their eyes in response to any of a deeply personal set of first-world grievances. I also realise that I should have better things to do at 3 AM on a Monday morning, but better things require good work and good work takes time. It’s just easier to rant on the Internet.

In no particular order, please find below my deeply personal set of first-world grievances. If you’ve ever participated in any of these, we are no longer friends.

• Writing a news report/article/anything that could use temporal context (which is almost everything) and skipping the date,

• Eating while talking (this is not the same as talking while eating, which is perfectly acceptable),

• Forgetting to add a timezone when it’s relevant and not obvious,

• Texting a hi and leaving it there,

• Starting a chat without a hi,

• Asking a non-trivial question with zero! zilch! nada! effort to think through it yourself,

• Pacing in a cafe and talking loudly about databases (ran into someone doing this on tonight’s coffee run),

• Running a cafe and using non-huggable mugs,

• Insisting that people write it as café,

• Doubling down on an indefensible and clearly inferior position out of a wildly ironic mix of insecurity and arrogance,

• Not using sorry and thank you as frequently as general civility (and if you’re part of this group, most probably also your behaviour) would require you to,

• Conflating being opinionated with being dismissive,

• Choosing an underground??? basement??? parking lot??? for a morning walk,

I’ve kept the trailing comma there because I’m tired now and I intend to keep coming back to this list. I think writing down your thoughts automatically validates them, even if no one ever happens to read or agree.