More Things People Do In an Obvious Attempt to Annoy Me

Going grocery shopping this morning I was reminded of several things that really annoy me. Okay, so they don't annoy me that much but I'm falling behind on my complaining.

One of the things that bothers me are grocery baggers. First off, I generally don't like people to do things for me, especially when I am just going to stand there doing nothing. It just doesn't make much sense to me. Since the main complaint they get from customers is broken bags, the baggers also pack groceries with an eye to prevent breakage. This usually results in about eight bags for every $50 worth of groceries. That's great if are unloading your groceries from your garage, but for me, living in a high rise condo, my main objective is to have four or less bags so I only have one trip. So most times I go to Rainbow I have to shoo the baggers away. But Pete, it's not like you're paying anything extra. Which brings me to something else that annoys me, namely...

Stupid people who think that just because you aren't charged for something that it is free. For example, we have laundry machines on each floor in my building. You don't need any quarters to use them. I don't know how many times people say something dumb like "oh, it must be nice having free laundry." How do these geniuses think that the laundry machines get fixed? That our laundry machines somehow don't use water or electricity or gas? That they are powered by the Laundry Faerie? Obviously the expense of running and maintaining laundry machines goes somewhere, and in this case the money comes from association dues. In the case of grocery baggers, the expense will slowly get incorporated into the price of your groceries. So before you start yapping about how something is free, spend a little time thinking about it. Otherwise, some smartass with a blog is going to write some crap about you.

Another phenomenon that you run into at the grocery store is people who for some reason or another just seem to always get in your way. Maybe something in the water supply is slowly destroying people's peripheral vision or maybe it speaks to the general self centeredness of American society, but for some reason a lot of people appear to lack an even rudimentary sense of awareness of their surroundings. When there is a display in an aisle, what possesses someone to park their cart right next to it, completely blocking the aisle? Other common maneuvers are leaving the grocery cart smack dab in the middle of the aisle, or parking it on one side of the aisle and then standing on the other side checking out the ingredients on various cans of beans. I find myself standing five feet from these people, obviously waiting for them to get out of my way, and most of the time they seem completely oblivious to my presence. I wonder what aisle the airhorns are in... BLAAAAAT!!!

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Apparently this is not some kind of Minneapolis-specific issue. Becky's brother Joe finds the walkers in Chicago to be just as annoying. I work downtown and have to deal with the skyway walkers most days of the week. Some of the annoying things you have to deal with are rare, such as people attempting to read books while they walk (and at least that provides some kind of humor). The most obnoxious thing is probably people who find it absolutely necessary to walk two or three wide. I wouldn't have guessed it, but yes it is possible for two people to take up about two-thirds of a fifteen foot wide skyway. It wouldn't be that bad if most of these people walked faster than, say, Estelle Getty in a windstorm. The skyway rules should approximate road rules: walk on the right side and slow people on the outside.