I asked, and you answered.
In my previous peevish column, I invited readers to share their peeves, and share you did.
Customer-service annoyances ranked high in your responses.
Laurie doesn’t appreciate clerks who say, ”Have a good one.”
“Have a good what?” she asked.
She also finds it irritating when she’s addressed as “dear,” “hon,” “honey” or “young lady.”
“It’s grating, and to me at least, patronizing.”
Barbara would appreciate if people would just get her name right.
“When introduced, I say, I’m Barbara, and many, many people here in Spokane immediately call me Barb! Why? I don’t like Barb! It isn’t my name!”
It could be worse. At least no one is calling her Barbie – or Babs!
Also annoying her is when she’s dining at a restaurant, and the server asks, “Are you still working on that?”
She’d like to reply, “No! I’m not WORKING on it, I am enjoying it, and I am not AT work.”
“That’s it,” Barbara said. “The rest of my life is near perfect!”
Pam’s life would be better with fewer thank-yous. It seems she’s inundated with gratitude when calling customer service lines.
“They ask a question and say ‘thank you,’ and ask another and say ‘thank you,’ and another with another ‘thank you,’” she wrote. “I start my conversation with, ‘Please do not say thank you after every request,’ and only once I was told they had to say it. I’d like to be the one who says it at the end of a successful experience.”
These folks must have been trained by the people who taught cashiers and baristas to ask if we have any fun plans for the rest of our day.
Angela offered a way to improve our shopping experiences.
“I think the world would be a much more polite place if we all had to use bicycling signals at grocery stores. Right turn, left turn, stop …,” she wrote.
She also suggested we might need to put blinkers on our behinds. “But nobody around here uses those when driving,” she said.
Signaling courtesies may be helpful, but if we apply the rules of the road to steering shopping carts, I’m worried I’d have to sport a “Wide Load” sign on my keister.
Gail has a couple of questions.
“Why do customer service people have to say an elongated ‘Purrrrrrfectttt’ to our responses to their questions?”
She’d also like to know why newscasters have to stand on busy roads when reporting on just about any topic.
Speaking of newscasts, Paula hears a lot of poor grammar on them, which irritates her almost as much as people who make up words. She had a coworker who thought “tooken” was a real word.
My column struck a nerve for Bill, who is a keen observer of license plates.
“Our state is losing out on a financial boon where licenses are concerned,” he said. “Those from out of state rank among the major scofflaws, but there are many, many Washington plates out of date. Fines that should be implemented rank from $136 to $200.”
While I’m not able to list all his plate-related grievances, I am including his reminder to check the Washington Department of Licensing website to see if you’re an offender.
Dianne heartily agreed with Judy’s gripe about businesses not having their addresses posted large in front.
“I depend on addresses to find my way around, having been born with zero sense of direction and being lost a lot of my 86 years on earth,” she wrote. Wouldn’t it be lovely if even a few of the offenders would see themselves as rude or annoying to others?”
Well, Dianne, you got your wish because I certainly saw myself in Lindy’s peeve.
“My driving pet peeve is people who turn into the far lane instead of the closest lane,” Lindy wrote. “I was once stopped by a cop for turning into the closest lane because people across the intersection might turn into the same lane, which would be the far lane for them!”
Oh dear! When my sons were in driver’s ed, they each pointed out my tendency to turn into the far lane on certain well-traveled Spokane streets.
“You can’t do that, Mom!” they’d say.
But I can. And I do. However, thanks to Lindy’s reminder, I’m trying my best to follow the rules of the road as God and the government intended.
And if I don’t always get this one right, at least I’ll be using my blinker.
