"Let us go forth a while, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our closed rooms...
The game of ball is glorious."

--Walt Whitman

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Peeved

We all have pet peeves--things we objectively acknowledge as trivial but which, in practice, drive us absolutely barmy.

Here's one of mine: I work in a modern office building, less than ten years old and fully ADA compliant. This means that every door is equipped with a pressure plate embossed with the standard disability icon. Press the plate and--ta-da!--the door opens.

And every single day I see multiple people who appear to be perfectly healthy and whose hands are not, in fact, entirely occupied, using said pressure plates.

Now, I recognize that some small percentage of these people could conceivably suffer from a wrist, elbow or shoulder condition which renders them incapable of either pushing or pulling a 5-pound door. But in general I think it highly unlikely.

And whenever I see this, I just want to run up, grab them by the shoulders, give them a good shake and say "How lazy are you?! Just open the damn door yourself! Would it kill you to expend that one-twentieth of a calorie?!?!"

It's the laziness that gets me. I'm not the most active person in the world, as the deepening layer of dust on my elliptcal machine will attest, but I open my own friggin' doors. And I really don't think that anything with the disability icon on it should be used mostly for the convenience of the able-bodied. Call me old-fashioned, I don't know.

Anyway, that's my peeve. One of them.

So, what's yours?

4 rejoinders:

Fourth pew, center sounded off...

Oh, my, I have SO many today! (Yes, it was a bad day on the "we're surrounded" front.) But I'll stick with an all-time favorite -- people who refuse to think. "I messed up my direct deposit --please tell me for the tenth time what happens next." "I requested vacation pay for our NEXT paycheck -- why haven't I gotten it yet?" And then there's the ever-popular "I know I turned in my timesheet late, but why didn't you get my pay here on time?"

I never used to be much of a drinker . . .

frightwig sounded off...

People who say they can't bother to keep track of current events and political news because it's "too depressing," that peeves me lately.

Anonymous sounded off...

people who don't use turn signals. over-politeness on the roads also bugs the hell out of me - so does rudeness. I could list more but I need sleep.

Anonymous sounded off...

People who tell you for years that they are going to do something and then don't. Then they get mad at you when you tell them you are so overwhelmed doing your work and theirs to worry about current events.