Pet Peeves

In random order, a list of things that piss off this angry writer. 

1.) Asking me for my phone number, zip code or email address when I check out.  I do not care to be contacted with your special offers.  I do not care for you to contact me at all.  I wish for you to ring up my purchases, tell me a total price, let me pay for those purchases and then I will leave.  If I require anything else that your establishment has to offer, I will make a return trip.

2.) Having to use a card when I check out.  I hate the Kroger's Plus Card, Speedy Rewards Cards, etc...  I have a novel idea.  How about you offer me the best possible price just because I chose to spend my hard earned money in your store.  I feel violated when you insist that I become part of your marketing programs before you offer me those "low" prices.  I don't want you to keep track of what I buy in your store.  I don't want you to keep track of how often I'm in your store.  In fact, Kroger's, I don't want you to keep track of anything about me.  The United States government already performs these services.  You can stop now. 

3.) When a lane ends on the highway and people race up to the front and try to cut in.  You are an asshole and a douchebag for doing this.  Fuck off.  Have more sense next time and be like everyone else.  Get over in an appropriate manner like a civil human being.  If you are one of these ass-hats, I will respond in escalating fashion, depending upon whichever mood I am in that day.  The response could be anything from a simple arms-in-the-air-wtf signal, to blasting my horn at you, flipping you off, or  sticking my head out of the car window and telling you that your mother is a whore. 

4.) Salespeople that do not take no for an answer.  I get it.  I have worked in sales before.  I know that you're not supposed to take no for an answer.  However, my time is more important than yours.  I will politely decline once.  The second time I will point out that this is the second time I've told you no.  If there is a third time I figure you are fair game and I will hurl insults at you including calling your mother a whore. 

This is especially true for salespeople that knock on my door or call my phone.  I have never sat around my house wishing I knew more about Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior.  Nor have I ever been sitting in my recliner, watching stupid shit on television and wondering if AT&T had a better deal on cable service.  Once you have invaded the space of my residence, you only get one polite declination.  If you persist past that, you are more fair game than regular salespeople.  I become more volatile when you are near my home.  This is my happy sanctuary.  You are disturbing that happiness.  I may threaten to physically throw you off of my porch.

5.) Believe it or not, I really don't like confrontation much anymore.  At least not as much as I did when I was younger.  There are exceptions to this rule.  If you make my wife uncomfortable in any way, or mess with my children, my "fuck you switch" gets instantly flipped.  I can not really control this switch in those situations. 

6.) If you are an overly chatty restaurant server, you will annoy the hell out of me.  I'm sorry.  I can not pretend to care about how bad your day has been.  I can't make myself care about much of anything in your personal life.  I wish you to be polite, courteous and offer good service.  I do not wish to be your friend, not even for the duration of my visit to your restaurant.  I sometimes am not good at masking my displeasure about your chatty-ness.  I do not usually call your mother a whore, though.  This is only a minor inconvenience in my life and not worthy of reducing you to tears. The same goes for those running cash registers at local grocery stores. 

7.) Having to deal with cell phone companies, or debt collectors, or service people of any sort, especially if I have to speak to you over the phone.  I do not like talking on the phone very much.  They have invented text messaging for a reason.  I do not like your electronic answering services.  I do not want to push 1 if I am a current customer, or 4 if I want to speak to a live representative.  If I call your customer service number, I desire to speak to someone.  I wouldn't call for any other reason.  Trust me on this one.  The fact that I'm resorting to dialing an actual phone number means that I really want to speak to a human being. 

Also, I get particularly annoyed when I am transferred to a customer service rep that does not speak english as a first language.  This tells me that your company is ran by a cheap motherfucker that does not care enough about their customers to hire quality customer service reps.  I have never been very successful when trying to communicate with "Josh" from Bangalore-fucking-India.   I may call "Josh's" mother a whore, but I usually don't. 

8.) People who tell me Ohio State sucks, or that the Cardinals suck, because they see me wearing shirts or hats with those teams on them.  This is acceptable if you are a true sports fan.  If you can not name three players on the Michigan football team, then you are not worthy to call yourself a Michigan fan, and are especially out of your league debating sports with the likes of me. 

9.)  Writers that make lists.  Seriously.  This is the most basic form of writing and lists are the creative efforts of amateur hacks.  Nobody cares about your pet peeves, or whatever other lame subjects you make up lists about.  If you call yourself a writer, and you constantly write lists, then you suck. 

Whenever I Feel Like It

"Are you just going to write your blog when you feel like it now?" she asked.

"Huh?" I answered.  I was probably doing something really important, like watching Jeopardy or checking Facebook. 

"Are you going to write your blog just whenever you feel like it instead of weekly?" she repeated.

"I don't know.  I've been working on my story a lot." I responded.

And thus you have another riveting conversation between my beloved and me. 

So, about this blog column.  It's supposed to be weekly.  I started it originally to give me an outlet to work on my writing skills.  It is supposed to serve as a tool to keep me writing, especially when I'm not doing so well in other writing forms. 

But lately I've found myself busy working on other projects.  I have been steadily working on a novel.  I work on it most evenings after work, even if I only add a paragraph or two.  I've been working on an essay that I intend to mail off to Sun Magazine, in hopes of getting published.  I still write a poem or two or three a week, when inspiration strikes.  All of this while working 60 hours a week. 

I haven't abandoned the blog column.  I try to update it most weeks.  I have topic ideas.  It's just that it gets pushed farther down the importance list sometimes.  That's probably a good thing, as long as I'm actively writing on something else.  The novel is the most I've written on one piece of literature in my life.  I'm determined to finish writing it this summer. 

I have a writer friend at work named Mike.  We talk about writing most days, while we smoke cigarettes on break.  We discuss our issues with writer's block, when we have them.  We talk about our story ideas, poems we've worked on lately.  Talking with another writer keeps me inspired to write.  I tell Mike all the time, the benefit to having a good job in a factory, is that we can write whatever we want, whenever we feel like it.  Both of us have aspirations of being published writers, but we can take our time, stumble around the literary world, hoping to find our footing, because we earn a living by building cars. 

I'll write columns regularly, as I can get around to it, whenever I feel like it really.  That's the benefit of being the editor of your own column.  I don't have to worry much about deadlines.  In the meantime, I have to get this essay edited and printed and mailed off to Sun Magazine.  They pay really well for the work they publish.  Of course, they only publish a very select amount of material they receive.  Less than one percent of the material actually, which means it's very unlikely that I'll get published.  That's ok though.  I've got more cars to build to pay the bills.