Life's Little Annoyances: True Tales of People Who Just Can't Take It Anymore
210
Life's Little Annoyances: True Tales of People Who Just Can't Take It Anymore
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Overview
What can you do when the world is pushing you over the edge? More than you think.
For some of us, it's the automated voice that answers the phone when we'd rather talk to a real person. For others, it's the fact that Starbucks insists on calling its smallest-sized coffee "tall." Or perhaps it's those pesky subscription cards that fall out of magazines. Whatever it is, each of us finds some aspect of everyday life to be particularly maddening, and we often long to lash out at these stubborn irritants of modern life.
In Life's Little Annoyances, Ian Urbina chronicles the lengths to which some people will go when they have endured their pet peeves long enough and are not going to take it any more. It is a compendium of human inventiveness, by turns juvenile and petty, but in other ways inspired and deeply satisfying. We meet the junk-mail recipient who sends back unwanted "business reply" envelopes weighted down with sheet metal, so the mailers will have to pay the postage. We commiserate with the woman who was fed up with the colleague who kept helping himself to her lunch cookies, so she replaced them with dog biscuits that looked like biscotti. And we revel in the seemingly endless number of tactics people use to vent their anger at telemarketers, loud cellphone talkers, spammers, and others who impose themselves on us.
A celebration of the endless variety of passive aggressive behavior, Life's Little Annoyances will provide comfort and inspiration to everyone who has ever gritted his teeth and dreamed of sweet retribution against the slings and arrows of outrageous people.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429900973 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Holt, Henry & Company, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2007 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 210 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Ian Urbina is a reporter for The New York Times, based in the paper's Washington bureau. He has degrees in history from Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and his writings, which range from domestic and foreign policy to commentary on everyday life, have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Harper's, and elsewhere. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, son, stepdaughter, and a nuisance of a dog.
Read an Excerpt
Life's Little Annoyances
True Tales of People Who Just Can't Take It Anymore
By Ian Urbina
Henry Holt and Company
Copyright © 2005 Ian UrbinaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-0097-3
CHAPTER 1
WEAPONS OF THE WEAK
It makes no sense that inconsiderate dog owners refuse to clean up after their pets, so why should the response be any more rational? If a person risks getting shot by taking the logical approach to dealing with impatient drivers who lay on their horns for no apparent reason, then why not try a softer, and perhaps less reasonable, tactic?
The world would be an awfully boring place if everyone acted logically. And justice would only belong to the litigious.
Thankfully, there are people who occupy the space just below aggression but just above following the rules.
So when our favorite TV program is interrupted by yet another fund-raising telethon, it's these types who call in to unnerve the smiling phone attendants seated in front of the cameras. And when every waiting room on the planet seems to have a television blaring some mind-numbing talk show, these people bring us the perfect tool to shut them off without anyone knowing who did it.
They are the arms dealers and foot soldiers of life's smallest battles. And we all owe them a debt of gratitude. They make the world safe for the rest of us who are equally frustrated but just a little more timid.
WHO TURNED THIS THING ON, ANYWAY?
Nothing tortures the psyche more than being trapped in a room with the voice of Geraldo Rivera lecturing about the decline of American culture. And no matter how hard you try to look away from that television in the hospital waiting room or the airport lobby, the babbling entrances you like the rest of the zombies sitting around.
If only you could turn it off without causing a minor uproar — or at least without anyone knowing it was you who did it.
All Mitch Altman wanted to do that day was catch up with several friends he met for dinner. "The whole point was for us to share each other's company," says the forty-eight-year-old inventor, who lives in San Francisco.
But the televisions perched in the corners of the Chinese restaurant were monopolizing attention. "No one could focus back on each other," Altman says.
When Altman and his friends finally did reclaim control of their attention, the conversation quickly drifted to the topic of public television sets. All agreed that a discreet and universal remote would be the ultimate weapon against this pervasive annoyance.
So Altman built one. And after testing it out at a couple of local bars and restaurants, he named his pocket-sized gadget "TV-B-Gone" and began selling it on the Internet.
"The choice of having that distraction on or not should be yours," he says. "Now, it can't be taken for granted that everyone wants the television blaring."
Of course, his weapon cuts both ways. "It has only one button," Altman explains. "Unfortunately, that means it works as well to turn on the TV as it does to turn it off."
HONK IF YOU HATE THIS STORE
David Terry says that he is not prone to moralizing, but the presence of the adult video store down on the main drag annoys him nonetheless.
"It's poorly kept and just plain ugly," he says. "It's basically a cinder block bunker with a door and it sticks out even in an area with only gas stations and a strip mall."
Terry has no pull with local officials in his New Jersey town, and he hardly has the time or inclination to raise a stink with the local zoning board.
He can, however, honk his horn. And that is what he does every time he drives by. When he passes the store and sees a customer leaving or entering, he gives a little friendly toot on his horn and waves enthusiastically.
"It works like a charm," he says, explaining that his action usually sends a patron scrambling to his car or into the store while nervously glancing over his shoulder.
Terry says he takes keen delight in imagining what thoughts must dart through each patron's head: Was that my mom? Oh no, I think my boss drives that kind of car! Maybe that was my wife? "It's simple but harmless," he says.
A DOG OWNER'S ULTIMATE CRIME
Inconsiderate dog owners commit countless crimes against humanity.
They let their nosy canine off the leash and force the rest of us to fend for ourselves as Fido sniffs our every imaginable crevice. They leave their four-legged fiend home alone to yap incessantly as everyone within earshot stews about the things we would like to do to shut the dog up.
But the worst offense of all is when they fail to pick up after their furry friend.
For Merlyn Kline, this is a constant source of tension. His mother lives in Exeter, England, near a public park where dog owners rarely pick up their mess. "She goes on about it day in and day out," says Kline, who is forty-two years old and owns a software company there. "She finds it absolutely appalling because it ruins the park for everyone else."
One day as his mother bellyached about the topic, Mr. Kline began entertaining himself by constructing small flags out of toothpicks and fluorescent tape. He was trapped at the kitchen table anyway, he thought, so why not do something distracting? After making a batch of the miniature flags, it struck him that he should put them to use. So the next time he was walking in the nearby park he stuck a flag in each turd he found. His mother began doing the same.
"Seems silly, really," Kline says. "But I can tell you that I have seen dog owners on several occasions look over at flags and act chagrined. I think it draws attention to the problem."
Susan Lulic lives on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. But, oddly, she came up with a similar approach to handling the problem.
Lulic carries a canister of gold paint with her when she takes her dog out for a walk early in the morning. When she comes across an unclaimed mound, she gives her canister a quick shake and spray paints it.
Why?
"It gives a little pizzazz to a boring walk," she says. "It also signals to everyone that some rude bastard did not do his civic duty."
Lulic, who lives in Tucson, Arizona, and teaches adult basic education and GED classes to people who have run into problems with the law, says that she adopted her artistic approach several years ago after a dog owner let his dog leave a deposit at the top of her driveway. She spray painted it and stuck a small flag in the top that said "Pick Up Your Shit," hoping the owner would see it the next time he passed by.
No one ever picked up the mound, but someone did later leave a reply note in the turd. "Let's just say it was threatening enough language that I decided to let them have the last word," Lulic says.
WHEN PLEDGE DRIVES GET IN THE WAY
If you are looking forward to a certain television show, the last thing you want to see in its place is a stage full of people asking you to call now and make a donation.
For Mark Thomas this is a frequent frustration. As a professional pianist, Thomas looks forward to the concert specials regularly televised by the Public Broadcasting Service. But every so often, he sits down to catch a concert only to find that the station is airing its seasonal pledge drive instead.
"I can't tell you how annoying it was," says Thomas, who is thirty-seven years old and lives in Queens, New York. "Sometimes I had rushed home to watch something that I had been looking forward to all week."
With time to kill, Thomas decided to reap his revenge by making the phone-a-thon just a little bit more interactive. At first, he just called and hung up over and over again. "I got a kick out of hearing one of the droning announcers say 'We want to hear more of that. More phones ringing,'" he says.
But soon he upped the ante and tried to rattle the volunteers seated on stage. After dialing he would speak gibberish and watch the facial expression of the volunteer for signs of bafflement.
"The best was when the camera happened to be focused closely on the person I was calling," he says. "I would say, 'I can seeeee yooouuu,' and then describe what they looked like."
Taking pity on the volunteers, Thomas says that he no longer uses the tactic. "But I still laugh to this day about it," he says. "When I turned off my TV each time at the end of the evening, I felt like I had certainly gotten my fill of entertainment."
BREAKING INTO FORT KNOX IS EASIER
Brian McCracken left the store with three new CDs and raced home to listen to them. But when he got to his stereo, the frustrating ritual began.
First, he tried using his fingernails. But they glided over the cellophane as if it were glass. Then he resorted to using his teeth, but they were not exacting enough to grasp the slight ruffle in the packaging. Next, he headed to the kitchen knife drawer. The options there had more chance of slicing his finger than of cutting the thin layer of CD packaging. In the end, he opted for brute force and scraped his nails across the top of the case.
At the time, he owned over three thousand CDs. "That's a lot of times to experience this frustration," says the forty-four-year-old software designer from San Clemente, California. "It used to make me so tense that I would have a tough time unwinding again."
Finally, McCracken cobbled together a solution — a razor encased by plastic. This simple device cuts through CD packaging without risk of slicing a finger. "It was great because listening to music no longer required this crazy process anymore," he says.
McCracken now sells his simple contraption through a CD-accessory product line called MacTec Products. "I guess a lot of people have stopped going to their knife drawer," he says.
HONKU
Only saints and deaf people have never been tempted to throw an egg at a car with a driver needlessly laying on his horn. Aaron Naparstek, on the other hand, faced this temptation daily.
Naparstek lived in an apartment in Brooklyn near the corner of Clinton and Pacific streets. Virtually every day during the morning rush, the intersection backed up. "It was a perfect storm of honking," says the thirty-five-year-old freelance writer. "Everything came together at this corner."
Cabbies used the route regularly to get to midtown Manhattan. Ambulances took the street to get to a nearby hospital. And the lights were timed in such a way that the intersection regularly gridlocked. "Practically every several minutes someone was sitting on their horn," Naparstek says. "And this is 6 a.m., mind you."
Then one day, he snapped.
From his third-floor window, he fired three eggs in rapid succession at a particularly aggressive horn honker. The first hit the trunk, the second the roof, the third the windshield. Emerging from his car, the driver yelled some things that scared the bejesus out of Naparstek.
"He seemed really serious," he recalls. "I realized I was taking my life in my hands and that I had better find another way to cope with this."
Thus was born the Honku.
From that point forward, whenever Mr. Naparstek heard people needlessly honk their horn, he penned a little poem. Three lines, totaling seventeen syllables and written in a five-seven-five format, his haikus brought him relief. They were simple creations, and like most haikus they usually derived from a direct observation of something in nature that led to a sense of Zen. His first read:
You from New Jersey honking in front of my house in your SUV
Later ones took a heavier tone:
Terrorism is a Lincoln Continental leaning on the horn
Naparstek began taping his haikus to the light pole nearest to where the honk had occurred. Before long, other people joined the act. One that Naparstek came across while walking down the street was:
Oh, Jeezus Chrysler what's all the damned honking Ford? please shut the truck up!
Then they started appearing all over New York City. "People started writing me with their own haikus about every urban annoyance imaginable," he says. "The guy who parked too far from the hydrant and took up two spaces, the person who never picks up their dog's poop, they were all there." The most common were haikus about car alarms.
Eventually, Naparstek put the best ones in a book. "I still write them," he says, adding that he rarely posts them on light poles anymore. "This city has enough honking to keep me going for a long time."
A GENTLE WAY TO TELL SOMEONE TO GET LOST
The idea came to him while he was out one night with his friends, at a local bar. Jeff Goldblatt, a twenty-eight-year-old business student at Emory University in Atlanta, watched as a pudgy guy with one too many Coronas under his belt tried to put the moves on a knockout blonde standing in the corner.
At first, Goldblatt and his friends felt bad for the girl. It must be a real pain to have to deal with such pushiness, they thought. But their sympathies shifted when the girl went overboard and began yelling and making a scene even after the guy had clearly gotten the hint. "We began debating within our group whether there was a more humane way for the girl to have given the message," Goldblatt says. "We couldn't come to an agreement on a method that would have allowed her to fend the guy off while also allowing him to save face."
But Goldblatt soon thought of a solution.
As a joke, he activated an unused voice mailbox from a spare phone line in his house to record a message for incoming calls.
"You've reached the rejection hotline," the recording said in the cheesiest voice Goldblatt could muster. "You're hearing this message because the person who gave you this number was not interested in receiving your call. Don't take it personally but ..." He e-mailed the friends who had participated in the discussion at the bar and told them the number to call.
They thought it was hilarious. So they began emailing the number to other friends. And before long so many calls were coming in that the voice mail line crashed his phone provider's computer system.
"It was unbelievable," Goldblatt says. "Web sites were posting it, radio DJs were mentioning it. The line couldn't handle the calls."
Realizing that he had struck a chord, Goldblatt erected a Web site. He also bought additional phone numbers — paid for out of his own pocket — with area codes in various major cities. "It just seemed like an effective way to deal with a common problem, so it was worth the expense to me," he says.
Mr. Goldblatt's Web site now offers "rejection" phone numbers in twenty-eight cities. All told, they receive 1.6 million calls per month. "That's a lot of rejection," he says.
Had the knockout blonde in the bar that night wanted to be extra careful, she probably would have brought Goldblatt's phone number with her. She might also have brought Josh Santangelo's e-mail address as well.
Santangelo invented papernapkin.net to provide a little extra protection against unwanted suitors. Write any name in front of @papernapkin.net, and the person who e-mails the address will automatically get a rejection response. "The person who gave you this e-mail address does not want to have anything to do with you," the reply e-mail says, continuing with a long explanation of possible reasons for the rejection. "We have no beef with you and we'd be just as pleased to serve your rejection needs as we are to serve anybody else."
Santangelo, a twenty-six-year-old Web developer from Seattle, Washington, said that he thought of the idea after hearing about the rejection phone line. He reports that more than thirty thousand people e-mailed it within its first month of service in August 2004.
In contrast to Jeff Goldblatt's rejection phone line, the stakes are much higher when a person uses Josh Santangelo's e-mail service. If a suitor's come-on e-mail is sappy or strange enough, Santangelo removes the names from it and posts the contents on his Web site.
"There are a lot of people who just won't take no for an answer," Santangelo says. "It can't hurt to have extra ways to fend them off."
WHEN FLYING BECOMES A TEST OF WILLS AND WITS
All Dan Cabacungan wanted to do was sit back and take a nap, and instead he got into a two-hour battle of wills with the passenger seated behind him. All Ira Goldman wanted to do was use his laptop and place his drink on his tray table, and instead he got bashed in the knees. Air travel these days is beginning to look like a pro wrestling smackdown.
Dan Cabacungan describes himself as a fairly laidback guy. He wasn't asking for much on that flight back home after a grueling week of travel. "It was a Friday night and I hadn't slept for thirty hours," he says. "All I wanted was a tiny bit of shut-eye."
So, after waiting for the plane to reach altitude, Cabacungan snuggled into position, tucked his minuscule pillow into the crook of his neck, and slowly began to recline his seat. But suddenly, an inch and a half into its angle, the seat stopped reclining. Perplexed, Cabacungan figured that perhaps something within the chair's mechanism was hitting a snag. He leaned forward and tried again. But it wasn't budging.
Realizing that it was the passenger behind him, Cabacungan slowly unbuckled his seatbelt and turned around to shoot a quizzical and annoyed look. The man in the seat behind shot back a "get lost" look and said that he was trying to use his laptop. "I've given up enough space already," the passenger said.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Life's Little Annoyances by Ian Urbina. Copyright © 2005 Ian Urbina. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
INTRODUCTION,CHAPTER 1. WEAPONS OF THE WEAK,
CHAPTER 2. SERVICE WITH A SNARL,
CHAPTER 3. OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS,
CHAPTER 4. GOING POSTAL,
CHAPTER 5. PRESS I FOR AGGRAVATION,
CHAPTER 6. VEHICULAR MISANTHROPY,
CHAPTER 7. RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE,
CHAPTER 8. BILLS, BANKS, AND BILE,
CHAPTER 9. TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY,
EPILOGUE,
A NOTE TO THE READER,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,