Funny thing – not too long ago, I was complaining about complaining. But there’s something appealing about making a list of “favorite things” to complain about – I guess we all have our pet peeves, don’t we?
When someone answers a “How are you?” greeting with “Can’t complain,” I sometimes think they just haven’t thought enough about it. If you’ve ever seen those bumper stickers that say “If you’re not angry, then you’re just not paying attention,” it’s kind of the same idea…you’re just not looking for something to complain about. In truth, I try not to go looking either, and I try to keep my complaints to a minimum. But sometimes they find me anyway.
At least in my case, it seems like many sources of complaint are rooted in the one thing we can’t control – other people. Well, that’s not entirely true – depending on our level of authority, we can control the behavior of some people to some extent. What we can’t control is how they feel about our controlling their behavior. For example:
(Parent to child) “You’re going to eat that, and you’re going to like it!”
OK, the parent can direct what the child eats, and can insist it be done without protest – but the kid is still free to hate whatever it is he or she is being required to consume. Or as one of my favorite power-pop bands puts it so well, “He can tell me what to do, but he can’t tell me what to feel.”
Hey, are people who can’t get to the point one of your favorite things to complain about? Enough with the digressions, and on to the aggravations (not in any particular order):
- Traffic/commuting (if you didn’t predict that one, you must be new around here)
- Lack of consideration for others
- Narrow-mindedness
- Being rushed/not having enough time
- Inattentiveness
- Inconsistency/double standards
- Careless spelling and grammar (Proofread, please! That’s all I ask…)
- Laziness
- Bad food
- Hot weather
Some of those complaint areas are so broad I may well have exceeded ten. I can’t complain about this assignment, though – I actually thought it was a lot of fun!
I concur with your entire list!
Sunshine – Thanks! 🙂 After I posted it, one more complaint came along, but I’ll post that one tomorrow.
I agree with your list! Lots of yours made my list, too. I didn’t think about the grammer/spelling one, but that is SOOOOO another one on my list. If you can’t take the time to review it, I don’t have time to read it – that’s my philosophy! Happy Wednesday to you!
Jennifer 🙂
Jennifer – We did have some overlap, didn’t we? I forgot about the drama junkies, though – they wear me out, too!
Traffic–big ick! Your mention of grammar brought to mind one of my big pet peeves. Failure to use capital letters when appropriate. I cringe every time a sentence begins with a lower case “i”.
Literary Feline – Oh, same here about the capitalization – and punctuation, too! Sometimes it just seems like people have gotten so lazy.
As for traffic, we could commiserate over that for weeks, since we’ll probably be stuck in it for that long! 🙂
Oh, I could join with you on complaining about every item.
Patois – Jump on in!
Funny – nearly every list I’ve seen for this topic has at least one item related to traffic or driving…