My Pet Peeves

Toilet paper: it should go over , not under . Putting it under makes it too hard to get at when you really need it!

Question marks: I hate it when someone writes a question, but doesn't put a question mark at the end. It looks incredibly stupid, don't you think

Commonly misspelled words: I got a whole list of words here that I keep seeing people who have supposedly graduated from high school, and in some cases, college, get wrong, over and over!

Smoking: It stinks! And it's not just some unpleasant aroma, like B.O... smoke is an irritant. Why do you think it makes people cough? (And hey, doesn't it cause cancer or something?) That's why I hate cigarette smoke; not because I'm some self-righteous goody-two-shoes, or a "Puritan weenie" as I was once called, but because it makes me (and many other people) physically uncomfortable. Smoking is such a big pet peeve for me, I can break it down into a list of sub-pet-peeves:

• Restaurants. People smoking in the non-smoking section is not much of a problem; I can only think of one instance off the top of my head of someone doing that. But what gets to me is restaurants that put the smoking section right next to the non-smoking section, allowing smokers to ruin my dining experience without even breaking the rules. (Trust me, nothing ruins a good meal more than smoke.)
• Smoking right next to the entrance to a building. Just because you're outside doesn't mean your smoke vanishes instantly; if there isn't enough wind, or if the entrance is sheltered from the wind by fancy bits of architecture that stick out around it, it hangs around, creating an obstacle course for non-smokers who want to enter or leave the building.
• Bus stops. Again, just because you're outside doesn't mean the smoke goes poof, especially inside one of those bus stop shelters with walls on three sides. Unless there's a really strong wind, that thing becomes a smoke trap. I was caught under one of those shelters in the rain once, and the guy next to me lit up a cigarette, dismissing my request that he not do so simply because he was "outside".
• Smoldering discarded butts. Are you in that much of a hurry? Can you not take the time to step on your cigarette butt and crush it out? (For that matter, it's littering. There are few sights more disgusting than a park bench surrounded with strewn butts.)

Channel surfing: Every now and then while watching TV, my dad starts flipping through every cable channel we get, and I find myself listening to chopped-up bits and pieces of shows which catch my interest and then go away before I get to take a good look at them. It drives me nuts! "Hey, isn't that...? Wait! What was that? No, wait, what's that? Wait! Go back!"

Talkin' 'bout my e-e-education: When I'm at a party or some other social situation, it makes me really uncomfortable when someone tries to strike up a conversation with me by asking me if I'm in school. (To be sure, this happens less often now that I'm 28, but it does occasionally happen.) People who do this almost invariably follow up by asking what I'm majoring in, what my grades are, what my GPA is, how hard I'm working, and what sort of job I hope to slip effortlessly into once my academic training becomes complete. This always makes me feel like a ten-year-old in the principal's office, and even if I am doing well in my classes (which I almost always am, TYVM), I just don't consider it a pleasant subject of talk. I wanna talk about fun stuff!

Hamburgers vs. cheeseburgers: As I see it, a hamburger by definition does not have cheese on it. If I wanted cheese, I would have asked for a cheeseburger. I'm getting a little tired of being asked, "Would you like cheese on that?" (To be sure, it's better than not being asked, and getting cheese anyway, which used to happen to me occasionally.) Ooh, and I just hate going to a restaurant, examining all the different burgers on the menu and finding that all but one of them has cheese on it! You'd think it would occur to them that not everybody who might want mushrooms or chili or sauteed onions on their burger likes cheese, but noooooo...

Nuts: I don't care for them, except for peanuts and cashews (which, as a botanist will tell you, are not really nuts). I don't like eating cookies, pies, brownies or candy bars with nuts in them; to me, they are lumps that just get in the way. What really bothers me is bakeries that don't sell any cookies or brownies without nuts in them. What's up with that? And those kids who go around selling candy bars to raise money for their schools or churches... they never have any without nuts!

"Whazzup!" Bah, I hate it when people greet me with this expression (or its close relative, "'sup!") I'm not sure why; it just rubs me the wrong way... it's supposed to sound cool, but it just sounds stupid to me.

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