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Original poster

How do you not be irritated by everyone??

316 replies

Whatevermission · 20/05/2019 09:09

Is this the curse of being middle aged? Or am I just a miserable old hag? I think I do a pretty good job of containing my seething rage and incomprehension of everyone's idiocy. I smile alot and friendly and chatty. But, wow, it's an effort. I used to love 'people', finding out about them and enjoyed how different we all are. Now I want to live in a cave and never have to have an interaction with anyone I don't already know and like, ever again

OP posts:
RosaWaiting · 22/05/2019 12:03

I've never read a food blog

part of my GOWness is that I don't understand how food became such a big deal.

BillywigSting · 22/05/2019 13:00

I'm only 28 and I can relate to pretty much everything in this thread.

I have been like this forever though. Even in primary school. The teachers were worried that I wasn't socialising or making enough friends /playing with the other children enough, just sitting on my own reading.

It wasn't because I had been rejected by my peers. I just didn't want to have anything to do with them, because they all talked a load of bollocks.

Even now I have a sum total of four friends (two close), ds and dp that I genuinely like. I love my family obviously but if I think about it I don't actually like them. They are all irritating.

Don't even get me started on strangers.

Supermarket shopping on a Saturday afternoon is essentially my idea of hell.

I'm going to be a right miserable mare when I'm 50 aren't I Grin

BillywigSting · 22/05/2019 13:02

And food blogs should be condemned to room 101.

I don't want to scroll through four pages of inane drivel about how you got this recipe from your friends nona in the Italian riviera, I don't give a fuck, just tell me how to make the sodding pasta I'm hungry.

StormyLovesOdd · 22/05/2019 13:59

So glad I opened this thread, I'm 48 and feel an undercurrent of pissed off about pretty everything most of the time, I thought it was just me. I'm sure it is the sudden lack of hormones, we're like the anti-teenagers. They have hormones raging and it upsets their mood, we're the opposite and the sudden lack of hormones makes us less tolerant to all the bullshit.

JaneJeffer · 22/05/2019 14:19

And food blogs should be condemned to room 101. And cookery programmes or segments. I'm sick of them all!

user87382294757 · 22/05/2019 15:07

I live in a tourist town and have to deal with loads of them on a daily basis. It is worse now as well as Summer.

The selfies! the barging past with a silly group leader with a flag! the rude teenagers...it is a nightmare. there were a whole lot today leaping in the air, with one trying to take the perfect photo of them...this is grown adults, not kids. It is madness. And they all mill urn pottering, and you can't get past.

And when the Summer goes it is not long to the Christmas market and it all starts over again. the only time I like it now, is first thing in the morning in the quieter months. Other times I sneak down side streets to avoid it all, and don't venture out on weekends.

Flicketyflack · 22/05/2019 15:08

billywigsting my children are like this too (47 year old head in a child's body) Grin

user87382294757 · 22/05/2019 15:09

Oh, also TV! It has always been a bit trite, but it seems to have got more inane. Country file! poor DC, we watch that and its enforced banality and BBC- ness and shout at it! And those annoying slooow...news clip things on social media which write the message like you are a 5 year old.

HectorPlasm · 22/05/2019 15:48

50 plus bloke here. I swear evolution is going backwards now.

And why does everything have to become a complete and utter wankfest?

City win the league. Great! I'm a City fan! Cue a 2 week wankfest

TV programme is good/ ending a run/ starting a season? Wankfest!

And the internet has totally denuded the impact of the word 'hilarious'. "Watch this hilarious clip!" No, because I already know it's crap from that description alone.

Also, it's a hint! Not everything has to be a bloody hack!

toomuchtooold · 22/05/2019 16:27

I think what happens is that when you're younger, when someone acts like a total dick, you think, hmm, did I do anything to make that interaction go so badly? And then at some point the penny drops, nah, there are just a whole lot of wilfully stupid people around.

For me it was a time I had to phone up for some insurance thing and the lassie on the phone, I could just tell (I felt) from her voice that she was going to be really annoying and say "what?" in the middle of the fairly complicated issue I was trying to get sorted out. And I just thought (and said) "nope" and hung up the phone and redialed and got someone else. I wish you could do that in like face to face conversations as well. Just flip the coin again, see if you get someone who isn't a numpty.

BillywigSting · 22/05/2019 17:25

@toomuchtooold I did exactly this with Amazon last week. It was extraordinarily satisfying.

fucktofuckoff · 22/05/2019 17:44

I'm 46, I thought it was just me. I'm irritated by everything and everyone 👿

fussychica · 22/05/2019 18:17

Went to a small city shopping today. It was surprisingly quiet BUT it didn't seem it because of all the people on their bloody phones wandering out in front of me without looking, stopping abruptly without looking, talking on their phone whilst being served, loudly chatting into their phones on the bus.

I sometimes wish mobile phones didn't exist but actually it's the bloody gormless folk who can't function without constantly staring at one that I wish didn't exist.

Rant over!

mbosnz · 22/05/2019 18:25

I'll tell you when I've finished disposing of all the bodies. . .

Chickenpie9 · 22/05/2019 19:40

Do you think experiencing bereavement has an impact on this ? I lost three close relatives pretty much as soon as I turned 30 and every year since (I am now 34) I just feel I’ve got no tolerance for people . I can’t stand lateness , people who talk at me rather than to me , colleagues who describe their caseload in long boring details and all of the stuff everyone else on here has mentioned annoys me too . Yet I work with older colleagues who have had no real bereavements in their lives e.g grandparents parents all alive and they seem to be the opposite of me wanting to socialise and make new friends at work and small talk all day . Just a thought of mine not a generalisation .

RosaWaiting · 22/05/2019 19:57

Chicken interesting point, I don't know, I had my worst experience of bereavement at 24 and I was much more tolerant till fairly recently.

I suppose it was a gradual process for me, and joking apart, I don't think it is age related but more about the things I whined about earlier in the thread.

there have been massive changes in things like public behaviour. I would have been deeply annoyed by someone eating sushi on the bus when I was in my 20s, but in those days it really would have been unusual.

BillywigSting · 22/05/2019 20:41

The bereavement thing is an interesting point actually, I lost my grandad when I was five and a friend when I was 9, and have lost other friends and relatives since (two grandparents and another very close friend).

I was also often regaled with horror stories from my dm from her time as an A&E nurse doing weekend nights in a busy city, so I have always had a bit of a 'life is too short for bullshit' type attitude, because it could literally all end tomorrow.

Chickenpie9 · 22/05/2019 20:55

a colleague of mine said she felt like she spent all day forcing niceness and politeness to people (we work with a large challenging client group ) and when she came home at night she felt like she had nothing left to give her DH and DC which is sad but I think from reading this thread maybe how a lot of us feel . Just glad to know I’m not alone in this permanently irritated mood .

Sarcelle · 22/05/2019 21:52

There is quite a lot to be irritated by. We are bombarded with noise and info, you can't switch off. Some people thrive on noise, a lot of us don't. I live in the SE and travel into London. So many people, invading your space or being loud in some way that you can't tune them out. People have no filter now. They behave as if public space is theirs alone. Their breaching of social norms adds another layer of irritation, there is that sense it will get worse.

It used to be that noise leaching from headphones was annoying, but now they don't even bother with headphones. You go shopping and there is somebody browsing and having loud inane conversations on phones like they can't not be connected ever.

I have been in a public loo and somebody in the next cubicle was clearly on the loo and making a call. Go to the theatre and there is somebody talking like they're at home rather than in a space where people have paid a lot of money to see a performance, they feel entitled to behave how they want, they are the leading role and the rest of us are mere bit players to them. Their shallowness, photographing the sandwich they are having at lunch, the inane conversations that begin "I'm not being funny", or "So I said.." or "So I turned around and said..."It's all such shite.

It's no wonder we are cross. We are entitled to be cross faced with modern life. Living as a hermit is becoming increasingly appealing.

RosaWaiting · 22/05/2019 22:34

Sarcelle "So many people, invading your space or being loud in some way that you can't tune them out. People have no filter now. They behave as if public space is theirs alone. "

yes! and they wonder why I've leaned in and waved at their friend when they are Facetiming her on the bus, right next to me, at full volume.

another thought on the age issue - the few people I know who have gone to live somewhere quiet are in their 20s or 30s. One of them is a northern seaside town and has a long drive to work - but it's a drive, which is better than Tubing around, and also she gets to live somewhere which is quiet, in theory. Hopefully she won't get crazy noisy neighbours now I've said that.

another has gone to a Welsh village and has to travel into London two days as week for work, which is a hassle of course, but she gets lots of quiet time and on balance, it's a better arrangement.

I always read the "leaving London" threads on MN because I can't wait to leave, and following my grump about food, one of the comments that always comes up is about delivery or takeaway food.

toomuchtooold · 23/05/2019 10:18

Do you think experiencing bereavement has an impact on this

Did for me. My tolerance of other people went right out the window when my dad was dying - I was having my third miscarriage at the same time. My thing with the insurance lady that I posted upthread was shortly after he died. There was a period of intense grieving where I really couldn't deal with other people at all, but after that, it got a bit better but I never really recovered.

There's probably a million reasons but for me, I had a pretty miserable childhood, bullied inside the house and out, and I think I grew up with the feeling that people are more bother than they're worth. As a young adult I was able to overcome that to come extent, made friends, made connections with people - but then in my 30s when my life fell off a cliff, my instinct was to isolate myself where I imagine that people with a happier family situation might have turned to others for comfort.
I mean I'm sure there are also introverts who don't have a sad family history as well, people who just are happier on their own.

shadypines · 23/05/2019 11:32

Chickenpie9 yes bereavement had a big impact on my tolerance levels. I became much more aware of time and don't want to waste it on utter crap.

Rosa....... People treating everywhere like their front room wow that sums it up massively! Go and make your personal (and some have been Shock real shockers) somewhere else! I don't care that you are in court for GBH tomorrow, I hope they throw away the key!

WattdeEll if I used the phrase 'cut the crap' at an appropriate point in our work meetings we would not have a meeting at all Grin They w are all utter gargage, we are supposed to be talking about work stuff, NO! We get;-

  1. Endless holiday talk (pre and post trip) including the obligatory 'What time are you flying? - (Who the fuck cares, what's the obsession with this - I don't get it)
  2. What are you doing/did you do at the weekend?
  3. Wedding talk (for 12 months before the wedding)
  4. Health issues (surely requires a different type of meeting?)

and on and on until I can feel my brain cells popping like bubble wrap. Needless to say I come out of the meetings knowing sod all about important work issues.

shadypines · 23/05/2019 11:33

oops should read above...make your personal phonecalls

Lotuslots · 23/05/2019 11:47

I work in a very modern open plan office (oh my noise travels). There are > 100 of us on the floor. But my fellow worker right next to me clears his throat (a medical condition) constantly. A long throat clearing session (so pleasant to hear) then 10 second silence and it starts again.
I now put on my headphones and my heavy metal music because otherwise I would absolutely lose my mind. He makes many comments acknowledging he has a problem and saying he should take his medicine more regularly. But it just continues. If a fellow worker beat him to death I would testify it was justified....

user87382294757 · 23/05/2019 14:20

I felt different and more like that after having a diagnosis of something which was bad a few years ago...it showed me the true colours of some people and made me want to bother less with some things, 'less of the crap' and also came with a healthy dose of being more assertive / saying no more and doing more stuff I want to and less I should...can see how it would come with bereavement also perhaps.