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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to find ditherers annoying

111 replies

drxerox · 22/04/2014 06:57

I was queueing in a national trust tea room, moving glacially slowly, as ever. In front of me was a woman who, when she was actually served, faffed around choosing a drink and a cake, as though she hadn't been standing in front of the cakes and the boards listing the drinks for a good 5 minutes.she was totally oblivious to the queue behind her and dithered around comparing the cakes as though she'd never seen them in her life. It seems to happen all the time, and it's always women. Why can't they just make their minds up?

OP posts:
SteadyEddie · 22/04/2014 08:00

YANBU. Food dithering is a particular evil.

DH does it and it drives me wild with rage, particularly because after all the dithering, he always chooses the same bloody thing.

RedFocus · 22/04/2014 08:02

Oh no I can't make up mind which you are.....argh! Grin

RedFocus · 22/04/2014 08:05

Personally I'm never in a rush and have the patience of a saint so it doesn't bother me.

MidniteScribbler · 22/04/2014 08:06

And while we're at it, at the checkout, what makes you think that the checkout person isn't going to ask you for money and a rewards card? You've been standing there for the last five minutes while they scan your groceries, so get your bloody wallet and card out and be ready when they give you the total. Don't look at them as if it were a complete shock to you that they may require payment at some point.

whitewitchofnarnia · 22/04/2014 08:16

Oh bloody hell my friend once spent nearly 40 MINUTES buyiny a birthday card for another friend in card shop. I ended up going for a coffee and tellibg her to meet me. She also once spent 20 minutes bloody chosing a chocolate bar. She also can't buy anything she likes without sending a picture to EVERYONE to get opinions. Me and another friend were saying we sometimes wish she wasn't such a nice person so we could cut contact.

MackerelOfFact · 22/04/2014 08:17

I hate Oyster card ditherers who block up the barriers and escalator ditherers who seen surprised that the perpetual motion of the staircase doesn't continue once they have finished their ascent/descent and just stand there while everyone else helplessly piles into them.

Footle · 22/04/2014 08:22

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

treaclesoda · 22/04/2014 08:24

my dh isn't a ditherer, he is always quite quick. But he does this weird thing whereby whilst we are queuing and he has decided what he wants. But when his turn comes, he feels obliged to look up at the menu on the wall and scan it then pretend he us making his decision there and then on the spur of the moment. He doesn't really know why he does it, he thinks his mum might have taught him that it was bad manners to look as if you have planned what you're having in advance of being asked Grin Confused

GnomeDePlume · 22/04/2014 08:26

DFiL does this in restaurants. Is seated, given menu, chats, has a drink then only picks up the menu to choose when the waiter arrives to take orders. Everybody else says what they would like leaving DFiL to last (we know him of old). He then looks at various items on the menu, looks round the restaurant to see what everybody else is having, looks at the menu again, looks round the restaurant again. Looks at the menu. Then after much humming and haa-ing he chooses something. Orders starter, orders main course then changes his mind about starter.

For crying out loud it is only lunch he is choosing not his last meal on earth!

treaclesoda · 22/04/2014 08:29

my sister otoh is a champion ditherer, as is her dh. They have barely ever been on holidays, despite wanting to go, and being able to afford to go, because they can't make a decision on where to go. They have set holidays, so are tied to particular dates. It's now April and ever since they 'didn't get round' to going away last year they have been discussing booking their holiday for this summer. Now they're looking round only to find that they have very little choice of accommodation because it's all booked up. So they probably won't go this year either...This has happened almost every year for the past 25 years, so you'd think they'd know by now Hmm

BrianButterfield · 22/04/2014 08:31

My SIL's family are all ditherers, to a man/woman. They're very nice, generous, good fun, but my GOD they could dither at an international level. They have been known to miss planes etc due to dithering and what's worse is they egg each other on by introducing new complications to decisions until you really want to scream.

Fizzybangfanny · 22/04/2014 08:32

brian Grin

Lauren83 · 22/04/2014 08:36

My pet hate Is cash points, you queue behind them for ages and its like they aren't prepared for the questions its likely to ask as if they have never seen on before?? Also people infront of you who don't have the courtesy to tell you its empty, AND people who you tell its empty behind you and they don't believe you and try anyway thinking you must just be skint!

limitedperiodonly · 22/04/2014 08:38

We were at the Ben and Jerry's counter at the pictures behind a family of five. I don't really like ice cream but DH is addicted and I thought: 'What the hell! I'll have one too.'

After at least five minutes, with the time of the film start ticking away, I told the woman to get a move on because she was doing it deliberately to show how important and what a Supermummy she was. She did hurry up a bit. Not by much though.

They weren't even going to see a film. They'd just popped in from the street. It was Leicester Square so it wasn't as if this was the only place to get an ice cream.

It was probably a combination of anger and the sugar rush but I couldn't concentrate for the first 20 minutes of the film.

I chose Strawberry Shortcake. It wasn't even worth it because it's bloody horrible, isn't it?

limitedperiodonly · 22/04/2014 08:54

I leap-frog ditherers at buffets which creates another problem. I don't care when they look at me all hurt, but what I hate is that when I go back to get the thing they were dithering over, other people think I'm pushing in. I want to shout: 'It was him. He couldn't decide which bit of bacon was of optimum crispiness.'

Nennypops · 22/04/2014 09:06

It depends. If they are ditherers who hold me up, I agree they are incredibly annoying. However, in some contexts if they really can't bear to make a decision, the reality is that other people are doing them a favour in making a decision for them, so you can be totally selfish with a clear conscience. For instance, if there are four people approaching a roundabout at the same time all trying to give way to each other, someone needs just to decide to be the first to go.

I once went to Italy with a friend who, I discovered, was incredibly indecisive: result, we went to where I wanted and when I wanted (and I basically told her what shoes to wear, whether to she needed a coat etc) and we were both happy.

Trillions · 22/04/2014 09:12

YANBU. I also leapfrog ditherers. If I can't physically push past past them, I bark at them to make up their mind or get out of the way! Yes, I know I'm horrible, but life is short. I don't want to waste any of mine standing behind some fuckwit who doesn't know what sort of sandwich they want.

limitedperiodonly · 22/04/2014 09:15

I hate people who clog the doorways of bars and restaurants dithering about whether to go in.

I barge past them. I live in a very touristy area so I am responsible for many of those stories about how rude Londoners are.

limitedperiodonly · 22/04/2014 09:21

At Victoria Station it gets so rammed that they often keep repeating over the public address for people to keep on moving at the top of the escalator. When you get to the top there are staff moving people who fail to understand out of the way.

So it's not just annoying, it's obviously dangerous.

BrianButterfield · 22/04/2014 09:23

I live in a tourist place and refused to go into town yesterday as I couldn't face the bank holiday ditherers, all walking 15 abreast at the oace of the slowest mobility scooter and congregating in doorways.

Burren · 22/04/2014 09:23

Oh God, treacle. Your husband is my mother. She's extremely conservative about food, so will have decided what she's eating from the moment she sees a restaurant menu, but she clearly also thinks that it looks grabby to say 'I'll have the soup, and then the sole' immediately, she feels the need to do a sort of pantomime of deciding for the waiter's benefit, as if it's all too delicious to be decided between, while the whole table starves quietly!

This is a generational and cultural thing (possibly specifically rural Irish of my mother's generation), but she hates to see a confident child - confidence meaning that when they're offered food or drink, they accept with thanks, rather than refusing three times first and looking at their shoes in shy anguish. She brought us up never to accept anything to eat or drink, or any offer of entertainment, when visiting someone, however hungry/thirsty/bored we were.

Which is fine when you're operating within the same culture, and the adult knows to keep offering until the subtle moment where you're allowed to accept (Fr Ted's Mrs Doyle is not fictional with her endless 'Go ON, go ON' etc) because then it would be bad manners to refuse. But when my aunt's new American boyfriend was trying to make friends with us, and asking us if we wanted to go and see ET in the cinema, or to go to the funfair, he got very frustrated because 'they don't want to do anything!'

It's made me a deeply decisive adult...

vladthedisorganised · 22/04/2014 09:33

Leaving my 4yo champion ditherer aside, the worst I've seen was at a charity tabletop sale where the woman in front of me wanted to look at a toddler's dress for sale (price 50p).

The vendor had packaged the dress in clear plastic, but the woman wanted to have it unpacked so she could look at it 'properly'. Then she wanted to take it over to the window to see it in a better light, but she had a few other things that she wanted to buy so could the vendor just keep a hold of them for her?
After 'looking at it in a better light', she then wanted to see what her sister thought of it, so (again clagging up the queue) she motions to her sister to come over and take it over to the window so she could see the dress. Which she thought was really lovely, but she wasn't sure... Could the vendor just pack it up again because she might not buy it, but then again if the vendor could put it aside for half an hour she might well come back if the vendor wanted to give her a bit of a discount...

By the time she decided she wasn't actually going to buy anything at all, everyone else in the queue was silently screaming 'IT'S ONLY 50P FFS!!'

Blithereens · 22/04/2014 09:38

I hate it when you queue for ages and then when the person in front of you gets to the till and the assistant asks them for money, and they go, 'Oh!!' as if it's a shock and take five hundred years to get their purse out. The rage!!

treaclesoda · 22/04/2014 09:38

Burren you've hit the nail on the head there. We are indeed from Ireland. Grin Well, Northern Ireland, but in this case it matters not a bit, culturally it's all the same with stuff like this!

limitedperiodonly · 22/04/2014 09:38

burren MIL brought DH and his brother up to do the politeness dance. Not just in restaurants, but in lots of things. It took me a long time to learn I had to ask DH what he wanted several times before getting the answer. He knows now to spit it out - mostly.

She's originally from the north-east of England. Whenever we get together, my SIL and I want to kill them.

Also, my niece is that kind of confident child you described. MIL thinks she's rude and is always complaining about her and my SIL. My nephew is a ditherer and MIL adores him. Naturally he takes after his dad, which is obviously the right way to be.