to find ditherers annoying

[drxerox]

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?

And I've been called direct before, by people who think it's an insult

Also people who stop moving as soon as they are through the ticket barrier/escalator/door. Death to all of these people.

AND (I'm on a roll!) people who answer a simple yes or no question with ten minutes of dither-TASTIC rhetoric, usually closing their eyes while they talk to you. I've never met a decisive eye-closer. It must be linked. I shall write a scientific paper and have it published.

As ever, mn comes up with the goods, and more. My mil brought up my husband to never immediately accept what was offered, leading to, when we go out people having to press stuff on him before he can accept it, whereas, coming from a normal family with a brother and sister, if you didn't take it when it was offered, you'd missed your chance.

OMG, this thread is my spiritual home.

I am so not a ditherer, that I bought the very first bridal gown I tried on. The thought of faffing in and out of a load of white frocks brought me out in the sweats, so I just went with the first one

YANBU.

My own mother was very decisive for herself, but dithered when someone else was involved, because dithering was wrapped up with love.

If you spent ages choosing something with or for someone else it meant you really cared, even if it meant your daughter froze her nipples off in a t-shirt while you decided on the best frozen leg of lamb in Sainsbury's for Sunday lunch, or got pushed and shoved in a thick coat, scarf and gloves in John Lewis's overheated Christmas department while you picked the nicest card for your son, who was probably going to be too hungover to even open it.

I've become an adult who grabs the first thing off the shelf and marches to the till.

YANBU (though it's men as much as women). FiL and his DP are shockers for this, so pernickerty (sp?) and rude with it. I really don't want to be ageist but I do think there's an element of that to it, especially in NT tea rooms.

Ditherers who stop right at the exit to tube stations to consult their A-Z are fucking annoying too.

YANBU.

I know someone who takes about five years to decide what she wants from a menu, while everyone else quietly succumbs to starvation and dies off. It's so fucking attention-seeking and selfish, apart from anything else.

Also people who get off the bus and stand stock still on the pavement outside, as everyone else gets off and trips over them and creates a pile-up. And people who stop dead at the bottom of the steps on the tube to look at their maps. MOVE!!!

JapaneseMargaret The one time my mum infected me with her dithering was over my wedding. I chose my dress very quickly too. Then, when she'd paid a hefty deposit, and there was a short time to I got a bit of a wobble and told her.

Instead of saying it looked lovely (it did) she said she'd buy another one. She wasn't at all annoyed. It pleased her to be able to go the extra mile. But at that moment I told myself: 'You're being a bridezilla. Pull yourself together.' I think she was a bit disappointed .

It took her longer to choose her outfit than I did over mine. Quite rare moment of selfishness. I think there was a bit of competitiveness going on with DH's mother. She'd have explained it as wanting to look her best for me on my big day

Recently got stuck behind a man dithering in a coffee shop. Oh, how he could not decide which coffee to order. Then there was the whole decision of whether or not to eat something with it. Eventually he decided: mmmn, think I'll maybe have a croissant

By this point, I felt like shouting at him that you can't maybe have a croissant. You either have the croissant or you do not have the croissant. There is no maybe about it! Argh!

Possibly even more annoying is my local co-op, where they employ ditherers to serve ditherers. Trying to keep their attention while paying is difficult, as they tend to be distracted by other customers asking them things and go shooting off, with your debit card in their hand. Got interrupted last week by a man attempting to skip the queue because "he only wanted a lottery ticket". My heart sank.

perhaps we got to the same Co-op. Whenever I feel bothered about how badly other supermarkets treat their cashiers - making them do a certain number of transactions per hour - I remember what it's like standing in our Co-op queue, listening to the cashier nattering to the woman in front about mutual friends and family, while leasurely pushing items through.

DH does this every time we have a takeaway.

Get the menu out, have a look. Then phone...and as soon as they answer, he'll give my order and then it's 'Oh...umm...hang on (cue frantic looking at menu that he's had in front of him for twenty minutes)...umm...I thiiiinnnk i'll have...'

Drives me crazy.

And they're on the bloody roads too - travelling slowly for no good reason, stopping completely at empty roundabouts with great visibility, failing to pull out of a junction into a gap that 3 cars could pull out into and sitting in the right hand lane of 2 lane dual carriageways for ages before realising that lane 1 is in fact clear and there's a queue of traffic waiting to get past them. I'm sure they just drive around in their own little worlds without concentrating on the job in hand.

Bit of a tangent, but GOD, my parents have been doing the politeness dance for their entire marriage. Nobody is ever allowed to say what they want, or how they really feel, so everyone is second guessing each other and no-one ever gets what they want and everyone ends up hating each other, and if you try to be direct and say you want something, you get aggrieved looks, and, worst of all, if you genuinely don't care about an issue, they don't believe you, and assume you are withholding your true feelings and really you hate them for not guessing what you really want to do, because that is how they've been feeling their entire lives!

I have a friend who dithers about absolutely everything,

I saw her yesterday, she was looking for a birthday card, and we had to go round every cheap rubbish card shop while she must have looked at 10 cards in every one, then at the end of an exhausting couple of hours "Oh I don't know, I think I'll come back on Wednesday when I'm off again"

Wouldn't be so bad if it was just this once, but she's like this all the time, and it becomes very draining, because she refuses to go into the shops that I like, and if on rare occasions she does, she sulks and sighs like a bored child.

I gave up on toast altogether after the first day as a hotel toaster is a ditherer's spiritual home.
Love this! I see some people spending more time deciding whether to have grated or plain cheese in a sandwich than I spent deciding to buy a house. And all the time, the queue builds while this big decision is in the making.

This morning, waiting for the bus in the rain. Woman (who got there 15 minutes after me, but 10 before the bus turned up) pushed to get on first. Then spent an age dithering about trying to find her purse, then debating whether to get a carnet or a weekly, or maybe just a return, and did the driver have a copy of the schedule she could take? She gets this bus regularly and does this every time.

OH is a ditherer. If there are 5 tasks to hand he'll moan on about there being so much to do & not enough hours in the day. Right, thats 1 hour + spent moaning about it then. So then he'll (eventually) do 1 or 2 then waste further hours moaning about the rest...which then don't get done...!! It drives me nuts, I have to remove myself to the furthest corner of the house and then yet further time is wasted whilst he moans that Im not interested...no shit, sherlock..He comes from a family of ditherers tho, they talk a lot but never seem to reach an actual decision to do anything. So its bred in him.

I don't dither at all. It wastes too much time in this precious life. My DM is very level-headed, ruthless in terms of what she wants done but I watched her for years pretending to be a 'helpless ditherer' to get her own way.

My personal ditherer rage is always switched on by people at underground ticket machines, especially now were in full tourist swing. There was a huge snaking queue at kings cross the other day, just to get to the machines. Most of the people in the queue were clearly blind as machines would come free and THEY'D STILL BE STANDING IN THE SODDING QUEUE. I had to tell various numpties to go to the bloody free machines and they'd look at me like I was deranged. Then of course they'd get to the machines and stand there randomly pressing and muttering, then they'd have to find their purse or wallet in their bags (instead of getting it ready when they were in the queue), then they'd feed each coin in s l o w l y then get their ticket and have a good look at it, inspect it really carefully WHILE STILL STANDING IN FRONT OF THE MACHINE. And then I finally get to a machine but then the person next to me wants help with their damn machine, or ask directions, or ask any general fucking london question instead of leaving me alone to get on with topping up the sodding Oyster card .

AARRGGGHH. Gives me the rage just thinking about it.

Top up your Oyster card online. Problem solved.

"A hotel toaster is a ditherer's spiritual home"

DH's family are goodbye ditherers. All of them the fuckers

The way to farewell a family is to announce you are leaving, smile, wave, thank the host and leave, no?
Not according to them. Each person must be hugged and kissed. Ugh. Then there must be a five minute conversation with each person. Then a few random group conversations. Then we move to the hallway, chatting all the way. Then a pause at the front door for another chat. Then we stand in the drive for oh, a good 15 minutes or so. Then all the relatives take turns to kiss each child as they enter the car.
Then the host runs back inside to get some random gift they forgot to give us - things like artificial flowers, a bag of lemons or a half empty bottle of perfume they found that they thought we might like.
Then we wind down the windows to chat some more.
Then we reverse, slowly,, waving and beeping.

Every. Time. I desperately want to sit in the car and beep the horn. It's EXHAUSTING saying goodbye to them all. Ditherers.

Then the host runs back inside to get some random gift they forgot to give us - things like artificial flowers, a bag of lemons or a half empty bottle of perfume they found that they thought we might like.

Love this!

dunsborough sounds like my parents.

I'm a private ditherer (oo er!).
Certain decisions I'll fanny about over and completely overthlnk it. In my head.
However, I am always aware of others when out and never dither in queues or anything.
I absolutely hate shop ditherers - who stop with their trolley right in your way to check the receipt, and oh look a voucher for cheese, wonder if....MOVE YOU BUFFOON!

My other ditherer hell moment is being in the security queue behind ditherers at an airport. Even if you are on your first ever flight, you are now bombarded with information from live people and animated films as you queue, about taking off your coat, shoes, belt etc - and, above all, on a busy day, you will almost certainly have watched fifty people in front of you take off their coat, shoes, belt etc. There's no excuse for not knowing what is expected, even if you have just arrived from Mars!

Why then, are the ditherers baffled and taken aback when they arrive at the front of the queue? Why do they start, with a surprised air, to unlace their 20-hole Docs, and begin to pat their trouser pockets for small change and forgotten phones? Why does it surprise them every time that their large bottles of water are confiscated, and that their laptop must be taken out of its case?

If I can get out of my shoes, coat and belt, put everything on the conveyor belt, take an iPad and a laptop out of my bag, give a bottle of milk to the security person for testing, walk through the security gate with my toddler, retrieve my stuff, put iPad and laptop back in my bag, and get back into said coat, belt, shoes etc without holding up the queue behind me, surely you can speed it up a bit???

(Obviously not speaking about anyone with mobility difficulties here, lest I sound like some disablist maniac...)

My parents are ditherers. It drives me crackers.
I end up just telling them what's going to happen.

you've got 2 minutes to make a decision or I'm doing it for you.

one day I might have to kill them. For the good of mankind.

and my blood pressure.