Ditherers

[Clarabellb]

Those people who queue for bloody ages at security and then once at the front need to un bloody load their liquids, re package them...discover new liquids, laptops...Christ on an effin bike!

deydo
They are the same people who stop at the bottom or top of an escalator....

OP, well her boss was very flexible about lunchtimes mine was less so. Once I went and even bolting my lunch didn't get back anywhere near within the hour coz she dithered and got thoroughly bawled out by my boss. I explained what had happened and my boss helpfully bawled across the office 'Mandy, stop making my staff late by spending twenty minutes to decide whether or not you want to fiddle about with a pickled onion'.

Next time we went out she made a prompt order of chips.

DP is a nightmare in restaurants. He never likes to look at the menu until he's sent the waiter away at least once and even choosing a glass of wine means an uncomfortably long pause. Most irritating.

And I've previously told the story about him being banned from our local taxi firm for dithering so much while leaving the house. In and out like a yoyo before he makes it down the drive.

I have traumatic childhood memories of him hovering around huffing and tutting because we were taking too long to put our shoes and coats on, and once we were all finally ready and sitting in the car waiting to go he would suddenly remember six thousand urgent last-minute tasks and leave us waiting on the driveway for half an hour.

This pretty much is what DH is like. It is infuriating.

Actually what he does is he waits until everyone else is ready become he'll even start readying himself to leave the house. So we will all have our shoes and coats on and have actually gone outside before he starts getting ready. The really infuriating thing is he has OCD which manifests as a compulsion to check every fucking thing in the house (all doors locked, all windows shut and locked, all lights off, the hob not being on (no idea why as it's only ever in if I'm cooking) and so on).

So the children and I (and his parents or mine if they're visiting) end up sitting in the car or standing outside the front door for 10-15 minutes waiting for him every single time we leave the house together. Now he's started insisting that I give him a lift to a slightly closer station than the one he could walk to from our house (through really slow traffic so it must mean he gets to work later) when I take DS2 to school. So we have to endure extra time in the car waiting for him to finish faffing. We make huge progress through long audiobooks due to having to spend about 40 minutes in the car every morning (rather than 25).

He refuses to accept he should start getting ready 15 minutes before he wants to go and the rest of us can saunter down at the last minute, put our stuff on and be gone.

Chottie

Another good example!

Short trip to Ireland couple of months ago. Mum and teenage mutant nincompoop boy in queue for security behind me. Conversation was as follows.

Mum: Have you got all your liquids in the clear bag ready?
TMNB: Yes mum.
Mum: Really?
TMNB: Yes.
Mum: What, you've got all your liquids in thr bag already have you?
TMNB: Yes.
Mum: You're seriously telling me that you've put every bit of liquid you've packed into the clear plastic bag?
TMNB: YES.
Mum: What about your toiletries? You do realise they are liquids don't you?
TMNB: YES MUM.
Mum: What about that aftershave you like? I saw you pack it. That's a liquid. Have you got it in the plastic bag?
TMNB: YES MUM FOR GODS SAKE I ALREADY TOLD I'VE DONE IT WHY DO YOU KEEP GOING ON ABOUT IT YOUR'E RUINING MY LIFE I HATE YOU!

Just as I go through security his bag gets scanned, and guess what it's chock full of liquids he hasn't put in the plastic bag, and his Mum is absolutely berating the little shit for being so stupid.

People who get to the front of the queue in a café and haven't decided what they want! Argh.
People who wait until the cashier is scanning their shopping and then vanish off as they've forgotten something or need a wee or something else daft.
People who stop dead when they get off an escalator. Why?
Can I add people who crowd round the door to the lift as I'm trying to get out with my son in his buggy? Yeah I bumped your leg, you wouldn't move!
People who get to the front of the queue, watch the cashier scan everything then act like it's the surprise of a lifetime that they have to pay. Faff pockets for wallet, faff wallet, check cash, check cards, faff faff faff!
Then spend aaaaaages sorting wallet whilst still at the till so the next person still has to wait. Sod off will you, my frozen oven chips are melting.
People who do the daft dance when you arrive at a doorway at the same time. Left right left right.... just pick one side! I just stop still to one side now, and do you know what? People still do the side to side dance! WHY???

MiladyThesaurus I think it's just selfishness - they find it annoying having to wait for people, so they make sure they are always the last one ready so everyone else is waiting for them. My dad could do his faffing in advance but then, heaven forfend, it might be him waiting in the car - and he is far too important for that!

This is my DH! waits until he is right at the ticket barriers of train stations before he begins to look for his ticket... drives me mad! He is always away with the fairies

We flew Easyjet at the weekend, and we were wetting ourselves at the "queuers".... the plane came into the gate and suddenly everyone was standing, forming a queue and standing in it for the next 30 minutes. What the hell,do they think it's leaving without them??!?! Then they get on board and spend 15 minutes trying to fit their stuff overhead and holding everyone up. FFS. We waited until last to board, and yeah our bags went under. So what??! Still got them the other end. It was baffling pack behaviour...........

Ditheres in supermarket. Why are you staring at the fruit. WHY. it's the same every week. Bananas apples grapes.....
Ahhhhh

Ditherers do drive me mad, especially bus ditherers, who rush to get on and then spend ages hunting for money/pass.
At Manchester airport though, this year, I did become a ditherer. I thought I'd packed a mossie plug refill in my case. I went through security, smug in the knowledge I was on the ball. Then I got stopped and the security guy searched my hand luggage.
In my cavernous, giant hand bag, was the refill and two lipbalms! They were really nice about it but next year I'll double check and take a smaller hand bag.

YANBU about ditherers. For some reason there seems to be a law that I am always stuck behind them.

In respect of flight security, equally annoying are the people who don't give you any time to put your belongings on the conveyor belt. I've got it down to a fine art but I still have to put my medication and laptop separately, which seems to annoy quite a lot of terribly well-dressed men (who then take longer than I do to sort their crap out).

The ones that boil my piss are the middle aged blokes that spend hours staking out the overhead lockers and reorganising their fucking belongings to the nth degree. We get the same things in my office kitchen: guys with a mug to wash who spend a good five minutes soaping it, rinsing it and drying it sloooooowly while everyone else stands and waits.

THERE IS A FUCKING DISHWASHER, FFS!

Ditherers on buses do my head in.

Just when the leader of the queue wanting to get on the bus is starting to get on, more people try to get off as either a small child or someone elderly has only just got down the stairs and the bottleneck behind them has to get off.

The couple who get separated - one gets off before the other and, instead of walking on and clearing the bus and the waiting queue, he or she will stand in the door of the bus, waiting for their beloved, either oblivious to the people trapped behind them or loudly tutting as people bunp into them as they try to get past.

The ones who have waited for the bus and then, as they're on the bus with the rest of the queue behind them, start to look for thirlleir pass or the change needed for the fare. After they've found their purse/wallet of course.

people bump* into them

start to look for their* pass.

FFS.

I've said this before - at least once in their lives all ditherers must make a prilgrimage to a ditherer's spiritual home - the toaster at a hotel breakfast buffet. They must wait there for a minimum of half an hour, carefully selecting first the type and exact slice of bread, then staring hard at the toaster for some minutes before carefully, and, importantly, wrongly, putting the bread in and fiddling with the controls so it comes out half done and they have to repeat the process, to be rewarded with two blackened pieces of bread. They will then give the ceremonial hurrumph, the ritual repetition of an incantation about bloody foreign toasters, and slowly shuffle away, only to repeat the same ritual for every morning of a two week holiday.

My parents have at least two holidays abroad a year. Every. Single. Time. Df has to leave something in the over 100ml liquids bin. Drives mum mad

starchild it would never be DH waiting for us in the car because we're all efficient at getting ready.

He'd never be finished his outside checks (yes, the doors he checked were locked from the inside must be checked again from the outside before we can go) before we were in the car even if we only started getting ready when he went outside.

I don't mean to mock his OCD but I don't understand why he can't just take it into account when he's determining when he needs to get ready. He knows he's going to spend 10-15 minutes checking stuff so he should factor that in rather than waiting til everyone else is ready and then complaining that we'll be late when he finally gets in the car where we've all been sitting for the last 10 minutes.

I frequently shout (only inside my own car!!) about some people's dawdling attitude in getting from a-b. How do they get through their lives at that pace?!?

OP I so agree....

Apart from muttering lots under my breath, I often think they should put in special lanes for people who DO know how to use an airport. I saw some once in the US - labelled something like "frequent travellers only" - dawdle at your peril in one of those lanes.

Apparently DH excelled himself at the airport this morning with his dithering.

He got there and went through security (probably annoying everyone else who was there in the process). Then he realised he didn't have his passport. So he googled to see if he could get to Ireland without one. And then asked the Ryanair staff who said he couldn't fly on just his driving license. Then he tried to phone me (I didn't answer because I was doing something other than sorting out DH's messes). So he had to get back through security, go home in a taxi, go back, get through security and then get on the plane. Luckily we live about 10 minutes from the airport or he'd have been scrowed.

I think I might have been ready to murder him if we'd been going together.

Oh Christ, the checkout ditherers in Lidl, while they're fussing around sorting out their wallet, blocking the checkout, my shopping is flying through ahead of me onto the floor as the checkout operator.will.not.ever.wait. Aaarrrgh!

Learn the bloody rules!

OhGodWhatTheHellNow

^This.^

They've joined a queue, they've had the opportunity to see what's happening ahead of them and yet it takes them by suprise.

Every. Fucking. Time.

Dithering at petrol stations. They get to the till then start craning their necks to look for the number of the pump they used. The one they were stood next to doing nothing when they filled up the car! If they can't see it they sat something helpful to the cashier such as "It's the black one."