to ask for your examples of weird behaviour from apparently normal people?

[Beelzbubble]

I'll start with my good friend who is normally very kind, conscientious and understands social etiquette.

She insists on giving me a lift home (I normally walk and never ask for lifts). Suddenly her phone rings while we are driving and she pulls up and parks in a road far away from my home and proceeds to have a 30 minute conversation with a recruiter about a forthcoming interview. All the time I am sitting like a lemon looking at her thinking "should I get out, presumably she knows this is rude and I will be late home" but I stupidly do not because I am too English and bite my tongue and twiddle my fingers waiting for her to get off, thinking she will be finished soon and we will be on our way.

She finishes her call and drops me off with no apologies for the impromptu phone call.

I don't think that's rude or weird tbf. It's an important call which she needed to take.

How rude OP, but ‘normal’ people do seem to be a bit weird / entitled when it comes to phone use sometimes. I don’t get why anyone would sit with their phone on the table whilst they’re having a meal with you, but my brother does it.
I also don’t get people not giving lifts if it means going slightly out of their way, but have friends who wouldn’t.

I don't think that's rude or weird tbf. It's an important call which she needed to take.

Of course it's bloody rude. If it's so important, you greet caller, say could you hold one moment as I've got someone with me, explain to person with you, resume call. It's not rocket science.

And at the very least you, at some point, apologise to the person you’re with, acknowledging that your phone call is an intrusion on their time.

That's not rude in this case, as it was about an important call about an interview. If it had been another friend calling for a chat, for example, then that would be rude.

YABU in this example.

I'd avoid accepting these lifts.

My example, SIL who is very old school on etiquette but often insists on bringing her own food to heat up in the microwave when eating dinner or Sunday lunch at other people's. She doesn't have any dietary needs and isn't even vegetarian.

I’d decline further offers. I had this happen once - a friend offered to drive me to the nearest tube station, saving me a half hour bus ride. Which was very nice of her. However, once I was in her car, she asked if I’d mind if she did a quick stop to pick up a few items. Well, the few items ended up being her weekly food shopping and I was home a half hour later than I’d have been if I bussed and tubed my way home! So I just said no thanks from then on. Although I’m Canadian, I’m also ‘too English’ to speak up!

It is rude. At some point during the 30 minutes (long time for a phone call?) it would have been appropriate to excuse herself for a second and check with you whether you wanted to wait or not.

That's very rude and fucking unhelpful too.

I remember once serving someone in the supermarket. Her phone rang.
I was 18 so not very worldly, and meekly tried to get her attention. She kept yabbering on and on. Queue was building up. When I managed to tell her how much her shopping was she announced “I’m on my phone! Wait!”
So an older lady (who I could of hugged) said “well I’m not bloody waiting, get of your phone and pay!”

"I don't think that's rude or weird tbf. It's an important call which she needed to take."
It was definitely rude to stop the car, take a 30 minute call while the passenger just sat there and then not even apologise.

I would have stopped the car, found out who was calling and texted to say I was driving and would call them back as soon as I dropped my passenger home.

Rude!

MilkTwoSugarsThanks

I don't think that's rude or weird tbf. It's an important call which she needed to take.

But not to say anything?!

People with their phones are rude; I admit I sit in mine a lot but when you’re talking to someone and they pick up their phone to look at Facebook or respond to a text I do find it rude and will generally stop talking to make my point.

First off no one can ‘insist’ on giving you a ride. If I was you and it sounded like the call was going on, I would have mouthed a ‘thanks but gotta go’ and left the car. Surely she couldn’t have parked further from your house than from work if she was giving you a lift from there.

It’s rude

Manners have gone out the window for a lot of people when it comes to using their mobile telephones.

I can't stand those who put their phones on speaker on the bus and think it's acceptable for others to have to listen to both sides of some inane conversation for the whole of their bus journey. Even worse when it's in a foreign language as it often is on one journey I make into town (and no, I'm not racist. I just find it annoying). It's not so bad if it isn't on speakerphone.

What ever happened to people sitting quietly and looking out of the window and relaxing on their journey?

YANBU - I think that was rude. Someone did something similar to me once.

My Dsis lives overseas and me and DH had gone to visit for her wedding. A friend of hers insisted on driving us to the airport for our flight home even though we'd said we'd take a taxi. Very kind of her to offer, but then she drove us all around town so she could run some errands, including one trip to a pharmacy where she went in for at least 30 mins.

We were sat in her car surrounded by our luggage, getting more and more panicked about the time and looking at our watches, but we were too polite to ask her to hurry up.

We did end up catching the flight but it was a very close call with minutes to spare.

My mum is, to all intents and purposes, a normal person.

But she stares at people in public and comments loudly on them, their appearance, their clothes etc. You can be sitting having a coffee completely normally then she'll just look someone up and down really blatantly and say something like "hasn't that woman got nice hair?" then just resume a normal conversation.

Weird, embarrassing and awkward.

@dirtydennis are you my long lost sister? My mum does exactly the same, it’s actually terrifying because you never know what she’s going to say. Sometimes it’s a lovely compliment, sometimes it’s ‘her bum is far too big to be wearing white trousers’ 🙈

A mate of mine is really weird about food in restaurants; she'll come to my house (and other friends' houses) and eat whatever's put in front of her.... then we'll go out to eat and she's asking the waiting staff to lay off the basil, leave out the tomatoes or similar. Sometimes, she even ends up removing three or four constituent ingredients (from a pizza, for example) a and, once, she even asked if she could have Beef Bourguignon made with chicken instead. Nutty mare.

DirtyDennis My mum is the same😶 We were sitting waiting for her appointment and a woman with beautiful spiral curls sat down in front of us, mum pointed and kept going "boing, boing boing" and the other day a tall man walked passed and in a loud voice said " blimey wot a huge, big, tall long man" They are not hurtful comments but she has done this since I was young🙄

Last year I had a coffee morning for a charity we support. This woman arrived ( loudly) took 3 long phone calls and then complained no one was speaking to her and there wasn't any chocolate cake left.

To all intents and purposes, MIL is polite and appropriate etc. Except... she almost always refuses to eat in our house. If it was because she didn't like my cooking*, I'd be annoyed but chalk that up to irrational MILness , but basically, although she's often at ours in the evening she'll choose to have a late lunch, even knowing she's at ours for the evening, and then just isn't hungry.

Once or twice, fine. But I'd say this is about 9 times out of 10. It's incredibly odd.

• at other times she happily eats my food and has always done so, including when she stayed with us previously.

Would love to know how others deal with 'commenting mothers'. I go from pretending I don't hear her, to just a polite smile, to saying she's being rude. Nothing works/nothing stops her.

When my child was in primary there was one mother I was quite friendly with. I lived quite near the school, and one day my car was in for service so I took the day off, walked my youngest to school, and went back for her at school closing time. Just as I collected her the heavens opened, one of those sudden downpours where the rain is hopping back inches off the road, and instant flooding gutters. The other mother said "Hop in, I'll give you a lift on my way.". Got in really gratefully, then she stopped at the end of my road - about fifty yards from my house - and said "It's a pity it's not a Tuesday, on a Tuesday I go down that road to the farm for eggs" and turfed me and child out into the rain. I might as well have walked home, as we were soaked to the skin in the last few yards that she wouldn't drive. There wasn't even a problem turning, it was a rural area and I had a big farm-type entrance people used all the time for turning and for sex at night.