Things people do that baffle you 2

[jenzzi]

Following this thread https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5520735-things-people-do-that-just-baffle-you?page=40

Things included
talking on loudspeaker in public
very elderly people who shop on Saturday morning
people that stop at shop entrances
people park next to you in a car park that is about 20% full

Quiet libraries are a thing of the past now.

When Im elderly I will go shopping on a Saturday thanks very much. The world does not revolve around the young or those in a hurry despite what they might think.

Or even worse, under a toastie and it gets stuck so on top of not being able to use the paper serviette, you can't eat the toastie because it has bits of paper stuck to it.

Park so close as to block my driver’s door on my car then fuck off without checking I can get in. I couldn’t. Had to climb over from the passenger seat. wtf?

The "railway station shuffle" - whereby the husband (who is the one who is catching the train) drives the car to the station with his wife in the passenger seat, and then the two of them get out, hold everyone else up while they say their goodbyes and then the wife gets into the car and drives off. The same performance repeats itself later in the day, when the wife drives the car to the station, they do the same little dance in reverse and the husband then drives back to the house.

Why can't the wife drive both to and from the station? [NB seen with other relationships too, not just husband and wife]

Might be that one can't stand how the other drives?

DH is an awful driver and always in a hurry because he's always late. I either shut my eyes when he drives or insist on driving myself. So we do the railway station shuffle at times because his driving gets thoroughly on my nerves.

(Mind you, DH doesn't drink and somehow I care less about his driving when I plan to have a couple of glasses!)

@DeposedPresident "Might be that one can't stand how the other drives?"

This surely wouldn't account for the large number of couples performing this little routine! When I used to have a daily commute into London I estimate that around 50% of couples did this.

Then other customers need to learn how to wait then

So if someone is cycling what you deem quickly (probably just using the council- designated cycle infrastructure to get to work) do you want them on the road or shared pavement / cycle path? If the council has designated a path shared use you should expect cyclists on it. And they should be cycling at whatever speed they need to be moving at to make cycling a viable means of transport.

You cannot commute by bike at snails pace. It’s not viable. You don’t get to work in time. Cycle paths are provided as the council wants people to commute. You cannot expect people to only use cycle paths / shared path at a dawdling / recreational pace.

This could just be my local co-op...but

I always take a shopping bag - I haven't needed a plastic bag for years - and I get it out, and start packing my few bits of stuff, upon which the cashier asks me if I need a bag. I smile tightly and say 'No, thanks!' but I really want to snarl!!! 😕

Also, I am very empathetic towards plants and cannot bear to see them die of thirst. You see so many cafes and shops where - probably very expensive - bay and box trees in tubs die a miserable death because no-one can be bothered to come out and chuck a bit of water on them. It's ridiculous! Don't they realise plants in tubs have no access to ground water????

Jeez. And then they leave the brown corpses there for months, looking horrible.

Pubs, on the other hand, seem very good at watering their pots and hanging baskets. Good for them - it's not rocket science.

People who watch the Michael Jackson movie. Baffling.
People who watch it with their DCs or DGCs. Utterly abhorrent.

People who rush around supermarkets expecting people to just jump out of the way. I'm shopping, I'm looking at products, reading labels due to allergies and ingredients I carnt mix with my medication. I also carnt walk fast due to arthritis so I really carnt just move quickly out of the way. I shop to keep my independence as long as I possibly can. Yes people may be in a hurry, that's not my problem. Just wait because I'm not going to create pain for myself and jump out of the way just so miss oh so important can exit the shop faster.

You're right - I was once one of these annoying people until suddenly I realised what a whinging knobhead I looked and stopped doing it immediately.
I barely post anything now and feel so much better about my life because I finally realised that online "friends" are not friends and they don't really give a flying cucumber about what you think.
Never posted photos of my kids in hospital but I was a serial pass-agg idiot at one time. I hate that old version of me.

But (except in a minority of truly tragic cases), they aren't born addicts.

I can fully understand why people continue to smoke, but why do they initially make the decision to start the journey into certain addiction?

Maybe they both enjoy driving and so they do half each; or they see driving as a boring chore, so they each do their bit and also have chance to relax, read or scroll on their phones when the other is doing their bit?!

I barely post any more either because Facebook in particular has turned into a sewer of AI slop, local whinging and ads.

I think most people with any intelligence look back at their social media behaviour from a decade ago and cringe at themselves. I'm sure you're no worse than a lot of people. I never posted stuff like that but there was a period when I genuinely thought people might care what I'd had for lunch or that I'd just spotted a squirrel in my garden. Madness.

Honestly it's such a bizarre phenomenon, looking back on it. like a period of collective insanity. I think people who still post a lot on social media now (over the age of about 20) are a bit desperate.

I miss the ability to easily chat to friends I rarely see but I'm so glad its in decline.

But you're just one of loads of customers they will serve that day. If lots of their customers do invariably want/need a bag, it makes sense for them to ask everybody as a matter of routine.

Even amongst the people who always take bags to the supermarket with them, the very nature of local convenience stores lends itself to last-minute unplanned-for purchases. Getting the weekly shop at Tesco is an 'event' that people put thought into; realising that you're out of milk and dashing to grab some much less so.

on the matter of busy supermarkets, have supermarkets recently decided to stock shelves at all hours rather than just when it’s quieter? The main issue for me is the stocking pallets and the online shopping pickers, and then the ordinary shoppers on top of that. It gets v busy.

I think they all decided to not give a shit about the shopper's experience some time during the pandemic, and then it has increased. They don't even reserve the pallets for night fill to the later evening anymore, it's just any old time.

Rely on AI for everything. They even post wrong information and seem shocked that AI got it wrong and a person corrected them

No, I still think that the default should be to assume that everyone nowadays takes their own bag.

Customers should have to actively ask for a bag, for lots of good reasons.

I still think it can't be a lot of fun working for minimum wage - in a place with frequent shoplifters and potential violent robbers after the cigarettes behind the counter - and then being treated like you're stupid by so many customers for not realising that they need a bag, whilst taking longer to serve the queue because you're putting the scanned purchases back on the counter rather than into a bag, before they then ask for one.

Like it or not, you have to react to what people are like, not what they should be like; and if you berate customers for not bringing their own bags, you'll just get anger and/or abuse from a fair number of them.

Smoke

The amount of personal information people freely give out online