Stuff that makes you disproportionately cross

Screwfix & toolstation pack size lottery

They know fine **** well they serve the trade and DIY markets but only sell some basic consumables in giant packs that would last all but a major contractor months and months. Whilst others come in a sensible range of pack sizes.

I give you 100m rolls of earth sleeve and 50 packs of enormous coach bolts.

Believed to be the cause of a recent fire in a barbers in Southwark.

One fire engine from Dowgate Fire Station also attended along with fire investigators, who believe the fire was caused by a hairdryer which had been left on.

It was user-error, not a switch spontaneously failing.

It was user-error, not a switch spontaneously failing.

Yes, our mad switched sockets also annoy me. Again we’re the only ones with these (India are slowly binning them for schuckos or multi-compatible sockets). A throwback to post-war Britain when houses were fused with 4 circuits as we were utterly broke and all our consumer goods were crap. Thinking about it, in post-brexit britain they’re probably needed more than ever. Can I make my house an earth free zone?

There’s cautious and there’s cautious. In all my like I have never known a hairdrier to spontaneously switch itself on start a fire. I accept they could start a fire *if left on and unattended* but not by switching themselves back on.

The H&S flipside is, having a hairdryer is an acceptable risk in return for having dry hair, but where’s the risk Vs reward in leaving it plugged in and switched on?

Related example, most workplaces mandate your work PC switched off overnight. But the reason for turning it off isn’t to save the IT department the few watts it consumes on standby, it’s the small risk of the power supply going pop multiplied by the cost to the business of the office burning down. Very low probabilities with very high consequences.

@tomd
I give you 100m rolls of earth sleeve and 50 packs of enormous coach bolts.

Lifetimes supply of M6 bolts for brakes and fork lowers though!

Weirdly M4 bolts (brake rotors) came in a bag if 10 last time which was really annoying.

The earth sleeve makes great ties for the garden, although it’s not UV proof so after a couple of years once whatever it is has established they’re probably just adding to the microplastics in the soil.

Single panniers!

EEK…that was me this am..
THough I agree… I’d rather have a shoe in each pannier..but i was in a rush… meh!

DrP

I can clearly remember my mum having a hairdryer with separate heater and fan switches when I was young. Very young, because it was in my first house and we moved out of it when I was about 5. Reason I remember is I walked into a bedroom and found it on the bed with the element glowing red hot! That was a bloody stupid design.

Er, single panniers. Sorry, guilty! It’s plenty big enough on it’s own for my commuting/shopping needs and I don’t do cycle touring.

The H&S flipside is, having a hairdryer is an acceptable risk in return for having dry hair, but where’s the risk Vs reward in leaving it plugged in and switched on?

Fair enough, I totally understand that *ANY* item left plugged in with the switch on at the mains could present a risk, but the poster singled out hairdriers like they pose some unreasonable risk. If an individual has such a level of risk aversion then surely they should be switching everything off at the mains when not in use?

Nodding sagely at most of these, but the plug socket thing is just plain weird. Regardless of the practical risk of it spontaneously combusting being somewhere between zero and no really it’s zero, does no-one unplug their shit and put it away after use?

To be honest, I don’t really understand why we have switches on sockets anyway. My partner is a serial switcher-offer, including (if not especially) empty sockets. It doesn’t irritate me particularly, but I do file it squarely into the What’s The Bloody Point bucket.

Lending my shovel to a relative to clear the garden at the new property. Receiving it back covered in concrete!

Thirty years and numerous concreting jobs carried out with it and it was still shiny and clean. One minor patio build later and it all cacked up!

A second patio could well be being built as a result of this.

Loud shouty football fans.
Dogs chasing me on my bike. I’ll ride off as fast as I can till it stops chasing me.
Anyone calling me “bruv”

Someone taking a hex key from the hex key set, using it and NOT PUTTING IT BACK.

You could boil cold water with the fury that induces in me.

I’ve got a friend like that, really nice guy but I won’t lend him anything since the hard drive enclosure incident – It was one of those universal drive enclosures that will take any drive..came back with 3 of the 4 screws missing from the case cover, my protest was met with a blank stare and a comment of “its not broken, it still works fine”. lol

He asked to borrow my socket set and I straight up said, you can’t borrow it, but I’ll bring it over and you can use it, as I know damn well there will be some sockets missing if I let it out of my sight!

Infact I’ve just recently borrowed a power drill from him, and guess what? I had to buy a chuck key for it, despite it having a built in chuck key holder, hahah!

unflattened boxes in the cardboard recycling.

I’ll see that and raise you 2L pop bottles with the caps nipped up. Back when my girlfriend’s daughter lived with us, that was one of her fella’s (many, many) irritating party tricks. The dopy sod could fill a fortnightly collected recycling bin in a weekend. I don’t get it. It’s not even laziness, once you empty the bottle it’s then extra effort to screw the cap back down.

The bit at the bottom of Excel that says ‘Calculating (8 Threads): 1%’.

While I may have the latest laptop with whatever the latest Intel Superchip is and eleventy billion gigs of RAM, can it add up quickly? No it bloody well can’t.

Oh, and,

A number of posts here (such as littering) are perfectly reasonable cross-making situations. I’m looking for things that you know, deep down, that you’re internally overreacting to.

Like, others have mentioned “hidey tidy.” This is my other half and it drives me ****ing incendiary, but I know it’s just me being anally retentive and not something worth having an argument over. A few weeks back I discovered what was left from a pack of 50 pens bought for a mini quiz, stuffed in with the teaspoons in the cutlery drawer. Just… just… we’ve all seen the film Scanners, right?

What does annoy me, and I think in this case it is justified, is half the time she’ll proceed to deny all knowledge. More than once I’ve said something like “which one of us is most likely to have put this here, the one who stuffs insurance documents in a drawer with the tablecloth, or the one who alphabetises the spice rack?” I am, demonstrably, a monster.

really nice guy but I won’t lend him anything since the hard drive enclosure incident

I’ve found over the years that people who don’t have tools generally have no respect for them. I’ve long since stopped lending mine out, even to people I’d think would actually have an ounce of mechanical sympathy.

The last time I loaned out tools it was to a couple of guys who did odd jobs for the company. They asked to borrow a screwdriver. Practical guys, I thought, so I lent then my nice bit set. They used it as a drift, the handle came back battered worse than a porn star’s helmet.

Why? Why would you do that? Why would you do that to your own stuff, let alone someone else’s? I have a cold chisel for fox’ sake, you could’ve borrowed that.

I’ll see that and raise you 2L pop bottles with the caps nipped up.

Current advice is to put the caps back on. It makes automated sorting easier. Loose tops are too small to be “recognised” as plastic waste.

My other half, who in most respects is a very sensible person insists on making gash bits of one-side printed pages into note pads…So far so good, excellent recycling. However she then affixes them to the fridge door with a magnetic clip. When the fridge door hits the walls, they fall to floor and scatter everywhere.When the clip is overfilled with notepaper, it also falls to the floor under the weight of paper…scattering bits of paper everywhere.

Every time the conversation goes something along the lines of…”mind the door against the wall…Oh, too late” or “Don’t put too much paper in the clip, it will fall….oh”

somehow it’s my job to pick up the bits of paper…

👆 Buy her a stapler, so then you only have to pick up the pad, and not individual sheets.

OH going into the garage (my safe space), rummaging around to find something and leaving all of the moved items on the floor and not replacing all of the original items in their original location.

Current advice is to put the caps back on.

The correct procedure is to squish the bottle between your knees, and put the cap back on, forming a vaccume and therfore a nice flatish bottle that takes up far less space in the recycle bin.

Anything else is pure insanity.

Current advice is to put the caps back on. It makes automated sorting easier. Loose tops are too small to be “recognised” as plastic waste.

I put the caps back on, but I crush all the air out first. Putting the lids on prevents them from expanding again.

somehow it’s my job to pick up the bits of paper…

Schoolboy error.

In any case, why’s the door hitting the walls? Fit a doorstop.

i suck the air out.
makes me feel a bit light headedy… free drugz innit…

DrP

You could boil cold water with the fury that induces in me.

I want to use that phrase. I suspect I will need it sooner than I expected

People who go for a piss in the cubicle when the urinals are empty and then make a sound like Niagara falls .

The inability to have a “place” for stuff. My keys almost always go in the shallow glass tray on the bookshelf in the lounge so I know most of the time where they are.

The OH on the other hand is almost always “too busy” to do such things and hence spends many wasted minutes searching the house asking “has anyone seen my keys?” before every exit of the building.

Can probably say the same about most things in the house.

Oh and the inability to put the lid properly on anything. The things I’ve packed up by the top only to drop them as the lid’s fallen off! Infuriating.

And it’s spread to the kids. Why don’t they pick up the good habits?

Still love her and I’m sure I’m equally as annoying.

She’s over on Mumsnet right now, whinging about her Darling Partner who keeps picking up jars by the lid and then wondering why he drops them. 😁

People who don’t indicate at roundabouts

I’m with @speeder on the lid issue !

Cougar
She’s over on Mumsnet right now, whinging about her Darling Partner who keeps picking up jars by the lid and then wondering why he drops them. 😁

Wouldn’t be surprised. 😁

My colleague repeatedly turning on a 2kw fan heater on in the office when it’s 23+ degrees. Completely bonkers. Been pointed out numerous times how bloody hot it is but won’t stop doing it even after the boss has a go about it! Complains that she’s cold!

Dishwasher, pretty much anything to do with that, oh and when printers decide they don’t want to work that’s nearly always a red mist moment.

Fly tipping in lay bys/field gates. This also includes fag packets at the side of the road. You just know these people are also flicking their spent cigarettes into the hedge as they go past as well.

The inability to have a “place” for stuff. My keys almost always go in the shallow glass tray on the bookshelf in the lounge so I know most of the time where they are.

The OH on the other hand is almost always “too busy” to do such things and hence spends many wasted minutes searching the house asking “has anyone seen my keys?” before every exit of the building.

Can probably say the same about most things in the house.

Oh and the inability to put the lid properly on anything. The things I’ve packed up by the top only to drop them as the lid’s fallen off! Infuriating.

And it’s spread to the kids. Why don’t they pick up the good habits?

Still love her and I’m sure I’m equally as annoying

Have you dared suggest that the reason she’s so busy is because she spends so much time looking for the items she’s scattered around the house?

No? I’d probably keep quiet too 😀

Oh and the inability to put the lid properly on anything. The things I’ve packed up by the top only to drop them as the lid’s fallen off! Infuriating.

MrsMC doesn’t have much use of her left hand, so has a genuine reason for not always putting lids on properly, but still catches me out after all these years. Not sure if I’m irritated with her for doing it or me for not expecting it.

People who don’t indicate at roundabouts

Or those who indicate right but then leave their right indicator flashing as they turn left to exit the roundabout. I drive in Milton Keynes, a city famed for its roundabouts, yet so few of the people driving there know how to signal on them properly.

https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/update/2017-03-06/family-loses-everything-after-fire-caused-by-hairdryer/

Sure it’s rare but for the extra effort vs potential downside why wouldn’t you unplug after use.

When I’ve lost something and people try to “help” by naming random places and asking is it there?

This.

People who leave the engine running in a stationary vehicle.

People not walking in a straight line. I have no issue if you’re slow, but keep a steady line so I can get past.
People who walk in large groups across an entire path or pavement. I walk quickly, don’t make me go into the road.
Stopping in doorways. Just step aside and stop blocking everyone.
Being late. Is shows a complete disregard for everyone else’s time.
Not being ready to pay at a supermarket check out. What did you think would happen when you arrived at the till?
Faffing.

Crap hand dryers in toilets.

Bathroom sinks without mixer taps.

+ 1 for people being late, especially those who are always late, and not just a bit, but like 30 minutes or so.

People who hold their mobile phone out in front of them on speaker when on a phone call. Has no one ever shown you how to use it ‘properly’?? <sigh>

Doubly piss boiling if done in close proximity to others i.e. in supermarket/pub/restaurant grrrrrrr!

People who don’t indicate at roundabouts

Or those who indicate right but then leave their right indicator flashing as they turn left

And these same people get annoyed when you pull out on them (I know, I know, but I am a belligerent tosser and I think that if they can’t be bothered to drive properly, neither will I).