Reviews
Final Word: Empty ice cube trays? Now THAT’s annoying
USAToday August 26,2009
Funny what we remember from our childhoods. Like what really annoyed our parents, for instance.
For the most part, my dad didn’t get that irritated about too much. But when he did, you pretty much wanted to stay out of his way.
Having an older brother was a perk, since he was the one who often bore the brunt of dad’s occasional wrath. I learned from his mistakes and vowed never to repeat them.
Things like empty ice cube trays.
This came back to me the other day when I went to the freezer to get some ice and pulled out a tray. Empty. I have only myself to blame for that, since I’m pretty much the ice man at our house, but I immediately thought of Dad — and my brother, who never refilled a tray in his life.
“Who put this empty tray back in the freezer?” Dad would shout. No one, of course, stepped forward. We all kept our heads down, including the dog, while Dad paraded the empty tray through the living room, waving it over his head as crime evidence.
A book out this week, That’s So Annoying, doesn’t deal with empty ice cube trays, oddly enough. But it does deal with lots of other things that set people off.
A warning here: Thumbing through this book can be quite annoying, since it brings up everything that lots of us find, well, annoying.
• Waiters who hover like vultures and who talk with you as if they’re part of the party.
• People who pick things off your clothes while they’re talking to you, without your permission.
• Slow drivers who move to the passing lane and remain there.
• People who think it’s cool to be fashionably late for everything.
• Colleagues who clip their nails, both finger and toe, in the office.
• Store clerks who talk on their cellphones while you wait.
The list goes on, of course, but I’m surprised the book is only 169 pages long.
I could have written a whole chapter alone on people who violate my space. They stand too close when talking to me. The fact I keep backing up doesn’t seem to register with them. They just follow me until I’m up against a wall, at which point I flee. Talk about annoying.
The book is written by etiquette expert Cynthia W. Lett, who tells us how to politely handle annoyances — what we can, and should, do when dealing with them.
My dad didn’t need Ms. Lett. He handled his own affairs, caring little about anyone’s feelings, something I suspect my brother found quite annoying.