Monday morning pet peeves

It’s a grey, dreary Monday morn­ing in Bo­ston… per­fect for un­load­ing the list of things that con­sist­ently rubs me the wrong way in the morn­ing as the work week grinds in­to gear and hits me with 6 hours of pre-loaded Basel.

  1. In the park­ing lot of Star­bucks. Someone does that rushed-walk stu­pid-look­ing move­ment thing to­ward the shop door and doesn’t hold the door open be­cause they are wor­ried they will be one spot be­hind in the cof­fee line. Lame-o. My gut re­ac­tion to see­ing this too many times is to make sure I go over­board be­ing po­lite to hold the door open for people. If they are jerks about it, then when I get in line be­hind them I will stand just a tiny bit too close un­til they start to fid­get.
  1. Ped­es­tri­ans who can­not freekin de­cide if they are go­ing to cross the street or not. Don’t start, then stop, then start, then stop, then look at me! March out there and get across the damn street as soon as I start to slow down so that we can both get mov­ing again asap. I’m not go­ing to run over you. At least not after we’ve made eye con­tact.
  1. Back to Star­bucks. Those folks who make a drink or­der and then rush to the drink de­liv­ery area, crowding out people who have already been wait­ing and are most cer­tainly go­ing to get their drink first. Then when your drink is called, you have to work your way around them. Geez. How to handle? Shoulder through, grab the drink, and THEN say, “oh, ex­cuse me.” The “mor­on” is im­plied.
  1. Email that ends in “Best re­gards, Mit fre­und­lichen Grussen, Meil­leur­es sa­luta­tions”. Email with gra­tu­it­ous HTML lay­outs or auto-at­tached con­tact files. Email that doesn’t get to the point in the first two sen­tences. Email. Well - in ret­ro­spect, I have a whole list of pet peeves just about email. I’ll stop now and re­sume this one at some more ap­pro­pri­ate time.
  1. Wow - a new one! People who wander around Star­bucks say­ing “is your name Mor­ris?” That’s the SECOND FREEKIN TIME THIS MORN­ING. NO. I AM HERE TO FO­CUS, NOT TO MEET YOU. IF I WANTED TO MEET SOMEONE I WOULD BE AT WORK. Sorry, I ap­par­ently need to drink more of this cof­fee! Good grief, if you’re go­ing to meet someone at Star­bucks, fig­ure out a re­cog­ni­tion pro­tocol and for good­ness sake don’t ask someone with head­phones on who is clearly NOT LOOK­ING TO TALK TO YOU.
  1. Lo­tus Notes wel­com­ing me to a busy week with a nice little crash. Thanks, that was pleas­ant. Can you do that again?
  1. CIOs who don’t up­date their blog reg­u­larly. Cough. Not even after get­ting suf­fi­cient cof­fee so that the list of pet peeves moves back in­to be­ing noth­ing but mild dark amuse­ments.

(All that said - I really do love grey morn­ings in Oc­to­ber. The muted au­tumn crisp­ness, the damp that makes you want blankets & hot cider, the feel of winter around the corner.)