Open letters

[resonant]

Dear counter employees,

When I arrive at the front of the line, you've got about ninety seconds to acknowledge my existence.

If you'll make eye contact and say, "I'll be with you in a moment," I'll wait humbly in line for quite some time. But when I step up to the counter, I start, well, counting. If you go on with your work and ignore me, in a minute and a half you will have lost a customer.

I wish I were more confident that most of you cared at all, but at least it makes me feel better.

-----

Dear people in waiting areas:

Chairs are for people to sit in. They are not for you to put your towels on at the pool; there are hooks on the wall for that. They are not for you to pile your coats on at the skating rink; I realize there really is no satisfactory place to put coats at the skating rink, but it makes a lot more sense to put the coats under the benches and the people on them than vice versa.

If all the seating places are occupied, I will move your stuff so that I can sit down. I will move it as gently and respectfully as if it were my own (and you'll notice that my own stuff is under my chair or hung on a hook), but I will not stand up for an hour and a half so that your worldly possessions can have the comfortable chair. Sorry if that bothers you, except not sorry at all.

-----

Dear people in public places in general:

As the loudness and annoyingness of your ringtone increases, so should the immediate accessibility of your phone.

-----

Dear acquaintance:

It's lovely that you enjoyed that book, and that you think I might enjoy it, too. But I hate it when people lend me books that I haven't asked for. I mean, you do realize you've just handed over (1) a significant object for which I have to be responsible and (2) a task that I have to perform, whether I want to or not? Seriously, if you want to just recommend a book to me, go for it; I'll write it down and get to it when I'm in the mood to read whatever it is. But if I wanted to borrow a book, I would have asked for it.

-----

Dear parents,

If you come to a cafe, and you bring a child too young for school, you are going to have to entertain him while he's there. If you expect to have a conversation, you're going to have to bring along toys or books or art supplies or whatever else will keep his attention, and you're also going to have to expect frequent interruptions.

If you bring nothing for him to do, he's going to try to talk to you, and if he says, "Are you ticklish?" and you ignore him, he's going to say it over and over again, louder and louder.

If the mild-mannered woman in the useless headphones has to come over and whack someone upside the head, it won't be the kid. It will be you.

Comments

[reginagiraffe]

Yes to all of these. Especially #5.

[snailbones.livejournal.com]

LOL - you are so right, especially about people lending books!

[vamysteryfan.livejournal.com]

# 3 is a massive pet peeve. I've actually said to people "You can move or I can sit on it, but I'm not standing."

[vickita.livejournal.com]

My way around the book-lending issue is, if I really, really think someone should read a book, I *give* it to them. "Here, have a book!" And then I probably forget all about it, and so there's usually no stress involved on the other end, either.

My new thing, though, is gifting iTunes store audio books to people that I know listen to audio books whilst they are traveling. That's a rockin' way to get people to read books that I want them to read. *eg*

[ecaterin.livejournal.com]

I swear I've been tempted to walk over to parents in public situations and drop a business card on their heads :P (I teach positive discipline :P)

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I see this so much! Like it's so hard to bring along a pad and some crayons?

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I feel bad being irritated by this, but usually I have my reading pretty well planned out for the next month or so, and usually I'm in the mood for one thing (only novels, only comedy, only fantasy, whatever), so the odds that I'll get around to reading this one book before I forget who it belongs to are ... slim.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

People will actually get snippy with you if you move their stuff! Like you were supposed to give their purse and their coat the same consideration you'd give an actual human being! Look, if you don't want me to touch it, don't put it where it's in my way!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

At least both of those spare someone the necessity of remembering who they're supposed to return it to!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

People seem to expect both too much and too little of their kids. Like, they act like the amount of television a six-year-old watches is this immutable fact of nature that the parents have no control over, and yet they expect the same six-year-old to sit for four hours in a laundromat with nothing to entertain him but a copy of Ladies Home Journal.

[snailbones.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah - I always kick myself when somebody has raved about something and I've made all the polite noises, only to have the damn thing thrust into my hands... feels like I'm sitting an exam then!

[vickita.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I actually learned a long time ago that if I let go of a book, there's a good chance I'll never see it again, so I don't generally give books to people unless I'm *giving* it to them.

And then, yeah, 90% of the time I totally forget about it, 'cause that's the way i roll. ;-D

[qe2.livejournal.com]

On #1: yes, yes, yes. The pharmacy where I get my drugs is staffed with otherwise-nice people who cannot for the life of them follow the instructions written in GREAT BIG CAPITALS on a sign customers can see that tell them how fast they need to respond to waiting folks (fast) and what to say if they're otherwise occupied (roughly: "I'm otherwise occupied, but I'll be with you as soon as I can be"). Grr argh.

On #3: remind me to tell you some time about the wedding I sang at my last long-term church job wherein another singer's cellphone rang eleven times during the vows. If she hadn't been 65 and brittle, I'd have physically dragged her ass out of the nave and thrown her down the steps to the undercroft.

On #5: I think parents like this think we're the village it takes. Would that they troubled to discover how few people actually live in their neighborhood...

[toyniffler.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit puzzled about peeve No 2, If I put a towel/jacket/purse on a chair in a public seating area this means I've only gone to fetch something/to the bathroom/to buy tea. It's a territory marker for "I'll be back in this chair in a few minutes,please don't sit on it" Isn't that the norm? If someone moved my stuff then I'd be a bit miffed admittedly.
I agree with all the others though, especially No. 5. I have friends who do this regularly and it drives me up the wall.

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

Heh, I'm with you, only that with (4), be glad you're living far away, cause that's me. Ok, me with very good friends and family (as in 'read this, now! *dumps book on struggly victim* 'cause I'm dying to have a conversation about it with you. What d'you mean, you're not done yet?'

I know it's annoying, but on the upside, if I hadn't done it with HP, I'd not now have an excellent plot/character beta ;).

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I think parents like this think we're the village it takes.

made me laugh out loud. And think of a bumpersticker I once saw that said, "It Takes A Child To Raze A Village."

[ali-in-london.livejournal.com]

Like it's so hard to bring along a pad and some crayons>

Worse is when their idea of entertainment for their child is a biiiiiig bag of Haribo, bar of chocolate or liter of cola. Which not only results in a sugar high and eventual crash for the child, but also instills the less-than-useful habit that if you're bored, the answer is to eat something.

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

Grrr. I was just working up a head of steam over the book-lending thing the other day. Sometimes I don't mind having books pressed upon me; in between obsessions, I'm always willing to try something new-n-different. It really depends on the method of the lender, though. My father just mails me stuff he's read that he thinks I like, and his interest in the book ends when I call him and tell him it got here safely. My mom, on the other hand, makes kind of a hairy deal of loaning me two (always two! rubber-banded shut and presented in a jaunty bag!) books and then pestering me until I read them. And always, ALWAYS, I choose the one she's LESS anxious for me to read to tackle first.

Regarding the little-kid-asking-the-same-question-over-and-over issue, I like to count how many times the kid repeats the same exact phrase before his mother/father finally acknowledges him. My best record is 17 repetitions, and the mom wasn't even talking on her cell phone at the time.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

In re: the last letter, this is only really a problem in cafes that aren't attached to bookstores, as parents sitting in bookstore cafes tend to abandon their kids in the children's department after saying to the underpaid, unknown-to-them staffer on duty there, "could you look after him, please? We'll be in the cafe if you need us."

>:O

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

At the pool and rink I mentioned, people will pile all their stuff on the benches and then go skate or swim for several hours! And then they'll come out, get their stuff off the chairs, and go home.

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

I actually learned a long time ago that if I let go of a book, there's a good chance I'll never see it again, so I don't generally give books to people unless I'm *giving* it to them.

Ditto... Lending books--as opposed to just giving them outright--is too hard, so I tend to just give them to people. (And sometimes I'll totally forget I gave it to them, and 2 years later they'll be like, oh, I read that book you gave me, and I'll be like cool! What book? *g*)

[vickita.livejournal.com]

Exactly! ::high-fives:: Sistah!

[cjedwards.livejournal.com]

You're far more patient than I re:(1). 90 seconds? I'm annoyed after about 20 :). Also, the children thing- when I see these two parents with the one kid whom they cannot control I just want to smack them. My mother frequently took six girls out to restaurants, and woe betide any one of us who was irritating- that being said, we always had the crayons/books/toys to keep us occupied. Definitely one of my pet peeves.

[kalimyre.livejournal.com]

For #1: I work in customer service. And no, they really don't care. Perhaps 10% of customers are whiny, stupid, and filled with undeserved entitlement. They ruin it for the rest of you because they make the service people hate you all. I'm sorry but it's true. Which is not to say ignoring you is okay, but I must admit I understand it from the service person's view.

[giglet.livejournal.com]

Re parenting... I just spent four days in an environment that is unusually gentle to kids under 12, and the difference from, say, average at-the-mall behavior was kind of amazing, and terrifying. It was an SF con that is largely run by parents. There are activities for kids that were fun enough that some grownups and teens also attended some of them. Except for a few activities (private parties and a few "the discussion topic is sexual, for legal reasons we don't want people under 18 in the room" panels), kids were welcomed anywhere the grownups went -- not just tolerated, but welcomed as attendees and volunteers and artists and gamers and costumers. The parenting I saw was also notably gentler than average. Maybe I was just in the right places at the right times, but it was a lovely place to be.