What’s Really Annoying

Written By Neil Offen

Ten of the most annoying things about modern life today, not including, of course, the president of the United States.

10: The ultra-thin flimsy plastic produce bags at the supermarket that you can’t figure out which end to open and then once you figure out which end to open you still can’t open them without rubbing the two sides together and hoping they come apart.

9: Political emails beginning with the phrase, “Will you chip in today”? And political emails, usually from a candidate you’ve never heard of, always ending with “Will you chip in today?”

8: Gas station pumps that start playing loud audio/video channels as soon as you start pumping.

7: Two-factor authentication, which is either an email message to one of your email accounts or a phone call to your spouse’s phone or a text to your own phone which is in your pocket, when all you’re trying to do is to log onto the damn website from your laptop.

6: Spam texts beginning, “Hi, it’s Jessica [or Emily or Candy or Veronica] and we’re hiring and you could make up to $1,000 a day just working part-time from home!”

5: Self check-outs. Scan here. Coupon there. Make sure to place item in bag. Place item in bag. Place item in bag.

Particularly for produce.

4: The hundreds of people on an email group mailing list who decide to hit “reply all” when they have important things to add like “LOL” and “Yes!”

3: Being asked to tip 20 or 30 percent when someone has fetched a solitary bagel for you from the bagel bin right behind them.

2: Automated phone trees which tell you to “Press 1” or “Press 6” or “Press 8” or, inexorably, “Return to the main menu” when you just want to talk to an actual human person because 1, 6 or 8 can’t answer your very specific question which doesn’t fall into the categories of 1, 6 or 8.

1: When your password doesn’t work. And you click on “Forgot your password?” and you create a wholly new password, and you’ve made sure it has numbers and symbols and small letters and capital letters and you go through two-factor authentication, and then you find out now it’s your user name that doesn’t work.

Neil Offen

Neil Offen, one of the editors of this site, is the author of Building a Better Boomer, a hilarious guide to how baby boomers can better see, hear, exercise, eat, sleep and retire better. He has been a humor columnist for four decades and on two continents. A longtime journalist, he’s also been a sports reporter, a newspaper and magazine editor, a radio newsman, written a nationally syndicated funny comic strip and been published in a variety of formats, including pen, crayon, chalk and, once, under duress, his wife’s eyebrow pencil. The author or co-author of more than a dozen books, he is, as well, the man behind several critically acclaimed supermarket shopping lists. He lives in Carrboro, North Carolina.

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