This probably will be a recurring series. Because I frequently get annoyed by stuff that people in places ravaged by ebola and famine likely think is stupid. So here are my current first-world annoyances:
Not being able to see the Royals
For the first time in 29 years, the Kansas City Royals baseball team is in the post season. They are thisclose to competing in the World Series. They haven’t even made it into the playoffs since I was 3 years old. The postseason games have been thrilling, and I haven’t seen a single one of them. Like someone who really is from a third-world country, I’ve had to listen to them on AM radio. Because Major League Baseball hates the poor and only broadcasts their games on cable. OK, I’m not poor, but I don’t have cable as a lifestyle choice. I don’t want to spend a lot of money on something that will make just make me fat. Because I imagine if I had cable, I would just sit on the couch a lot eating Cheez-Its and watching shows about picking the perfect wedding dress and hoarding. (I do pay $8 a month to watch reruns of such shows on Netflix, which I honestly hardly ever do.) But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to watch my hometown, underdog Royals make history. I can watch the Chiefs play every game because apparently the NFL isn’t classist and elitist. They broadcast their games for all to see. The MLB might as well hang a “Po’ folk not wanted” sign on the stadium door.
Putting babies on the phone
I don’t want to talk to a baby or toddler on the phone. Not even my own. He doesn’t get it. Someone is holding this electronic device to his face, and all he thinks is, “I want to throw that on the floor to see what sound it makes.” So they could care less, and I’m left there on the other end of the line - often at work - saying nonsense to him in high-pitched voices in an effort to get him not to throw the phone on the floor. Which I really shouldn’t worry about because it would serve the person right who gave their phone to a baby.
Cheap toilet paper
I was telling my pal Emily the other day that I feel like my husband and I are finally successful enough to buy really good toilet paper. For years, I lived the impoverished life of a college student and then single, underpaid newspaper reporter. I bought the cheapest, store brand, two-ply I could find. (Even at my poorest, one-ply was not an option. It’s basically air with a few fibers and no absorptive capabilities.)
So in the last year or so, after five-plus years of marriage, we decided our income could support buying smaller versions of soft paper towels for our bums. Because it’s so thick and scrumptious, you don’t have to use nearly as many squares as you do of the cheap stuff, so I think we’re actually saving money.
But the wonderfulness of our home toilet paper makes the stuff I encounter at work all the more infuriating. It’s lower quality than the stuff I bought at Aldi’s in my early 20s. It falls apart, rolls up into little chunks and gets stuck in your special bits. When you flush it, little pieces of it break off and float back up, and you have to flush it again. It’s a travesty. And a waste of water. But I’m not going to leave flecks of my used toilet paper in there for the next person.
Then Emily told me that at our local zoo, they’ve put up signs in their bathrooms requesting you only use two squares of toilet paper. Two squares of one-ply. That’s like saying, “Please only use this plastic grocery sack when jumping out of an airplane.” No. Just no. You need a parachute for that, and if it’s one-ply, you’re going to need like 50 squares. You can’t even pick a boogie with two squares of one-ply.
Hidden frozen dinner directions
So when I microwave a frozen dinner - ironically, usually for lunch at work - the only thing I want to see is the directions for how long I should cook it. And yet that is consistently the most obscure thing on the packaging. I don’t want to read about your home-style recipes and delicious ingredients. I know it’s mostly just factory-produced sodium. Nobody’s grandma was involved. So I don’t want to read a story about her. I just want to see how many minutes to nuke it. And whether I need to pull back the plastic or stir midway through (which is a huge pain, by the way. I buy these things to cook and eat quickly. I want to put it in the microwave in the lunch room, go to the bathroom or answer an email, and then come back when it’s all done. But noooo, on some of them, you have to babysit them and stir it midway through, like an animal.).
I just want the directions in big, bold type on the back of the box, in the middle, so I don’t give myself mouth burns or salmonella by cooking it incorrectly. Also, when I get older and need reading glasses to see stuff close up, that seems like even more of a danger.
You hear me, Amy’s and Stouffers?
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