Comedic "things you would ban": minor things that irritate you

[Techniquest]

Stuff like that makes me glad I'm vegan! That said, vegan food (of the lazier kind at least) is too loaded with fats and sugars to be healthy, I can see there being new rules about that implemented before too long.

You have to see it to believe it with the amount of fat that leaks out of some of the food I've cooked. That's after cooking it in an oven with no oils etc, a lot of these things are recommended to be cooked in a frying in oil!

 

[Peter Lanky]

Stuff like that makes me glad I'm vegan! That said, vegan food (of the lazier kind at least) is too loaded with fats and sugars to be healthy, I can see there being new rules about that implemented before too long.

You have to see it to believe it with the amount of fat that leaks out of some of the food I've cooked. That's after cooking it in an oven with no oils etc, a lot of these things are recommended to be cooked in a frying in oil!

I've thought about that, and a reckon that it's because those who make ready prepared vegan foods are trying to jump on the fashionable bandwagon (no slur intended here) without really knowing what they are doing. As long as they can legally say 'vegan' on the packet, then they have ticked the box. Every marketing department seems to be trying to jump on various bandwagons these days.

 

[Techniquest]

I've thought about that, and a reckon that it's because those who make ready prepared vegan foods are trying to jump on the fashionable bandwagon (no slur intended here) without really knowing what they are doing. As long as they can legally say 'vegan' on the packet, then they have ticked the box. Every marketing department seems to be trying to jump on various bandwagons these days.

Oh indeed, it is almost fashionable these days to be vegan. Mind you, so is 'flexiterian' which I cannot see the appeal in. Eat meat one day, vegan the next, vegetarian the day after or whatever, no that's weird to me.

Some of the pre-prepared vegan stuff I get is because I often am a lazy vegan, quite honestly. I should make more effort to cook my own meals etc, but I'll get there. I buy prepared stuff than I used to, so that's a plus!

 

[yorksrob]

Stuff like that makes me glad I'm vegan! That said, vegan food (of the lazier kind at least) is too loaded with fats and sugars to be healthy, I can see there being new rules about that implemented before too long.

You have to see it to believe it with the amount of fat that leaks out of some of the food I've cooked. That's after cooking it in an oven with no oils etc, a lot of these things are recommended to be cooked in a frying in oil!

Please no, they've already ruined baked beans by taking all the salt and sugar out !

 

[gg1]

Sliced bacon which has so much water added to it that when under the grill or in a pan it is at risk of being boiled. Pigs are not aquatic, at least those that I have reared weren’t.

'Dry cured bacon' is the stuff you're looking for. At first glance it's about double the price of the cheapo water filled bacon but after taking into account the greatly reduced shrinkage when cooking there not a huge amount of difference in price, and it tastes much better.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 26 Mar 2022 ==

Mind you, so is 'flexiterian' which I cannot see the appeal in. Eat meat one day, vegan the next, vegetarian the day after or whatever, no that's weird to me.

My understanding of flexitarian is it's greatly reducing your meat intake but without eliminating it entirely which would have health and environmental benefits.

From the purely animal welfare point of view (which I'm guessing is what you're alluding to) it does seem very half hearted.

 

[Techniquest]

Please no, they've already ruined baked beans by taking all the salt and sugar out !

It's not all of it, just some! I generally go for the reduced sugar and salt beans, once upon a time I'd have never touched them but now any other baked beans is just too weird for me!

gg1, I think I find flexitarian weird because it's not one or the other. Reducing meat intake, absolutely in full support of anyone doing that. This whole way of eating meat one day, none the next but then in two days' time it's 3 days of meat (or whatever the individual wants) kind of thing just makes no sense to me. I'm sure it makes sense to plenty of people, but I can't see the logic personally.

I did have an item for this list earlier, but I've completely forgot what it was. Maybe it'll come to me later!

 

[Gloster]

I am afraid that to me anybody who says they are flexitarian is likely to be showing off and expecting to be congratulated for the way they care for animal rights, the environment, etc., but are not actually giving up their pleasures. If you are going to help the environment, etc., you need to substantially change your eating habits. If you want to be healthier by cutting your meat consumption, then cut your meat consumption. But don’t expect applause.

Although the producers keep to the letter of the law in their ingredients, etc., vegetarian and vegan food is just the latest marketing ploy for many of them. Many of the companies are part of the same conglomerates that continue to churn out lard and grease burgers and the like.

Years ago I knew a chap who was “dieting only at mealtimes.” This may sound like an excuse, but his wife had some problem which meant that she could only eat carefully and sparingly: at meals together he would have the same as she did. However, he helped out at the business that his son ran and he would eat hefty snacks there.

 

[Drogba11CFC]

Pretentious Wordle answers.

 

[Jimini]

Pretentious Wordle answers.

Sticky answer, today

 

[krus_aragon]

As a follow up to the post about people who busk, but only have a limited repertoire. There is a woman who sits near the bus station playing the accordion: I pass most days, but have never heard her play anything except Que Sera, Sera. The staff of Next must be going out of their minds.

I've encountered worse. Some years ago (in Hereford, iirc) I saw an elderly woman strumming away at a ukulele or similar that only had one string! She didn't make any use of the fretboard either.

 

[Lucan]

I'd ban the pre-recorded words
"We are currently experiencing an exceptionally high level of calls. Please [bog off] and look at our website"

and have them replaced by :
"We are currently experiencing a perfectly normal level of calls. But the bean counters have cut the number of our phone operators just one, and there have lots of people waiting before you. By the way, don't bother with the website because it won't deal with what you are phoning about (unless it was to ask about our carbon-free, or equal opportunities policies) and it doesn't work properly anyway, unless you happen to be using exactly the same version of the same browser as our outsourced web developers did."

 

[dakta]

Be careful for what you wish for, I assume it was an attempt to be blatantly honest automated recorded message for the passport service a few months back brazenly told me they were quite busy, nobody was available and terminated the call.

sitting for hours was not an option and my issue to this day is not resolved, though to be fair I don't really need to resolve it immediately as i no longer need the passport.

 

[Techniquest]

I had similar to that with BA back in January. Fairly urgent issue which needed sorting, wasn't important enough and the system hung up on me twice! By the time I got annoyed enough to go to Twitter and seek advice from the official BA social media team, the issue was sorted thankfully. Felt so dirty using Twitter for anything other than photo-sharing and such like with a friend!

 

[S&CLER]

W.H. Smith has long been a uniquely tiresome shop, but today I experienced for the first time their latest irritant: when I paid by contactless card, the card reader began by asking me silly questions, before it would take my money. You press clear to skip these questions. This is almost as irritating as those shops such as Go Outdoors that email you after a purchase to ask what your experience was like. They've had my money, what more do they want?

 

[EastisECML]

Catchphrase calling itself a celebrity special. Is it really a celebrity special when it's on every day?

Oh indeed, it is almost fashionable these days to be vegan. Mind you, so is 'flexiterian' which I cannot see the appeal in. Eat meat one day, vegan the next, vegetarian the day after or whatever, no that's weird to me.

Some of the pre-prepared vegan stuff I get is because I often am a lazy vegan, quite honestly. I should make more effort to cook my own meals etc, but I'll get there. I buy prepared stuff than I used to, so that's a plus!

Isn't flexiterian just how most people normally eat? Your average person may have meat with one meal and without meat for the next. This just sounds like a marketing buzzword to appeal to people who like having a category they can claim to be a part of as they feel it makes them more interesting.

Oh and not a fan of those vegan bake pastry meal things either. Usually feel hungrier after than I did before. No need to invent new food items for a vegan diet I think. Plenty of vegan food items already in existence, although I don't usually crave a lot of choice so easier for me.

 

[Gloster]

People who drive mobility scooters when taking their dogs for walks. Now I realise that dogs need to be exercised and you may be unable to go far except on your scooter, but please pay attention to others. Too often have I have seen a mobility scooter whizzing along either on the pavement or along the edge of the road with a dog on a long lead racing backwards and forwards across the pavement. The owner’s attention is divided between driving the scooter and keeping an eye on the dog, but they are failing in both. If they don’t drive their scooter into someone or cause cars to swerve, the dog will tangle its lead around someone or something.

 

[Bletchleyite]

W.H. Smith has long been a uniquely tiresome shop, but today I experienced for the first time their latest irritant: when I paid by contactless card, the card reader began by asking me silly questions, before it would take my money. You press clear to skip these questions. This is almost as irritating as those shops such as Go Outdoors that email you after a purchase to ask what your experience was like. They've had my money, what more do they want?

My "favourite" is asking if I would like a £1 bar of chocolate when paying for, er, a bar of £1 chocolate.

Moto service area ones have another irritant, "would you like to donate 25p to charity"? Er, what charity? Staff seem to dislike it and cancel it straight off, though.

 

[D821]

Tea towels made from synthetic materials, instead of cotton, that just spread the water over whatever you're trying to dry instead of absorbing it.

 

[Calthrop]

Tea towels made from synthetic materials, instead of cotton, that just spread the water over whatever you're trying to dry instead of absorbing it.

Amen ! This has long been a peeve of mine on the drying-up-in-kitchen scene generally.

 

[oxfordray1]

Tea towels made from synthetic materials, instead of cotton, that just spread the water over whatever you're trying to dry instead of absorbing it.

I'd not thought of it until you said it, but you are so very right!

 

[Gloster]

People who take a ‘phone call and have the ‘phone on speaker mode (or whatever it is called when you hold a conversation when the ‘phone is sitting on a table, etc.), but then tell their friend sitting next to them all the contents of the call. S/he already knows, as does the rest of the bus, coach, restaurant, park, etc., because we have just had to listen to your inane witterings and those of the person on the other end of the line.

 

[PeterY]

People who take a ‘phone call and have the ‘phone on speaker mode (or whatever it is called when you hold a conversation when the ‘phone is sitting on a table, etc.), but then tell their friend sitting next to them all the contents of the call. S/he already knows, as does the rest of the bus, coach, restaurant, park, etc., because we have just had to listen to your inane witterings and those of the person on the other end of the line.

Hearing other peoples phone conversations, both caller and receiver on public transport. Some can be quite interesting

 

[xotGD]

Ugly loft conversions. Sometimes it looks like someone has stuck a garden shed on the roof of the house.

 

[jfollows]

Not lighthearted really, but I have a friend who would leap and answer his phone when he was mid-sentence in a conversation with me. Maybe it's a generational thing, I'm old but he's older, and my dad used to run off and answer the phone at home also.
The last time of many he did it I decided I needed to do something about it. His phone rang and he said "do you mind if I take this?" to which I said "yes" but he didn't listen to what I said, just assumed I was OK, and took the call. Which I had to listen to because we were chatting in a pub until he stopped talking to me.
At the end of the call I said something as politely as I could along the lines of "did you not realise I said 'yes' in answer to your question and I find it exceptionally rude that you break your conversation with me to talk to someone who just happened to call you".
He got the message, and now he's much better about it.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes someone important does call, but my book of manners tells me to apologise in advance to my companions, explain that I might get an important call and apologise for having to take it. For example, I might be waiting for someone to call me to confirm something important has happened.
But if I get an otherwise unexpected and unanticipated call when I'm talking to someone, I just let it go to voicemail, that's what it's for.
I was once at the cheese counter in Fortnum & Mason and chatting to the man about cheese when someone - actually the same miscreant friend - called me, so I answered to the effect of "sorry Bob, but I'm busy, I'll call you back" and the cheese man described me as his politest customer of the day for not ignoring him.
I don't know, it just gets me and is something I find incredibly rude. A bit like queueing up for someone behind a desk who starts talking to you, then their phone rings, and they answer it.
My dad said "it might be someone important" to which my point in response was "who am I, then?".
It was difficult working out what to say to Bob but it obviously worked because we're still friends and he doesn't answer his phone when he's chatting to me any more! I think the fact that his girlfriend confirmed that I was right in her opinion when he subsequently asked her what she thought probably helped also.

 

[Gloster]

A friend was on a panel interviewing applicants for a middle-ranking job in one of the areas of a large national company. Half-way through one interview the candidate’s ‘phone rang. Without a word to the panel he answered it and held a several minute-long conversation which seemed to be about who to invite to a party; it certainly wasn’t anything vital. At the end of it he resumed talking about what he had been going on about before the ‘phone rang. He didn’t get the job.

 

[Class800]

A friend was on a panel interviewing applicants for a middle-ranking job in one of the areas of a large national company. Half-way through one interview the candidate’s ‘phone rang. Without a word to the panel he answered it and held a several minute-long conversation which seemed to be about who to invite to a party; it certainly wasn’t anything vital. At the end of it he resumed talking about what he had been going on about before the ‘phone rang. He didn’t get the job.

Should have been kicked out of the interview straight away - a blatant breach of professionalism

 

[Mcr Warrior]

How about those annoying advertising flyers stapled in between the pages of a weekly magazine or periodical?

 

[Class800]

How about those annoying advertising flyers stapled in between the pages of a weekly magazine or periodical?

The ones I have aren't staped so I can just shake them out and put them all unread into recycling

 

[Jimini]

How about those annoying advertising flyers stapled in between the pages of a weekly magazine or periodical?

Annoying, yes, but a significant source of income that keeps said magazine in business.

 

[Class800]

Annoying, yes, but a significant source of income that keeps said magazine in business.

Foolish income really, as most people won't read them and the advertiser is wasting their money