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

[125Spotter]

Any advertising that uses the term So-and-so Technology to make it seem like something is more complicated or worthy than it really is, or imply that I am not worthy of being spoken to in plain English because I may not understand, or in so doing tells you nothing about what supposed feature(s) or benefit(s) one is supposed to derive from said "technology" or how it will impact our lives.

Also, people who then parrot "my xyz has ABC Technology in it", presumably either because they're proud of owning ABC Technology or want to show off – without having a clue what that really means (and, if I could be bothered, likely not able to respond to any scrutiny of their claim).

Some examples:

BlueMotion Technology (Volkswagen) - call it what it is. Start-stop, some aerodynamic streamlining and other minor tweaks to improve fuel efficiency.

Trolley auto-stop technology (various supermarkets, most recently seen by the exit of a Waitrose store) - why not just say "your trolley will stop if pushed behind this point" which is far more descriptive.

I'm sure the collective wisdom of the forum has seen many others...

 

[Indigo Soup]

And another thing with online forms - trying to find whether they've gone for 'England', 'Britain', 'Great Britain', or 'United Kingdom' in a drop-down list of countries. Often it's the last of those and it's tucked in with the rest of the U's but sometimes it's at the top of the list.

The really fun version of that one is where they've gone with United Kingdom, but alphabetised by the ISO 3166 codes so it's listed between 'Gabon' and 'Georgia'. I've not yet come across one that only has 'England', to the exclusion of 'Scotland', 'Wales' and 'Northern Ireland', but I'm sure it must exist.

Related to this... companies which advertise UK delivery, but conceal that this excludes a substantial portion of the UK until the latest possible stage. If you're not going to cater to the whole of the UK - and there are all kinds of reasons why you might not - then don't advertise that you do.

One of the more ridiculous examples of this was a brewery in Aberdeenshire whose products could not be shipped to Aberdeenshire.

 

[AM9]

One of the more ridiculous examples of this was a brewery in Aberdeenshire whose products could not be shipped to Aberdeenshire.

Obviously export strength.

 

[GordonT]

Any cooking utensil advertised as non-stick which manifestly is not.

 

[A Challenge]

The really fun version of that one is where they've gone with United Kingdom, but alphabetised by the ISO 3166 codes so it's listed between 'Gabon' and 'Georgia'. I've not yet come across one that only has 'England', to the exclusion of 'Scotland', 'Wales' and 'Northern Ireland', but I'm sure it must exist.

Or even Great Britain out of order between Gabon and Georgia (though that is less obvious)

 

[Calthrop]

Or even Great Britain out of order between Gabon and Georgia (though that is less obvious)

Airing, perhaps a little conceitedly, a bit of obscure and not-too-useful information -- might the seemingly messed-up alphabetical order, be due to the list-maker's latching onto the Russian name of Georgia -- "Gruzia" (that country having belonged to Russia / the USSR, until quite recent times) -- "Gre..." alphabetically preceding "Gru..." ? (The Georgians call their country "none of the above"; but "Sakartvelo": general picture got is that they -- rather like the Basques -- are a weirdly individualistic people, in quite a lovable way.)

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Or even Great Britain out of order between Gabon and Georgia (though that is less obvious)

'GBR' being used in the data sorting, perhaps?

 

[Gloster]

Airing, perhaps a little conceitedly, a bit of obscure and not-too-useful information -- might the seemingly messed-up alphabetical order, be due to the list-maker's latching onto the Russian name of Georgia -- "Gruzia" (that country having belonged to Russia / the USSR, until quite recent times) -- "Gre..." alphabetically preceding "Gru..." ? (The Georgians call their country "none of the above"; but "Sakartvelo": general picture got is that they -- rather like the Basques -- are a weirdly individualistic people, in quite a lovable way.)

Or just putting GB in its correct alphabetic place after Ga(bon) and before Ge(orgia).

 

[125Spotter]

might the seemingly messed-up alphabetical order, be due to the list-maker's latching onto the Russian name of Georgia

Likely the ISO-3166 alpha-3 codes being used as the lexical sort order, rather than the display name:

GBN = Gabon
GBR = Great Britain
GEO = Georgia

(If it was the alpha-2 code used for sorting, then we'd expect GB to be between Gabon and Grenada, assuming a complete country list is used: GA = Gabon, GB = Great Britain, GD = Grenada, GE = Georgia)

 

[KT550]

Businesses (and individuals) that do not format their telephone numbers correctly on shop fronts, vehicles, websites etc.

e.g. many London numbers are shown as 0203 xxx xxxx; should be 020 xxxx xxxx
Coventry 02476 xxx xxx, instead of 024 76xx xxxx
and Reading 01189 xxx xxx, instead of 0118 9xx xxxx are other regular errors.

 

[125Spotter]

Businesses (and individuals) that do not format their telephone numbers correctly on shop fronts, vehicles, websites etc.

e.g. many London numbers are shown as 0203 xxx xxxx; should be 020 xxxx xxxx
Coventry 02476 xxx xxx, instead of 024 76xx xxxx
and Reading 01189 xxx xxx, instead of 0118 9xx xxxx are other regular errors.

I can somewhat forgive those who make an attempt to format their number according to prevailing (yet wrong) patterns, but have a special irritation for those who present their number in some invented unique-to-them format, and also decide to read it out in that format. Sometimes I'll see things like 0771 xx xxxxx or some other rubbish at the foot of emails, or I am expecting to write down a mobile phone number and am given an initial four digits, followed by seven perhaps broken up into some other set of blocks.

Related: broken telephone number validation on websites or other systems more generally. A great many systems seem to think a telephone number in the UK consists of exactly 11 digits, including some major (typically residentially-focussed) telephony providers, who are unable to configure their dial maps in their phone systems to allow subscribers to dial numbers with fewer than 10 digits after the trunk (0) digit. There are plenty of areas of the country that are exceptions.

 

[GusB]

Businesses (and individuals) that do not format their telephone numbers correctly on shop fronts, vehicles, websites etc.

e.g. many London numbers are shown as 0203 xxx xxxx; should be 020 xxxx xxxx
Coventry 02476 xxx xxx, instead of 024 76xx xxxx
and Reading 01189 xxx xxx, instead of 0118 9xx xxxx are other regular errors.

I share your annoyance - to an extent. I did a spell working for BT DQ (Directory enQuiries) at the turn of the century and there were quite a few numbering changes going on:

• rollout of the 02x schemes in certain areas
• replacing 0345/0645 (lo-call) numbers with 0845-7 and 0845-9; freephone numbers were all to begin with 080
• "national rate" numbers such as 0990 changing to 0870-5
• premium rate numbers such as 0898 being replaced with 09
• mobile numbers moving on to the 07 range

In the case of 02 numbers the only changes to subscriber numbers were the first 4 digits (7 digits long) or the first 5 digits (6 digits long).

Londoners had already seen the change from the original 01 code to 071 (inner) and 081 (outer) codes. After ONEday in 1995 those codes became 0171 and 0181 respectively, so naturally people were going to simply replace 0171 with 0207 and 0181 with 0208. 020-3xxx-xxxx numbers came out shortly afterwards.

Northern Ireland was another place where there was a massive change - the whole area came under the 028 code but in most instances it was a case of replacing their 01xxx code with 028xx. People simply didn't realise that if you wanted to call someone in Coleraine from Belfast, you simply dialled 70xx-xxx and could omit the 028 part.

In the case of 08 numbers the format was supposed to be 08xx-xxx-xxxx but companies often retained their old format as they were simply easier to remember.

By this time, however, mobile phones were becoming more popular and you had to dial the whole number anyway and so formatting didn't really matter so much.

I can somewhat forgive those who make an attempt to format their number according to prevailing (yet wrong) patterns, but have a special irritation for those who present their number in some invented unique-to-them format, and also decide to read it out in that format. Sometimes I'll see things like 0771 xx xxxxx or some other rubbish at the foot of emails, or I am expecting to write down a mobile phone number and am given an initial four digits, followed by seven perhaps broken up into some other set of blocks.

This does annoy me. I read my mobile number out as 07xxx-xxxxxx because it has a natural pattern to it, but if it makes more sense to read it out as 07xx-xxx-xxxx that's also fine. This is probably due to the fact that people no longer routinely use landlines and they're used to having to use the full number.

 

[AM9]

This does annoy me. I read my mobile number out as 07xxx-xxxxxx because it has a natural pattern to it, but if it makes more sense to read it out as 07xx-xxx-xxxx that's also fine. This is probably due to the fact that people no longer routinely use landlines and they're used to having to use the full number.

As long as I've had my current mobile number, I've always remembered it as 07xx-xxx-xxxx, the first part is a Boeing aircraft type, the second a class of EMU and the third as decimal number which is an exact power of 2. What does surprise me is the number of people who can't remember their own mobile number. In the halcyon days of home landlines, everybody knew their full number, despite occasional changes.

 

[dangie]

Not a ban or an irritation, but I don't know where else to put it.

My local Chinese Takeaway.

On their 'menu' they have 217 different choices of meals. Yes.... 217....

Now while waiting for my Chicken Chow Mein, which arrived within two minutes of me ordering it, I didn't have time to peruse the many different delicacies on offer. What I thought though, was out of those 217 dishes, how many actual different dishes are there?

For example, if they didn't have any (or never have had any) Kung Po Sauce, just substitute it with a Black Bean Sauce and no one will be the wiser. Especially after six pints of Stella on a Saturday night. Is there really any difference in Chicken Cantonese Style, compared to Chicken with Cantonese Sauce, or the aforementioned Chicken in Kung Po Sauce?

Do Chinese Takeaway's just have a few basic ingredients, and mix & match to suit?

 

[Cross City]

Do Chinese Takeaway's just have a few basic ingredients, and mix & match to suit?

Yes. Obviously there will be a few sauces which are vastly different but a lot of them will be slight variations of each other.

Indian restaurants are the same. They will have a base sauce that is then tarted up with extra spice/veg/fruit/coconut/etc to make different styles of curry.

 

[GordonT]

Processes on electronic devices which should be very straightforward but which on your own particular hardware have you clawing the air in frustration. Such as endeavouring quickly to scan a multipage document in pdf format and not the page by page png or jpg images with which you are presented.

 

[dangie]

Processes on electronic devices which should be very straightforward but which on your own particular hardware have you clawing the air in frustration.….

Considering home computers have been with us for many years, you still need to be computer savvy to use them. As soon as the slightest thing out of the ordinary occurs, which it undoubtedly will, it leaves many users dabbing any key(s) in frustration hoping it will all miraculously put itself right. When that doesn’t work, which it invariably won’t, the only other action is to switch it off (assuming it hasn’t frozen which is then unplug it), leave it for an hour or so, switch it on and pray everything has put itself right.

Then you call your children/grandchildren to come and sort it……

**** Auto merge ****

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 30 Apr 2025 ==

Yesterday whilst out cycling I got sunburnt. Now being 74 with fair skin and bald I lather on the Factor 50. Always use Aldi suncream as it's the best.

However I got burnt. Where? Somewhere I hadn't put cream. On my head. I wear a helmet so didn't see the need. Unfortunately the sun shon on my head through the helmet vents. Lesson to be learnt.

 

[Brent Goose]

Auto save

Previously this was only invoked if there wasn’t a clean exit from the relevant program but now it just overwrites what was there regardless meaning if you just what to do some ‘what if’ or realise what you had started was a bad idea after all then unless it was switched off then you knackered And have totry and restore a previous version.

 

[Gloster]

People who wish you a cheery ‘Good morning’ or similar and then, when you don’t answer, stop and tell you that you are rude by not answering. I am on a stick, walking very slowly up hill or completely stopped, and wheezing like a deflating zeppelin: I don’t have breath to spare.

 

[dangie]

People who wish you a cheery ‘Good morning’ or similar and then, when you don’t answer, stop and tell you that you are rude by not answering. I am on a stick, walking very slowly up hill or completely stopped, and wheezing like a deflating zeppelin: I don’t have breath to spare.

Although I wouldn’t stop and tell you that you were rude by not answering, I‘d certainly think to myself ‘miserable b*gger’. Any form of acknowledgment is not difficult. Wave of the hand would do

 

[Gloster]

Although I wouldn’t stop and tell you that you were rude by not answering, I‘d certainly think to myself ‘miserable b*gger’. Any form of acknowledgment is not difficult. Wave of the hand would do

One hand is holding the stick, the other is holding my shopping. Do you want to pick one or the other, or both, or even me up?

 

[Calthrop]

People who wish you a cheery ‘Good morning’ or similar and then, when you don’t answer, stop and tell you that you are rude by not answering. I am on a stick, walking very slowly up hill or completely stopped, and wheezing like a deflating zeppelin: I don’t have breath to spare.

Re people who do that vis-a-vis you: has me wondering who in their right mind, could be so very officious / entitled / arrogant / plain offensive. I've always reckoned that -- certainly among English folk -- one can greet an encountered person, if one so wishes; but said person is free to respond / acknowledge, or not -- and no shame to them or offence-giving by them, if "not".

 

[bspahh]

Interviews where people start each reply with "Thats a great question". I would rather have "Ummm." or silence.

I wouldn't mind so much if people would sometimes say "Thats a stupid question."

Its annoying if it is for every reply. If its for some, but not all of the questions, does that mean that the other questions really were stupid, but politeness means they haven't called it out?

 

[bearhugger]

Interviews where people start each reply with "Thats a great question". I would rather have "Ummm." or silence.

I wouldn't mind so much if people would sometimes say "Thats a stupid question."

Its annoying if it is for every reply. If its for some, but not all of the questions, does that mean that the other questions really were stupid, but politeness means they haven't called it out.

I would really like the interviewer to respond along the lines of "Yes, that's why I asked it!!!"

 

[Peter C]

It's certainly been mentioned before (and probably by me!) - but I would ban people walking about staring at their phones. I sort of understand messaging on-the-move (e.g. to let a friend know you're going to be a little late meeting them perhaps), but even then surely you can move somewhere out of the way which isn't going to disrupt people walking around. It's frustrating trying to navigate around people staring at TikTok or whatever when you're trying to get to and from the shop!

-Peter

 

[GordonT]

It's certainly been mentioned before (and probably by me!) - but I would ban people walking about staring at their phones.

Particularly when they are about to cross a busy road with minimal inclination to be distracted from their phone engagement.

 

[Peter C]

Particularly when they are about to cross a busy road with minimal inclination to be distracted from their phone engagement.

Yes that's just a bit scary!

And now you've mentioned crossing the road - I'd also like to ban pedestrian crossings which don't have the red and green men on the opposite side of the road, and instead next to you above the button. Those crossings always catch me off-guard and make less sense to me (probably because I'm so used to looking across the road rather than to my side).

-Peter

 

[ls2270]

Yes that's just a bit scary!

And now you've mentioned crossing the road - I'd also like to ban pedestrian crossings which don't have the red and green men on the opposite side of the road, and instead next to you above the button. Those crossings always catch me off-guard and make less sense to me (probably because I'm so used to looking across the road rather than to my side).

-Peter

Exactly! They’re an especially bad design at busy crossings as people at the front of the queue block the view of the lights for those waiting behind.

 

[AM9]

Exactly! They’re an especially bad design at busy crossings as people at the front of the queue block the view of the lights for those waiting behind.

Well if those at the front haven't started moving, it's almost certain that they still show red. The traffic not stopping is also a clue that it isn't good to cross yet.

 

[GordonT]

I agree with the comments about the poor design of the "above the button" green/red men. On a recent visit to London, however, I found the green time "countdown" feature a helpful additional display. Do any places outwith Central London have this feature?