Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Things That Annoy Me Part 1

1. People Who Back Into Parking Spaces.
My thoughts on backing into parking spaces are these: The amount of time you "save" by pulling forward out of a spot when you leave the parking lot is completely obliterated by the extra time you spend parking in the first place. Plus, you are way, way more likely to park crappily (next-door-neighbor, I'm looking at you!), and be off-center between the white lines, probably making it difficult for some poor parent to get their heavy, squirmy, cranky child into or out of a carseat. And I think you are a show-off.

2. The Disappearance of My Favorite Meatless "Meat" Products.
Boca and Morningstar Farms, I'm looking directly at you!! Oh, my dismay at finding out that Boca Italian Sausages and Morningstar Farms Veggie Dogs are both discontinued. Don't they realize how hard it is to find a decently-textured, good-tasting replacement meat product is?? Most of them are pure crap. And you don't discover this until you've spend $5 on a package, and forced your entire family to eat flavored rubber or something that falls apart with a mere glance for dinner. Please, please let me know what your recommendations are, if you have any. I have tried Tofurkey and Morningstar Farms Italian sausage (both crap), as well as several types of veggie dogs (can't remember which ones, which in itself is a clue that none of them were winners). Halp!

3. People Who Send You an E-mail Just to Respond With a "Thank You".
I'm going to 'fess up here and admit that my organizational skillz are not A-1, at home or at work. This includes my e-mail inboxes, both work and personal. In fact, I currently have 752 messages in my Outlook inbox, waiting to be deleted or filed (and in a few cases, answered, though I try to stay on top of that at least). My sent box is far, far worse (I practically never file that stuff). I feel, though, that I must partially blame our e-mail hungry culture. The massive strings of e-mail communications I get copied on, message after message, one person answering, then another, then another - it drowns me. And often times, all these people aren't really saying anything inherently different from the last person, so it's all just white noise. But the worst, worst offender is the "Thank you" e-mail. I'm all for niceties when someone goes out of their way for you, but this is my job. I'm just doing what I'm supposed to do, what I'm paid to do. If someone asks me for information by e-mail, and I provide it to them the same way, I declare now that I DO NOT NEED TO BE THANKED. PLEASE. Don't thank me. It's just one more e-mail I have to delete.

4. Dieting.
Oh, the hunger. It may be making me a smidgen cranky, hmm?

6 comments:

  1. I would add that I am irritated when Trader Joe's stops carrying particular fake meat items.

    And they discontinued Boca italian sausages?! I almost died when they stopped making Morningstar mini corndogs.

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  2. Trader Joe's makes a soy chorizo that a lot of people love. It's kind of intense. Have you tried it?

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  3. OMG. I remember telling several junior associates that the client doesn't require a thank you email every time they provide needed info... what a waste of inbox!

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  4. My great experiment into the realm of meatless diet failed because I could not find a good substitute. I found most of what was out there pretty disgusting. I don't like fish enough to eat it all the time - so I was pretty limited and pretty hungry all the time. So I went back to eating meat - I didn't want to but I also didn't think raiding the M&M jar every night wasn't good either.

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  5. I agree with the Morningstar hotdogs. No good subsitute there.

    And yes, the TJ's chorizo is pretty good. I'm actually a fan of the TJ's corndogs as well.

    Gardein has some good products, although I haven't tried many of them. But they are Canadian, so much better at the veggie thing ;)

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  6. I don't do many substitutes (just go with beans more than anything) but Health is Wealth Vegan Buffalo Wings?

    Oh my gosh. So good.

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