Minor things that bother you

[Throckmorton]

The "pass interference" call.  Isn't that the defender's job?

I hate "offensive pass interference".  The QB Is not passing to the defense!!!!!

The defender's job is to defend the pass, not to interfere with the receiver's ability to catch the pass.   
   
Every player on defense is an eligible receiver hence the distinction.   
   
   

[Beltway]

The "pass interference" call.  Isn't that the defender's job?

I hate "offensive pass interference".  The QB Is not passing to the defense!!!!!

The defender's job is to defend the pass, not to interfere with the receiver's ability to catch the pass.   
Every player on defense is an eligible receiver hence the distinction.   

https://www.sportingcharts.com/dictionary/nfl/offensive-pass-interference.aspx

What is Offensive Pass Interference?

A penalty called when an offensive player impedes a defender's ability to play pass defense.  This can mean setting an illegal pick, where an offensive player intentionally gets in the way of another player's defender.  Pass interference is also called when an offensive receiver shoves the defender away from him prior to making a play on the ball.  The penalty is 10 yards from the previous line of scrimmage, and the down is replayed.  Offensive pass interference cannot occur behind the line of scrimmage or after the ball has been touched following the throw.

Sporting Charts explains Offensive Pass Interference

Offensive pass interference is most often called when the offensive player makes an obvious attempt to shove the defender away from him in order to get open to catch a pass.  The official will look to see if the defender could have made a play on the ball if the contact hadn't occurred.  If so, the official will throw the flag.  The other common form of offensive pass interference is the pick play.  An offensive player will intentionally run into a defender to allow a teammate to get open.  The pick is illegal, and pass interference will be called.

[hbelkins]

As well as...

*High taxes
*Insecure national borders
*Groundless impeachment proceedings

Here's one: people that needlessly bring up politics in a non-political thread.

Who says it's a non-political thread? The title is "minor things that bother you," although I really think those are major issues, not minor things.

It is NOT soda, it is pop.

Yes!



Smudge is always right.

[vdeane]

Going to the bank just to get a roll of quarters and being stuck behind someone with a drawn-out and/or complicated transaction.

People who treat the 5 mph and 20 mph E-ZPass lanes on the Thruway the same (slowing down to 5-10 mph) - alas, this one seems to be most people

[21stCenturyRoad]

When you're at the convenience store wanting to quickly buy something but the guy in front of you is buying the whole store and has a conversation with the clerk

[Scott5114]

At the grocery store, when the old lady in front of me in line (it's always an old lady) has a bill of $9.48, and after peeling the five and four ones off her stack, goes digging through her coin purse until she finds exactly 48 cents.

My mother is the same damn way (though she's only 51). It pisses me off when she does it, especially when there's a long line behind us. She hates breaking up dollar bills.

What's even worse is when they do something like that so they can pay $10.03 and get 55¢ back instead of 52¢. You're just wasting everyone's time at that point because you're taking up time digging out the pennies and still getting change back. If having pennies really bothers you that much, just take them home and leave them there or give them to the person behind you in line.

How about using slashes instead of hyphens in dates, and leaving out the century?
11/27/19  instead of  11-27-2019

Precisely that date format, month-day-year, is one of those "certain American customs that bother me" I believe are too much for this thread. It makes no sense, having no order. I tend to follow local usage and thus I use month-day here, but when adding the year I use this format so the date remains sorted:

2019-11-27.

CCYY-MM-DD works just as well as MM-DD-CCYY.

Microsoft Office products such as Word, Excel and Access have a list of date formats that are perfectly valid to use.

Nothing is valid except ISO 8601.

Also, singular use of plural pronouns, e.g. "I talked to the person and they said..."

In that vein, while I respect people who decide their pronouns aren't the binary ones (he/his and she/her), why they choose "they/them"? They imply more than one, so I don't see why they have to designate an individual, and besides, there is already "it" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun.

"They"/"them" is the plural, and should never be used in the singular.  The gender-neutrals are "it" and "one".  Otherwise, "he" and "she" should be used or "he/she".  Let's stop abusing the English language.

This comment displays a failure to understand that when English lacks a facility for something (such as a gender-neutral pronoun) speakers will naturally attempt to repair the defect like a river cutting off an oxbow. Attempting to stop it is about as easy as stopping the river from changing course, too.

It also displays a failure to understand that singular "they" has been in usage since approximately 1450.

[MNHighwayMan]

Nothing is valid except ISO 8601.

👍

That is the way to go.

[Beltway]

CCYY-MM-DD works just as well as MM-DD-CCYY.
Microsoft Office products such as Word, Excel and Access have a list of date formats that are perfectly valid to use.

Nothing is valid except ISO 8601.

For formal international data transfer.

In many business environments what I said about MS Office is true.

[Scott5114]

Many business environments allow lots of moronic stuff, like letting people install and use MS Office.

[MNHighwayMan]

Many business environments allow lots of moronic stuff, like letting people install and use MS Office.

I mean, MS Office is pretty useful, if you know how to use it. The problem is, not enough people know how to use it.

[Scott5114]

It's also full of horrible kludges and incompatibilities, the ribbon interface feels like it was designed by an OkDOT engineer in their spare time, and the Office Open XML specification is a total joke.

It also costs stupid amounts of money when LibreOffice does the same thing much better for free.

[Beltway]

Many business environments allow lots of moronic stuff, like letting people install and use MS Office.

That is why the IT department should perform the installation, and the end users be prohibited from doing so.

MS Office is by far the industry standard for word processing, spreadsheeting and presentation.

[Scott5114]

Pinheads are also industry standard for management.

[Ben114]

For me it's gotta be people with iPhones who hate texting people that don't have iPhones and they see the green bubble

[mgk920]

University abbreviations that mean something else. UT, ND, and VT are states unrelated to the universities, and UK is a country.

Calling any indoor temperature "freezing".

Like with me, when someone in an on-line discussion says that he or she is from 'LA', I'll likely respond with something on the lines of "New Orleans, Shreveport, Lake Charles, Etc?".

Mike

[tdindy88]

When you're at the convenience store wanting to quickly buy something but the guy in front of you is buying the whole store and has a conversation with the clerk

I honestly don't like it when the clerk wants to engage in small talk with me. Maybe I'm introverted or whatever, but I have absolutely no desire to talk with people that I don't really need to talk with. I have family, friends and coworkers to carry on conversations with, I don't need to discuss my life with someone who's conducting a transaction for me. This is honestly one of the things I liked when I visited New York City, the clerks were mostly impersonal, quick to take your money, give you change and send you on your way. I liked that.

[jeffandnicole]

When there's enough room to park two cars between driveways, and someone parks directly in the middle preventing a 2nd car from parking there.

[jeffandnicole]

At the grocery store, when the old lady in front of me in line (it's always an old lady) has a bill of $9.48, and after peeling the five and four ones off her stack, goes digging through her coin purse until she finds exactly 48 cents.

My mother is the same damn way (though she's only 51). It pisses me off when she does it, especially when there's a long line behind us. She hates breaking up dollar bills.

What's even worse is when they do something like that so they can pay $10.03 and get 55¢ back instead of 52¢. You're just wasting everyone's time at that point because you're taking up time digging out the pennies and still getting change back. If having pennies really bothers you that much, just take them home and leave them there or give them to the person behind you in line.

When a toll plaza is backed up, this is one of the reasons why.  If someone doesn't know the toll, regardless of it's a fixed price seen on signs, or a variable price based on a ticket system, having a $20 bill ready and handing it over will probably cover the toll (PA Turnpike excluded). When they don't have that toll money ready, they'll dig around and ask everyone in thr car for money, and after a bit of time they just wind up pulling out a $20 anyway.  The car behind them will pull up wondering what took so long (and normally blame the toll collector).  Then they wind up doing the same thing.

[SSOWorld]

I'm one of those who gets annoyed by almost everything!, Yeah, go ahead and call me out on it. Most of this certainly is arbitrary and I decline to say everything because it sets off a chain reaction of shit that need not be said.

*Overmoderation of this forum 

Good behavior is the solution to your problem (said ind true hypocritical fashion - by the way, H.B., this is a sarcastic response.)

oh by the way, OK Boomer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  (Ok, so I pressed one too many buttons)

Nothing is valid except ISO 8601.

👍

That is the way to go.

Yes.  it sorts better. Also trying to sort files electronically when the policy/trend is to put given name first.

*  Motorists using their turn signal when exiting.

I disagree, because communicating your intentions is always valuable to other drivers on the road. Also, isn't this legally required in most states anyway?

Moving into a previously existing lane, absolutely.  Signalling when moving into a new lane at the point it opens up is pointless.

Hey everyone, I'm getting off the freeway!  Yes it makes sense when the idiot exiting slows down to freaking 35 (arbitrary) before committing such action.  Otherwise, I could care less. At the same time, signaling when getting ON the freeway - Hey, I already see you (Though in fairness, not everyone is hyper-aware). Not signaling when changing lanes grinds my gears, however the robotic nature of signaling at every point where its a turn also gets to me - three left turn lanes? you're in the left lane? STILL HAVE TO SIGNAL per the law.

In football: not using analytics and therefore punting the ball away on 4th and 1 just so they don't get criticized; overcalling of penalties.  Having two football teams in Los Angeles.  Not going to an 18 game schedule/having those ridiculous pre-season games.

Speaking of football, Here's a tidbit from the TV Tropes "Insistent Terminology" series

American football announcers – presumably fearful lest those of us watching/listening to the games get confused as to exactly which sport is being played – take great pains to insert the word football (as both noun and adjective) into as much of their commentary as possible. So instead of saying, "These players need to move the ball down the field if they're going to win this game", they'll go with something like, "These football players need to move the football down the football field if they're going to win this football game," and so forth.

* Here's a supercut video an intrepid fan made of every time CBS analyst Phil Simms said "football" during a single telecast of an NFL game.note The game, for the curious, was a 2012 Thanksgiving Day matchup between the Detroit Lions and Houston Texans. It was not an especially unusual or important game, although it did go into overtime. (Total count: 58.)

** Baseball announcers, by contrast, will often call entire games without mentioning the name of the sport. Instead, it's "the ballgame", "the ballpark", "the ballplayers", etc.

*PLAY BALL!
*Foul Ball
*Fastball
*Curve Ball

--oh boy...🙄

**The difference is probably because professional football grew up so much in baseball's shadow that most of the teams played in baseball stadiums and many of them were even named after those baseball teams: The New York Giants were at first the New York Football Giants, for instance, until the San Francisco Giants moved to San Francisco.note  Even that professional sports team from Maryland mentioned above was originally the Boston Football Braves. Hence explicitly saying what sport is going on to avoid being mistaken for the other, better-known sport.

Yeah one can understand this.

**An inversion occurs in real life with the Super Bowl. "Super Bowl" is a trademarked phrase, hence the alternate term "The Big Game."

Doesn't mean it can't bother me.

* "I VOTED" Stickers, yeah it's part of the effort to get everyone to be involved in the election, but still.
* I'm a human.  I also am known as a person, American, worker, taxpayer, stakeholder, investor, voter, motorist, etc.  ok, so we change the name based on the context.
* motorist - what does a motor have to do with driving a car? Along these lines, names of car dealerships containing "motor" - Also using the word AUTO to refer to a vehicle.
* Overuse of "and" such as in "each and every", "alcohol and other drugs", etc.
* because it's tradition as a reason for not adapting to changes.

Anyone need a collaboration of "serious business" items?

Law of the month VMS

blah
blah
blah
SLOW DOWN

[Beltway]

* I'm a human.

Use of the word "humane" when referring to the kind and caring treatment of animals.

Animals are not "human"!  Even though some are very cute, you don't treat them like you treat a "human"!  They don't have the rights and responsibilities of a human.

"Humane" is merely putting an "e" on the end of "human."

[SSOWorld]

* I'm a human.

Use of the word "humane" when referring to the kind and caring treatment of animals.

Animals are not "human"!  Even though some are very cute, you don't treat them like you treat a "human"!  They don't have the rights and responsibilities of a human.

"Humane" is merely putting an "e" on the end of "human."

Doesn't mean humans aren't animals.

[Scott5114]

humane
marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals

humane prison guards
a more humane way of treating farm animals

Dates back to 1552 with the current meaning.

[Beltway]

humane
marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals
humane prison guards
a more humane way of treating farm animals

Dates back to 1552 with the current meaning.

late Middle English: the earlier form of human, restricted to the senses above in the 18th century.
. . . . .

Who says that the English language didn't try to conflate humans and animals in stature?

How many books have ever been written by animals?

[US 89]

How many books have ever been written by animals?

Every book that's ever been written.

[Scott5114]

humane
marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals
humane prison guards
a more humane way of treating farm animals

Dates back to 1552 with the current meaning.

late Middle English: the earlier form of human, restricted to the senses above in the 18th century.
. . . . .

Who says that the English language didn't try to conflate humans and animals in stature?

How many books have ever been written by animals?

So you're really taking issue with a point of English usage that dates back 300 years? Are you going to hold the Potomac back with your palm for your next trick?