Six apparently ‘normal’ behaviours I’ll never understand

People that listen to talk radio at an above-normal volume

Music is good loud. I get that, I get that it’s designed to be an immersive experience, and that at the end of a shitty day it’s pretty cathartic to turn Pink’s ‘Try, Try, Try’ up to 11 and belt out all the bad feels, but I don’t understand why people listen to predominantly chat-based radio shows at an ear-splitting volume. It’s just people talking. Is the experience of listening to people talking more enjoyable when it feels like they’re actually shouting at you? Or does it just in fact piss off your neighbours or housemates or anyone walking past your car who doesn’t derive any enjoyment from hearing Ted from Basingstoke talk about his opinions on hot-housing at a booming sound level?

Barmen who ask if I ‘mean diet coke’

If you go into a shop and ask for a can of blue paint and the assistant says ‘Is that blue paint or red paint?’ then you’d give them an odd look. And if they held your stare while gesticulating impatiently at all the paint, you’d probably just back away slowly. So why is it acceptable for a barman to ask me ‘Is that coke or diet coke?’ when I’ve clearly asked for a coke? IF I WANT DIET COKE, I’LL ASK FOR DIET COKE. This situation is made much worse when they use the term ‘full fat’. Watch it, buddy.

Being weird about food stuck in teeth

If you go into the office and your colleague has got a bit of fluff on their face, you’d be like ‘Dude, there’s something on your face’, and they’d remove the fluff, and everyone would get on with their lives. But when that fluff is food and the face is teeth, people get super weird about it, thus resulting in many hapless individuals spending their days talking, laughing and smiling in front of people that are like ‘Ugh, gross’, before going home to a mirror and deep embarrassment. I currently have braces which makes this a really major problem, but even though I’ve explicitly told those around me that they should just say if I have something stuck in my teeth, I still find myself revealing forests of salad every time I do a quick cursory check after lunch. So to better align my behaviour with others’, next time an angry wasp lands on a friend’s head I’ll just be like ‘Oh yeah, erm, sorry. Didn’t see it *mumble mumble*’.

The total futility of ‘tasting the wine’

In the olden days, patrons of hospitality establishments were offered a small sample from a newly-opened bottle of wine to check that it wasn’t corked. Nowadays, the majority of wine served in restaurants comes in screw-top bottles, so the entire exercise serves no purpose other than to make customers feel uncomfortable as a relative stranger watches them imbibe a tiny bee-mouth’s worth of liquid before declaring ‘Yes, lovely thanks’, even if it tastes like expired milk.

Small children on the rush-hour underground

Children need to learn to walk, and they need to learn to socialise. Is the underground at rush hour the best place for that? IS IT? Is the best place to put your toddling offspring in front of hundreds of tired, irritable commuters storming from one platform to another each with flailing bags and briefcases in perfect alignment with your child’s soft bonce? Is the best time to ‘practice stairs’ at 6pm on a Monday evening when said staircase is full of gnarling office workers chomping at the bit to get on the tube before it becomes so rammed they have to spend the journey home pressed into the greasy, finger-smeared doors? Is it?

Women peeing on the toilet seat

Nothing makes me so seriously consider abandoning the sisterhood than walking into a toilet cubicle and finding pee all over the seat. What is HAPPENING in there? Maybe you’re a hoverer, fair enough. But if your distaste of public conveniences is such that you’d perch uncomfortably over the toilet to avoid making contact with it, then surely you’re aware that leaving the vicinity in such a state makes you just as culpable as those you fear yourself. SORT IT OUT, YOU’RE GROSS.

Good luck, tomorrow’s world

This evening, I’m feeling really, really sad for the next generation. Why? Because my experience of them today would suggest that they’re all raging morons. Complete and utter fucking morons.

This afternoon I encountered a scrawny oik deliberately intimidate an unsuspecting woman by stepping into her path and barking directly into her face. She scurried off, and the brat fell about laughing. ‘Ah mate that was well funny!’ he shouted at his friend, who was also dragging his knuckles on the ground.

Then, after getting off the Tube I passed by a group of teenage girls strutting down the road with their arses hanging out of too-small hotpants and faces glistening like billiard balls under the weight of a pan-full of makeup and poorly-applied false eyelashes. One of them lobbed an empty bottle on the street, literally two feet away from a bin. She caught my eye, and this is how the conversation went.

__

Her: What, bitch? Problem?

Me: Yeah, why don’t you put that in the bin?

Her: If you’ve got a fucking ISSUE with it why don’t you pick it up?

Me: Why don’t YOU fucking pick it up and put it in that bin which is RIGHT THERE?

Her: It was all sticky, innit. I’m not fucking holding that. WHY ARE YOU SUCH A CUNT?

__

Slow claps all round, then.

Today no less than 12 of my friends plastered pictures of their (for now) adorable kids all over Facebook. I wonder how many of them will end up like the interminable shits that I presently want so much to punch in the face?