We live in a society where unfortunately there are a lot of annoyances. Sometimes we get so used to these things we just accept them. In many cases it is just our nature to do so. Humans come in different varieties. Some of us have far more patience than others, some believe they are being unfairly treated even when they are not and some think they are special and should not be subject to the everyday annoyances of life. This is why we react differently to the same situations, but some situations are just wrong and it doesn’t matter what our nature is, they just shouldn’t happen.

The government tells us we can put our name on a Do Not Call list and if advertisers call our number we can tell the government and they will do something about this, preferably a fine of some sort. In the beginning when the list first came out and I put my telephone number on it, it did seem to stop these types of calls, but gradually they began again even though I had renewed my number on the list. One particularly annoying caller kept calling me early in the morning and sometimes late at night with robocalls. I decided to report it and went on to the government site and to my surprise the area where you report the calls didn’t work, so I decided to call on the phone and was not able to get anything but a busy signal no matter when I tried to call. Things have gotten so bad Apple and Google have joined forces to defeat robocalls.

If you use the internet a lot you are faced with something which I don’t remember existing a couple of years ago. This happens when you click on a headline which seems interesting to you and instead of the story coming up, you get an ad. I have seen a lot more of this lately. When the ad comes up, many times there is no way to continue to the story so I don’t know if there really is a story or the entire headline was a hoax. There should be some set of rules for the internet which are enforced to prevent false advertising and steering people to unwanted pages for financial gain. Along with this type of thing are the emails flooding our computers which try and bilk us out of our hard earned money. There has to be some sort of treaty between countries to stop fraudulent emails, after all there are laws for doing this personally, yet many of the things you can get arrested for, you can perform on the web.

How many times have you put in a food order only to get the wrong thing? The bigger the order the greater the chance something will go wrong. The funny part of it, it always seems the mistake is in the favor of the company. I hate going somewhere and giving them a big order for sandwiches and such, because I know there will probably be a problem of some sort when I get it. Let me tell you I have some really strange problems in my life ordering food and I am not just talking about mistakes. I remember when I opened a sandwich only to find there was a bit taken out of it. Another time I opened the lid of a cup of tea to find all I had was hot water and a small waxed envelope containing a pickle slice floating in it rather than a tea bag.

Did you ever buy anything and find out it was defective? I bought a gas clothes dryer one time from a famous retailer and as soon as they hooked it up I smelled gas and had to return it. You would think this would be a simple thing to do wouldn’t you? All I wanted was an exchange. The manager of the appliance department told me there would be no exchange unless I purchased a new one and after it was installed I would get a refund on the first one. Well of course I was not going to do that, which caused me to have to get the store manager and raise hell. I won my case, since the entire premise was so ridiculous and I took a refund and went somewhere else for a new gas dryer. One has to wonder why a store would think that a policy like this would keep customers.

Our cars are not immune to mechanics making mistakes either. One day I went to the local service station, which was now being managed by someone new. I told him I just wanted wiper refills. When I returned I got the bill and it was about 90 dollars. When I read it I noticed he had replaced the wiper assemblies which I had not asked for. I confronted the manager and he told me you couldn’t just get the refills for this type of car and at that point I pulled out a pair of spare refills I kept in the trunk for emergencies. Another time I had just gotten an oil change and was driving home from work when I noticed smoke coming out from under the hood. I opened it to take a look and an oil geyser came out and soaked me. The mechanic had forgotten to put the oil cap back on. Then there was the time when I went to one of these express oil changes. I noticed they sent a kid to do the change who must have only been about 17 years old. I didn’t care about that, oil changes were simple enough, but when I saw him putting 3 in 1 oil in the filter of my car I stopped him and had to get the manager. He told the manager he was instructed to put a little oil into new filters and the manager apologized to me after telling the kid it was supposed to be motor oil and replaced the oil filter.

The New York City subway system can be very handy, but at rush hour it can be uncomfortable. The trip back home for me, when I worked in the city, took about 1 hour. This was the usual time for the trip, but subways break down and one day I boarded the train at about 5 PM and this was a line which went under the river in a tunnel. It just so happened the train broke down at about the half-way point and lost all power. It was the middle of the summer and temperatures in the train went to well over 100 degrees. Most people were dressed for work, so almost no one was lightly dressed. We sweated in the dark for over 4 hours and many of the people were standing, because the train was so crowded. It turned out to be 4 hours in hell. Embarrassing things would sometimes happen on these trains. One time in an especially crowded train a rather attractive woman was sort of crushed against me. She was wearing a sweater, the kind with large knitted openings. When the train arrived at her station she went to get off and somehow a button from my jacket got into the hole of her sweater and as she moved away the sweater stretched out drawing her back. While it looked comical she was not a happy camper.

There are so many things which seem to happen to some of us which sometimes even make us look stupid or the butt of jokes, such as chairs collapsing under us, stepping in a hole or even banging our heads in an awkward way. I guess this is just something we humans have to put up with.