I was never a Seinfeld fan, but it was such a huge part of the cultural zeitgeist in the ‘90s that it’s impossible for certain episodes to miss you. As such, since we’re right around the holidays, I’ve been feeling like I should celebrate Festivus. Essentially, I’ve got some petty grievances that I’ve been itching to air. So, buckle up, Buttercup — here are some people, places and things that are about to be the subject of my ire.
Petty Grievance No. 1: Marketing emails
Recently, I bought a $7 item from Fanatics.com. It was a Christmas gift, and I am not a sports fan, so it's safe to say I do not intend to be one of their Gold Star Medallion frequent flyers.
However, post-purchase, I began to receive marketing emails from them.
Let me be clear: I received EMAILS, PLURAL. As in FOUR+ TIMES A DAY!!!!
Who is this even appealing to? I can't imagine someone looking at their inbox and going, "Well, I was undecided after the first three emails, but with email No. 4, yes, you've got me! I shall purchase another item from your business!"
Receiving this many emails from a business I care about would be pushing it, but this is just ANNOYING AF. There should be a rule that I have to buy something from your business three times before you are allowed to add me to your mailing list.
Petty Grievance No. 2: This lazy ass delicate flower of a dog
Ginger, a garbage-eating former farm dog of no discernible breed, refuses to walk in the rain. Every time there’s even a light drizzle, she will glue her little paws to the ground and won’t move a muscle until you agree to take her back into the house.
I DON’T GET IT, GINGER. You were literally born in a barn.* You sneak cat poop and old chicken wings off the ground for midday snacks. You've had the blood of a small mammal in your mouth after you stabbed it in the heart with your monstrous incisor. You even come equipped with an undercoat, given to you through decades of Darwinian evolution and selective breeding, for ease of swimming. And you can’t handle a little rain?
Get out of here. I don't believe you were descended from a wolf.
Petty Grievance No. 3: This peppy ass delicate flower of a dog
Ren, another country-ass mutt of no discernible breed, won't go to sleep unless she's tucked under a blanket. 'Round about 8:30 every night, this little pupper just gets... fussy. She will sort of paw at you and stand around looking forlorn until you lift up a blanket so she can curl up under it.
It's adorable, don't get me wrong. But this behavior carries into our bed, and when that happens it takes on an extra sadistic twist: Ren gets under the comforter, sleeps for about 30 minutes, realizes it's hot under there, and Army crawls her way out. She'll then sleep for about an hour in the open air of our bedroom, until she realizes she's cold and wants back under the blanket again. She doesn't have thumbs, so she paws my back until I wake up and lift the comforter for her.
Ren does this three or four times a night. EVERY NIGHT. And she DOESN'T wake up R -- only me! I haven't slept through the night in three years. It's killing me slowly.
How did we end up with these two pretty precious princesses for dogs? SMDH.
Petty Grievance No. 4: The woman with the hacking cough who decided to sit next to me at a work presentation
I have many grievances to air here:
1. It was not a full room by any means and so I had decided to sit two-men-at-a-movie-theater-style near one of co-workers, and this lady took the seat in between us. There were so many other seats!
She was late to the presentation and reeked of cigarettes.
She had a hacking, nasty cough, which I would have attributed to the aforementioned cigarettes if not for her saying, "Oh, man, I'm so sick!"
Why!? Why, why, why?! If I get the plague on Christmas, I'm hunting you down. I will booby trap your house like Kevin with the Wet Bandits, and as an adult I can't watch that movie without full-body cringing, so you KNOW I'm serious.
Petty Grievance No. 5: Last-minute potlucks
I had volunteered to host my book club’s December meeting and was outvoted in favor of someone who lives about 45 minutes away from me. That’s not the part I have a grievance about; the book club consists of people living a mostly suburban existence, and not everybody wants to drive into the city all the time. I get it.
But what really grinds my gears is that at the last minute, the host decided to make it a potluck. So, now not only do I have to drive 45 minutes to a house where I am not the host, but I still have to engage in host-like activities? No, no, no! I *MIGHT* have been fine with doing a potluck if it had been scheduled as a potluck in the first place, but the bait-and-switch occurred with mere days to go.
Bah humbug, says I.
Petty Grievance No. 6: Architect I.M. Pei
He knows what he did.
Petty Grievance No. 7: Going off topic in my Pokemon Go Discord group
It might require a bit of background in order to fully explain this gripe, and I also have to reveal something extremely embarrassing about myself:
I play Pokemon Go. And not like, a little bit. I'm kind of obsessed with it. I play every day.
As such, I started using an app called Discord that allows you to connect with other people who play the game so that you can coordinate groups to take on multi-player challenges within the game.
Still with me? Good.
In any case, Discord is set up sort of like Reddit where there are various channels designed to handle specific discussions. Want to find a player to trade with? There's a channel for that. Want to brag about the rare Pokemon you caught? There's a channel for that too.
But there's one user in my Discord group who is FLOUTING THE RULES OF DECORUM and derailing literally all conversations in EVERY FREAKING CHANNEL. It's getting on my last nerve! I shouldn't have to scroll through a soliloquy about the time you backpacked on Denali in order to figure out if we're all meeting up for a raid. And it's even more annoying because there is a specific channel marked "General chat" where it would be perfectly fine for her to talk about her extensive hiking career.
YOU SUCK AT POKEMON GO.
Petty Grievance No. 8: My distant relative who "likes" everything I do on social media
I recently became Facebook friends with someone I know I share DNA with but if you asked me to draw you a family tree, I couldn't do it. I don't remember the last family function where I even saw this person, but ever since we became friends, he's been liking, heart-ing, and private messaging the crap out of me.
He's your typical Baby Booming old fart who has oodles of time on his hands since his retirement, and he's chosen to channel that time into poking around on Facebook, apparently. I don't really know what to say when he sends me chain letters or pictures of other relatives with whom I also share only a passing familiarity. And it feels like a real pickle whenever he likes an Instagram pic of me holding a drink.
UGH.
Petty Grievance No. 9: The co-worker who only told me AFTER I shook hands with someone "that guy regularly doesn't wash his hands after using the bathroom"
COME ON, BRO. You can't sit on information like that.
BRB, I need to burn the first layer of skin off of my palms.
And with that, the airing of my petty grievances has come to an end. I'm glad I got that off my chest before the holidays -- whew! It would have been dicey if I'd have had to carry all of that into a weekend with my family. Dodged a bullet there.
What are your petty grievances this holiday season? Do you have as many as me! Lay 'em on me, I'm dying to know!
*I’m assuming, at least
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