people who piss me off

The world is getting dumber.

I am more convinced of this fact now than ever before. Day after day, I am confronted by overwhelming evidence that people in this country, overall, are borderline retarded.

This is something more insidious than the disappearance of books smarts. I'm talking about the complete breakdown in common sense. As George Costanza screamed, "We are living in a society here!"

Following is a partial list of people who I have come across in recent weeks that deserve to be clocked in the head with a two-by-four.

1. The elevator people.

As a preface, many thanks to Todd A. for inspiring this thread.

The elevator door opens. I attempt to leave the elevator car. But a mass of people from the outside immediately begin shoving their way through the doors, breaching the most basic tenets of elevator ettiquette.

Common courtesy dictates that people leave the elevator, then and only then, do newcomers hop aboard.

Can you imagine if people started pulling this shit getting on and off the plane? We'd be gridlocked down that one narrow aisle. The same concept applies to elevators, and has ever since people started using them to climb the skyscrapers of the 1930s.

Of course, we already have mindless idiots on the plane -- those people who try and cram their oversized bags into the overhead compartment. Most of them would need hydraulic jacks to succeed. But they try anyway, holding up the entire line.

With any luck, they pout or throw a temper tantrum when the flight attendant tells them they must check their luggage. Douchebags, all of them.

2. Cashiers

This one draws more pity than outright anger.

I'm on line at Panda Express with a friend. He gives the girl a coupon for 10 percent off his meal, which I believe should have been something like $5.50. You would think this results in a savings of approximately $0.55, but you'd be mistaken.

The cashier attempted to give him a $0.10 discount. She did not understand the difference between percentages and 10 cents.

No one particularly cared about 40 cents difference, but my friend protested on principle. She had to get a manager to right this situation. Some scholastic institution failed this poor person miserably somewhere along the way.

3. Coaches who call without their stats totaled.

I was working a desk shift last week and took a Legion call during my dinner break, which sucked enough. But I was immediately aggravated when the coach could not start the conversation with the final score of his game.

"Hang on a second," he said. "I had a new scorekeeper tonight, and I'm not sure what some of these marks mean."

Yeah, maybe you should have thought of that before you called me and interrupted my dinner. And if you don't even know the final score off the top of your head, jackass, may I humbly suggest you should pay closer attention to the team you allegedly manage?

You can imagine the rest of the call was equally painful as this yahoo struggled to add up his statistics. After a while, I made sure he heard me chewing through the phone.

4. Door-to-door solicitors

Not for nothing, but our apartment complex has a "no soliciting" sign at the front entrance. I would greatly appreciate it if offending parties would adhere to it. Of course, our inept management here hasn't lifted a finger to stop the numerous flyers for crappy pizza joints, Chinese food huts and rent-to-own housing developments from inundating me with unrequested information.

It's aggravating, and these people should be charged with littering.

By far and away, however, the most annoying people are the ones who actually knock on your door. Lately, we've gotten a lot of those college student types looking to sell us magazines so they can take some exotic vacation.

They always start with some sort of pseudo-clever greeting that's designed to get me talking to them. At first I was polite with these people -- once upon a time, one of them asked me if I wanted to smoke a bowl -- but now I just tell them, "Oh, there must be someone else from your contest here, because I just bought two magazines from him about 30 minutes ago!"

Bottom line: If you can't respect the no soliciting sign out front, I'm sure as shit not going to buy anything from you.

5. Passport people.

For reasons that may become apparent in a later post, I spend a lot of time waiting on line at the post office. This facility has all the forms and does a lot of initial processing for U.S. passports as well. So I'm often around people getting passports.

You'd be shocked at the number of people attempting to obtain this all-important document for international travel only days before their departure date.

I love the expressions on their faces when the postal employees tell them it typically takes six weeks for the forms to be sent to Seattle, processed and returned. They are shocked and start pleading for some sort of special treatment.

"But I need it now!. We are leaving in two days!"

Maybe they should have thought of this when they booked the trip. If these are the people representing America abroad, it's no wonder the rest of the world hates us.

6. The loud talker

This one was a while back, but it fits perfectly within the scope of increasing retardation, so I will include it here.

The missus and I were in a coffee shop; I was studying for an exam and she was writing a grant. Granted, a coffee shop is not a library, and I expect a certain decibel level of conversation from the tables around me.

What I did not expect was this one Pig Lady holding a meeting of some Pre-K parents group a few tables down. She was shouting to the entire table, and everyone else throughout the coffee shop. Everyone in the damned place was forced into hearing every part of her conversation.

Meanwhile, the children of these poor parents were wreaking havoc everywhere. The parents completely ignored the fact that waitresses were literally tripping over their kids. These little urchins were crawling underneath our table, precariously close to sticking their little fingers in the electrical sockets.

I must admit, I debated my responsibility in this matter. Should I prevent the child from electrocuting himself, or stand idle in the hopes of teaching a lesson to the absentee parents? The child ultimately left the underside of our table to go trip the waitress, so I never had to make such a decision.

Anyway, at the end of this parenting seminar, the Pig Lady dutifully shouted her email address and phone number to her entire group, and by extension to everyone else in the room.

Naturally, I copied it down in my notes.

As we drove home, I thought about our potential conversation. "Oh hi, you don't remember me? Oh, I was the one 20 tables down trying to study while your children used our table as their personal playground and you infuriated an entire room full of people. Yes, didn't you notice the ear plugs? How did I get your number? You gave it out to all of us, you insufferable windbag."

But my better half talked me out of enjoying such a chat with our new anti-friend. Something about not letting these types of people get under my skin so much.

That's it. Rant over. Can't we all just get along?