If your business is on a high-traffic area of 14th Street, at what point after you realize your sign says saloon instead of salon do you have it remade?
Oh, wait, the sign also says “walk-in’s welcome” and “we specialize in heena tattoos”?
No, no, wait, I’m sorry, it actually says “heena tattooes“?
Nevermind.
You probably know by now that I hate people who don’t conform to the sorts of etiquette rules that keep society running smoothly, such as waiting for me to leave the train before you enter and giving a friendly wave when I let you turn ahead of me in heavy traffic lest I ram my front end into your brand new BMW.
My big pet peeve as of late are people who walk on the wrong side of the sidewalk. I used to assume, to keep myself sane, that all of the people doing it were from countries where they foolishly drive on the wrong side of the road, but I eventually realized that it’s just a product of living in a city where there way too many people who think they’re too important to follow the crowd and leave space beside them for people to pass.
Kamran thinks I should give couples more leeway when it comes to taking up the entire sidewalk on some of NYC’s teeny streets, but he and I always make a single-file line when we see someone coming so as to not rub it in their face how happy we are holding hands as we walk to the grocery store and how pathetic and meaningless they are as unattached folk. But no. I do not give them more leeway. And I actually hate them more than single people on the wrong side of the sidewalk, because between the two of them, one should have the decency to move aside.
Anyway, I’ve begun implementation of a new method to combat the sidewalk-hogger. I call it The Heedless Gape. When I see someone coming at me on the wrong side of the sidewalk, I simply keep walking at my desired pace and look off into the distance as if I see something so fantastical and all-consuming that other passersby don’t even register with me. Eventually, and usually with an angry huff, the offender will move aside so I can continue on in gawking glee.
I’ve considered what will happen if ever someone refuses to get over, and I’ve decided I’ll just patiently stand my ground until the other person gives up. And you know he’ll give up before I do, because the one advantage to being a very unimportant person in a city full of important people is that I have nowhere to go.
I like to judge people for fairly irrational things like:
1) not liking something as small as onions, while I myself hate everything that comes from the sea except possibly crab, and I only eat that when forced,
2) not putting their dirty dishes in the dishwasher at work, while I myself leave dishes in the sink at Kamran’s for days, and
3) using abbreviations like “lol” in chat, while I myself say “brb” all of the time, though I usually follow it up with “~@~”, which in Google chat looks like a pile of poo with flies circling around it, and the awesomeness of that cancels out my “brb”.
There’s one thing I judge people for that I don’t think is irrational, though, and that’s not washing their hands after using the bathroom. I know that ingesting someone else’s urine likely isn’t going to kill me, but I still feel so superior as I take an extra-long time to wash my hands in the bathroom and call innocently to anyone who leaves without stopping at the sink, “Oh, excuse me, but I think you accidentally-and-not-at-all-because-you’re-a-lazy-respectless-heathen forgot to wash your hands!” With the hugest, fakest smile on my face.
As I was rinsing today at work, though, I wondered, what do people who don’t wash their hands think about me? Are they judging me for being too clean?
The Awesome Part About Working in Downtown NYC on Yankees World Series Parade Day: My office building overlooks the parade, so I can watch it from our balcony without having to actually stand amongst the stinking masses.
The Awful Part About Working in Downtown NYC on Yankees World Series Parade Day: I don’t actually care about the Yankees or even baseball in general, yet I had to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with all of the cheerful fans this morning on the train. Grand Central was flooded with people in jerseys who had apparently taken the day off for the parade, which makes me a little sick to my stomach.
The Idiot Thing I Did in NYC on Yankees World Series Parade Day: I wore baby blue pants with a baby blue shirt and a navy blue track jacket. If one more person says something Yankees-positive to me on the train today despite the fact that I’m wearing headphones and reading a magazine, there will be blood.
I posted on Examiner, and it’s really too short for me to paste an excerpt here.
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