Top Ten Things Eliza Hates About You

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Eliza MacKnight, Staff Reporter

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If you’ve ever been sitting in public and become disturbed by something someone was doing to the point where you simply couldn’t take your eyes off of them, welcome to my life. Unfortunately for those around me, I find so many things frustrating that it’s next to impossible not to be irritated by little things people do. Here are ten of the most annoying things in the world:

Peeing on the Toilet Seat:

Walking into a public bathroom, everyone is just hoping for a semi-clean toilet to use and a smell that isn’t gag-worthy. However, more times than not, I walk into a bathroom and am welcomed by the sight of drops of urine scattered around the toilet seat.

 

First of all, if they are using the toilet correctly, how do girls end up peeing on the toilet seat? Secondly, no one knows who used that stall last. They could have contagious infections that are easily transmittable through contact with bodily fluids, and now I’m being forced to wipe up the pee you recklessly put all over the seat.

 

Seriously if you, for some reason, end up peeing on the toilet seat, for God’s sake please wipe it up. It will save innocent 16-year-old girls from having to run all the way back out to the car to make their mom come clean it up for them.

Talking and Texting During a Movie:

Quite possibly the most irritating experience in the world is going to the movies. Not because I’m forced to pay an absurd amount of money just to get in, or because I also get roped into buying overpriced food due to the tempting smell in the main lobby, although these are equally annoying.

 

What makes me the most agitated is when I’m all settled into my seat and a herd of middle-school-aged girls enters the theater and decide to plop down directly in front of me to pull out their phones and gossip. Normally this wouldn’t bother me, as I do enjoy listening to the stories of 13-year-old girls from time to time. However, through all of their dramatic hair flips and excited blabbering they blatantly miss the robotic woman’s voice telling them to silence their cell phones. This, in turn, leads to the next two hours of my life consisting of watching them text and Snapchat with their brightness turned all the way up. After the movie ends, I somberly watch them leave, and can’t help but sit and think about how much I hate the movie theater.

Not Covering a Cough or Sneeze:

As the weather grows colder and the days grow shorter, I realize fall is almost over and the year is quickly coming to a close. If you’re anemic like me and suffer from a weakened immune system, with the beginning of winter also comes the beginning of a much dreaded time of year: cold and flu season. Even if you don’t contract a cold every time someone sneezes in your presence, I think most can agree it’s absolutely disgusting when people neglect to cover their mouth.

 

According to a study done at MIT, a single cough can release up to 3,000 bacteria-laden droplets at 50 mph, with a sneeze giving off 13 times as many droplets at four times the speed. So next time you can feel that cough rising in the back of your throat, please do everyone around you a favor and stick your mouth in your elbow.

Stopping in the Middle of the Hallway/ Taking Up the Whole Hallway

I get it. You haven’t seen your friends in over an hour, and the most important thing right now is regrouping with them for the seven brief minutes of freedom you have until you have to part again for 5th period. I completely understand that friends are necessities, and you want to tell them all about what happened in their absence; however, when I’m stuck behind your entire friend group that walks (slowly, I may add) in one giant line across the width of the entire hall and end up getting marked tardy because of it, I have to say it doesn’t make me too happy. Next time you choose the hallway as the venue for your socializing, try breaking off and walking in groups of two.

When All of Your Teachers Use Different Websites

Blackboard, Edmodo, and Google Classroom are just a few of the new websites teachers are using to post homework and send assignments to students. The new one-to-one program has promoted the use of laptops instead of paper worksheets. This is all well and good except for one thing: every teacher uses a different website. For every different website there is a different username and password, some sites having specific criteria we must include in our passwords to make them safer (adding punctuation and capital letters, for example). As a result of this new phenomena, I am no longer able to check my English homework, and have been forced to ask several classmates to forward me all assignments and due dates.

People Chewing with their Mouths Open

There are few things more annoying than sitting directly across from someone who isn’t eating with their mouth closed. The absolute worst is when someone is eating mac n cheese; the sound alone makes me nauseous.

 

Not only is it unpleasant to the eye (and ear), it’s also distracting. In my personal experience, when people talk with their mouths full, I don’t hear 90 percent of what they say. All my focus is on what is rolling around in their mouth. Take the advice of the debutant director in She’s The Man and, “chew like you have a secret!”

Family Members Not Throwing Away the Box When They Finish Something

Growing up in a family of six, I fully understand the concept of first come, first serve. I’ve made countless batches of brownies to help me through long homework nights and come downstairs to find an empty pan. However, nothing bothers me more than getting pumped to open the new box of Frosted Flakes and then pouring out two broken flakes before realizing someone put the empty box back in the pantry.

 

What motivates people to return the milk jug to the fridge after they have poured the last remaining drops out is also still a mystery to me, especially because the trash can is closer. Just a friendly reminder to everyone (or maybe just my family), to be considerate and throw things away when you finish them, lest my excitement be crushed once again.

Parents Who Don’t Watch their Small Children in Public

It’s unfair to judge parents purely based on the behavior of their children, as this doesn’t provide a totally accurate representation of their parenting style. This does not apply, though, in the situations that anger me. I really try not to criticize parents, seeing as how I don’t have any kids of my own, but sometimes it gets to the point when you just wonder what is going on inside these adults’ minds.

 

For instance, I was walking around a store on a Saturday night, when I came very close to stepping on a small child who, being no taller than my knees, ran right into me. I smiled at him as he ran away and then looked around for his mom, whom I didn’t see. A minute later I walked into the dressing room and saw a young woman bearing resemblance to the child who had just attacked my shins, looking at her potential purchases in the mirror and talking on the phone. After hearing her tell her friend that yes, she had ended up bringing the kid with her, although she had no idea where he was now, I politely told her I had just seen him in the perfume section and he was headed to the lower level of the store. She graciously thanked me before closing the door to continue trying more clothes on. Realizing the automatic doors on the bottom level led directly to the bustling parking lot, I told a store employee if they saw a small child running around to return him to the upstairs dressing room and then fled the store before my discontent got the better of me. Parents, please watch your kids.

Pedestrians Walking on the Road When There’s a Sidewalk Nearby

It’s appalling to be driving past all the beautiful sidewalks just to see pedestrians walking on the street. Not only that, but they’re walking on the wrong side of the road. Wasn’t the whole point of the safety unit in seventh grade health class to teach us to walk facing oncoming traffic? Especially at night when people with bad eyesight (me), are driving around, why would anyone think it’s a good idea to walk on the road when there’s a sidewalk three feet away?

What’s even worse than this is when people decide they want to jog in groups, and then they take up a whole side of the road. This forces the driver to swerve onto the wrong side, in hopes that no one is coming, just so the joggers can run on a flat surface. This situation becomes dangerous for everyone involved. A note to all people on foot: the sidewalks are there for a reason: use them.

When Girls Block the Sinks to Re-apply Makeup

Due to the position of my seat most of the time, it’s inconvenient to get up and go to the bathroom during class. For this reason, I have always gone in between classes. This doesn’t bother me at all, except when I decide to go in one of the large bathrooms at the end of the hallway, because that’s where girls go to reapply their makeup. I’m not judging you, and I really couldn’t care less if you want to fix your makeup throughout the day; however, when you ask me to stop washing my hands so you can get closer to the mirror, or refuse to move when I stand right next to you waiting for a sink, it’s frustrating.

 

When dealing with those automatic sinks, I’ve noticed only about three actually work, and I can guarantee that at least two of them have been covered by girls checking their winged eyeliner. Thus begins the line of tardy girls with unclean hands, who wait about 20 seconds before realizing they won’t be getting a turn at the sink and opt for hand sanitizer instead. To the girls who have to make sure their brows are “on fleek” 24/7, feel free to bring a compact mirror to school.