Photo of a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder (Royale) with Cheese. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A few things have been getting right up my nose in recent times and I wanted to share them with you – some sort of blogging therapy you might call it – better out than in!  So here goes…

1. Phonecalls (currently at least 3 times a day) from an automated voice telling me to “be quick” and reclaim £1000s I’m owed on PPI.  These claim processing companies (which will take an enormous percentage should you be successful in your claim) seem to think that this is a war of attrition and that finally I am going to say to them, “please, please, do this on my behalf”.  I am not going to do this – never, ever – so stop ringing me.
2. Paying to use the facilities (I hate that word) in railway stations.  Payment to use these suggests to me some sort of premium experience, payment for a little extra plush with your flush.  However, in my experience, the opposite is true and railway stations have some of the worst public conveniences out there.
3. Car Park pay and display machines that only take exact change.  There is no other word for this than robbery.  I can’t think of any shop I would go into, pay for something and expect the cashier to keep the change without asking me.  So why is it ok for car park operators to do just this and penalise people because they haven’t got the correct change?
4. Shops that offer to see whether a product they don’t have is available in another store about 200 miles away.  I can’t think of anything that I would buy that would be worth driving 200 miles to pick up.  Please stop offering me a thousand other ways to get your product – none of which are convenient – and just let me go.
5. Packets of nuts that carry the warning of “Allergy advice: contains nuts” – the clue is on the front of the packet and inside the packet.  Just because you have an allergy, does not mean that you are incapable of any sort of rational thought.
6. Shops that offer you cut price chocolate bars at the till along with all your non-chocolate shopping.  There is nothing more irritating to someone like me who can’t resist either a bargain or chocolate and it is just not fair – so stop it.
7. Hairdryers that require a 20p piece to work in public swimming pool changing rooms.  This is yet another case of discrimination against those who don’t happen to have a 20p coin in their purse and also leads in my case to another very public example of bad mothering skills when I have to leave the swimming pool with my daughter’s hair dripping everywhere and the audible tuts of others (with 20p) about “catching pneumonia”.
8. The inability of people working in a well-known hamburger joint to understand what I feel is a simple request “A quarter pounder without cheese”.  I’ve never understood why a quarter pounder should automatically come with cheese, but it does and I don’t like cheese – hence my request.  I don’t feel there is anything particularly fussy or difficult about this request but I can count on one hand the number of times my quarter pounder has actually arrived cheese-less.
9. Those really annoying “puzzles” that appear frequently on social networking sites which ask you how many “faces” or “letter Es” etc you can see in a picture.  You know it’s a trick and you’re determined not to fall into the trap so you waste an inordinate amount of time searching for something that is not even there and then get the answer wrong anyway.
10. Magazines on shop shelves wrapped in plastic.  Everyone loiters once in a while and likes to flick through a magazine in a shop without buying the magazine – this doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.  You can browse in a bookshop – you are positively encouraged to – so as long as I don’t go in every day in my lunch break and use the magazine shelf as a sort of public library – what’s the problem?

I feel so much better now and it’s amazing how little time it took me to think up 10 things that really irritate me.  I’m sure there are thousands more – I’m not known for my tolerance. I would love to hear of things that irritate you.  Do you agree with me?