What follows is a small catalog of annoyance. I am sure I have uttered these words. I am sure those I love have uttered and will utter these words. Those of us who live on the planet are bound to irritate someone at some point. But henceforth, anyone who hears these words uttered around me is going to know what’s going through my head, even if I am sporting a socially correct veneer of facial politeness.
“Doesn’t [person] have anything better to do?”
Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, knitting, reality TV, insert your guilty pleasure here. We all have them, but some killjoy is just dying to make you feel like a fool for your choices. This cute little number is intended to make the target feel like a frivolous, time-wasting moron. On the other hand, I suppose one is to infer that the speaker is a virtuous ascetic who only expends effort to create great beauty or value. Right. Get back to me when you’ve won the Nobel Prize.
It also makes me wonder, “Why do you care so much? What about this activity gets up your nose so much that you feel the irresistible need to sneer?”
I would also venture to guess that the subset of people who are superciliously passing judgment and who have also tried that thing approaches zero in nearly every circumstance (which would tend to account for the fact that speakers of this phrase seem to think that typing out 140 characters a couple of times a day takes So Much Time). Therefore, I shall now respond to all such questions by saying, “No, actually — and don’t you have anything better to do than to make fatuous judgments about stuff you don’t understand?”
“I am the kind of person who…”
This one reminds me of the quote often attributed to Margaret Thatcher, “Power is like being a lady; if you have to tell someone you are, you aren’t.” (I can’t find an authoritative source for this — at least not swiftly). The point is, all too often the quality that follows this statement would rarely be attributed to the speaker by anyone who knows them. It’s almost a guarantee of willful blindness to one’s own personality.
A close cousin to this statement is a manager’s boast that he has an “open door policy.” Generally, this person only has the door open the better to swing it firmly shut on your ass and your ideas.
“I have to be honest with you.”
After hearing this, I always think to myself, “Okay… how many lies did you tell me prior to this statement?”
“Get a life.”
You first.
Got any choice hateful phrases you would like to see banned from polite conversation?
