So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[HudsonHawk]

I think it's largely impossible to not get muddy or salty (depending on the season) around here, even walking in from your car.

Seriously. My poor dress boots.

Sure, I guess a certain amount of dirty is inescapable. I just mean that you don't generally wear your dirty work clothes to visit someone (obviously your own house is different). That was considered gauche as well. Even if all you had was your overalls, step-ins and your marrying/burying clothes, you tried to scrub up a little.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Couple of peeves ...

Empty ice cube trays returned to the freezer. Grrrr ...

Oh man, this drove my dad nuts. He was generally a pretty calm man, but he had a conniption fit over empty ice trays.

 

[Fading Fast]

Oh man, this drove my dad nuts. He was generally a pretty calm man, but he had a conniption fit over empty ice trays.

My father took it one step further. Yes, he brooked no excuse for the person who took the ice out of them to not refill them, unless - and I kid you not - it was him. Then, he would just put the tray on the counter and expect it to be filled. Here's the thing, growing up, I did not see this as a double standard, it was just normal that my Dad did no, absolutely no, household chores of any kind. The rule: he paid the bills, my mom and I took care of the house.

 

[Edward]

When telemarketing calls, I ask them for their number so I can call back at a more convenient time.
If they tell me they are not allowed .
My next question is “Can you tell me what this sound like?” then I hang up & block the number.

All sorts of fun to be had. My current trick is to say "Certainly, can I just put you on hold for a minute?" Then set the phone on the table and go about my business. I had two phonecalls in as many days from one telemarketer; the first time, they hung on for four minutes before hanging up, the second time, three and a half. It feels a bit mean given that the groundlings in those companies are just people doing a day's work and have quotas to make, but on the upside they haven't wasted their time with me since....

I do believe that the age of the telephone solicitor is drawing to a close. I should hope so anyway, what with the National Do Not Call Registry and all.

Alas, I get three or four dozen junk emails on any given day.

Junk email is at least easier to sift out. I think as more and more people shift over to mobile phones, it's easier to filter out calls than to landlines as well, which helps. If a "withheld number" ever calls my phone, I won't answer. If they need to, they can call back from a number that displays.

That list was/is a complete lie. We got at least twice as many solicitation calls after we put our number on that list than we did before.

The technology has shifted... many of the worst scammers now instead of phoning by known numbers just randomly generate them via computer. Chances are the bod to whom you speak doesn'tg even know which number they're talking to (typically why they ask).

Other countries may be different but here in the UK the answer would be: Because you give it to them. Not directly of course, but if you have filled in an application for: Loyalty Card; Credit Card; Sales Offer; Online Purchase and a myriad of other innocent looking forms, you will have given your phone number away, as well as your home address and your preferred purchases, and almost every other detail that interests those with intent to cold canvas you.
Those forms are mostly online these days, next time you see one, look at the rectangular boxes that are known as 'fields.' See how many have an asterisk denoting that it's compulsory to fill in your personal details. Once one company has your details it will be sold and resold on and on.

Pretty much. Here in Europe we have very tight data protection laws (in large part a cultural reaction to the Holocaust), but all too many people are still very cavalier about handing their information out in exchange for, say, a free pen, newspaper, or w.h.y.. The law has made it increasingly harder for data harvesters (e.g. you now have to opt *in* to receive marketing communications, not *out*), but the lack of vigilance on the part of many individuals means it is hard to enforce. The state can only go so far to protect people from themselves...

Frankly I am very wary of the internet, why for instance do some companies store your card information when you make a sale? It has now become a risk. If that company gets hacked your card details are there, or, if an employee has an ulterior motive, that employee could pass on your's and other's details.

It's always a risk.... though no more so than using a card on the phone, or anywhere else where they don't need you to enter a pin (increasingly few places now). I've had my security compromised once or twice in the last twenty years, but the banks are so quick to pick up on it now, I've never lost money.

Companies which keep your payment details for future use can only do so with your permission, and are subject to tight regulation as well - they're liable to significant financial penalties in the event of a data breach, for example, and they are also legally obliged to provide adequate security for the data to begin with. Getting ripped off this way will always happen to some extent (in much the same way as murder hving been a crime for hundreds of years, but it still happens), however it's nowhere near as common as is popularly believed.

For me, cash, as in the filthy folding stuff, has always been king. It can be difficult to pay cash, because the system has deliberately been contrived that way, but with a little patience, and care, you won't get plagued by cold canvassers, or have your details hacked.

It's certainly a way to avoid card crime, though typically it's much harder to get the money back if you do get ripped off.

A point of annoyance: being asked to remove my shoes when I go to somebody's house. Really? You invite a person into your home then you ask them to take off an article of clothing. That's how you treat a guest?

Used to do it all the time, and also had it requested of me in other folks' homes - usually when they'd rented and wanted to keep the carpet from being damaged. I have wood laminate flooring, which can get badly scratched if there's foot-gravel. Never been an issue really.... when I'm more organised, I wear slippers at home anyhow.

 

[sheeplady]

Sure, I guess a certain amount of dirty is inescapable. I just mean that you don't generally wear your dirty work clothes to visit someone (obviously your own house is different). That was considered gauche as well. Even if all you had was your overalls, step-ins and your marrying/burying clothes, you tried to scrub up a little.

True. I'm thinking more of stopping by. And I want to say, I've only asked one person to take off their shoes in my house. That was my mother-in-law and she was being disrespectful, tracking in visible mud around my crawling infant. If guests ask, unless it's winter or mud season and their shoes are obviously encrusted, I tell them to leave them on. But honestly, I've never had someone not take off their shoes coming in, even workmen and women.

And unless someone gives me a darned good reason to not take my shoes off at their home, I do take them off, even if they insist "you don't have to" and change into house shoes or socked feet.

But I grew up on a farm, where the outside is *always* dirtier than inside.

 

[HudsonHawk]

And unless someone gives me a darned good reason to not take my shoes off at their home, I do take them off, even if they insist "you don't have to" and change into house shoes or socked feet.

We were always just taught that taking off your shoes was like putting your feet on someone else's coffee table. It's too informal, or...what's the word I'm looking for...I can't quite place it...but the idea is that it's not your home, don't presume to treat it like it is. Of course, there were lots of other "rules" about being a guest in someone's home that today's more casual nature would think are dated. So my question would be...how sure are you that "you don't have to" isn't just a polite way of saying "please don't"?

But I grew up on a farm, where the outside is *always* dirtier than inside.

We had concrete floors and they were usually pretty dirty. For some reason, my mother used a dust mop, though I never understood why my suggestion of a bucket of water and a squeegee wasn't a brilliant one.

 

[MisterCairo]

People who don't leave the newspaper as it was when it was received after reading it.

My father had the same issue.

And his grandfather before him (my dad was raised by his grandfather).

At least I come by it naturally!

 

[sheeplady]

We were always just taught that taking off your shoes was like putting your feet on someone else's coffee table. It's too informal, or...what's the word I'm looking for...I can't quite place it...but the idea is that it's not your home, don't presume to treat it like it is. Of course, there were lots of other "rules" about being a guest in someone's home that today's more casual nature would think are dated. So my question would be...how sure are you that "you don't have to" isn't just a polite way of saying "please don't"?



We had concrete floors and they were usually pretty dirty. For some reason, my mother used a dust mop, though I never understood why my suggestion of a bucket of water and a squeegee wasn't a brilliant one.

I would hope that someone who expressly *didn't* would say something like, "please don't take them off" or "I would prefer if you left them on," or "please keep your shoes on." Part of being nice to guests as a host/hostess is to give them social cues on how to behave in unfamiliar social contexts. In the tradition of following the hostess at the dinner table if you are unsure of how to eat an item or which fork to use. "You don't have to" means, "yes, we take our shoes off, but it's up to you." I would hope that someone who invited me in would give me the correct social cues upon me asking, rather than leaving me with a choice and comparing ne to putting my feet on the coffee table after i left because they didn't give me the right cue.

Also, I'd be pretty upset if I changed into clean "house shoes" and somebody compared that to putting bare feet on their table... I obviously felt my shoes were too dirty or would scrape your floors and I brought clean shoes.... honestly I don't know how someone would find that offensive if they preferred you wear shoes.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I would hope that someone who expressly *didn't* would say something like, "please don't take them off" or "I would prefer if you left them on," or "please keep your shoes on." Part of being nice to guests as a host/hostess is to give them social cues on how to behave in unfamiliar social contexts. In the tradition of following the hostess at the dinner table if you are unsure of how to eat an item or which fork to use. "You don't have to" means, "yes, we take our shoes off, but it's up to you." I would hope that someone who invited me in would give me the correct social cues upon me asking, rather than leaving me with a choice and comparing ne to putting my feet on the coffee table after i left because they didn't give me the right cue.

This is my point about social and cultural norms. It would be assumed that such scenario wasn't unfamiliar, and one didn't need a cue to tell you not to take your shoes off, you just knew not to. It's like elbows on the dinner table or feet on the coffee table. Nobody had to be told by the host not to do those things, as it was assumed your momma taught you that when you were a child. Secondly, it's not the Southern way to be so blunt to people like that. You let them do their thing in your house, no matter how tacky you think it is, then you complain about them when they leave, as you figure you *did* give them the cue, but they just missed/ignored it. I'm not saying that's right, I'm saying that's the way it worked.

Also, I'd be pretty upset if I changed into clean "house shoes" and somebody compared that to putting bare feet on their table... I obviously felt my shoes were too dirty or would scrape your floors and I brought clean shoes.... honestly I don't know how someone would find that offensive if they preferred you wear shoes.

Changing shoes would be fine. It's assumed that you would try not to track mud in if you could help it. Walking around someone else's house in your socks or barefoot is what we're talking about.

 

[tonyb]

People who don't leave the newspaper as it was when it was received after reading it.

My father had the same issue.

And his grandfather before him (my dad was raised by his grandfather).

At least I come by it naturally!

Guys who did time in the federal joint in decades past knew to pass along the daily paper in the same unwrinkled condition it was in when they received it. Or so I was informed by an old bank embezzler of my acquaintance. A dozen or more inmates had but one paper among them, and these were the kind of crooks who read the paper.

 

[sheeplady]

This is my point about social and cultural norms. It would be assumed that such scenario wasn't unfamiliar, and one didn't need a cue to tell you not to take your shoes off, you just knew not to. It's like elbows on the dinner table or feet on the coffee table. Nobody had to be told by the host not to do those things, as it was assumed your momma taught you that when you were a child. Secondly, it's not the Southern way to be so blunt to people like that. You let them do their thing in your house, no matter how tacky you think it is, then you complain about them when they leave, as you figure you *did* give them the cue, but they just missed/ignored it. I'm not saying that's right, I'm saying that's the way it worked.



Changing shoes would be fine. It's assumed that you would try not to track mud in if you could help it. Walking around someone else's house in your socks or barefoot is what we're talking about.

I'm not trying to argue, but just as you are stating that it was/ is the norm in the south, it seems to be the norm here to take your street shoes off, particularly in rural areas.

We're also not afraid of being direct in this area either. Cultural difference, class difference, call it whatever you want. I'm not trying to be a stick in the mud, all I am saying is it is not a *universal* expectation that you wear shoes in the house. It may well be in the south, and I might be considered horribly ill-mannered for asking when I see a shoe rack by the door in a southern home, but so be it.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I'm not trying to argue, but just as you are stating that it was/ is the norm in the south, it seems to be the norm here to take your street shoes off, particularly in rural areas.

We're also not afraid of being direct in this area either. Cultural difference, class difference, call it whatever you want. I'm not trying to be a stick in the mud, all I am saying is it is not a *universal* expectation that you wear shoes in the house. It may well be in the south, and I might be considered horribly ill-mannered for asking when I see a shoe rack by the door in a southern home, but so be it.

I understand. I'm not arguing or trying to convince you either way. I'm just pointing out the differences in expectations.

 

[Zombie_61]

In the last 20 years of knowing the great US-comedy-series, I always wondered, that all these families come home and walk with their streetshoes all around in the whole house.

Didn't the producers want to show shoe-undressing or was it saving time and money??

I don't know how it is in the rest of the U.S., but I've lived in southern California my whole life and I've never known anyone who regularly removed their shoes before entering a house (theirs or someone else's), the one exception being work boots that were caked with mud or some other form of debris. The same has been true whenever my wife and I have visited her relatives in northern Illinois, but we visit when the weather there is less "extreme" so I don't know what her relatives do with shoes and/or boots covered in mud or snow.

That being said, I and one of our friends tend to remove our shoes as soon as possible when we arrive at home, but that's a matter of comfort, not cleanliness; we just don't like shoes.

People who don't leave the newspaper as it was when it was received after reading it...

Over the years at my last place of employment co-workers would occasionally ask to borrow my newspaper and promise to return it, thinking I hadn't read it yet because it was just as neatly folded after I was finished with it as it was when I bought it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We get the Sunday paper delivered at work, and I get very ornery if the kids throw away the funnies before I have a chance to read them. If I don't get my weekly nature lesson from Mark Trail, life isn't worth living.

 

[tonyb]

I don't know how it is in the rest of the U.S., but I've lived in southern California my whole life and I've never known anyone who regularly removed their shoes before entering a house (theirs or someone else's), the one exception being work boots that were caked with mud or some other form of debris. The same has been true whenever my wife and I have visited her relatives in northern Illinois, but we visit when the weather there is less "extreme" so I don't know what her relatives do with shoes and/or boots covered in mud or snow.

That being said, I and one of our friends tend to remove our shoes as soon as possible when we arrive at home, but that's a matter of comfort, not cleanliness; we just don't like shoes. ...

Older houses (pre-WWII) in Seattle often have (or had) mud porches off the back kitchen door, and sun porches at the front. Many of those houses have been remodeled such that the mud porch became part of an expanded kitchen and the sun porch part of an expanded living room.

Makes sense, now that the city, once a land of blue collars, is now populated by people who rarely get their hands dirty, let alone mud on their shoes.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

We get the Sunday paper delivered at work, and I get very ornery if the kids throw away the funnies before I have a chance to read them. If I don't get my weekly nature lesson from Mark Trail, life isn't worth living.

Mark Trail still exists? I haven't seen him in decades. Loved him as a kid.

 

[sheeplady]

When somebody comes to your house, finishes the roll of toilet paper, and puts the new roll on holder THE WRONG WAY.

I mean, seriously, did you not just use the last of the previous roll and observe how it was done?

My husband used to put roll on the holder all willy-nilly, whichever way it happened to land. I was like, "What is *wrong* with you??? You don't even have a preference???"

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

The two sections of the paper that people always leave behind are the sports and business sections.

 

[GHT]

My husband used to put roll on the holder all willy-nilly, whichever way it happened to land. I was like, "What is *wrong* with you??? You don't even have a preference???"

Groan! Don't you start, you sound like someone I know, whose not too far away. Right way. wrong way, there's only two ways. The tissue either hangs down from the front or the back, what's the big deal? At least she drew the line at copying the habit of hotels, whereby they fold the tissue into a 'V' shape point.

 

[Zombie_61]

Groan! Don't you start, you sound like someone I know, whose not too far away. Right way. wrong way, there's only two ways. The tissue either hangs down from the front or the back, what's the big deal? At least she drew the line at copying the habit of hotels, whereby they fold the tissue into a 'V' shape point.

Yep. As long as there is enough paper left on the roll to get the job done, who cares?