Introduction
To begin, I want to assure you that I’m a pretty even-keeled sort, and although in my youth I had quite a temper—my brothers referred to my not-infrequent rages as “fire-ups”—I am very good at keeping it together these days. Still, I know that everyone has a breaking point. Probably it would take the perfect storm of annoyances to push me over the edge, not just a single irritant (such as the incessant call of the whip-poor-will in James Thurber’s eponymous story). The purpose of this post is to give anthropologists, biographers, or police detectives some good leads if somebody, someday, seeks to figure out why a calm, easygoing person like me actually went berserk. So here’s a list of the kinds of things that could, if chained together under the right circumstances, finally push me too far.
Anything involving a fitted sheet
Could it possibly be that in 2026 nobody has improved on the weirdly quasi-rectangular, never-correctly-sized, inexpertly-elasticized fitted sheet? This product’s job is just not that complicated: to stay put on a mattress. Sometimes fitted sheets actually fit, and thus recede into the background, but so often they misbehave: for example, a corner peels away, so you wake up with your sweating skin plastered against the mattress, perhaps imprinted with its weird texture. And where fitted sheets really drive me nuts is when they’re not on the bed. Unlike a top sheet, they’re impossible to fold … no matter how precisely you try to line up the edges, you just end up practically wadding the thing into a ball. And then when you try to mount it on your mattress, you can’t get it oriented—it it behaves like pizza dough you fail to stretch into a disc, only you’re trying for a rectangle. Finally you find the little seams that (if you’re lucky) delineate these edges, and then you’ve got the sheet covering most of the mattress, but that final corner is either way too tight, so you can’t tug it far enough down, or it’s too loose, and you have all this slack to fold under. Every time I deal with a fitted sheet, I almost want to just give up and go sleep on the couch with a sleeping bag.
Stuff stuck in my teeth
I should only eat nuts at home where I have a gum stimulator tool. Otherwise I have all this shrapnel in my teeth I can’t work free, and my tongue gets tired and sore. When this happens on a hike I’ll sometimes pull a thin twig off a tree to use as a toothpick, in which case my wife warns me the twig is poisonous. (The worst part of this scenario is that she actually knows what she’s talking about.) But things get really bad when some sneaky bit of food gets stuck so badly right between two teeth that that it actually hurts. In this case, a toothpick doesn’t always help. In fact, the worst case scenario is that either a toothpick actually breaks in there, compounding the problem, or a piece of dental floss shreds in between the teeth. At such moments life seems literally hopeless.
And speaking of dental floss, even it doesn’t shred, trying to throw away a strand of it can seem futile. I pop the trash can lid up, try to drop the strand in, and it clings to my fingers, or misses the can, or only half of it goes in so it dangles over the side, or—worst case—it falls on the floor and (because I’m usually so exhausted at bedtime) I have trouble even finding it. Can’t Dyson create some kind of Floss-Vac, so that when I’m done flossing I can just press a button and have the floss ripped from my fingers and sucked into a vortex where I never need to think about it again?
Janky POS at gas station
Paying at the gas pump should not be complicated. Every company designing this point of sale interface should just copy an existing design that works. And yet the Service Station Industrial Complex seems to need to innovate. Sometimes it’s loud video ads or byzantine car wash options, or else it’s half a dozen loyalty card options. If I try to use my Safeway card and don’t have any award points, it sometimes hoses the whole transaction; other times, it weirdly gives me the Chevron member discount (which is a mistake, but hey, I’ll take it!). This confusion is only slightly annoying, but what kills me is when the POS wants me to pre-select something. The other day an Arco POS display said, “Enter amount.” Amount of what? Gas, or money? I guessed and put in “6,” figuring consumers care mainly about how many gallons we need, vs. the unpleasant matter of how much we’re forced to pay. Well, I guessed wrong and the pump gave me $6 worth of gas … a little over a gallon, which is of course nearly worthless. But I was like, okay, fine, it wants a dollar figure. So I tried again and put in a generous number, which should have worked, except that after pumping for like 30 seconds the POS realized, hey, this same card was used twice at this pump—an obvious sign of fraud! Stop the fueling! So I got like another half-gallon, plus it locked up my credit card, so I had to call my bank. Amazingly, this isn’t the first time such a thing has happened. Whoever designed this interface should be force-fed gasoline through a beer bong.
Car blasting horn at cyclist
Look, I understand that when I am out bicycling, sharing the road with cars, occasionally a driver will want to make sure I’m aware of his car bearing down on me. A little toot of the horn from, say, 30 feet away is completely appropriate. But I also encounter motorists who wait until they’re five feet from me and then blast the horn. It’s not like I didn’t know they were there, but that unexpected loud blast can just about make me jump out of my skin. The horn is supposed to be for safety; why this need to weaponize it? When this happens, I generally flip the driver the bird. This response might seem strange to you: I mean, what if the driver overreacts? Well, think about it: what’s he gonna do, come after me? He’s ahead of me! If he screeches to a halt, I’ll ride right past. If he waits for me at the next intersection and wants to fight, I’m all for it. After all, I’ll be the only combatant in a helmet.
The last time this happened, a couple weeks ago, I flipped off the driver, and then my riding buddy said, “There were kids in that car.” I grasped his point immediately: I had lucked out! Consider: the driver is an asshole; his young kids know it; and now I’ve taught them an important gesture they can make to their dad on a regular basis. I only wish I could give them a better tutorial, emphasizing that the ring and index fingers don’t curl all the way in, but are positioned such that their knuckles line up with that of the bird finger. But I’m sure those kids will refine their technique over time.
Resurfacing earworm
I am cursed with the ability to remember rock songs in great detail, whether I like them or not. Obviously in the case of a band I love, like Pink Floyd, it’s natural I’d remember every word of every song, along with all the instrumentals—but also intact are all these songs I never even meant to listen to but encountered secondhand because they got a lot of radio play. This means I also know all the lyrics to, say, “Piano Man” by Billy Joel, even though I only liked the song briefly, when I was like seven. Mercifully, lots of the music from my youth has failed to pass the test of time and, due to zero airplay, finally fades from memory.
Until it comes back. And this, alas, can happen at any time, for no reason. Some minor song like “One Step Ahead of You” by Split Enz will suddenly pop back into my head, and I’ll be like gosh, that’s strange, but then it’s kind of understandable that one would resurface because “one step ahead of you” is a household phrase. But occasionally a song I always despised, and which hasn’t been played on any Bay Area station in decades, and has no reason to be remembered, will pop into my head and then become the soundtrack to my latest anxiety dream, so I hear it all night as I sleep. Most recently the offending song was “Hair of the Dog” by Nazareth. In case you’ve forgotten, it’s the song whose chorus (which is like 90% of the song) goes, “Now you’re messing with a / Son of a bitch!” Why does my brain do this to me? Am I punishing myself for something?
Modern light bulbs
I understand the benefit of modern LED light bulbs: they use like a tenth of the energy of traditional incandescent bulbs. And I’m all for saving the planet, of course. I like to run my lights on a dimmer (which also conserves energy) … but it’s strictly hit or miss how the new bulbs will behave. The same make and model might work this week but not next. How they fail varies quite a bit. The LED bulbs designed for above my stovetop don’t do a damn thing. (I found some non-LED ones on Amazon but they refused to ship them to California due to state law; I had to have like 20 of them shipped to my mom’s place in Oregon.) Other LED bulbs seem to work on the dimmer but occasionally, spontaneously they’ll start flickering like crazy, causing seizures in my epileptic houseguests. Or they’ll just occasionally stop working until I futz with the switch a bunch of times. Completely maddening.
The other issue is, even though these modern bulbs barely use any energy, I can’t get a bright enough bulb for the bathroom. When I shave, I want that bathroom lit up like an operating theatre (and the rest of the time it’s on a dimmer, remember)? But all these LED bulbs max out at some piddly lumen number.
Does your neighborhood feature people leaving totally cool stuff out in their driveways for anyone to take? Sometimes it’s crap, like worn-out, depressingly faded or dirty toys, or waterlogged books. But more of the time it’s great stuff … we once got a beautiful drafting desk, and another time some elegant drinking glasses, and once (as celebrated here) we found a sweet toaster. But perhaps the most satisfying item ever was a box (in front of this old geezer’s house) of old-school incandescent bulbs. I couldn’t believe my luck! I mean, these you cannot buy. It’ll be a sad day when they finally burn out. Just like me I suppose.
People who can’t use calendar software
Among workplace productivity applications, perhaps the most useful is the shared calendar. How did we ever set up meetings before we could instantly see what day and time works for all six attendees? It’s great! Which makes it extra frustrating when colleagues—whom I have no option to avoid having meetings with—choose not to participate. They break the whole system. You go to set up a meeting and their schedule looks like Tetris—they’re triple- or quadruple-booked all day, every day, for the next five years. How many of these meetings are bogus? Answer: all but (possibly) one.
And if you’re attending a meeting, accept the invite! Don’t keep me waiting! I mean, what’s the problem … are you holding out for a better offer? Just keeping your options open? Look, if you don’t accept, I’m either going to have to hassle you, or reschedule, because believe me, I wouldn’t invite you in the first place if you weren’t absolutely necessary to the discussion. Chances are I don’t even like you.
If I were a manager, I would tell my employees, “If I ever see you double-booked on your calendar, you’re fired.” (You might think this would be frowned upon by leadership but actually, I’d be a hero, just for finding a novel way to get rid of more employees.)
Malfunctioning smoke alarm
Is there anything worse than being awakened in the middle of the night by a shrieking smoke alarm? Not only are you jumping out of bed, but you’re legitimately alarmed, especially because so many of these don’t only detect smoke (which at least you can smell) but carbon monoxide (which could silently kill your whole family). So you’re trying to figure out if you need to evacuate the house or just silence the damn thing. And half the time the “Silence” button doesn’t work. After all, the thing is malfunctioning.
It was bad enough when all you had to do was take out the battery—but now there are these factory-sealed models where you can’t. So you have to bury the damn thing like the telltale heart, smothering it in a clothes drawer so you don’t have to hear it anymore.
Bonus points: a certain model I seem to have a weakness for buying has a switch on it called “Deactivate.” It’s so tempting to throw this switch, except you can never go back. I mean, what’s the difference between using this switch and just smashing the alarm with a hammer?
I actually got the manufacturer to warranty a unit recently. The support rep asked what happened. I said that it wouldn’t stop alarming, no matter how many times I pressed “Silence,” and then finally it went silent but now won’t respond to the “Test” button. (I confess I left out the part where I repeatedly beat the alarm with my fist and then threw it on the floor.)
I was traveling recently and my daughter, who was visiting (or I guess technically housesitting since my wife and I weren’t there) called to report a smoke alarm wouldn’t shut up. Before I had a chance to actually advise her, she said, “Oh, wait, here’s a ‘Deactivate’ button!” Before I could stop her she’d thrown the switch. “Thanks a lot, “ I snarled. “You just bricked it.” Then I felt like a jerk, which hurt especially bad because I know it’s true.
Synthesis
I just realized what’s probably going to push me over the edge one day: I’ll be asleep, having an anxiety dream, with “Rock Me Amadeus” playing on infinite loop in my head, and then the smoke alarm will go off, and it won’t shut up, and in my frenzied attempt to smother it I’ll end up trying to wrap it in a fitted sheet!
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