Dear fellow geeks, geek leaders, and other random people who read this blog:
This is not a useful post. This post, in fact, will show you how the inside of my brain works. It can be a scary, scary place sometimes. Also? This isn’t a rant. This is just nitpicky. Also probably brought on by lack of sleep. And it’s supposed to be funny, not cranky. So if you read it as cranky, oops.
Here goes. I hate it when you…
- Change the subject line of the email. I have multiple reasons for this:
- I don’t read subject lines. I also don’t read chapter titles, article titles, etc. I don’t know why. It’s weird. My husband makes fun of me for it. So I’m not actually going to SEE what you put in there for my cute little eyes to see.
- It breaks my email threading. I have a strange obsessive behavior that makes me adore my threaded email conversations. I cuddle up with them at night (no, not really. If you’re like me and don’t read titles, please go back and note the “humor” thing up top.).
- Make plurals with apostrophes. Just please don’t do it. Unless you like watching me twitch. In which case you should go ahead and do it, but don’t expect me to buy you a beer. Ever.
- Misspell Latin phrases. If you can’t spell it, don’t use it. You don’t sound erudite, you just make me twitch. See previous bullet point about twitching.
- Hug me. There are a few non-family members who I don’t mind hugs from (Whose first names pretty much always start with “J”. No, I don’t know why.), but otherwise, there will be twitching. But this one doesn’t get you exempted from the beer buying, so this one is a lesser evil in the Jenn hierarchy.
- Correct my order of punctuation and quotation marks. Yes, I know I do it “wrong” for American English. No, I don’t care. Pthththt.
So, gentle readers, what are your completely ridiculous pet peeves? (Other than being called “gentle readers”, that is. I think that one’s weird, but I’m still leaving it in there.)
Leading Geeks 
It sounds like you need a hug to get rid of that crankiness. Oh… wait… Number 4.
As for changing subject lines, I’m going to take the opposite view in a situation that is all too common. The email conversation has gone in a completely different direction and the subject line is no longer relevant. Some of your “gentle readers” do read the subject line, especially when there are dozens of unread emails on my blackberry. (yes, my blackberry.)
My peeve (I laughed about yours, so you are safe) is when I am typing frantically trying (usually in vain) to complete some rush work and someone comes into my office and says: “Do you have a minute?”
* …send emails in text message syntax. I don’t care if you are typing it on your phone; you may be brief, but pls dont make me wrk 2 read yr msg! Learn to be succinct or get a phone with a keyboard you can use.
* …forget to PDF a document before you send it. I don’t want my clients to see that you didn’t know how to use styles in Word, or formatted those columns by using (gasp!) tabs.
* …recline your airline seat rapidly. Be polite, and go slowly – preferably with a glance back to me to see if I am prepared. I understand that you have the right to recline, but please do it in a way that gives me the opportunity to protect my open laptop and my knees. If you ignore this one and come smashing into me, I may suddenly develop restless leg syndrome.
* …look at me strangely or make odd comments when I order a bourbon followed by a glass of milk. The bourbon warms me up on the freezing cold airplane and settles me down for the commute after a busy day and a last-minute dash to the airport. The glass of milk goes with the chocolate bar I stashed in my bag. Even if I didn’t have a reason, it’s none of your business!
Phew! Thanks for letting me get those off of my chest!
@Doug, very funny. I’m fine if you change subject lines when the subject changes, but putting your response IN the subject line drives me nutty.
@Faith, I apologize, but I would probably give you a quizzical look with the bourbon & milk…
My peeve is when people launch a new email thread simply by replying to an unrelated email. And they leave the subject line in place. I suspect this is ‘easier’ than re-typing four email addresses.
This drives me bonkers, because then it’s incorrectly threaded and quite hard to track down later.