Little annoyances?

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I also really hate it when details in plays and movies don´t match up; for instance, if it´s a period piece, and they show some kind of anachronism- (modern haircuts, buildings not looking right). I feel that this insults the audience´s intelligence.

I once saw a play where a really rational, controlled character turned out to be a murderer. Suddenly, at the end of the play, his character totally changed- so much that I found it unrealistic. I guess the playwright wanted it to be a surprise, but it was too much of a surprise- it didn´t fit at all! Ruined the whole play for me.

I was irritated in the 2nd half of the "Rome" series when the character of Octavian- who was played by a young man- suddenly "grew up"...(meaning, they got another actor to play the part...a slightly older man, almost didn´t make any difference); so, he grew up and became another person! The 2nd Octavian didn´t look anything like the 1st Octavian, and he had a totally different voice, inflection, accent and general way of speaking. I could never really get used to it, and it totally bugged me.

I was even irritated in the 1st "Rome" series, where Julius Caesar never said "et tu, Brute?" after being stabbed. I thought that was a shame.

Well, I could go on and on about details in movies...that´s just the tip of the iceberg....

Those of you who are bothered by outlets that aren't switched off when not being used should move to a country where they don't have switches. Problem solved.

Yeah - I was wondering what that meant. I've been to France and Italy and I don't recall that - but then I stayed in hotels.

What happens if you don't switch them off? Do they waste energy? Or pose a shock risk? Some of us dumb Americans (and Canadians?) would like to know.



Here's a picture of a typical North American outlet (installed sideways by some redneck - it was the best pic I could find). Is this kind of what you UK guys are talking about? As you can see, ours are idiot-proof. No switches. The super advanced ones have trip buttons - but that's about it.

The UK uses totally different plugs and receptacles from any country on the continent. This design is also used in a lot of other countries that used to be part of the British Empire like Ireland and Malta (though in the case of Ireland, the Republic of Ireland was already independent when this design came into use, but it was presumably adopted in order to maintain commonality with Northern Ireland among other reasons). Since there are no former British possessions on the European continent, it has not come into use there. Countries in continental Europe use a variety of similar but not identical standards, which are very unsophisticated designs with two or (occasionally) three round plugs. These are generally even more compact and less sophisticated than the North American-style design and they are in direct contrast to the very large and complicated UK-style design, which is designed with extensive and sophisticated safety features.

The design in use today in the UK is a relatively new - it did not come into use until just after World War II and its spread was enabled by the enormous post-war reconstruction of British housing. Its rapid spread was assured by it becoming the standard design for new construction, a which was taking place at an unprecedented rate as the Government moved to replace wholesale the huge amounts of old and sub-standard housing stock that then existed. Old installations were systematically upgraded to maintain compatibility so by the 1970s the previous design (which was much simpler and more similar to current norms in the rest of the world) became almost extinct except for specialized applications. This was one of the smaller, less-noticed and talked-about, but still obvious in day-to-day life, of the many infrastructure and technological shifts in the UK that happened from the 1940s to the 1970s. One would be hard-pressed to say that a change in electrical plugs caused a significant increase in living standards but it was enabled by a lot of other huge enormous changes that did.


Energy is wasted if a device is plugged in to the receptacle and the switch is left on even when the device is not in use. This is the same situation as leaving a device plugged in when not in use to any unswitched receptacle (like the style used in the US).

On the other hand, leaving the switch on when nothing is plugged into the outlet does nothing. Because these outlets include built-in shutters that automatically block them off when nothing is plugged in, the risk of shocking yourself unintentionally is virtually nil. The shutters open when a pin enters the ground receptacle (the ground pin is longer than the other prongs, so it goes in first, opening the shutters of the other receptacles in the process and allowing the other pins to be inserted).

A switch would actually be more useful as a safety feature on US-style outlets that do not have built-in shutters than on the UK style which does.

Either way it is a useful convenience feature as it provides a way to stop the flow of electricity to a device without physically unplugging it. This is good for energy saving (technically with unswitched outlets you should unplug everything when you are not using it, but that is inconvenient compared to just flipping a switch) and it also offers another option if you need to kill the power to something during an emergency, aside from actually pulling the plug. So it is a feature that (in my opinion) should always be provided but unfortunately it virtually never is on US-style receptacles. (I am not sure I have ever seen one with a switch.) Also it does not require a change to the standard (the plugs and receptacles stay the same) so it would be much easier to start using it than, say, built-in shutters which while a wonderful safety feature would be basically impossible to implement in countries currently using standards that don't have them as that would require a total switch from one standard to another.

It's jarring. If someone's talking to me on speakerphone or a bad line it sets my teeth on edge ! !! !

OH!! ! Speaker phones! I can't stand them! I hate the way they sound and I hate being on them when there are a bunch of people on the other end and I can't see them. I feel like I'm blind-folded in front of a firing squad. (Or at the very least, the people are flipping off the phone.)

And I can't stand it when people (my husband) listen to their vmail on speaker!! !! !

I didn't know you guys don't have switches on power outlets.

The reason it annoys me is nothing to do with the electricity really, it's just the way it stands out as being pointless.

Well, now you know.

I found the power outlets in the UK quite odd when I first went there as a kid. Now I am used to them and appreciate the technical aspects of the design.

This really bugs me if i see one on i will go throught the whole house finding the rest and switching them all off or where ever i am.

Snoring, water dripping out of the faucet, my bf doing things differently than me, crumbs on the counter tops, phones, telemarketers, that child abuse ad on the side, the weight watchers ad we had on here, the high pitch sounds from the TVs.

I get totally irritated when I´m sitting in my apartment, and someone slams the main door to the building below, and the whole apartment reverberates from it...

I get that too.


Oh I get annoyed when my bf is sitting at the computer and he taps his foot and I can feel the couch shaking because he is vibrating the floor and it makes the vibration go through the couch too. Also when I am in the car and my bf taps his foot, it makes the car shake and makes it feel like there is something wrong with it. But he does pretty good controlling it.

Last edited by Spokane_Girl on 09 Apr 2009, 3:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

When someone has my nintendo DS on with the sound on when I'm trying to watch the telly, it drives me up the walls.
People using my laptop
When in films people seem to break the laws of physics or doing things that are just unrelistic or illogical, for example jumping through glass and ending up unscratched.

When all the passwords reset on the computer and I have to re login on everything. When my bf closes out of the web pages I was in. When he puts his dirty dishes in the sink instead of in the dishwasher.

Also, loud ticking of clocks, especially when there's more than one loudly ticking clock in the room and they aren't synchronised.
That sound is a sure fire way to increase tension when I'm nervous, plus it displays how very slowly time is passing.

euuuuuuuuwwwww, thx dude.
(As I read I experience).