Pet Peeves

Sitting here in God’s Waiting Room this morning, it is quiet and peaceful as the TV is turned off, and it does not fill the room with news about hatred upon hatred.

Such a troubled time we live in.

In the quiet, pet peeves come to mind. The one at the top of the list is news reporters doing interviews who constantly talk over their guests. They never let them answer a question entirely, and it seems they feel their opinions are more important than the person they are talking to.

As someone who spent almost 20 years doing radio interviews for a living, here is a little free advice: Do you reporters realize you’re doubtlessly missing the authentic story? If you ask a question and quietly listen to everything the person has to say, most times, that will lead you to question number two. Question number two will tie your story to question number one. You might discover that the story is so different from what you thought that you would throw the notes and pre-written questions in your lap away and engage in a meaningful conversation. After all, that is what your listeners or readers expect. But you have to listen first to put that story together in a factual and meaningful way.

Pet peeve number two is sports announcers who seem to think they are smarter than anyone on the field, including the coaches and the umpires. During this football season, we often hear little about the people playing and more about the opinions of those in the broadcast booth. The standard sports broadcast formula calls for one individual to describe what happened on the field and the second person to add color to the story. Usually, that color is based on their knowledge of the player, background, and understanding of the game. 

The last thing a viewer or listener wants is a rant of what the announcer thinks is incorrect and all of their opinion, profoundly intellectual scrutiny of what the coaches did wrong, what they should have done, etc. We turn the volume to zero at our house and watch the game. A side advantage of the reduced volume is that we miss many commercials.

And that brings us to pet peeve number three. The constant repetition of the same old commercials over and over again, many times, only separated by another old commercial being run over and over again. Having lived in White Oak for 16 years, it is vividly clear, to the point of ad nauseam, that a particular insurance man has been in business in Longview since 1964. Today’s commercial is the same one that ran 16 years ago. It’s never been changed, and sometimes it appears many times an hour, even back-to-back, depending on programming. Where in the world is the ad agency that would let something like this continue on and on and on? Yes, from personal experience in the broadcasting business, it takes repetition before a sizable number of people recognize what you are selling. However, it’s time to change the commercial once that point is accomplished.

Support Canada Free Press

Pet peeve number four is the people who poke along 20 MPH below the posted speed limit and stay in the left passing lane rather than moving back into the right lane where they belong. Often, the thought goes through the mind, “Where in the world did these people learn how to drive?” Most of them seem to be on a sightseeing trip or have been appointed to count the number of fence posts along the road.

At number five on our pet peeve hit parade are people working as store clerks or in a fast-food restaurant who do not know how to make simple change. Have we quit teaching arithmetic in school? Maybe it’s the new so-called modern math. The last I heard, 2+2 still equals four, and 10-4 still equals six. Yeah, that was computed using 85-year-old math.

This list goes on for several more pages, but listening to an old man rattle on about things they can’t change is probably one of your pet peeves.

Just sayin’

VIEW Comments