Angry on the inside

Good morning, Gentle Readers. I have very limited time this morning, so I'm dipping into the archives for your viewing pleasure. This is an article I wrote a little while ago, and it speaks to some things that are very important in my life. Enjoy!

A Few of My Least Favorite Things

I think of myself as a pretty cool customer. Unless it’s a major injustice in the world, I don’t tend to get too riled up. At least that’s how it appears to the outside world. Inside, I find that there are countless little, petty things that not only bug me, but that I absolutely hate. Most of them, I’ve found, center on my love of language and the repeated bastardization it receives on a daily basis from the general public.

Since I was an English major in college, most people assume that I’m a big Grammar Nazi, but that’s really not what it’s about. I split infinitives with great frequency, I sometimes use “I” instead of “me” when it’s clearly the indirect object, and I’ve been known to incorrectly use “they” instead of “he or she” simply because it’s less cumbersome. Those things don’t bother me too much for some reason.

However, when Toni Braxton sings “Unbreak My Heart,” something happens inside me. I remember first seeing the video, feeling my jaw clench, and screaming, “Un-break? UN-BREAK?” I understand what she was trying to do there, but I’ve never forgiven her and doubt I ever will. Bad Toni.

There are two things that incur my wrath the most, though. First, and I feel my chest tightening just typing this, is the poor use of acronyms. When I hear people make reference to a “PIN Number,” I want to grab them by their stupid shoulders and shake them. “You’re saying Personal Identification Number NUMBER, you piece of shit!” I’d yell. Unfortunately, these people often use “PIN Number” and “ATM Machine” in the same sentence, which is a combination that is so much worse than the sum its parts.

Similarly, while working on a university campus, not a day went by without overhearing these normally bright students refer to the Education Abroad Program as the “EAP Program”. Would I get thanked wholeheartedly for pointing out these redundancies? Of course not. It appears that people would rather keep saying unnecessary words than use their brains for an extra moment.

The second goat-getter of mine starts when people want to be clever but end up just lazy. I am of course referring to the dreaded phone numbers that spell things with more than seven letters. I first let it slide a little when they were only eight letters long (i.e. 1-800-AUTOZONE), but the trend continued to a horrible extent. 1-800-AMERITRADE will make people search for three extra letters as the phone rings, for example. The worst culprit of all, though, was one I saw on an airport advertisement a couple of years ago: 1-800-SAVETHECHILDREN. I swear to God. You realize, of course, that not only is that longer than two separate phone numbers, but that since it starts ringing after the seventh letter, one could effectively call 1-800-SAVETHEPEOPLEWHOEATCHILDREN and get the same organization. Somewhere, an old lady is trying to save children, but the operator hung up on her before she could even find the L. Is that really what they’re going for?

Some people suggest that I need to get over these things. They point out that “PIN” alone or “PI Number” would be confusing. They say that 1-800-GETALOAN, though incorrect, is much easier to remember than 1-800-438-2562(6). I see their points, but I don’t buy them. Spell out the acronyms if they’re too confusing and get creative with your phone numbers. This is about quality control, people. We have nothing to lose but our superfluous letters and words; we have an entire language to rescue. We must stop it now, lest we become the “USA of America” at 1-800-USAOFAMERICA. Anal people of the world, unite!
(But please, for my health, don’t even get me started on “EPT Pregnancy Tests.”)