Life's Little Annoyances
by Ian Urbina
On This Page
Description
What can you do when the world is pushing you over the edge? More than you think.For some of us, it's the automated voice that answers the phone when we'd rather talk to a real person. For others, it's the fact that Starbucks insists on calling its smallest-sized coffee "tall." Or perhaps it's those pesky subscription cards that fall out of magazines. Whatever it is, each of us finds some aspect of everyday life to be particularly maddening, and we often long to lash out at these stubborn show more irritants of modern life.In Life's Little Annoyances, Ian Urbina chronicles the lengths to which some people will go when they have endured their pet peeves long enough and are not going to take it any more. It is a compendium of human inventiveness, by turns juvenile and petty, but in other ways inspired and deeply satisfying. We meet the junk-mail recipient who sends back unwanted "business reply" envelopes weighted down with sheet metal, so the mailers will have to pay the postage. We commiserate with the woman who was fed up with the colleague who kept helping himself to her lunch cookies, so she replaced them with dog biscuits that looked like biscotti. And we revel in the seemingly endless number of tactics people use to vent their anger at telemarketers, loud cellphone talkers, spammers, and others who impose themselves on us.A celebration of the endless variety of passive aggressive behavior, Life's Little Annoyances will provide comfort and inspiration to everyone who has ever gritted his teeth and dreamed of sweet retribution against the slings and arrows of outrageous people. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
Member Reviews
This is a short compilation of stories of people's creative solutions to get around or get back at inconsiderate people, companies, and the everyday crap that constitutes modern life. Some of the stories were funny, some were the stories behind things I already knew about (such as giving someone an e-mail address that is anything@papernapkin.net sends them back a form rejection letter), some were creative, some were just stupid. A lot of them vaguely annoyed me, because the "solutions" seemed to be just as annoying and inconsiderate to third parties as the initial problems, with the people hiding behind the excuse that "I was annoyed first!!". Cute enough bathroom reading, but it's not real clear to me why this book needs to exist, or show more what its target audience is (my mom got it for free in a corporate workshop gift bag and passed it on). show less
The book only took two days to read, but it gave great insight on what to do, in situations, where you usually wouldn't think there was something you could do. It gave situations that we go through everyday, and we accept that there really is nothing we can do about it, but these people did. It was a fun book to read.
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information
7 Works 575 Members
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Awards
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Life's Little Annoyances
- Alternate titles
- Life's Little Annoyances
- Original publication date
- 2005-11
- People/Characters
- Mitch Altman; Aaron Naparstek; Jeff Goldblatt; Josh Santangelo; Christine Hanson; E. L. Kersten
- Dedication
- To Aidan, for making me laugh like no one else can.
- First words
- Most days the job ended late.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Most of them asked what time it was and told me I was insane.
Classifications
- Genre
- Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 306.090511 — Society, government, & culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Social Behavior - Dating, Marriage, Divorce Social history
- LCC
- HQ2037 .U73 — Social sciences The family. Marriage, Women and Sexuality The Family. Marriage. Women Life skills. Coping skills. Everyday living
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 166
- Popularity
- 196,750
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (2.97)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 8
- ASINs
- 2
