Look, I am just a normal person like you. I have to get these 7 cretins off my chest and I have to do it now before I have my second espresso.

I live in Italy which may account for a lot of frustration but also brings a lot of laughter and joy. These will have to wait for another article.

Today it is me ranting and so fasten your seat belt if you dare read on. Already, you may have clicked away, but that’s fine by me. I only want empathic readers.

1. People who stand in the doorway

Move your ass, fool! This is what I feel like saying when you see someone standing in the doorway in a bar, café, shop or wherever. Don’t they know that a doorway is specially designed to allow people free movement from outside to inside and vice versa? Marvelous invention. Has worked for millennia so why is this idiot blocking it? Has he or she got a better design up their sleeve and just waiting for the patent to come through?

2. Bartenders who pretend to speak English

These bartenders want to show off their 7 words of English they learned at school. Having spotted that I speak English quite well, they jump on the bandwagon and shout out their lame greetings in horrible English and expect me to play their little game.

“Good morning, how are you?”

Everyone in the bar turns to look at me. Then when you ask this fake English speaker a simple question, they cannot even answer in English. They confide to you, in Italian, of course:-

“Oh, I was never very good at English.”

“My English teacher was terrible.”

“I’d love to start again but I just haven’t got the time.”

At this point, I want to substitute “time” with “intelligence” but restrain myself with an effort and try to enjoy my espresso. Then I silently leave and cross that bar off my list! Great way to lose customers.

3. People who shout on their smartphones on the train or bus

Why on earth do I need to know what these people are doing or even thinking? If they do think, that is! They are convinced that the whole world must know their business.

I know of a friend who was absolutely brilliant at mimicking reactions to what these people were shouting. He was sitting opposite them on the train and made all the appropriate grimaces, smiles, eye rolls, growls that were the responses to the shouting. In other words, he was pretending to be the guy who was on the other end. The shouter got really annoyed and said:-

“Why are you listening to my conversation?

My friend replied:- “I had no choice as you were shouting so much!”

This beats the comedian Greg Benson cell phone crashing videos which were very popular a few years ago. But you would have to do a lot of hard work to make it effective. My friend’s way was much easier as he did not have to say a word!

4. People who think their smartphones have been invited too.

You invite a few friends to dinner and they all come along with their precious smartphones as if they were their babies or pets.

But, excuse me, the phone wasn’t invited. They spend the evening checking it and then the worst of all is that they never switch it off. How rude! Real conversation is impossible. They will never be invited again, that’s for sure. Now you know why I have invited so few people to dinner this year.

5. Smokers on train platforms near the open door.

These are your fellow travelers. Poor things. As soon as the train stops at a station, they have to actually get off the train and smoke a cigarette on the platform. They have that aggrieved look about them and they are thinking that smokers are always persecuted wherever they go nowadays.

What they do not realize is that the smoke comes into the carriage anyway. The worst type of all is the smoker who actually stands in the open doorway of the train and smokes pretending that he or she is really outside. They are not but they are the ones who still believe in Santa Claus!

6. Uneducated morons

We can lump all the chem trailers, flat earthers, anti-vaxxers and birtherism freaks in this group. Let us just take the anti-vaxxers. It all started with Dr. Andrew Wakefield who wrote a fake report stating that there was a definite link between the MMR vaccines and autism. He was struck off the British medical register. These cretins never bother to check their “facts” and the result is a mass of ignorance which is worse than a slime pit!

7. Gum chewers

Looking at these people makes me cringe. I was not at all surprised to discover that this intolerance to certain repetitive sounds is actually called misophonia and it is all explained here. That is the science but it still drives me mad.

So now you are saying maybe I am the one who needs therapy!

Maybe I do because every article you read about all the things and people you cannot bear finishes with the take-home message which is:-

“We love in others is what we love in ourselves, and what we cannot stand in others is what we cannot see in ourselves.”- Anonymous

You see, it’s me who is the problem! I need therapy. But I enjoyed the rant and hope you did too. Don’t worry too much about the psychology.

Just say, nobody’s perfect, not even me.