Patrick's Place

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Saturday Six

1. Someone posts a question on a website’s message board asking a simple question that could easily be answered with a Google search: does that bother you? Do you tell them to look it up, or would you just provide the answer?

I'd just answer it. It's my job. However, I have to say that if it's a message board that I frequent and this person does it all the time, I would stop doing the answering after awhile. As a librarian, I always cite my sources, so if Doofus doesn't get it when I answer "The Dow closed at #### yesterday according to Google" after a couple of times, it's his loss.

2. A co-worker in the cubicle next to you clips his fingernails regularly. Would this annoy you enough to make you complain?

I'm afraid I'd be the offender here. I have horribly frangible nails and I'm always breaking them and having to snip off the snags. Other people doing the same thing doesn't/wouldn't bother me in the least.

3. You’re in line at a checkout counter when the person being waited on is delaying things because they won’t stop talking on her cell phone. Would this bother you? Would you say something about it?

How long? I mean, a minute is one thing; five minutes is another. I'd be more likely to ask the employee if s/he could handle my purchases quickly until the other customer was ready to deal with his stuff.

4. At work, you go to the coffee area and see that the person before you has left a minor spill of coffee and sweetener. Would it bother you enough that you’d clean it up, or just leave it for someone else?

I'd probably clean it up, if it were still wet and there are paper towels handy. I have given up cleaning the microwave at work, which is ok since the new director seems to be quite keen to do stuff like that. Odd, but {shrug} whatever.

5. A co-worker’s cell phone keeps ringing every few minutes while they’re away from their desk. The ringtone is particularly annoying. If you knew they wouldn’t be back for an hour or more, would you be annoyed enough to turn the cell phone off?

I might shove it in a drawer. More likely, I'd put on my noise-suppressing headphones and rock out to jango.com as is my wont. I'm pretty sure nothing could be more annoying than my son's ringtone, which is an extended belch. [Why, yes, he IS a teenager! Why do you ask?]

6. Someone you know regularly returns a, “Hello, how are you?” with a simple, “Fine” and no effort to ask how you are. Would this bother you enough to make you stop asking them if you knew they’d never return the courtesy?

I'm kind of laughing because we get into these 'battles' at work of circular "How are you?" conversations. "Wait, I already asked you that, didn't I?" {head smack} It might take me forever to notice this occurring, but once I did then yes, I would stop asking. But I also don't care that much since I work with people who don't pay attention to the answers anyway; I include myself in that assessment. Maybe it's a hazard of working with the public: I ask that question, and get asked--dozens of times a day.