Notably Petty Grudges

[23 Daves]

I moved into my present block of flats a year ago, and as I've mentioned on this forum before, it's a very old 1930s block with lots of antiquated fixtures and fittings. We actually have open days and events so members of the public can casually look around at what was, at one point in the nineties, on the endangered buildings list (but is now just a bit on the faded, crumbly and damp side).

Anyhow, when I first moved in here I assumed the lift worked the same as any other lift. I assumed that if somebody got in it with you, and you asked "Which floor?", then pressed your floor and theirs, it would take you to both. This is precisely what I did when a bald, stubbly, grouchy man walked into the lift with me one day.

"No, MATE, that doesn't work!" he spluttered. "It don't remember the floors! It's just gonna go to YOUR floor now! You have to go to the lowest floor first! Oh, forfuckssake!"

Then he got off out at my floor, and stormed off down the stairs in an angry fashion. If I'd taken down my trousers and shat in the lift, he'd have been less bothered, I think.

This incident took place a year ago. And ever since that day, whenever he sees me, he scowls and glares at me. For inconveniencing him once by not understanding how the lift worked. It's such a petty and prolonged grudge that you've almost got to admire it - I'd be willing to bet that if I stayed here for the next ten years (which I'm not going to do) he'd still be giving me his attempt at a Phil Mitchell glare.

And it got me thinking about really petty, pathetic grudges. Ones beyond the point Vince from "Fifteen Storeys High" would take them. There's one other one I can think of - a schoolfriend of my wife's is still routinely blanked by her neighbour. And why is this? Because they also went to school together and she refused to loan her the use of her pen in a Geography class "because I need it myself at the moment". 30 years later, they are still not on speaking terms, which must take a bit of explaining from time to time.

"Why are you two so frosty with each other?"
"Oh, I wouldn't loan her my blue felt tip in Geography in 1991".

What drives these people on? Do they know we privately laugh at them, or do they think they're on some kind of serious crusade and lessons about manners and common sense are being learned as a result of their tough love?

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Some people just hate you, don't they? You barely need to give them an excuse. Something about how you act or how you look, they're just itching to unload the prejudice.

Well, break their legs

Break their legs.


May as well give them a solid reason.

[23 Daves]

Some people just hate you, don't they? You barely need to give them an excuse. Something about how you act or how you look, they're just itching to unload the prejudice.

Nah. Sometimes that's it, but mostly I think there are certain people who love to condense all of their life's frustrations on to the one idiot who mildly inconvenienced them one Tuesday evening. Why are they on the same level of life as that person who accidentally kicked their heels in Tesco Express? THAT person is an idiot heel-kicker. They would never do anything like that, and yet they're still not a millionaire.

I'd be willing to bet that the kind of people who hold petty grudges are also the kind of people who use the phrase "It's common sense!" a lot.

[Captain Z]

I ignore a poster on a forum because he once told a story in which he said 1991 was 30 years ago.

[biggytitbo]

I fucking hate roll top blinds. No reason, I've just taken against them. If I see one these days I actually have to smash it to pieces with a cricket bat.

[Puce Moment]

I'd be willing to bet that the kind of people who hold petty grudges are also the kind of people who use the phrase "It's common sense!" a lot.

And:

"I call a spade a spade, me."
"That's PC gone mad."
"I speak my mind, if you don't like it, piss off back down South."
"Them vegetarians just need to have a nice bacon butty, lol."

[Pijlstaart]

I fucking hate roll top blinds. No reason, I've just taken against them. If I see one these days I actually have to smash it to pieces with a cricket bat.

Curtains > Blinds.

You can hide behind curtains, wipe your John Frum on them, all sorts.


Petty grudges, there was an Indian guy in Manchester with a larger-than-normal head and a massive beard, and I gave him a wide berth. He began to glare at me, he hated that, why do I give him a wide berth? The thing is, he was a truly scary guy, his head was really big on it's own, and then there was a beard that made it look twice as big. Torso-sized head, so I think I was right not to go near him, but he didn't like that.

[billtheburger]

There was some guy who won one of the popstar contests on tele with a face I disliked. I hated his eyes and miserable expressionless visage. Then one day he called someone a cocksucker or faggot and everyone hated him with more rational reasons than me.
Good.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Ok what if it's petty to start out with but then gets nasty as time goes on?

Only there was some old dear related to a friend of my mum's, who accidentally broke a 'special' plate in the sink at her sister's house donkeys years back and in a huffy fit was summarily banned from all future functions involving said sister, such was the depth of her plate-based trauma.

This brews up a treat as the sniping and back-biting piles up as years pass, they get wind of each other talking shit about each other and use that to?... Justify talking more shit about each other of course.

They stop talking to each other entirely, cards stop getting posted, one doesn't ring the other when their mum dies.

This ends up with them coming to blows at a wedding they'd both unknowingly agreed to attend decades later, apparently one of them fork-fired a dumpling at the others head during the meal, but it didn't turn into a funny food fight, just a spirited fist-based one.

[Endicott]

Anyhow, when I first moved in here I assumed the lift worked the same as any other lift. I assumed that if somebody got in it with you, and you asked "Which floor?", then pressed your floor and theirs, it would take you to both. This is precisely what I did when a bald, stubbly, grouchy man walked into the lift with me one day.

"No, MATE, that doesn't work!" he spluttered. "It don't remember the floors! It's just gonna go to YOUR floor now! You have to go to the lowest floor first! Oh, forfuckssake!"

Hold up. Even assuming that the lift worked how you expected it to, he's told you his floor, which is before yours, and never-the-less you've pressed the button to go to your floor first. Taking him right past his own floor, to your floor, a complete waste of his time. I'm a bit rusty on my Debrett's guide to correct lift behaviour but really, is that on?

[checkoutgirl]

"because I need it myself at the moment"

Selfish. There are selfish people in the world and your wife is one of them. Selfish people deserves despisement and scorn for the rest of their lives. I assume you provide the requisite level of scorn towards your wife on a daily basis?

[olliebean]

Hold up. Even assuming that the lift worked how you expected it to, he's told you his floor, which is before yours, and never-the-less you've pressed the button to go to your floor first. Taking him right past his own floor, to your floor, a complete waste of his time. I'm a bit rusty on my Debrett's guide to correct lift behaviour but really, is that on?

Most lifts, if you press more than one button, will stop at the floors in the order it reaches them regardless of what order you pressed the buttons in. That's what I'd expect a lift to do, and what I assume 23 Daves expected it to do, because that's what most of them would do.

[Endicott]

It's strangely comforting to realise quite how stupid I can be. Have some karma olliebean.

[Puce Moment]

A friend who I have known since I was 8-years-old made a comment at my wedding that we were somehow doing it on the cheap.

I haven't spoke to him since. That was 2006.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Now you're both sixteen maybe it's time you bury the hatchet.

[Bored of Canada]

Now you're both sixteen maybe it's time you bury the hatchet.

INTO HIS FUCKING SKULL, YOU MEAN.
Cheap wedding? The fucking CHEEK of it, mate. He's a wrong'un.

Burst his fucking face with a brick.

[touchingcloth]

When I was about 12 years old, I lived on a housing estate which had only a single small spit of grass suitable for playing football. I've never much cared for football—whether watching it, playing it, or co-existing with people who do either of those things—but I've always enjoyed living in that slim intersection between my own inarguable rights, and other people's threshold for explosive annoyance.

This in mind, that fact that the tiny spit of football-able grass butted up against the garden fence of the least patient and most shouty man in all of the North West meant that playing football was an irresistibly provocative act to my little, shitty self. He'd be watching us like a hawk, waiting for the merest hint of trainer-lace-encroachment on his property, and I'd be keeping him in the corner of my eye, giddily anticipating his latest fizzing eruption of apoplexy.

Now, our aging, rude, shouty neighbour may have been many things—aging, rude, shouty, a neighbour—but he was not—at least in the presence of children—a curser. This led to him being somewhat stymied when choosing words to accurately convey his rancour to an audience of pre-teens. The only word he ever seemed to settle on was "youths", so on this particular occasion that our ball was lofted over his hedge and into his garden, he cavorted in a little gleeful, gloating victory jig, before leering through his shrubs to say "haha, youths! You will never see that ball again, you complete and utter...youths! I've got your ball now, see, and it's mine, all mine!"

I wasn't going to acquiesce to this literal daylight robbery, not even after having my face flecked with youth-propelled spittle, so I marched myself up to the front door and rang the bell. An unreasonable amount of time passed before any movement behind the door became apparent—if I didn't know better, I'd say that angryman was deliberately keeping me waiting—and when it swung open to reveal the hypertense Gargamel behind, I said, politely as possible, "can we have our ball back, please?" This did not go down well, not even a bit. "Your ball back?!" he bellowed, "you YOUTHS want your ball back?! Well, let me tell you something, you little sack of...youth...you're not getting that ball back, not never! You hear?!" and then he slammed the door in my face.

Well this obviously wasn't fair. You can't just take my ball off me, even if it isn't actually my ball, and even if this kind of shouty confrontation was the only reason I had been joining in with the football in the first place. This wasn't in the least bit just, so I rang the doorbell again. And again. And again, and, because there was still no answer, yet again. The door opened far more vigorously this time, and before I even had a chance to calmly state my case, the word "WHAT?!" was barked at me. "Well, the thing is", I said, "that is our ball and so can we have it back, please?" Angryman simply said no and slammed the door too, and my immediate finger-to-doorbell reaction was met with a pair of fingers popped through the letter box followed by a slightly muffled but still unmistakably angered voice - "I've popped it, so there."

Popped? I ask you. That was quite an escalation. Some sort of Rubicon had been crossed, and we both knew it. Alea iacta est, I muttered, before making the Caesarean decision to reach once more for the doorbell. Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding...nothing. Fingers breached the letterbox once more, and again muffled anger floated from the inner darkness. "I've disconnected the doorbell now, let's see how you like that, shall we? You abominable little youth."

A youth I may have been, but I wasn't stupid. I knew that in days of yore a pair of double-A batteries weren't the only way of calling one's attention to the door. Knock knock. Knock knock. Knock knock. Knock knock. Knock knock. Knock knock. The shouting started even as the door had barely begun on its lightning fast inwards arc - "What?! What do you want this time? I told you I've popped the ball, so that is the end of it. WHAT?!". Clearing my throat and sweetening my features, I informed him, politely, that "the rub here, Angryman, the crux of the impasse we have reached, is that that is our ball, and you've gone and popped it now, so...can we have some money to replace it, please?"

Well he just about hit the roof. His arms started flailing wildly and he was barely managing to string words together, much less sentences, but I got the general gist that he wanted me to leave his property and with haste, so I quietly demurred telling him that wouldn't happen until I got some form of financial compensation for our mutilated ball. Angryman started hollering to his neighbour across the road who was washing his car - "Alan! Alan! Will you come here and witness this, please? This youth is refusing to leave my property, AND he is asking for money! Alan! Alan?". Alan maintained what I would call an unnecessarily focused level of attention on his hosepipe—it was almost as if he didn't want to be drawn into what he considered to be a needlessly escalated conflict over minor trespass and a cheap ball.

Not finding a confederate in Alan, he retreated behind his door after a few more shouted threats for me to leave his drive or else, but I wasn't going to be put off so easily. I had 45p or whatever to recoup for whoever the ball happened to belong to, so I resumed my campaign of calm but insistent knocking. His lips practically protruded through the letterbox this time - "what's that you're doing, you nasty little youth? Are you kicking my door? You're trying to break my door down, aren't you?". I explained that no, I was simply gently knocking trying to call his attention to my presence with a view to claiming a ball's worth of sterling, but he came back with "yes you are, you are trying to break down my door. Stop it at once or I shall be forced to contact the police."

Things really took a turn for the worse now. The door opened slowly this time, but with palpable purpose. Angryman stalked through the threshold with, I noticed with a puckering of my rearmost sphincter, a large claw hammer gripped in his dominant hand. He silently brought the door closed behind him and growled "now." He turned on his heel to face the house, and punctuating each word with a mighty hammer blow to his own front door, shouted "STOP. TRYING. TO. BREAK. MY. DOOR. DOWN. OR. I. SHALL. HAVE. TO. CALL. THE. POLICE." I vividly remember seeing each strike of the hammer recorded in a massive round dent in the face of the door, and deciding after he had returned indoors that maybe now was the time to leave his drive for the safety of my young chums.

Anyway, to cut a long story short (because it's become way, way longer than I anticipated), he did call the police, who summarily arrested me on suspicion of causing criminal damage, before letting me go and deciding that there was no way a child of my size could have left such massive, obviously artificial craters in a door at adult head height, and instead cautioning Angryman for wasting police time.

We never did get the ball or our money back, and we adopted slightly new tactics in our ballgames in the future. Namely, keeping an eye out for the fucking mentalist who might vault the fence and cave your skull in at any minute.

[shiftwork2]

A friend who I have known since I was 8-years-old made a comment at my wedding that we were somehow doing it on the cheap.

I haven't spoke to him since. That was 2006.

Ah, that reminds me.  The only friend I have ever 'let go' made a comment to me about a suit I was wearing for an interview for a Master's course.  Something about it being 'sharp'.  That was in 1996.

[checkoutgirl]

We never did get the ball or our money back

You loser. You entered the court of lunacy and got out crazied by a mental old man. Pathetic.

[Blue Jam]

One of the other PhD students in my department recently developed a big grudge against me and I still don't know why. We used to get on well but over the last few months she started being really weird and hostile, trying to make me look stupid in front of our supervisor on the rare occasions I had to consult her about something, planning lunches and after-work drinks and making sure I wasn't invited, unfriending me on Facebook and blanking me at other social events. She recently finished her PhD and left and I've since learned that she had some major problems which she may have been taking out on me as a random target- I'll never know, I'm just glad I don't have to put up with this childish and tedious crap anymore.

Still, walking past her old desk today I noticed she had taken all of her toys, science freebies and nick-nacks bar one, and it was one of the little kawaii toys I brought back for everyone from Japan. It wasn't even a personal gift- I got a big pile of them for everyone and left people to chose their own- so she probably left it because it had my germs on it or something. She even took the drawing pin it had been hanging on- maybe she disinfected it first.

[23 Daves]

Ah, that reminds me.  The only friend I have ever 'let go' made a comment to me about a suit I was wearing for an interview for a Master's course.  Something about it being 'sharp'.  That was in 1996.

What's wrong with calling a suit "sharp"?

[shiftwork2]

Ah I can't really remember the details.  He'd gone a bit arty (he studied at the Royal College of Art for two years after we met on an engineering course) and got into expensive suits.  I probably had some shiny thing from Burtons.  He did use the word 'sharp' mockingly, I do remember that.  It's ok I'm over it now *pounds keyboard*

[Steven]

Still, walking past her old desk today I noticed she had taken all of her toys, science freebies and nick-nacks bar one, and it was one of the little kawaii toys I brought back for everyone from Japan. It wasn't even a personal gift- I got a big pile of them for everyone and left people to chose their own- so she probably left it because it had my germs on it or something. She even took the drawing pin it had been hanging on- maybe she disinfected it first.

She was doing her PhD thesis on the `Non-ubiquity of the arse of Gordon Ramsay in the modern media'.

[syntaxerror]

ALTERNATIVE OPINION

Something petty and/or trivial is usually a quick and easy way to call time on a friendship that has been on the slide for a long time. No point holding a grudge about these things, but next time you think someone has taken a seemingly petty exception to something you've said or done, might be worth asking yourself if they were just looking for an excuse to not want to have anything more to do with you.

[23 Daves]

ALTERNATIVE OPINION

Something petty and/or trivial is usually a quick and easy way to call time on a friendship that has been on the slide for a long time. No point holding a grudge about these things, but next time you think someone has taken a seemingly petty exception to something you've said or done, might be worth asking yourself if they were just looking for an excuse to not want to have anything more to do with you.

That still doesn't explain my neighbour, though! I'd never met the idiot before.

But I know what you mean. I've fallen out with people over what have seemed like relatively minor issues to everyone outside the circle, but in reality there have been problems with the friendship for some time. A few of my friends got more right-wing as they got older and started to seem to get hugely offended by my left-wing views, for example, where they would have once agreed with me- but I think it's not so much the views themselves that upset as the stark reminder that we've become very different people. C'est la vie.

[derek stitt]

An old pub bore that I once knew got buried last Friday so some of the topics of conversation in the pub this week were about him. By all accounts the recently deceased was quite a bearer of grudges and resentment. One example being that he refused to speak to another old duffer for over twenty years over a row about the smallest common British Walking Bird. Apparently when the subject of the argument got brought up he would quickly sup up and not frequent the pub for up to three months at a time.

On a side note, he was having a shit when the chimney stack of his house got struck by lighting resulting in the majority of his house collapsing around him when he was sat on the toilet. I wonder if the fire brigade turned up to find him looking crestfallen, trousers and pants  around his ankles, still sat on his recently converted outside lavvy. It's wicked to laugh at that scenario but he was a cunt.

[syntaxerror]

That still doesn't explain my neighbour, though! I'd never met the idiot before.

But he thinks you're an idiot!

[23 Daves]

But he thinks you're an idiot!

Well, he's wrong! I have specialised areas of intelligence, and 1930s lifts are not on that list.

I bet he can't name the B-side of Al Stewart's "On The Border", but I don't hold that against him. (I hold the fact he wears Double Denim against him, though).

[garbed_attic]

Erg. I just got into a really fucking pointless argument with a friend's girlfriend. I hadn't had an argument with anyone outside of my immediate family for some time, so it felt really weird. Basically, cause I've been finishing my thesis, I suspended my Facebook for a while because it was getting distracting. I put a message saying why I was doing it, but I guess people couldn't see it after I'd suspended the account. My friend's girlfriend (C) needed to contact me to say that a boardgames night had been called off, but didn't have my number, so had to ring around to get hold of me... since she would usually have used Facebook to get in contact, she was none-too-impressed by my disappearance and sent me some mildly passive aggressive messages. Nothing horrible or anything - it was just clear she was annoyed. Which was fair enough.

The boardgames evening was rearranged for this evening and she told me to come at half 6-ish but to err on the late side since she and her boyfriend would have to had dinner first. I was finishing off some work and then had to get a lift so I arrived at quarter past 7... late, but I blithely figured it wouldn't be too bad due to the "late side" caveat. I was wrong and she was pretty pissed with me. Anyway, we were to play Adventure Time edition Munchkin. We dealt the cards and C announced that because I was late she was only going to use her attack cards against me... which she did. At first, it didn't bother me, but through the game she kept mentioning how she was only attacking me because I was late. There was talk about how I was her "enemy" and it was all pretty on-going and present and stress-inducing. When I managed to score any points she'd quibble and try to argue the rules in ways to disadvantage me, or say that I hadn't completed the challenge fast enough.It made playing really gruelling and it became apparent that there was no possibility I could win because there were only a few of us playing and her targeting me threw off the balance. At some point, when it was my turn, I (very immaturely) said that it seemed pointless my playing and when asked why I said that I felt that C was being pretty passive aggressive and that since she had said that I should arrive late to make room for dinner, I felt she was making a big deal out of very little. C was really angered by this and said she wasn't being passive aggressive and said she was upset / angry because I'd just disappeared off Facebook and that she hadn't to phone round to contact me, which she hadn't enjoyed doing and then said that she wasn't playing and went to her room. Her boyfriend went to talk to her while I sat shame-facedly. I tried to apologise and said that I was just being huffy and stressed due to having to hand in my thesis and that I hadn't appreciated that my leaving Facebook would cause such trouble and that people wouldn't all see the explicatory message. She stormed back into her room and then her boyfriend got mad at her for, as he saw it, over-reacting. Anyway there was lots of drama and I went home.

TL:DR - I was flighty and disorganised, pissed someone off so they were passive aggressive, I said I felt they were being passive aggressive, they got plain aggressive, their boyfriend got annoyed at them, I got guilty and apologised, apology was refused, I went home.

Dear me.

[Danger Man]

I was going to say 'kick her fucking cunt in' but then I Googled the game you were playing and am torn between 'It's nice that people can keep a sense of childlike fun into adulthood' and 'GROW THE FUCK UP'

I'm even swearier in real life...