Things I Can’t Deal With Lately

One of my favorite writers is Emma Golden, the woman behind the hilarious blog Emmas’s Thing and a contributor to Thought Catalog, Elite Daily, and more. Every week (or so), I enjoy reading the posts in her “I Can’t” series, which are posts where she complains about things she just can’t deal with. As she says herself, “Being an adult is rough and by bitching and moaning about it openly on my blog, I believe I succeed in saying most of the things everyone else is probably thinking but can’t bring themselves to say because they actually have “filters” and “social awareness.” In these posts, Emma often says what’ I’m thinking — so there’s no need for me to write it twice, right? However, I’ve been lately rage-y lately, so here’s my installment of “Things I Can’t Deal With Lately”.

High-end brand flip flops

Flip flops are essentially a piece of rubber shaped to your foot and two pieces of fabric to go between your toes. Paying anything more than $15 for a pair of flip flops is ridiculous. What’s even more ridiculous is the people who will buy these name-brand flipflops and shell out $250 bucks on shitty sandals solely because they have a Tory Burch logo or “MK” written all over them (for Michael Kors, of course). You could buy 20 pairs of flip flops at Old Navy in a rainbow of colors with that money!

People who swing their arms in an extreme manner when walking

This excessive flailing of the arms tends to be a crime committed more often by women than men, and becomes more apparent and annoying during my walking commute during rush hour. It’s like they are a helicopter planning to take off (which would actually be a blessing since I wouldn’t have to deal with walking behind them). I’m so annoyed by these people that I walk really close to them on purpose so they “accidentally” hit me with their swinging arms, thus making them aware of their embarrassing habit and hopefully forcing them to say “Sorry” and evaluate their life choices.

New Jersey Transit

I live in New Jersey and commute every day and night to my job in New York City. The commute itself isn’t too bad — it’s a 30-minute train ride, followed by another 10-minute train ride and a 10-minute walk. But from door to door, with delayed trains, a shitty train schedule, and slow people in general, it’s around an hour and 20 minutes door to door. Woof. Usually I don’t mind the commute as it goes by quickly, but the past few weeks have been filled with delays upon delays. Trains just don’t show up. Trains are parked outside the station for a half hour due to “signal issues” or “wire problems” that have been broken for years and they are too cheap to fix. Amtrak trains are sucking at life, which somehow affects NJ Transit passengers and we have to suffer as well. To make things worse, NJ Transit and Chris Christie both handle the situation in terrible ways. Commuting sucks in general, I get it. But this is just incompetence at its finest. Oh, and they’re raising the prices by 9%. So my $250 commute will now be even more. Great.