NT phrases or questions that drive you nuts!

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People who stare you down and say good morning. - That interaction just led to nothing.
"I think everyone has that problem" - what you just said was false stop trying to make me feel better
"Im just like that too" - especially when theyre not
"you're just being paranoid" - when describing a situation

My wife has terminal cancer. I never get angry, seriously, except for: "Pray to God, she'll get better!", or "Try eating alot of ______, that will cure her!". Completely clueless about what "TERMINAL" means.

It seriously makes me want to take a baseball bat to them then say "Pray to God, you'll feel better!

That could(n't) care less phrase used to confuse me for a long time. I used to wonder when someone says that they couldn't care less, do they mean that they are so uninterested that they can't care less because their level of care has reached zero and can't go lower, or do they mean that they care a whole lot and are too interested to care less than they do now? Now, I know it's the former, but this used to drive me nuts thinking about it.

This is a funny topic! I agree with a lot of the ones mentioned so far, especially "what do you do for a living?" I just ignore it now, and the person asking it if I can. I also hate it when people ask, "how's everything?" Or "what are your plans for the weekend?" Ughh.

I have this problem alexithymically (if that's not a word, it is now). People will ask "how are you?" because they instinctively know. I don't. Thus I can only reply "about average."
This, for me, is preferable. Just equilibrium. The easiest state to understand and operate with.
I also have problems lying so cannot just reply with the expected "fine."
Always gets some weird looks.

^
I still tend give 'em an honest reply instead of this "fine" or "good" rubbish. I've often said "could be worse" which usually gets a laugh for some reason. Or I might say "surviving," "awful," or "better today than yesterday." I just think the stereotyped responses are too boring, and the stereotyped "how you doing? - Fine" thing misses the opportunity to actually find out how the person is really doing.

Questions in general piss me off, tbh - unless they're questions that are strictly necessary, or as a way of gaining academic information.

I don't understand why people at work keep asking "how was your weekend?" and "did you go anywhere nice?" when I invariably answer "fine, thanks" and "no" respectively. I call these reflex questions or compulsive questions because the asker doesn't care about the answer; they're only asking out of habit. I know I only ever ask questions like that when I know they've done something interesting and actually do want to know how it went. Asking out of 'politeness', rather than genuine interest, makes people phoney and insincere.

I work in a corporation, and people there use a LOT of corporate jargon, which I find trite, insincere, and confusing as hell. I read somewhere a person may use confusing language because of an subconscious desire to distance oneself from the subject. It's supposed to be a sign of dishonesty or hiding the truth.

We need to gather low-hanging fruit (Let's bid for easy-to-win contracts)

We are right-sizing or down-sizing our staff to better position ourselves in the marketplace (We are firing people so our profits look better to the stockholders)

Let's run it up the flag pole and see who salutes or Let's socialize this (I'm too spineless to make a decision so I'll have a committee review it to see what idea is most popular)

We need a soup to nuts approach on this project (We need to pay attention to what we're doing for the whole project)

Mistakes were made (Someone made a mistake, and I'd rather not say it was me)

"chop chop" for hurry up
Sometimes people already automatic reply with 'I'm fine, thank you" without even me asking them back how are they, as I tend to answer their 'how are you?" with a quick answer of "fine, thanks". hehe
who are the robots?

One or two people used to ask me how I was at work, as they passed by in the corridor. During the phase when I was trying harder to fit in, I would reply "fine thanks......how about you?" But they didn't answer, they were walking away by that time. And another guy was leaving and we all said goodbye to him. As he shook my hand he told me that it had been great knowing me. Thing is, we didn't know each other, we'd never said a word to each other before. I always want to challenge that kind of thing, but I suspect it would do more harm than good.

"Bless you!" when someone sneezes.
I don't mind people saying this, but it seems really odd. Why would someone need to be "blessed" when they perform a normal body function like sneezing?

I just looked up the origin of this.

That is incredible how something like this has survived over 1000 years!

Last edited by saxgeek on 11 Jul 2016, 12:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Interesting thread. The corporate speak commentary here is so accurate IMHO. I often find myself translating back and forth from direct to corporate language.

About the questions about jobs, I always ask people if they like what they're doing. If their response is more negative than positive, I'll start a conversation about what they'd like to do, and that usually starts a nice conversation.

About greetings, I never know what to say if an acquaintance says 'Surviving' or 'Hanging in there.' Sometimes I'd genuinely like to see if I could brighten their day or help, but they're just acquaintances so I feel like I shouldn't try.

About weekend plans, these conversations can actually be a fun way to see if someone might share any of my interests/hobbies. Why don't some people like them, aside from the already stated reason that they feel people might not be interested in any sort of unusual or specialized weekend activities?

That annoys me, too. Like if I'm in the classroom and it's quiet, and then I sneeze, and several people all say, "Bless you," I just get so embarrassed. Like, there's no reason to say that. I don't like all that attention drawn to me just because I sneeze. o.o

I was told it was because of an old superstition that when you sneezed, your soul came out, and the blessing was to make sure Satan couldn't grab it before it got back in your body again.

"Badass".

I really cannot stand that word and it's beyond me how it is supposed to be positive!

"Hello"
Not when it's used as a greeting, but the way some people, especially teenagers, use it. Annoying. To me it's way more annoying than "like" ever was

How else do they use it, besides as a greeting? I don't think I've heard this. O.o