I am generally not a fan of people and generalizations, and this post has both! I prefer to dislike people on a case by case basis, but sometimes generalizations can’t be helped. These are some broad brush stroke types of people I try to avoid.
1. Oversharers.
We all know one, or have met one, anyway. An oversharer is someone you just met who will tell you their life story and what kind of underwear they’re wearing today. It’s like they have verbal diarrhea and cannot possibly go five minutes without talking.
I met a woman on the street walking her dogs the other day. I often see her walking her dogs at the same time I walk mine. We exchange good mornings and nice weathers, but I hadn’t seen her around in a while. The other day, she told me she hadn’t been around, because she had a heart attack. She blamed her mom who was scamming her for money. Her mother in Mexico told her that she needed an operation, so dog lady was working long hours so she could send extra money back home. Then dog lady’s aunt told her that her mother had the operation months and months ago, yet she was still taking all the extra money.
Dog lady has three dogs, three daughters, and three sisters who all live in the US, but she hasn’t seen her father in 20 years, etc. It just went on and on. I know this woman’s entire life story, but I have no idea what her first name is.
2. The Passive Aggressive.
There’s a fine line between genuinely nice and overly nice. I know lots of people who are genuinely nice. It’s just their nature. Making people feel comfortable or happy or complimented is just who they are and they always mean it. They’re not doing it to make you feel badly in a passive aggressive way, or because it makes them look good. That’s not the type of person I’m talking about.
I’m talking about The Passive Aggressive. If you live with a PA, they will wait until you’re in the vicinity to do dishes as a way of making you feel badly. They will never confront you and ask you to do the dishes. They’ll just do it in front of you, hoping you’ll say “No, I’ll do that.” If you don’t, they might give a deep sigh in front of you and pretend that they’re carrying a huge rock up a hill instead of loading an automatic dishwasher. A PA will compliment you in the hopes of getting a compliment in return. A PA will suggest that you do something instead of just asking. They’re slippery and indirect.
I do not respond well to passive aggression. My grandmother was a PA master and tried this crap on me all the time. I got very adept at ignoring it.
3. The Complainer.
My mother calls them Negative Nellies. They just won the lottery, but it means they’ll have to pay a ton of taxes. They just got a pet unicorn with magic wishes, but unicorn food is expensive. No matter what happens, these people find something to complain about.
I’m not the most positive person in the world, but when good things happen, I don’t automatically look for the bad parts. I see silver linings in things, even terrible things. The really sad thing is that Complainers generally have it pretty good.
4. The One Upper.
No matter what experience you’ve had, a One Upper can do you one better. You landed a great new job? Instead of simply congratulating you, the One Upper will ask about the benefits, then immediately tell you that theirs are better, no matter what they are. You bought a new house? The One Upper’s is bigger. You got a boat? Aw, how cute. The One Upper has a 900 ft. yacht docked in the harbor full of bikini clad women and clowns.
Their stories may or may not be true, but when it comes to One Uppers, everything they say sounds false after a while. Nobody can have every little thing better than everyone else.
5. The Insincere.
“We should do lunch some day.” Yeah, we totally should, except you don’t really mean that. The Insincere go around writing checks with their mouths that their asses won’t cash. They want to do all the things with you all the time forever, because you are their new best friend, except they don’t mean it and end up doing nothing with you ever.
You run into quite a few of these people in Los Angeles. I don’t think it’s that LA breeds these types so much as people think they can get away with it here. It’s gotten to the point where I believe it when I see it.
What kinds of people bother you?
Fish Of Gold 