PeevePile • A Pet Peeve Archive » Paper towel dispensers that are above shoulder height so that when you go to get a paper towel, the water on your hands rolls down your wrists and up your sleeves.

Paper towel dispensers that are above shoulder height so that when you go to get a paper towel, the water on your hands rolls down your wrists and up your sleeves.

— Mediocre Fred from Washington, DC | Hygiene | 10.29.2008 | Comments (6)

I usually first vigorously self-squeegee and flap before moving to the towel stage.

— Biffy posted 10/29/2008

Yes! and I would estimate this is 95% of the towel dispensers in women's rooms, as whoever installs them doesn't seem to realize we're shorter, on average (duh).

— AR posted 10/30/2008

Agreed! And what makes it worse is the motion-censored ones barely give you enough to completely dry your hands, much less your wrists and arms, too!

— Kate posted 10/31/2008

Gaahhh! They are the worst!!

— katie posted 10/31/2008

I HATE it when the water runs down your arm and then slowly drips off your elbow!!! What I have learned to do is pull the paper towel out before I wash my hands. But it shouldn't have to come to that!

— Dayna posted 11/4/2008

YES!!!!!!!!!!!! And then the cuff of your sleeve gets all soggy. That is the WORST.

— Nicole posted 5/1/2010

When parents start voicemail messages with "hey [name], it's your mother/father." » My husband does this with his kids! It never fails to drive me bugshit! – Mindy 7/26

Grubby, tangled haired children. » Keeping clean is one thing; the kids I see don't even start out clean. Parents and kids both seem to roll out of bed and go to the local WalMart (where else?) without so much as running as hairbrush through their hair or taking a bar of soap to their bodies. I think we can be quite sure they don't know what a toothbrush is for! The trend of wearing pajama bottoms in public needs to stop as well. – Mindy 7/26

When strangers try to touch my children. » Good god, it's like you read my mind. I absolutely hate it when I'm in the grocery store and people touch my son's feet or poke his little cheeks. Yes, I know he's the cutest thing on this earth but THAT DOES NOT MEAN YOU CAN TOUCH HIM – CakeThief 7/24

Air quotes. » use shocker quotes instead. form shocker with fingers, bend to mimic quoting action. – kn obel 7/22

When non-white street beggars call me racist when I don't give them money. » I always want to know if people would feel equally as badly if the opposite were true. Like, if you only gave money to non-white street beggars out of guilt/fear of being perceived as racist. That's racism, too, right? Right? No one complains about that one... – Chelsea 7/22

When non-white street beggars call me racist when I don't give them money. » Ugh. This happened to me when I declined to sign a petition without even hearing what it was about (I was also not a registered voter in that state AND was in a hurry). Jeez, I'm not racist! I hate all petition signature gatherers equally. – Kate 7/21

02.11.10

Send in your mobile phone pet peeves for the week of February 15th! Perhaps the simplest and most common generator of peeves, the mobile phone prods and pricks us in all places, public and private. With skull phones just around the corner, it’s likely these peeves will soon become irrelevant—so let’s spray them across the galaxy while we still can.

01.18.10

For the next week or so, the pictures for peeves will be of Peeve Pile’s national spokesperson, Rob Grace, and his special person, Shana, enacting various peeves. Please feel free to make such pictures yourself. Just include a link to them when submitting a peeve.

01.02.10

Hello. I’ve added a voting feature, so you can vote as you assume that you would – just click on a one-to-five star rating (it will tell you your vote has been recorded); five indicating that you completely agree with, or find the peeve amusing, one meaning the opposite.

Once a bunch of ratings are in, I’ll add a worst, and best rated area to the right column.