4

Pre-Recorded Drive-Thru Messages

Drive-thrus are about convenience and simplicity. Add even one more step to the process of pulling up to a speaker and blowing out some poor high-schooler's ear with your screamed order of a #5 with large fries, and you've effectively turned elementary school arithmetic into quantum physics. Small improvements, like splitting one drive-thru into two and screens that let you see what the cashier is typing, have further simplified the process without adding extra hurdles. And then some fast food HQ funny guy thought it would be pants-shittingly hysterical if when someone rolled up and said "Hello," an aggressive voice immediately tried to sell them an apple pie, and after the person declined, an entirely separate disinterested voice would ask them for their order as if the first voice hadn't happened.

Don't lie to me, drive-thru teen. We both heard a woman in her late 40s recite that pie speech. You can't expect me to give you my order. Where did she go? I want to talk to the woman who is clearly someone's awesome aunt, and that ain't you. Pre-recorded messages at drive-thrus are a corporate version of the voicemail joke that makes you think your friend picked up, so you start talking and then PSYCH IT'S THE VOICEMAIL YOU IDIOT KILL URSELF LOL! I'm the paying customer, and I'm insulted that they think it's OK to barely make it through a proper greeting before they try to force-feed me a novelty burger with bacon and Twizzlers. Just give a solid, believable hello before you try to mouth-fuck me with Whoppers.

If I do want what they're offering, I know Drive-Thru Teen will input the order. But I wasn't actually speaking to him. I was ordering cheeseburgers from a disembodied voice treading in the tidal swell of time, doomed to repeat the same sales pitch for eternity or until someone actually buys the thing they're pitching. No one ever never will.

3

Gas Station Pumps With TVs In Them

There was a point in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election when I was so saturated with the vile cynicism of it all that I had to turn away from it for a few days to cleanse my brain. I didn't feel like I needed to run to something that was happy and comforting; I just needed a quick bath in neutrality. I didn't do anything special. I just lived my life without the constant IV drip of cynicism. It was a much-needed reminder that I can unplug from the horrors of the world. It was great 43 minutes. And then a fucking gas station pump dragged me back into it.

2

Public Restroom Toilet Motion Sensors

I tend to brag a lot in my columns. I hate to do it again, but here goes: I've pooped in a large number of public restrooms, an unusually high amount of them in grocery stores. It must be some instinctual urge whereby seeing all that food prompts my body to "make room for more." I'm not sure. As you'd imagine, I am no stranger to the paper toilet seat liners some public restrooms provide so you don't have to mash your cheeks against the butt remnants of 10,000 strangers. They're like condoms for your whole ass. I've never looked into the data on how sanitary those things actually are, and likely never will. I'm really just crossing my fingers and hoping it'll protect me from the work of a piss artist painting up a masterpiece on his toilet seat canvas.

Editor's Note: Sorry, Luis, but Soren Bowie looked it up back in 2011. You're fucked.

After the liner's center has been cut out from its small perforations, it ends up floating lifeless and sad on the surface of the toilet water. It's just there telling you to shit on it, because it's worthless and it deserves it. Its humiliation creates an anchor point for the entire liner and an ominous foreshadowing of a tragedy to come. There's a reason I'm harping on this, and it has to do with automatic flushing sensors ...

Some toilet flushing sensors are a little sensitive. A slight veer to the left or right will make the sensor think you've poofed out of existence, so the toilet will flush itself to hide all evidence that you were there. In its sudden insistence to play co-conspirator, the flush drags the paper liner down with it. If that's never happened to you, I'll have you know it feels like you're an elegant dining table place setting and a magician is trying to rip a tablecloth out from beneath your ass.

1

Embedded Videos That Follow You Down The Page

The closest thing I've ever experienced to being relentlessly followed by a slasher movie villain is whenever an auto-playing video on a website dislodges itself from the top of the page and follows me down as I scroll. No matter how far or fast I run, every time I look back, it's always a step behind me. I've tried juking it like a Heisman-winning running back -- a couple scrolls down, then three up, and then five down. Nothing. It's still there. It's always still there.

I sympathize with sites that do this, but despise them for doing it. Ad blockers have robbed all of your favorite sites of hard-earned advertising money, so now they're cutting back to adapt. A lot of the internet only gives the illusion of being free. Blocking ads means less revenue for every website you visit, including the ones you actually enjoy and hope don't one day disappear into the void of a 404 error. Ad blockers are a weapon to fight the intrusive ads, but a lot of us end up using them like nuclear bombs when all we need is a flyswatter. It turns ads into an arms race -- you use an ad blocker, they tell you that you can't access the site with the blocker on. Turn off your ad blocker and a video chases you to the ends of the Earth until your story becomes a cautionary tale that teaches kids in the distant future a lesson in how nothing's free except healthcare and jetpacks. (It's the future; they've figured some shit out.)

As soon as I see a video appear at the top of a page, I immediately mute the tab. The video continues its relentless follow into oblivion without a peep. As I see the video in my periphery when I'm reading the text, I can't help but feel sorry for it as it keeps up with every flick of the scroll wheel. Then the same weird little bit of me that thinks I've hurt a shirt's feelings when I choose to wear a different shirt kicks in. Maybe the relentlessly following video isn't a supernatural murderer. Maybe it's a hungry, scraggly street dog peering in through the window on a snowy day as I drink hot cocoa by a fire. Come on in, sad little video. I'll watch you, even though I kind of hope you malfunction and set your entire website on fire.

Luis is on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

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