Annoyances: Emily

Paper Maps: When I walk into your visitor’s center to ask you where I should go in your city for lunch, please don’t give me a paper map of your entire state or region that is longer than me. I cannot read them while sitting in my small Nissan Versa because my car is smaller than your map. What I hate the most is how many folds there are. Really? I am an educated individual and I cannot figure out how to get that map back to it’s original size. How do you expect some folks from Pennsylvanian to be able to? Just don’t. Don’t even unfold them in my presence because I do not want it. They just get thrown in my lap when we get in the car and then I’m expected to get out the map of New York to show where everything is then I can’t unfold it and fold it back to normal size. I HATE PAPER MAPS.

People who try to be nice but screw you over: If I ask if the hotel is smelly, don’t say no if it actually is. When I get there and find out it is smelly and you lied, I will hate you and resent you for your “niceness.” If you’re sending me to a place for lunch and describe it as a sandwich and soup joint, please make descriptions that indicate it is not like a McAlisters or Olive Garden. Please state that the restaurants bathrooms will be outside and no one with more than 10 teeth will be eating in our presence. If you have a “mountain view” room, please do not show fake pictures on the internet that look like your “resort” is in Aspen, Colorado. We will believe you and book a night there only to find out the “mountain view” is a hill with trees and a dumpster. Thank you for your niceness but if you’re not telling me the truth, just don’t be nice.

Smoking Hotel Rooms: I do not want to sleep in an astray. Sleeping in an astray is like sleeping on the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor in 1941. You have about the same chance of coming out alive. You know when you fall asleep in your “smoking” hotel room that there’s a chance you might wake up but there’s more of a chance you will not. If you do wake up, everything you own will smell like said ashtray, also your mom will not have to go down the elevator to step outside to smoke. At least you’re risking your life for love.

Smoking in the car: I like my lungs. I don’t take great care of my liver, so I need the lungs to function as best as possible. Therefore, when there is not even 2 feet separating us in a very small rent car, please blow your smoke out of the window. Please make sure you are damaging mother nature’s lungs and not mine.

Smoking breaks: If you must take a smoking break every 20 minutes, please don’t spend 10 minutes preparing for your smoke break. Have your cancer sticks ready. Place them in a specific pocket in your purse where you know they will always  be and you can reach your hand in there and in 5 seconds have your cigarettes. Also, keep your lighter with your cigs. It only makes sense. This way, instead of having to stop, bend down, put the purse down in a steady location, unzip the purse, take everything out of your purse, find the cigs, and then find the lighter, put everything back in the purse, take 5 minutes to get off the ground while you breath with your inhaler, grab your phone to check your facebook, then light up, have me give you the diet coke I’ve been holding for you all day, and now you’re balancing a diet coke, cigs, and a cell phone in 2 hands, and finally, after 20 minutes of preparing to cut 1 year off of your life with each cig you smoke, “we can walk now.” I HATE SMOKING BREAKS.