Irrational Beliefs: The Strange Things We Hold Against Others

Although I spent just a few hours with my predecessor here at Vat19.com, I'm pretty sure that he and I wouldn't have gotten along.

It's not that he wasn't a nice guy. He was both enthusiastic and polite, rare qualities in someone who's preparing you to take on his job. It's not even like he looked at me funny or unknowingly insulted something I like. In fact, I didn't even realize my dislike for him until a couple of weeks after his departure.

One afternoon, though, as I was searching through a pile of his old faxes, I realized that he and I never would have gotten along. He consistently stapled his pages at the very edge of the paper.

That flagrant disregard for the permanence of the paper-to-paper union was enough to counteract everything else I knew of him. In an instant, I decided that he was unreliable, careless, and generally unlikeable.

I'm not the only one with these silly issues, either. A friend of mine refuses to go out with any man who owns a plastic watch. It doesn't matter if he's an outdoorsy sort who uses it while mountain-climbing and deep sea diving; she's out the door the moment she finds out.

Even my parrot has an irrational hatred - phones. The size, shape, and style are unimportant. If it's a phone, or if you're a person carrying a phone, she attacks.

A brief survey around the Vat19 offices revealed that pretty much everyone has at least one strong, irrational hatred:

• People who wear braided belts
• People who wear pantyhose with open-toe shoes
• Creative I-dotters (Though I must confess to agreeing with this one. Why are they wasting so much effort on circles, stars, and hearts? The collective wasted efforts of the creative i-dotters could have cured world hunger by now).
• People with ribbon magnets on their cars
• People named Holly.


Do you have any completely irrational beliefs? Would you switch jobs to avoid working with a guy who has salt and pepper hair? Would you duck behind doorways to avoid making conversation with a co-worker who drives a Volkswagen? Leave your irrational dislikes in the comments.