SURELY.......

My partner picks me up whenever I start my sentences with “Surely…….”. I have been doing this a lot lately because I am constantly in disbelief that people can be so stupid, naive, idiotic or just plain dumb.

Things that render me speechless are usually normal everyday things that many people simply feel entitled to do, just can’t seem to get right, or assume that they have a right to do regardless of who might be inconvenienced in the process. I have listed here a selection of things that are extremely frustrating and idiotic and need to be called out.

1. “Surely, buying a ticket to a performance entitles you to a seat with a view of the stage." Why, oh why then do people insist on standing up when the act comes on stage and remaining vertical for the rest of the show? Does it enhance their experience? What about the people behind? Didn’t they pay for tickets, too? One show I went to at the Adelaide Fringe gave me an excellent view of the large lady in front of me who insisted on bopping the night away in front of her perfectly good seat thus rendering useless any seats behind her.

2. “Surely, these people went to Primary school and learned to write English. It can’t all be blamed on auto-correct.” The widespread proliferation of bad English that isn't called out is unfortunately likely to change our language for the worse because people are accepting bad grammar and spelling errors as normal. Let's all correct bad English when we spot it.

3. 'Surely, you could wait an extra day to buy the latest iPhone instead of waiting in line for 36 hours to buy it on the day it is released.” Surely you have something better to do with your time and an iPhone purchased a couple of days later is just the same.

4. “Surely, phones should be banned from meetings." Meetings only go for 30 - 45 minutes max, so being without your phone for half an hour is not the end of the world (unless you are an emergency worker, of course). I’ve been in meetings where everyone brought in their phone and either had it face up on the desk in front of them so they could give it their full attention during the meeting or they held it below the desk while the meeting was underway. Tell you what, if I was running the meeting I would ban all phones from the meeting room.

5. “Surely, one ‘Acknowledgement of Country’ is enough at a meeting/event." I have been to events/presentations where there have been four or five speakers and every one of them started with an acknowledgement of country. Is this going overboard or what? Not trying to be disrespectful, but one such acknowledgement during the housekeeping segment would suffice - we get it!!!

6. “Surely, when people migrate to another country they understand that they might have to adapt to some degree to the new country’s laws and customs." Apparently there is an Islamic law that prohibits the charging of interest on financial loans, so to keep these people happy when they settle here (and to gain their business) NAB has developed a product to get round this by restructuring the loan as a lease and charging ‘rent’ instead of interest. (It’s a bit like halal meat. The animal is the same but how it’s slaughtered makes the difference.)

I read this to my partner before publishing it and he said "Surely, this is venting..."