Something that irritates me…

So, someone who may or may not be my coworker gets into my car last week.

Now, it’s hot inside the vehicle (heck, it’s almost August. In Texas, no less! "Hot inside the vehicle" is kinda' a given...), and the Person In Question (PIQ, for short) immediately reaches for the AC controls (that’s “Air Conditioning” for those of you that live in places like Point Barrow, Alaska, Grise Fiord, Nunavut (Canada), or…ahem…Minnesota). Without asking how anything in my car works, PIQ starts turning dials and punching buttons (at one point PIQ had managed to turn ON the rear window defroster within nanoseconds of turning OFF both the radio AND the AC) – all while making this annoying whiney-gaspy noise.

Meanwhile, I hadn’t even put my car in DRIVE, yet.

Now, I don’t know about everyone else’s car, but mine takes a couple of minutes to cool off after starting it – especially on a hot and sunny day down here in Texas. Not once have I been in a vehicle where you turn the thing on in the summer and it instantly blows icy-cool air out of the vents (nor have I been in a car in the winter that immediately wafts warm with a mere turn of the ignition key). So, why was PIQ expecting my car to perform the miraculous?

Anyway, I finally get my car into gear (and begin the process of turning off the rear window defroster, resetting my radio and reactivating the AC) when PIQ finally graduates from the whiney-gasp to the whiney-whine.

“It’s sooooo hot! How loooooong does it take for your car to cool off? I’m dying here! I think your AC is broken!”

“Just give it a second. It’ll cool off. It’s not an instantaneous process, you know.”

“But it’s sooooooo hot! Can’t it work any faster?”

It was a miracle I didn’t boot PIQ out of my car and onto the asphalt.

I don't know what irritated me more:

• The fact that PIQ started blindly punching buttons and turning dials instead of just being patient and/or asking how to adjust the air.

OR

• PIQ's incessant whining.

Bah…