3x the most annoying things people do in the car
Okay, it’s probably no longer very common for you to get incredibly annoyed at your fellow passenger during a long car ride because they’re holding the map upside down. But there are still plenty of other things that can be absolutely infuriating, especially when they involve food and drinks, while you’re on a road trip…
You know the feeling, right? Whether you’re the driver or the passenger, you take your job very seriously, but by the end of that hours-long journey you’re thinking, “Never again. Or at least not until the next holiday.” And these three annoying things may have caused that:
One of you is a die-hard foodie
As the driver, you’d much rather cruise along the motorway in as straight a line as possible and hope your food-obsessed passenger falls asleep, because otherwise she (okay, we’re talking about me here) wants to stop at every possible obscure market stall or simply some warehouse by the side of the road for local products. “Look! A Crémant de Bourgogne warehouse! Do you think they sell boxes to private individuals?” Or “Hey, I see a sign for a goat farm 24 kilometres inland over there. Shall I take a detour for some cheese?”.
On the way back to the Netherlands, your car reeks so nauseatingly of Vacherin cheese and smelly dry sausage that turns out not to have been vacuum-sealed quite tightly enough, and the windows have to be opened, meaning you get no benefit from the air conditioning (which cost you six hundred euros to have repaired before you left for a region where the average temperature is 34° C). Sigh.
The entire group ignores the designated rubbish bag
You didn’t hand out all the currant buns as soon as everyone got in for nothing: you designated that empty bag as the essential rubbish bag. And everything is supposed to go in there: the empty wrappers from the Fruitella and fruit Mentos, the mandarin peels, the sauce-smeared cardboard boxes from the McDonald’s fries, the children’s empty juice cartons, the sticks from the salty liquorice lollipops. Only to arrive at your destination, find the rubbish bag suspiciously empty, and see that everyone in the back has simply scattered everything around their feet. Tantrum in 3, 2, 1…
The person catering the trip has brought impossible things
It’s very sweet that you took the trouble to boil eggs, peel carrots to dip them in hummus, and spread peanut butter on rice cakes. But just as these things actually can’t be eaten in public, such as on a train or plane, they’re also off-limits in the car for the next thirteen hours, unless you fancy another round of nausea, okay? Deal. Oh yes, one more thing: my husband finds it incredibly annoying that I almost never feel like eating crisps, except during a long car ride. Add a soft drink, and I become childishly delighted by this ultimate holiday feeling. But then I’m sitting there with greasy fingers on the steering wheel, the radio, the gear stick, the rear-view mirror…
I do always dutifully lick them clean first, but in any case: sorry, darling.
Read also:
- 6x the funniest answers to questions about eating in the car
- 6 things that are too antisocial to eat in public
- Road trip food: what to bring
