Airport taxis. What a bitter pill. The first non governmental interaction on arrival in a country is the madding crowd of men who offer to overcharge you for a ride. While not universal I will vouch that a solid majority of airport taxis score high on the rapacious scale (one piker wanted $20 for 1.5km ride in Djibouti). While many great places have well developed bus and train connections, some points have no other options (Aswan, Egypt). Given time and non unreasonable (<15km) distance I will walk…but sometimes I have to pay the man.
Idiosyncratic bike share systems. I want to use these systems in nearly every city I find them. The part that makes me crazy is that it seems that each town and city reinvents the wheel when they develop a system. Some are well thought out; others are not (it is pretty much impossible for a non citizen to use the Lisbon or Buenos Aires systems, and it took days to register for the tiny Reims program). But my biggest gripe: instead of putting all that customization into the process, why not just call up someone who has done it successfully? ‘Hi Dublin. Who did you use?’. ‘Hey Klagenfurt – can you forward me your system specifications?’. Get something that has succeeded instead of thinking that you will improve on a system. Nearly identical list of gripes about idiosyncratic parking meters and apps.
Jazz. Not all jazz, just the sickly soundtracks (Kenny G?). I take my hat off to the brilliant salesman who has succeeded in convincing so, so many places, from the airport in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei to the hotel in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia that their clients want to hear this in the background, especially on short looping replay. But it is atrociously banal, monotonously simplistic, and culturally vacuous noise that makes a space worse, not better. Currently editing my site in Kampala…. same same jazz on loop.
Bathing architecture. It is annoying enough that many showers in much of the shiny world have exactly zero space to put soap or a razor or toothbrush (did non humans design them?). But would it literally kill you to put a shelf in the wet part of the bathroom? And the trend towards translucent bathroom walls – I for one am not interested in sharing my ablutions, or anyone elses.
Followup peeve. Whoever originated the idea of the shower head on a sliding pole will burn in hell. This design is fraught with the obvious engineering failure options such as head droop and fall, and pole slip, and means that one hand is always employed managing the water. Gradual or sudden failure of these shower heads have variously: soaked my toilet paper, shorted out the electrics, blown light bulbs, rendered the towel useless, semi-flooded the room and my Dopp kit, shock-boiled my nether regions.
Transportation systems built to exclude casual users. In Cape Town you cannot ride the bus without a special transport card. Those cards are not sold anywhere near where the buses run. They are sold at a few retail shops, but good luck finding one that has a card available. Same for the Buenos Aires subway system. I visited twenty shops to try to buy one, without success.
Begpackers. This is the corps of really scruffy travelers who have migrated from highly developed countries to visit other places, who decide to sit on the pavements with cardboard signs, and ask for money from the locals – to fund their continued holiday! I cannot imagine how offensive this must be to a resident – ‘wait, you decided to go traveling, and you want me to help you pay for it?’
Unrevealed fees. The practice of room, flight, and rental agencies of not including known fees, such as airport tax, cleaning fees, service charges, resort fees, in the listed price of a good or service. This is maddening. Comparing seemingly similar products listed at the same price (eg hotel room cf. Airbnb room), yields, when I get to the booking page, vastly different total costs.
Gender, marital status and profession questions on forms at borders and hotels. How many times have I answered these pointless questions? For that matter, pretty much every form that I have been forced to fill out at hotels. I generally write in random answers.
Unique to the USA – a horrible trend at hotel check in. Being presented with an ’agreement’ that has to be signed, pointing out the penalties for bringing pets, breaking things, or smoking. These policies are already posted, and it seems to me to be particularly unfriendly to feel the need to bash my integrity with this requirement.
AirBnb ’renter agreement’. Hosts (using the official term, which in this case is ironic) deem themselves authoritarian lawyers, and are drafting extremely broad ’agreements’ that guests must now sign (after they have made a non-refundable reservation). Two recent examples will serve to bring this point home. If guest wears shoes in the apartment, host may charge them a floor cleaning fee. If hosts feel in any way that they are ’disrespected’ by guest they may cancel reservation without refund.