15 Things That Annoy Illinoisans the Older They Get

Aging comes with gifts: Wisdom, perspective, and a finely tuned radar for nonsense you no longer have time for.

The list of things that set your teeth on edge gets longer every year, and somehow more satisfying to complain about.

Here’s what annoys Illinoisans more and more the older they get.

Loud Restaurants

There was a time you didn’t notice the noise. Now it’s the only thing you notice.

You sit down for a nice dinner, lean in to talk, and realize you’ve caught one word in five over the clatter, the music, and the table of twentysomethings howling in the next booth.

By dessert, you’re just nodding and hoping you didn’t agree to anything.

A restaurant where you can hear your own dinner companion has become the height of luxury, and you’ll drive across town for it.

Tiny Print

The world’s fonts shrank, or so it would seem.

Menus, medicine bottles, the back of a soup can, all of it printed for the eyes of a hawk.

You find yourself holding the package at arm’s length, tilting it toward the light, patting your shirt for the reading glasses you set down somewhere.

Whoever decided dosage instructions should be the size of a gnat owes you an apology.

You’ve started photographing labels just to zoom in on your phone. That’s the move now.

QR Code Menus

You sit down at a restaurant hungry. Instead of a menu, the table has a little square code you’re supposed to scan with your phone.

So now you’re fumbling with your phone’s camera, waiting for a page to load, and squinting at a menu the size of a matchbook on a screen when a laminated card would have done the job in two seconds.

You didn’t come out to dinner to do tech support.

Press one. Press two. Say your account number.

No, say it again. That’s not a valid response. Let’s start over.

Twenty minutes later you’re still mashing zero like a panic button, praying a human picks up before your patience runs all the way out.

You remember when you could call a place and somebody answered. You’d like that back.

Self-Checkout

Somewhere along the line, the store decided you should be the cashier, for free.

So there you are, scanning your own groceries, bagging your own groceries, and getting scolded by a machine about an unexpected item in the bagging area when you’ve done nothing wrong.

Then the light starts flashing and you wait for a teenager to come punch in a code anyway.

You’d rather wait in a real line for a real person.

At least then somebody’s getting paid to bag the eggs.

The Tipping Screen

You buy a coffee, or a muffin, or a single bottle of water, and the clerk spins the tablet around so it can ask you for twenty percent.

The person did nothing but hand you the thing you pointed at.

Now you’re doing quick guilt math while a line forms behind you and the screen stares you down.

Tipping used to mean rewarding good table service.

Now a self-serve frozen yogurt wants a cut.

Everything Needs an App

You want to park your car. There’s an app for that, and you have to download it, make an account, and enter your credit card before the meter will so much as blink.

The same goes for the menu, the loyalty points, the doctor’s forms, even the thermostat.

Your phone is now cluttered with apps you used once and will never open again.

Some things should just take a quarter, or a signature, or a single human conversation. They used to.

People Who Are Late

You used to wave it off.

But these days, somebody strolling in twenty minutes late lands differently.

You showed up on time. You always show up on time.

So when another person treats the agreed hour as a loose suggestion, it reads as a small theft of the one thing you can’t get more of.

Your time has grown more valuable to you, and you’ve grown less willing to hand it away.

Be on time, or call. That’s the whole ask.

Speakerphone in Public

There’s a special kind of nerve required to hold an entire phone call on speaker in a packed waiting room.

Yet here’s a fellow doing exactly that, broadcasting both halves of a conversation about his car insurance to a room full of strangers who did nothing to deserve it.

You learn things you never wanted to know about people you’ll never meet.

Headphones exist. A lowered voice exists.

The whole room is silently begging you to discover them.

Packaging You Can’t Open

The simplest items now come sealed like state secrets.

A new pair of scissors trapped in a plastic clamshell that, cruelly, you’d need scissors to open.

A pill bottle whose childproof cap defeats every adult in the house. A jar lid welded on at the factory.

You’ve stood in your own kitchen, sweating, locked in combat with a bag of shredded cheese.

It shouldn’t take a utility knife and a running start to get into a package of batteries. And yet.

Blinding Headlights

When did every oncoming car turn into a searchlight?

Those bright LED headlights everybody has now seem aimed straight at your eyes, and driving at night has become a squinting, white-knuckle event it never used to be.

You’re not imagining it, and you’re not making it up.

The glare is real, and it turns the evening drive home into a more dangerous chore.

You find yourself running more errands in daylight, just to skip the laser show on the way back.

Subscriptions for Everything

Once upon a time, you bought a thing, and you owned it.

Now you rent everything, forever, in tiny monthly bites.

Your TV shows, your music, your software, and even features built into the car. Each one is just a handful of dollars a month, which is precisely how they get you.

You sit down to cancel one and find three more you forgot you were paying for.

The explosions are deluxe, and the dialogue is a mumble, so you’ve made peace with leaving the subtitles on for everything, even shows in your own language.

You used to roll your eyes at people who did this.

Now you are people who do this.

Speak up, you find yourself telling a forty-foot movie star. Some of us are trying to follow the plot.

Phones at the Dinner Table

You finally get someone across the table, and they spend the meal sneaking glances at a screen in their lap.

A buzz, a peek, a little smile at something you’ll never see, all while you’re mid-sentence about your week.

It isn’t that you need their undivided worship. You’d settle for their undivided attention for the length of one dinner.

The food gets cold while the phone gets all the warmth.

Put it away, just for an hour.

Anything That Starts After 9 P.M.

A concert, a party, or a game that kicks off at nine o’clock now feels like a scheduling error.

Nine used to be when the night began.

Now it bumps right up against your bedtime, and the thought of leaving the house once you’re already in comfortable pants feels frankly unreasonable.

You’ll happily meet anyone for an early dinner. The later show, you’ll catch the recap.