I like to think of myself as an ever-evolving personality always on the look-out for new ways of seeing things, new ways of thinking about things. Thus I have changed my pet peeve. It’s a pet peeve that wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago. After all, not many people hang up the phone without giving some indication that they are going to do so. Unless they are angry but that’s not what I’m talking about here.
My pet peeve is people who you are chatting with online and are suddenly gone. No goodbye, no ‘I have to answer the door’, no explanation at all. They are just gone. You write a sentence and there is no response. They could be dead for all you know. It is the height of rudeness.
I know a charmingly arrogant person whom I occasionally chat with and even he has the decency to say goodbye when he signs off (one should not be arrogant unless they have good manners!). But others who I will not name are just gone – poof! I ususally chat with them again to see if it was just an oversight on their part but it usually isn’t.
Apparently to some people chatting online is not really talking to a person, it’s just venting ones thoughts and ideas to a computer that has the strange ability to understand what one is saying, and then leaving when they’ve had enough.
And before you go and think that it’s perhaps something I said, please believe that it’s not. Usually my last sentences are just as innocuous as any other during the ‘conversation’.
So for all of you who have the good manners to tell someone when you are signing off – thank you. It’s appreciated.
Good-bye 
