9 Things That Secretly Annoy Everyone

Michael Chernow, a New York entrepreneur, uses this Monday podcast episode to rant about his personal etiquette pet peeves, and he insists plenty of other people share them. The first and biggest one is the toilet seat. He says men should lift the seat before peeing in someone else's home or a public restroom, and he claims women who hover often splash the seat because they can't aim the way men can, so they should lift it too. He uses a piece of toilet paper or his foot to handle the seat, and he says he makes his two sons recite a list of 13 values every night, including lifting the seat to pee and lowering it afterward. Smaller gripes include leaving cabinet doors open after grabbing something, and loading dishes in the wrong dishwasher slots, which he says he quietly fixes when he opens the machine. The bigger social points are about hospitality. Chernow thinks you should never show up to a dinner party empty-handed, even if the host says to just bring yourself. He suggests a bottle of wine, beer, cheese, bread, or flowers, and says a guest's gift choice reflects their character. Staying at someone's house for a few days should earn a thank-you gift too, and he says he usually brings a coffee table book, a nice bottle of wine, or a good steak. At dinner parties, he wants guests to start clearing plates without asking, since asking puts the host in an awkward spot. He says he enjoys washing dishes himself, so he tells helpers to relax, but the gesture still counts in his book. The episode ends on car manners. If you ride in the passenger seat, put on your seatbelt right away, because the chime is the car telling you to do it. He says it's nonnegotiable and treats it as a sign of basic consideration, not a legal technicality. The tone stays casual throughout, with plenty of asides about his own habits and his wife's dishwasher quirks, so the episode works better as a list of personal opinions than as any kind of formal guide to etiquette.