Old people and the internet

I recently attended a writer’s conference, where I took a workshop titled “Navigating the Digital Age”. Any inclinations towards technology or today’s generation has me piqued. That’s because I’m 18, I have a profile under every social networking site available, and I even blog under an alias.
When I walked into the conference room, I was the only one that looked under 40 years old.
A white-haired lady in a matching pink blouse and pants struggled into a plastic chair. Another woman, with thick spectacles on the bottom of her nose, gave a start when my macbook gave the ominous “ohmm” of turning on. A man crossed his arms in an elbow-pad jacket, and a cane rested near his seat.
The woman holding the workshop was a petite, young literary agent.
“Now today I want to give you a few ways that you can use the internet to promote your book and gain readers,” she said. “Let’s start with blogs.”
My face relaxed, I might have given a small smile. Oh, blogs, that’s what we’re talking about here. This was comfortable territory for me.
By the perplexed faces I saw around the room, it clearly wasn’t for everyone else.
“A blog?” whispered a woman.
I leaned forward. “All you do is create a blog on some kind of blogger forum. And you can blog about anything really--gardening, fashion, fiction, whatever you want. And you can follow other people’s blogs.”
“So you look at blogs?”
“Yeah, lots of them,” I said.
“But how do I find them again after I see them?” The woman was so blank faced and confused. It dawned on me how some things don’t click with the older generation. For them, the internet is something that you can get lost in and never be able to retrace your steps. You only have one chance to look at an interesting website because who knows how you will ever find it again amongst the millions of websites on internet.
“On blogger, you just click follow and every time you log in there are updates on who has posted. Personally, I subscribe all my blogs on google reader, but you need a gmail account for that.”
“Oh honey,” she laughed, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Then we moved onto twitter.
A woman near the back started talking. “You know, I tried to make a twitter thing the other day. So, I made an account, but then I sat there for two hours trying to figure it out.   And I just couldn’t! By that time, I needed to make dinner, so I handed the computer to my husband, and he’s really good with internet stuff. And you know what? He sat there for another two hours, and he wasn’t able to do a damn thing.”
By the tone of her voice, she was making twitter out to be utterly unworkable. No hope, completely futile.
“You know,” boasted the woman in the matching pink blouse and pants, “there are classes you can take for twitter. My senior center has offered them.”
I then realized another thing about the older generation on the internet: they treated the internet like it is something that can be broken. If you tweet incorrectly, if you don’t hashtag correctly, you run the risk of breaking twitter. For them, the internet is like a car. You need driving lessons or you’re likely to crash. There is no manual on the internet. I treat every social media site with absent-minded curiosity. I play around with it, and if it strikes my fancy I will stick around.
“A niece of mine got a twitter and she had 10,000 followers in a week,” said the woman in thick spectacles.
“If she has 10,000 followers, she is at least following 30,000 people,” I said. “Because most people just follow you back.”
“But I don’t know 30,000 people.”
The literary agent couldn’t help but give a small laugh.
“On twitter,” she explained, “you just follow anyone that interests you. I personally follow celebrities I like. It’s interesting how the barrier between celebrities and everyone else has broken down since twitter.”
“So these people you follow just write little things?”
“Yeah it can be anything like a joke, news update, a picture, question.”
“Well, I don’t have time to read all that. I have better things to do with my time.”
“I agree,” said the woman next to her, “I’m not going to be spending all day doing that.”
Mumbles of agreement swept the room. I wondered what was so important in their days.
My third realization came with their collected pride. They thought all the information offered on the internet had to be read. That is, you have to read every single tweet of every single person you follow, every single status update on facebook, every single blog post. Us, the younger generation, can recognize that it’s impossible to absorb all of the internet’s contents because it’s constantly multiplying. Thus, we skim through what we can. I’m never burdened about the hundreds of updates that pile up every hour.

A few days after the workshop, when I was fooling around on google+ for the first time, my mother peeked over my shoulder.
“What the hell are you on now?”
“Google+. It’s newer than facebook.” (which my mother had been acquainted with only a few months ago)
“Ugh,” my mother sneered.
“What can’t handle it?”
“Maybe I don’t want to expose everything on the internet. Maybe I understand the consequences of the internet. Maybe I have more dignity than that.”

It’s no use trying to explain the internet to the old.

my twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/carmella_mingo

The Shamed Customer

 

It's in Italian bitch!

The "customer is always right" has never sat well with me.
I make a very self-conscious customer, in fact. Maybe because I have never been employed in a typical sense. As an 18 year old, I have never worked on a wage. I write for a small town newspaper, so all the grandpas that read every inch of the newspaper really love me. My cat lady neighbor also calls me to tell me how delightful I am.
Because of my unconventional job, I am enamored by minimum-wage workers. I just think about how they stand there all day, answer the same questions all day, and deal with the dumbest rednecks and/or sorority girls.
I really feel like they work harder than I do, and I   also think they have gained wisdom from their trials on the underbelly. Thus, I, the customer, am inferior.

One time in Starbucks, I said, "I would like a medium chai latte, please."
"I don't know what you mean," said the barista, who had a bitch glare that melted through whatever self-confidence I clung to.
"But-but it's there on the menu."
"I don't know what you mean by medium," she said, as her eyes lowered to their size chart.
It was a model of a small, medium, and large coffee cup, but underneath the cups were the size labels of: tall, grande, and venti.
"Oh, I guess I want a grande chai latte," I said.
"Alright, that will be $4.70."
When I recounted the story, in shame that I wasn't aware of correct coffee terms, I got a different perspective.
"You should have called her a fucking bitch, and told her you wanted a fucking medium," said a friend.
From now on, I only use the words small, medium, and large in defiance.

My other incident with customer embarrassment was at the pharmacy. I needed two prescriptions that dealt directly with my vagina. 
I walked up to the counter, praying to whatever God would listen, that a female would take my order.
"Hey! What can I get you?" said a cute, young, and flirty guy named Brad.
"Um, I would like to pick up my nuvaring prescription and, um, I don't exactly know the name of the prescription but it's something like flaan-a-cole or fluc-a-na-zaa." 
I looked like a toddler sounding out words and he only gave me an empty look in return. 
"It's for yeast infections." The secret was out. I just knew he was picturing my sad vagina, as he walked back to fill my prescription. It's human nature. If some guy asked for me to fill a prescription for genital warts, the image of his infected wang would pop into my head uninvited.

Another time, my aunt and grandma surprised me with a full body massage. It was a sweet gift of them. I squealed in excitement and gave them tight hugs, but all I was thinking about was my unshaven legs and armpits. It was the dead of winter in the midwest, I was hibernating.
As I lay on the massage table, with mystery cream covering my face and a zen music playing in the background, I echoed silent apologies to the masseuse.
My legs aren't normally like this, trust me. Go to a happy place and forget about the leg hairs you are now stroking. God and Jesus love you for your selfless acts. 

So, to all the minimum-wage retail and food industry workers out there, you do have a customer who thinks you are probably right.

I can't handle this

"I do do cocaine."

-words from a person I love and believe in

Make a wish. Break my leg.

My wish, as a child, was to have a broken leg.
Traditionally, in children's books and such, children are thought of having innocent and generic wishes to become princesses or superheroes. Looking back on my childhood, almost all of us were warped in the mind. All of us latched onto some ideal that looked magical in our eyes, but negligible or dreadful to the rest of adult society.
My wish to break my leg began when my best friend Christina broke her leg. We were seven years old at the time, and in the same 2nd grade class. Secretly, I knew she was cooler than me, even before she broke her leg. In my front lawn, she would do one cart-wheel after another. She made it look effortless, as if she was a windmill with a soft breeze blowing her along. I, on the other hand, feebly tried to do a somersault, but every time I ended up with a mouthful of grass clippings and a sore neck. We were both adventurous, but she always outpaced me. Christina broke my handlebar record on the playground, one which I had coveted since kindergarten. Christina could also jump farther than me. She had a loft bed, and we would spend hours jumping from it onto the floor of her bedroom. She always made a graceful arc through the air.
I remember one day I arrived at school, and Christina's desk was vacant. The teacher explained she was at the doctor's because she had broken her leg while jumping off her bed.
I was shocked and sad, but, secretly, I thought about how she wouldn't be cart-wheeling, jumping, or winning in handlebars any longer. I wondered if her popularity and grace would fall to me, her natural heir.
I was wrong. Christina arrived to school with a pink cast on her leg and a story to tell.
All day I reheard the tale, "I was trying to do a flip through the air, and I almost got it, but then I landed wrong. You wouldn't believe the pain. My leg was like this--" She tried bending her hand backwards, and everyone winced.
I was the only one who noticed the smug look fleeting across her face.
If I thought a cart-wheel would make you noticed, an injury made you a star. Lines would gather to sign her cast, and circles would form to hobble around on her crutches. She laid around all day, like a gluttonous queen, asking people to fetch her crayons, carry her bookbag, and finish her craft projects.
I was no longer Christina's best friend, considering she now had a group of doting servants.
I remember, in class, while we were learning how to multiply, Christina raised her hand.
"Mr. Stevens may I go to the bathroom?"
"Sure," he said, and returned to the board.
She made a slight huff. "But--"
"What is it Christina?"
"I can't get there by myself," she tilted her head towards her cast-bound leg, which rested on a pillow.
"Then what are your crutches for?" I grumbled under my breath. I few people laughed.
Christina shot me a glare.
"I don't see why you need any help," said Mr. Stevens without looking back at her.
"My leg is broken! And my doctor expressly told me--"
"Fine, whatever, someone go with Christina. Don't be gone long."
Christina gave a haughty smile. She waved for one of her servants, and theatrically proceeded to wobble out of the room with grunts of pain.

That afternoon, at recess, those who laughed at my remark found me at the playground. We were finished with Christina. Our plan was this: either prove her broken leg was a fraud, or break our own legs.
We spent a few evenings huddled together, in closets with flashlights, trying to figure out how Christina had faked a broken leg.
"Maybe she threatened the doctor to give her a cast!" suggested one girl.
We nodded in thought.
"Or maybe she swapped out the x-rays."
"Or maybe she bent her leg in a weird way, so it looked broken."
We never found anything conclusive, so we proceeded to phase two: attempting to break our legs.
I drug out my life-size plastic doll from my playroom, and henceforth it was the test dummy.
We would climb to the top of swing sets, soccer goals, tree houses, and tool sheds, and throw the doll off. Then we would inspect, if it looked like she had broken her leg. If yes, we proceeded to jump, if no, we jumped anyway.
But none of us ever broke our leg. We must of been drinking our milk and taking our vitamins. I got bruises and grass stains, but otherwise I was a healthy child. The only excitement we had was when a mom would give a startled scream from the window, and run out trying to stop us.
But I didn't give up on having a broken leg. I, instead, resorted to playing the part. My friends and I would rummage through my dad's socks and start putting on one sock on top of the other. After ten layers of socks it looked like I had a cast. I would then find a long stick or pole and hobble around on "so-called" crutches.
When I and three other girls wobbled into the kitchen, my mom look at us oddly.
"Do you guys have a cast on..?"
"Yes!" we squeled.
"Alright," my mom gave a small laugh and went back to scrubbing a pan.
My mother's acceptance was good enough for me. For the rest of the day we laid around like gluttonous queens--eating cookies and watching movies.

A profile of the most unique valedictorian you will ever know

 

(Imagine this is your high school valedictorian, at 2 am on a Wednesday night*)

Alexandria is a girl that no one will forget.
It doesn't matter if you only heard the rumors about her, or if you first heard her name when she was giving her valedictorian speech at graduation. 
People will always have something to say about her.
For years, I had been intrigued by her.
It started in 7th grade when I heard she lost her virginity. Then she went by the name of Alex. The news was spread mainly in the handicapped stall in the girl's bathroom. Throughout the day, all the girls would synchronize their visits to the bathroom to congregate in that stall. I've gotten math test answers in that stall, had mini dance parties in that stall, and I also got the latest gossip in that stall.
"His name was Flame," said one girl, who was fixing her hair in front of the small mirror above the handicapped railings.
"You've got to be kidding me," said another girl leaning against the wall.
"That's actually his name. I think his parents are weird."
I stood against the locked door, and listened ardently. Flame. The name rolled around in my head. I imagined him as a disco-dancing gigolo in a white polyester suit.
"They did it at a party," said the girl in front of the mirror. A disco party, I thought.
"Well, she's masturbated with a toothbrush," said the other girl.
The bell rang and we filed out of the bathroom.
For the rest of middle school, Alex only got a worse reputation. She embodied the twisted queen bee of middle school. Just the way people would say "Alex" it translated to bitch. She walked in a pack of girls who only wore Abercrombie, Uggs, and glares on their faces. 
One time I ended up at their lunch table. I was lazily drawing circles on a sheet of paper, when Alex said, "You know what is also the shape of a circle?"
She laughed. "Your vagina."
Then everyone else laughed. I felt like I was on the outside of the joke. Was I the only virgin? I thought.
As with all queen bees, gossip was always buzzing about her. One time I heard she got paid to give blowjobs, another time I heard she had sex on a front lawn of a random house in the middle of the night. I heard all of these rumors so many times, that I took them as truth. 
When she walked down the hallway I couldn't help but stare.

When Alex started high school, she insisted her name was "Alexandria." Everyone scoffed.
"A new name won't change what she is," said everyone I knew.
The name "Alex" embodied what she was known for--being a slut and a bitch--and no one wanted that power wrested from them.
But Alexandria was reinventing herself. She would correct anyone who called her "Alex" without fail, and soon enough people began calling her Alexandria.
I never hated her, and I never smeared her. Rather, I was mystified and intimidated by her reputation. One day during my freshman year, when I was doodling in a sketchbook, she leaned over and looked at what I was doing.
"Wow you are amazing at drawing," she said.
"Thanks," I said, and kept drawing.
"What's that?" she pointed at a string of words at the top of the page.
"It's a quote from a book."
She studied the words. "That's beautiful," she said, "what book?"
"A Million Little Pieces by James Frey."
"Can I borrow it?"
In three days she was finished with the book and asked me for another. After she had gone through three books of mine in a week, she asked me for my sketchbook.
"I want to write you a note," she said. She found the page, where she first saw my drawing, and in the corner she wrote the words, with an arrow pointing to my drawing, "this is super fucking crunk. if you draw anything else on the front or back of this page that doesn't touch greatness, I will take it upon myself to hunt you down and slit your throat." 
She was harsh, as always, but it touched me.
But not everyone changed their thoughts about Alexandria. At the end of freshman year, the class rankings were released. And guess who was number one in the class? Alexandria.
For days, the goody-goody kids stewed over the news.
"She doesn't even deserve it! I actually stay home and study," bemoaned one girl who still wasn't allowed to watch R-rated movies.
"All she does is party,"said the resentful number two in class.
"Did you know she has done cocaine?" chimed in a kid, who most likely didn't know the difference between crack and blow.
I only respected her more, and from then on I was her lone defender.
When everyone else bombarded the conversation with words of dissension I would say something like "Isn't it remarkable that she can come to school hungover on a Wednesday and still have better grades than you?" or "So you've snorted cocaine with her before?... No? Never? Then you can't really say anything."
It wasn't until junior year that we had another class together, American literature.
In the first week, when we were discussing Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway, Alexandria rose her hand and announced to the class, "If anyone is going to win a Nobel prize, it's Carmella." 
We still understood each other perfectly.
She was the first to wear leggings as pants at our school. Along with sheer shirts, fur jackets, and nerd glasses. For months, every girl (and even most guys) would make fun of her clothes, but soon enough they would start wearing the style themselves. By that time, Alexandria was on to something else.
She also turned in assignments early. Essays would be stapled and on a teacher's desk a week in advance, study guides would be completed just in case, and she copied down every word the teacher spoke. She was still number one in the class, and still everyone hated her for it.
I guessed that she, amongst the rest of the top 5%, only ate, studied, and took tests. I was wrong.
One day my friend found her planner in the bathroom. We poured over it later that night. Not only did Alexandria hold top billing in the class, but she also managed a popular fashion website, woke up at 5 am to run every morning, and somehow she still found time to party and get drunk. Let me add, she made baked goodies for my class bi-weekly and she was still asking me for books to read.
She was the most fascinating person I had ever observed, and I dreamed of the chance of being a fly on the wall in her life.
And my senior year, I had exactly that chance.
We had the same government, economics, and literature class. There was no need to pay attention to the government class, so all we did was sit in a corner and talk for the next straight hour and a half. She was still the dynamic and brutal person I knew her to be, but in that semester I also learned she had a soul.
One day the topic of sex came up. I was ready to hear about her many partners and escapades, with a few words of regret.
"So, I slept over with this guy last weekend," she said.
"I didn't know you had a boyfriend," I said.
"We aren't technically a couple, but we will be soon. It's pretty funny. I was out-of-my-mind drunk downtown one night and I just walked up to him and told him he was hot. I think I actually yelled at him that he was hot."
"How's the sex?" I asked.
"Oh my god! I'm not having sex with him!" She looked shocked.
"But you said you slept over with him."
"I just slept in the same bed as him. I've only made out with him," she said, as if this was obvious.
"What?"
"I'm not going to have sex with him for a long time, maybe never. I have barriers, you could say."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I've only had sex once."
"What?" I couldn't believe her. "I mean, I thought, you had, well, I've heard rumors."
"I don't know what you've heard, people are always spreading shit about me, but I've only had sex once."
"But why?"
Her voice lowered. "Honestly, I was kind of taken advantage of. It was the summer before 8th grade, and I was dating this guy. We went to this party, and I got drunk and I passed out in a bedroom. When I woke up I knew I had lost my virginity."
"Do you remember any of it?"
"No. I don't even know if I was conscious."
"Oh my god. That's rape. You were raped."
"I actually changed for the good after that. My life was heading down a wrong path at that time--parties, drugs, bad people--but after that happened to me I started to focus on academics. I always knew I was smart, but only after that I started applying myself."
"So all of the rumors," I said, baffled.
"Aren't true."
It was hard to reverse her reputation, upturn all the rumors, and see her as the strong, but broken, girl she was. 
When Alexandria began her valedictorian speech, on graduation day, I listened to her as one of her few lone defenders. "Some people think I socialized too much to deserve this," she said to our entire class and a stadium of parents. The kid sitting next to me tried to whisper something in my ear, but I swatted him away. "You should listen," I said.

And like she left me note in my sketchbook four years ago, she wrote this to me:
"I regret I didn't pull you in closer when I had the chance. You are going to conquer the world one day because nothing will get in your way or be good enough. You are going to be my inspiration forever. Until the day I die, maybe longer. "

This is coming from a person who outshines every celebrity and icon I have ever met.
We are each others life inspirations.
Love you, girl.
Carmella

*That picture is not of Alexandria, but it does capture her spirit. Actually Alexandria is not even her name. I choose to keep everyone anonymous on this blog :)

When I was a Lolita

 

(The 1960's version. The millennium version is torn mini-skirts Hollister camisoles)

It wasn’t until I read Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita that I understood where pervert men came from. No, it wasn’t that I understood them but I saw, for the first time, how severely misunderstood and confused girls are at the turn of puberty.
Nabokov’s Lolita is about a man, Humbert Humbert, who becomes obsessed and sexually involved with the 12 year old Dolores Haze (who goes by Lolita). In the book, Lolita is the type of girl, who at an innocent age, has a sense of provocation and even flirtation. From her perspective, her skimpy clothes and playful taunts are sirens for attention, especially attention for her beauty. From Humbert’s perspective, she is a sexually-charged young girl who is interested in him.

I know this because, when I was at the precocious age of 12 or 13, I was a Lolita. I didn’t realize my misplaced signals and vain ideals were possibly alluring to a dangerous lot until I read Nabokov’s book in horror.

When I was around 9 or 10 my body started changing. I grew hair in odd places, I gained weight, and my feet looked clownish on my short frame. I wasn’t batting my eyelashes at anyone for attention. All I wanted to do was sit on a couch and find a pillow large enough to hide behind.

But, as if by magic, around the age of 12 I began to fill out, and in the right places. I could fit into a B-size bra, my gender was clear in a bathing suit, and I had a lean frame. These changes were analogous with boys giving us new attention.

At that age, all I wanted was for people to think I was pretty, so I turned to America’s conventions of beauty. The background on my myspace profile was a montage of Victoria’s Secret model pictures.
I remember my mom glancing over my shoulder, at the computer, while I was on myspace, “Why do you have Victoria’s Secret background? You’ve never even shopped there.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t have it as my background!” I exclaimed, as I closed the screen.
“Hey, what kind of information do you have on that web-site thingy?”
“It’s called a myspace, mom.”
“Yeah, and I’ve heard some pretty sick things about it on Dateline.”
On my myspace, I had my middle school’s name, date of birth, full name, city, and state.  Also a picture of me in a bikini with a wad of cash in my hand.
It’s hard for me to explain why I took that picture, subliminal media influences were at work I’m certain. I was with a friend, a Lolita more advanced than I was. She talked to strangers online, and then invited them over to hang out. Well, I was sleeping over with her and we decided to get in our bikinis and pose like the girls in rap videos.

Now, whenever I watch Oprah do a show on molestation or online predators, I cringe. The “grooming process” is a term used to describe a predators manipulation to making a young girl trust him and love him.
I remember someone on the show said, “It’s surprising that girls can just fall into it.”
Actually, it’s not surprising at all. At that age, if anyone told me I was pretty and funny, I would be clueless with glee. I would online chat with the stranger for untold hours, and I would feel pride, no matter what age he turned out to be. I would be the one desired, and that is all that mattered.
Thank god I never had the chance to get groomed.
But one time I did encounter something even worse.
On a Friday night when I was 13 years old, I went mall shopping with my two best friends. I bought my first thong that night, and I felt half-embarrassed and half-sexy. After milling around for hours, it was 9pm and the mall was closing. My friend, the advanced Lolita, called her dad to pick us up. He said he was at the Burger King at the end of the parking lot and told us to just walk over.
We stepped out into the spring night. In mini-skirts, small tank-tops, and Victoria’s Secret’s bags around our wrists, we walked across the empty parking lot.
Then an old, beat up, pick up truck came crawling up to us. I immediately felt uncomfortable. The pick up truck halted in front of us and inside were two men in dirty work  clothes.
“You girls need a ride,” said the man in the driver’s seat. The other one leaned over and gave a long look at us.
I felt my skin prickle and my hands clenched my shopping bag.
My friend laughed and said, “Well, I don’t know..”
My other friend shifted so her long, thin legs were in full view.
I met eyes with the man, and something came over me.
“We don’t need a ride from you!” I screamed, with my eyes bulging.
“Hey, lady,” he said, “we’re just trying to be nice.”
“Yeah,” my friend said, “why are you freaking out?”
I didn’t leave his eyes.
“Get the fuck away from me! I don’t need a ride from you!”
“What the hell is your problem?” he said angrily.
I didn’t answer him.
“Fine,” he grunted, “we’ll just leave.”
“Good!” I yelled as he shifted the truck into drive and sped off.
I gave a long breath.
“Why did you just freak out?” said my friend.
“They were just being nice,” said the other.
And I couldn’t explain what had came over me. All I knew was that I wouldn’t have gotten in that truck over my dead body. It was a gut feeling.
After that, I wasn’t friends with them any longer. After that, I didn’t need the attention.

How to annoy a journalist

My brother's girlfriend, Mary, was recently interviewed for a local newspaper I work for. I actually organized the interview for Mary, unbeknownst to her, by mentioning her name when a fellow reporter was working on a study abroad assignment.
Normally when I get a friend or relation of mine in the newspaper, I feel like I am doing a good deed by recognizing their achievements.
But today, Mary came to the house with only complaints.
"She called and said we could do the interview today or tomorrow."
"That must have been inconvenient for you," said my mother.
"It's like she didn't even give me a choice if I could do the interview or not!" Mary exclaimed.
"You know," I said, "we are given our assignments on Tuesday and we are expected to have them finished by Friday. So, it really was today or tomorrow."
"That's not my fault!"
"But was it really that painful for you? I mean it's more inconvenient for us if we don't get the interview because that means we piss off our editor, and get a sizable chunk out of our paycheck."
"Still it's not her fault," my mom said.
"Well it sounds kind of pathetic," I said.
"And then when she did the interview, she didn't even ask me questions. She just told me to talk about it, she didn't even ask me anything interesting."
"She didn't ask you any questions?" I asked skeptically.
"She was just like 'talk about it'. I bet she is only going to put in the dumb things I said," Mary said.
"Why would she do that?"
"Well people always get me wrong in papers," she said.
I rolled my eyes.
"All she could say was 'what was your first impression?' 'what was the food like?'"
"Those sound like questions to me," I murmured.
"It would have probably been better if she did the interview in person, but, then again, I wouldn't have wanted to actually go somewhere for it."
I had to leave the room. After being editor for my high school yearbook, working for a newspaper for an upwards of 6 months, and conducting over a 100 interviews, I had experienced almost every annoyance imaginable. And Mary named almost every one of them.
First off, people treat me like my time is meaningless. I normally have a three to four day window to do multiple interviews, cover events, and write the assignments.  And during the school year, I have an even smaller time window. Which means, the time we agreed on to do the interview is the time we need to do it. One time I scheduled a video interview with a group of people at my school. It was after school and I had planned to meet them in the parking lot. They said "fuck it" and left before I had time to walk there. Another time, I was scheduled to interview a kid going to military school. He delayed the interview 3 hours so he could sleep in before his work out.
Secondly, people take it as a personal affront when we make a slight mistake. I remember multiple people coming up to me the day the yearbooks were distributed to tell me about minor mistakes. One kid complained that I got his bible verse for a senior quote wrong (4:11, not 5:11). All I could picture, when he told me, were the little scraps of paper people submitted their senior quotes on, and a yearbook staffer having to sift through and hand type each one. One girl bitched me out on facebook for quoting her badly. The words from her lips, in the interview, were "If you don't have a tan, you don't have a chance". I didn't get one syllable wrong.
And thirdly, people think we are responsible for you talking eloquently. You saying something dull like "the experience was great", is not my fault. Normally, in that instance, I follow up with "why was it great?" and if you answer "I can't find the words to describe it" then it really is your fault. You are in an interview for christ sakes, you find the words. If you answer "I don't know" or "um sure" to every question then you won't sound that enlightening. All I can do is fluff up my descriptive prose, but otherwise it is you hanging dry. Also, if you are in an interview and the journalist doesn't ask the perfect question to what you are thinking, then just say it!

But I will say, in contradiction to my complaints above, I have met wonderful people through my interviews. Most people are thankful and eager to tell their story, and help me along the way. A kid at my school committed suicide this year, and through my interviews with his friends, I learned what kind of beautiful person he was. I talked to a local strawberry farmer, who took me with him on his land and gave me one of my most entertaining interviews to date. I interviewed a daughter and mother about a mission trip they went on, and although I didn't agree with the objectives of the mission trip, they still sent me a pie, a hand-made purse, a note, and multiple voice mails to express their gratitude for being interviewed.

I will keep writing and interviewing, but hell people! Get some manners!