Quick fixes can eliminate annoyances with little or no pain

Annoyances that cannot be fixed are too numerous to list, but sometimes you see easy-to-fix annoyances that would take so little to change.

Let’s start with misleading signs at McCarran International Airport when you approach from the airport tunnel. If someone would put the word “and” on these signs, it might stop people from circling twice before finding the place they need to go. Just one word, that’s all I’m asking.

The signs in question say “Departing Flights Terminal 2.” As a person in the communication business, I assumed that means the departing flights for Terminal 2. And I kept driving looking for departing flights for Terminal 1. No such sign exists, because the signs mean all departing flights.

When you approach the airport from I-215, the signs tricked me. Twice. And not just me, I am sure. I was with an editor with the San Diego Union-Tribune (who is admittedly directionally challenged), and even though I warned I’d missed it before, we both were confused.

Quick fix: Change the signs.

(Department of Aviation spokesman Chris Jones kindly refrained from even hinting I was a dummy. But he said surveys of McCarran visitors “have consistently shown that less than 10 percent of those surveyed believe we have not provided sufficient signage at McCarran.” While no promises were made, he said he’d take note of my issue.)

The second easy-to-fix annoyance involves our early dinner at the Jade restaurant at the Palazzo.

Our threesome wanted a leisurely meal starting with a bottle of wine, and we wanted to enjoy a glass before starting our food. This was carefully explained twice to a waiter who smiled repeatedly and nodded in agreement. Wine first. Food later.

We all suspected there was a communication gap. That was confirmed when our wine never came, but our food did.

At that point, we asked for the wine and they took the food back to the kitchen. Silly us. We thought it was to, at the minimum, keep the food warm.

When the food reappeared, it was tepid. Sending the food back seemed like a waste of time by then. We surrendered and ate the tepid but tasty dishes.

Now this is no noodle shop. We were not tourists in Hong Kong. We were in an upscale, almost empty Chinese restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip, where presumably the staff grasped English. Presume at your own risk.

What should we have done?

As usual, I consulted with the Review-Journal’s restaurant critic, Heidi Knapp Rinella.

“Personally, I think the best way to handle it is to not order the food until you’ve seen the wine list,” she said.

That’s what she and her husband do if they want to relax over the wine, because that eliminates the waiter’s discretion.

“I won’t order until I’m ready, no matter how many times they ask,” Heidi said. “And as empty as restaurants are these days, it isn’t like they needed to turn the table.”

Learn from my mistakes.

Quick fix: Take control in restaurants that may want to rush you. Just don’t order.

My third easy-to-fix annoyance is one of perception rather than communication.

Frequently, the public asks about seeing firefighters at gyms working out with their fire trucks outside. I always explain that the firefighters need to be fit and strong to haul us out of fires and that’s the reason they work out while on duty. They are still available to respond quickly to a fire call, even at the gym.

I can defend taking the trucks to the gym.

I can’t defend firefighters taking their trucks out on runs to Starbucks. I didn’t like it even before gasoline passed $4 a gallon, because I thought it was wasteful.

Now a new Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce report says the wages of Las Vegas and Clark County firefighters are 55 percent higher than the national average. It adds to the perception that firefighters do a lot of things on the taxpayers’ time and dime.

Quick fix: Stop doing it.

Shouldn’t we fix the easy ones? Especially since we flop like flounders faced with problems that go beyond merely annoying.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0275.