That just burns me up! Doesn't that burn you up?

B chose pet peeves.

Ages and days ago, I worked for Ghetto Discount Pizza, and I developed an ardent loathing for gated communities. Or at least the gate itself.
The impenetrable fortress that is the gate, like all good fortifications, has several rings of defenses.
The first is the callbox.
The callbox allows you to scroll through a listing of everyone in the community until the screen displays the name of the desired party. A three digit number appears with the name, and all you have to do is dial the number, which is connected to the resident's phone, and the resident presses a button allowing the guest on to the premises. Nothing could be simpler or more inviting.
But that is merely a strategic ruse, a feint, designed to lull would-be encroachers into over-confidence.
In reality, the callbox is a stalling device designed to give screeners ample time to remember your suspicious features should you turn out to be a disreputable rapscallion. That cagey stare. The sloping brow that clearly marked you as one of the criminal classes.
The call box has three bottons: "A," "Z," and "Call," and a security camera to watch as you slowly spaz out before the machine. The former two numbers let you navigate through the list of names and to select a starting point, either the beginning or middle of the alphabet; however, the target name could be A. Aardvark, and there would still be a glut of names to scroll through allowing the men watching on the security camera a good look at you.
You might think, "Aha! I remember this person's call number. I am so clever. No gate will get the better of me."
But those screeners are one step ahead of you. They did not become gatekeeper/watchers just to waive riff-raff like you on the premises.
Dialling the call number directly never works.
And just for that, once you realize dialling the number won't work, and you begin closing in on the name you're looking for, the machine will spit you back to the beginning of the list. Who do you think you are, buddy? Awfully quick to get into this fancy gated community aren't you? Why don't you just cool your jets?
Somehow, possibly through sheer determination, you make it to the right name and get beeped in, you still must contend with the gate itself.
The physical gate is on wheels, but since they spent a lot of money on the state-of-art call box for this community, they had to skimp a bit on frills like wheels. The wheels come from every broken grocery store buggy in the area. The gate jerks, sometimes catching on cracks in the pavement or those quaint cobblestones. My this neighborhood is sophisticated! A gate and cobblestones? Am I in the Europe? Does Prince Rainier have an apartment here?
While the gate is slow and wobbly, possibly deliberately to give it that old world charm, the arm -- did I mention there's an arm, too? Well there is. Because only a gate would be lax. Ahem.
Anyway. The Arm is swift. It is like the hand of an irate bouncer saying, "NO! You may not get in here. Your name is not on the list. I don't care if Call Box and Gate let you in. I am their manager."
So between the gate and the arm, it's like one of this tricky parts of an old video game where you must skillfully time your attack. It requires precision.
Or just take your chances and follow someone's car after they've been beeped in. Although there is a strong possibility that the ass of your car will be slapped as the arm comes down.
If you have proven your mettle by advancing beyond the Call Box, the Gate, and the Arm, there is still the maze of identical buildings and road names before you reach your destination.
For all that trouble, the whole system seems to break down a great deal with the arm straight up and the gate already rolled back as though Mongul hordes have conquered this walled jewel of suburbia and, after pillaging anything of worth, have left it open in a humiliating gesture of defeat.
That the system is so prone to breakdown -- or that despite all their elaborate precautions nomads from the Gobi steppes can still overrun them -- galls me all the more when I think of the annoyance I had to go through, and I was getting paid to go there.