Fear the wrath of a patient man.
I myself keep a pretty cool head just about all the time. Infact, it's just about impossible to make me angry.
BUT
There are things that do get on my nerves, know it all's and people who can't make up there mind about a decision fall under this category.
I work in the aviation industry. An industry where even the most learned and best pilots will tell you, "The day you stop learning about flying, is the day you'll make a quarter mile black streak on the ground and buy yourself one of those nice little farms with the white picket fences." Meaning, if you think you know it all, you'll get yourself killed.
As a flight dispatcher at a little flight school, I have to make judgement calls about the weather and the pilots abilities to fly the aircraft I'm letting them take. It ticks me off to no end to see a pilot that flies maybe six times a year try to tell me the airplane is broken, or the radios don't work, or an endless list of little squawks. When all of these things lead back to human/pilot error and they won't LISTEN when I try to help them after they've asked me. Or they'll just become angry and not accept any help because they're trying to hide their own inadequacies.
To explain a little bit about the radios, because this is the most common gripe I get.
You set the audio panel to COM1 (most audio panels have a COM1, COM2, NAV1 and NAV2.) Turn on the COM1 radio. Set the frequency to either ATIS (weather report and field conditions) or the CTAF (common traffic frequency, kinda like ATC.) To test, you'll either hear the ATIS or you can key the mic and hear yourself transmit on the CTAF.
Pretty simple, right, they teach you this stuff from day one in flying school. I can understand someone not being acquainted with a certain aircraft and asking. It's the irrate idiots that get to me, blaiming me for their stupidity, because they could never ever be wrong ever.
Customer: "I WANT THIS AIRPLANE TO WORK, THE FUCKING RADIO IS INOP, NOW WHY DO I PAY FOR THIS!!"
Me: "Sorry sir, mind if I take a look at it."
Customer: "It's FINE, I KNOW HOW TO WORK A RADIO, IT'S YOU WHO HAS THE PROBLEM!"
Me: "Sorry sir, but as per FAR/AIM Part 91 flight operations in Class Golf and Echo airspace you do not need a working radio to fly to and from this airport, the VFR flight plan you filed with me doesn't make any mention of landings at any controled fields."
Customer: "WHAT! I CAN GO WHERE EVER I LIKE WHEN I'M FLYING!"
Me: "Yes sir, that's true, but the problem you've brought to me is not a down squawk for VFR flight, you won't get a refund and we will charge you the minimum fee for a no-show flight, would you like me to take a look at it and see what the problem is?"
Customer" "FINE! But you won't find anything."
After inspecting the radio and turning it on, everything works. Now if I'm really feel like being an ass, I'll take my headset into the plane. and in the hanger we have a CTAF scanner so you can hear the aircraft in the pattern. I'll walk over to said sick airplane, fix the audio panel, and call for a radio check, and get the standard "five by five" or a loud and clear transmission, all the while the customer is standing next to the scanner.
Me: "Good to go, have a good flight"
Generally, they just cow out at this point and leave for their flight, but every now and then you get the total idiots who think I've just commited the original sin.
Additionally, when customers strand and airplane at a far away airport because they thought they could fix the problem. Generally this entails me, taking a plane off the schedule and a battery charger or jumper cables to fly off to where they are and giving them a jump because they wore the battery all the way down. Now again, if it's a student on their first cross country solo or something, you just laugh and help them out, but the fucking hell bent idiots just keep yelling at you the whole time while you fix their airplane that they broke.
See in aviation, everything is right in front of you, RTFM pretty much sums up every problem I've had a pilot bring to me.
