Trying the limits of my patience

So here I am talking to someone I knew in high school and she asks me if I know of some sort of site or service that is kind of like Pandora, which is no longer available outside of the US. I suggest Last.fm because I am somewhat obsessed with that site and also it makes for better at work listening than the radio, most of the time.

This would be the time that a particular person decides to butt into the conversation. "You talking about facebook?" he asks. We filled him in on what we were talking about. "I just use facebook," he says. We continue our conversation about music and internet radio. "I just use facebook," he repeats. We keep talking. "I just use facebook," he says a third time. "Why don't you just use facebook?"

"This is boring," he says as we continue to talk about music. "This is boring, seriously. I want to go. Nothing's happening. This is boring. I could be playing poker right now." We were doing our best to ignore him by this point. When you dignify them with a response you only encourage them.

The problem with these sorts of people is that they really feel like their contributions are essential to your conversation, so when you walk away, they'll follow you around. The other problem is that other than being irritating, they're pretty much harmless, and never do anything particularly bad so it's not like you can really tell them to piss off.

The problem with me is that sometimes I am far too diplomatic for my own good. I have a hard time telling people that irritate me that I can't stand them. I'll go out of my way to avoid contact with these people, to the point of not answering my phone when they call, not replying to their emails and being on the exact opposite end of the room. But when I'm cornered, I'm polite, so I guess I come across as being really nice, which only attracts more of these people to me. This would be the case with this person, who makes a b-line in my direction every time he sees me at a party.

So while he follows both of us up to the bus stop, we're talking about music from Eastern Europe and Israel, he says "Eastern Europe? So they sing in French or something?" We continue talking and then he says "That was a joke. You were supposed to laugh." And that's about the time when I decided that I didn't feel like catching the bus and walked an hour to get to the other party I was planning on going to. Nothing like a good long walk in the dark when you're set to explode.