A hapless fellow is at the unfortunate end of many of what most consider pet peeves. Just as he has found the telephone number he is looking for in the telephone book for an important call, a woman beats him into the telephone booth. That's not bad enough, but she is a gabby woman who refuses to cut her call short. In another scenario, he's a storekeeper who must contend with a customer who reads a magazine but won't buy it or anything else in the store, while in the process he destroys the magazine and causes general havoc in the store. In a third scenario, the hapless fellow is at home dealing with a slippery throw rug, which just happens to be at the top of the stairs. In the kitchen, he can't get a frozen ice cube tray out of the freezer, which causes all sorts of problems. And finally, at Christmas, he has to search the entire string of lights to find the one burnt out bulb that is causing the entire string not to illuminate.
—Huggo