David's Pet Peeves, 2017 Edition: Bailers and "Bad" Weather

On this week's Rule Breaker Investing podcast, Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner takes a break from his usual topics and generally upbeat outlook to dig into some things that just irk him. He thinks we'd all be better off retiring some phrases from our vocabularies, because they're linked to ideas we'd do well to dump as well.

Closing out his list of pet peeves, he picks a pair he hopes we're all in agreement about: folks who make a habit of cancelling last minute, and weather apps that purport to offer certainty when their developers really should know better.

A full transcript follows the video.

This video was recorded on Nov. 15, 2017.

David Gardner: Pet Peeve No. 7: And I'm pretty sure you might have disagreed with some of my others, and again, I was trying to say earlier we're each individuals. My pet peeve might be your favorite thing, so I'm never here to suggest that you should adopt any of these. If you like them or if I'm helping you articulate something that you have thought about; then great. I'm not asking you to agree with any of these, except for maybe, well, this one and the next one. I think we should all be agreeing on No. 7 and No. 8.

No. 7 I'm just going to call "bailing." Bailing. It's kind of a modern word. Maybe a little bit more of a modern phenomenon. This is when people cancel on you. They bail. Now I think canceling something once -- something comes up, let's say, once a year with a friend or something -- that's human. That's understandable.

However, repeat cancelling -- otherwise known to me, anyway, as "bailing" -- usually done at the last moment, by the way. Now that is a pet peeve. Maybe it's not so much the act of bailing. In my experience -- and I'm sorry if you're one of these people, and I hope you're not -- I think it tends to come from certain people more than others, so what I really mean by this pet peeve is maybe not "bailing," but "bailers." You might have somebody in your family or a friend of yours, and more often than not or more than should happen, things get canceled, once again, at the last minute.

Now for me, I'm a fairly regimented person. I try to lock down my calendar. I use iCal. I'm a Mac guy. And I have about 23 calendars that just make up my calendar, and it's so I can have different colors. I have this amazing rainbow-looking thing that I can look back for 10 years. Ever since I first adopted the Mac in the spring of 2008 I can look back and see all the beautiful colors of my life. And it matters to me. And it makes me sad when I have to hit "delete" because I didn't get to have coffee with my pal, Sal, because Sal bailed. It makes me sad. But not that sad if it just happens, you know, once with Sal.

But -- and I have a cousin, who will not be named, who tends to do this -- when you thought you were going to have cocktails and them over, or you're going to come by, or we're going to go to the game together; and you find out within 24 hours, sometimes more like within one hour, that oh, it turns out that beautiful color thing on my iCal I'm going to have to hit Delete again, because blank is a bailer. That -- that -- I think we can all agree is a universal pet peeve. No. 7, bailers.

Pet Peeve No. 8: Which brings us to No. 8. There is absolutely no doubt that this pet peeve is well placed and we're all going to agree on this one together. Let's put our hands together in the middle and on three we're going to go o-h-w-a-a because we all agree. That never ever when you check the weather, your favorite app may be Dark Sky. Yes, I'm one of those suckers who paid three bucks or whatever for a weather app. I realized you could get Yahoo! Weather for free. I still love my Dark Sky. Maybe you do too. Whatever your regular weather go-to site is never, ever should it read "chance of precipitation 0%." Never!

There is never a 0% chance. Maybe in certain climates, in certain areas of the world -- deserts! -- maybe there is literally a 0% chance of precipitation there, but I live in the Washington, D.C. area. We're kind of East Coast-Mid Atlantic. We all live in different places. How many times have I seen a 0% chance of precipitation and it starts to rain? Even just the lightest drizzle. It always should say 1%. At least 1%. There's no reason that you should ever suggest 0%.

Imagine a 0% chance of the market dropping tomorrow. A 0% chance of this or that person winning this election or football game. Never. There's almost never, ever a 0% chance; but especially for most of us, in the many different places we live, a 0% chance of precipitation?