Useless or Annoying

I don't know if anyone else has this issue or if it’s just me, but have you ever noticed that there is a fine line between useless and annoying?

For example, most motorcycles do not come with clocks. That’s annoying. You can’t use your wristwatch because it’s under your gloves and jacket. So I bought a little clock that you can mount to your handlebars. It’s a decent clock. It has a glow-in-the-dark face – for at least 15 minutes of darkness (useless). And a thin little brass second hand (REALLY useless). When I’m riding my bike, I never need to know that it’s 6:04 and 26 seconds. Plus the thin brass is very difficult to see against the glow-in-the-dark face when you are bouncing down the freeway at, umm, California freeway speeds.

But the useless second hand doesn’t bother me. I’ve learned to ignore it. Until yesterday.

Yesterday the second hand fell off the spindle and now it resides at the bottom of the clock. For the first time I noticed that the second hand actually has a big round part that goes over the spindle where the hand attaches to the movement. Now that it’s at the bottom of the clock, the big round part is as annoying as it can be. Every time I look at the clock all I can see is that stupid second hand bouncing around. It went from useless to annoying in one brief moment.

The clock still seems to keep time just fine. But I’m going to have to replace simply because that stupid second hand bothers me.

What in your life has gone from useless to annoying?