People Are Such Idiots

Time to be blunt- what's going on people? For the past few weeks, I've noticed a trend in the general perceptiveness and awareness of the people surrounding me; in that both have been on a sharp decline. I don't know if we, as a people, decided to say "Fuck it!" to important things like, oh, paying attention to what one is doing behind the wheel, and I've simply not been informed of it; or there has been a brain draining blast of cosmic "Stupid Rays" that just-so happened to nail our pretty little planet, but there's been some unsettling changes in how people have been interacting with their surroundings.

There are two barometers one can use in determining in how much people are paying attention to what they're doing a person can go by- their driving habits and their behavior when interacting with service industry personnel. Not only can one gauge a person's general awareness through these observations, but also their intelligence and level of maturity.

Driving!

I don't know what it is about people and driving. It's not a very difficult skill to master, nor is it particularly taxing to perform (under normal conditions, of course). You get in, start it, and make sure you abide the speed limit and not hit anyone or anything. How this is difficult for so many to grasp is beyond me, but it seems that there are people out there who are on a fanatical crusade against common sense. Take, for instance, these little tales of potential driving catastrophes.

Tale, The First- My girlfriend and I pulled into a local gas station to get a quick snack. While pulling up to the building, some jerk-face in a large pickup truck suddenly backs out of a parking space, his rear bumper and tailgate dead on-course for a nice collision with the hood of her car. She stops. What does Jerk-Face Mc. Drive-Bad do? He continues backing up. If not for my girlfriend's quickness with shifting into reverse, she'd probably be in court trying to pry any money she can for repairs out of the hands of Jerk-Face's presumably tightfisted insurance carrier (assuming he has insurance). Jerk-Face speeds off, we get our snacks, all it well.

Tale, The Second- Whilst driving to her house, my girlfriend and I are making a right turn onto a side street. It's a standard 4-way intersection, with us having the right of way (we had no stop sign to stop at). While in the process of turning, some person sitting at the stop sign to the left of us, suddenly pulls forward, cutting us off. I'm not entirely sure what compelled this guy to risk not only his life, but the life of the person in the passenger seat (whom if my girlfriend hadn't hit the brakes would've had a rather intimate encounter with our vehicle's front bumper), nor am I sure that he was even aware that we A) Had the right of way, and B) We were even there.

Tale, The Third- While taking her dog out to potty, my girlfriend and I witnessed someone in a pickup truck pulling out of his parking area. Not content with simply, and carefully, pulling out onto the street; this person does a 90-degree turn at 30 miles an hour, then speeds towards a turn that's no more than a few yards away to take another high speed 90-degree turn, fishtailing the entire time, only to run a stop sign, turn again, and speed down our city's mini-highway doing 70 mph in a 40 mph area. Meanwhile, someone comes down the road in the opposite direction, doing twice the speed limit, and comes close to smearing my girl's beloved dog all over the asphalt. If this guy has come down the road only three seconds earlier, there's a significant chance he would have collided with the tow truck guy, almost certainly killing them both.

These are only but three examples of people showing a complete disregard for their own safety, the safety of others, common sense, the law, and a willful, and steadfast, refusal to pay attention to what they're doing. I'm not sure what compels these people to become such dangers to everyone around them.

Are they suicidal?
Do they not give a damn that they could, potentially, kill another person?
Are they just completely stupid?

The three preceding tales are naught but a preview of the what the plague of moronic behavior has wrought. I can't begin to recount the number of times I've almost seen a pedestrian struck down because of a negligent driver not watching where they're driving, or a pedestrian blindly strolling into the path of a speeding 2-ton plastic/metal potential death machine. There's a war on rational forethought going on people, and it's no longer limited to politics. People are getting dumber by the day, and they're not afraid to put their idiocy on display.

And what better place to do so than at their local fast food eateries?

If you want a good, and I do mean a real good, look at just how petty, low, cheap, ignorant, and downright disgusting people can act, there's no better place to catch a glimpse of people at their worse than working in a drive through. I have seen fully adult human beings throw temper tantrums rivaling that of a two year old in terms of ferocity. It seems people will get angry over the most miniscule of things, and have absolutely no problem on taking it out on the people there to serve them. Not only will people complain about the smallest of problems, but they'll also pitch a fit about problems that they, themselves, cause. Instead of admitting that they've had an idiot moment of massive proportions, a person will turn around and blame the poor employee for their own screw up. Now, for the presumptuous out there, don't think I'm saying that only customers can be morons; I do acknowledge that there are also incompetent employees out there, but there's a big difference between employees and customers. An employee not doing a good job in a position will, most times, be moved to a position that's better suited to their ability and replaced by someone who can work that position better. There's near nothing that can be done about customers who exist only to suck the intelligence out of whatever room they're standing in.

For convenience sake, I've categorized the typical unastute customers that anyone working in food service, and retail for the most part, can come across. Any customer, at any time, can fall under any or all of the proceeding categories; sometimes existing simultaneously across the entire spectrum of ungoodness.

The Royal Stuck-Up Bitch- Our first example of unbearable customers is the classic Royal Bitch. This is the person who thinks that, not only is she better than anyone who works in the service industry, she owns their soul and they must kneel and fall prostrate before her because she has chosen to patronize that particular business. If you fail to make sure everything, from your service to the way you breathe around her, is "ABSOLUTELY PERFECT RAAAAAAAAAWARARARAGHGHLBLBLBLBL!" she will see to it that the next 45 seconds of your life become the most unbearable hours of your existence. Bitches typically employ screeching, haughty condemnations of our performance, and assurances that "I know the manager and I can make sure you're fired because you refused to give me a bigger smile than what you did" as weapons on a regular basis. They also believe that it's completely fine to "forget" that you, too, are a living, breathing human being who is capable of making errors and also has something not unlike emotions and will yell, scream, and curse like a trucker who just got cut off on the highway which prevented him from taking that off ramp to the motel where he had a free hooker waiting for him and he hasn't had any in months. Bitches are not afraid to have complete temper tantrums in public, and will adamantly insist that their, often insane, demands should always be met because "The customer is ALWAYS right", despite that nine times out of ten they're dead wrong. They'll insist on ordering specials that are discontinued or never existed, blame any equipment failures on the employees, and set such an amazingly bad example for their children.

Think I'm exaggerating any of this? I've had a person say, and I quote "Well why don't you just fucking close the damned store then?!" when I informed him that there would be a two minute wait on Apple Pies. Apple-FUCKING-Pies. I've had another customer give me her order, change her order twice, then change it back to what it originally was, then go and launch a massive bitch-fit because I changed her order from what it originally was. Both of these customers, of course, had children with them. I guess their god-damned Big Mac or Whopper is more important to them is more important than their children growing up well-adjusted and respectful, eh?

Cap'n Cheapy- Trying to get a good deal when eating out is perfectly fine. Cap'n Cheapy takes this idea and runs it past the endzone and out of the damn arena. Not unlike the Royal Bitch, Cheapy will find anything to complain about, no matter how insignificant, and use it to extort more food out of the business.

These have been personally observed.
Employee's tone of voice "wasn't right"? FREE FOOD!
No napkins in bag? FREE FOOD!
"Hey, I ordered this but it wasn't what I really wanted can I exchange it for something better?"
"You messed up my order!!!!!!!!...what receipt?"
*watches as customer takes meat off of a sandwich* "No meat! WANT FREE FOOD!"

The stunts that Cheapy will try to pull often cross the line into blatant scammery. I've seen customers come back day after day claiming that they're "Owed a free meal" for one mess up that happened months in the past. When confronted with the fact that she's never produces a receipt or contacted a manager about the messed up order, this customer sped away, never to be seen again (at least by me). I've seen people swap their food with someone else, then come back and complain that theirs wasn't made right. I've seen people try to claim free food off of a supposedly messed up order and tried to pass off a months old receipt as proof.

These people prey on manager and business owners fears that if they upset one person, then they'll tell all their friends and the business will lose ten or so customers forever because of bad word of mouth. So, they'll bend over backwards to please any customer and Cheapy and the scammers gleefully take advantage of it. Often, the time and energy spent dealing with someone trying to scam the business could be better spent getting one, or more, legitimate customers served. If someone is blatantly attempting to scam some free food, it's much better just to say "No", let them be pissed off and leave, and focus on serving customers that we're actually turning a profit on.

The Eternal Thinker- The Eternal Thinking exists for one reason- causing as many people to pile up after him while he decides if he wants a taco or a burrito. The number one cause of huge, slow moving, drive through lines is the jackass who decides to sit and ponder every single choice, and often settle on what was their very first idea of what they wanted. These people are also highly inconsiderate of others; taking what seems to be joy in seeing how long he can make the line wait before the customers decide it's much better to risk being tossed out for slamming the guy out of the way so they can finally place their damn order.

Mr. Oblivioso- The exact opposite to The Thinker, Mr. Oblivioso opts to display no real sense of coherency at all. These are the people that will order food in drive through, forget what it is that they ordered by the time they get to the payment window, and wonder why the prices are "So god-damned high!!?!!". There is one similarity that these people share with Thinkers, they also cause massive waiting lines for order takers. Unlike Thinkers, though, it's not because they're thinking so-hard about what they want; it's that they're just staring at the menu board until a thought finally occurs. Instead of doing the rational thing and reading the menu board, they'll ask questions about what the price is on every single item there is, ask questions like "What's the price of a *DOLLAR MENU SANDWICH**?", and even order items from a completely different restaurant chain, ordering Whoppers from Mc.Donald's and whatnot.

A fine example of people who are completely oblivious would be a group of college students I witnessed one evening. They piled into a car and drove to Mc.Donald's. They parked, in a Mc. Donald's parking lot, got out and walked to the building. The building has "Mc. Donald's" written in bright lights across the roof and is easily seen. There's Mc.D's propaganda plastered all over the windows, and the, easily recognizable, colors red and yellow all over the place. Let's not forget the big "Golden Arches" sign, and the "Golden Arches" logo on the doors. They open the doors, enter the building, having to have seen, at the very least, the Arches logo on the door, and what, to their dismay, does one of them exclaim?
"This isn't Taco Bell!"
This wasn't just some matter of fact statement that they're in the wrong building. No. Her tone of voice and utter shock that she was, in fact, standing in Mc. Donald's conveyed the feeling that she was genuinely pissed off that she wasn't in Taco Bell...and as they piled back into the car I discovered, much to my horror and non-surprise, that she was the driver.

Bill Cosby once said that all children are born with brain damage. I'm wondering if there's some that never grow out of it.

The Absolute Asshole- The creme del a creme of nightmare customers, we have the Asshole. This guy wants only one thing in life- to make everyone else as miserable as possible. These are the bathroom vandals, the people who speed through the parking lot at 50 mph, the people who smoosh food against windows. They are the perfect example of just how rotten people can be, and I fucking hate these cretins with a passion. I've seen people pull up to a speaker box just to yell profanities into it and speed up, cut people off in drive through, yell and curse at other customers, throw food around, leave massive messes, piss in the trash cans, scrawl swastikas on the bathroom doors. You name a depravity that they can perform in public, chances are good that I've witnessed it. These people need to be banned from public places and beaten. They think these acts are hilarious, like splashing hot sauce on employee's faces, and believe they're just SOOOOOOOO FUCKING AWESOME when out acting like god-damned retards. A sad fact is that there isn't a set age-group for these peoples. I've been people with ages ranging from 15-50 acting completely unbearable simply for unbearability's sake. What drives them to do it? Is it funny? Is it because they think they can get way from it? I guess, since there's very little that's actually done about it. These people need to be banned from any and all public places on sight. Their vandalism and chicanery cost so much in the energy needed to clean up after them, and emotionally in that I've seen people break down in tears because of how they've been treated by an Asshole. It's sickening to watch, and I don't see why we, as a people continue to allow it to happen. I've made it a point to put Assholes in their place when I see them when I'm out and about my business; so many others should do the same thing. If we, the decent and mature citizens of the world, would band together we could expel the Jackassery menace from our favorite places to eat and make the world a much more comfortable, and bearable place for all of us.

There are many more categories that could be made of bad customers, but these are the most broad and easily recognizable. I'm not sure how people who have, most of them, graduated high school and are either parents, role models, higher education students, educators themselves, or have attained some other title or role that typically requires them to be rational, forward thinking, decent human beings. Sadly, it seems that intelligent and perceptive people are becoming a rare breed, as the rest of the human race sinks into the mire of its own idiotic despond. I'm not sure why people are becoming more reckless, stupid, cruel, oblivious, or just plain stupid these days; but it's clear that they're at war with common sense, and the first causalities are decency, respect, and even lives. The tide must be turned before things get worse, and Idiocracy becomes reality. If not, we're screwed.