I am going to talk a little bit today about awareness and the lack thereof in today's society, or at least in the retail place I work for. Maybe I just have a Lovecraftian horror living under the store, draining the intelligence of those foolish enough to enter, causing near instantaneous transformations into gibbering idiots. I sort of doubt this, as it has yet to happen to me, I am the only sane one, it's everyone else who's crazy! My preferred belief is that modern civilization is full of people who are naturally stupid, and not that there is a nameless beast doing nefarious deeds in general.
Today I was in the bathroom doing the things one typically does in a bathroom, when the door handle commences to jigglin' from outside. Okay, this happens occasionally when one uses a public bathroom, no need to panic, a simple "Occupied" later and the person will stop, muttering a short apology which generally trails off into cursing your terrible luck at having to wait for someone else while nature continues to insist that things be taken care of immediately. Well the first one didn't take, so I said it again. Continuation of attempts to unlock door. I yelled it this time, loudly, and finally the person backed off. I finish my business, wash my hands as per company policy okay I did it please don't fire me boss who somehow found this. As I came out of the bathroom, I see a kid, probably in the range of ten to twelve, but could just as easily have been eight or fourteen because I am a terrible judge of age. He says to me "Sorry, I thought you said hockey puck." Without going into what relevance the phrase hockey puck could possibly have in the context of what was going on, what difference does it make what I said? You grabbed the door handle, mysterious words emanated from inside, so what's your next step? A person capable of critical thought might think "Oh, someone's in there, I have no idea why they said hockey puck, but I should definitely not go in there because there is clearly someone inside!"
Now don't worry, I didn't make this post just to rag on some dumb kid. It is merely an example, the most recent, of things that happen that make me fear for the general public. For another example, at the store, we have recently put our carts outside, by the door. They used to be inside, so I realize people aren't quite used to the idea yet, however, they are around three feet from the door. If you were to walk outside the store and somehow immediately trip and fall to your right, you would hit your head on the carts, or if you had the wherewithal you might catch yourself with a hand on them. You can open the door and reach over and touch the carts without closing the door or taking a step. As you go into the store, the carts are right there to your left. They are a very bright yellow, a color I don't personally like, but it fits with the motif of our store's logo colors. I say all that to say this: since we have put the carts out there, we get easily a dozen people per day asking us where the carts are.
There's an old saying I never really use, "If it were a snake it would have bit you." This saying has never been more true than today. These are the people who, five thousand years ago, would have been mauled to death by a saber-toothed tiger, or eaten a strange mushroom or poisonous berries and died horking their guts out on the jungle floor. Today, however, they are allowed to survive by a society that coddles them and allows them to live in personal microverses that contain only a single entity, themselves. Tiny bubbles of self absorbed existence that are only occasionally pierced when they ram into your car with theirs, or run over your foot with a rascal in a grocery store, or they have to interact with an actual human being while they stand in front of you in line at a restaurant, staring agape at the nearly double digit combo meal options. Greater minds than mine have wrung out the comedy potential in the dozens of warning labels all over every single thing these days, so I won't belabor those points or try to retrace their material other than to say one thing. Isn't it possible that by constantly flashing signs in people's faces to tell them they shouldn't do things or that other things are dangerous, that we, as a society, are actually training the skill of critical thought out of people? We no longer have to think about whether something might hurt us, we never have to look around for something dangerous around the corner. No one pays attention to their surroundings anymore. If you take an average person today and toss them into a wild, untamed jungle, or throw them directly into a heated battle, they would be dead without ever understanding what happened to them, simply because they don't pay attention. So there you have it folks, yet another screed against modern life. All things considered it isn't terribly original, but these are the thoughts that have been in my head.
