By most accounts I’m a farily easy going kind of guy. Polite, great to get along with, and patient with others a good deal of the time.
Note that I did not say ‘all of the time’.
I understand that we have a finite amount of time on this planet. We all have things we want to do and experience before we shuffle off of this mortal coil, so I do everything I can not to needlessly waste people’s time. The only thing I ask is that the same courtesy be extended to me.
Unfortunately most people did not get that email, so quite often I am disappointed.
When I am out and about on one errand or another, I try to get things done as efficiently as possible. Not that I’m some sort of anti-social misfit or something, it’s just that in most cases sticking around longer than necessary does not gain me anything. If there is no need for me to stay, I’m not going to loiter. It’s just the way I am.
Not to say that I don’t take things slow sometimes. If I want to spend some time in one locale or another with no intended goal, I will. This does not diminish my ability to be aware of others, though. While I might be enjoying myself in this pursuit, I do what I can to make sure it does not impede others. If I see someone coming and I need to get the fuck out of the way, I get the fuck out of the way. It’s not difficult to be at least partially cognizant of your surroundings.
Apparently for some this task is much harder than I think.
If you’re looking at a specific item with some determined scrutiny and you don’t realize right away that I need something from that same small area, I’ll give you some slack. But if you’re staring there dumbfounded like you had never seen anything like this in your life, then you might gain a spot on my shit list in quick fashion. Yes, they do offer that many varieties of underwear… get over it.
The situation gets even worse when there’s more than one person involved. I’m not sure what the mentality is behind this but for some reason these groups tend to travel side by side. If they are traveling as fast as I, great, be my human snowplow. But with alarming regularity they are not doing such. And in a lot of these cases they are blocking any potential pathways around them. It’s situations like these that make me wish I was manufactured by Ebonite, and I was on my way to taking out a 4-6-7-10 split.
What’s even worse is when they stop. Large families are really bad about this. It’s like every family member has there own orbital pattern in this group and they must stick with it. Only problem with that is that I’m a comet who doesn’t want to get brought into the gravitational pull of the outer planetary bodies of these groups just because I remembered I needed tea and it’s right over there.
There is one level beyond this that is completely mind boggling to me. It’s when a member of one of these groups actually notices that I’m trying to find a way around them, they look at me, and then turn away as if I wasn’t there at all. It’s almost like the look of “MOVE!” on my face was being displayed in German. If I am in fact that hard to read then I need to take up playing poker.
Not everyone gets this kind of reaction out of me. I can deal with the elderly and infirm just fine. It’s pretty much out of their control.
It’s the people my age or younger who move with the locomotive speed of molasses on a slight incline during January in Iowa who really get my blood boiling. The most common occurance is two guys who are traveling along without a care in the world. When I’m stuck behind them for no reason whatsoever I’m usually trying to size up which one would make a better target for the Robdozer. Because the dream I have at that point that would be just below spending some quality time with Ewa Sonnet is bodychecking one of those bastards right into a display of Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Because fuck them and fuck tomato soup.
As a tech nerd I find it funny that technology or the lack thereof can be an impediment. There have been times when I’m at the register with just a few items when the person in front of me decides to write a check.
A check? Seriously? We were on the moon in 1969… it’s now 2010… and people are still writing checks? Are these people stymied by the idea of a debit card? Do they think it’s magic or something? They can keep track of their money with a card just as easily as they can with a checkbook. It’s not rocket science and that PIN pad is not a Rubik’s Cube.
What is surprising to me is that technology can provide obstacles just like a human can. I understand that companies try to use the cheapest possible hardware, but these self checkout things should not take seven minutes for me to buy ten items. Even the registers I used at Toys ‘r’ Us back in 1995 would laugh at their slowness. I have to wonder if someone found a way to run Windows XP on 8088′s.
Slowing others down without thought should be a crime. Because as Henry Rollins once put it, “It’s like murder in the millionth degree.”
I’m with Hank on this one.
How should things that slow me down be Fucked In The Ass: with a sonic boom.
Today I should have called the police on ten different people for assault and battery. While attempting to walk into the grocery store there were two groups of people who were determined to walk as slow as possible. I wanted to say to these people “Hey assholes! Don’t you realize it’s a hundred and fuck you out here? Get a move on!”
Keeping people out in this heat for no reason should be considered inhumane behavior.