Leelanau Whippersnapper

I hate Sunday’s.  If only I could attribute peoples basic lack of intelligence to bushels of straw in their heads.  I should explain.  Working in retail, you tend to pick up on human behavior pretty well.  I see hundreds of people every day of the week from all walks of life and from all social and economic backgrounds.  I’d venture to say that people who don’t work in retail have very little exposure to this many people in a given week, certainly, most people don’t venture past their desk’s or their front doors.  At work I am forced to be social.  It is my job to put my self in front of people every day and try to sell them something.  I get paid to do this but believe me, if I had a choice, there are just SO many people I would rather just punch in the face and ask them how on earth they managed to get their underwear on.

“Do I really need to follow these directions?”, said the man wearing the wife-beater T-shirt with 4 kids in tow.  “Does this color go with mauve?” said the young blond who clearly had no idea what ‘mauve’ is.  “Why doesn’t anyone work here?” said the 60 year old man who could clearly see the line in front of him and the 5 employees scurrying to help 2 and 3 people at a time, oblivious to the fact that he was NOT the most important person in the area.

I’ve reached many conclusions about the general human condition as I’ve worked retail jobs over the years.  One is that nobody is more important than himself.  Many people simply can not deal with a multi-tasking employee and many people need dedicated one-on-one attention.  This is due in large part to pure laziness.  “You know if you had read the directions on the can of paint and applied it properly you would not be here asking me why your paint didn’t stick to the wall”…[fucking dipshit].  “Well, you didn’t tell me that when I bought it!” Why the hell should I have to TELL you anything EVERYTHING you need to know is printed RIGHT HERE on the can!! - you are not building a FUCKING NUCLEAR SUBMARINE HERE!

Now, don’t get me wrong here, I like nothing more than talking with a customer who is truly interested in doing the job they want to do correctly.  I will take all the time they need to expalin how something works, how to do the job, what tools they will need etc.  That is part of my job.  If you listen to me do this however you will see the salesman.  Every other sentence I will drop disclaimers and clauses designed on purpose to protect ME from people’s desire to blame EVERYONE but themselves when something goes wrong.  “This is how you put on the driveway sealer, look right here on the can, THE MANUFACTURER recommends that you…”  A good salesman will sell you the product, back up the product through qualified statements from the manufacturer of the proeuct they are selling, but put the onus for completeing the job correctly squarely on the customer.  We sell it, YOU do it.  That is why it is called a do-it-YOURESELF home center.

I try to keep work out of this blog but since I have nothing else to talk about most of the time you get to read about all the people in the world who are simply too lazy to bother reading or following directions.  MEN are far worse than women and kids…well, I guess spilling paint all over the new living room rug will teach them to PUT THE LID BACK ON THE CAN before starting the wrestling match.

Folks, it’s really very simple.  Manufacturers put directions, and warnings, and disclaimers ON the packages of the products they produce to not only HELP you do the job right but also to protect themselves (and me) from your PATHETIC inability to think about what you are doing before you do it!  Those of us working in retail can tell within 30 seconds of talking to you whether or not you will give us a problem in the future.  We KNOW almost immediately which of you actually reads directions and who does their homework before starting a do-it-yourself project.  We know that many of you need to be spoon fed the most basic information…how some of you can even wipe your own ass is a mystery much of the time.

So, I hate Sunday’s becuase I hate people who don’t think before they speak.  If you are too lazy to read directions and then follow them, dam it, hire a fucking contractor to do the job for you.  Lord knows they need the work.

There was once a time when I considered myself to be pretty “conservative”.  I was all for small government, self-reliance, and basic values.  Ya, not so much any more.  The Log Cabin Republicans can eat my shorts.  I have no use for today’s conservative.  They are all about big governement, spying on citizens, control of the masses…you name it, the face of conservatism today is VASTLY different from what it was years ago and I’m not even that old.  On the same note, I’m not real fond of liberalism either.  I don’t really appreciate the  dumbing down of everything to the lowest common denominator just so nobody gets offended.  I really can’t stand whiny rants of inequity about whatever.  I guess I don’t really fit either mold and I’m OK with that too.  I did find a nice blurb on conservatism tonight that I wanted to post.  I agree with it but know that there is an equally disturbing converse side for liberals.

It Must Be scary to be a Conservative - By Chris Bowers

It must be really scary to be a conservative. To be one, you must live in constant fear of terrorists nuking the United States, of gay people on the verge of convincing you that you really enjoy sodomy, of Spanish becoming the official language of the United States next week, of every African-American voting seven or eight times in the next election, of radical Islam suddenly becoming the latest hip thing among kids across the country, of perpetual lesbian orgies in girls bathrooms in high schools across America, of liberals forcing everyone to become a vegan, of Christians being rounded up into concentration camps, and of Democrats outlawing private property if they were to ever take power again.

Here is another picture of complete stupidity.