Crankiness Abounds

Anybody who knows me knows I do not have a great deal of patience, particularly when I have to deal with the boneheads you encounter in so many “customer service” situations these days. But yesterday, while running errands and transacting routine business, I was in line behind somebody who was impatient to the point of being downright rude.

I actually felt sorry for the young lady who took the abuse, and told her so after the jerk left.

This guy, a well-dressed man who appeared to be in his early 40’s and driving a high-end luxury car (at least, he got into one when he left the store), was angry because the young lady asked for some ID when he proffered his credit card to pay for the transaction. Sheesh. I have written “ASK FOR PHOTO ID” instead of a signature on the back of both my bank debit cards.

Apparently, the young lady was supposed to know who this guy is.

It’s no secret that there’s a lot less happiness in the world these days. We live in a country that’s deeply divided politically. We’ve been involved in two seemingly endless foreign wars that seem to have no mission, no goals, no clear purpose, and which have drained our treasury and mortgaged our kids’ future.

We “won” the Iraq war in about five minutes of “shock and awe” years ago, and have been dallying there since. We set up a government in Afghanistan which appears to be composed largely of crooks and ne’er-do-wells, led by a man who wears a silly hat and apparently isn’t really a friend.

Anybody who’s over 45 or 50 years old - maybe even the rude man at the store - has seen their retirement “plan” become a retirement “guess” with the collapse of the economy last year.

Anybody who travels by airplane has seen that experience go from bad dream to nightmare in the past few years, marred by experiences like the absurd removal of footwear presided over by people who by and large should never be put in a position where they have to interact with other human beings.

We’ve been pounded by gasoline prices that soared to over four bucks a gallon for no apparent reason a couple years ago, and now anybody who pays attention to agriculture knows that our local farmers are on the ropes with the crappiest milk prices ever, while we pay through the nose at the store for a gallon of moo juice.

Never has the lunatic fringe been given more play in the media, as if it were normal to walk around with a gun on your hip carrying a sign saying the President is a Nazi. Round-the-clock news channels do so little fact-checking that anybody’s wildest statement is unchallenged, and regarded as “truth”.

The names “Glen Beck” and “Rush Limbaugh” come to mind. Network news broadcasts actually use clips from these blowhard clowns to “balance” their news! God forbid some lefty’s assertion that health care reform is a good thing be left “unbalanced”!

Now, before I descend into the mood-set of that horribly rude man at the store this morning, I’m going to head out into the 52-degree sunshine this afternoon with my dog, and enjoy what’s left of this gorgeous day before global warming or global cooling kills us all.