Frustrations

I am a utilitarian in my efforts. Things have a purpose or they are useless to me. Be like water and seek the path of least resistence. Whatever it takes to get it done.

A Christmas present in a shoe box is still a present with or without fancy wrapping. I go along to get along but sometimes the useless things we do as a society drive me nuts. I say what I mean and mean what I say. No peripheral side-stepping. If you want to know what I think then be prepared because your delicate feelings or false self-image will not be icluded in the response equation. Never ask me if this dress makes your butt look fat. No your butt makes that dress look fat. Time is not a replacable commodity and I don't like wasting mine doing a tango of niceness.

I hate it when I want to get from point A to point B but have to consider options C,D,E and F. A good example is ordering food at a drive through. I'll take Hamburger Combo #1 please. Will that be regular, medium or large. REGULAR ! Would you like cheese with that? Did I say I wanted a cheeseburger ? Would you like a hot apple pie. Arrrghhhhh !!! If I wanted one I would have asked for one !!!!

So here is what set me off today and caused this venting. It is a beautiful day here and I work out of my house but I rarely get a chance to eat lunch let alone leave the house to go eat out. Today I decided to and thought a Pizza Hut buffet would be nice. It was 1:34PM when I left. I thought the buffett ended at 2:00 PM but once I arrived they were just turning off the heaters on the buffet table. So I asked if I missed the buffet and yep it was over 10 minutes ago. Now here's all this pizza, still warm, and salad in the salad bowl. They will throw all of this away or in the case of the pizza, box it and take it to the homeless shelter. So instead of making a last minute sale a mere 10 minutes past the deadline they end up getting nothing. Were it me I'd have said yeah go ahead and load up and I'd have made $6.00. So I shook my head and walked out.

Go to the Subway, nobody behind the counter. I make noises to indicate my presence. I wait, nobody comes. I turn and walk out. OK then let's run to Carl Junior's. Hadn't been there in a very longtime and I notice they have these two big machines where a second line of customers would have ordinarily been. There are three of us at the counter. People behind the counter are busy going to and fro but nobody takes our order.

Finally the guy in front of me says "well maybe we're supposed to use this machine". So he is over there custom building his burger and probably dealing with responding 'no' to question concerning hot apple pies. After he's pushed the screen a good dozen times he tries to put his $10 in the machine and it won't accept it. So he repeats the process at the other machine. Same result. So I look over at the other guy, an elderly man just standing there smiling and shaking his head and I say loud enough to be heard "what the hell ever happened with paying some young person to tend a counter ? Shortly after that a young person came and tended the counter " May I help you?"

We have gone technologically insane as a society bound by meaningless corporate policy as if it were set in stone and can not be trumped by common sense. The rule is 'Get the customers money in your hand ASAP. If you have to bend a corporate policy to get an additional sale then bend it.

Don't even get me started with restroom water conservation faucets and blow dryers.