h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I went grocery shopping yesterday. While at the supermarket, I saw something that made my blood boil. It had to do with an army of middle-aged Chinese women who were taking forever with their groceries at the counter.

Now, understand this, people: I am a reasonably patient person. I can tolerate somebody taking forever digging through her purse for nine one-cent coins so that the cashier won't have to give her change, never mind that the thing is some dollars and ten cents. I can even grit my teeth and bear with it if somebody gets to the counter and discovers - horror of horrors! - that one of their mineral water bottles is dented, or she's forgotten the soap, and sends somebody back to get/exchange the item (not to worry, the rest of the world is perfectly happy to fritter away their time waiting in line behind you. And we don't care about the jam on the way home).

What I cannot stand, however, are shoppers who reach the counter and decide that they've got one item too many in their cart, or that they don't really need the butter after all --- and off-load them on the candy shelf or under the counter, OR someplace other than where they took it. Which is exactly what these women were doing - stuffing their extra bottles of mineral water and sauce and cans into the candy bar shelves, behind all the boxes - doubtlessly so that the cashier wouldn't see them.

This is shoppers' selfishness and irresponsibility taken to the extreme - and something that I've observed with exponentially increasing frequency. If you don't really need ten cans of spam, why take so many in the first place? Okay, fine, you may need them all, but upon reaching the counter you discover that you don't have enough money - I'll allow for that. But what does it hurt you to return the item to where you took it, instead of junking it someplace it doesn't belong, or maybe just asking a supermarket attendant to help you out? Two minutes of your life? Your place in the line? Well, tough luck, buster - you take something off the shelves, you're responsible for it. You should've planned your freaking shopping list before you started emptying the shelves onto your cart.

It's bad enough that consumers are taking things off shelves, and then putting them where they belong - I've been bars of soap being left on food shelves, and plush toys right on top of candy bars. But when you take something that is temperature-sensitive like butter or ice-cream, decide you don't want it, and leave it someplace to rot --- that's an action that deserves the mandatory death sentence.

Listen up, people. You may not think there's anything to leaving your yoghurt on the bread shelf - and for all I know, you probably don't care - but there's a reason why the freaking yoghurt is kept in the freaking cold section, and not on bloody open shelves. Why do you think some items are kept refrigerated? - to arrest or retard the microbes inside.

Letting a box of ice-cream defrost entirely, and then sticking it back in the freezer section not only causes ice crystals to form, thus ruining the taste of the ice cream, BUT also allows microorganisms that are dormant inside (what, did you think ice-cream was sterile?) to flourish - even to dangerous proportions. Cheeses and yoghurt are made with bacterial cultures (you know all those ads promoting Lactobacilli? yeah, your blue cheese and your Nestle yoghurt are alive), and sometime in their production the temperature of these things are brought down to arrest further growth of these microbes, because the right amount of fermented chemicals has been achieved in the product. What happens if you bring the temperature back up to the temperature for optimal growth? They start reproducing and metabolising again --- and whoosh, there goes the carefully measured taste, there goes your product.

And meat! They can't very well shoot up your side of beef with preservatives the way they do things in cans. And guess what, the meat is raw - which means that it's made up of blood and other microbe food resources. And if there's anything microbes love, it's blood. So unless you're the sort to eat charred corpse of cow, you're going to be eating a hunk of meat that has living creatures inside of it - and you're not going to want to buy a side of beef that was left standing in a corner before being returned.

Okay, so maybe a couple minutes of exposure won't really harm these products. But have you seen the way shoppers hide these items? as though they're some sort of secret treasure. You know what I mean - on the bottom shelf, behind other items. By the time the supermarket attendants have found them, who knows how long they've been out of the open? The product is no longer marketable!

(Yes, I'm sure that there are unscrupulous attendants who just put them back on the shelves, but I'm also sure that these are few and far between... especially if the store is to maintain a good reputation. And in the event they do actually do that.... well, you'd better think twice the next time you put a pat of butter in your basket, just in case it's a returned object!)

Of course, this is just a long-winded way of saying that leaving temperature-sensitive products out in the open will ruin them!!! In fact, you shouldn't even return these things back to their freezers once you've taken them and walked around for half an hour. As a shopper, you should be responsible for taking these items - that, once you've removed them, you don't return them. (Unless of course, you were just taking them down for a few seconds to read the label and stuff. I'm not entirely unreasonable). Responsibility, people, responsibility! Plan your shopping properly - get all your dry and canned goods first, and THEN when you're about to leave, go get your ice-cream, your cheeses, your butter. That way you won't be damaging any goods, and you won't be harming yourself. Surely it doesn't take all that much effort to organise your shopping?

Let's show a little more consideration for our fellow shoppers, people. There may be supermarket employees all over the place, but there's only so much they can do, so much they can monitor. What do you think would happen if everybody behaved the same way and randomly left their things about? Being a little more responsible in a public place won't exactly kill you - and it would save the rest of us a lot of grief.

Oh, and to those of you selfish enough to bring ten items to the five-item express counter - GO SOD OFF!

-- Farlander the irate.

(NOTE: To everybody reading this - I'm not necessarily targetting you guys. I was just so angry about this I had to write it down, and share it with others, who are probably bothered by this plague as well)

No need to apologise, my friend. This is just one of a many variations of a rampant disease infecting modern societies. I lump them together under one major grouping, jerkism.

Perhaps I'll do a piece (probably have to be a collaborative one) that lists and describes some of the more obvious and serious forms. It simply must be that some people are just to dense to understand what constitutes free-will and what amounts to just being a soddin' jerk.

Well, let me know if you do start that collaborative article. There are a couple of "rampant disease infecting modern societies" that I would dearly like to rant about.

"who are probably bothered by this plague as well"

Yes, it annoys me too. I replace the easy items when I see them - sometimes the bad shoppers have only dumped them a short distance away from where they should be (which shows the extreme extent of their laziness and incompetence). I draw the staff's attention to the items that are more of a problem. A couple of weeks ago I found an onion tucked away which had actually started sprouting - a very long root and a few faint leaves!

This is a particularly annoying version of 'jerkism', if not one of the more serious and dangerous ones. Perhaps the three of use (or more) could decide if it would be a good idea to break it down categorically: ie:
Market maintenance
Market shopping
Market etiquette
Or, better still perhaps:
Shopping
Driving
Phones
EMail
... and such.

I often thought of just writing an entire book on the subject, perhaps something along the line of 'You're a jerk [put your name here]' or 'Are You A Jerk?', as most of us are capable of moments of jerkism. It could provide a scoring sheet to help one determine if they were only the occasionally absent-minded jerk, a regular jerk, or and absolute god of jerkism.

Instead of a book, you might consider writing an internet survey form on it. Lots of people seem to like answering those N point tests and finding out how X they are (where X can be almost any attribute from geekiness to gayness to compatibility with their current partner). The sneaky bit is that while taking such a test they might be forced to become more aware of their behaviour.

Well, if it makes them aware of their behaviour, that's a good thing, isn't it? Um, if it causes them to become more careful and considerate, that is. Oh okay, I forget, we're talking about inconsiderate people. 'Twould be easier to move a mountain.

Fords, you forgot 'Cinema/Concert hall etiquette'! I've a lot of things to say about that. Especially with regard to those who, despite all the announcements to TURN OFF ALL HANDPHONES, still keep them on -- and halfway through the movie/performance, the thing goes off, and .... hang on, there's more .... they actually *answer* the darned thing!

I do like the idea of a net survey to get basic stats and comments, but there are an awful lot of self-help books out there that are doing pretty well too.

I'm certain that some people would rather not be jerks, just as people take courses to no longer be stupid. Seems to me there may be a market here.

Some people may simply be asocial, but others are just ignorant. Perhaps, like body odor or bad breath, once people are made aware that they might have a problem, they'll feel compelled to examine themselves for symptoms and work for a cure.

I can see it now, 'Your 12-step Program To Abandon Jerkism: Or, how to keep friends and not piss off people'

I knew a dear, friendly lady who was just so loud that people took it for aggressiveness and hyperbole. Turns out that she had been compensating for a gradual, but severe, hearing loss. After she had been properly diagnosed and fitted with a hearing aid, she lamented that if only someone had told her, she might have found out before the loss became so bad.

Watcha think?

I can easily add to this book/survey...
Drivers here amaze me. Last night I was about to exit the parking lot of the grocery store and this guy was on the highway. He actually drove into the right-turn lane where *I* was and just drove over it to the proper lane. Then he had the audacity to stare at me when I leaned on my horn and screamed as I slammed on my brakes. It was if he was saying, "What? What did I do?!"
Another one....people who come to the vet's office with their pets who are spoiled brats and then treat them like babies when they act up. Dr Lance has told *many* an idiot owner that if the animal is allowed to act out it will bite others and then be quarrantined for ten days. Somehow it always shocks the owners... Yesterday, actually, a woman came in with two Miniature Pinschers. One began barking at me immediately and would not stop. Eventually he started coming towards me and soon began trying to tear my leg off. The lady was actually startled! She didn't even try to pull the dog back, she just said, "It's okay, baby! It's okay!"
I just stared at her. I wanted to scream, "NO IT'S NOT OKAY, YOU STUPID COW!! YOUR DOG IS A F***ING MENACE AND I WOULD LOVE TO PUT MY SIZE 7S UP HIS *SS RIGHT NOW!! AND YOU'RE MAKING IT WORSE BY COOING HIM!! HE'S NOT OKAY, HE'S NOT A BABY, AND YOU'RE A STUPID FAT B*TCH!!"
*pant pant* Okay, that's my rant of the day...think it's about time I started that Ranter's Society now.....

There, there. It'll be okay.

I've been trying to remember the term for misplaced items at the market... I think it's called 'drift' but I haven't been able to confirm that. I know it falls under 'shrinkage' which includes shoplifting and pilfering and other expected losses a store suffers as part of doing business. When I worked for one entire night as a stocker for a major grocer I learned it. Believe it or not the job was too stressful for me.. well too stressful for the pitance they were paying anyway. But anyway, one of the things we were responsible for was replacing all the misplaced items.

I was pretty upset when they told me to put the new stock in front of the old stock because it was quicker. I had worked retail before and that was a bozo-no-no. But because we had such a small crew and so little time they prefered letting old stock sit at the back and get dusty than pull it off, put the new stock on the shelf and place the older stock in front. Oh well.

Anyway, enough rambling. Ok, how's this for jerkage? People who leave their shopping cart parked behind or worse, against your car in the lot! Seriously folks, it takes 30 seconds to put the cart where it belongs.

From my days working in the fast-food industry...
Idiots who cannot read the menus at a restaurant. I used to work drive-thru at Arby's and people would drive up and ask for a cheeseburger. "We don't sell cheeseburgers," I'd say. "Well, what do you serve?" they'd ask. I wanted to scream through the intercom, "READ THE BLOODY MENU, GENIUS!!"
Really, stupid people in general piss me off. So I stay angry a lot. There is one thing that irks me more than almost anything and that is people who come to the US and do not speak English - and never learn English. And for some reason *we* cater to those people and make ourselves bi-lingual. I seriously doubt Japan or Russia does that for Americans or for Italians. Why should we do it? It makes no sense!!

Actually quite a lot of Japanese speak English. Well, Engrish anyway.

http://www.engrish.com/

Madman, you are truly mad. Hey, I understand about the menu thing, it's right stupid not to read the bloody menu.

Still, as bad as it is when foreign people live in a country and NEVER learn the language (and I find it hard to understand), where visitors go, a much larger percentage of European and Asian people (especially merchants) speak some English than the number of Americans who speak another language well enough to communicate there.

Some Asian languages have similar roots (the same goes for some European languages) that they become multi-lingual, rather than merely bi-lingual.

This may be due, in part, to the fact that English has become a de-facto world-wide language for business. When two companies speak commpletely different languages, they are often found to use English as a 'neutral ground'.

Its use in contracts is especially valuable when it is tough to find true agreement on terms, English can be as specific or as vague as necessary to get a contract signed by both parties. Vagueness can be an essential part to finding agreeable terms when various prides are at stake. Each can kinda convince themselves that they 'won', when what they got was simply a fair deal.

Yay, English.

Another bout of grousing, then.

One of my best friends lives in this large housing area where they have a street night market on Thursday nights. The thing with street markets is that you have to find parking space for your cars near shoplots, and on vacant fields and the like - which would be like anything from a minute to several minutes' walk from the market.

Alas, if only it were so. You will probably have noticed that when people park in a shopping centre car park, they'll circle the area closest to the lifts for ages trying to find a spot, when there are many spaces a little farther away. These are the same folks who won't bother looking for a decent space to leave their cars to get to the market. Oh no.... These people actually brazenly park on the driveways of people's houses.

So that was what happened that one Thursday night. Needless to say, no cars could go in or out of my friend's house, and her mother was irate (which is only reasonable). So when the fellow finally came back for his car, she let loose her tongue and berated the guy, saying that it was irresponsible and inconsiderate for him to block somebody's driveway simply for the sake of convenience, and what if there were an emergency in their house and they needed to get out on the double?

You'd have thought that the fellow would've been embarrassed enough to grudgingly say sorry, but oh no. He lets loose a tirade, screaming at her for being rude and unyielding. And what's more, his young teenaged son joined in and shouted at her for being callous! (and this in a country where it's considered incredibly bad manners - not to mention a stain upon your family name - for a child to raise his voice at adults...)

Cripes.

If someone completely blocked my drive I'd have them towed. No, by doing something so... callous is the right word for THEIR actions, I feel they give up any expectation of courteous treatment in return.


Now speaking of people in parking lots/car parks I hate the people who are so desperate to get that very closest space to the store/mall/market/elevator entrance that they spend 5 or more minutes following people to their car to see if they are parked closest.

So, here's what I do when at the mall. (I make only one pass to find a close spot so I'm usually parked about halfway out or more). When I walk out to my car I purposely walk down an adjacent aisle. If someone follows me I walk really slowly. I then try to figure out that boundary, that last car that they hope I'm driving so as to take my spot. Any farther they'll circle again and stalk the next patron. When I feel I'm getting close to that limit I walk toward a car like its mine with keys in hand.... verrry... sloooowly... pause by the dooooorrr.....

...

ANDWALKTOTHENEXTAISLE, go to my actual car and laugh at them!

Brilliant, Count Zero!
Americans are some of the most overweight people on Earth and it would be beneficial for most of us to actually walk instead of driving around and around for a parking place close to the entrance of a store. Plus, gasoline is about $2.15 a gallon here (premium, mind you...my car has a V6 engine and has to have the good stuff), so why waste gas and be a fat ass?
Hey! A slogan!
'Why waste gas and be a fat ass? Just PARK!!"

Speaking of vehicles, how do you like people who are sitting at the front of the line at a light, who decide it's the perfect time to rummage through stuff on the seat next to them; or, worse, in the back seat?

They have no clue that being in front puts a special burden of alertness on you, as you affect everyone's chances of making it through and facilitating the flow of traffice. That is such self-centered jerkism, in so many ways.

One of the most accurate measurements of time is the three seconds it takes between the light turning green and the second car in line to honk its horn.

Hi CZ,

Oh, if 'twere only so! That is an accurate measurement of time, but only if the person actually honks. I've sat through most of a light, three or more cars back, and waited 5 seconds to finally hit my own horn!

Wake up Guys! IT DOESN'T GET ANY GREENER!!

How about those who get in a passing lane doing less than the limit; or, worse, pace the traffic next to them!

While we're discussing horrible drivers, let me grouse a bit about awful passengers! In spite of the fact that we *do* have anti-littering laws over here, I tend to see all manner of things being tossed out of the passenger window(s) of a moving car - anything from soiled tissue paper to banana peel and other food-related waste. Surely it couldn't hurt to just... keep them on a piece of tissue paper on the mat, or in a plastic bag, until you get to a proper dustbin??? I mean, food waste doesn't exactly count as Biohazard Material, Level 4...