Not Enough to Worry About

So I went on a Caribbean cruise to celebrate my birthday. I love a cruise. The ships are beautiful. The food is amazing and unending. There's drinking, gambling, entertainment, and in the morning you wake up in beautiful new destination. Honestly, barring being hit by a hurricane or the like, I don't know how anyone could be unhappy on a cruise. But that doesn't stop some people. For example, after entering the port terminal I got on line to check in and board the ship. The couple in front of me had to wait maybe five minutes for their turn to get registered and board. By about the three and a half minute mark, the woman announced irately that Royal Caribbean was ruining her cruise! Later I saw another passenger who upon discovering that the soft serve machine wasn't open all 24 hours a day promptly declared that their vacation was ruined! And I've seen it on other cruises and in other situations where any person in their right mind should be happy and thankful and instead they become incensed at insignificant details. Check out a travel review site sometime. No matter how nice the hotel, resort, etc., you will find reviews vociferously complaining that their trip was spoiled because they found a tiny crack in some piece of tile you can hardly see anyway. And it's not just when people are traveling. Listen to the people in your life sometime and hear how the smallest minutia can ruin their entire day.

The problem is that people don't have enough to worry about these days. We used to worry about just making it through the day without being eaten by animals. Later we worried about getting enough to eat so that we didn't starve and enough shelter so that we didn't freeze to death. We moved on to finding safe working conditions, and more than one day off, and so on and so forth. Now, relatively speaking, life is so good for most of us that we have time to worry about the tiniest, most inconsequential things. Think about it. Nobody cares if they're wearing the right brand of jeans if they're being chased by a sabre tooth tiger. It doesn't bother you in the slightest if your latte was made with whole milk instead of 2% if you haven't eaten in a week. However, for most of us these more primal fears have long ago been quited. Unfortunately, rather than make us appreciate all that we have, all too often that can cause us to stomp around like spoiled children declaring our cruise has been "ruined." System broken.

Bus Monitor Blues

     So this clip of a bus monitor getting called fat is taking the web by storm and apparently people have now donated over half a million dollars to give to her! System broken.
     What ever happened to sticks and stones... Yes, kids are mean, and they shouldn't have said mean things to her. But she's the adult!  And as I understand it she was on the bus in the first place to prevent bullying. My question is, how is she supposed to prevent children from being bullied if she can't keep herself from being bullied? Shouldn't she be fired? At the very least shouldn't the administrator who came up with this plan and hired her be let go? Unless from the very begining the plan was to put her on the bus so the kids would bully her instead of the other children, but that would be really mean. Or maybe not.....
     For now it seems that as a nation we've decided to give this woman over half a million dollars! All I can say is where do I sign up for that? Seriously, we'll get a video camera and kids on buses everywhere can say whatever mean things pop into their little heads. They can yell at me until the tape runs out. You don't even half to give me half a million dollars. I'll do it for fifty grand. Hell, I'll do it for five!
     As I see it, she's being rewarded for either failing to do her job, or accepting a job she was not capable of doing in the first place. Even if none of that were true, she's still just a woman who had a bad day. Her child didn't die. Her house didn't burn down. She wasn't horribly disfigured. With all the people in the world who really need help, with all the good that a half million dollars could do, we decide instead to give it to her because she had a bad day. System broken.

Readers who should have taken a class in logic

     After my last blog, I received several messages saying the reason things like that happen is that we don't pay teachers enough. In fact, I heard from several teachers. They opined that if we just paid teachers better, we would fix the educational system. In fairness to these readers, this is a mantra I have heard repeated over and over by teachers through the years. Now don't get me wrong, I love teachers. My mother was a teacher. Many of the favorite people in my life have been teachers. And it's entirely possible that teachers are underpaid, but this line of argument coming from teachers is proof of just how screwed up things are.
     Listen to what they are actually arguing.... Raising teacher salaries will solve the problem. That means one of two possible things. Either they mean that higher salaries will allow the schools to hire competent teachers, while the present salary level does not. Or... it means that if we pay teachers more, they will start doing a good job instead of the crappy job they're doing now. Now it's possible that either or both of these things may actually be true, but remember that this argument was coming from people who are presently teachers. What they're really saying is that 1) I’m incompetent and should be replaced, or 2) I’m not going to do a good job until you pay me more! Either way, not a very bright thing for a teacher to say.
     I know this is going to piss some people off, but that’s what they’re saying. And I fear that as long as so many people so intimately involved in a problem situation can not discuss it with a little bit deeper thought, we will continue to be screwed.

1+1+1 is 5!

     I love it when I only manage to get an hour or two into my day before being slapped in the face with absolute proof that this country is going to hell! This morning I stopped at a fast food restaurant to get some breakfast. To name it would be pointless as I consider them all to be equally bad. After surveying their menu, I ordered three items which, as it happened, were all 99 cents. The pimply faced young cashier looked up at me and said, "That will be $5.53."

      With my mind already dancing with thoughts of sausagy, breakfast goodness, I wasn't a hundred percent sure I had heard him correctly, and responded, "No... I only ordered three things and they were all a dollar."

      He looked down at the register in front of him, hit some buttons, looked at it some more, and announced, "No sir, that's right, it's $5.53."

       I mustered a chuckle and said, "No, I got three things, they were 99 cents each, so that should be three bucks and some change for tax."

      "Well," he responded incredulously, "the computer says it's $5.53."

      Not certain whether to laugh or be angry, I pointed at the menu and said as kindly as I could, "Forget about the computer and just use your brain. Everything I ordered was a dollar, and one plus one plus one is three! How did we get to five dollars and change?"

     The cashier, seemingly both perplexed and annoyed, replied, "Look, I don't know buddy, the computer says it's $5.53."

      Great, he's resolute in his ignorance, and now we've moved from sir, to buddy! At this point I looked around to see if there were any other audience members in this theater of the absurd, and sadly, or perhaps thankfully, there were none. Well, at least I wasn't holding anybody else up!

      Having clearly reached the limits of this young man's intellect, I asked to speak to the manager. The boy humphed and went to get him. Shortly, a slightly older and slightly better dressed young man appeared and asked what was the matter. I explained that I had ordered three items, that those items were each 99 cents, but that I was being charged five dollars and change for my purchase. "Hmmmm....." he replied. Then he looked at the register, pushed some buttons, looked at the register again and said, "Nope, the computer says it's $5.53."

      I am certain that the dumbfounded look that spread across my face was truly priceless to anyone watching. In the end it took almost another five minutes before light dawned upon marble head and I got my breakfast for the right price. Now I know not everybody is a math genius, but this is simple arithmetic, and if this kid can't add to three, how is ever going to go any further than being a cashier at a fast food restaurant? Oh wait... I guess he could be the manager! If this is truly the best our educational system can do, we're screwed.

Hate, Forgiveness, and the US Open

Hate, Forgiveness, and the US Open

          I watched most of the US Open coverage yesterday with my brother, and as he struggled to stay awake and Tiger Woods struggled to stay near the top of the leader board, I couldn't help reflecting on the saga that has been Tiger Woods in the past couple of years. 
     I used to hate Tiger Woods. I think that was the result of two things. First, almost immediately upon bursting onto the scene of professional golf, the pundits, commentators and radio talk show hosts almost immediately began predicting he would surpass Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 victories in major championships. I dislike it when someone is canonized like this before getting anywhere near the actual achievement. (In fairness, I'm also a big fan of Jack's that may have played into it.) So I disliked Tiger from the start. Secondly, when any person, thing, song, etc., gets too overly popular, my instinct is to hate it. Not rational, I know, but that's me! Now my little hate-affair with Tiger Woods was moving along fine over the years, he was continually unlikeable, unengaging, and as far I was concerned, kind of an ass. I mean let's face it, the man had an ego the size of Cleveland, and the only time he ever interacted with fans was to yell at them for making too much noise or taking a picture. He was, however, an ass who was unquestionably the greatest golfer on the planet.
     Then it came out that he was also secretly sleeping with half the hot women on the planet! Sick as it may be, my first instinct was to like him better. Maybe he was human after all! As he lost his family, sponsors, fans, and seemingly his golf game, I wanted to like him even more. And I don't think I was alone. In America we love to see someone fall from the heights, but we also love to see a comeback even more. If on his road back Tiger was willing to be just a little more accessible, engaging, and fan-friendly, I was ready to hop on his band wagon and wave a flag. In fact, I was looking forward to it. It's always more fun to root for someone as they attempt a great feat than to root against them. It always more fulfilling to celebrate greatness than to revel in someone's failure. Tiger, however, had other ideas. Since his return he has been no more open, likeable, or good to his fans than he ever was. He didn't reach out to us as fans or even seem to care what anyone thought. No, he seems determined not to bend, give, or accommodate in even the slightest way.
     What a shame. What a missed opportunity. His golf game seems to be getting better, and I don't know how he'll end up finishing today, but in the larger game he has already lost. Other golfers have been beloved. Palmer, Nicklaus, Chi Chi, and Trevino, for example, were awesome golfers who were loved by the fans. Tiger on the other had has only ever been liked because he was the best. Of his time and maybe all time. Both of those things may now have changed, and sadly, it seems the most Tiger Woods can hope for is to return to being an ass who is also the best golfer on the planet/ever. Maybe he will. Who knows... But until then, given what he's wasted, squandered and given up, he's just an ass.