A Clear Thinking Oasis (Nice Long Rant!)

Sometimes at work I long to be around smart people. Like today, a girl named Tiffany said faggot. She then caught herself and asked if I minded if she said it. I told her, "I'd rather you say faggot than nigger to be honest." She laughed and replied, "Why?" I said, "Because there is more history and hatred behind the word nigger." Laughing even harder, she replied, "Yeah right. Nigger is just fun to say!"

This next thing might seem trivial but it got under my skin. This guy named Josh told me that he didn't know how to view his own myspace page. He knew how to see new comments, but didn't know how to see his own myspace page. Really? Yeah, I know, it's silly. But it amazed me that somebody that age who actually had a myspace didn't have the knowledge to view it.

Later I overheard Josh and Bobby talking and complaining about their homework. I don't know what led to it or what the conversation was about, but I did hear bobby say, "I swear, people are just stupid. I mean, if we evolved from monkeys then why are there still monkeys. It's that simple. And besides, science has proven that all humanity came from two people and that's exactly what the Bible says. As if we needed science to tell us that."

I didn't even say a word because I would have been there all day. I wouldn't even know where to begin with that statement. But then again, Bobby was the one who thought that President Obama was going to be kicked out as soon as they realized he was born in India and that Former President Bush would come back to fix everything he messed up.

And then there's my manager. Yes, I know it's fucky fried chicken... but this guy is an idiot (and is a head manager of a money making franchise!). He cannot spell anything worth a shit. The other day he posted a note about a meeting ... oh i'm sorry, it was actually a meating. A mandantorry meating at that. Apparently if we have any reazon why we cannot attend said meating, we are reqiered to talk to the mangement.

So perhaps I'm being picky. Either way, I thought it was funny... especially since it said that everybody had to be thier (yes, not only did he use the wrong form, he spelled it wrong too). So being the funny guy I am, I wrote a little note on the paper in the office that pointed to the misspelled words and read, "Spellcheck is a blessing. Use it."

Apparently he was so fumed when he saw it that he was seconds from calling me up on my day off and firing me. I guess he calmed down and decided to "have words" with me instead. He told me that he knows that he isn't the best speller, but that I needed to bring these things to his attention because calling them out by writing on the paper makes him look stupid (as if spelling the words horribly wrong didn't already). He also said that "not all of us went to school for computer techonology and know how to use spell check." He's 29 years old people. He's only six years older than me!

Apparently I'm dangerous at fucky fried chicken. I'm a whisteblower! There was this new policy about using paper liners on chicken. The big manager told everybody that liners cost five cents each and that for each one we waste he is taking five cents out of our paycheck (he was being dead serious). I got bitched at for blowing the whistle on this because I knew that these things couldn't possibly cost that much and all I had to do was look up in the cost book to find that per sheet that he claimed was five cents was actually a cool four hundreths of a penny each. So apparently they aren't five cents each sheet... they're 5 cents per 125 sheets.

I talked to big man manager Dan about his lying to crew members about the cost of product (cups, paper, chicken, etc) and told him that morally I found it abhorring (had to explain that word to him). I told him that in the end people will not respect him for lies and that if he wants to lower paper cost that he needs to tell the truth about how it hurts the company and not to lie about it. He told me that he did not agreed and he didn't care if people respected him or not and that the ends justified the means. Whatever. (Oh and big shocker here. This guy who makes his own shedule actively shedules himself to work so that he can get out of church but is apparenlty a devout Christian. Nothing says hypocrite like a Christian actively avoiding followers of his own faith in devotion to God by skipping church every week).

Oh and today, new rule! Apparenlty now we need to have a manager with us with their special manager key before we can clock in or out because we can't be trusted to clock in and out by ourselves. On top of that, we need the manager to issue 10% senior citizen discounts on food. Wow. When I critized this I mentioned how we were told if we clocked in early we would be wrote up and that nobody has been wrote up. I went on to expose the fact that all their threats have proven to be empty as nobody has been fired or wrote up for the miriad of rules that we were warned about (and that everybody breaks on a daily basis). I told them they had empty threats and I was told to "try them." *Rolls eyes*

So anyways, the point of my rant is this. I wish I could say that these were isolated instances of stupidity but they're not. I know this is fast food and these are teenagers but I assure that little chances as these people grow up and branch out. I wish I could say that stupidity was uncommon but it's not. I know there are smart people out there and I know there are educated people too. All three of these people voted in the 2008 election (2 for McCain, 2 surprisingly for Obama). It's days like this that I say to myself that democracy doesn't work. A democratic society cannot flourish and prosper when it's voters are fucking stupid. I would actively support a McCain/Palin presidency if it meant that all the stupid people in America magically became educated.

Usually talk at work does not go past sex and annoying customers. But every once in a while it does and on these days nihilism seeps into my brain like never before. It's like there are forty people all telling me the pen is blue when I can clearly see that the fucking pen is red! There used to be a girl named Kelly who was so smart and so well read. She was my clear thinking oasis and I miss her a lot. Even her boyfriend who volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, spending six months in Hungary building homes for low-income families, was smart. They broke up and he now works at Pizza Hut and she attends university.

I want my clear thinking oasis back. I want somebody to come to my work who can exchange intelligent statements and hypotheses.

Jesus freaks and religious nuts are so lucky. When they are surrounded by people who do not share their beliefs they can simply write it off as evil, sinful, or the AntiChrist. When we intellectuals are surrounded by people who don't understand science, religion, philosophy, psychology, etc etc etc, all we can do is take a pencil to our face and stab stab stab!!!

I often float between this strange dissonance in my desire that I was born during a much more simple time, like the 1400s. Sure I wouldn't have modern medicine, science, or a worldwide view of humanity... but boy would I be at bliss. Knowledge is a burden and sometimes I wish I was just stupid (but not really). Because then the next wish floats in, that I was born in another universe.

In this universe, I like to call it my Madam Butterfly universe, there is no religion, bullshit ideas, or mental laxity. When people want to get philosophical and ponder life and existence, they open up a book or watch a documentary about the natural processes like deep sea life, rain forest diversity, quantum mechanics, or philosophical futurism. They might read Bible tales, but not to take them seriously, but to learn more about primitive beliefs and the human experience. They would read from the Bible, the Koran, Hindu texts, Greco-Roman faith, and more to achieve a sense of man's strange path to understand himself. When they want to get out of the house, they wouldn't go drinking or clubbing. They'd go to museums of art of history or to the local Denny's to discuss literature.

I remember the first time I went to Richard Dawkins' website and saw the subtitle, A Clear Thinking Oasis. Something about it made me feel like I could sense the breeze through my hair as a stood on top of a great mountain overlooking a gorgeous natural scene (perhaps because next to the subtitle happened to be a picture of him doing just that).

Alas, the closest place to get to this is to pull up my ipod and listen to the sweet English voices of Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward as they tell me stories about Abraham, and Moses, and the grasshopper, and the platypus as well as mitochondria and genes of a selfish nature.