What's Wrong With Society In A Nutshell
Hello. Today I found the colour panel on the blog editor.
In other news it's Simon's birthday! It's also Elvis Presley's birthday. Today I have my first day off work in 7 days. Yay!
It isn't until you have to serve the general public at a job like the cinema that you begin to truly appreciate how generally stupid people are. For example. Story 1: A man bought an icecream from a till at Candy Bar yesterday (the big long bar that sells lollies and confectionary, not "candy" - "candy" should be banned from the English language) and then was told to queue up over at the icecream kiosk to get his icecream made. So he goes and stands beside it, completely oblivious to the queue. When he realises that only people who have queued are being served, he asks where he goes to get his icecream. He is told to join the queue. So he does. He gets impatient at the time it is taking to get to the front, so, as he is almost at the front, he leaves the icecream queue and, with goes and rejoins a till queue. He eventually gets to the front of that and asks if he can have his icecream. He is told to go and join the icecream queue. He starts to show signs of frustration but goes back and joins the icecream queue. He finally gets to the front of the icecream queue and gets his icecream, but then he says he wants to see the manager because he thinks the system is stupid and if it wasn't so complicated he wouldn't have wasted so much time. The manager has to listen to him, put up with him, and then placate him, apologising and so on, because if they don't, he's going to go out there and give us a bad name for poor service.
Story 2: A lady rings up today wanting to lay a complaint. I took the call and noticed she sounded very happy about wanting to make a complaint. I call up the supervisor who's on so that she can take it. Turns out this lady came in a few days ago (she'd been "too busy" to lay the complaint on the night or up until today), asked for 2 adults and 3 children to a movie. They misheard/misunderstood and gave her 2 adults and 2 children. She took the tickets and they started going over to Control Point to be let into their movie. However, it seems before they did, they came back a second time to buy lollies and confectionary. Then they went back to control point to be let in, where it was found they were missing a ticket. By this time the cinema was almost sold out, and when they went back a third time to buy the missing ticket, it was seperate from the rest. They didn't complain on the spot - if they had we could have put them in the seats we keep aside for problems like these. She also complained that the "young guy" who served her was "more interested in the young girls in front of us and behind us". I mean come on - who complains about something like that? Of course he's going to be! And what do you care?
I still remember customers who would buy tickets from the ticket box (directly opposite the cinema foyer entrance) and then look around and ask where the cinema was. Seriously, standing there, framed by the entrance, asking where it was. "Well sir, if you turn about and face the direction you were facing when you came up the escalators, you'll see this MASSIVE GAP IN THE WALL surrounded by movie posters, and inside, look! There's a popcorn machine right there! And see! More posters!! If you look really carefully, you might make out the big, bright sign above the door saying Berkeley CINEMAS!!"
There's several more examples I can think of off the top of my head, but I won't mention them now. Maybe some other time.
But seriously, so many people these days lack any form of common sense! Even in the staff there're people who lack the ability to think or judge or decide for themselves. They'll keep just mindlessly doing what they're told to do, and as soon as something changes, or goes wrong, they're a total mess. They can't handle it. But anyway, that was an aside. What I was saying was, the way I see it, "In My Experience," it comes down to 2 things. People these days are too used to other people thinking for them and people are too used to expecting that their every want and desire will be catered for. Many people, when left on their own, cannot cope. Whether it's a simple job of following instructions and finding the icecream kiosk, or successfully using a phone menu (yes if you ring our Movie Line you will encounter a menu where you have to choose between three of four options, and yes, you would be surprised by the number of people who can't use it and complain - as a Circle Lounge worker I'm one of the people who bear the brunt of these – one of the menu options connects you through to the Circle Lounge phones), a lot of people just cannot do it. Society is too convenient for its own good. You don’t have to think anymore, we invent things (or professionals) who can do it for us. All most people care about is pursuit of self gratification. “As long as I’m happy the rest of the world can take a train ride to hell for all I care”. It shows in society. A car alarm can be going off in a car park and no-one cares. People just walk on by with their heads down, anticipating the pleasure they’re about to get from browsing the latest clothes/perfume/games/stereos. I was at Botany with my dad a few years ago and this car hooned by through the carpark with this kid – about 3 or 4 years old - leaning from the window screaming and crying for their mother. Everyone else just kept walking. A few glanced up, but they didn’t do anything. My dad called the police and gave them a full description of the car! Whoever was driving it definitely wasn’t the kid’s mother, and the kid definitely didn’t want to be there.
Sometimes I think people need a war or some sort of national disaster to bring them back to their senses, help them show some common sense and actually take some responsibility for their own lives {That's another thing – no-one is willing to take responsibility for their actions anymore! It’s always “It’s not my fault” “I don’t know, don’t ask me!” “You should have told me I didn’t have my tickets!”}
People say that war is a terrible thing. Why is it terrible? Mostly because so many people die in a war. But then (and I am not in any way trying to undermine the tragedy of loosing a loved one) we all die at some point. Why is it any worse dying in a war? We’re all on the death sentence, millions of people die each week, we’re all going to die, yet we hate war because millions of people die in it. Perhaps we hate it because war gives us something to blame for our loved ones deaths. Perhaps we hate war because it destroys our way of life, makes us more aware of the threat and fear of death. So if we don’t want to die, and we don’t want the increase in rate of deaths that war brings, why fight in a war? If New Zealand was invaded tomorrow, would you fight? If yes, why? Sure if it was Hitler invading there would be a very definite reason – a regime under him could well mean a life of fear and torture and pain for the conquered. Also if a communist country invaded then we may fight for the convenience of a free market. But otherwise, why fight the invaders? What difference does it make who’s in charge? Perhaps we would be “fighting for our freedom” – what freedom would we be loosing? We’d be paying taxes to different people, some laws may change (some for better, others for worse), and our lifestyles would probably change thanks to the new laws. MP’s and civil servants would obviously be out of luck, but other than that, what difference would it make if we were invaded by another country with different values and ways of doing things? We’d have to adjust to a new lifestyle – that’s all. Are we fighting simply for our lifestyle? In World War One, what difference would it have made to the French if the Germans succeeded in their invasion? The Government would have gone. Is that it? What difference did it make in World War Two? They had to be allegiant to a different form of government, but otherwise if it wasn’t for uniquely Nazi inventions, such as the Gestapo and Concentration Camps, life wasn’t too much different. The fishermen kept fishing, the bakers kept baking, the students kept studying, the engineers kept working – only they were under a different political system. Correct me if I’m wrong. Why is war so bad? I think our society is too complacent and decadent and something catastrophic would do some badly needed waking up of people.
MS Word and I disagree as to whether “icecream” and “carpark” should be compound words or not.
Anyway, it’s 3am so I’m off to bed.
Night~
In other news it's Simon's birthday! It's also Elvis Presley's birthday. Today I have my first day off work in 7 days. Yay!
It isn't until you have to serve the general public at a job like the cinema that you begin to truly appreciate how generally stupid people are. For example. Story 1: A man bought an icecream from a till at Candy Bar yesterday (the big long bar that sells lollies and confectionary, not "candy" - "candy" should be banned from the English language) and then was told to queue up over at the icecream kiosk to get his icecream made. So he goes and stands beside it, completely oblivious to the queue. When he realises that only people who have queued are being served, he asks where he goes to get his icecream. He is told to join the queue. So he does. He gets impatient at the time it is taking to get to the front, so, as he is almost at the front, he leaves the icecream queue and, with goes and rejoins a till queue. He eventually gets to the front of that and asks if he can have his icecream. He is told to go and join the icecream queue. He starts to show signs of frustration but goes back and joins the icecream queue. He finally gets to the front of the icecream queue and gets his icecream, but then he says he wants to see the manager because he thinks the system is stupid and if it wasn't so complicated he wouldn't have wasted so much time. The manager has to listen to him, put up with him, and then placate him, apologising and so on, because if they don't, he's going to go out there and give us a bad name for poor service.
Story 2: A lady rings up today wanting to lay a complaint. I took the call and noticed she sounded very happy about wanting to make a complaint. I call up the supervisor who's on so that she can take it. Turns out this lady came in a few days ago (she'd been "too busy" to lay the complaint on the night or up until today), asked for 2 adults and 3 children to a movie. They misheard/misunderstood and gave her 2 adults and 2 children. She took the tickets and they started going over to Control Point to be let into their movie. However, it seems before they did, they came back a second time to buy lollies and confectionary. Then they went back to control point to be let in, where it was found they were missing a ticket. By this time the cinema was almost sold out, and when they went back a third time to buy the missing ticket, it was seperate from the rest. They didn't complain on the spot - if they had we could have put them in the seats we keep aside for problems like these. She also complained that the "young guy" who served her was "more interested in the young girls in front of us and behind us". I mean come on - who complains about something like that? Of course he's going to be! And what do you care?
I still remember customers who would buy tickets from the ticket box (directly opposite the cinema foyer entrance) and then look around and ask where the cinema was. Seriously, standing there, framed by the entrance, asking where it was. "Well sir, if you turn about and face the direction you were facing when you came up the escalators, you'll see this MASSIVE GAP IN THE WALL surrounded by movie posters, and inside, look! There's a popcorn machine right there! And see! More posters!! If you look really carefully, you might make out the big, bright sign above the door saying Berkeley CINEMAS!!"
There's several more examples I can think of off the top of my head, but I won't mention them now. Maybe some other time.
But seriously, so many people these days lack any form of common sense! Even in the staff there're people who lack the ability to think or judge or decide for themselves. They'll keep just mindlessly doing what they're told to do, and as soon as something changes, or goes wrong, they're a total mess. They can't handle it. But anyway, that was an aside. What I was saying was, the way I see it, "In My Experience," it comes down to 2 things. People these days are too used to other people thinking for them and people are too used to expecting that their every want and desire will be catered for. Many people, when left on their own, cannot cope. Whether it's a simple job of following instructions and finding the icecream kiosk, or successfully using a phone menu (yes if you ring our Movie Line you will encounter a menu where you have to choose between three of four options, and yes, you would be surprised by the number of people who can't use it and complain - as a Circle Lounge worker I'm one of the people who bear the brunt of these – one of the menu options connects you through to the Circle Lounge phones), a lot of people just cannot do it. Society is too convenient for its own good. You don’t have to think anymore, we invent things (or professionals) who can do it for us. All most people care about is pursuit of self gratification. “As long as I’m happy the rest of the world can take a train ride to hell for all I care”. It shows in society. A car alarm can be going off in a car park and no-one cares. People just walk on by with their heads down, anticipating the pleasure they’re about to get from browsing the latest clothes/perfume/games/stereos. I was at Botany with my dad a few years ago and this car hooned by through the carpark with this kid – about 3 or 4 years old - leaning from the window screaming and crying for their mother. Everyone else just kept walking. A few glanced up, but they didn’t do anything. My dad called the police and gave them a full description of the car! Whoever was driving it definitely wasn’t the kid’s mother, and the kid definitely didn’t want to be there.
Sometimes I think people need a war or some sort of national disaster to bring them back to their senses, help them show some common sense and actually take some responsibility for their own lives {That's another thing – no-one is willing to take responsibility for their actions anymore! It’s always “It’s not my fault” “I don’t know, don’t ask me!” “You should have told me I didn’t have my tickets!”}
People say that war is a terrible thing. Why is it terrible? Mostly because so many people die in a war. But then (and I am not in any way trying to undermine the tragedy of loosing a loved one) we all die at some point. Why is it any worse dying in a war? We’re all on the death sentence, millions of people die each week, we’re all going to die, yet we hate war because millions of people die in it. Perhaps we hate it because war gives us something to blame for our loved ones deaths. Perhaps we hate war because it destroys our way of life, makes us more aware of the threat and fear of death. So if we don’t want to die, and we don’t want the increase in rate of deaths that war brings, why fight in a war? If New Zealand was invaded tomorrow, would you fight? If yes, why? Sure if it was Hitler invading there would be a very definite reason – a regime under him could well mean a life of fear and torture and pain for the conquered. Also if a communist country invaded then we may fight for the convenience of a free market. But otherwise, why fight the invaders? What difference does it make who’s in charge? Perhaps we would be “fighting for our freedom” – what freedom would we be loosing? We’d be paying taxes to different people, some laws may change (some for better, others for worse), and our lifestyles would probably change thanks to the new laws. MP’s and civil servants would obviously be out of luck, but other than that, what difference would it make if we were invaded by another country with different values and ways of doing things? We’d have to adjust to a new lifestyle – that’s all. Are we fighting simply for our lifestyle? In World War One, what difference would it have made to the French if the Germans succeeded in their invasion? The Government would have gone. Is that it? What difference did it make in World War Two? They had to be allegiant to a different form of government, but otherwise if it wasn’t for uniquely Nazi inventions, such as the Gestapo and Concentration Camps, life wasn’t too much different. The fishermen kept fishing, the bakers kept baking, the students kept studying, the engineers kept working – only they were under a different political system. Correct me if I’m wrong. Why is war so bad? I think our society is too complacent and decadent and something catastrophic would do some badly needed waking up of people.
MS Word and I disagree as to whether “icecream” and “carpark” should be compound words or not.
Anyway, it’s 3am so I’m off to bed.
Night~
posted by David | 2:57 am
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