CHCH News - Stupidity Run Amok

Have you ever noticed that we have a very serious problem these days? No, I don’t mean the economy, the war on terror or any of those things. I’m speaking of stupidity run amok!

If you don’t know what I mean, I’ll give you an example. Recently Chip placed an order for an herbal tea he drinks. He placed an order for three boxes containing 24 teabags each. I was home when UPS delivered the order. As I was unpacking the box, I noticed immediately that something didn’t seem quite right. One of the boxes of tea seemed lighter than the other two. Upon closer inspection, and after some shaking of the boxes, it became clear that the lighter box was lighter for a reason…there was nothing in it! Now understand, the empty box was factory sealed. All of the flaps were neatly glued into place, with the perforated tear strip in its pristine state. After it dawned on me that this box had gone through quality control, not only did I begin laughing, but it also made me wonder if you have to pass a stupidity exam in order to work in quality control. And what about the worker who packed the order? Did it not occur to him (or her), that maybe, just maybe something wasn’t quite right when two boxes weighed more than the third one? Perhaps packers are required to pass the same test.

Still another example that comes to mind is when you use the drive through at a fast food restaurant. You drive up to the speaker and confidently place your order. You ask the order taker to call back your order just to make sure they understood it. At this point, they call it back and it sounds right, so you make your way to the smiling face in charge of taking your money. Now, the bag comes through the window. You know it’s right, it has to be right because they correctly called it back to you. With stomach growling all the way home, triggered by the smell emanating from the bag, you arrive home with drool hanging off your lower lip and your stomach now screaming “Feed me!”, just like Audrey, the plant from The Little Shop of Horrors. You sit down at the table, ready to feed “Audrey”, laying all your edible treasures before you. With mouth watering, you unwrap your cheeseburger, only to find a bun containing lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, ketchup and mustard, but to your astonishment, not a single piece of meat!

Now I ask you, how can you have a cheese-burger, without a hamburger patty? What you have arrived home with is a veggie burger that will satisfy neither you nor Audrey. You eat the damn thing anyway, because not only are you famished, it’s also more trouble than it’s worth to return it. Remember the smiling face taking your money I mentioned earlier? I know why this person is smiling…it is because they know that you now understand what Joe Pesci meant in Lethal Weapon II, when he said, “Don’t ever go through the drive through! They (paraphrasing here) screw you in the drive through!” Boy was Joe Pesci ever right.

Of course no discussion of stupidity can happen without mentioning the government at least once! A good example of our government “at work”, is our local highway department. Now the government is supposed to be hip to the fact that there are handicapped people who come to the highway department for license plates, driver licenses and so forth. Now, you pull into the parking lot of this relatively new complex with your handicapped placard hanging from your rearview mirror, only to discover there are no handicapped parking spaces. The nearest one is half the length of a football field away, in front of the family court building. The really stupid thing about this whole situation is that if you can’t walk, or if you’re mobility impaired (like me), and try to park at the curb, the cops will write you a ticket to the tune of $40 or more, despite that handicap placard being in plain view for all to see. You would figure that the government would display some modicum of common sense, right? Wait a minute, I forgot. We were talking about government!

5/16/2004

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