TMI a little place to whine

I attended a bridal shower today and one of the other guest was commenting on how rude people are lately. Her biggest beef was that people in shops and stores are pushy and unfriendly and will not wait for their turn but barge right in ahead of anyone no matter what.

I guess I don't go shopping other than grocery shopping lately, but once she said it others chimed in with the same or similiar complaints.

It's another sense of entitlement. Me first. I'm more important than you.

It's bad enough they treat other adults with such disrespect but I now wonder how they are treating their children. Is being a rude person to everyone, even your children, a form of child abuse?

It used to be called "Secretaries Day" now it's Administrative Professionals Day. So my employeer decided to pamper us one day a year by iving us a big breakfast, and thanking us for all we do. And then the tradition is to raffle donated items.

This year a coworker of mine won a "gift card" to Subway sandwich shops. I won a TGI Friday's gift card. Later that day we were talking and she was complaining about how "cheap" her present was. It was "only" she siad for a 6 inche combo meal. That's a usual lunch order. A six inch sub, beverage and chips or cookie. Instead of saying "I got a free lunch" and being glad about not having to buy one , she complained about what it wasn't.

She is never satisfied, she always expects more. As a matter of fact she seem to feel she in entitled to more.

Entitled by what? An accident of birth or residence?

I don't understand why some people are so upset by not having what they think they deserve. I often wonder what makes them think they are deserving of anything? Is it the color of their skin? The shape of their face? Is it that they were born in the Northern Hemispere? Is that they were born in a democratic republic? What makes them so special that they - and not some child in Ethiopia in the African continent or Port a Prince, Haiti - deserve to eat 3 full meals a day plus snacks and candy?

What entitles them to have health care? Access to doctors and hospitals and fresh water?
What entitles them to shelter and clothes?

And when they have all these things, why do they feel deprived that they don't have more?

I son't understand this deep level of dis-satisfaction.

Remember when you could just reach someone with just a telephone call. If they weren't home the phone rang a few times and you hung up. Or it gave a busy signal and you knew to try again.

Now it's a number that's transfered to a cell phone, or one that's transfered to a voice mail, or a text message or something.

And people get rude to you if they can't reach you IMMEDIATELY. Or if you can't identify them immediately. Some called me recently on my cell and just started talking, then she got angry when I interrupted her to findout who itw as who is calling.

"What, you dont' have called ID?' she screamed. I said that my phone only gave a phone number, not a name. She was quite annoyed.

So because we rely on a machine to let us in on the secret of who is calling now we have no manners when using a phone? Amazing.

Weren’t those tapes sent to NBC chilling? What would have happened if the killer had gotten the zip code correct? Would the mail have been delivered early Tuesday morning instead of on Wednesday? Would it have spared us some graphic new coverage and the repeated airing of the video from the phone camera that was played on a loop almost continuously since the incident?

Now the press is being pressured to back off from the sensational coverage because it could inspire copycat killings, just as Cho was inspired by the Columbine killers. Maybe it takes something like this and it’s overboard coverage to make the press realize that they sensationalize and lionize the shooters. Maybe this will bring news coverage to a sensible level and make them realize that human suffering isn’t what ratings are all about. But I doubt it.

Doesn't any one care that the word was a mistake made up by one of those illiterate presidents? I think it was one of those presidents we never remember, since the dictionary says the word came into use as a noun in 1857. He misused the word and the general public thought that if a president used it then it was correct. So the word became a part of the language of "stupid American terms", not English.

The word that should be used is "normality". We don't get back to normalcy we get back to normality.

Every time I hear the word used by the mediaI want to scream. It just perpetuates stupidity.

Rude is:
When some cutie pie walks into you and blames you for not moving out of her way because she was watching a video on her cell phone as she was walking.

Rude is being sushed by someone talking on their cell phone in public because they can't hear what's being said byt he person on the other end of the line .


Worse yet rude is talking on your cell phone in public about matters that should be discussed in private or behind closed doors and then giving people the evil eye when their expression indicates they have overheard the conversation and are offended by the content of it. Some conversations are meant to be had in private.

Rude is eating at an outdoor table of a restaurant and putting your thong clad feet on the table top while waiting for your order to be served.

Rude is leaving a picnic area littered with trash and garbage because you are too damn lazy to pick up after yourself.

Rude is not taking responsibility for your actions and blaming others.

Some math whiz wants to convince me that we need statistics on who people are; i.e. we must catorgize people by color and ethnicity so we need statistics. After all, she tells me, how can we tell where money is needed unless we know these things.

I keep trying to tell her that if we need to identify people who need economic assistance we don't need to know their color. Does being black and making $12,000 a year make you poorer than being white and making $12,000 a year?

Poor is poor. There is no color of "poor". There is no ethnicity that determines "poor". There is no race that is "poor" in and of itself.

Poor means the lack of funds to buy essentials and maintain your life; i.e. food shelter and clothing, medical care, dental care and provide educational materials for your children.

Poor doesn't care what color your skin is. Poor just is.

So why again do we need to know the color of poverty?

To make those of us who are not poor feel better?

I am amased at perfectly educated and insightful people who have told me "I don't read the Miami Herald".

They live and work in Miami. They are always concerned with the national news and state legislature, but they dont' read the local press?

Why?

How do you think people get to be legislators in the state unless they have paid attention to the local politics?

People complain all of the time about the caliber of people running for office on the state and national levels. If voters had paid attention to them as the "little guy" in local politics first maybe they wouldn't have been voted to higher offices. Maybe if people read the local press and found out what their characters and their disposition was like whne they did not yield so much influsence andpower we would be able to weed out the riff raff and come up with people who are actually in politics to make a difference for their constituants.

Instead, educated people, who take their news seriously and think the local press is unworthy of their time and trouble, help perpetuate the "Peter Principle", helping others rise to the level of their incompetence.