Can I ask you a question? Are we turning into a nation of Assholes? Don't laugh. I'm being very serious. Ok, maybe asshole is harsh, maybe I should ask if we are slowing dumbing ourselves to the point of idiocy. I can't put my finger on it, but I really feel like we are slowly turning ourselves into those "humans" in Wall-E. Where everything will soon be decided for us... Case in point:
This Asshole.
Let me set the scene for you. I woke up incredibly early for a meeting at work. Since I'm part of the Management team, I couldn't just roll up as if I had rolled out of bed. Trust me I seriously considered it. But I woke up at an ungodly hour for a Saturday, went to and participated in a meeting, and then as I was leaving decided to take my family breakfast. Because I knew two things for sure, one: there was no effing way I was going to cook breakfast, and two: McDonald's was still serving breakfast for another half hour. Score. My kids can't get enough of high fructose corn syrup and nitrates. So I booked it to McDonald's which isn't really that far from my house and realized that I wasn't the only person on my side of town boycotting the kitchen. The drive through was backed up, almost to the 7-11 in the same parking lot. That 7-11 will have some significance in a minute, I promise.
So here I am at McDonald's now 23 minutes before they forget how to make pancakes and only know how to make chicken nuggets. I'm starting to panic, because if my kids don't get these pancakes, I'm going to have to go home and use my toaster for frozen waffles and that is just an atrocity that I'm not equipped to handle at this moment in time. At 19 minutes before lock down, I have to make the biggest decision of my adult life... Which drive through line to pick. Because my McDonald's has two, to make sure more Americans are getting their McDoubles and hot apple pies. How do you choose? If I go left the right with go faster and if I go right, well vice versa. Well shit, here goes nothing.
I choose right, and I immediately know I've made the biggest mistake of my Saturday morning. I have a feeling that the car in front of me has no idea what is happening, since it sits there for a three car count. A. Three. Car. Count. Which in real life is like five minutes. I look at the clock and realize it's been eight minutes and I break out into a sweat... Eleven minutes until lock down. Eleven.
I'm not sure what the issue is, so I roll down my window with every intention of "helping". I'm not above "helping". And by helping I mean, getting out of my car and walking up to his window and ordering for him. But I refrain when I hear the following...
"Uh, well, I'll have a large Sprite..."
A large Sprite? A fucking large Sprite? Dude. There is a 7-11 literally twelve fucking feet away. You drove right past it and if you had looked out your passenger side window as you sat in this very long and slow moving line for the past, oh I don't know 13 minutes you could have Big Gulped your ass outta my way.
It gets better.
I can hear him and the order taker discussing the menu items offered at breakfast. Then I realize that the order taker is actually explaining and breaking down breakfast sandwiches for this asshole. Sir, excuse me, Sir? Have you ever been to a McDonald's? I mean are you new? Are you an infant? Are you a vegan who has fallen off the wagon?
Then it hits me. This has to be the stupidest person in the world because there are pictures on the menu. PICTURES. And not just pictures of people enjoying food, but pictures of the ACTUAL FOOD TO ORDER. Even better McDonald's has taken out the hard part of having to memorize the names of the food, because they have provided numbers. NUMBERS and PICTURES, of the food. So you can order with ease. So you can order despite the fact if you have a brain or not.
I wish I was making this up. I wish.
So my question is, are we there? Are we to the point that we have dumbed down even the most simplistic things that we are beyond help? Have we some how reversed and become beings that regardless of pictures and numbers still can't even order an Egg McMuffin with hash browns and a coffee? Even if we have no idea what it's called, but we can see it looks delicious and beautiful, and so we yell out a number and then the cashier yells out another number, and then we use our fingers and toes to count out green paper rectangles and metal circles so we can eat our designated number?
Are we really that stupid?
Don't ask me I proceeded to order the wrong breakfast for the Hubbs using the wrong number and picture on the men, and then they shorted me a hash brown because, well it's fucking McDonald's.
Then I went to Starbucks and waited in line for and paid over two dollars for iced tea.
Who's the idiot now?
