Andy Chase

It's things like this Ask Metafilter thread that make me pessimistic about humanity as a whole.

I have to ask myself how I would react in this woman's place, if somebody was giving me grief for closing a frigging bus window as they're exiting the bus.

The first time it happened, I would just sit back down with my ears burning. My brain shuts down when confronted with overwhelming pettiness/small-minded behavior/incompetence; I know this from past customer service experience. I don't have the gene that gives me the ability to verbally smack customer service reps around when they don't listen to the problem I'm trying to explain, or start stonewalling me. I'm the type who sputters and fumes, and gives up.

My two personal, notable exceptions are the time I yelled at a past pointy-haired boss in front of my entire department over a promised-but-undelivered raise, and the time I started shouting at the DMV clerk after some last-straw in the protracted battle to get my permanent California license. So I guess at the far side of that angry mental white-out is a point where things come back into focus, and I am able to get my point across. But I have to be really pissed off to get to that point, and the clarity seems to come at the expense of the ability to modulate my voice.

I think the bus situation would reach that point eventually. Rather than try to engage them in a battle of insults, I would ask the two ladies what is really on my mind:

"What is your fscking problem?"

I would really want to know, and in the pursuit of a straight answer I would probably be able to deflect the verbal jabs such a question would provoke.

Even now, though, just thinking about this complete stranger's little urban drama has me in mental shut-down mode. How much mental energy is humanity as a whole wasting on petty nonsense like this every minute of every day? The mind boggles.