I have come to the conclusion that there are a great and many varied personalities on this planet. No doubt you are thinking “that Jeremy, he’s a quick one,” and you are correct, but the truth is that very few of these personalities are ones that make any sense to me. Let me give you a couple of examples:
I am willing to bet that at some point you have come into contact with the people who talk. These people are all around us, and make up a vast proportion of the peoples that I can’t really abide for very long. Odds are you have a friend like this that you only kind of put up with. I am talking, of course, about the type of people who do not partake in conversation.
They own it.
These are the people that do not contribute meaningfully toward any type of mutual communication, opting instead to simply wait until you are done with WHATEVER you are talking about, then blurt out the thing that they were/are/going to be thinking about. This can be either their part of the conversation you are having, disjointed and out of turn in the shared stream of consciousness, or something that has nothing to do with your subject matter; instead moving on to whatever this rather obtuse individual had pop into their head while they were paying no attention to you.
Now being a bit of a conversationalist myself, I believe that in order to have said conversation both sides must be actually listening to each other and playing off of each other’s ideas. Call me old fashioned, but a conversation should be a two-sided thing. When it is not, it is called a lecture or a speech, and it is so annoying that it makes me want to stab myself in the neck just to have a reason to recuse myself from the situation.
Another person is one known very well to those of us in the service industry. These people are the bane of any barista’s existence, and many of the food-servers out there as well. These are the people who have turned my job, which I used to love so very much, into a daily ordeal consisting of barely repressed rage and deeply buried homicidal imaginings. Indeed, these people are the subject of a great many sneering and exasperated looks and are subject to the full brunt of wit that they can not understand is directed at them, but makes me feel morally and intellectually superior (thus makes me giggle). These are the entitlementists.
I know, I know; this word does not really exist. Well it does now, as I have the power to summon forth from the ether collections of letters that make perfect sense when taken in context. Unfortunately, these people are very real, and are a very real threat to my sanity.
These are the people who, through some combination of money, privileged upbringing. social retardation or the lack of a swift kick in the skull, feel that they have some sense of entitlement to the labor of another based upon a paltry sum payed to a business for the constrained actions of its employees.
Yes, you may purchase that meal.
No, that does not allow you to assume that I will be going out of my way in any way, shape, or form in order to meet your needs.
The belief amongst these people is that paying for a good or service entitles them to forgo the normal morals and common sense behavioral rules of civilized society, allowing them to degenerate to the level of common swine: discarding refuse, creating unholy messes and basically stinking up the place with their fundamental lack of concern for the repercussions of their actions.
These people are also the most likely to end up with a burned-down house in the event of a psychotic break suffered by one of the disenfranchised laborers whom they have wronged through their egregious disregard for social more.
These are but a couple of the peoples that inhabit the world which I navigate every day. I am sure that they are familiar to you. If not, be on the lookout, for they are residing in a bar/restaurants/coffee house near you, waiting to foist their superiority complex on the unsuspecting populace of their local watering hole/social gathering place.
Have you run across other people you would like to vent about? Leave me a comment and let me know! (see that? Audience participation.)
