29 April 2018
Maybe.
I’m not so sure.
You certainly weren’t actually helping.
People who want to help generally help, and one of the first things they do is make sure they’re not doing the opposite of helping. And one of the last things they’ll ever do is whine about just trying to help.
People who want to appear helpful won’t do anything until someone is watching. I tend to think most of them are creepy weasels, but I get them. Getting ahead requires getting seen and you want your efforts to count for something. If they think the boss is watching and they’re helping me out then that’s good enough for me.
The most loathsome of all types are those who wish to feel helpful. They don’t care about you or the boss, they’re just mostly sad schmoes who crave validation. If you’ve ever had a child “help” you in the kitchen you get it immediately. At least with the child, you have the advantage of imparting valuable skills, so the hassle is worth it. Alleged grown-ups who blunder in and mess up your rhythm (at the least of it) and feel all good about what swell people they are are using you to masturbate.
If I don’t want to go several blocks out of my way, the last turn to get to work is a left across two lanes of traffic. It’s a busy neighborhood with about a half a dozen vendors clustered close to the Interstate, but there’s a turn lane in the middle of the street, so I’m content to wait.
Sometimes some motorist will stop in one of the oncoming lanes and gesture for me to pass in front of him. He’s often less than a block from the red light so it probably costs him nothing, and if I can see that it’s safe, I’ll cut in and smile and wave and be done with it.
However, and too often, I will not be able to see that it’s safe. There are a couple of parking lots bleeding into that right lane on busy nights, and if he’s in his left lane I can’t see through him, so I don’t always know whether it’s safe. If I’m T-boned turning in front of traffic, I’m the one charged with failure to yield. Let alone maybe dead. Meanwhile, in this alleged super-hero’s lane, traffic is stacking up behind him and all they can see now is that green light at the intersection. So he’s not just using me to feel good about himself. Now he’s hijacked the time of all the hapless drivers behind him. Finally, he gets fed up and proceeds to exercise his right of way, but makes a point of screaming at me as he drives by because clearly I am the parasite commandeering everybody’s time.
update 230201, contra The Alleged Super-Hero and his Angry Fans, correspondent Mykpogdyf Mminx responds: “I can see this so vividly in my mind’s eye as you describe it. And you are spot-on. In some people’s needy, soul-sucking fervor to appear virtuous, other people can get hurt. Plus, it’s straight-up cringe-worthy watching them preen and puff-up preemptively to doing ‘their good deed‘.”
# (cross-hatched tag) whattagoodboyami