Month: September 2023

29 April 2018

“But I was just trying to help!”

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

3 October 2023 —
Our new AssMan at the QuikkStopp, Yuviffont, has all the makings of a middle management martinet. In addition to regularly reminding herself (through us) that she’s in charge, she’s also keen on “helping” us set up our tills. She’s got plenty of time (pretty much her entire shift) to do that BEFORE I arrive, but what I generally hear first from her is how busy she’s been and how she’s had no time to get all this stuff done that her ostensible subordinates manage when she’s not there “helping” us. I try not to listen, as there’s usually much more interesting stuff going on in my own head, or I’m beginning to focus on MY CUSTOMERS.
Last Monday, at the beginning of my shift, as I’m beginning to breathe a little easier knowing that Yuvi‘s soon on her way out the door and out of my hair, I greet my first customer and ask how I might help when suddenly she’s at my elbow with a roll of quarters “for your till.”
“Yeah, sure,” is what I may have said as I again attempted to assist the customer and then I see that my screen shows the accounting tile rather than the point-of-sale tile that my customer and I were getting ready to use. I sigh heavily, take the roll of quarters and her “paid out” slip and put it aside and say something like I can deal with this later. I void the beginnings of her attempt to disbalance my till and go back to the prime directive, which, of course, is customer service.
Next, Yuvi grabs the roll of quarters and the slip that I’d laid aside and says, “I can do it myself,” thereby demonstrating to all concerned that she actually hadn’t needed to bug us in the first place. That was probably my favorite part of the whole unnecessary power-play. Another favored moment was at the end of my shift as I was counting my till and I reflected that I still had more than ten bucks worth of loose quarters, and that I had not once needed to take another roll out of our drop safe.
And again, I want to clarify, maybe it wasn’t just a power-play. Maybe she needs to feel helpful, and it doesn’t matter whether she actually helps anyone, just as long as she feels good all under. But that just makes it all sadder.

14 September 2023

I don’t have any hard copies of the above illustration, but I’m tempted to get some. Awful people expose themselves in many ways. Bad parking is usually a sign of deeper pathologies. Or stupidity. Either way, they should pay for their offenses with the pristine finishes of their cars. My late commie “sister-out-law” told a story about a large logger who walked across the hood of a car in his hobnail boots after it had encroached onto the crosswalk. That’s the kind of spontaneous justice I crave.

The Wish: I like to imagine tungsten-carbide chainsaws emerging from under the lines in parking lots to rend the metal and rubber of offending vehicles. Put the saws on a timer, of course, so they’re mostly quiet. They should only emerge when the clock, sonar, and programming convince them that someone has parked (and not just passed) over the lines and therefore was encroaching on more than just his own space. Most vendors would probably find such a notion to be prohibitively expensive. But I’m going to keep on wishing. Meanwhile…

The True Story: I went to my local grocery connection a week or so ago. I rarely know when I’m going to be in a hurry, but I usually know when I’m not. I don’t like backing up my car. I can do it, of course; I can back a trailer down a winding gravel driveway, but it’s tedious and slow and more error prone than driving forward. In order to avoid backing up when I’m in a hurry, I tend to put the “hassle” up front, so if the parking spot only offers a single access to it, I’ll usually back in so I can just drive straight out if it turns out I AM in a hurry later. Even better are the adjoining spaces that most of the larger lots sport. Often I can drive straight through one and then I’m positioned to drive out of the other, all without putting it into reverse.

That’s the opportunity I found when I got to The Emir of Eats®. Except the front left corner of a huge pick-up truck was encroaching on the right front corner of my preferred space. Pausing briefly, I contemplated moving on to find another space, but was chastened by the firm economic principle that, “When we reward something, we get more of it.” I do not ever wish to reward misbehavior. I have a smaller car, I thought, so I can fit into that. I couldn’t get out my right door, but I wouldn’t need to. Satisfied that MY parking was within both the spirit of the lot AND the actual lines, I locked up and went shopping.

When I got back with my goodies, I saw that two other vehicles had parked behind ours, and that the driver of the pick-up had returned to his ride and was just sitting there glowering at me. Apparently, it looked to him that he couldn’t move forward without hitting me, or back out without hitting someone else. All resulting in damage to his precious “rig.” The nice thing about driving a “piece-of-shit” car like mine is you care a lot less about additional scrapes. Drivers of pretty new pick-ups are much less cavalier about the finishes of their rides. He sat there until I drove out of my space and released him from his self-made trap.