A Fun Case Study For You

Friday 23 April 2004




Real-life story: dentist's office, workers talking, one worker who's pregnant is gushing about how great it is and tells another worker that she too should have a baby. Worker #2 says oh no, I can't, I'm not married yet. Patient in waiting room overhears this and is upset because she's had two children by artificial insemination. She says nothing at the time, but later complains to the dentist that she was offended by his staff. Dentist later comes down hard on one of his staff for not running the office well and allowing the original conversation to take place. Staff member explains that she wasn't anywhere nearby when the incident happened, and didn't even know about it, but the dentist still blames her and is mad at her.

I posit the question to you: who's the idiot here?

If you're even at my rants page reading this, you know my answer. I have zero patience or tolerance for people who cannot understand simple things like not yelling at a person for something they weren't even there for. In my ideal world, such stupidity would be dealt with swiftly and severely. I live for situations like this where I can be present as an uninvolved third party, so I can say what needs to be said without regard for the consequences. I've done it before, you know. An example would be the time I was in the express lane at the grocery store and the lady in front of me had about 25 items despite the sign saying "10 items or less" and other lanes were filled with people with about 25 items. The lady even looked at the sign and snorted as she stacked up her 25 items. Oh yeah, she knew. She just didn't care. And the cashier couldn't say anything to this lady, because she knew the lady would then complain to the manager and get the cashier in trouble, since the customer is always right. What this situation needed was someone who didn't have to worry about getting in trouble. So I spoke up loudly and said "Hey, what's your problem, can't you read, you have too many items, you're not special, you have no right to be here wasting my time and that of all these people behind me with ten or less items, so go to that other line or I'm calling a manager RIGHT NOW." And she did! She didn't like it, but she did it.

Back to the original scenario here, if I'd been there, I would have said to the dentist "Hey! Are you stupid? It's not her fault and anyone, especially someone with a degree from medical school, should be able to see that! What's your excuse?"

The scary part is that the stupid people are breeding. Even scarier is that smart people are increasingly afraid to confront stupid people and hold them accountable for their actions...too many lawsuits, too much political correctness, quotas, and so on. It's a bad situation and getting worse every year.