Just another rant, feel free to move on
Right. So I wrapped this last production today which means that I am (technically) free. In reality it means I am now free to deal with my life and do all the things I haven't been able to do since this job started, namely getting the car (back) to the garage so they can fix (again) a rather disturbing engine trouble. Luckily, it is still under warranty so "technically" it shouldn't cost me anything. In reality, it's costing me time, fuel, and whatever else they throw at me while I'm there. Whoever coined the term "customer service" was either mistaken in their use of the words, or had something completely different in mind than they let on. Look, I understand a car is a cash hole, I accept it because it makes my life easier to deal with and I can afford it. Whatever. What I don't like is being dicked around. That gets me a bit hot under the collar in ways these guys can't imagine.
Which reminds me of a guy I work with. He's a... well I'll just come right out and say it, he's a small Mediterranean man with a rather average IQ and a hot temper. His saving grace is that he's both stopped drinking and has for many years now, been in a steady relationship with a woman who seems to calm him down (I have one or two ideas on how she accomplishes this but I won't get into that here). Anyway, this guy was telling me a story that happened when he was around 18 or 19 years old and was at the peak of his scrapping days. He sometimes did renovation jobs with his dad and they'd done a job on this man's hair salon. This client was always putting off paying them, until things got ridiculous (6 months I believe). So my friend tried to talk to him but was basically told there was no money and the whole sad story bla bla bla. Right.
So one day my friend decides enough is enough, so he follows this client during his day. The guy goes here, there and everywhere, and in the process my friend discovers that not only is this guy driving around in a brand new Mercedes, but he also has a second hair salon that seems to be doing quite well. Right.
A few days go by and my friend brings his dad to this guy's salon and tells his father to stay in the car. He opens the back trunk of the car and gets a baseball bat out of it and walks to the hair salon. He walks in and there are a few people on chairs and a few more waiting to get their hair cut, so he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a WAD of cash and pays each and everyone enough for their hair cut and tells them all to get out. EVERYBODY gets the fuck out of Dodge in a major hurry and as soon as the last one is through that door, my buddy jams the baseball bat in the door so it can't be opened and lunges at the client. Ba-ding, Ba-dang, people are thrown about and many punches are exchanged and pretty soon the whole place is thrashed and looks like a grenade went off inside. My buddy's dad had to break the front door's window with his feet to get in and get his son off the bloody client.
I can't remember if he ended up spending time in jail or not for this, but to this day he has no regrets about it, simply because the guy was taking him for a ride and was laughing in his face about it.
Now, I don't mean to say that I want to do the same thing to my car dealer, but the concept of honesty and accountability has been so thoroughly eroded from the fabric of our lives that to mention it, never-mind to expect it, is almost laughable, and it shouldn't be like that. Not too long ago, it wasn't like that. People worked hard for their money and understood the value of a dollar, furthermore, there was a very real understanding that if you fuck with someone, you can expect that someone to come around and fuck you up. I'm not necessarily advocating violence, or self-justice either, but you gotta admit, with all the fucking laws and regulations we now have, not only are you not allowed to do justice yourself, but the odds are actually stacked in favor of the person(s) fucking you over. Therefore the notion of accountability is being lost and what we are left with is a bunch of fucktards who fuck the system and everybody around them all the time because they know that it'll be a cold day in hell before they are caught and if they ever are caught, they are more likely to get a slap on the wrist than anything else. This breeds not only corruption, but it also breeds apathy and a cavalier attitude where nobody gives a shit because everybody feels ENTITLED. They feel entitled to the right of way on the street, they feel entitled to cut you off in a line-up, they feel entitled to scam you on your car repairs... Everybody feels entitled to fuck everybody else over and to only look out for their own interest, because they know that they risk less by doing this than you do if you try to have your rights upheld. This is a completely dis-functional way of life and it has to stop. Unlike the revolutions of the past, where the statusquo was challenged by the youths of the day because they were trying to break a form of oppression, this is the result of corporate manipulation and nobody seems to get it, and those who do are quickly labeled paranoid or conspiracy theorists. Christ, doesn't anybody remember that there once was a time when people didn't sue companies just because the label didn't say an obvious warning like "drink carefully, this coffee is pipping hot" or "don't east hamburgers 3 times a day or you'll get fat"?
Let me bring you back a few years... When the first wave of frivolous law suits began in the US, corporations were forced by the courts to pay out huge amounts in damages to greedy fucks because these corporations had not covered every single possible aspects of warning and liability in their fine prints, mostly because up until then (70's-80's), the average person was raised with an understanding of common sense, as in if you gulp down a fresh cup of black coffee, you're likely to burn yourself. Now the reason most people were raised with this school of common sense, is two fold, first, because a big portion of the population still lived in rural areas, and when you live on a farm, if YOU don't shovel the shit, ain't nobody gonna do it for you. Secondly, because people still remembered either personally or from their parents, the Great Depression of the 30's. This had a huge effect on the popular consciousness of many generations and it's pretty easy to understand how common sense was a natural way of living in those hard times: if you worked you got paid (sometimes), and if you lounged around in bed 'till 12, you went hungry, and I mean HARD hungry, not "Oh I have to eat Mac & cheese hungry. There were no programs to keep you off the streets if you were broke, and forget about social housing or health care. There was NOTHING! Nothing but the cold hard truth that your ass either got some money fast or you were going to die. Simple as that.
Right, back to the 70's and early 80's. So when folks saw that the courts were forced to hand over judgments in favor of the plaintiffs, by virtue of being forced to follow the Law, not what was right, corporations were forced to step-up their game and the legal departments started printing all these stupid warnings on the labels of the things we buy everyday. But that only applied to products, and the genie was out of the bottle by then; you could sue your neighbor because he didn't cut his lawn of trim his hedge or a number of other stupid things. Soon, even municipalities and even states were in the hot seat. Remember when you could get money if your car went into a pothole that fucked-up your car? I do. Right, so as a result, insurance companies also got into the game, which was a business unto itself, by inventing all these new conditions and provisos which limited one's liability under this act or that regulations, and pretty soon, we had laws popping up that addressed every manner imaginable of possible injury or wrongdoing. We were making our world safer for our children, we were making a better world than AAAALLLLL of the past generations. We were smarter than they. Weren't we?
Meh, maybe not. Because now, instead of having people looking both ways before they cross the street, they walk right into traffic on a red light, while talking or texting on their cell phones. Why? Why would a relatively intelligent person do something like that? I'll tell you why. Because they have the RIGHT OF WAY. They are ENTITLED to cross the street wherever they bloody well feel like, with little or no concern for their own safety, because we as a society, have made it the motorist's fault if they are hit! At no point does it enter in anyone's head that right of way or not, if you get hit by a car, even one that isn't speeding, you are going to get fucked-up. But that doesn't register. It doesn't register because to a great degree, these are young people who still feel like they are Superman (or Wonder Woman, take your pick), and have not got a clear concept of their own mortality yet. Why is it that this is new (new as in the past 15-20 years or so). Simply because we are de-responsibilizing people where we used to teach kids to be responsible ("look both ways before you cross the street...).
I learned this summer for example, that if you are a motorist and you get into an argument with a taxi driver, unless that taxi driver threatens your life, there is nothing that the cops, the city's bureau of taxi, or the taxi company itself are going to do. So cabs are encouraged to drive like assholes and to be dangerous because the law and the system protects them. I could give you so many more examples of this type of bullshit it would take 10 pages to write down only a fraction of it.
So where does this leave us? I honestly don't know. All I know is that this society is being run by corporate interests and few seem to see it. They've got us by the balls and we're more than happy to pay them to keep on squeezing us until there's nothing left. People have to start thinking critically again. I may not be the smartest or most learned individual on this planet, but I know when things are fucked-up.
Which reminds me of a guy I work with. He's a... well I'll just come right out and say it, he's a small Mediterranean man with a rather average IQ and a hot temper. His saving grace is that he's both stopped drinking and has for many years now, been in a steady relationship with a woman who seems to calm him down (I have one or two ideas on how she accomplishes this but I won't get into that here). Anyway, this guy was telling me a story that happened when he was around 18 or 19 years old and was at the peak of his scrapping days. He sometimes did renovation jobs with his dad and they'd done a job on this man's hair salon. This client was always putting off paying them, until things got ridiculous (6 months I believe). So my friend tried to talk to him but was basically told there was no money and the whole sad story bla bla bla. Right.
So one day my friend decides enough is enough, so he follows this client during his day. The guy goes here, there and everywhere, and in the process my friend discovers that not only is this guy driving around in a brand new Mercedes, but he also has a second hair salon that seems to be doing quite well. Right.
A few days go by and my friend brings his dad to this guy's salon and tells his father to stay in the car. He opens the back trunk of the car and gets a baseball bat out of it and walks to the hair salon. He walks in and there are a few people on chairs and a few more waiting to get their hair cut, so he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a WAD of cash and pays each and everyone enough for their hair cut and tells them all to get out. EVERYBODY gets the fuck out of Dodge in a major hurry and as soon as the last one is through that door, my buddy jams the baseball bat in the door so it can't be opened and lunges at the client. Ba-ding, Ba-dang, people are thrown about and many punches are exchanged and pretty soon the whole place is thrashed and looks like a grenade went off inside. My buddy's dad had to break the front door's window with his feet to get in and get his son off the bloody client.
I can't remember if he ended up spending time in jail or not for this, but to this day he has no regrets about it, simply because the guy was taking him for a ride and was laughing in his face about it.
Now, I don't mean to say that I want to do the same thing to my car dealer, but the concept of honesty and accountability has been so thoroughly eroded from the fabric of our lives that to mention it, never-mind to expect it, is almost laughable, and it shouldn't be like that. Not too long ago, it wasn't like that. People worked hard for their money and understood the value of a dollar, furthermore, there was a very real understanding that if you fuck with someone, you can expect that someone to come around and fuck you up. I'm not necessarily advocating violence, or self-justice either, but you gotta admit, with all the fucking laws and regulations we now have, not only are you not allowed to do justice yourself, but the odds are actually stacked in favor of the person(s) fucking you over. Therefore the notion of accountability is being lost and what we are left with is a bunch of fucktards who fuck the system and everybody around them all the time because they know that it'll be a cold day in hell before they are caught and if they ever are caught, they are more likely to get a slap on the wrist than anything else. This breeds not only corruption, but it also breeds apathy and a cavalier attitude where nobody gives a shit because everybody feels ENTITLED. They feel entitled to the right of way on the street, they feel entitled to cut you off in a line-up, they feel entitled to scam you on your car repairs... Everybody feels entitled to fuck everybody else over and to only look out for their own interest, because they know that they risk less by doing this than you do if you try to have your rights upheld. This is a completely dis-functional way of life and it has to stop. Unlike the revolutions of the past, where the statusquo was challenged by the youths of the day because they were trying to break a form of oppression, this is the result of corporate manipulation and nobody seems to get it, and those who do are quickly labeled paranoid or conspiracy theorists. Christ, doesn't anybody remember that there once was a time when people didn't sue companies just because the label didn't say an obvious warning like "drink carefully, this coffee is pipping hot" or "don't east hamburgers 3 times a day or you'll get fat"?
Let me bring you back a few years... When the first wave of frivolous law suits began in the US, corporations were forced by the courts to pay out huge amounts in damages to greedy fucks because these corporations had not covered every single possible aspects of warning and liability in their fine prints, mostly because up until then (70's-80's), the average person was raised with an understanding of common sense, as in if you gulp down a fresh cup of black coffee, you're likely to burn yourself. Now the reason most people were raised with this school of common sense, is two fold, first, because a big portion of the population still lived in rural areas, and when you live on a farm, if YOU don't shovel the shit, ain't nobody gonna do it for you. Secondly, because people still remembered either personally or from their parents, the Great Depression of the 30's. This had a huge effect on the popular consciousness of many generations and it's pretty easy to understand how common sense was a natural way of living in those hard times: if you worked you got paid (sometimes), and if you lounged around in bed 'till 12, you went hungry, and I mean HARD hungry, not "Oh I have to eat Mac & cheese hungry. There were no programs to keep you off the streets if you were broke, and forget about social housing or health care. There was NOTHING! Nothing but the cold hard truth that your ass either got some money fast or you were going to die. Simple as that.
Right, back to the 70's and early 80's. So when folks saw that the courts were forced to hand over judgments in favor of the plaintiffs, by virtue of being forced to follow the Law, not what was right, corporations were forced to step-up their game and the legal departments started printing all these stupid warnings on the labels of the things we buy everyday. But that only applied to products, and the genie was out of the bottle by then; you could sue your neighbor because he didn't cut his lawn of trim his hedge or a number of other stupid things. Soon, even municipalities and even states were in the hot seat. Remember when you could get money if your car went into a pothole that fucked-up your car? I do. Right, so as a result, insurance companies also got into the game, which was a business unto itself, by inventing all these new conditions and provisos which limited one's liability under this act or that regulations, and pretty soon, we had laws popping up that addressed every manner imaginable of possible injury or wrongdoing. We were making our world safer for our children, we were making a better world than AAAALLLLL of the past generations. We were smarter than they. Weren't we?
Meh, maybe not. Because now, instead of having people looking both ways before they cross the street, they walk right into traffic on a red light, while talking or texting on their cell phones. Why? Why would a relatively intelligent person do something like that? I'll tell you why. Because they have the RIGHT OF WAY. They are ENTITLED to cross the street wherever they bloody well feel like, with little or no concern for their own safety, because we as a society, have made it the motorist's fault if they are hit! At no point does it enter in anyone's head that right of way or not, if you get hit by a car, even one that isn't speeding, you are going to get fucked-up. But that doesn't register. It doesn't register because to a great degree, these are young people who still feel like they are Superman (or Wonder Woman, take your pick), and have not got a clear concept of their own mortality yet. Why is it that this is new (new as in the past 15-20 years or so). Simply because we are de-responsibilizing people where we used to teach kids to be responsible ("look both ways before you cross the street...).
I learned this summer for example, that if you are a motorist and you get into an argument with a taxi driver, unless that taxi driver threatens your life, there is nothing that the cops, the city's bureau of taxi, or the taxi company itself are going to do. So cabs are encouraged to drive like assholes and to be dangerous because the law and the system protects them. I could give you so many more examples of this type of bullshit it would take 10 pages to write down only a fraction of it.
So where does this leave us? I honestly don't know. All I know is that this society is being run by corporate interests and few seem to see it. They've got us by the balls and we're more than happy to pay them to keep on squeezing us until there's nothing left. People have to start thinking critically again. I may not be the smartest or most learned individual on this planet, but I know when things are fucked-up.