Human Apathy

Weekend Edition by HumanFission

I am a friend of Icenode and will be a guest writer on The Daily Rant. From what I've been told I will post mostly on weekends. Enjoy.

While many of the "rants" you've seen here focus on some specific point of idiocy that has drawn the public eye, mine are more general. You see, I (and those who know me can generally back this up) just dislike people in general. Individuals are fine; people however, suck.

My point of view is constantly reinforced by my particular dealings with said people on a day-to-day basis. I work in an industry that exposes me to mankind in all of its…"glory" and while I had thought I had become desensitized to the larger failings of Man, I am continually proven wrong, many times on the most basic of things.

This would bring me to the "meat" of my rant, actually. Why is it that while technology advances, the ability for the general populace to understand and use that technology seems to be decreasing at an alarming rate? If you were to ask random people (and I have), they will tell you that it is the complexity of this new technology, that it is becoming harder to use as it evolves, out of shear design. The problem is these same people are the ones who fail to apply the very basics of common sense to a problem when it arises. Things as simple as checking power, putting in batteries, or reading instructions elude them when the object of their technological desire fails to react exactly how they expected. These same people, after bypassing any sort of logical problem-solving cries of mercy coming from the active parts of the brain, will sit and wait on a phone, sometimes for hours, to make someone else tell them what to do. Let's recap that for a moment, because it's important. After ignoring any efficient or logical steps, these people will sit and waste away on a phone…so someone else can tell them what to do.

This isn't an anomaly. It's the standard in today's time. What is going on here? Have people really become so lazy, so accustomed to someone else doing all the work that they have simply given up? I think the answer is a resounding "yes". It's not that people have grown less intelligent, thus causing some sort of comprehension problem, it's that they have grown lazy, and that has generated a degree of apathy that is staggering in its magnitude. When these people are presented with options they could have done themselves within minutes or even seconds of discovering the problem, many, if not most, not only become angry, but lash out at those who pointed out the simplistic solutions that were overlooked. These people seek to defend their actions by passing the blame to someone else, blind to the fact that many times, this sort of argument is nothing more than humorous in its complete lack of application.

Our culture, specifically in America, but perhaps spreading to the entire population of the globe, is becoming "Fiercely Apathetic". What's worse, the very technology that generates the response detailed here is the same technology that facilitates such apathy. There's a reason the Bible says the meek shall inherit the earth; they're the only ones who are going to know what's going on before long.

Circuit City Lays off 3,400 Employees

Circuit City is laying off 3,400 of its highest paid employees. Probably not the CEO and a few other of the highest paid elite I'm sure. Even thought this move proves they should be the ones let go. A large portion of those employees were being paid higher wages because they have been with the company for a long time and know their field of sales well. They will be replaced by low salary low motivation workers for the most part. They will be unfamiliar with the technologies, and the only thing they will learn are the cheat sheets that have bulleted lists of features each product has. I can't think of a single worse move when customers biggest complaint about chain electronic stores is that the sales people aren't knowledgeable enough and are pushy.

On top of that Circuit City is setting a precedent that if you do well in the company by learning the products and earning yourself raises, you just might be working yourself out of a future job. So what incentive is there to do anything other than the bare minimum. The reason for the layoffs is supposedly to cut costs, but what kind of training costs will hiring 3,400 new employees be? Especially when the industry average employee turnover rate is 30%-50% already. So they will end up hiring closer to 5,000 employees and training them within the first year. There is no way to predict the impact this will have on customer satisfaction and rather they will continue to shop there or not with numbers, but I think we can all see this isn't a good move for cutting costs or increasing income.

Banks Should Understand Simple Subtraction

For most people negative numbers start when counting backwards from zero. Apparently however my bank has their own counting scheme. Counting backwards from somewhere around $22 is when the numbers go negative for them. So far I've been unable to find any documentation stating that $22 is equal to $0 from my bank. And since I have a "no minimum balance required" account, I know that I'm not being penalized because I'm trying to stretch my money. So why is it that I received overdraft charges for a $5 and two different $2.50 transactions? Those numbers aren't precise, but I rounded up to make my point.

That would put my balance around $12. There were no other charges pending, and I haven't filled up with gas from this account in over 2 weeks, so it wasn't due to any of their pre-auth charges. Basically my bank just decided that $22 would be a good place to rob me of $75 since they charge $25 per overdraft. This isn't the first thing that's indicated their poor system to me, but if I don't get my money back it will be the last.

Why haven't we tried this already?

I read an article this morning where Mexico will trade you an Xbox for your gun. If its a larger caliber or machine gun, they'll trade you a computer complete with a legal version of Windows installed. You can read the article here.

While this probably isn't a long term solution, and you probably won't see any of the crime syndicates trading in their weapons, it just might do the trick at stopping impulse crimes by street thugs. Some boundaries would have to be imposed if we implemented a similar law in the U.S. to prevent people from abusing this system by trading in cheap guns bought days prior for an Xbox. But I think a small financial loss due to a law such as this would probably be preferable to more law enforcement requirements if it can help lower non organized crime even a few percent. Would it work, who knows, but I think it'd be worth a try here as well.

Movie Previews that Show too Much

Its become a popular trend over the past few years. Instead of a short preview with just enough tidbits of information to get your mouth watering, studios are putting out the movie condensed down to a couple of minutes. Nearly all of them include all their best one liners and what they hope will be memorable and quotable sayings. But some go as far showing not only the tidbit of information that is suppose to keep you waiting on the edge of your seat for the movie, but also the conclusion or result of that exact same situation. I've even seen a few lately that actually showed the end of the movie.

There indeed may be a large portion of people out there that don't appreciate a little suspense or thought provoking teaser, but I am not one of them. And so far, neither is anyone I've asked. The movie 300 previews showed 2/3rd's of the best lines and a couple of scenes that should have been major plot points if you didn't know how they turned out already. Luckily this movie had plenty to offer and I still found it quite enjoyable. But now every time I turn around there is another Spiderman 3 trailer. And the most recent one seems to show exactly how one of the entire theme's in the movie ends up turning out, and on top of that introduces a new character that would have been much more climactic if not known about until watching the movie. To take a scene from the over played 300 preview, I'd like to line up the marketers in charge of previews and kick them down a well yelling "This is SPARTA!"