Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Stupid People

            Here is the thing about stupid people… they will always be here and that really pisses me off. People quite frankly don’t use their brains…ever. Like I said, I am only 24 years young but I have been around the block as many times as it is needed to realize who dumb people actually are. I wouldn’t say that I am the smartest person in the world, in fact I didn’t even break 1000 on my SAT’s. Yeah I know, why would I admit that? The truth is I just didn’t feel like taking that piece of shit again. I would probably say those were the worst 3 hours of my life. So fucking boring I can’t even describe things I was thinking about. I could think of a million things I would rather be doing. Anyways… the question is why are these people so dumb?

            There could be many reasons for it. It could be because their parents are stupid. Heredity is a son of a bitch. But I wouldn’t bank on that one. My father isn’t the brightest bulb in the bunch, but my brother and I turned out to be pretty smart. But there are people who are not smart because of their parents. I tell you what is a son of a bitch though, incest. That would most likely screw you over in the smarts department and basically health altogether. But that’s beside the point. It could be from just plain laziness. Lazy people can become stupid because they just don’t care. Unlike the less fortunate ones who were dealt a bad hand, these fucking idiots have no initiative, and thus live a life of boringness and sorrow. I know some people like this myself, and man are the lame as hell. I could go on for pages about different types of stupid people, so I am just going to stop there. Let’s just say that I would guesstimate that of the 305 million people that live in the United States currently, 100 million of those people are fucking idiots.

            When thinking of stupid people, I can’t help but think about a scene from the movie “Clerks.” In this classic of a film, the story revolves around two store clerks named Dante and Randall. In this scene, a customer comes into the store, the Quick Stop, looks at a rack where the price is right in front of their face and in quite large lettering and then proceeds to ask the clerk how much the particular item was. Now if I were in that situation, I might literally scold them. Fortunately I have never frequented these kinds of people enough to drive me insane, but this job at the hospital has come close a few times.

            There have been so many things that have happened to me at this job that I actually had to start writing them down. First and foremost, what I do at this job is completely ludicrous to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, I like the job and the people I work with, I just think some of the facets of our job are a little inconvenient. Well, mainly the fact that the hospital is too cheap to hire someone to man the front desk. It gets so bad sometimes that we are literally five or six calls deep and we cant catch up because we are trying to explain to some fucking tard that yes, in fact this is a hospital and not Home Depot. These people will actually fight with you because they don’t believe you too. But like I said, being that they won’t hire anyone to man the front desk and take patient information calls, which are a lot of the calls we get, we have to deal with stupid volunteers.

Volunteers are another thing that gets me going. Not just at this place but anywhere. Volunteer is another word for this… I don’t have anything else to do so why don’t I go work somewhere for free and maybe, just maybe, they will give me a free meal… It’s usually some old fart who can barely see let alone help anyone. In fact it should be the total opposite. Young people should be doing it because its mainly old people who come visit their old friends in the hospital. But to each his own I guess. I never thought of it this way until just now, but maybe this is them trying to hold on to that little piece of society they have left. Man that’s deep. But no, it’s because old people have some friging fetish for food and talking gibberish to people. They get the best of both worlds at the front desk. So God forbid we actually have someone manning that desk past the time that Wheel of Fortune is on. Now if you think about it, what time do you think a hospital gets all of their calls for patients? After 7pm, that’s when.

            These people that call in ask the dumbest damn questions. For example… Not too long ago, I believe it was a Saturday afternoon, a man called in and abruptly disrupted my whole speech I have to do at the beginning of the call. He then asked me probably one of the dumbest questions I have ever heard… “Is this Delmont?” Now for anyone who has no idea what Delmont is, it is a charming little town in southwestern PA where the highlights include a movie theater, a church, and a playhouse… and that’s about it. So no sir, this is not Delmont. What kind of stupid fucking question is that? Is this a town? Yes, this is the phone number for the ENTIRE town of Delmont

I swear to God that these people pick up a telephone and then just stare at the wall too. When I say this I am not exaggerating in the least bit. You try and correct these people and try and figure out what they actually need and they don’t hear you. I sincerely think they take the phone after they tell you what they need and hold it in the air. I really wouldn’t be surprised. And it’s always like the are surprised that someone is answering the phone, like they didn’t know they were on it. It’s quite comical sometimes. I’m very sorry mam, I didn’t know I would be catching you off guard by doing something that you knew was going to happen by dialing a telephone number. Forgive me, please. And then most of the time these friging people don’t even know what the hell they want. It usually goes something like this. And trust me, this is no exaggeration. I get these calls every day I work…

Ring…. Ring…

Me: Hospital Operator this is Greg. How may I help you?

…Silence…

Hello???... Hello???

Old fucking fart: Uhhhhh I am looking for a room for patient information.

Me (what I want to say): That doesn’t make any sense you stupid old bag of  air.

Me: I have no idea what that means mam, are you looking for a patient?

Old fucking fart: Ummmm I uhhhhhhhh I need to know where my neighbor is. She went to the hospital in a car today and I want to know where she is. Uhhhhh could you help me?

Me: Yes sure mam, I will put you through to patient information….

…Busy signal…

Me (what I want to say): I’m sorry mam, I guess I am patient information because these lazy asses who volunteer for that position never actually do come in to volunteer.

            Me: That’s actually me right now mam, could you spell the last name please?

            Old fucking fart: Uuuuuuuugh I uhhhh actually don’t know their last name…

Me (what I want to say): How in the hell do you not know your neighbors name? And if that’s the case, why would you care enough to call in and ask how they were? That would be like me calling in and asking if anyone from the town next to ours was in the hospital. I don’t know their name, but I want to see how they are…

Me: Well unfortunately mam I can only look up the patient by their last name so if you would like to find that out and call me back I would love to look that up for you.

Old fucking fart: I know the first name, can you look it up by that?

            Me: I literally just told you mam, only the last name will work.

…She calls back hours later because she’s old and probably got lost in an episode of Matlock…

Me: Hospital Operator this is Greg. How may I help you?

Old fucking fart: Johnston!

Me: I have no idea what that means mam.

Old fucking fart: The patients name is Johnston… you told me to call you back...

Me: Mam, we literally take thousands of calls I had no idea it was actually you calling back. You said Johnston. Could you spell that for me?

Old fucking fart: Johnston.

Me: … Could you please SPELL that for me?

Old fucking fart: J as in jingle-O-H-N-S-T-O-N. Johnston. Mark Johnston.

Me (what I want to say): Oh my lord, this isn’t an f’ing spelling bee…

Me: He’s in room 111A.

That is typically how a usual patient information call goes with these old fucking people who don’t pay any damn attention to a word you are saying. Like I said, I actually think people call and then either hold the phone away from their faces or put the phone down because they never understand you. And the they are all like huh? What did you say? SPEAK UP? It doesn’t make any sense to me. I have a soothing voice, I am articulate, I am polite unless you are stupid on the phone, and I am helpful. What else do you people want from me? My phone etiquette is so spotless I could probably win the best operator award.

            Moving on from stupid people at my job, let’s talk about where else we can find stupid people. You name it, you got it. The movie theater, the department store, mowing the lawn, basketball courts, gyms, and bars are just a few of the places I will be discussing. But trust me people, they are all around us.  The movie theater is a good one because you can find anyone at these places. Though you may not realize it from such a normally quite place, you can pick out the fucking idiots from a mile away. Case in point… You are quietly and cozily watching a film you have been waiting for a long time now. You are scarfing down your popcorn and sharing your experience with a lady or even possibly just a good friend of yours. Then all of a sudden you see a bright light coming from a row in front of you. So bright that it actually blinds you a little. It’s kind of like when you are watching a movie and then a really bright scene comes on, with snow or something like that. I don’t know about you but I literally have to shield my eyes. But any who, this ignorant bastard is looking at his phone and texting during a movie and thinking absolutely nothing of it. How fucking rude do you have to be? That is literally rule numero uno in the handbook for movie goers. TURN OFF YOUR DAMN PHONE AND NEVER USE IT DURING A MOVIE. You are telling me you can’t go, at most, three hours without checking your phone? That’s insanity. If you can’t go that longer than three hours then you need to get some help dude.

            Department stores can sometimes make me very angry and even can go as far as uncomfortable. Although these places focus their sales to the mass and have lower prices, which just means there is a better chance of me seeing someone I don’t want to talk to. See, one of my biggest pet peeves is making small talk with people. I absolutely hate it. I would rather have my nuts in a vice than make small talk with people. At my age you get the same five questions. You get them so much you can actually script what you are going to say.

1)     How are you?

2)      How is the family?

3)     Are you done with school?

4)     Where are you working?

5)     What else are you doing?

Those are my least favorite questions in the English language because I have heard them so many times. But to tell you the truth, it is sort of fun if you make it that way. When I see someone I know I won’t talk to for a very long time after that particular encounter, I will actually make stuff up. What, like they will know or even give a shit. If they cared they would talk to me on a regular basis. I have actually told people I was going to school abroad, which if you count Harvard on the Mon as abroad then technically I wasn’t lying. Not only can you find these acquaintances at the store, you can find a plethora of other fools. It’s not just the people whose shop there either, the people who work there are maybe even worse. I have nothing against the people who work there, don’t get me wrong. But what I do have a problem with is asking these people a question and they have no idea how to answer it. That’s called bad hiring people. If you hire someone for the electronics department that knows nothing about an lcd television, then you got problems. I’m sorry, but it’s just if you know nothing about your job then you shouldn’t be there. That’s just my opinion. Hell, they even know that’s true. Wal Mart got rid of most of their cashiers and replaced them with a robot.

            On sort of the same line, convenience stores are the worst. It started getting really bad when you had to start going in to the store to pay for your gas because stupid idiotic people don’t have enough gumption to actually pay for their gas… apparently… But that just sort of jumbled up the stores and made them busy constantly. I hate busy places, which is just one of my many quirks, and every time I go into one of the convenience stores in town I get angry. Why? Not because of people buying snack cakes of pop, not because of the forth mentioned gas guzzlers, but because of people flushing the pride and money down the drain by playing the lottery. The lottery, though it may be a good concept, is ridiculous. The reason I say this is because the only people that play it are over the age of 50 and really don’t have the money to waste. I have seen actual lines of these people who religiously march into the store at the same time every single day to buy their stupid scratch offs. Oh, and don’t forget the daily numbers or God forbid the Power Ball. I have seen people drop $50 on scratch offs and not walk about with anything. And they do this more than once a week. Its also amazing that they memorize their “numbers” too. The rattle off these 20 or so numbers in succession and yet they cant remember to pay the mortgage. Makes sense. Am I the only person who thinks this is absurd? Invest your money you old fucks. Instead of trying to strike it rich with something as simplistically retarded as the lottery, why don’t you save that $50 and give it to your family when you die. Just sayin’.

            Seeing stupid people while mowing the lawn may not make sense, but just give me a second to explain myself. During the summer of 2005 all the way through to the summer of 2009 I had a job with the maintenance crew at my high school. It was a forty hour a week slave labor job basically. Most of the people who I worked with were alright but they had their bad tendencies. One of the main jobs we had to do was actually weed eating all over the school district. There is nothing worse than weed eating chain link fence in 90 degree weather, trust me. And this was no simple task either. There were four main buildings in the district and none of them were small. But some of these idiotic people would actually stop what they were doing, walk over to you while you were weed eating, and say the dumbest shit to you. For example, there were these giant steep hills we had to weed eat because a mower couldn’t hit them. So the young, strapping, and apparently limber teenagers were told to try and keep our balance on them while flailing an industrial strength weed eater in the air. Safe and sound technique obviously. And as we do this people would come out and just say dumb things like “hey, it’s a scorcher out today isn’t it?” First off, I already know this. I’m trying to keep my balance on what might as well be a mountain and I am swinging a 15 pound weed whacker around. Now if that didn’t make me hot already, I know its 95 degrees out. That’s the least helpful thing anyone has ever said to. Thank you. Not only did you make me stop what I was doing, but now I had to actually respond and create fake laughter to appease you. Don’t ever speak to me again. That’s not even the worst one either. The one that rattled my spine every time I heard it was this… “Why don’t you come over to my house and do that!” … Ummmmm how about no? I haven’t just heard this from people at my old job either. My neighbor says it to me literally every time I mow the lawn. It’s so frustrating. I has gotten to the point where I hate cutting the grass because I know its going to happen. Its not funny and it never will be people. Just because I’m mowing the lawn doesn’t mean I want to mow yours. Nice try though…

             Gyms are a dumb person’s home away from home. They may not be able to put a complete sentence together, but you throw them on a treadmill with MTV on, they will run for hours. Now I may be being stereotypical here, but most of the people who go to the gym, or what I noticed while I was in college, were all of the hot girls who really couldn’t make it on their brains. Though it was a nice site to behold, not particularly good conversation. Trust me, I tried. And don’t even get me started on the meat heads in the weight room. Shit, I go in to tone up a bit and these guys are benching massive amounts of weight, busting a nut in the process, and screaming their asses off. Then they go home and watch the movie Avatar thinking it’s the best movie ever made. Obviously I just made that scenario up, but I wouldn’t doubt it. The general idea of exercising brings out some idiots though. I am an avid basketball player during the warm months and though they may be able to consistently hit a three point shot, their speaking skills are on par with a bear. Needless to say, I try and avoid any sort of conversation with these people. I remember one particular time I was shooting at the park by the bridge. No one was playing so I was just fooling around. Low and behold this man comes stumbling out of the woods/ weeds by the side of the road and challenges me to a game of one on one. I beat him, pretty handily actually. He had approximately three teeth in his mouth and shirt that made him a walking billboard for the beer industry. He had it coming.

            Bars are just like gyms when it comes to the idiots of the world. They all flock there, especially if the jukebox plays the top 20. Now there are three kinds of bars, the trendy bar, the “eh” bar, and something I like to call the shit kicker bar. The first of these bars pretty much explains itself. This is where all of the best looking, trend setting, Rihanna listening assholes go to slosh their nights away with vodka and unprotected sex. But you may actually find some intelligent people here. The “eh” bar is the bar that not a lot of people go to. This is typically the one I would be found in along with a lot of my friends. It just fits me better. I don’t go out to hump anything that moves, unless of course that happens. I go out to share a couple of drinks with my buds. Now the third type of bar, or what I like to call the shit kickers bars, is where you find the real morons of the earth. Shit kicker bars are, just as the name implies, where you will get the shit kicked out of you if you make a wrong move. People may call these bars shady because of the people who go in. If you got up the nerve to walk into one of these places you would most likely find a man in a tattered old black and red cotton flannel with the sleeves cut off. He would most likely have a long white beard, because of the hard life they have lived no doubt, and he would most likely be in a screaming match with another man of the same look. I could put money on them fighting about truck engines or car racing. If that wasn’t a dead give away, ask them for their NRA card.

            I could literally talk about dumb people for days, but I am going to stop there. I don’t want too many people mad at me. But like I said, I’m not Albert Einstein either… I just tend to think before I speak.