North Americans are more stupid than everyone else

Is that even possible? I seem to shake my head in total disbelief at someone at least everyday, sometimes multiple times per day. I really do try some self-talk, forcing myself to just accept it and move on, but I just can't because it's too unbelievable.

From my morning drive in, to the people I deal with at work, the people that serve me in food joints and retail stores, I just can't believe how people that stupid can still be alive and haven't somehow gotten themselves killed due to their lack of awareness of things going on around them.

Driving for example. Clearly nobody understands basic traffic flow or the causes and effects of certain situations, never mind the basic art of piloting a vehicle, which almost everyone in this country would refer to as "like, super easy!" despite teenagers complaining that driving exams passable by someone in the geriatric ward of a hospital are difficult. Have you been to Europe? And women, I'm very sorry to say but you are the absolute worst at it, that's no secret. I shake my head at you the most, but the look of total confusion on your face when I pass you on the highway is often worth chuckling over so I'll leave that alone for now to rant about another time.

So back to this stupidity thing. We have warning signs on products you couldn't imagine would be necessary (but obviously someone did something stupid enough to warrant the cautionary graphics) and criminals that seem to rake in boat loads of money in compensation for injuring themselves during some robbery or whatever. The whole world makes fun of us - well, Americans take the brunt of it but don't you worry, we're just a few steps behind as usual! A lot of it does stem from the setting of some precedent in the court system but due to my lack of legal know-how I'll leave that one to the experts.

I say Darwin's approach is the best - just take the warning labels off all the products and let the problem solve itself. Gave your child a swiss army knife and they stabbed themselves? Oh well. You put your car into cruise control and it didn't steer itself away from the guardrail? Sorry for your loss. The $30 camera phone you purchased takes bad pictures at weddings? You should have known.

The most recent issue with the Ontario Police force was their brilliant seatbelt blitz during the month of April. Really? Is this something new? If someone hasn't realized in the last 30 years that perhaps wearing a seatbelt is a better idea than not then you should be left to figure it out by yourself regardless of the injury you cause to yourself.

North Americans are just the absolute worst at attempting to devise the most ridiculous blanket solutions to social problems.

People shooting themselves? Ban guns! Drunk people driving at night? Cap alcohol sales at 2am. Don't want your child to watch brutal violence and sex on television? Write to the network and have them cancel the show - it's that easy! No actual parenting required! Actually, if enough of you do it you can get them to censor out all the swearing. Even words like "penis" will be censored out because clearly that is offensive language. How could someone say that on television! Penis. Oh they should be ashamed!

Who am I kidding, it's been like that for at least a decade now. To the point of watching a movie on Fox or some other horrible network late at night that is the same version they had to air at 8pm or whatever the cutoff is, so all the language has been censored out, and not with silence or the ever-amusing <beep> but with someone else's voice who very rarely resembles the actor's in the most remote way. Are we seriously paying for this?

Violence on television. With all of these stay-at-home people who obviously have very little to do with their minds complaining that cartoons from the 80's or whenever have over fifty thousand incidents of violence in each episode. And this violence is causing our children to bring guns to school, and rape women and steal millions of dollars from old ladies. Who's buying into this?

We are so determined to deny responsibility for everything so much so that we'll actually shift the blame to other people or corporations, the latter being the most popular. Drop a can of soup on your toe at the supermarket? Sue the company and you'll probably win millions. And we all know about that woman in the USA spilling hot coffee on her loins. Whether she actually agreed with suing the company is irrelevant.

Unfortunately attitudes will never change and it's only until bad things happen that we eventually wake from our slumber and think differently. We will continue as we have been, and I can only hope at some point beyond which we cannot do anything to counter the momentum of stupidity, other countries will pass by us laughing all the way. Maybe at that point we might take them seriously and realize we're not the best at... anything.

Disservice with a smile

If one specializes in something you expect them to do a pretty bang-up job of it. The burger place must have a superb array of quality hamburgers, and the pizza joint... well, they know pizza. It's the whole reason they're still in business, and this is especially true for franchises where a good majority of people appreciate their specialty product so much they've built an empire around it.

And though it makes the most sense when the specialty product is in the title such as Kentucky Fried Chicken - or as their marketers would rather you call it, KFC - numerous popular chains are just known for something good.

In Swiss Chalet's case it's their rotisserie chicken. And when combined with french fries and their unique love-it-or-hate-it barbecue sauce (or "used dish water" as my Dad calls it) it makes you smile with contentment. Their latest campaign is chicken marinated in a spicy sauce, served with spicy, battered fries and a house salad. You would think the staff would be trained to up-sell and perfect this thing like crazy and see whether the customer demand leaps or plunges.

During my most recent visit a few days ago, many of us ordered that special with some adjustments to the sides and some opting to pay an extra 99 cents to have the white meat breast as opposed to the standard leg. Well, as dishes began to arrive at our table it seemed we had all made the right choice. Wow that chicken looked good; juicy, tender, fall-off-the-bone good. Then I got my plate.

My first thought was that, perhaps due to some kind of error in The System I ended up with a kids meal.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with The System - whether in hospitality or retail industries - all problems related to the original order are caused by something of a technological nature: computer upgrades, bar-code scanners, etc. otherwise known as The System. An alternate scapegoat is other staff members.

Well, maybe not quite a kids meal, but a portion of chicken the size of an infant's hand slapped on a huge plate beside 30 pounds of french fries somehow just doesn't look right.

I then began to analyze the situation: what would make someone not take a second glance at this and say - "Hey, wait a minute. Something here doesn't look right here because A) this will be served to an adult; and B) this is our feature dish that we are encouraged to promote. Let's put this little chicken back and grab this gentleman a piece more suitable for his age group."

But no that didn't happen, nor was any action taken by the person who brought it to our table because, well... that's likely not in her job description. All she has to do is go to kitchen, pick up food, deliver to customer. Rinse and repeat.

Thankfully our primary server was good enough and took the baby chick away, and replaced it with a man-size portion, no questions asked. What a great guy.

So you folks in the hospitality industry, or really anywhere a little common sense and input from you might benefit the customer and your company as a whole, just... give a shit. Just a little bit. Especially when your primary income depends on tips.

A much belated thank-you

So a while ago I wrote about how the makers of Axe products would give you a ton of cash to pimp out your bathroom if you could prove it was really disgusting.

Well what do you imagine happened? Yep they ignored me.

Did they? Maybe for a few days, but I received an email from the Axe marketing squad thanking me for the kind mention (which of course further publicizes their campaign) and that someone would soon be in touch. Yeah ok I said.

A week or so later I received another email, saying they would send me a token of their appreciation, but they first need my address. This is getting a touch more serious, and I still highly doubt anything will happen but what's the harm?

After another week I received a care package at my door from none other than Axe - inside were numerous sticks, sprays, body washes and matchbooks... more than I could ever use for years!

I ended up spreading the word and donating a few to other guys who also liked Axe stuff, but I still have a drawer full here that comes in handy for that all-too-important rotation of fragrance.

Thank you, Axe! And my apologies for the severe delay in my reply.

Back in action

So it's been almost a year since my last post... and though I'd really like to blame it on being insanely busy I cannot.

I am no longer in school so there is no need to procrastinate, but since there has been a few requests to keep up with my ranting and informative posts about various tech gadgets I thought I'd come around again.

What I have been wondering is who really reads this stuff? Who goes out and traverses the thousands of Blogger pages, ultimately ending up at mine, and pauses for a read?

Who knows, perhaps its entrapment under the Google umbrella makes it more advertised than one would expect, but regardless - I am back in action.


Upcoming:
- A much belated thank you
- Women drivers. Yes... you.