Thursday, September 27, 2007

"But I wasn't doin' nuthin'."

I just love how often this phrase, or something incredibly similar, is exclaimed as soon as something undesired by that person begins to happen. It's as if they suddenly default to a toddler's skill level of shedding responsibility. Every time I hear someone bleat that brainless excuse, I want to jam something sharp and jagged into the speaker's kidney repeatedly. I have come to loathe that knee-jerk complaint.

Apparently, there is widespread confusion as to what "doing something" actually is. We see this horrible ignorance played out so often from people who don't wish to be arrested by the police. We see it in altercations in the street. I see it consistently in store patrons. All of whom zealously wave the banner of "not doing anything" as soon as someone starts to exact consequences upon them.

Let's make the issue a bit less murky. You are always doing something. You exist and therefore are affecting the universe to a greater or lesser degree. If you happen to be in a coma, you're still respiring, still metabolizing nutrients and eliminating waste. Your body is still locking up a volume of organic compounds and keeping them from being utilized elsewhere in the biosphere. True, I am being exceedingly pedantic in scope and overly literal. The implied complaint is that they, the allegedly injured party, were not doing anything wrong.

Fair enough I suppose. I still raise an eyebrow over how well tailored their definition of acceptable behavior is. It is not up to debate that they are choosing to act in a specific manner, that part is a given. They desire to argue where the line is drawn in respect to actionable or not. It is judgment call that is largely not their's to make. For example, somehow a person entering into my store and spending over an hour perusing the shelves and subsequently leaving a mess in their wake without any indication they are actually looking to make a purchase is "not doing anything wrong." How could anyone accuse them of loitering? Can't you see they're looking around? They aren't hurting anything.

Interesting theory. Erroneous throughout, but interesting nonetheless. First off, loitering is defined by Webster’s as, "to remain in an area for no obvious reason." There are two alternate definitions as well, but if one definition is correct, the term applies. If someone happens to be wandering around my store at random for an extended period of time, they're loitering. One could argue that their reason is obvious and I'm just the only one missing it, except that as the person enforcing the store rules of conduct, I am the arbiter of what is and isn't "obvious purpose" as well as how much time is reasonable to give them. As to their assertion they're causing no harm, they are generating more work for the staff to keep the store looking neat and tidy. In addition, there is the strong probability that their shuffling the shelves is also making it harder for other shoppers to find what they are looking for, meaning lost sales, which is very much a harm for a business.

Consequently, they are then instructed politely to find someone else's floor to keep from flying out into space. The smart ones leave quietly. Most begin the protest of being innocent of inappropriate action.

You might be surprised that as soon as their mouth starts lolling open and offended sounds start, they're no longer listening to anything you have to say regardless of how interested in reasoned discourse they might appear on initial scrutiny. If you are surprised, you obviously haven't worked retail or been reading this blog very long.

There's naught else to be done except to remain implacable in your insistence they leave. Happily, most of these lack-wits will realize they're better off someplace else. Unfortunately, that still leaves a few who will assert that not only have they not done anything wrong, but I have no right to make them leave.

Things have just moved up a notch on their level of personal denial. Not only do I have the right to make them leave, I have the responsibility to make them leave. They are most definitely "doing something" now. Even if I have had to summon the police to remove them and charge them with trespassing, they will squeal to the last that they have done nothing to deserve their treatment.

And that is but a small taste of the whole. A homeless man voiding his bladder on someone's lawn claims he isn't doing anything. An inebriated woman singing at the top of her lungs off key in the middle of an apartment building at three in the morning might claim the same thing. I've watched guys try to keep the police from placing hand-cuffs on him all the while bleating the lie that they aren't doing anything.

What astounds me is that some people will buy that load of shit! Why?!

2 Comments:

Blogger Jeanne S said...

People are stupid, that's why.

10:06 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

People don't like to take responsbility - for anything. It's annoying/

8:53 PM  

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