A Little Bit Brighter

Nobody's perfect. A phrase used often by people trying to justify their mistakes. I personally think its a good rule for life. We are none of us perfect. All we can do is to do our best with what we've got. Get up every day and do our best. The trouble all starts when people stop caring. Stop giving it their best. Apathy. You walk in to a coffee shop or a restaurant, and you know the minute you walk through the door that your waitress doesn't want to be there. She doesn't want to help you. She wants to collect her pay check, but she wants to do the absolute minimum amount of work to get it. Why should she smile? Or make you feel welcome? She makes the same amount whether you have a great time or a horrible time. And the one percent of people who come in to the restaurant and actually complain about what a bitch their waitress was is not half enough to actually get her fired. So I guess the real question that wracks my brain is, “Why do people not care?” Is it enough to get by by doing the minimum? Now don't get me wrong. I've done my fair share of the minimum. Anyone who's gone to college knows what the minimum is. You've procrastinated your way through another semester and its getting down to the wire. You have exactly one day to finish your final paper or final project. You rush to get all your sources sorted out and you start writing. All you can hope for is that by the end of the semester you will have established a baseline for how much under the required page count the professor will accept and still give you a passing grade. I know all the tricks. I have done-them-all. But its not a suitable way to live life. You can't get by in life by doing the minimum. Why is our country in such dire straights? Because George fucking Bush got up every day and did the minimum. Why did the twin towers get bombed? Because everybody in the homeland security council of 2001 did the bare fucking minimum. My big question is this. Why do we accept the minimum? Have we gone through life for so long just accepting shit that it somehow magically becomes gold? No. No matter how you twist it around, shit is still shit. I say we don't take it anymore. If you go into a restaurant and get horrible service, don't grumble about it on the car ride home, I say you tell the waitress to her face (ladies please don't be offended that I use “waitress” in my descriptions, it could just as easily be a man). I say you walk right up to the waitress, smile, and say “excuse me miss. I just want you to know that your service was horrible. I didn't see you smile once. You honestly don't look like you want to be here. And if you don't, then why are you? And don't say its because you need the money, because needing money is no excuse for being a mean cunt.” You might want to omit the “mean cunt” line. I just added it in for dramatic effect. But it really just goes along with my belief that we should start calling shit shit again. If someone breaks down my back fence I'm not going to use a politically correct description of said individual. I am going to use every expletive I can think of do describe him. Now some of you may be saying, “Now you wait just a dang minute here! I can't say that to my waiter.” And my rebuttal is, “Why the hell not!?” She didn't think enough of you to give you service with a smile. Is it that hard. Did she have a bad day? Awww...Is that what it was? Poor girl. She has three kids at home to feed, and no husband to help her. All the more reason for her to learn some good god damned manners. So please friends. Follow my lead. If you go in to a coffee shop, or a bar, or a restaurant, or anywhere, and the service is horrible, don't just grin and bear it. Make as much of a commotion as you can. Get that mean waitress fired if you can. It's not a crime to want to be treated with a little respect. And who knows, if we stop letting people shit all over us, maybe the world will start taking notice. Maybe people will start learning to turn that frown upside down. Maybe, just maybe tomorrow will be just a little bit brighter.