crackerwax

Went to watch Superbad with Mrs Douglas tonight, very surprised at how good it was. A teen sex comedy with actual real laughs! Stunned.

That’s not the point of this rant though, no ladies and gentleman this rant is about the lack of judgment that is displayed by about ninety percent of the population of this country. About how stupid it is that a 72 year old is asked to prove they are old enough to buy some wine, because a supermarket can’t risk letting staff use their judgment on when to ask and when not to ask.

I know there’s a problem with underage drinking in this country, and it is a very bad thing but this is not the way of stopping it. Maybe encouraging parents to raise their children might be a more appropriate direction to take on this one? Anyway, as ever I digress.

As I said before we decided to go to the cinema tonight, we got there early so we bought our tickets and popped over to the games machine area for a quick game of air hockey. We found our table, I popped the pound coin in and out dropped the puck, great. It was at this point I realised there were no paddles.

So I trot back out to the nearby ice cream counter and ask the singularly disinterested youth, who’s so malnourished looking it appears the only thing keeping him upright are his clothes, where I can get the paddles from. ‘You have to get them from the ticket desk.’, he responds glumly.

Next stop the ticket desk, or rather the queue that was snaking its way towards the ticket desk. So I join the queue and I queue and I queue and finally I get to the front and am granted an audience with the slack jawed teenager charged with guarding the paddles (which given the effort required to even get near the fucking things, I assume must have been made by chiseling down a forty tonne block of platinum to the required shape with a unicorn’s horn. By Jesus).

Now that I’m there though I’m eager to get my paddles and get back to the air hockey table, which by this point had probably supplied all the air it was going to anyway, so I ask the question. The exchange goes something like this:

‘Hi, I’d like the air hockey paddles please?’
‘You have to pay a deposit.’
‘Ok! How much is that?’
‘It’s two pounds.’
‘Righto here’s a twenty.’
‘I can’t give you change.’
‘What?!’
‘I can’t give change for the deposit.’
‘Why? Why can’t you give, oh never mind.’

I dutifully trot back to Suzanne and drag her off for a drink and a game of Scrabble (on the DS natch) in The Dial instead.

Now, do I really look like the sort of person that would steal two air hockey paddles? Do I really have to stand in queue for ten minutes to be told that I need to put down a deposit for my paddles and that if I do want to pay that deposit I need to bring the correct change? Fuck me, would a sign have been too much to ask? Some form of communication that would have alerted me to the fact that I’d have to go on the Krypton fucking Factor just to get a game of air hockey?

Now I know the point is that it’s probably not about me stealing them per se, but rather that the deposit is there to remind you to give them back at the end of your game. Presumably so that they’re not stolen by a moron in an ill-fitting cap or used by children to kill each other or whatever. I get that.

I’m a grown up though, small amounts of money are relatively easy to find. Being two pounds short at the end of the night isn’t going to bankrupt me, in fact I’d rather pay two sterlings not to have to stand in a fucking queue to give them back. Meaning, that in this case, the deposit would have been totally fucking pointless anyway.

So why didn’t he just say don’t worry about it here’s the paddles, knock yourself out, just remember to bring them back though, ok? I’ll tell you why, it’s because the world is populated by morons and we now operate on the principal of lowest common denominator. So even if this guy was smarter than your average bear it would make no difference, because he works with people that would make Benny from Crossroads look like Stephen Fry and they’re the ones the rules are written for.

In the case of the 72 year old wine drinker, the reason for the demand of ID was less to do with a shop assistant being unable to tell the difference between a 16 year old boy and a 72 year old man, and more with the risk that they might not be able to distinguish a 14 year old girl from an 18 year old girl.

If that ever happened the store could lose its license and with it a fair chunk of its income. Consequently, because we’re raising a nation of idiots for whom questioning is an alien concept, it becomes a no exceptions policy. No ID, no alcohol and if you don’t enforce the rules you get sacked.

That principle applies to the guy in my cinema. He’s been told not to give out the paddles without first getting a deposit. This rather handily conflicts with another rule though, if there’s no sale the till stays shut and since a deposit doesn’t go through the till he can’t give me change for my deposit. Amazing.

Common sense and judgment have no place in the modern world, they’ve been replaced by pictograms and litigiousness.