I decided to take my lunch time to go run a few errands. Specifically go to the gas station, pick up a small purchase I needed, and ship off a package of something I recently sold on eBay. The caveat to it all was that I had left my wallet at the mythical girlfriend’s place, and all I had in my possession was a small amount of cash, presumably sufficient enough to be able to put gas in my car, make my purchase, and ship my package.
I figured it would take roughly 45 minutes or so to hit up all three destinations and accomplish all three of my planned tasks. Somewhere around the 75th minute, I was parking back at the office, frothing at the mouth in aggravation at how long everything took.
It had nothing to do with traffic either; it’s simply the fact that everywhere I went, everything just took forever, for a myriad of reasons, sometimes a combination. But the lasting thought in my head was that the basis of most of it revolved around people doing things a dated way, just how slow an inefficient it all was, and how I’d rather pull out my own teeth than to have to do things in this manner again, if it can be helped.
Firstly, I went to go ship out my package. My first mistake was going to an Office Depot in the first place; I guess I had grown naive by the fact that in my old office, I used to be able to go to the Office Depot across the street for shipping purposes, but the thing was that I was right next door, and I was often capable of being one of the first people in the door as soon as they opened. Having to drive to a suburban Office Depot at 10:30 in the afternoon was roughly the equivalent of dragging my naked balls through a football field littered in broken glass shards.
Basically, as is the case with lots of these big-box office supply/needs stores, there’s just one counter where people can print and copy, as well as ship packages. Naturally, there were two people at the counter prior to my arrival who had things they needed to print and bind; it occurred to me, that it’s because nowadays, people really don’t actually have printers as universally as they used to, and the need for printing has to be fulfilled by office supply stores, or discreetly on company materials at their jobs.
Regardless, all it was to me was people doing something different than what I needed to, clogging up the lines of service and preventing me from doing what I needed to do. When I eventually got someone to tend to me, I realized that after I had left, they had overcharged me pretty badly, but I was in such a desire to gtfo of Office Depot that I didn’t bother arguing it, because frankly four dollars wasn’t worth it. But the thing is, I shipped an identical box two weeks prior from an actual USPS post office, using an automated label maker (a machine) that utilized my debit card, and it was easier and way more cost-effective than this ordeal was.
There’s a joke floating around on the internet that basically says that drugs should be legalized, but the distribution of them would be controlled solely by Comcast customer service. The obvious implication is that Comcast customer service is so bad, it’s basically going to be really difficult and not worth the effort to sate one’s drug addictions.
I left Office Depot feeling like the same joke would apply to trying to ship a package through Office Depot, because it took forever, the customers that want to print and copy are about as clueless to the process and hardware as the store’s employees are, and ultimately, they overcharged me in the end.
After I had completed my first two errands, I figured getting gas would be the easiest of my things I wanted to do. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I was sans any sort of payment card, I knew that I would have to go to a window, face a human being, and pre-pay an estimate of how much fuel I could get with what cash I had left in my pocket. I have negative memories of this entire concept dating back to when I was still a teenager and this practice became common, due to the fact that so many people would gas and go without paying. It’s something I typically avoid, but obviously with no charge cards in possession, I had no choice.
Naturally, there was an absurd line inside the gas station, and it made me really feel bad for those people to whom pre-paying cash is the norm, because if this is a regular occurrence, I can really see why people want the most fuel efficient vehicles they can buy, because this was complete bullshit, waiting ten minutes just to give someone money.
And the thing is, paying with cash is so archaic and not time-efficient at all, not to mention, creating the necessity to carry coins on one’s self. Basic math is harder than ever for people, and it’s the onus of actual people to have to properly count out bills and coins to give to another person, and hopefully get it right on the first try.
Typically, I like to fill my tank up all the way. My car’s gas tank has a capacity of 13.2 gallons, and it doesn’t take a math genius to know that in today’s prices, a little over $30 would be sufficient to fill my tank up all the way. However, at the time of this little tale, I had a twenty, a ten and a five. I rationalized that my options were either pre-pay $25, get really really close to a full tank, or pre-pay the $35, get my full tank, but then have to go back into the gas station to get my change. Needless to say, given how long I had to end up waiting, $25 ended up happening, and I left the gas station with the math gears in my head debating on just how many miles I could go before I had to fill up next, instead of simply preparing for the next time I hit the 310 mile mark to prepare to start looking for the cheap places.
In the end, my afternoon of “quick errands” ended up taking way longer than I had anticipated it would have, and I came back to the office agitated. Apparently agitation is good for the writing hobby, because I’m easily able to spew all these words, but seriously, I don’t know how people can live life doing things in such archaic manner, like paying for everything in cash, and relying on big-box office stores in order to produce tangible outputs.
If I had my debit card and could go back and do everything over again, I know it would be vastly different, efficient, and I’d have arrived back to the office in a more chipper mood and with a hard-on for how efficient I was capable of being, because efficiency is apparently a turn on for me. I’d have sought out and found a USPS center with a robotic machine, and getting gas would’ve been completely done at the pump without having to face another human being.
And to think people out there are demanding shit like $15 an hour to be incompetent, inefficient assholes? Children please.
