Pouring Syrup On Shit Don't Make It Pancakes

It's dawned on me that I just don't post as often as I should anymore. The problem is that I rarely feel the rage and anxiety I used to feel. Don't get me wrong, I still get pissed sometimes. And I'll have a well-publicized breakdown from time to time. But the general "I'm not gonna pay a lot for this muffler!" mentality has waned lately.

It's back today.

I had a meeting this morning at our client site, and I needed to read up a bit first. So I left home early, and I made my way to the site. I arrived even earlier than I had planned, so I decided to sit down outside and do my reading there, because it was early enough in the morning that it was still kinda nice outside.

As an aside, my client site is near the DC courthouse. I find it equal parts hilarious and sad what I see coming in and out of there each time I pass by. Inside, rich old white people are deciding what happens to poor, young black people. Of course, I'm generalizing, but not to a ridiculous extent. Unfortunately, this is the way our justice system is set up. So everyday these young kids go to appear before the court, where a series of important decisions are going to be made. Call me crazy, but if I was in these kids' shoes, I might pull my pants up. Or not wear a Deion Sanders jersey or a gigantic, plain white T-shirt. I appreciate freedom of expression, and I hate getting dressed up as much as the next guy. But for fuck's sakes, there are people in there who can send you to jail! Tuck something in already. Play along. If I could figure out a way to take the pictures without getting my ass kicked, I could run a blog called "You Wore That To Court?" and make a million dollars. Anyway.

I'm sitting outside and I get a call that the meeting is canceled. Awesome. I didn't bring my lunch today because I had a meeting first thing, and I skipped breakfast to get there early. So now I have nothing to eat all day. Even better, I have no cash on me so I can't afford cab fare. I have no choice but to walk all the way back across the mall to my office. When I get there, work just starts piling up and I keep getting more and more grumpy. Finally, I manage to get a break for lunch and head to Subway.

Let's get this out of the way right off the bat: Subway is not good. No one ever thinks, "Yum! Subway!" You eat it because it's there. It's across the street from your office, or it's open late, or you're on a diet, or some other combination of sub-optimal conditions. This isn't up for debate, right? They don't charge four dollars for a sandwich because they care about helping you save money. They charge four bucks because if they charged five, you'd probably go somewhere else.

So why, why God why, is there always someone in line who treats ordering their sandwich like picking out the coffin they want to be buried in, and why must I always be standing behind them?

I'm hungry, and I want to eat, and so does everyone standing behind us. We have the common sense to understand that no matter much thoughtful customization we apply to our six inch turkey sub, it's still going to taste pretty much the same. If you put five different vegetables on your sandwich, can you really tell the difference between them? Does it even matter? Just fucking eat it already! Or are you so completely lacking in self-awareness that you don't hear the line groaning behind you? Have you noticed us shifting our feet impatiently, as you grow ever more frustrated with the minimum-wage earning poor bastard in charge of creating the World's Most Important Tuna Wrap? When you finally stop yelling at him for making mistakes, and you turn to us with that "Can you believe how incompetent the service is here?" look, can you feel our group, as a whole, desperately, silently, wishing you and everyone you care about was dead? We're not nodding our heads in silent approval. We're trying different head angles in hopes of killing you with our minds.