sucking on the pro circuit

markets, while superior, are highly imperfect (as they must be)

liberty writers often fail at recognizing the prime superiority of markets — voluntary businesses are not monopolies, and may be put out of business peacefully. other than that, and the advantages that flow from it, incompetence abounds in the market with sad similarity to government.

government "effort", liberty types know, often achieves a result counter to the claimed intent. same in the market. unintended consequences are damned difficult to assess and predict. the market is superior, of course, because of the many failures (AKA attempted solutions). most people are too stupid to get this. even more are too stupid to realize that government benefits from sucking at what it attempts. its existence is a given for more people. they expect government to suck, while at the same time defending it! morons.

i'm hesitant to raise yet again the incompetence of restaurant employees, because i'm entering the traditional age range of curmudgeons, and it's easy to write me off as another stodgy fuck. maybe i've become too observant or knowledgeable; there are plenty of details that the average youngster in the workplace can't be expected to address. still, they are professionals in the literal meaning of the word, however "lowly" their jobs may be. i don't see such jobs as lowly, despite the comparatively low pay. those jobs are stepping stones for the excellent, and i run into at least one person a month i'd hire on the spot if i hadn't been driven out of business by the "tax" scammers. usually, those people depart the stepping stones quickly, while the career lowlifes remain.

the source problem in modern markets is socialism. what ayn rand foretold in Atlas Shrugged is here, and with scary accuracy. shouldn't be forgotten or disregarded that most people confuse government with society. hell, government is so far up the ass of business, that it's almost impossible to not confuse the two; you can't do a goddamned thing without some government slurper trying to fuck and control you. as business owners are illegally forbidden from excellence by the fedgoons and their tentacled parasites in local "office", society falls in line. stupid as the average man may be, he knows incentive and disincentive as well as the most sensitive, aligned economist.

the great plastic glove scam

government excels at requiring the execution (feigned or otherwise) of arbitrary, worthless (or worse) steps; adherence to this stupidity borders on, and often reaches, the religious. regardless of sequence, the same germ infects the market as well. again, the relief valve is that the market must ultimately respond to the perfect granularity of voluntarism, where a billion stupid decisions are not routinely bundled into a single vote. a restaurant pisses you off? you vote against it through avoidance. what other people do about it is generally none of your business.

i may never write the deserved expose on this modern plastic glove disaster, but the subject illuminates multiple noteworthy human weaknesses. sometime in the last 15 years or so, restaurants got it into their skulls (perhaps via government force) that food sanitation would be enhanced by requiring handlers to wear disposable plastic gloves. my informal observations suggest an opposite result, similar to the usual government bullshit attempts to improve things. if you haven't considered the subject, pay attention for a few months whenever you watch food handlers with plastic gloves. the gloves, rather than being used sensibly, become a mental shield through which the average restaurant worker reaches an invalid equation: "glove on? sanitation fulfilled!"

as i've mentioned to a few restaurant managers after watching multiple glove fuckups, it's as if restaurant workers think they can wipe their asses and then handle your food, long as it's all done with a plastic glove (the same one) on. rather than stress conscious hand cleanliness, the plastic glove revolution has allowed restaurants to fuck away sanitation while projecting an opposite image. sound familiar? how many customers do you think are watching the glove use intelligently? i suspect, based on what i've seen, that most customers are lulled into disengagement with this activity much as they are with the backward, liberty-denying monstrosities of TSA, etc. what matters is the show. customer sees plastic glove, customer is assured. customer has flashlight shoved up his ass at an airport, "customer" feels safe.

unsanitary food handling existed long before the plastic glove joke though. hands are disgusting playgrounds for bacteria, viruses, snot, shit, and more. even if a restaurant worker washes his hands regularly, hands excrete urea and other things that are kinda gross to think about. the difference, however, is that the plastic glove dummkopfs regularly touch the same surfaces with the gloves that they do with their unwashed hands. given my choice, i vote for a return to bare hands and higher scrutiny, even though plastic gloves when used properly are more sanitary in isolation. humans, as with many "wonderful" proposals, invalidate out of the gate.

design suck

if you design restaurant bathrooms for a living, there are some things you need to get straight. first, many people don't wash their hands. despite overexposure of door handle tests and the like (e.g., hotel bedspreads) on TV news globs, restaurant management still puts up those bullshit "employees must wash hands" signs (by government decree?) in the same bathroom that encourages them to touch a nasty door handle (likely with feces on it in small part) after this fabled washing. showy claptrap. attention to recent trends of bathroom users demands changes in design. simple rule: have a usable method for users to touch nothing somebody else has touched after washing hands. this includes the water faucet. otherwise, just admit it's a joke. and any auto-shutoff faucet designer who allots the laughable run time of less than ~10 seconds should be slapped. get real. if you have a door handle on the exit, better have paper towels, and a trash can next to the door. obviously, many people are catching on to this, since you routinely find discarded towels on the floor next to the door when the trashcan's across the room. use your fucking heads, design sloths.

general worker suck

i ordered a froo-froo frozen drink from an all-night "we make everything" joint inside a popular gas station. this place is usually pretty good, but tonight there was a big hold-up waiting for my drink (ordered via computer touch-screen). i see a woman begin to make the drink, then she disappears to the back. some guy is waiting at the counter, and then i hear a baby crying. the woman who was making my drink comes out with a baby in her arms and a stroller, to hand to the guy. do i care? not yet. she has to deal with a baby, i can hang. so after this baby's delivered to its apparent father, she goes back to my drink, measuring out milk, putting her hands on materials that should be kept clean. the father says something, and she disappears in the back again, emerging to toss a set of keys his way. then back to my drink.

eghhhhhh! enough. babies, cute as they may be, are germ centers who routinely cover themselves and their handlers in excretions which have no place near food. i went up, asked nicely if she were working on order #87, then said i wasn't trying to be a jerk, but handling a baby while making my drink wasn't something i was into. she said she was about to wash her hands, and i pointed out that she'd already been handling the baby and my drink stuff without washing. then she said with some resentment that she could throw it out and start over. that would have been okay with me, but the attitude sealed it. told her to forget it, then went to the cashier and got a refund.

this type of sloppy crap just baffles me. why would i even have to mention this? what kind of dumbass, self-absorbed lunatic must one be to, in front of a customer, prepare a baby for transport, hands all over the baby and stroller, then go back to making a stranger's drink? then when the customer mentions it nicely, out comes the attitude? pure bullshit; over the line, smokey! this sort of drivel is growing more frequent. disgraceful fuckups at restaurants are the norm.

why? well why not? why shouldn't the decline of society be felt all around? individual responsibility and sense is growing scarce. competence by "professionals" blows out into the ludicrous zone. as i've written before, modern waiters are growing more insistent about being tipped for poor service. for example, i consider a callback (checking on your order after a few bites) to be mandatory for a waited meal. this used to be the standard, but now the standard is to forego, or delay until it's pointless. water glass? good luck getting more than a single, cursory refill, if that. i avoid waited meals actively now because the service is such a joke, with high expectations for tips (via the usual illogical claim that tip percentages should rise with inflation — sure sign of a moron).

salty's final thought

socialism — the pretense that a man's worth is inversely proportional to his ability (except when it's time to rob him) — is killing society. it begins with the evil demand that every last detail of a freeborn man's life must be extracted, placed in a pool, then assessed and divvied by assholes who consider violent force and the threat of it to be their exclusive birthright. the destruction abides.

posted by saltypig @ 02:49