You want fries with that?

This is an off topic general rant about the lack of common sense and the dumbing down of America.

Reading about the latest rash of shootings, and thinking about some past incidents, my thoughts are "what ever happened to common sense, or, what we used to call country common sense?" Since when does a kid who's getting picked on think it's OK to go to the family gun safe, yank out a rifle and some ammo and go shoot up his school? Why does someone who lost their job or got fired think it's OK to grab a pistol and ammo and go shoot up their former workplace?

Irrespective of any political or economic influences, it is apparent today that a lot of folks lack basic common sense. I spent a good number of years in retail sales and management and the idiocy level of even non-entry level employees was discouraging. As for the dumbing down of America, when was the last time you had a cashier count your change back to you? Have you ever had a situation where you had a tab of, say, $3.10 and you handed the cashier a $5 bill and a dime and got a deer in the headlights stare? I can remember seeing job applications where the applicant could barely read or write, we had applicants that could not tell time on an open faced clock.......had to be digital.

Just look at some of the recent headlines. A guy kills his 5 kids and himself to get back at his wife. The guy was a grown adult but had an extremely juvenile thought process (kind of like the juvenile thought process involved with giving the Queen of England an ipod or the British PM some CD's, which weren't even compatible with the European standard.--you Bush haters can feel free to substitute a "W" gaffe here). This seems to be getting more and more common these days.

Customer service? What's that. Every medium to large company today uses an automated phone system. When you finally get a human it's usually someone located well outside of the U.S. who has a minimal command of English (OK, in fairness I'll include "W" in this category). Another annoying thing about customer service is the lack of ability to negotiate with a human when you finally get one. For example, Customer: " I paid my bill online but it did not hit until 1pm on the due date and your company's stated cutoff time is noon...as it was only an hour late can you waive the $36 late fee?" CSR Supervisor: "Our company policy says it's due at noon." Customer: " I've been a customer of your company for 20 years and have never been late on a payment, as a courtesy how about waiving the late fee?" CSR Supervisor: "Sorry our policy is that the payment is due by noon and you were an hour late.......have a nice day."

Should I even discuss fast food workers? Sure. Remember the story of that little girl in Florida, 12 year old Jasmine Roberts, who for her science fair project, decided to measure the fecal bacteria count in fast food ice dispensers and fast food toilets and it turned out that there was more fecal bacteria in the ice than there was in the toilet water because the workers did not have common sense enough to wash their hands after taking a crap?

Although I am aware of some of the major problems we face today, some of the behavior of people just seems to defy explanation. I am especially appalled, as I have previously stated, at the total lack of basic common sense a lot of folks are displaying today. The lack of education can be cured, but the lack of common sense.....I just do not know, maybe it's something in the water.