Originally posted by LLoyd45
Perhaps it's not really your will that's shaping your reality, but your subconscious manipulation of the facts..

I fail to see how you can be subconsciously manipulating facts when you are flipping a coin over and over, trying to land heads, while a researcher is sitting there recording which side the coin lands on, and of the course the experiment is repeated many times with many different test subjects. Would you care to elaborate?

Originally posted by LLoyd45
It's a luxury few can afford in today's trying times.

How can you not afford something that costs nothing?

Yep. I second the Op.

When people are taught to eat junk and they cant mimick the taste they will eat like savages.

I'm on the raw food diet for many reasons. Learning to eat form nature and you can get by.

The sad thing is people were taught to entertain rather then garden.

People will be savages because they are taught to eat triple servings off food.

Originally posted by ExquisitExamplE
I fail to see how you can be subconsciously manipulating facts when you are flipping a coin over and over, trying to land heads, while a researcher is sitting there recording which side the coin lands on, and of the course the experiment is repeated many times with many different test subjects. Would you care to elaborate?

It's no big secret that many researchers consciously or subconsciously try to make their results conform to their own personal theories and hypotheses. Nobody likes to be proven wrong, especially those who consider themselves to be much smarter than the average bear.

Originally posted by LLoyd45
How can you not afford something that costs nothing?

I consider my time a valuable commodity, so I have little patience for mind games or the pursuit of esoteric concepts like the "true" meaning of life.

[edit on 16-1-2009 by LLoyd45]

Originally posted by LLoyd45


If you truly believe your powers of positive thought work, you shouldn't fear walking down those downtown areas alone at night. Just flash those bad guys your friend-winning smile, and all should be well..

[edit on 15-1-2009 by LLoyd45]

Lloyd, everything in the world is not black and white. It is not all good or all bad. One needs common sense. I know there is bad in this world. I can't change bad. Its out there. I no more would go seek it out, or think my "winning smile"(which really would win nothing) would keep me safe.

I have been in REALLY dicey situations and a couple times talked my way out of harms way and the other couple had a dog that kept me safe. There is bad out there. Just try and stay out of the truly bad's way.

There is good in all walks of life and to say all people are bad, greedy, out to get you is wrong.

Look at the Hudson river plane crash yesterday. A man on board made sure women and children were off first, ferry drivers took their boats directly over to help.

Stopping looking at all the bad in the world(there is plenty of it!) and start looking at the good. Yes, people will disappoint sometimes, but, you will be amazed at when you get those random acts of kindness

I see this quite often in my line of work as well. One more descent into madness for western society. It seems simple common sense---and common courtesy---are quickly becoming things of the past. The only 'silver lining' to this situation is the fact that given a true global scale catastrophe the screamers and fit throwers will kill each other off in record time.

Face it, when lack of yogurt or cottage cheese elicits such behavior, their ability to survive in the face of real adversity is certainly lacking.

Actually I see this everyday I go into work and it's usually me that takes the full force of everything and mainly everything (or well almost everything) relies upon me or another cashier who is their. First I would have to say we are a 24 hour store, never closing, even on Christmas eve, day, new years, and probably even Martin Luther King day that store will be open.

Next I will say that everyone that comes in generally seems well...I don't want to say it in a negative fashion, but as if they are ungrateful for what we do for them. We never close our doors, try to keep the store clean as best we can with the limited amount of help we are given. (Mainly whenever I work we only have 3 people out front [not counting the manager]). Needless to say, I'm not allowed to leave the cash register so that leaves two people, we are understaffed in one department so that person leaves well before the usual 8 hour shifts end; so basically it leaves one person to tend to the whole store. On top of that we had to stop quite a few shop lifters which was almost an impossible task in and of itself.

For the most part though whenever we don't have anything in stock, people seemed mad (When I was new working their) though as they started to get to know me a bit better they seemed not to care so much. Quite a few customers I know come in their just simply shrug it off and ask for a rain check (that's another thing that is left to the cashier and not the managers, even though the head office asked the managers to do it.) Overall I would say it gets me ticked having to write a rain check every few seconds, while trying to deal with costumers (quite a few I tried to give above and beyond service to), but over the course of time that I'm there I just have to tune them out. Sorry to say because it seems mean of me to say, but really some of the things people do and say are just to crazy. For one thing who would shop on the last day of a sale and expect it to be in?

I agree with what others have said here about humans becoming dependent on a way of life to supply what is "needed". It's utterly frustrating to realize that it was really not so long ago that people were centered on the necessity of living for another day. Everything a person did at that time had to be about ensuring the chance of survival tomorrow. It certainly wasn't about pepperoni pizza rolls. I understand the frustration of not finding something in stock, but to throw a tantrum (and I know that it happens, I work with the public every day of my life) is ridiculous, childish, selfish, and there is- underlying everything- a sense of entitlement that is hard to avoid.

What have we become that these are the things we are most concerned about? I ask myself so often- when looking at the recent headlines on major search engines- when did we stop caring about our world and the things that are taking place within it? When did Paris Hilton's multi-million dollar shopping spree become more important than the constant struggle of the middle and lower classes for recognition and opportunity? I've thought so much about the state of things and I must agree that there will be a large chunk of humanity that will not survive truly cataclysmic times because they'll still be bitching about pepperoni pizza rolls.

We are our own worst enemies- plain and simple- and what scares me is that it is this same sense of entitlement that is being instilled in younger generations, generations that *gulp* will be in charge someday. What we are entitled to is "life", however we choose to live it. The problem is that we have lost so much in the pursuit of machines that do these things for us. Who needs a car that parks itself? What we have bred in our world is a laziness that is scary. There is no sense of work ethic anymore, there is no sense of responsibility or accountability, there is no sense of comradery or unity or fellowship. There are just a bunch of people looking out for number one, and unfortunately I think that in a more or less hopeless situation the worst in humanity- far worse than supermarket tantrums- will come out for all to see.

God, I hope I'm not around to see it...

Oddly this entire thread reminds me of mostly the opposite.

Just to start with I never really had much faith in humanity from the beginning and weirdly my work actually reminded me that I should have some, not a great deal... just some.

Once upon a time not too long ago I used to work in a tremendously busy national IT help desk... you know the kind of thing. 45 second SLA's, 75 calls a day, 6 days a week job.

And... yeah, sure enough I would get sued about 2 times a week and a death threat or two every month but they weren't the ones that ever stuck in my mind.

If I ever had to contend only with the bad ones I don't think I would ever had stayed the job for the time that I did.

I was there for three and a half years and eventually made redundant and for the great majority of those three and a half years I was actually happy.

You see, I found that the crazy angry people were a very small minority. They just seemed bigger at the time since they were the loudest but they really didn't reflect the attitude of my customer base as a whole.

People as a whole were a fairly neutral bunch, evenly spread across all attitudes. They just want the help they were guaranteed. They wanted our assistance and in OK, in some cases wanted our 'assistance' unfairly and without question.

But the majority just wanted help, even the 'seemingly' angry ones (though not the psychotic ones).

Just being honest and putting things in ways the 'angry' ones could understand changed people from angry to understanding.

Not so different from any ones else, they just started off from a different place.

(oddly injured pride was factor in a huge number of cases, conceding that they needed help was a large a factor and admitting that they didn't know what the problem was seemed an even bigger issue).

But.. once they realised that as I would put it innocence (which according to some people is ignorance) IS an excuse and understanding the systems was not their job it was mine, they turned right back into your neighbour.

A lot that started screaming ended up apologising once they realised that we could and were going to help and we weren't going to blame them for their problems. Very notably in a number of cases.

That was normal.


The ones that kept me in the job though?

They were the good ones.

They are ones that stick in my mind and the ones I'd help even to my own detriment.

(got in trouble over some of them too, but the customers deserved it and I'm quite good at avoiding fallout, helped that the other guys I worked with understood too..)

You could put up with the psychotics knowing that somewhere down the line you'd find a genuine and good person.

They were what the job was all about and there was enough of them to make the death threats worth enduring.

Cheers.
Absence.

True Story:

Years ago I worked as a stock clerk in a grocery store. A woman approached me as I was stocking the salad dressing and asked for a 16 oz bottle of Kraft Ranch dressing. We were totally out of it, and I even checked in the backstock area. I suggested 2 8 oz bottles. She said she had to have 1 16 oz, 2 8 oz was not fine. I insisted we had no 16 oz bottles. She then sat down on the floor and began to cry! I just ignored her after that.

WTF???

I have worked in retail and customer service for many years now.
Whenever I see a customer abusing retail staff (or the other way round!), I promptly return that agression back at them. Getting angry at other people in public is not acceptable, and will happily incur my wrath.
I have had my fill of callous, brainless people that resort to yelling and violence to get what they want... and as a customer in a supermarket, I am free to say whatever I want to the other customers.

I've had plenty of praise from security guards and store staff for doing this, too. So if you want to vent your frustration with useless consumers, wander aimlessly around a busy shopping centre until someone cracks it at a staff member.

Originally posted by spaznational
I suggested 2 8 oz bottles. She said she had to have 1 16 oz, 2 8 oz was not fine. I insisted we had no 16 oz bottles. She then sat down on the floor and began to cry! I just ignored her after that.

Wow. I'd be tempted to sit down next to her and ask what the real problem was? Whatever it was, it was enough to put her on the fringe of any failure causing total breakdown.