I'm confused. Please help me

Life is full of imponderables and unanswered questions. The world is often a confused, confusing and illogical place in which things happen and no reasons are necessarily given. As follows are just some of those questions. This is not a rant – far be it from me to do such a thing – but more of a series of queries. Maybe you have the answers. If so, please help me out. If you don’t have the answers, well then I guess you’re just as confused as I am.

Whatever happened to the business theory that the happiness of the customer must always come first? Case in point: Wendy and I stopped at a little joint for coffee this morning. It was a bitterly cold (for the time of year) morning, so we nipped inside this place to warm up and to have a latte. Sitting there with our drinks we realized we were just as cold as we were outside. We realized the door to the street was wide-open. Wendy went to the counter and asked that the door be shut. The young female of whom she enquired offered the rejoinder that “the boss likes the door to be open.” I see, so the customers can be miserably cold, but the $#@^& boss wants the door to be open. So, the boss is saying, in effect, “screw the customers!” Well, I say, screw the boss. We won’t be back and we’ll rejoice to see the business fold. Like, what don’t you get, folks?

Window-dressing mission statements. In the same context, many organizations are governed by a so-called ‘mission-statement’ that invariably holds, once you are through all the accompanying mumbo-jumbo and bafflegab, that the organization exists to serve the wellbeing of the client. When did that actually last happen? When did you ever run across an organization, like say the Post Office, in which the welfare of the Post Office and its employees wasn’t much more important than the convenience of the client?

How many ways can you spell hypocrisy? At the so-called ‘green’ Oscars, did the self-aggrandizing, environmentally aware tinseltown folk arrive at the ceremonies on bicycles or public transit? Did Al Gore? How did he get out to Hollywood? By bus? Well, I didn’t watch, so maybe I missed their red-carpet arrivals.

How many ways can you spell ill-considered? Prince Harry is going off to war. One can admire his patriotism in wanting to do an Iraq combat tour. What one cannot admire is the fact that he will be an immediate enemy target as a symbolic martyr. What one also cannot admire is all those who serve in his same sector will also have their chances of being blown away increased a thousandfold.

Did somebody think there actually was a ‘good time' for diarrhea? I don’t mean to be indelicate here, but there is a TV commercial in which a young woman at lunch with friends suddenly grimaces in pain, and we are told she is in some sort of bowel-distress, and that she should take whatever it is they’re pushing because “It’s never a good time for diarrhea.” I’m glad I now know that because maybe I’d thought there was.

Does anybody really believe this? Gasoline prices have been ridiculously high of late. OK, we have to swallow that because the whole thing with prices is a racket anyway, and we all know that. But then we notice that if the per gallon price per gallon or liter goes to a certain point, that all stations offer their fuel at exactly the same price. Our elected officials tell us there is no price-fixing going on. I think we’re also told that pigs will fly.

Banks advertise on television and extol the wonderful rates they will offer their customers. Why do they do that? Everybody knows Bank B down the street will offer ‘exactly’ the same rates as Bank A. Maybe some people don’t. That’s very, very scary.

Huh? There’s an ad on TV that extols the virtues for people of a certain age to use the equity in their homes to finance all and sundry. Better than to just have all that investment tied up in a simple structure. It’s known as reverse-mortgaging, though the ad doesn’t call it that. One of the suggestions is that maybe you could use the money to finance a first home for the kids. My God, I can hear my old man now: “Say, Pop, could you an Mom put your place in hock so me’n Mandy can get a house of our own.” Delicacy forbids me suggesting how he might have responded. What happened to young people taking care of themselves? Are the old folks now obligated until they close the box on them? “You say you can’t afford a mortgage? Well, I guess that means you can’t afford a mortgage.”

Just my thoughts on this first day of March which this year came in like a three-toed sloth, rather than a lion or a lamb.