An Open Letter to Shoppers.

People - It's two thousand and goddamn twelve. As in, fifteen hundred years ago some dudes decided to start counting the years in relation to the existence of some Jewish guy that had been dead for five hundred years. And before said dude, there were about ten thousand years before that in which human beings stopped being a bunch of cave dwelling apes and started to build civilizations.

My point? 

Humans and their creations have been around for a while, and in those interminable centuries mankind has learned to do a few things:

Like fight and kill each other over the right to make their own minds up about how they want to be governed... although they seemed to have forgotten that hard won lesson over the last few centuries. Apparently  voting for “Your Next American Idol!” is easier than voting for a Congress that isn't full of corrupt shitheads - and it's a voting choice that is vastly more important, if the voter turnout numbers are to be compared..

But that is another rant altogether.

Yes, back to my point (again):

Human kind also invented a little thing called commerce. It's a wonderfully brilliant system that allows a person to exchange goods and services to another person for a different set of goods and services.

Commerce is a cornerstone of human society. Ever since the earliest man found that he can trade his food to another guy for a sharpened piece of rock, trade has helped define us as a species. Over the centuries, specific rules have arisen over how trade functions. These rules are, or at least should be common sense to any person that regularly participates in this necessary activity.

1. Don't cheat the person you're trading with (unless you can get away with it) or you'll get a spear to the kidneys. 
2.  Try to show some semblance of being a rational human being instead of acting like a major tool or else he'll stab you in the kidney with a spear. 
3. If there are accepted trading policies in place that the majority of co-traders seem well within their capacity to adhere to, one entering the sphere of trade should just suck it up and do their own...well... adhering (or again there will be potential for kidney stabbing).

I'm sure there are myriad other more intricate rules for commerce that vary wildly between the many cultures of this world, these are just a few basic examples. What you should really take away from all of this, however, is one simple thing - the golden rule, actually:

Don't be a dick unless you are prepared to suffer the consequences that might arise from any spear-to-kidney interactions. 

Seems pretty basic to me. “Don't be a dick.” Truly, these are words to live by, and this isn't a new concept either in fact it's the core tenet of all of the major religions. Sure, they may gussy it up a little bit, but really the message is clear: Be a dick and you'll be punished.

Consider how these two concepts are internal to the socialization of nearly every human being on the planet and has been since mankind decided to invent these things for itself. We use commerce to get what we want or need but cannot make ourselves, and we practice not being a dick to make sure this goes as smoothly as possible.

Why then, do some people continue to act like entitled little bitches when they are shopping? What kind of asshole abandons 12,000 motherfucking years of progress just so they can get on with whatever infinitely pointless thing they were doing just a few seconds quicker?

It's called “12 Items or Less”, you asshole. I swear to your God, if you have 13 items I will stab you in the fucking kidneys with a spear.

Jason Zebrowski is just a guy pretending to be a writer instead of being the janitor he was trained to be at his last job. His favorite activities are being sarcastic and never updating his own blog: http://theoriginalxenotaru.blogspot.com/