As a secondary source of income, your favorite blogger on the whole worldwide web spends no less than 40 hours a week planted on one end of a vast and expansive cubicle farm. I have a stand up desk which is capable of changing its altitude to accommodate my desire to either plop my less than bulbous ass in a chair situated in front of a couple of monitors, or to stand up in front of said monitors so as to irritate the questionable physical integrity of my ankles.
I park on the other side of the expansive facility from where I normally sit. This affords me the opportunity to increase my step count in any given day. It’s either that, or go to the bathroom more. I already go to the bathroom a lot. If I were to increase the trips to the hopper any more than what I do now, people would ask just a few more questions than they do now.
Nosey assholes.
In addition to parking in BFE, I also make a daily trip or two to the cafeteria which is centrally located in what can be considered the middle of the cube farm. It’s on these trips that I stock up on a muffin for breakfast, or a side dish to consume with my Hot Pocket infused lunch.
In a given week, at least half of my trips from my cubicle to either the cafeteria or my vehicle tend to get littered with a group of people walking slow in front of me. Add to that, these people take up the entire width of the walkway.
They are oblivious to their surroundings, including the sarcastic blogger walking briskly behind them in a vain attempt to feed his FitBit. As such, they maintain their “Slow Elk” pace and don’t even bother to consider the fact that they’re being rude.
Common courtesy in what we can only expect is a polite society dictates that I don’t yell at them to get out of my way, or resort to the benefits of my weight and low center of gravity to clear a path.
Common courtesy in what we can only expect is a polite society also dictates that the people blocking the entire path take note of their surroundings periodically in order to determine if they’re in the position to piss someone off to the extent that their victims will take to the internet to gripe, bitch, and moan about such an avoidable indiscretion.
Sadly, this phenomenon (do, do, do, do, do) isn’t limited to the goings on in a office building parked in the Texas Hill Country in close proximity to a popular theme park.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are two different types of Ranch dressing in this world. There’s the lousy crap that seems to be tainted with buttermilk and is commonly featured on the salad bar at Pizza the Hutt. It tends to show up in most of your common brands of salad dressing, and ranks in palatability with the excretions of belly buttons, the backs of knees, and other stuff that is tainted.
The other type of Ranch dressing is the good stuff that restores your faith in God and country when copiously applied to deep fried food, sandwiches, and even salad if you’re in a pinch.
Yesterday, I found myself at the grocery store seeking out some Ranch dressing that wouldn’t remind me of that which is tainted. My plans for dinner involved throwing some buffalo chicken, various leafy greens, and Ranch dressing into a spinach wrap. Given that I was out of the homemade stuff and I didn’t really feel like making any, I opted to buy it premade instead.
As I approached the necessary aisle, a lady with a basket approached from the opposite direction. Since she was turning right and I was turning left, I applied traffic rules and let her go first.
My bad.
Why we tend to apply traffic rules to non-driving situations in a day to day lives isn’t really beyond me. It’s just that using them when I’m not behind the wheel doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. Instead, it just puts on the order of assorted critters and varmints which take on a herd-like or flock-like mentality when traversing certain distances all at once.
So the lady with the basket walked the entire aisle in front of me, pretty much hugging what I will refer to has the freeway/turning lane portion at the break neck speed which can only be described as glacial. Her position in time, space, and the cruising lane of the aisle made it somewhere between awkward and impossible to pass. It’s not like I could address her and request the right of way. “Excuse me ma’am. I know I just gave you the right of way into the aisle because I inadvertently applied traffic rules in a locale where the Po-Po can’t stop me for going too fast, or cutting you off, or texting while I hurl myself from point A to point B in order to
a) maintain a brisk pace for my health, and
2) get myself a blasted bottle of Ranch dressing that doesn’t taste like it’s tainted with the flatus of a particularly obese wildebeest;
but at this point, you appear to be doing everything in your power to inhibit my progress deliberately, even though I yielded an assumed and non-existent right-of-way to you, and you knew all the way down in the depths of your soul, or something you may refer to as a soul, that you’re now doing nothing more but piss me off. That being said, will you please let me pass and get to my precious bottle of untainted Ranch dressing before I make you the lead story on the six o’clock news tonight as the victim of an assault by way of this 3 liter bottle of Diet Coke?”
I mean Good Lord in Butter people!! There was a snail behind her honking on its horn telling her to get a move on.
She knew we (me and the snail) were back there. It’s not like she was oblivious to our presence.
Common courtesy in what we can only expect is a polite society dictates that I don’t yell at this person to get out of my way, or resort to the benefits of my weight and low center of gravity to clear a path.
Common courtesy in what we can only expect is a polite society also dictates that the people blocking the entire path take note of their surroundings periodically in order to determine if they’re in the position to piss someone off to the extent that their victims will take to the internet to gripe, bitch, and moan about such an avoidable indiscretion.
So as much as I find the premise absolutely ridiculous of taking to the internet to complain about my ongoing first world problems, I just can’t pass it up. I’m probably near 800 words into this aimless rambling. Why on God’s Green Earth would I stop now?
Sheesh.
Some years back, a colleague called attention to this phenomenon (do, do, do, do, do) and shared the term he had coined for these people.
Now be careful y’all. This term contains one of the two words we can’t really say in polite society anymore. Since Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel used the term at least once when he was White House Chief of Staff, I’m going to take the artistic license to use the term.
Before revealing the term, it should be stated here and now that I offer it as a dead on interpretation of the behavior at hand. I offer the term as it’s defined.
I do not offer the term as it applies to those with various birth defects, mental conditions, or any one of the on-air talents at MSNBC.
The term which best describes those who display both conscious and unconscious ignorance of their surroundings is as follows:
Kinetic Retard
kinetic
adjective ki·net·ic \kə-ˈne-tik also kī-\
: of or relating to the movement of physical objects
From <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kinetic>
retard
noun re·tard
1
\ri-ˈtärd\ : a holding back or slowing down : retardation
From <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/retard>
So based on the definitions I’ve pulled off of the magic and wonder that is the internet, the slow moving herd of beings which serve to define, enhance, and strengthen my misanthropy on a daily basis is known as a group of Kinetic Retards.
But let’s not stop there.
What do you call a group of Kinetic Retards?
A group of ducks is called a flock.
A group of horses is called a team or harras.
A group of lions is called a pride.
A group of lower case “i”‘s is called a Pod.
A group of hares is called a husk.
A group of hairs is called a do.
A group of super heroes is called a league.
A group of monkeys is called a barrel.
With that, I will now offer up the correct terminology when referring to a group of Kinetic Retards.
Certainly I can’t and won’t take credit for coining the term “Kinetic Retard”, but I will take credit for assigning nomenclature to their unfortunate plurality.
Be it declared today, on this twelfth day of July in the year of the Lord of 2015, that going forward, a group of Kinetic Retards shall henceforth be referred to as a gooch.
Example –
Coworker 1: “Hey you guys want to go to the cafeteria? I need to get a breakfast taco.”
Coworker 2: “Sure.”
Coworker 3: “Hang on guys. There’s a gooch of Kinetic Retards that just walked by. We either need to take another route to get around them, or wait a few.”
Coworker 2: “There is no other route.”
Coworker 1: “Crap. I was really hungry too.”
Coworker 3: “Stupid gooch.”
Coworker 1: “The worst thing is the fact they know we’re behind them when they pull this crap”.
Coworker 2: “Stupid gooch.”
With that, all I can say is this, ladies and gentlemen.
The next time you get hung up behind a slow moving crowd in a hallway, and said crowd is purposely blocking your way, be sure to call out that Gooch of Kinetic Retards for what they are.
You might as well incorporate some salty epitaphs as well. It’s not like two of the words in that title are really acceptable for usage in polite society anyway.
