May 26, 2005
This whole sitting-in-an-airport-killing-time thing is getting tiring. But as long as I'm here, let me vent a little about some of the people that occupy this little planet with us.
Driving up the highway one day recently, I had an inordinately large number of people cut me off (with no visual warning, of course). And I started to notice a trend. They were all driving relatively high-end vehicles.You know, Mercedes, BMW, Porsches, etc. Cars that I can't afford right now and probably wouldn't have much interest in owning, anyway. Because frankly, I don't want to turn into a pompous bitch.
What is it about these people that makes them believe they are so much more important than me? That I am driving along, just waiting to see what they do next? That my space is not as valuable as theirs, and their need to be in the lane right now supercedes my need to maintain a safe distance between me and the other hunks of metal flying along at high speeds? I started thinking about it -- really pondering it, not just muttering to nobody in particular while trying to regain the stopping space between me and Miz Mercedes SUV up there.These folks who routinely piss me off in the middle of an already crappy commute are usually driving nice cars. And to have a nice car, you've gotta be able to make the payments. And to make the payments, you've gotta pull down a decent salary. And to pull down a decent salary, you're probably a manager, or C-something-O. And if you're in management, you've probably gotten there by (a) being good at what you do, (b) being pretty intelligent, and (c) not caring a whole lot about other people's feelings.
Really -- most upper-management can't afford to care what the people under them actually think. If they worried about whether their decision to merge companies will put some people out of work, business would never grow. And I understand that. But as they make gains in their careers and attain increasingly impressive-sounding titles, they draw further into that little world where they are one of the most important people to their boss (if they still have to report in to someone). Their meetings don't consist of 14 guys in shorts and Tevas, deciding whether the project should move forward with an XML codebase or not. They're sitting around drinking their Starbucks and picking at a danish that the executive assistant had ordered in (often at the last minute -- again because her boss didn't think how his schedule would affect someone else's), making decisions about the "resources" and how many can be expended. And because they no longer have to buy their own breakfast, or hear a co-worker wonder out loud whether the phone company would actually cut off their service after only 2 months of non-payment, because their budget really IS that tight, they don't understand that the rest of the world does not revolve at the pace which they've set. And so, when it comes to driving and getting their Beemer where the Blackberry says they need to be right now, they really don't give half a thought to the rest of us. The world caters to them everywhere else, why not on the highway?
Honestly. How many times do you get cut off for no good reason by a middle-aged woman driving a Chevy Impala? And yes, that 17-year-old kid in the souped-up Honda Civic will cut you off, but mostly because he's not yet discovered that he's immortal. But if a graying/balding idiot in a convertible silver Mercedes decides that the space in front of you (that you were saving in case you had to hit your brakes) is absolutely where he must be, right this minute, you can be fairly sure that it's only because he truly does think the world revolves around him.And sure enough, you let off the gas and tap the brake, cursing and muttering at him. But you do it. You make room.
One of these days, when it's a decently safe little speed, I may just allow one of these yayhoos to take off my bumper and see if it might jolt him or her back into reality. I doubt it, but I'd sure feel better.