Hand Washing, Attentiveness, and Intelligence - Things People Fake

Ever wondered why people pretend the things they pretend? In some cases it makes sense (i.e., politicians - that should be self-explanatory), but most of the time it just kinda makes you scratch your head and wonder 'why?'.

Faking Attentiveness

This is probably the most understandable of the list of things people fake. It wouldn't do you much good if you decided to nod off for a nice nuzzly nap in the middle of an "important" staff meeting where your boss/supervisor/CEO is going to reassure everyone that they have absolutely no intention of laying off anymore employees or plans to close any offices in the immediate future.

As a word-to-the-wise everyone should realize that no one every really needs to make "plans" to close an office or layoff workers. They just show up at a "high level" meeting one day where someone asks aloud 'anyone got any ideas on how we can save a million or so in payroll?". Someone always invariably answers, 'well, we could close the Scranton office', they all mumble and nod, and that's that. The 'high level' meeting participants then proceed to pat each other on the back and give each other bonuses that total a little more than a million for their stellar work and ability to 'think out of the box', 'rightsize their operations', 'generate investor capital', yadda, yadda, yadda.

Other areas where faking attentiveness is somewhat understandable and/or necessary since not paying attention would cause disastrous distress levels in the people you're interacting with include:

a) childrens' school plays right up until and immediately after the 3 seconds your kid actually gets to walk around the stage pretending to be toothpaste or give the Virgin Mary a gift of Frankinsence that looks a lot like the empty box of RitzBits you put in the trash last week with a few cotton balls and paint slapped on as a disguise. The rest of the time you just gotta grin, say "oh yes, s/he's wonderful", and pretend to care as the other parents surrounding you extol the virtues of the existensial exuberance inherent in their son/daughter's protrayal of a tree, rock, or other such obtuse object.

b) while listening to your husband/wife/significant other babble on about some work-related crisis that really isn't more important to you than the Happy Days or Laverne and Shirley rerun you're trying to watch (The Fonz on a surfboard and still wearing his leather jacket...Go Fonzie! Go! Look out for that shark! Ahhh, Carmine, you singing fool, where are you now? Rags to riches and back to rags again, I presume.)

c) during sex when you might be thinking of the list of groceries you need to pick up on the way home from work tomorrow or trying to delay orgasm by thinking of baseball or your grandma's dentures that she accidentally left on the edge of the sink right before you had to go in for your morning visit that's gonna take at least 10 minutes (I still have the emotional scars from that one). You probably should at least appear to be interested in whichever of your partner's body part(s) are in contact with you at that moment. You may also want to try and make eye contact, but that depends entirely on your physical orientation and whether or not you've removed the gimp mask/blindfold/duct tape yet.

Faking Intelligence

This one is a bit of a grimy grey area to say the least. On the one hand people have successfully faked knowing something about something to the point where they make CEO. In that scenario, even if you royally screw up they'll still give you a multimillion dollar golden handshake on your way out the door so, really, who's the smarter one then?

Unless of course you get caught while you righteously rip off the masses and get sent to spend some time at the local penitentiary where everyone enters by the 'back door'...wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Mind you, depending on your personal procilivities, you might view it as an extended stay at Club Med or Hedonism - Prison Edition. You might get lucky and end up in the cell next to Martha's. She could let you know exactly what ointment you should use for that chafing that turned into a funny looking rash and how to make it from rhubarb and toothpaste...'it's a good thing'.

On the other hand, most people who fake intelligence don't have a hope in hell of making CEO or a clue where to begin so much so that they try to make themselves seem smart by using as many 'big words' as they can think of. For most however, the biggest words they can come up with are 'marmalade', 'authorized', or 'unaccepatable'. They particularly like that last word as anyone who's worked in any service capacity would know the phrase, "well that's just unacceptable" and recognize it as the last refuge of the terminally 'tarded twits who like to argue and complain about everything under the sun. I think one of the true measures of someone's lack of intelligence or just plain stupidity is to record how long they'll argue over a penny in the price of whatever it is they're buying. Once they break the one minute mark they should be allowed to put a handicap sign in their car, they need as much help as we can give them.

Faking Hand Washing

Now this is the one that causes me the greatest amount of conceptual constipation I've ever had the misfortune of experiencing.

Why? Why? Why?

I have witnessed, first hand, people using the restroom (usually while at work during my quarterly meeting with the Department of Wastewater Management - see previous blog for details) and only after they realize that someone else is in the restroom with them, they decide it necessary to give the impression that they are sanitary souls and fake washing their hands.

You, I, and anyone else would know they're faking because in the microsecond that they turn the tap water on/off there is no possible way that they could even get their hands off the tap and under the water to even accidentally dislodge a miniscule microspec of the microorganic mites dining on their digits.

Again

Why? Why? Why?

If you're going to take the time to turn the water on, why not get your hands wet, add some soap, give a little rub, rinse 'em clean, and dry 'em up? Would they rather walk around the rest of the day with the festering fecality of their brief restroom repose? Does it add spice to their dull leftover lunch? Did they pick out a particular peanut they wanted to give a second chew to? Lastly, who exactly are they trying to kid? I mean, come on, Ebola didn't spread on its own, you know.

My head is spurriously spinning due to the lack of logic so I'm going to shut my brain down for a while and get back to work. I have things that I pretend too, you know.

Poop Chute Toot Toot

Its a little disconcerting when you walk into your office restroom facilities (most lovingly referred to in our place of work as 'The House the Poo Fairy Built') and all is quiet. You get a little relaxed, maybe make a little more noise than usual, maybe slam the stall door a bit harder than you intended, and let out that exhilarant exhilation of, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." as you sit your bare buttocks on your throne-of-choise's cold plastic seat.

Sidenote for the squeamish: for brevity's sake I've left out the details of the paper-spreading ritual and the whistling of 'Old Susanna' that usually acts as soundtrack.

The source of my disconcersion (that's probably not a word, maybe it should be consternation?) comes when after all this excessive noise making and possibly a little flatulence just prior to your intial push-and-pinch (or push-and-plop for those of you with looser sphincters than I), you hear in the stall adjacent a muffled, 'sniffle, sniffle, cough, cough'.

'Egad!', you think to yourself, 'there's bears in them there woods!'

Once busted you do what every normal, relatively young, selfrespecting person does and mentally switch your ass to stealth mode and try to quietly sloop and ploop the rest of your delivery into its watery resting place all the while hoping to the heavens the chili you ate for lunch doesn't make a rumbling return anytime soon.

Sidenote #2: I mentioned "relatively young" in the paragraph above only because I've had the pleasure of passing my thoroughly digested munchables, along with some thoroughly undigested peanuts and corn, on to the treatment plant while the stall next to me was being occupied by a gentleman that was neither young nor apparently selfrespecting 'cause he let the shit fly like he was late for his own funeral. His advanced age and relaxed muscular structure also caused some unnecessary and quite clappy flappiness that was just uncalled for and more than a little embarassing.

At the end of it all, what made things that much more disconcerting and odd was the fact that after completing my quarterly review with the Department of Wastewater Management, washing (with soap) and drying both hands and all my fingers, and walking out of the Poo Fairy's abode, the coughing sniffler (who was there before I entered) was still sitting (I hope) in his stall coughing and sniffling with no end in sight.

There's gotta be some kind of fetish in there somewhere. I just hope he wasn't offended by the hints of rapini and asparagus I left behind. After all, I wouldn't want to be rude.