Remember college? Was it the same as Schmidt and Jenko’s experience? Hopefully not since they’re trying to stop a drug ring … but who am I to judge. At least they’re making the most out of their short time there.
Read More...Last time I checked, there were designated areas to safely stop a car. The middle of a road was never one of them. Newsflash: no one else is prepared for your 60 to 0 deceleration.
Read More...Nobody likes broken technology. I mean, I guess there are some people out there who get a weird sense of satisfaction from fixing broken technology, but are they really excited that it’s broken or that they were able to fix a problem? Are there actual human beings living in 2021 that pick up their phone and hope it doesn’t work? I have to believe the answer is no. Unless you were trying to get off the grid for a while. Broken broken feels like a strong wish, though, when you could just turn it off or leave it at home.
For the more sane among us, broken technology is never a fun time. Technology, for starters, is expensive. Like sell your first child expensive and every year those prices climb a little more. It’s the most exhausting hill climb I’ve ever done. Remember when you could get a phone for like, well I don’t actually remember anything pre several hundred dollars, but at some point it was affordable. Same with gas, and clothes, and houses, and cars, and toothbrushes, and watches, and all of the things.
So you’ve spent your entire paycheck on something the size of your palm. It’s fun! It’s new! It’s the envy of your friends, co-workers, sidewalk strangers – everyone! Until it’s not. There’s always the one day where you go to power on a device and get the infinite loading screen of death. A stalled progress bar. A spinner stuck in time. A loading bar that never starts loading. A percentage that would fail every test, regardless of the curve. You know what I’m talking about.
Few things bring greater frustration than broken technology. Why is that? My guess: we need working technology to find a solution for our current problem. But if the solution magician is also asleep at the wheel, how are we ever supposed to move forward? Stuck in a black hole of questions and no answers. A lot like English exams. What answer are you looking for?! An opinion is not an accurate way to assess my knowledge of a book! Everyone is different and my current opinion is best left in my head.
Anyways … despite my raging passion against standardized English testing, technology is the same puzzle. And so we travel down the path and start walking through the 5 stages of grief with our currently most hated possession. Starting, of course, with grief. Grief for not being able to get it working. For never knowing if you’ll see the login screen ever again. A genuine sadness that it doesn’t work all the time. Like the price tag indicated.
We quickly move on into the angst portion of our journey thinking about all the potentially lost data if our technology does not magically come back online. When was the last time you ran a backup? Do you even know people’s phone numbers? How are you supposed to contact someone to send help? Will we ever see those unopened messages again? Once we’ve accepted our sadness, fears, and anxieties around our current situation we move to confusion.
Confusion around how to even begin fixing this. Who knows how to fix these things? Do you have to physically go to a store? Wait in line and hope you can explain the problem enough for someone to fix it. General confusion on how it works to begin with. Literally think about that for just a second. How do these things do all of the things they do? I have no idea. But that is a short rest area on our way to anger. Why? Simply why must things be like this?
You want answers. I want answers. Everybody wants answers, but the place with the answers is currently closed. So where does that leave us? About to throw something at a wall probably. And you can see how we easily get to tears. Throwing is never the ideal solution. Brute force, after all, usually makes it much worse. But at the end of the day, hole in the wall or not, we are frustrated to the point of literal, or metaphorical, tears.
Alright, jumping off my pedestal for now. If you know someone who would enjoy this post and want to share it with them, that would be awesome. Sharing is caring, after all. Don’t forget to subscribe to get these in your inbox twice weekly and follow TRP on Twitter for frequent musings. Thanks for reading!
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Oh, look. Another daylight savings time has come and confused our biological clocks like the demon it is. Why are we still observing this not once, but twice a year? What purpose is it serving? Does it boost the economy? Is it a way to keep the calendar in sync? I would like answers from whoever controls this. Who does control it? Father time? Mother nature? Please tell me it’s not the government. Regardless, it needs to go.
If this happened once a year, it would still be annoying. On the scale of which version is better, spring or fall, that clearly goes to the fall option. I have yet to meet anyone who gets excited to lose an hour of their lives every spring. Time goes fast enough, I don’t need some arbitrary time rule eliminating an hour every year. Thus why the fall is preferable, since I gain that lost hour back. Although, if we’re being honest, that hour would be more useful to me during the summer vacation season instead of during winter.
Let’s break down why this is the worst, and then argue to send it back into the fiery pits of the south where I feel confident it originated. Spring forward. What? Why? It’s 1:59AM going on 3AM. How absolutely exhilarating. Especially since it happens overnight. You go to sleep. Life is normal. Time makes sense. You understand when to wake up and when to sleep. Life is good. Then, BAM! Time change! And all of a sudden you are late to all of your Sunday activities. Your phone says it’s one time, but all your other dumb household appliances say something different. It’s so stressful.
And what if you forget to change all of the possible places that display the time in any sort of fashion? Well, first of all, everything does not need a clock. I would like to throw that out into the innovation universe cloud. If you decide that what you’re building is going to display time, then you better make sure it knows how to sync with the actual time as well. I’m over trying to adjust my microwave clock like I live in the 20th century. I literally don’t have the time. I’ve lost an entire hour.
Circling back, what if a clock is off? Well, in my experience, the clock I usually forget about lives in my car. Which is truly just unfortunate. Am I late? Am I early? I left the house on time, or so I thought. The amount of times I second guess my decision about when to leave in the days following a time shift is astronomical. Usually for the first half of the ensuing week I’m late for every meeting on my calendar. How I still have a job, you and I both wonder.
In other musings, why is it always a Sunday? A Friday night going into Saturday would allow for more adjustment time. I never know when to go to bed on the night of the incident. My phone says bedtime, but my body says binge time and that is an internal struggle I still haven’t figured out how to resolve. Meanwhile, who has a Saturday night bedtime? It’s more of a fall asleep when you fall asleep kind of vibe. Or if some external circumstances cause you to lose consciousness. No judgement.
You might be thinking, yes springing forward is my least favorite form of exercise, but then we get to fall back in just a few months. Well I’m here to say that I enjoy falling back as much as I enjoy trust fall exercises. Which is not at all. Do I trust a stranger to catch me? Absolutely not! What if they feel their phone vibrate and are waiting for a text back from their crush? If that was me, I’d sneak a glance for sure. Anyways … falling back is more confusing. Your bedtime syncs up with your grandparents momentarily. And then you’re awake before sunrise and everything is dark and you aren’t sure if you’ve been abducted and sent to Alaska or not.
My last feeling about this, not final though, just going for a somewhat concise post, has to do with our poor animals. Whom we adore. Maybe not all animals, but definitely our dogs. They too don’t know what to do with daylight savings time. Think about it, their internal clocks are synced with the actual daylight – not just the concept of day versus night as presented to us in the form of four numbers separated by a colon. Or Google it, some very smart, scientific, people have researched this extensively while I have merely thought about it for a few moments.
Mmkay, so overall emotion towards this ritual is not great. I would propose solutions, but there’s only one thing I would like to do with it. Make it disappear. Send it the depths of the ocean where those creatures have never seen daylight once. Fly it into outer space, I think time is relative out there anyways. I don’t care. Just take it away from me. Arizona and Hawaii are looking like excellent options for my next place of residence.
Alright, jumping off my pedestal for now. If you know someone who would enjoy this post and want to share it with them, that would be awesome. Sharing is caring, after all. Don’t forget to subscribe to get these in your inbox twice weekly and follow TRP on Twitter for frequent musings. Thanks for reading!
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Languages have never been my strong suit, but there is one that I simply cannot understand no matter how many times I try. You probably guessed it. It, of course, is the Starbucks language of coffee. I’m not sure what class, or after school club, I missed in my education to pick up on this. How do people learn the little intricacies of their favorite orders? It’s not on the menu, believe me, I keep checking. It’s not on the website. It’s not on their commercials. It’s not on Google. If you don’t speak coffee, you better befriend a nice human who will teach you because otherwise you’ll be stuck standing at the front of the line looking like a deer in the headlights with angry, caffeine-deprived customers screaming at your back.
It’s a straight up clique. An original form of social distancing for those who haven’t proven their worth by passing the challenge of ordering a drink from the menu and then proceeding to change everything about it. Personally, I find the drive-through lines comical because that is way slower than waiting in the store line. You have to try and explain your custom creation through the highly efficient outdoor microphone. You know, the ones that pick up about a third of what you say. Then you get to play the ever fun phone tag, or microphone tag in this case, of you placing an order, the employee repeating it, you correcting it (because heaven forbid you get two pumps of caramel when you specified twenty), the employee repeating it again, you correcting it … again (because you asked for pumpkin spice not light ice), the employee getting a bit frustrated on round 3, you getting irritated over having to continue to repeat your daily order (how do they not have this memorized by now, all the money you’ve spent there?!), etc.
Rant over, I apologize for all the die-hard Starbucks fans in the world. What do you call yourselves? Starbucksers? Star-Warriors? Starbuck Chucks? Straight up Stars? SBean? Estarbucksso? Now that is a winner! I should trademark it, you are all welcome. Don’t say I never did anything nice for you. Judge you? Yes. Mock you? Definitely. Blog about you? Certainly. But alas, I have given your band of minions a catchphrase.
I understand the concept of customization in food. If you’re paying for it, it better be everything you hoped for and more. What’s the best way to do that? Make it your own! Most places have found a balance – a diverse menu that lets you make slight adjustments based on dining preferences. Burgers without ketchup, extra cheese on the nachos, double the oreos in the milkshake, re-heating the fries so they’re toasty by the time you get to them, combination of half lemonade and half tea, etc. Minor adjustments that don’t impact the overall cooking process. It is but a blip on the cook’s radar.
Starbucks has adopted the opposite mentality it seems. Create a menu, train employees how to make the small amount of available drinks, then allow customers to run wild with suggestions. Completely ignoring what people at corporate have deemed current feasible options. How this is a sustainable business model stymies me … oh, wait, it’s because they cater to both the 1% and the 99% all at once. In other words, the rarely seen 100%. Price: 1% model, hands down. Coffee drinkers: well there’s the 99-ers. It’s fascinating. Why even bother creating a menu? Why spend money and time and energy and sanity constructing beverages that people will look at and go, it’s fine and all, but completely change the recipe and I’ll drink it?
You order a chocolate chip frappuccino, sans chocolate chips, without milk, zero sugar, and instead of espresso a black coffee pour over. Pretty close. You order a vanilla latte, but skinny edition sans flavor, additives, anything besides water, and low-fat whipped cream. You order a caramel macchiato, but with ten pumps of chocolate, just a quarter pump of caramel, milk steamed at exactly 152.5 degrees for slight froth, but not too much, and a whipped cream. I don’t even know what I’m saying but these are all things I’ve heard while waiting in line for my cake pop. Honestly, I don’t care – estarbuckssos, you do you. What I do care about, is having my order become unnecessarily complicated because the employees forget normal words like water. I have to order liquid, pulled from the coldest, purest creeks in Chile with ice, hand carved by farmers in the Swiss Alps. And, of course, a perfectly moist, aerated, sugar dough covered with the finest colors at the end of the Lucky Charms rainbow and topped with tiny globes of crunch.
Alright, jumping off my pedestal for now. If you know someone who would enjoy this post and want to share it with them, that would be awesome. Sharing is caring, after all. Don’t forget to subscribe to get these in your inbox twice weekly and follow TRP on Twitter for frequent musings. Thanks for reading!
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What a time to be alive. Smartwatches, self-driving cars, every restaurant available for delivery, no shame for laying on a couch all day to watch TV, Chewy Chip-Ahoy. So much progress. So much technology. So much innovation. So much delicious food. So many choices for which piece of paper to fill out when you walk into a bank. Did that entire sector of the economy miss the memo? Did no one tell them that it isn’t 1879 anymore? Why are they always the last ones to know … everytime?
For starters, how long did it take banks to get useful online applications up? Too long. How long did it take for banks to finally jump on the happy app train? Too long. How long did it take for banks to do everything in their power to have minimal interactions with customers? Well, this is to be determined since they still seem to love face to face awkward money conversations. Self service is the future. Why talk to an angry, or confused, customer on the phone when they could read an article, or talk to a robot, and figure it out themselves? Anyways, I digress. Back to what’s really important here, which is how confusing it is to write on paper at the bank. It’s the only time I actually write something that doesn’t involve a screen and a cursor.
Some financial institutes have graciously allowed app users to deposit checks via picture. Genius. One less interaction and one less stressful choice at the paper counter. Choosing a slip is somewhat almost kind of intuitive. They’re all different colors. Then it’s usually an educated guess based on the two words I know: deposit and withdrawal. One is exciting and the other is sad. When in doubt, go with the more positive choice. That’s the easy part, though. After you have carefully selected what you hope to be the right check-sized piece of paper, then you have to fill it out. Who knows their bank account number off the top of their head? I don’t even memorize phone numbers, you think I’m going to memorize my bank number? Hard pass.
I used to try and be a good bank customer and put my numbers in the tiny boxes on the paper. A traumatizing experience that reminded me of proctored tests in school. You know, the super fun ones where they make you write your name, address, medical information, dreams, every time you’ve blinked, with each letter in a separate box the size of a period. But, then the impossible question of my bank account number stalls me so I would take my half-hearted attempt to the bank teller who would have to finish it for me. Then, like technology, I evolved and would pick the bank paper and just take it up without even trying.
Now, however, I no longer care about what the bank tellers think of me. I don’t even glance at that table. It’s a straight up swerve. Right into line where I confidently stroll up and tell them what I need – they can figure out which piece of paper I need. That’s their job, right? Or part of their ‘other duties as assigned’ at the very least. If they wanted me to do it myself, why not let me do it online? Or on their app? Or via a chat bot? Or via telekinesis? So many options that don’t involve a bank teller judging my skills as an adult. It also seems like minimizing real life visits would reduce overhead.
Why don’t they move all operations online, you may be wondering? I’ve been asking myself this for years. Even Capital One’s reinvented “cafes” are still banks. Just banks with iPads and chairs in them. Which begs the question, why can’t I use the iPad in my house, sitting in my own chair, and not put on pants to come to a building to conduct financial business? Sure, I get it. Some people prefer in person interactions. Well, I would prefer it if I could eat a whole pizza by myself and not receive four plates from the delivery driver like I’m going to share it. I would also like to receive a bank bonus for showing up in person, when so many people are able to avoid that. But, we can’t always get what we want, can we?
Alright, jumping off my pedestal for now. If you know someone who would enjoy this post and want to share it with them, that would be awesome. Sharing is caring, after all. Don’t forget to subscribe to get these in your inbox twice weekly and follow TRP on Twitter for frequent musings. Thanks for reading!
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There is nothing that irks me more than bad drivers. I can’t stress that sentence enough: bad drivers are my pet peeve! The reason I scream at my windshield and take my hands off the wheel to throw them up in frustration. The reason I usually show up at work stressed out (ok, this may be somewhat related to other circumstances … like the fact that I’m driving to work), but you get the point. I’m always amazed at how the overall quality of driving seems to decrease overnight. Every. Freaking. Night. Has the driving test gotten easier to pass? Is it now a pay-to-drive scheme where you just have to show up with cash and the person at the DMV is like ‘OK, let’s take your picture – you have 3 hours for that right?’.
I’m not going to say how many years it has been since I took the driving test, but for fun let’s say enough for my parent’s car insurance to drop down and they no longer have to sell their souls so I can drive. I almost failed my driving test before I left the parking lot because the radio was on and that is “distracting”. Literally turned the car on and the employee gave me this how dare you look and said ‘Really?! That’s how you want to start this test?!’. Being the clueless, snarky, idiot that I was, I replied, ‘Well, it’s hard to drive without turning the car on’. Which technically, is very true, but I should have known better and just brown-nosed it because my freedom (from having to be driven everywhere) was now in this (angry) employee’s hands. As you can imagine, it was a stressful drive and my every move was criticized. At one point when turning left, I looked left first, then right … is that incorrect? Not sure, but apparently it was that day.
Anyways, I digress. I have a lot of thoughts on the stupid things some drivers do, however, today I want to just put it out to the world that yield signs and stop signs are not the same thing. At all. In fact, they serve very different purposes. Let’s start with the obvious, one is an octagon that says STOP and the other is a triangle that says YIELD. That alone should be enough, but unfortunately, it is not so let’s go a little deeper.
The STOP sign (with 8 sides, remember from up there?) is where you have to come to a complete stop – wheels aren’t moving. You can safely look both ways and then proceed from 0 MPH as you please. Funny how people usually forget the one action item here, which, of course is to STOP! As much as I enjoy that moment of panic when I’m driving by a stop sign and the other car decides to read stop as roll (this isn’t a fire drill – it’s just stop, there is no drop, and there is definitely no roll), I much prefer the relief that comes with someone fully stopped and not moving at all. What does it say about drivers, though, that I now expect people to roll and get pleasantly surprised when someone doesn’t? I mean, in their defense, stop and roll both have four letters and both have an o in the middle(ish) of the word. So, yes, I guess I could see how that would be super confusing. If only the sign was clearer.
Now that we are through the complicatedness that is a stop sign, prepare yourself, because we are about to look at the YIELD sign. Unlike the stop sign, you do not have to stop at a yield sign if no one is coming. There’s a lot to break down here, so let’s start with part numero uno. I realize that the sign is red (like a stop sign) and has a similar shape being a triangle (almost like an octagon, just with 5 fewer sides), but you do not have to stop! In fact, people aren’t expecting you to stop, so when you do, someone has to slam on their brakes to avoid hitting your selfish rear-end. Look at it this way, stopping at a yield sign is basically the same thing as deciding to stop in the middle of the freaking road. Which is not safe driving!
But wait, there’s more to this epidemic: you don’t have to stop, IF NO ONE IS COMING. In other words, if someone is coming, you do not have the right of way and you have to stop. I realize this is very confusing for people – maybe that’s why they stop at all of them? Fewer things to remember. Keeping it simple, stupid as that is. Deciding to merge full speed into traffic is rarely a good idea and I do not recommend it. Especially if I am the driver with the right of way. Those people are the reason I have to constantly know who’s in the lane next to me, who’s behind me, etc. so I can know if I have an escape swerve option or not. Them and also the safe rules of driving.
Alright, jumping off my pedestal for now. If someone you know is suffering from stopield confusion then, by all means, share this post with them and help get them back to leading a normal, safe driving lifestyle. Thanks for reading!
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I have a confession to make…I have committed a terrible sin. Honestly, I’m embarrassed to tell you what happened, but I feel like we’re on that level now, you and me, so here goes nothing:
In an apartment, not too long ago, a tragic homicide happened. A human (let’s call them a restless professional) was living their best life, minding their own business, not giving a care in the world. Now this human had been gifted a succulent. Mind you, no one asked said human if they were prepared, or even if they wanted, to take on the burden of caring for another living thing. To commit to ensuring that this plant would be fed and loved. No, there was no asking just a bold statement followed by the heavy click of the ball and chain now trapping the free-spirited human into responsibility.
So now the human had an (unwanted) succulent. The human, tending to look for the best in any situation, thought: ‘Well, plants have lots of health benefits so maybe this will be good! Besides, worst case scenario, my roommate is growing a small, thriving, forest on our balcony so they can help me out.’ And so the human took the succulent and put it on the windowsill (because everyone knows that plants need sunlight. I mean, come on, the human isn’t that clueless!). There the succulent lived happily in the warm, direct sunlight for a day, then two, then three, then a week, then two weeks, then three weeks, etc.
One day (about a month later) the human came home from work to find that it was still light outside (apparently some people get home before dark every day, lucky duckies). Desperately wanting to enjoy the last rays of warm, direct, sunlight they went over to the window and basked in the Vitamin D. Feeling truly elated, and a bit invincible, the human glanced down at the windowsill and noticed a little pot with nothing inside it. Seemed strange that the roommate would pack a pot full of dirt and then put nothing in it…maybe they were finally losing their touch? Maybe it was the human’s turn to show the world that, although they still get nervous when having to actually TALK on the phone to make an appointment, and don’t buy groceries that either can’t be microwaved or aren’t immediately ready for consumption, in fact they were a responsible adult and their parents could stop worrying about having to clean out their basement for a make-shift bedroom.
Then reality hit. Like a ton of bricks strapped to the front of an 18-wheeler going 70MPH on the highway. That wasn’t the roommates pot! No, that was the succulent gifted to the human (who knows how long ago at this point). It was green and thriving when first handed over, but now it was so dead it looked like dirt. What does a responsible, caring, living their best life human do in this situation? Well the only thing that makes sense when seeing a dead plant of course – ran it to the sink and drowned it in water (because obviously it was thirsty or it wouldn’t have died).
Now, I would just like to point out that succulents, by nature, are supposed to need VERY little attention. Did I maybe neglect it for too long? Neglect is a strong word – I prefer the term forgot. I didn’t purposefully not water my succulent. In my mind, the succulent had been watered when it was given to me, therefore it would be a couple months before it was a thirsty hoe again. Turns out, I was thinking of a cactus. It also turns out that succulents and cacti are NOT one and the same (much to my disappointment).
There you have it! You’re supporting an (accidental) plant murderer. Well…actually, in a weird twist of fate, turns out my succulent is thirstier than I am because the drowning actually brought half of it back to life. I’m happy to report that the living half is doing great currently…and also that my roommate immediately took over its care.
Moral of the story is this, two things really:
Alright, jumping off my pedestal for now. If you know someone who has mistakenly been entrusted with a succulent, or a fish, or another seemingly innocent living organism, please get them the help they need immediately. Thanks for reading!
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What makes you think I know the answer to your question? Does my face scream “walking encyclopedia of all the knowledge”? Because I’ve seen myself in the mirror and I’m giving off more of a “confused about what even APR is and why they can’t just say interest” vibe. I find it interesting that this is a massive problem in my life currently. Usually I’m dressed like the retired high school jock who isn’t able to quite move on from the glory days and yet somehow that tells people that I want to answer their questions…nay, I KNOW the answers to their questions.
Despite my best efforts to convince strangers that I’m not the source of all truth in the universe, I get questions like:
If only there was some technology that could help you out…just one, I’m not asking for a lot, but one thing that is so intelligent it’s slightly scary. Hold on, let me Google it and see what they have to say about it. Oh! My! Goodness! It’s Google itself those narcissistic little nerds! Not a Google fan you say? Their color scheme is a bit too primary for your tastes? Never fear, you can work with Watson, or Alexa, or Siri. Better yet, don’t just stick with one – call up several of these genius robots and see what their answers are.
In all my free time, I like to play a little game I call AI: Jealous or Nah? Here’s how it works: you put several machines right next to each other and take turns asking them different questions. OK Google, tell me when I’ll make enough money to retire? Alexa, will I wake up tomorrow craving oatmeal or eggs? Hey Siri, tell me a joke. Then ask the same three questions, but change the recipient. By the end of it you get a pretty decent joke and some fascinating queries into your future. My theory? They’re listening to you abandon them for the others so they feel an intense need to one-up the competition.
With so many options, I genuinely don’t get how the Internet is not everyone’s first place to try and find an answer. Not humans. Besides, you get an answer so much quicker that way. If you ask me, my baby peanut-sized brain will have to go Google it…or Alexa it, or Siri it, or Watson it. Go straight to the source, that way you can keep searching until you find an answer. Don’t get mad at me, I’m reading the top result for your sorry self – no way am I scrolling to page two of the results. I have better things to do, like Google ways to keep yourself entertained on a ship. Or how to propel down from a third story window (in case of a fire, duh).
Alright, jumping off my pedestal for now. If you know someone who loves to ask questions, do everyone a favor and introduce them to Google. Give someone an answer and they’ll keep coming back, but teach someone to search and they will never speak to you again. Thanks for reading!
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I’m all for optimism – it makes life so much more fun! Don’t agree? Alright, you pessimistic son of gun, clearly you need a hug and some CHEWY CHIPS AHOY (because they are everything that’s right in this world). Then you probably need to be slapped because no one else needs your negativity. Keep that mess to yourself.
Anyways, I digress, like a turn lane with no road to turn onto. Have you ever noticed how many turn lanes lead, well, nowhere? Who put them there? More importantly, what higher up approved the paving of said turn lane? And of course, who pitched the idea? Who woke up one morning and thought ‘This new road is going to be great, but if we put some random turn lanes in the public will think we plan to come back and maintain the road for future development’? Because that is what you think, right? Oh, clearly they are going to build something there, otherwise why put a turn lane in? And if they’re building something new they will want to make sure the road stays in decent shape to attract all the young, hip people to make this town a global hot spot for the yuppies .
The funniest part is you never see one of these stag turn lanes that have been freshly paved. They’re all slightly faded, the paint is cracking – clearly it’s been there for awhile and still it leads into the always desirable wooded area where a serial killer is probably waiting for you to wander in like the curious being you are. Or it goes to a swamp which is most intriguing because what on earth is being built there?! A water park?! A pool?! Last I checked solid structures on a liquid foundation don’t work…outside of Venice of course, which should be a wonder of the world.
I wish I could have the same optimistic outlook on potential future endeavors in my job. If I could go to my manager and say ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be great if I spent three months working on a project that will do NOTHING for our business currently, but if we decide one day down the road that it might be feasible for us to explore possibilities in that direction, I’d have laid the very first step by creating a Google Doc, putting a title on it, and formatting it to perfection…but nothing more’. What would the response be? Well, probably a drug test for starters, then some variation of ‘hell no, get back to work’!
So clearly my job doesn’t follow the optimism model that road construction companies do and what a shame that is. At the end of the day, those workers probably go home satisfied and feeling like a true team player. They set another crew up for success after all…at some point, maybe, in the future. Not only did they do their job, oh no! They went above and beyond and added turn lanes everywhere. Like Oprah. YOU GET A TURN LANE AND YOU GET A TURN LANE AND YOU GET A TURN LANE! EVERYBODY GETS A TURN LANE!
It could be worse though. There could be NO turn lanes. Then the whole country would be like Atlanta and everyone’s Google Maps would be purple during rush hour. Purple?! Yes, purple. I didn’t realize there could be traffic worse than the deep maroon color, but leave it to hotlanta to give us a new level of stoppage. They don’t even use the traffic lights because no one would move – there are traffic cops that man EVERY INTERSECTION to shut down the drivers who think that as long as they are in the act of turning it’s fine regardless of the impact it has on traffic going the other way. That’s a topic for ANOTHER TIME though.
Moral of the story: more turn lanes are better than no turn lanes. If nothing else they allow you to imagine what might be coming. And, as Albert Einstein said, ‘The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.’ So these seemingly random turn lanes are making us smarter…wow are road construction crews thoughtful!
Alright, jumping off my pedestal for now. If you know someone who is frustrated about the never-ending road construction, share this with them so they stop complaining and start realizing that it’s all for their greater good. Thanks for reading!
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The Restless Professional 
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