MAGIC         PORK

I stopped by Circuit City after work today to return something. On my way into the store, I see some people, maybe 5 or so - I tried to avoid eye contact. They were sitting on the ground, huddled in the rain, under sheets of plastic tarp.

As the young woman at the customer service desk is going through that whole return process, I ask her the question she had probably heard dozens of times that day.

Me: Why are there people sitting in the rain outside of the store?

Her: They’re waiting for the PlayStation 3.

Me: How long have they been waiting?

Her: They started yesterday. It goes on sale Friday morning.

(This was Wednesday night.)

Me: (pause) I see.

Then another customer, some big guy down the counter from us pipes in with “What are they, idiots?”

She didn’t answer that. She obviously thought they were, but that’s a tough position for her to be in. You don’t want to be calling your store’s customers idiots, especially ones that are waiting to plop down a good sum of money.

Now, I thought the people that camped out waiting for Star Wars Episode 1 were idiots but I could at least see where they were coming from. They were fans of the movies and they had been waiting a long time for it and this was a huge event for them. There was a sense of being part of something big, and they were basically hanging out with their friends anyway. Yeah okay, it was really stupid, I won’t try to justify it.

But this… is just a video game console. You buy it, then you bring it back home and that’s that. You’re not even waiting for an event that you’ll be experiencing with other people. If you really had to line up for it or else be forced to wait another month for it to get back in stock… maybe… it would make a little sense. It would make at least Star-Wars-waiting sense, which is not much. But even if we assume it’s going to sell out on opening day, don’t you think you could just come really early on Friday morning? I mean are there really that many people that are going to be waiting for this thing that you’d have to line up days in advance? I think not.

The second thing that crossed my mind as I was exiting that place was: don’t these people have any responsibilities whatsoever? They couldn’t have jobs, or if they did then that means they took time off to sit on the ground outside a store and that’s REALLY stupid. So they must be students - but even then, what kind of coursework do they have that they can do this? Maybe their school is on Thanksgiving break already? I sincerely hope so.

I should go back tomorrow and ask each of them to pose for a photo. If they ask me why, I’ll say I want to keep them so if any of them ever apply for a job where I work I’ll know to show them to the door right away.

In fact why stop there… I could create a whole online database of photos that people submit. Then if you want to check someone out, you’d submit the photo and the facial recognition software would bring up matches on what stupid things the person did. It would be like a background check, except background checks don’t catch things like waiting in line for a PS3. And sometimes you might not even know the person’s name. Hey that guy’s personal ad looks okay, not bad looking… but wait, before you respond better run his photo through DrainOnSociety.com. Someone snapped a photo of him writing a check to pay for $12 in groceries? Forget it.

The problem is, people would submit their ex-wives or bosses or what have you, just out of spite. And then there would be libel lawsuits… yeah probably not worth it. But then again forget that, I would submit all the photos. I’m the only one I would trust to make the right calls on whether someone deserves to be in the database and I’d be willing to back it up in court.

Hmm… I see there’s already a DrainOnSociety.com. I’ll buy it from him in exchange for not making him the first person in my database.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 16th, 2006 at 12:22 am and is filed under general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.