Feeding the Mouse

Feeding the Mouse

Sometimes perspective slaps you in the face and wakes you up.

For example, when your barn cat is gone and you need a replacement. We have had several prospects brought in and they only go AWOL when we come back to the barn. The old standbys: Leave them in a cage for a while, of courseleave plenty of food and water always, and lock them in the tack room with a litter box — we've run the gambit.

We go back and there's no kitty.

Then, I go out to the barn the other night, flip on the switch and see a mouse in the food dish, jump up to disappear around the corner through the crack in the tack room door, having finished off the food for the last cat we had left out there.

I believe that all we are really accomplishing is to feed the local coyotes.

And they don't even leave us a thank-you card or anything.

The mare in the barn isn't talking either.

So, we keep bringing in new recruits.

And they still aren't doing the job.

Sort of reminds me of the times we are living in and PEOPLE who aren't doing their jobs either.

Like when stores don't take care of customers. The customer service you used to get, when you were looking for a suit or something; used to be, salespeople were at your elbows when you walked into a department. They asked you things, like how you were and what are you looking for.

If they didn't actually care what you thought, at least they were good actors.

They would ask you about things you didn't need a college degree to ask. Things that were civil and showed interest — like they actually gave a darn whether they sold you something or not. No wonder folks are going to the Internet shopping sites now. They can order what they want by specifications instead of to the physical retail stores to be ignored by the sales staff.

Like the old bromide: “I'm new in town. Can you tell me where to go to get the old run-a-round?”

What they used to call 'incentive' is a thing of the past, it would seem. Maybe because there are no true salespeople anymore — just telemarketers — who don't make the old standard 10 percent new sales incentives 'off the top.' And so, they don't care about whether new accounts are developed-or whether they are serviced adequately after they are set up.

Speaking of service… when you do get someone on the phone about a technical problem, it's Ravi from New Delhi, speaking pigeon English. And you KNOW he doesn't care what you want or think or anything else, because he's working for below-minimum wage in a slave-labor camp on the other side of the world in cubicle the size of a postage stamp and is out of range of your handswhich you would like to wrap around his throat by the end of your conversation- because you can't understand a word he's speaking and your problem is still not resolved… and your attitude is in the trash compost heap because you spent your ENTIRE SATURDAY OFF WORK trying to figure out how to get your new computer hooked up and programmed, or your wife can't figure out how to get money back from the new pair of red shoes she ordered size 7 for and got a 10.

Like that… You got mice instead of a barn cat.

You got those actively working AGAINST you, instead of FOR you.

Welcome to the real world. And the thing is… you know what you want.

Only, it seems that everyone is standing in the way of you getting it.

Like the mice thing… I know I want them gone. But, I have to go to war to get the thing accomplished. But, HOW to get there?

Reminds me of another saying: When asked how to get someplace, a local spends so much time trying to explain the zigs and zags to a stranger, that the exasperated man finally gives up and says, “I guess you can't get there from here?”

In that vein, I overheard someone say the other day, “I don't know what's going on with people these days? They get hired and they don't work. They stand around and expect you to give them a pay check just to stand there, just to be present; like you owe them something for just showing up? I just don't get it.”

Well?

That's what happens when generational permissive parents, political correctness run amok and a public at large being scammed by those in government promoting dangerous and destructive socialist agendas- are all mixed together in a toxic brew.

Personally, I've seen and heard things that make my skin crawl. I have doubted my hearing or sight when witnessing the actions of people misbehaving in public, thinking maybe I have early onset dementia. I shake my head in disbelief at the creepy attitudes of people of late.

Attitudes like those of mice — selfishly taking and working against the common good. And not that of the cat: Dutiful and eager to work, vigilant.

What the American worker USED to represent to the world.

But, I can't worry about that now. I have only this one job opening to worry with.

Ah, for a good barn cat to fill it!

By Robert L. Hall