My phone rings while I’m working at my desk. A polite-sounding man says he wants to talk to me about my Windows operating system. He says his company is detecting a “large amount of junk and viruses” on my computer. I’m looking at it as we speak, and it looks okay to me. I am, however, detecting a large amount of junk on my telephone.
I tell him I don’t have a Windows operating system and I hang up. I’m lying, of course. But dishonesty doesn’t seem so bad when you’re lying to someone who’s trying to rob you. It’s been my experience, and I’ve had a lot of it, that if your computer is acting up, you’re the one who has to make the call. Anyway, my lie was a lot nicer than what I wanted to say.
My caller is one of a large crowd of degenerates whose livelihood depends entirely on wasting our time and making us paranoid and irritable. And frankly, they bring out the worst in me. Here’s who I’m mad at today, and it’s a lot of people.
Because of hackers and other cyber scum we have to buy and remember to regularly update our virus protection. We have to be careful about opening email attachments and we have to fill our heads with passwords and usernames. If it weren’t for cyber scum, all we’d have to know is our name, and I don’t know about you, but I can do that most days. Curses to them all. May they suddenly need passwords to use their own bathrooms!
And spammers! Out of the ten thousand plus spam emails I’ve deleted this week, I also deleted two legitimate ones (that I know of). I’d been waiting for them, so eventually I checked my trash file, and there they were, buried among messages with subject lines like “Straight talk about hair transplants,” “Want to own your own spaceship?” and “Your life expeerence alone is worth a digree.” I assume the degree isn’t in spelling. May the computers of all spammers be taken down by ten million messages saying “Does your mother know what you’re doing?”
Because of identity thieves, we have to check our credit reports, buy shredders, and hide our important documents in places we can’t find them ourselves. Curses to them all. May they accidentally steal the identity of other identity thieves, or better yet, mob bosses.
Because of hijackers and terrorists, the rest of us are required to go through that gauntlet that is airport security. If we were half as crazed when we start the process as we are when we finish it, we’d be pulled aside for questioning the minute we get in line It’s tempting to give airport staff a piece of what’s left of our minds after the whole ordeal, but we have the bad guys to thank for it. May they all develop fear of flying and motion sickness.
There are so many other people whose behavior makes life harder for the rest of us. Because of shoplifters, we pay higher prices and put up with cameras in dressing rooms. Bad enough, there are mirrors in there.
Because of car thieves, we have car alarms, and because of car alarms there are cars beeping all over town with no thieves in site.
And because of the people who walk away with restroom keys, the rest of us get stuck dragging keys with two by fours attached whenever we use restrooms in gas stations. We may as well stand on the counter and announce. “Hey everyone, I have to go to the bathroom.”
A few bad apples spoil the cider for everyone. And there goes my phone ringing again. This better be good.
