As we were traveling over the weekend I noticed a continued trend with folks working in the service industry: the younger people working jobs as cashiers, etc. really like wearing AirPods (or something similar) all the time.
Back when Walkmans were all the rage in the late ‘80s and we had a corded pair of headphones attached to a portable cassette deck on our hip it was kind of fun to listen to music while out for a walk or something. I once tried to wear my Walkman at work while writing code, but I missed one phone call from a colleague (because I couldn’t hear the phone ringing) and I was scolded for my inattentiveness.
I didn’t wear the Walkman at work again.
There are times when I need to wear headphones at work these days to drown out the noise of the landscapers working in the yard or something that’s distracting me from doing my best work, but for the most part I feel to disconnected from the world around me when I tune out my surroundings. One of my strongest beliefs is everyone and anyone should always be aware of their surroundings; it makes the world much better when everyone knows what’s going on in their immediate vicinity, but too many people bumble and stumble through life, blissfully unaware of the safe that’s about to crush them on a sidewalk or something.
When I’m at Target and the person directing folks to the self-serve checkout lanes and their wearing AirPods I wonder why they’re even employed. I have enough IQ digits to figure out the green light means the register is available and the red light means it’s occupied. I don’t need a tuned out teenager telling me to go when the light is green. I’m aware of my surroundings. If the director is Target’s way of keeping a human presence at the self serve registers so they don’t feel bad about eliminating jobs, I’m not buying it. I don’t even know if the person doing the directing can hear what I’m saying so I purposely mumble and smile.
Don’t get me started on someone wanting to check my receipt; I always refuse, opting to just wave the receipt in the air.
I’m starting to go on a tangent and I feel my blood pressure rising a bit so I’ll stop the tangent right here. Suffice it say, there’s a lot of world around us to take in. I don’t get the appeal of replacing the world for music or podcasts or whatever while you’re working with the public. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
And it probably never will.
Maybe I should change the title of this blog to “Get off my lawn”.
