While we're on the subject, I want to know why parfumeries/cosmetic companies seem to think women should all smell like cloying amounts of flowers and baby powder, and men should smell like a ferret in heat. I mean, seriously..."musk". Having grown up in the country, when I hear the word musk I think: muskrat, musk ox, musk deer and musk turtle. NONE of these animals are things that I want to smell like.
There's an old spice commercial in here somewhere.
Look at the musk ox, look at me, look back at the musk ox, back at me. Unfortunately I am not the musk ox, but with the power of old spice, I can at least smell like the musk ox...
Old Spice: Smell like a man wearing a deer, dear man.
Along with the ads for Axe, the gist seems to be that women need to smell "pretty" and men need to smell like they've just had a 50-hour sex marathon. I mean, if you want that just have the marathon, dude.
More medical-related rage:
So after this morning's rage-inducing attempt to drop off lab samples, I
made an appointment. Online. With a computer and everything. For 12pm. Showed up right at 12pm. The facility is staffed by ONE person, who is tied up drawing blood from a woman who appears to be 150 years old. I'm guessing the extra time involved was because they had to rehydrate the blood to get it out of what was left of her veins.
So 15 minutes after my appointment (and they were in 15-minute blocks, so technically we're into the next appointment range now), this one woman comes back and asks for my paperwork. I note that I made an appointment online, and as part of that process, I entered my personal info and insurance info online. Like the website told me that I could do
to speed things up at the visit. She just stares at me for a second and proceeds to ask me all this information again. And begins entering it with a one-handed hunt-and-peck typing style on a rickety PC on a swivel mount. She is then flummoxed by the software and has no idea how to proceed. I'm studying the screen myself and figuring out the answers before she does, and I've never seen this software in my life nor do I have any background in laboratory testing.
Finally another tech comes in off her lunch break, the first woman asks her for help. She walks over, glances at the paperwork I brought, and then punches everything in in a matter of seconds
on the touchscreen (the first woman apparently either had no idea she could touch the screen instead of having to awkwardly reach from the keyboard to the mouse each time...or even have to use the mouse and keyboard period. Perhaps she was merely frightened of this modern devilry, I don't know...).
As I stalked out, the waiting room was now packed with people waiting to even be noticed because this one person was incompetent enough to take 15 minutes to try and fail at something that a competent person did in about 10 seconds.
It dawned on me afterwards that the majority of inefficiency in the economy isn't inefficient procedures (which is where companies spend shitloads of money bringing in consultants to find a way to make a task take 5% less time), it's incompetent and/or poorly-trained workers. For fuck's sake, America! Hire people with more than half a brain, and then train them! WHY IS THIS SO HARD?