The Dumbing Down Effect

Not wishing to sound like a moaning old sod but I'll tell you what fucks me off these days....

Consumers being treated like we are all fucking stupid with the dumbing-down of almost every purchase/experience we encounter.

In fairness, a lot of consumers are fucking stupid, hence I suppose the reasoning behind the child-friendly warnings and disclaimers that vendors and public bodies seem to have to put up and the consumer has to sit through, often bending the truth in our answers just to get to the end of the escapade sooner.

This morning, I encountered such mind-numbing stupidity in the form of a grilling from some spotty Trainee Dispenser at a chemist over my purchase of cold & flu tablets. The verbal equivalent of the childproof cap was in the first instance in the form of a question:

"Are these for you or somebody else?"

Well, they were for me as it happens and the coughing, spluttering bunged up person I had just presented them with should have made that clear anyway. Yet had they not been for me, most people, me included would probably have said they were lest we be subject to further questioning for fear we were attempting a Harold Shipman-esque escapade.

Next question was "Have you taken these before?"

Now here I made the grave mistake of not just saying yes. "YES! I have taken these beauties before and I love them and they love me. These tablets are fucking brilliant and I've managed to not kill myself yet Miss Dispenser, so please fucking sell them to me before I die here on your shop floor."

This is what I should have said. What I actually said was "No, but I have taken the other brand which I can see is exactly the same." 

Oh dear. This now unleashed a whole new world of futher questioning designed to see if I was in fact one of the Fucking Stupids or not. Apparently, just in case I was a Fucking Stupid, I was not qualified to read the packet for myself and decide these were the tablets I needed based on the rather thoughtful notes the manufacturers had already put on the packet.

A more senior Dispenser (this one had a different coloured jacket from the rest of the staff) was all of a sudden on the scene and proceeded to ensure I was buying these for the right reasons and was not going to stuff them up my arse or feed them to a Labrador or something.

"Is your cough a dry one?"
"Yes - listen" I coughed dryly in her direction.

"You know you should not exceed the stated dose?"
"Yes, I will use the instructions on the packet to take the recommended dose as I want these tablets to make me better. This is why I'm buying the tablets - to make me better. I'm not buying them to make me die, and if I was I wouldn't tell you anyway."

"Don't take with any other tablets"
"The chance would be a fine thing. I'm having trouble as it is purchasing these fuckers!"

"These are Night & Day Tablets - Make sure to take the Day tablets during the day and...."
"The Night tablets at Breakfast-time?" I finished the sentence for her. Needless to say she corrected me that actually, the Night tablets should be taken at night.

By the time I'd left the shop the cold had got bored and fucked off already.

In fairness, a lot of consumers are fucking stupid. Which is why they feel they have to do this, as it only takes one Fucking Stupid to ruin it for all of us by trying to sue a chemist for a lacerated throat having swallowed the entire blister pack in error.

Am I therefore wrong in thinking that these Fucking Stupids should be left to their own devices to fall off cliffs/overdose/boil themselves alive? Therefore removing themselves from the gene pool and sparing us non-Fucking Stupids the agony of being made to waste our own time?

I don't think so either.


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