Judgmental Intolerance Is Bullsh*t

   If you put together a list of all the things that I hate the most, intolerance would be pretty close to the top. Child abuse and rape vie for the top spot, and frankly that should tip you off to how badly I hate intolerance. I don't care who you think you are, what religion you follow, and what excuses you can make, intolerance is a poison and letting something that is a poison have sway in your life, your viewpoints, your morals, is sheer dumbassery of the highest order. 

   I can talk about all types of intolerance, and sooner or later, I probably will, but today I want to talk about the intolerance to the disabled community, because that is what I dealt with earlier today. In the job of cashier/checker/sales person, whatever you decide to call the job that I do (think lots and lots of groceries) you run into every type of person, from every walk of life. And the store I work in gets high traffic from the disabled community. We get the blind, the deaf, the wheelchair bound, the mentally disabled, and often their caretakers, be they family or professional. 

   And today a regular and his caretaker came through my line. I know them, not very well, because I don't know intimate details from their lives, but I know his name and I talk to him every time and sometimes he likes to give me high-fives after I hand him his receipt, which happened today. 

They don't all work the same.

   I would have liked to give the moron in the back of my line who was mocking him a high-five to the face. With my divider stick. The thing about my customer is that he has some type of mental disability. I don't know what, I don't think that it's autism, because I have some limited experience with that, and I don't think it's down syndrome, but his mind hasn't developed. He is an elderly man, but he's like a child. He's gone through several professional caretakers, because I see him with one person for a few months, and then someone new. I don't know why; these are things that I don't ask customers. But regardless, whenever he is in my line, he acts like a happy, energetic child. And here is this complete asshole being completely intolerant, completely judgmental, and that just pissed me off. Made me see red; made my anger want to come out and play. 

   So here I am counting, taking deep breaths, going through the anger management motions, because no matter the provocation, if I beat a customer down with one of my divider sticks, I am gonna get fired. That's the kiss of death in single mother-land, and I can just kiss my new apartment goodbye. No job = no apartment. 

   But I need to make my frustrations known, and so I am going to post them here. This blog is open to the public, anybody can read it, so maybe, just maybe, someone will read this and think twice about being an asshat. So to the guy who was mocking my customer:

   I don't know why people get a kick about picking on people who are different than them, but even if, for some unknown, unfathomable reason you think that you are better than someone; why would you waste your time on something so asinine as making them feel bad? What is the purpose? Personally, I think you do this to cover up your fear and insecurity. Mental health is a blessing, and one day you might suffer a head injury, or dementia, or Alzheimer's, or any number of things, and then you will be on the other side. Is this how you hope that people will treat you? And disability? This is something that is going to come to most of us as we age. People lose their hearing, their vision, their function of limbs all the time. Not being impaired is a passing phase: a blessing that most people take for granted. When the time comes and you are impaired, or someone you love is impaired, is this how you want society to treat you/them? Treating people like this does not make you funny, make you strong, make you better. Treating people like this makes you weak. You. Are. Weak.