Here are a few standards I think we as a modern society ought to implement with urgency and without delay:
- All coffee shops must have two lines. One of them shall be reserved for ordering coffee, and the other for any drink whose name involves adjectives and/or a trademark. Anyone attempting to order a complicated drink from the coffee line will be sent directly to the back of the adjective line. And they will be heckled until they leave the store.
- On a similar note, all grocery and retail stores should immediately switch to the queue protocol preferred at banks and post offices, in which everyone has to just line the hell up in the order in which they arrive, and then an employee calls on you. First in, first out. It’s fair, and it keeps the asshole behind you from jumping ahead when the next register over opens up and the sales clerk screams, “I can help someone over here!”
- The common practice of allowing patrons at fast casual and fast food restaurants to select and fill their own drink cups inevitably leads to endless dicking around at the drink station. Get in, fill your drink, and get the fuck out of the way. That’s how it works. Therefore we should either do away with the self-serve concept altogether or mandate that drinks proctors monitor the stations. Kind of like the people who watch over you at those self-checkout things that can’t figure out you brought your own bags.
- All new cars should come equipped with a sophisticated ensemble of gyroscopes, accelerometers, and predictive logic algorithms that detect when you change lanes. Each time you do so without signaling, a governor kicks in and decreases the maximum speed of your vehicle by anywhere from 2 to 20 mph for the remainder of the day. The higher the curb weight of your vehicle, the higher the speed penalty. Also, at interstate highway speeds, you are allowed six lane changes before you have to just stay in the right lane and wait for your exit.
