Today I shopped at a grocery store I've never been to before, but it was on my way back from a dinner with some coworkers in a nearby town. I get in line, and there are only two checkstands open and the line at each is about four people deep. I hear some chatter between the checkers, and apparently Bob the Manager let a bunch of people go home early because he thought it would be a slow night and he wanted to cut hours. It turned out to be a busier night than usual, so the store was understaffed. I watch as the two people in front of me, who were average middle-aged people, checked out. After the checker got through all their groceries, the customers stood there and watched while the checker walked out of the stand to the end of the aisle and bagged all their groceries. I was amazed. Now, when I was a kid I went to the store hundreds of times with my folks, and they taught me that if all the baggers are busy, you do the bagging. When my turn came, I slid my card through the reader, went to the bagging position, bagged all of my groceries, and was out the door lickety-split. I'm not a great bagger. Sometimes my 2L sodas go wonky. Sometimes it takes me longer than usual to get a new bag going. But I try. As I was signing the slip, I shook my head and asked the checker "do people seriously not bag their stuff when you're shorthanded? Is that normal here?" He had a thick accent. "Yez, sadly zees ees normal 'ere. In all of Europe, ze patrons, zey do ze bagging. Ze checker zeets" (he crouches down like he's sitting in a seat) "and checks ze groceries." (he mimes checking groceries). "But not 'ere." In my mind, those are some lazy fucking patrons. Ze checker, he was filled with ze ennui. Ironically, he wanted to sit and bag ze groceries, which makes him lazy in a slightly different way. I still side with the checker, though. FOCUS: Tell stories of laziness - your own or that of people you know. Has laziness ever screwed you out of something? Has it benefited you in some circuitous way? Have you ever watched four hours of infomercials because you were too lazy to stand up and find the channel changer?
Out of all my pet peeves, laziness ranks number one. Now when I mean laziness, I don't mean playing a video game or watching t.v for hours because you have nothing to better to do. I'm talking about the person who's watching a rerun of the biggest loser when they have to be at work or school in 2 minutes but don't want to get up because "they're about to say how much weight they lost!!" It's a fucking rerun, wikipedia it and get your lazy ass to were you need to be. One of the most lazy people I've ever had the displeasure of meeting was the cousin of my best friend. He never went to classes and was failing school (eventually dropped out), and got fired from every job his daddy set him up with because he didn't feel like going. The reason? He was to busy playing a PS2 version of Guitar Hero, eating what-a-burger three times a day every fucking day, and smoking enough pot that I was legitimately surprised he could see me through the haze. I don't really know why this pisses me off so much, its not my life and not my problem so rationally I shouldn't care. But I couldn't help but smile though when I heard my friend's cousin's parents finally cut him off and made him try to join the military only to be rejected.
I find laziness quite frustrating. The biggest form of laziness, in my not so humble opinion, is taking care of one's health. I work very hard to keep my ass toned and healthy. I research healthy recipes, make most food from scratch, and work out. I find it frustrating when people (coworkers, mainly) complain about their weight gain as they eat a plateful of grease and syrup and come up with a thousand invalid reasons for not getting out and breaking a sweat. It's not that I am not busy- I have two little boys, I wait tables, go to school and workout. I just prioritize a great many things over a bag of chips and the latest tv show. I think I am just sick of seeing morbidly obese people on scooters at Walmart....
I am quite the lazy shit, but I maintain I have a good reason.... I'd explain it further, but I'm too fucking lazy. More importantly, we don't have baggers in Australia. From memory, we never have. At all the supermarkets, the checkout chick (or laser lad, if you may) will scan the item and bag it immediately (with one exception, see below). The plastic bags are on little struts underneath the barcode scanner. It's the same in the Kmarts and Targets of the world too. Some places are starting to change that. Some supermarkets have introduced self-service checkout where you scan, pay and bag yourself. Some places are refusing to provide a bag if you have only a couple of items. The exception to the above is Aldi. If you don't have them, they're a German supermarket chain that is growing in prominence here. They're generally cheap, but have restricted lines. In Aldis, items are scanned and placed straight back in your trolley (cart). You then take that to a bench at the back and bag it yourself, or go to the car and load it all loose. Aldi also don't provide bags, so bring your own.
I am moving from the time I wake up until my daughter is in bed at night. My job is fast-paced and I rarely just sit around doing nothing. Near the end of the night is my chill out time, but things always need to be done beforehand. I no longer go to bed with piles of dirty dishes or coats thrown all over the floor. My kid leaves food all over the house so we have to clean to avoid disgusting critters like silverfish or house centipedes. On weekends, I play baseball (indoors winter, outdoor summer) and in in the arm season I like gardening too. I rarely relax and only sleep 5-6 hours a night, but I'm energetic and a flake, and have been that way since my late teens.
At this stage in my life I'm a strange mix of lazy and ambitious (ok maybe "ambitious" is a bit of a strong word). I'm playing at a bunch of small-medium sized music festivals this summer, so right now I'm living off some money I inherited and just working on music until then (I know that makes me sound like a spoiled asshole... especially in this economy, I'm tremendously thankful I'm able to do this). So on the one hand, I'm playing music about four hours a day and swimming 12km/week. On the other hand, I play a lot of Grand Theft Auto and Halo, and smoke weed every day.
Are we supposed to take this literally? Focus: For me, when I'm lazy intellectually I will usually be physically very active and vice versa: if I am not in school/working/nothing to do, I will usually sit in front of the computer(read my friend's roommate's wall posts from 2007 slouched over in my chair so much that if I dare move my head I will become a little nauseous because it was resting on at a bad angle without me realizing it) all day except to work out, which I make sure I get in. If I'm in classes/working, not only do those make me tired and often conflict with work out times on my team, it usually also means that I had to wake up earlier that day with fewer hours of sleep. Working out on little sleep just seems counter intuitive to me so I bail on that.
Focus: In my opinion, one of the major sources of laziness stems from the Tim Horton's (or any other fast-food) drive-through. I can't wrap my head around the people who will literally waste 25 minutes of their life waiting in line because they are too god damned lazy to park their car, walk inside (where there is no line) and order their food and coffee. One of my former co-workers was CONSTANTLY late for work. Her reasoning? "The drive-through at Tim's was too busy." Okay genius, you have two options then: 1) Get your fat ass out of your vehicle, walk inside and take care of business a lot quicker. 2) If you insist on waiting in the drive-through, then get there sooner. The only way I'll ever use a drive-through anywhere is if there are three cars or less in line. I can't be bothered to wait in line for anything more.
Continuing with the grocery store theme from the original post, I hate when lazy people don't put their damn cart in the corral. Lately I've been cussing them out and I mutter obscenities to myself as I move them into the corral on my way into the store.
On this note, I was arriving at the grocery store the other day with my girlfriend and I spotted a great parking spot right in line with the door and about five spaces deep. I'm waiting for a few cars to do their thing so I put my blinker on and this Mexican broad who was all of twenty years old and perfectly healthy puts her cart directly in the middle of the parking spot. Not ramped up on the curb out of the way, or where it fucking belongs in the corral, right in the middle of the spot. I sat there baffled for a second thinking how to respond and before I could roll down the window and call her a pinche babosa my girlfriend took the initiative and honked at her. She looked up at us and made a gesture and walked her cart over to the corral.
There's a Chic-fil-a here I sometimes go to, and the drive thru line will be wrapped around the building. So much traffic that there's a cop in the parking lot directing it. I can go in, wait in the very short line, pay, get my food, and be back so fast that at most the line will have advanced two cars. And freaking people who circle around a parking lot to find a space right up front. OMGZ! You might have to walk for a whole 20 seconds! Oh, and I also get ticked off by people (dad!) who don't take a moment to think about where a dish should go in the dishwasher. Just...look at the layout and think about it. I hate having to move things around to create room for more stuff because dishes were just put in at random. Who the fuck puts a bowl on the top rack? Bend down a foot and put it where it goes! Place your glasses at the back of the rack, not in the middle of the biggest open space. Fucking engineers can't do anything right...
European here, you Americans actually let that busy cashier bag your groceries? Last week another poster was talking about his great bagging skills and that he was given a compliment for it while he was shopping, but I didn't think a person actually bags your groceries. Over here they'll laugh at you if you wait for the cashier to bag your groceries. Focus. When I was young it used to take me hours to finish my homework, because I used to spend the time just staring (nowadays I have the internet to distract me). But that doesn't necessarily mean I'm lazy, it could just mean that I have a short attention span.
In the big supermarkets here you'll have two people working at each register, one ringing things in the other bagging everything. Most people are smart enough to bag their own groceries if there's just a cashier and no bagger, but you'll get the occasional moron that will just stand and stare while the cashier is ringing things in and clogging up the line.
I really think it's a regional thing. In the Midwest (well, at least Minnesota) it's common practice for customers to bag their own groceries at most large grocery stores. Only at the higher end stores do either the cashier or a bagger bag your groceries, but even that's not consistant. Focus: I'm pretty lazy, at least by my own standards, so anyone even lazier than me is just a total listless sack of shit. The type of laziness that really gets on my nerves is people who can't keep a job because they're so fucking lazy that they usually just stop going and get fired within a week or two. To add to my disgust for these people is that they always seems to have an indifferent attitude toward work and have no problems leeching off family members because they're too fucking lazy to support themselves. Maybe it's a value thing but in my immediate and extended family everyone has enough personal pride and dignity that they would rather work the shittiest of jobs than leech off another family member.
Much like pimptress I cannot fucking stand lazy people. Some of the people at my work are absolute lardasses and expect to eat a salad for lunch and have the pounds melt away. Meanwhile they recount how they watched ten episodes of survivor or american idol or whateverthefuck reality tv show that is on and don't get off their asses from the moment they get home. Sorry people but if the most athletic thing you do in a day is drink a diet coke then you can go fuck yourself.
It has come to my attention over the years that I appear to be very lazy. It has been an issue numerous times. The main reasons, as far as I can tell, are the following: a. If I can do something, I tend to think anyone can do it. Thus, I don't really brag too much. And if you don't tell people how hard you work, a lot of people just assume you don't work at all. b. I really prefer to think ahead and plan out tasks. This may result in me sitting there for a longer period of time before I actually start doing the physical manifestation of work. If I have a report to write, I will think it out before I start typing. I don't want to get half way through and find out I was headed in the wrong direction. The end result is that I am more efficient, but to the outside observer, it looks like I sit on my ass and then just hammer something out real fast. c. I assume people are smarter than they probably are. So if I am explaining something to them, I will tend to skip steps that I think are obvious and focus on the bigger/more complicated issues. The first time I really remember this being an issue was in high school. We had an English professor who had infamously difficult tests. We had just read The Metamorphosis. The test ended up being some inane essay connecting the text to a current newspaper article. I will be honest, I did not nail the essay. But, some classmate complained to the prof that I did not take it seriously, did not prepare, and somehow distracted them from preparing. The prof lit into me at the next class, practically reducing me to tears in front of my classmates. After the class I went and talked to him. He told me what someone had said, told me I had spent half the test just staring at the paper, and that my essay lacked certain details about Kafka. My response was stating that I felt (insert 5 incredibly detailed facts about Kafka's life) was irrelevant to the article and that my essay instead focused on the ideas contained in his writings. He kind of apologized and then gave me the benefit of the doubt for the rest of the class.
Much like Mr. Jacket above, I try to group my work tasks together so that I can perform most efficiently. It doesn't always work, but on a whole I seem to have more down time than the average bear. I'm also a little more computer savvy than the majority of my co-workers, so I spend a lot less time charting than they do. So, I have more time to goof off and BS than they do. When I'm at work, I'm not lazy, just smart. In my personal life, however, I tend to put non-essential things off until the last minute. Packing for a trip? Night before. Grocery shopping? Not until I'm almost out of food. I'm not really sure why I'm like this, although I suspect it's because both of my parent's are super organized and prepare for things weeks or months in advance.
This thread is basically about my roommate. He has become the embodiment of laziness. The biggest manifestation is his physical conditioning. He is a former hockey goalie who had multiple offers to play Juniors but didn't cause his parent's wouldn't let him pull out of school. His playing weight, and when I met him sophomore year of college, was around 180-185. He is now 235. Why? Cause he replaced high level athletics with a horrific diet and sporadic work out schedule. His diet is the worst. Dude, who as a Sicilian claims to be a food (particularly Italian food) snob, probably houses 2 large delivery pizzas from a shitty chain over the course of a weekend. Why? Cause its the easiest food to get to our place and he can order online. He is too lazy to cook food for the most part. He also stays in about 40-50% of weekend nights because he is basically too lazy to shower and make himself presentable to go out. Despite complaining that he never meets girls and feels like we don't take advantage of living in an awesome city enough...its infuriating. Despite all that, he is still attractive to girls and is a fun and hilarious dude to be around, which is all the more annoying when he complains without action cause with a bit of effort, shit would take care of itself. Myself, I just have problems with self-starting. Whether it be cleaning, studying for grad school coursework, doing laundry...I find a million reasons not to. But once I get going, I'm fine. Except for hanging up my coat or putting my shoes in a closet. They are just too convenient on a chair or next to the door.
Laziness drives me crazy. Especially when it comes to my friends because it's an anchor that just grows and grows. It's so easy to sleep as late as possible, grab some garbage breakfast as you commute to work, sit on your ass all day, eat processed pre-packaged garbage for lunch everyday, and then flop on the couch when you get home because of the "busy day" you had. Right now because there's snow everywhere I'm amazed at how lazy people are about clearing their driveways, sidewalks, and roofs. This shit ain't going away anytime soon and it's not going to all melt off in some magical mid-February thaw. When you can't park your car in your driveway or your kids have to leap frog from boot print to boot print to make it to the bus it's time to put down the Xbox controller, turnoff COD, and get outside.