Why People Are Jerks

Ladies and Gentlemen, how many times have customers yelled at you for getting their orders wrong even thought it was their fault? How often do you find yourself cut off in traffic by some angry guy who never learned to use his turn signal? Have you noticed how the likelihood of someone being a self-righteous jerk is directly proportionate to the individual's failure to adequately communicate what that person wants, be it no pickles or to make a left turn?

I used to assume that because these people are jerks, they take for granted that everyone will know exactly what they want based on some misguided sense that the world revolves around them. In other words, the poor communication stems from egocentric laziness. As it turns out, the truth is much more tragic.

There are psychics among us, telepaths mostly. The world is full of individuals capable of projecting their thoughts into the minds of others. Unfortunately, there are also those among us (most of us, it seems) who are unable to receive these telepathic messages. Thus, when working in, say, a movie theater box office, you may find yourself receiving an order that sounds something like this: "Can you tell me which is better? I want to see a different one, but she wants a repeat," or perhaps simply, "I'll take two" with no statement for movie or showtime or that one of these tickets is supposed to be a child's ticket.

The poor telepath becomes frustrated when you are unable to complete his order or answer his questions. It isn't as though he didn't give you all of the information. About half of it, he said out loud. The other half he thought, expecting you to be able to read his mind. After all, if you grow up able to read other people's minds, you tend to forget that others can't do the same. Orders get botched and our psychics are become angry when you swear they only said, "I'll take two," when they clearly said mentally "children's tickets to the 4:30 Cinderella."

These individuals believe everyone has telepathy and those who don't are simply too lazy or self-centered to pay attention when the psychics are thinking at them. The fact of the matter is, people aren't jerks, which leads to bad communication and arguments. Quite the opposite. They truely believe no one is paying attention when they mentally signal that they plan to change lanes and are enraged at the total disregard others seem to give their psychic communications. They're jerks to the rest of us because they think we deliberately never listen to them when they explain themselves so clearly.

This also explains how so many jerks are able to communicate with one another with but a look. Each party can send and receive these psychic messages.

You have been informed.