validated stupidity

There's a reason that self-check out lanes haven't appeared in Los Angeles (they were in my shitty suburb in Maryland at least a year ago). People here are just--on average--too stupid to operate them.

I had a Larry David moment today while waiting in line to validate my parking ticket at the movie theater where Allie and I had just seen Match Point. All you do is stick your ticket in the machine (there's a bigass arrow pointing which way for the easily confused), but yet the line was long and taking forever. Of course I'm freaking out because my three-hour free period is nearly up. So naturally it takes the person in front of me forever to work the stupid machine. Then we realize that she is trying to validate her movie stub! So I show her my ticket and say, "You have to have one of these." I said it in a rather curt tone, which wasn't intended, but yeah I was mystified by the stupidity. She didn't appreciate my tone and gave me some sarcastic crap about being nice and on the escalator down told me I was rude. I told her, "C'est la vie. I'm sorry." But I'm not. If you're stupid enough to wait in line to validate a movie ticket stub, you deserve that sort of public ridicule. However, I didn't set out to be mean, it just sort of happen in my disbelief of the situation.

Illustrating how this is not the only moron in the vicinity, it also took us forever to get out of the parking garage at Santa Monica and La Brea in West Hollywood where we had just had the most incredible BBQ at Zeke's Smokehouse. It must have been three people in a row that couldn't figure out how to put their ticket in the machine to exit the thing and had to beep to get the attendant's attention.

What the hell is it with people out here? They just want to feed my ego in the intelligence quarter. Of course I do my share of stupid things, but rarely do they impede other people's efforts to accomplish their business.