Insight?

Ah, the warm whisper of a long overdue insight...  Nothing like it really.  I was at a cash register today, getting trained.  The process of accepting and qualifying and categorizing and prioritizing and inputting and marking and filing coupons was explained to me.  It should be noted that certain coupons cannot be used for certain types of items and certain brands.  Certain coupons work on a single item while other coupons work on the entire purchase while some wily coupons of a very bastardly breed work sometimes on a single item and sometimes on the entire purchase depending on the circumstances at hand.  Manufacturer coupons are treated like cash at the end of the transaction.  Competitor coupons are honored as one of our own, though not necessarily if the customer is also asking for a price match.

I nodded happily.

"Any questions?" my trainer asked.

"How much of this do we humans have to keep straight?" I asked.

"All of it," she said.

"I see."

And in the back of my head there sprouted a little nugget, much like a seed, that spread black tendrils both fine and piercing through all the little spots in my brain that allowed me to take these rules seriously.

"Ah," I thought.  "I bet I'm giving the same dead, off-center stare to my trainer, right now, that I have seen from coworkers for the majority of my adult life...

"More work required from me because they (management up-and-ups, what-have-you) lack the skill to automate the work, well, it doesn't actually make me angry.  It just makes me not care.  Sure, I'll try to get the rules right.  But if I don't...  Who cares?"

If they cared about the rules, they'd simplify them or automate them or both.  But they don't care about the rules and neither do I.  They will say they care.  They will actually think and believe they care.  I know.  But they don't care.  They don't care because they have to follow the same rules when they run a register.  That's one thing that I LOVE about this new job compared to the old job.  Management is neck-deep in the crap right with the people on the floor.  It is a business structure to which I am not accustomed.  It is a business structure toward which I feel myself naturally gravitating.  But there is no way that the managers are keeping the coupon-rules boognish straight in their heads all the time along with everything else they are required to know.  It's too much.

But, those stares I got from my old coworkers on the floor for all those years...  I tried to explain why we "couldn't just" this or that as much as I could.  It never worked.  They gave me that dead, off-center stare that I always thought was a polite way to conceal anger.  It's not.  It's a positively honest, dead, off-center stare that shows the brain engaging the clutch and drifting into neutral.

It's so obvious now.