The ‘Oh, Fuck It’ Phenomenon

I’m sure this isn’t news to anyone, but lately it seems the quality of certain things has gone down.

The bananas at the grocery store are either green or going brown. Not only that, some of the other produce is actually fuzzy, but still sitting there on the shelf—in the hopes someone will buy it without noticing? I’ve mostly seen this with raspberries and mandarins, but I’m sure there are other examples.

Clothes cost more and fall apart faster.

The plow goes by, but leaves a thick layer of snow behind. Then, three days later, after the snow gets slushy, compacted, and muddy, the plow comes by again to dump the heavy wet mess at the end of every driveway. Removing the resutling hump is like shoveling concrete. Why not just adjust the blade a bit lower on the first pass?

I recently bought a wrap at Tim Horton’s. The lettuce in it was black. Seriously, who looked at that and thought, Yeah, I should serve that? I no longer buy lunch at Timmy’s, but I must confess I’m still a sucker for a doughnut. And I've yet to come across a moldy one. I don’t think they stay on the shelf long enough for that.

Recently, our recycling pickup changed over to a private company. Our recycling went from being picked up at roughly the same time on Tuesday mornings to being picked up sometime Tuesday evening (on a few occasions just in time to block my driveway as I’m arriving home after work). One week they didn’t pick it up until Friday night. No communication or explanation.

Third-year university students show up to a lab with no pencil and paper (or tablet and stylus pen) to take notes with. How do they think they will be collecting data, osmosis? Didn’t we have this conversation at the beginning of the last lab?

News articles are full of errors. Not even talking about fact checking here (that’s a whole other kettle of fish). The writing is just bad. Not only the occasional typo (I can forgive that), but sentences that make no sense, missing words, glaring grammar mistakes you don’t need to be an expert to see. (Case in point, I’m not an expert and yet I see them.) Do editors even exist anymore? If so, they seem to have been swept up in what I have come to think of as the ‘Oh, fuck it’ phenomenon.

Perhaps I’m exaggerating here, but at every turn there is someone with an opportunity to put in that little bit of effort to do a good (or at least passable) job who is instead saying, ‘Oh, fuck it. Who cares anyway?’

Sure, some of these issues—like the produce and the clothing—could be explained by businesses cutting corners, not because they don’t care, but in response to rising costs and other factors beyond their control causing ever narrowing profit margins. But I still think there is a rise in complacency going on that would make the industrious WWII generation cringe.

I get pissed off and complain. Usually to my poor, and very patient, husband. Why doesn’t anyone care about doing a good job anymore? I say. Shouldn’t we take pride in what we do? Shouldn’t we always be trying to improve ourselves and make the things around us better?

Then I look over and see that my son is eating Froot Loops and a pop-tart for breakfast. I briefly consider the quantity of sugar and lack of nutrition. I think about whether a good parent would make him swap the pop-tart for a banana (purchased green, but finally turning an acceptable shade of yellow).

Then I sigh and say, “Oh, fuck it.”