Upon occasion I like to step back and look at the world around me and try to figure out what would make the world a better place. Invariably, I fall back upon being horribly cynical and come to the conclusion that those with any common sense are pretty much in an elite class all their own.
One of the greatest troubles I tend to see is that people simply can’t follow directions. I’m not sure if this is because they believe they rate so much higher than everyone else or because they like the personal attention they get when someone else has to stop whatever they’re doing to explain, slowly and carefully, what exactly is going on.
I remember in fifth grade we had an activity that took up the better part of an hour to see how well we could follow instructions by folding a piece of paper (there were even visuals on this one). Out of forty people, only two people managed to come up with a paper crane. Perhaps the rest of the class was aiming for bunny rabbits, I’m really not sure.
At the time I really didn’t think much of this. I mean, it was fifth grade and we were making paper cranes—this is not exactly the stuff that one expects great life lessons to be made of. However, every time I see people heedlessly ignoring very large signs with fairly simple instructions printed on them, I can’t help but remember the poor deformed paper cranes.
Now, more than the people who, for some reason or another, don’t quite manage to absorb the instructions being presented to them, those who decide to blatantly ignore the instructions because they’re in a rush annoy me even more. I can’t understand what makes these people more important than everyone else (especially those who may also be in a rush, but are politely following the rules to avoid chaos). The way I see it, a system is set up to help expedite a process. People are given instructions to speed up their movement through the system. From this it follows that anyone who chooses to ignore the instructions is just slowing everyone else down and wasting time.
So, on the whole, my advice here is simple: Look for instructions and follow them. At the very least, you won’t end up being the jerk that someone else complains about over dinner.
