Great read Bill! Really enjoyed it.
My take on your question? Let’s put the shoe on the other foot. Just for fun. 😉
Let’s say Ms Salt works down at the local Amazon warehouse for her coin and you just happened to have an Amazon Corporate fan fetish. Who doesn’t? Let us say that you received a box of socks with a packing slip inside that says, “Happily packed and shipped especially for my favorite Customer! Love, Veruca Salt.” This perfectly packed box of socks just thrills you down to your tootsies. It’s fanlove. ♥️. Like you know her personally, you know?
With me so far?
So you find out that Amazon is having an open warehouse day where fans can come down and meet their favorite employees, take selfies and obtain autographs. I can feel your excitement. There might even be a chorus of Oh Happy Day playing in the background of your mind. I know there is in mine. Who wouldn’t want to meet the absolute BEST PACKER EVER! AmIright or amIright? Of course, I’m right, so down you go.
But you showed up on Thursday and our beloved Veruca works the Sun-Wed schedule. Bummer. Kind of ungrateful of her actually. You came all that way, after all.
Not to be denied your meet and greet, you find out from a careless employee her address and number and that she picks up her kid at school X and then goes to park Y before heading home. There is absolutely nothing but good sense and common decency to prevent you from getting your heart’s desire and damn the consequences to anyone else.
Does that give you (and maybe me—I can neither confirm nor deny imaginary scenarios that I may or may not have been present for regardless of what muzak was playing in the background) the right to show up at her child’s school, approach them at the park, call her at all hours or show up at her house for a chance to bask in the glory of her cardboard dusted presence? Just all weird like that?
I mean, as a customer of Amazon you pay her salary. She should be grateful.
No? Not the bestest of best ideas?
What do you mean it’s intrusive and disruptive? How is it weird? How is this anything in the world like creepy stalker behavior?
Kids are resilient. Who cares if they got scared and cried for 5 minutes in the grand scheme of things? There are autographs at stake, for crying out loud. (See what I did there?)
So what if she’s just worked a 10 or 11 hour shift to exhaustion? How hard is it to stand for a picture? Jeez.
You’d have to be smoking something to not see how she owes you her time and attention anywhere anyhow of your choosing. After all you’re a fan. She’d be nothing but a has been packer hack without your fan attention keeping her relevant.
~
Uh huh.
~
Now that we’ve had our fun, it’s pretty easy to see that if the shoe actually were on the other foot these people would be calling the police and hollering online a whole different tune if they had to wear that shoe. Cause it’s just creepy. No rational person would ever think that was okay if it happened to them.
Which means they’ve lost touch with reality, good sense, and common decency. A better personal or moral code would have prevented that slip but that takes basic self awareness and insight.
You owe strangers basic civility so long as they respect appropriate public boundaries and civility themselves. You do not owe them politeness to obscenities screamed in the presence of your family, especially young children. You do not owe them acquiescence to their every petty whim and desire just because they watched and liked a TV show you were a part of. Yes, even Star Trek.
You are right to protect the integrity of your privacy for you and your family. It’s a precious thing.
👍🖖🤛 ☮️
