Psychos don’t like being caught out

Further to my recent posts on office psychos, I’m still thinking through my Unified Theory of Global Dickheads. I’m sure that’s a Nobel Prize in the making. According to several studies I’ve read, about 1 in 100 people are full on psychopath/sociopaths and 1 in 20 suffer from diagnosable Anti-Social Personality Disorder. My own unscientific observations lead me to believe about 1 in 10 people are just jerks

I think that the biggest difference between a pychopath and a jerk is that a psychopath can’t change and a jerk doesn’t want to change. Jerks behave in ways that normal humans find objectionable. Their cunning approach is to be so obnoxious that we either have to let them have their way or essentially fight fire with fire – be obnoxious right back.

The thing is, if you’re a decent human, you don’t want to spend much time being obnoxious. It actually feels bad. While it’s worth shouting down a jerk every now and then, they like to put us in positions where our lives will essentially be miserable if we retaliate.  I’ve noticed this behaviour more and more lately.

This behaviour is far too widespread to be limited to the people who are statistically likely to have Anti-Social Personality Disorder.  This is where my theory on the preponderance of jerks comes from.  I think being a jerk is pretty much learned behaviour – they see that when they’re a colossal jerk, people often let them get their own way just to shut them up.

But you know what?  Jerks really hate it when you call them out for being jerks.  It’s actually fun to watch them squirm but they’ll rarely admit they were at fault.  Just today I was on a really crowded tram.  So crowded in fact that when I got on I basically couldn’t move far past the doorway.  That didn’t bother me too much because I wasn’t staying on for very long.

Each stop at least one person would get on and/or off which involved some creative squirming away for me and a few other to accommodate the people who were entering/leaving.  Finally, we approached my stop and I stood by the door waiting for the tram to stop.  A woman who wanted to get off as well evidently decided she didn’t want to wait for the door to open and shoved past me while the tram was still moving.  She actually elbowed me in the stomach!

As I got off the tram behind her I decided to communite my displeasure and the following exchange took place:

ME: Yeah, thanks for that.

SHE: I needed to get off.

ME: So did I, why the hell did you elbow me in the stomach deliberately?

SHE: You wouldn’t get out of the way.

ME: The tram hadn’t stopped, I couldn’t get out of the way.

SHE: You shouldn’t have been in the way.

ME: There was nowhere else to stand.  Besides, like I said, I was waiting to get off too.

SHE: I didn’t know that, you were just in the way.

ME: Well, here’s a novel idea – try saying “Excuse me” before elbowing me in the stomach!

SHE: And I suppose you would have moved if I’d said that.

ME: No, I would have told you I was getting off at this stop.

SHE: So, I was meant to just wait behind you?

ME: YES, YOU BEHIND ME IN THE FUCKING TRAM OF COURSE YOU WERE MEANT TO LET ME GET OFF FIRST!  WHY THEY FUCK IS THAT SO FUCKING DIFFICULT FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND?

Actually, I may have said “fuck” more times than that.  For some reason, the conversation ended awkwardly at that point.

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An angry train encounter

I’ve been going to jon interviews this week which involves the joys of public transport (parking is far too much of a hassle in the city to drive in).  We’re getting our first hot days of summer and I seem to keep lucking in to getting on trams, trains and/or buses with non-functioning air conditioning.  Plus, in Melbourne the public transport is usually absurdly crowded.

Maybe they aren’t broken.  Maybe it’s a deliberate plot.  It could be that the government is conducting large-scale experiments to see how the populace will respond to being crushed into a small space while being subjected to high heat and humidity.

If that’s the case, you can suspend the experiments now.  The results are in.  People in that situation get pissed off.

Coming home yesterday I found myself stuck on the tram from hell.  Literally, judging from the internal temperature.  My mood had gotten progressively worse until it reached the point where I was planning the order in which I would kill people when I finally snapped.  Hmmm, he looks easy… she’d be a pushover… I bet his head would pop right off… oooh, he looks tough, I’d better throw some frail bodies between me and him…

I was just about ready to put my plan into action when the tram passed a train station.  I took a punt that a train would be less hellish and jumped ship.  This turned out to be a good choice – the train was considerably less crowded.

There were a few seats empty in the vestibule of the train but somebody had a bike leaned up against them.  These are the type of seat that flip up if nobody is sitting in them so they were flush with the wall, which doubtless seemed like a good thing to the bike owner.  I thought I might actually sit in one of the seats that were designed with humans in mind rather than bikes.  It seemed like a reasonable plan but it led to the exchange detailed in the following video: