This is going to be a rant…

A rant that we all need to hear and we all need to participate in…

Because stupid people are amongst us and we need to do something about it.

It’s amazing how many people don’t listen to directions.

I recently ordered a pair of boots.

A very cool pair of redwings that were old and beaten up.

Picture your favorite baseball glove as a kid, or the best leather jacket you’ve ever seen — all worn out.

They were white in spots, light brown in other spots.

Pretty much the most amazing pair of boots I’ve seen. I bought them from a vintage clothing store.

I immediately went to a place to go get them resoled.

I specifically wrote directions down.

  • Re-soling.
  • New eyelets.
  • Laces.

I waited weeks with anticipation for my boots to come back. I finally had the cool pair of boots I’ve always been looking for.

When I went in the store to pick them up, she came out with a pair of boots that didn’t look like mine. They looked like another pair of boots that I have. I looked at them and I said, “These aren’t mine.”

What did they do? Did they oil them?

She says, it looks that way. I said, I did not ask for them to be oiled.

She goes, no, you didn’t.

I said no, no, no, no, no.

I started getting more angry, but calm, because when you get angry, there’s no resolution when you yell and scream.

There’s no reason to ever yell and scream at another person. Resolution happens when you speak calmly.

When you speak precisely.

As I talked to her, we had to put tape on the boots. She called the owner of the store. He said send them back, he’ll age them back.

I’m thinking to myself, age them back? He had no right to do that in the first place.

It’s like I bring my car in, the person who’s giving it a detail decides that my white car would look better in red.

Or like bringing in an antique with the right amount of patina all around it, and the person just decides to polish it up because they wanted to preserve it, because that’s what they wanted to do.

Stupid people are amongst us.

They just do whatever they feel like.

The shoe repair guy told me things like this never, ever happen. He always listens to directions really, really well.

Well, great.

So I was the lucky one? The one in a million where he decided not to listen to directions, and I got to have my vintage boots screwed up because somebody decided not to listen to direction?

It just drives me nuts how stupid people are.

I basically told the store, a well known store, look, if he doesn’t fix them the way I want, I said, he will refund me the price of the soles and refund me the price of the boots that I paid for.

I said it’s $309 and anything else is not acceptable.

If they’re not the exact way that I want, it’s unacceptable.

She looked at me, she was very nice, and she pretty much agreed with me.

The bottom line is: unless we’re precise in today’s world or any world, people tend to do things that they want.

It’s amazing that you have to go and give specific directions to a shoe repair guy.

He hasn’t seen boots with patina like that before? With directions that say sole-only?

It’s frustrating to say the least.

So, what can you do?

Well, for one thing, be as specific as possible.

Like so many things, it all comes down to being an effective communicator.

And please, please, please, please, please. Don’t be one of the stupid people I’m talking about here.

All you need to do is follow directions.

Don’t veer left when the directions say, go straight.

Don’t oil my boots unless I tell you to.

It’s not difficult, and we all need to come together and really come to grips with this.

Because if we’re really living in a world where everyone does whatever they want, how’s that going to work out?

I don’t know how you guys feel, but stupid people drive me absolutely nuts. And if you feel the same way, share your story in the comments below.

End rant!