You Are Selfish

I'll admit.

I'm not the nicest person on the block. I'm not a total bitch though, either.
I am firm when I need to be.

Take for instance the situation I found myself in this past Monday.
I get home to not one, but TWO hospital bills in the mail.
As I sit in the living room, talking to my roommates about my bills, I hear a dripping.
The faucet perhaps?
The dripping becomes heavier and more persistent.

I stand up and walk to the bathroom to see water POURING from the bathroom fan.
Holy shit.
While my roommates use the garbage can as a makeshift bucket, I am furiously pounding on my upstairs neighbors door while at the same time leaving a JUST THIS SIDE of rude voicemail on my landlords voicemail.

I didn't swear, I didn't leave a nasty note, but I got the job done. Even my roommates girlfriend was impressed with the way I handled leaving a message to the laziest landlord in the world.

Because when it comes down to it, I am a firm believer of the treat other people the way you want to be treated camp.
I don't want my roommates touching my shit, so I don't touch their shit.
I don't want my co-workers bugging me, so I don't bug them.
I don't want cars hitting me, so I ride totally defensively on the road.

But I've found, now more than ever, that people just do not give a shit about anyone but themselves.

Obviously, this is by no means an epiphany or a new found fact about humanity.
Everyone knows this yet for some reason, even these people who knows this continue to act in such a way as to perpetuate this awful aspect of human nature.

From little to big events, more and more, every day, do I see how careless and awful my fellow humans are.

The biggest incident that has plagued me for the past week is the story of the woman in the Brooklyn emergency room .
Now I can understand if someone died in their own home or in an alley. Yes it's sad that they didn't have any close family or friends who kept in touch to make sure they were OK.
But in a public space, where fellow patients, security guards and DOCTORS ignore you while you lay dying, I mean, shit.
Is that the way you would want to be treated if you have a seizure and end up laying on the floor unable to help yourself?

Or take the recent hit-and-run involving a 78-year old man.
Besides the fact that someone HIT A PERSON AND KEPT DRIVING, you can see all the other cars driving around as if this human being were just a spare truck tire in the road.
Not to mention the people walking on the sidewalk that didn't even bat an eye.

I encounter this daily on my 30 minute one way commute by bicycle.
After a good amount of accidents and tons of near misses, I ride very defensively.
I assume that everyone out there is not paying attention and that the only way to get home safely is to do everything in my power to save my own ass.

Whether it's motorists who never check their mirrors when opening doors or turning right, pedestrians who like to jay walk suddenly from between cars or other cyclists who like to pass you on the right with an inch of space while weaving and not saying a word; there are a ton of people in various modes of transportation who only give a shit about getting home as fast as possible and fucking over anybody who gets in their way.

Now, even when life and death is not involved, people still don't care about anyone but their lazy, disgusting selves.

At my place of employment, there is a shared fridge.
Now luckily, I have not yet been a victim of lunch theft.
So my coworkers at least care enough not to STEAL from others.
But they have no problem deciding that because they have access to the fridge, that it is now their own personal fridge.

Only two weeks after cleaning out the fridge, it was full again with people's leftovers and almost empty salad dressing containers and, by far the worst, OPEN CANS of energy drinks.

And not just one.
But TWO of the very same kind. So someone, who really enjoys Monster (the green can), could not only not finish ONE can, but they decided to open a new one and not finish that one as well and leave BOTH open, half empty cans in the fridge.

DISGUSTING.
This is not your home.
Leave your leftovers in your own moldy fridge.
I have to put my lunch in here every day and at the end of the day, I take whatever is left over WITH ME, like a nice, normal, CARING person.


The list could go on.

I hope one day, that common courtesy finds a new understanding with the human race.

As this world becomes more populated and we have to share more, recycle more, and learn to be better neighbors, I hope we don't kill each other by being completely passive aggressive and selfish.

The next time you decide to do something, anything, think if it would piss you off to see it as an outsider.

If so, stop.

Do us all a favor.

Oh, and please don't produce any offspring.