An Open Letter To Senior Citizens - By Baxter

An Open Letter To All the Senior Citizens:

Out of all the places I've lived and visited, the senior citizen community in the Scottsdale/Phoenix metro area still remains the meanest and most rude of anywhere in America, (except New York maybe). The following perspective, while generalized, will have obvious exceptions and is merely my subjective view based on 20 years of varied experiences.

You can't drive properly, yet you insist on doing so, endangering the lives of everyone around you. You make right hand turns from the left hand lane, you drive 20mph BELOW the speed limit, your vision & hearing are already impaired, and don't even consider checking blind spots or rear-view mirrors, remaining oblivious to the rest of the world behind you, as we attempt to get around you or away from you for fear of our own safety.

Parking lots are a whole other challenge entirely. How many times have we seen stories in the news of an elderly man or woman mistaking the gas pedal for the brake and then plowing through a storefront or wall or crowd of people, often resulting in serious injuries and fatalities? About as often as the people who try to drive their cars through flooded streets. Yet the MVD continues to only administer driving tests to 16 year olds, instead of the far more dangerous 80 year olds.

When, or if, you ever reach your destination, most likely a store, restaurant, movie theater, etc., you seize this opportunity to torture every employee in sight with endless complaints and demands. We employees in customer service are trained to serve you and help you, which most of us are more than happy to do, but you seem to enjoy making it as difficult as possible. Take note: do not talk AT us as if we are your child, student, or personal assistant. While we are paid employees, we are not your personal punching bags or doormats for you to release whatever other frustrations you have in life upon us. In return, we will not treat you as bewildered blue-hairs looking to be coddled. You get what you give. Also, when you ask someone to 'check in the back' for an item you want, it can take quite a while to dig through a crowded warehouse full of heavy boxes to find it, so we'd appreciate if you didn't proceed to ask 5 other employees for the same thing every 10 seconds. Patience is a virtue. And when those 5 employees realize we're all looking for the same thing for 1 person, we get offended and stop searching because of your total lack of consideration by assuming we must be so incompetent to have made you wait longer than 5 seconds to be gratified.

Clearly, some people who have never worked in customer service before have no idea what it's really like. It's not your neighborhood general store nowadays, it's big box chain stores, overstocked, unorganized and understaffed. Also, while most of us are required to wear name tags, it is entirely creepy when you, a complete stranger, addresses us by name as if we are friends. I'm not 'Jimmy Olson' from the malt shop on main street in 1956, I'd prefer to keep my identity private and just do my job. It's bad enough that we are on display for you to stare at while you wait in line, like we are monkeys in a zoo. Did you ever work in an office or cubicle? How would you like it if 10 people stood right behind you and stared at your every move while you tried to make a spreadsheet? Not so comfortable is it? Just let us do our jobs and save your complaints and demands until we have finished and you're still not satisfied.



You'll never actually be satisfied with anything, you'll always be condescending and you'll always be horrible drivers, I've come to accept these as facts of life. The world as you knew it has changed drastically beyond your means and comfort zones, as is to be expected with aging for all of us, but I felt compelled to write this perspective in the hopes that maybe one person will read it, recognize a part of themselves they weren't aware of, and perhaps try to change it or approach certain situations differently. And don't try to justify your sour attitudes by being a war vet or that you suffered through 'harder times'. You had World War I & II, we have Desert Storm/Iraq/Afghanistan/Iran, you had Pearl Harbor, we had 9/11! So those points of contention are no longer valid to current or future generations.

For the rest of you who just want to continue complaining the music is too loud, the line is too long, and demanding a $2 refund on some old can of soup you raided from your recently deceased friend's pantry, or acting entitled to preferential service, then not tipping or being gracious about it? Contemplate this: Who gets Social Security checks each month? You. Who gets Medicare & Medicaid services provided to them? You. Who gets to retire? You. And who currently gets their paychecks taxed to fund all of these luxuries that will most likely not exist by the time we would be eligible to use them ourselves?...The rest of us.