Naughty or nice?
Because the electrical tape fell off that part of my car's dashboard where it had covered up the "Maintenance Required" warning light, I spent Boxing Day morning at a local garage while getting this fluid changed, that filter replaced, and the other gadget adjusted.
In the waiting room, the TV was tuned (tooned?) to Fux Nausea, and the remote was nowhere to be found. As the sole customer at the time, I was not about to spend the next two hours engulfed in electronic dysentery. I pushed the correct button on the cable/satellite box to change the channel to CSPAN. Their call-in show was only slightly better -- at least there were no Big Pharma commercials or other snake-oil peddling.
Meanwhile, in walk several other customers. The first of them included a 30-ish white male with his wife and kid (who brings his family to an oil change?), the other was an older African-American male. The white dude made a not-so-sotto voce RWNJ comment at first, but once the program changed to a lecture series, everyone in the waiting room (except the toddler) sat up and paid attention. Maybe it's because the free-wifi sucked as much as the tired, old magazine collection, but at the end of the lecture, we agreed it was a good program.
It might have been naughty of me to change the channel without asking, but I consider the outcome -- thoughtful consideration of the topic (which happened to be scientific) -- to be nice.
Perhaps we should take this approach during the new year/regime: refocus and refine discussion. Drumpf-sters will not yield on political talking points, but maybe by changing the subject will open their eyes and ears.
= new reply since forum marked as read
The alternative (which I will refer to as "naughty"
is to rip the television off the wall and throw it through the shop's plate-glass window, then complain about the shop's overcooked coffee.
