The Case Against Humanity

The Case Against Humanity

©2020  Ross Williams

I am a Cubs fan.  My wife is a Cubs fan, and our son wears his baseball glove most of the year flopping himself around the house making dazzling, if imaginary, catches like his hero, Javier Baez.  When I point out that Albert Almora makes catches equally impressive, he just looks bored.  When I remind him that Jason Heyward has the hardware for his defense he simply looks puzzled.  He loves Javy, accurately and without false modesty described on a current Cubs t-shirt as “your favorite player’s favorite player.”

So I saved my money, cleared it with my wife, and we took him out of school for a day so we could have a family vacation at the 2020 Cubs Convention.   We took the train from Alton to Chicago, and Ubered to the Sheraton Grand.  The event was, in a few ways, a pleasant departure from the four or five previous Cubs Conventions my wife and I had attended at the Chicago Hilton and Towers in the years before our son was born.

Many presentations, panels and autograph sessions were held in what can only politely be described as cinderblock bunkers when the Hilton hosted it.  The Sheraton only had a few autograph lines in their sub-basement parking garage; the rest were in paneled ballrooms.  So good on the Sheraton for that.  Good also was the check-in procedure.  But I’m not here to praise Caesar and his legions, just to cut him to ribbons.

The first set of gripes has to be lodged against individual people, fellow Cubs fans in this case, though their antisocial behaviors are not unique to being Cubs fans.  I will only briefly mention the mopey children who decide they’re tired of standing in lines and flop themselves down on the floor where ever they happen to be, effectively blocking the foot traffic of a couple thousand people per pout.  …and the parents of these children who don’t drag those children to their feet by the scruff of their necks.  …and those who carry expandable chairs with them where ever they go so they don’t need to stand in lines at all, but can instead block the foot traffic of a couple thousand people at a time themselves.

Those people are positively pedestrian, and they’re everywhere.  I’m talking about the world revolves around me assholes who think it’s perfectly acceptable behavior to do any of the following:

1] clean out the ice machines on multiple floors filling your wheeled cooler so you can sit through a panel discussion without having to get up and get a concession stand beer or wine cooler, and dislodging two to three rows of spectators as you wheel your contraption around.  I get your distaste for hotels’ captive audience pricing, but you can surely manage to wait until the end of the presentation before resupplying your buzz.  Or maybe you can’t, in which case… seek help.

2] cart your child around in a Cadillac Stroller − which, we’ve all noticed − absolutely never contains your child who never leaves your arms [and usually desperately needs a new diaper] and which, instead, is used to commandeer large amounts of territory that you don’t strictly use and which other people might, if it weren’t being taken up with your Cadillac Stroller.  Here’s a hint, young parents: a child young enough to use a stroller is one that is too young to benefit from attending a convention of any sort.  Here’s another hint: what do you think grandparents are for?

3] lug your autographable items, souvenir purchases and the various other flotsam of convention attendance in a four-wheel wagon.  As if that wasn’t rude enough, you typically drive against the flow of traffic, and into shins, knees, children, decorative columns, signage and potted plants.  This ends up knocking over children, oldsters, potted plants and signs.  …that those you’ve left in your wake must pick up for you because you’re too callous to even consider that you’ve upended anyone, let alone everyone.

4] haul your booty around in an overstuffed backpack that you swing with reckless abandon behind you at chest level [head level on kids] into the same children, oldsters and signs with the same end result obtained by the asshole with the wagon.

5] station one member of your party at the entrance of a popular panel discussion two hours before it starts with an armful of coats, hats, pennants or other such items in order to reserve an entire row of seats at the front of the assembly so that the rest of the group can stroll in at their leisure and claim seats that were denied to everyone else because they were “saved”.

6] march your group of five into a row of seats with three empty chairs somewhere in the middle of the row, and then ”politely” request those on either side kindly move down in order to accommodate your brood.  This has the effect of pushing those on each end out of their seats altogether.  But that isn’t your problem, is it?

It was the episode recounted just above in #6 which dovetails quite nicely into the next phase of gripes about humanity emanating from the 2020 Cubs Convention: institutional, arbitrary caprice.  It seems to only happen to me.  I can literally be standing in the middle of a group of fifty people all doing the same non-offensive thing, and usually consisting of simply standing there, and I − me, singularly, solely, personally, alone − will be told that I cannot be doing what fifty other people are doing.  This dictum will apply to no one else.  I will usually then be told that if I do not leave, I will be forcibly removed.

The reason my wife and I had stopped going to the Cubs Convention a decade ago was because this very thing happened at the Chicago Hilton.  My wife was standing in an exclusive line to get an autograph from a popular player of the time [I forget who it was].  Naturally, a photo-taker could not be in the line because … well, there is no plausible explanation ever given.  You just can’t.  However, the velvet roped area to the side of each exclusive autograph line was used by picture-takers.

I was my wife’s designated picture-taker, and I was in the area to the side with the digital camera. There was a gaggle of easily a hundred other people, all with cameras and all shadowing spouses or children as they wound their way back and forth in their velvet rope queue.  I was chatting with my wife periodically during the slow march about what we wanted to do next and whatnot.  Suddenly, I was accosted by an older woman wearing an “event staff”-type shirt.  She’d had to wade through about 75 people to get to me, and she informed me that I could not be there.

“I’m going to be taking her picture,” I replied, nodding in the direction of my wife.

“This line isn’t for photography,” she replied; “you have to leave.”

“There’s a hundred people here with cameras all waiting their turn to take pictures.  Are you going to make them leave, too?”  Everyone else around me with a camera was watching and listening and trying to appear invisible as I implicated them in my apparent conspiracy to commit unlawful photography.

“You have to leave.  If you don’t leave I’ll get security to remove you.”

I erupted in a “Fuck you, bitch!” and left, telling my wife that I’d be up in the room when she got done.  The other picture-takers were neither threatened nor removed.

I saw the same woman several more times during the remainder of that Convention and each time I greeted her with a “Am I permitted to be here?” or “Am I allowed to buy this t-shirt?”  She always smirked in response.

We went to a Cubs game at Wrigley that year or possibly the year after, and she worked as an usher at Wrigley Field.  Coincidentally, she was handling a section of the stands near where we were seated.  On my way to the concession stand one time I happened across her and asked, “Hey, remember me?  Am I allowed to be here?”  She didn’t recognize me and looked puzzled, whereas I tend not to forget imperious assholes who go out of their way to single me out as a target for their authoritarian assholery.

At any rate, this happened once again − twice, actually − at this Convention at the Sheraton Grand, the first time as a result of the episode with the supremely inconsiderate family of five described earlier.  The three empty seats in the row were one on my left and two on my right as the five − two parents and three sulking teenagers − came elbowing their way in.  “Could you all please move down a seat so we can all fit in here,” came the faux-polite pseudo-request from the mother.

I responded by getting up and leaving altogether.  Let everyone else sort out who will be dislodged.  I went to the back to join a group of eight people all standing − literally − shoulder to shoulder behind the back row of the audience watching the last few minutes of a presentation and waiting our turn to find a seat.  My wife had asked me to get a seat for the next panel that was about to start.  A woman with a red “security” polo shirt came up behind me, ignoring the three people on my left and the four people on my right, and touched my left shoulder, “You’re going to have to move… we’re trying to keep this lane open…”.

I briefly looked, as my gaze passed to the “security” woman, at the three gentlemen on my left with whom I was rubbing a shoulder, none of whom were less than 275 pounds and all of whom had a waist size at or above 50.  Two of them looked curiously in my direction.  I weigh 150 pounds fully dressed and soaking wet.  If you want to keep a lane open, toots, I’m not the problem.  Yet she was not addressing anyone else.  Only me.

I didn’t have time for her petty authoritarian horseshit, so I stormed out.  My wife was next door at the children’s game room, filled with face painters, washable tattoo artists, balloon animal engineers, a batting cage and other such activities.  I found her and informed her that no, I could not get us seats at the next event in the ballroom because it was filled with assholes of every variety.  In the end it was moot, because our seven year old was too engrossed in playing whiffle ball with, at that point, Koyie Hill, an ex-Cubs catcher.

The next such incident was at the very same kids game room on Sunday, the last day of the Convention, literally ten minutes before the whole thing ended at noon.  Coincidentally, or not, hotel checkout was also at noon.  Our son was taking part in the pro player coaching event where Cubs rookies and bullpen pitchers were taking groups of kids through some of the exercises ball players go through.  In order to save time, I went up to our room and collected coats, hats, luggage, backpacks and all the rest of our haul.  I met my wife back in the kids room about 11:45 when the player coaching ended, wearing my heavy winter coat and my leather cowboy hat.  Afterward, two of the four players who’d been doing the coaching stuck around to give autographs to kids.  Twelve to fifteen hotel staff, many of whom had blue “Guest Services” polos while the rest were wearing “2020 Cubs Convention” t-shirts, remained behind and were standing around in groups of two or three, chatting with each other, oblivious and ignoring everything around them.

We dug the baseball and the Sharpie out of the bag and gave it to the boy.  I pointed him at James Norwood and said, “Go get his autograph!”  My son had been too involved in doing his pro ballplayer exercise that he didn’t pay attention to the player who had been instructing him; he had no idea who I was pointing at.  My son was not alone in confusion.  A half dozen kids had no idea who they were to get autographs from, and their fathers went out to the kid-only area with them pointing them in the right direction.

So I walked into the kid zone with the other fathers and pointed my son’s face at Mr Norwood.  My son soon returned with a fresh, drying autograph on his baseball, and looked blankly around, pointing at various Hotel Staff gentlemen, most of whom were young Hispanic kids.  “Is he a player?” my son timidly asked.

“No kiddo, the player’s the guy in the striped Cubs jersey over there who’s signing stuff.”  I think it was Brad Wieck, but he didn’t turn his back to me so I couldn’t see the name across his shoulders.  They all look the same: young, tall, athletic build, scruffy beard.  At that moment, one of the Guest Services girls in the polo shirt pulled herself away from her sidebar conversation and told me, “Sir, you can’t be out here.  This is for kids only to get autographs.”

I pointedly informed her, “I’m not getting autographs, I’m pointing my son at the folks he needs to get autographs from, because no one else is doing that.”

She seemed taken aback by this and actually started doing her job at that point − she was the only one of the hotel staff to do so; the rest were still engrossed in chit-chat.  She marshalled kids to the two remaining players in the room.  She occasionally ran across another father just idly standing by his child and shooed him away as well, so I was not the only one [this time] to be singled out for unnecessary approbation.

But lookit; I get it.  You’ve been doing crowd control for two solid days on several thousand people a large portion of whom are the rude, self-absorbed assholes I mentioned at the start of this.  You’re on the downhill side of your duties, and you can see the end of your personal tunnel.  But trust me, you can keep focus for another few minutes.  Do your goddamned job.

If you can’t focus and do your goddamned job for another ten minutes and someone steps in to do it for you, you are in no legitimate position to get huffy about it.  Period.  The proper response is to say “thank you.”

In anticipation of this: you’re welcome.

Also needing to thank me is the delivery driver for Sarpino’s, because I was not the one waiting for the pizza and chicken fingers when it finally arrived… nearly three hours after we ordered it.  My wife took over for me a half hour before you got there, and she is much too nice to say what needed to be said.

The final gripe goes to hotel restaurants which think so much of the quality of their food that they insist on charging a family of three $75 for $15-worth of scrambled eggs and pancakes.  When someone orders their bacon crisp, make it crisp; it’s not difficult.  But just in case you’re confused by the concept, crisp bacon does not bend when you hold it by one end.  It will, though, snap in half.
 

This year, 2020, is an election year.  My disdain for the human race has been growing steadily for decades, and my encounters with large groups of people and human institutions only accelerate that.  This experience was no different.  This year I’m voting for the flaming comet to put an end to the self-serving assholery of individuals and the arbitrary capriciousness of those who “just follow the rules” when it suits them [and only when it suits them], and who can’t be bothered to do what they’re being paid to do.

Good riddance to you all.