The Things My Job Taught Me About Clairvoyance
Or
They Call It Programming For a Reason by Peter Holby
Sometimes, when people ask me what I've been up to, I tell them I've been developing clairvoyance. Most of them laugh and tell me it's not possible. It started out as a joke. Now I'm not so sure. I keep thinking that people act the same so much, if you just watched them long enough you'd be able to pick up on patterns and be able to tell what's going to happen.

People at work; you can tell what they're going to do. If they leave the register but stop before the door for a little while (without talking to someone), they're going to come back and claim you overcharged them. If they look confused and stare at the register display, they think the price is wrong. If something doesn't scan the first couple of times, every other person will say, "Must mean it's free!" I stopped fake laughing after a while. I just stare at them and say, "You have no idea how many times a day I hear that joke." If someone's going up and down every aisle with a deliberate speed, it means they can't find what they're looking for. And if they need to ask you something, they're going to start with "Do you work here?" even though you're wearing your light blue long sleeved polyester CVS uniform shirt. They're afraid to start a conversation almost any other way. If they've just walked away from the pharmacy, they're going to complain about the prices. If you're wearing a nametag, they're going to think they know you. Now that I've figured all of this out, and it's true ninety-five percent of the time, I can answer their questions before they ask them. Hence, I have trained myself to be clairvoyant. It wasn't hard. You can tell for the most part what the President is going to say before he says it. You know when the light is going to turn red. You know how much your paycheck is going to be for. You know where the homeless man on the way to work is. You can look at people and tell how lonely they are, or where their breaking point is. Clairvoyance isn't seeing the future, it's knowing the past.

In school, when teachers complain about how poor our grammar is, or some such thing, I always make sure to point something out. "We're products of the system," I say. "Our grammar sucks because it wasn't taught to us. People like you just kept assuming we were taught it before. I mean, lets face it. Things aren't so hot, but it's hardly our fault. Garbage in, garbage out." That first part, that we're products of the system, which comes back in here. We all act the same because we were all taught to act the same. We say the same things because we think the same. We talk and think the same because we were taught to talk and thing the same.

"It helps to know you're not any more responsible for how you look than a car is, you're a product just as much. A product of a product of a product…. You can't escape the world, and you're not responsible for how you look, if you look beauticious or butt ugly. You're not responsible for how you feel or what you say or how you act or anything you do. It's all out of your hands…. The same way a compact disc isn't responsible for what's recorded on it, that's the same way we are. You're about as free to act as a programmed computer. You're about as one-of-a-kind as a one dollar bill."
-Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

Look at where your feet are. People have stood there before. The thoughts you're thinking, people have thought before you. People will stand and think after you. Where you live, same deal. We don't even own the basics. We're just renters. Or worse yet, squatters. Remember that this isn't a bad thing. Bad things don't exist anymore. We're no longer responsible. Blame the man driving this crazy train.

It has been said, however, that there is a way to break out of this cycle of irresponsibility and programming.

"Don't do what you want. Do what you don't want. Do what your trained not to want." -Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

Think, though, long and hard about breaking free of our invisible cultural masters. If we could decide what to do with ourselves, would we do the right thing? This couldn't be the right thing, could it? Are we capable of commandeering our own destiny? Are we worthy?

I wish this all weren't true. I wish we could amount to something more than the sum of our total programming. I hope that somewhere deep inside all of us is a spark of originality, something that only we posses, the inspiration from god, or something like that. I hope that at some point we will wake up and do things we never saw coming. But somehow, I don't see that happening. And perhaps most importantly, I'm only telling you this because I was taught to tell you this.