A locksmith acquaintance in Minnesota called recently to inform me about an incident on the Internet. Apparently the owner of a locksmith business was deceased and a relative hired an auction firm to organize a website auction of all the items remaining at the former business location. Items reportedly included both saleable products and tools of the trade. This had been a large, successful locksmith business and many hours were expended by the auction firm in order to catalog all of the items available for sale.
According to my locksmith source, between 200 to 300 locksmiths participated in the website by bidding for various products during the auction. After the auction was completed the excited winning bidders were informed that the seller no longer wanted to sell the merchandise. Whether this is an example of fuzzy thinking or if there is a rational explanation for the sudden reversal is presently unclear.
The first big brass National cash register used at our family locksmith business when I was a boy only registered as high as ten dollars. When someone gave me a five dollar bill as $1.35 payment for a duplicate key, I had to press the dollar key, the 30 cent key and the 5 cent key in unison. Then I had to mentally figure out the correct change for the customer.
On a recent visit to the Security Hardware Distributors meeting in Phoenix, I visited a local restaurant for breakfast. My bill was $7.80 and I gave the cashier a ten dollar bill. The register automatically displayed $2.20 for my change. No thinking required. However the cashier was out of singles. I offered the cashier three additional dollar bills but the cashier did not have a clue as to what she should now pay me. It took several minutes of discussion before the cashier finally gave me a five dollar bill plus twenty cents of change and she now had three singles to make future change with.
Lame thinking extends far beyond the bounds of locksmithing. As example, they are experimenting now with automobiles that drive themselves. Our brains and bodies are being put on hold as machines take on every task which is considered mundane. The result is that companies are getting rich selling exercise machines to people who are overweight because they have no real work to do. It's a strange world.
