So two IT guys are in the checkout queue at a supermarket, when one of them notices a magazine on the newsstand that has a picture of Steve Jobs on the front. He points non-chalantly and says “Heh, he’s dead, by the way” — when all of a sudden the town drunk in front of them goes ballistic about how insensitive it is to poke fun of a dead guy so frivolously. How did it go so wrong so fast?
Yep, that’s what happened to me today. You and I have probably heard over 68000 times, but I’ll ask you again anyway (INORITE…): “zOMG Did you know Steve Jobs died?!?”
While we were waiting to check out, I was talking on the phone to my brother whom I hadn’t spoken with in over a month. Caught off-guard at the store by this guy who has clearly taken a rough turn in life, I had lost my train of thought so I didn’t really have an immediate comeback to this guy’s tirade. I wanted to avoid escalating the situation further at least for a moment, so I just looked at my friend and said “wow…”, which proceeded to set him off slightly further anyway. To follow, in kind of a drunken slur: “He’s been dead for a week, and you’re joking at his expense? He invented your phone, man!”
Well, no, good sir, he most definitely did not invent my Android HTC G2 phone. He also didn’t invent the phone you think he did *either*. Jobs is not of the same calibur as Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, or Albert Einstein, despite what one’s Apple-fanboyism and/or media-fed-sheeple mind equates. It’s true he was an excellent motivator for the people who *did* invent such devices, as well as a person who is savvy with business and marketing, but did Jobs invent the iPhone, tablet PCs, or the touch screen for that matter? Umm, no. Do some Googling for fact checking on those (and most other Apple products) if you don’t believe me.
So after I got off the phone with my brother and the guy was done checking out, I was sure to let him know that I’m not just some insensitive dick and apologized for offending him, and he equally apologized for taking his bad day out on me. The mixup occurred where he assumed I was joking about his “death”, when I was actually making light of the insane amout of times we’d been asked if we knew he was dead (as in the overbearing news of his death).
Moral of the story? I dunno — “Be careful what you joke about with your friends in a private conversation so the nearby drunk guy doesn’t overhear and take it the wrong way”? Umm… how about “Don’t be on the phone in a totally different conversation and manage to say something that someone else eavesdropping might take offense to”? What do you think?
