The Know-Nothing Consumer

One day I was having lunch at my usual dining hall at Truman. Whipping a glass for milk out of the glass-tray (with a small, habitual, careless flourish that is sure to destroy a glass or glasses someday) I approached the milk dispenser. There are little labels for “Skim,” “Chocolate,” and “2%,” and also little labels that say “Full” and “Empty.” To my satisfaction, I noted that the 2%, my milk product of choice, was labeled “Full.” I confidently pushed up the lever, but found that only a dribble of milk descended from the spout. “What the devil are they about, labeling this ‘Full’?” I demanded (silently. Suspecting dining hall workers of malice is unfortunately an occasional pastime of Truman students.) “It is clearly not full, not by any measure.” I began to walk away, but then some neurons in my brain made a sudden and astounding connection: the “Full” and “Empty” labels were two-sided—they say “Full” on one side and “Empty” on the other. And yet the insight went even deeper: I realized that it is not the cafeteria workers but the students who are expected to flip the labels when a milk dispenser runs out, because, of course, they are the only ones who would know that.

This experience, in which I was a necessary (and defective) component of an economic activity, ended up being quite eye-opening. I began thinking about other things I did not understand. I could think of quite a few. You see, like most people my age, I live in an economy in which I as a consumer am not expected to know anything. I don’t need to know how to fix a car because we belong to AAA. The auto shop people can decode those mysterious orange lighted symbols mean on my dashboard. (Is that really what an engine looks like?) I don’t have to count out bills for most transactions because I use a check card. Think about that one for a moment: I don’t have to count. I don’t have to know the roads of St. Louis, Kirksville, or any other city, because I can look on Google Maps or borrow a GPS from my parents. The development of my cooking skills has been ponderous at best, due to fast food, freezer food and college dining halls. I don’t have to know how to fix my computer—either the ITS department or my dad can figure it out. And I didn’t have to pay attention to the labels on the milk dispenser—until at last they betrayed me. The architecture of our economy is designed to coddle young consummate morons such as myself, whose ignorant money leakages are enormously profitable.

Our parents had to know less than their parents, and we know essentially nothing. Examples of the helplessness of our generation in basic life activities abound. Tonight, while studying in a dorm, I printed off a guide for my genetics lab tomorrow morning. I galloped down the stairs to the lobby printer, confident that I would find the guide waiting for me there. It was not. The desk worker suggested to check if I had printed to the right printer. “Have I really done that again?” I asked myself. “Surely I checked before I impulsively clicked print.” I had not. In fact, when I brought up the print screen again, the selected printer was located in the library, a 5-minute walk away.

I set out for the library. When I got there, I found the first-floor printer belching out a six-page document every 15 seconds. All print jobs have a cover sheet with our serial username. The cover sheets showed that these were all coming from the same person. One of my friends was stacking the documents on the printer, anxiously waiting for her own papers to show up. Then I realized that I had not checked which library printer I had printed to, and that it was probably the second floor printer. I went upstairs and found my papers. Delighted, I returned to the first floor. The printer was still vomiting papers as if it had a sort of pulpy stomach flu. There were now a few nervous people standing around the printer. I offered to go explain what was happening to the students in the ITS office upstairs, one of those islands of experts to which we are continually having to hop so we can have our problems solved. But suddenly the printer started printing out other people’s papers. My friend left without ever getting her paper.

I’m willing to bet that the student who printed out a septillion of copies thought that he or she was only printing one. But the darn thing wasn’t coming out at the dorm lobby printer in front of which he or she was standing, so the ‘Print’ button got irritably clicked a few more times. And then a few more times.

It all just makes me wonder: first it was misunderstanding the milk system in the servery. But what will it be next time? I operate all sorts of complex and even dangerous machinery—a coffee maker, a car, a razor, a computer. What if next time I can’t just cross the room to the other milk dispenser? What if next time I’m faced with the certain disaster of having to rely on my own abilities? But that, of course, will never happen.