Sadly, New York City can now be called Big Blunt instead of the Big Apple.
It’s not simply that chaos spread throughout the five boroughs after marijuana was legalized.
The bitter odor I felt in the crowded men’s lavatory of the Majestic Theatre a few weeks ago was not from “The Phantom of the Opera” smoke machine, and not just because stinking smoke hangs everywhere, seeping into subway carriages and even Broadway theaters.
It’s partly because of a taboo fact in an era where increasing the minimum wage is a mantra: the legalization of drugs has turned service workers into mindless drones.
Almost all of my life, I’ve spent in the city.
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Never before have I had to repeat my extremely complicated Starbucks order of a “tall” coffee three times before the glum barista finally responded.
It would appear that “Everybody must get stoned,” a line by Bob Dylan, is now required reading for staff at any business with direct consumer contact.
Consultant and friend of mine Shelley Clark noted, “Too often, any question or request is met with a vacant look and a very much by-rote ‘no problem.'”
That’s a welcome change from the furious looks I usually receive when I intrude on someone’s “stay out of my space” fantasies.
The minimum salary needs to be reduced.
Why not, when so many service industry personnel have become hopelessly stunad (Italian for “dumbfounded”)?
The word’s meaning, “dumb,” is frighteningly similar to the drugged states of many service workers.
They are extremely inebriated, as seen by their glassy eyes, lack of interest in their work, and potent breath.
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Did you get General Tso’s chicken instead of chicken burritos from GrubHub?
The “Smoke & Draft” shop on First Avenue and East 75th Street, right outside my building, is to blame for a recent sidewalk knife brawl that put two deliverymen to the hospital.
I paid twenty dollars for a cup of soup that cost eight dollars at Pret a Manger. I enquired about a tote.
After accepting the twenty dollars, he instantly forgot about the soup, my change, my bag, and me. Until I appealed to his coworkers, he walked off strangely waving my Andrew Jackson like a flag.
I haven’t seen this much sleepiness due to marijuana use since I was in college during the Vietnam War when everyone was high and trying to flush their joints all at once because they heard the authorities were coming.
Our entire city of pickled cannabis has become that university.
One cashier at the Upper East Side gourmet food emporium Agata and Valentina was “so out of it, staring into space while people waited in line,” according to a bank executive who frequently shops there.
She failed to return my change. The cashier locked the register. Someone had to come with the dreadful key, and I had to wait. She took ten minutes to complete a transaction that should have taken no more than thirty.
One of my followers replied to my tweet about confused employees by saying, “The woman operating the service counter” at a big Sunset Park auto dealer “was plainly high… lacked any comprehension of the situation. I had my car stolen twice while it was in for maintenance.
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Developer Jordan Cohn tweeted, “I recently had a restaurant waitress forget my credit card. Lost forever; no trace of them remains. It probably got thrown out with the trash by mistake, that’s my best guess.
Our “progressive” politicians’ deliberate neglect of our city’s infrastructure is making it look like a dump.
