Does anyone work with or know someone who thinks the public they work with is generally stupid? I do. Actually, I used to be one of them.

I call it the Ant Complex; where someone inherently believes that the people around them are not worthy, stupid, or just don’t get it. Indeed, ants.

The Ant Complex usually occurs when a particular person deals with other people who have trouble with ordinary tasks.  I had the Ant Complex during my time as a gas station attendant. Nothing was more frustrating to me than the people who couldn’t operate a simple gas pump correctly. Just follow the directions on the screen, I would say.

In my associates case, who has the Ant Complex, he’s an ordinary cashier, but deals with people who sometimes don’t know the difference between credit and debit, how to swipe their card on the payment keypad, simple store policies, or other every day activities.

My associate is always talking to me about how stupid a customer was. He asks why they can’t just understand these simple things. He’s quite a critical guy. It sometimes comes to the point where he’s so critical that he’s complaining about things that only he, as a cashier, should know fully well and not the customer.

Now I see how much of an ass I used to be. Does anyone else have experiences with this attitude?