Quite honestly, what is transpiring in this country, pandemic aside — the chaos, uncertainty, etc. — does not surprise me at all. Approximately 10 years ago, I watched a news segment that showed how companies were having seminars for their managers on how to treat the new workforce entering the labor market. In other words, instead of the new employees adjusting to the company, the company was pandering to the new employees. I knew right then and there the country was steering itself down a road of mayhem. Can you imagine Henry Ford being told, “You have to have a seminar for you and your managers on how you adjust to the new employees, instead of them adjusting to you?” He literally would have closed the company’s doors for good.

My own experience with this happened a couple of years ago in Walmart. I was looking at the health and fitness magazines when they were up by the checkout counters. A man approached with his two sons, approximately 9 and 5 years old, all nicely attired. The 9-year-old started picking up items out of my cart. I calmly asked him what he was doing and he replied. “Oh, I thought I dropped something in the cart.” OK, whatever. A minute later, they are leaving and the 9-year-old starts walking away with my cart. Without raising my voice, I sternly asked him, “Where are you going with my cart?” He replied, “Oh, oh, I thought it was ours.” The father’s reply to the boy was, “Are you losing it, Tommy?” His tone was not one of authority.

I can’t speak for others, but if I was that 9-year-old, as soon as I touched that cart, I would have been taken aside and told, “You do not touch other people’s things, and if there is something you want to look at, you ask permission first.”

So what is happening in this country today really comes as no surprise. It was expected.