Dignity Done Diabolically
Humanity could profit by taking some pointers from the people who designed the machine gun nests at Omaha Beach and my Food Lion shopping buggy
This morning’s grocery run reminded me of D-Day. Well, not D-Day itself. It reminded me of my visit to Omaha Beach - which was in 2010, long after D-Day by most accounts.
You see, when I vacationed in Normandy in 2010, I was struck at the way the defensive fortifications had optimized carnage. Especially the German machine gun bunkers. I wasn’t surprised by this. Optimized carnage is exactly what one expects of a warring nation. I didn’t imagine it could be any other way. What struck me was the ingenuity that we humans invest in even the minutiae of carrying out destruction. The soul-sucking level of commitment is what struck me.
This hit hard as I strolled around the remnants of German machine gun warrens at the edge of the six-mile long beach. I hadn’t given it much thought but I’d expected the machine guns to face out to the English Channel - much like the massive anti-ship cannons we’d just visited at Longues-Sur-Mer. Instead, the machine guns were rotated almost 90º from the big guns’ orientation - so that they fired down the length of the packed sand shoreline.
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Our guide explained that this was more efficient. If German soldiers firing the guns missed one invading soldier scrambling for cover, that was okay because that round would eventually find its way to the flesh and organs of other invaders farther down the beach as they sprinted to safety once the doors to their landing craft opened.
The orientation of defensive machine gun bunkers along the English Channel may have been one of the simpler, least debated, and somewhat more intuitive decisions made over the course of World War II but that choice sat with me. I imagined someone had to devise this scheme. I pictured theme as grim foot soldiers sitting down with maps and diagrams and perhaps a protractor to make their recommendation as to the ideal orientation for each bunker.
The entire scheme was admirably diabolical for its cleverness, savvy, focus, skillful implementation, and its ruthless commitment to achieving a clear objective.
And shamefully so for its utter contempt for human dignity.
Which is what brings me to my visit to Food Lion this morning.
As I wheeled my shopping buggy out toward the parking lot, the woman ahead of me came to a screeching halt. Caught off guard, she slammed into her buggy and smacked her shin against it, causing a bruise. One of the men who harnesses the buggies to return them from the corrals walked up and took out a kind of bar code scanner device to scan the front wheels of the buggy. Voilà! The wheels were enabled.
Mind blown.
He explained to the woman that each and every buggy came equipped with a wheel locking mechanism. It can be locked if someone is shoplifting or if a customer has spent too much time in the store. He even pointed to a sign on the door - in small type, far from winning over anyone’s attention - which offers an explanation of this system.
I need to be clear that this wasn’t a case of removing the buggy from the shopping center complex. Or from the store itself. The wheels locked up on her as she took the buggy from the main shopping space into the vestibule area of the store where shoppers pick up their buggies.
It’s so ruthless. And demeaning.
It struck me that someone’s job was to design this high-tech buggy braking system, with “loss prevention” data in one hand and possibly a protractor in the other hand. There was very likely a meeting in which a team of soulless humans came to an understanding that if someone was shopping at their grocery chain for two whole hours, then Food Lion was well-advised to assault that customer as they exited for the crime of being too extra at their consumerism.
That decision - and the high-tech buggy braking system they invested in - seems punishably extra.
This entire scheme is admirably diabolical for its cleverness, savvy, focus, skillful implementation, and its ruthless commitment to achieving a clear objective.
And shamefully so for its utter contempt for human dignity.
Not that I want to offer excuses for either of these morally bereft affairs, but I have a much easier time understanding the contempt coming from the Nazi high command trying to defend a critical beachhead than I can grasp the kind of gratuitous slights that are clumsily put into play by the people with Food Lion’s loss prevention team.
My nearby Food Lion has a much different clientele than my Harris Teeter or Publix supermarkets where there is more variety and more gourmet options. The Harris Teeter has an in-store tavern to prolong patron visits…
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…and their shopping buggies are designed to hold your drink while you browse the artisanal cheese section.
For most product lines, Food Lion has its store brand and one, possibly two, national brands. The freezers in the frozen food section regularly go on the blink - so customers who are in the know will check to see if the goods they’re seeking had thawed out at some earlier point in time. The butcher, seafood and deli sections are often not staffed. Two of the aisles have supporting pillars parked in the shoppers’ path. There’s a certain contempt for humanity in these choices as well, but it was the high-tech shopper assaulting shopping buggy that struck me as being notably diabolical in admirable and shameful ways.
As I took my groceries to my car I was not so much outraged by this as I was envious. I wondered: why can’t decency and dignity be equally and similarly diabolical?
Imagine a world where an equal number of people with protractors in hand were as clever and as savvy and as focused and as dedicated to the execution of their plans and as ruthlessly committed to the dignity of all people as the most diabolical schemer who’s contemptuous of their neighbor’s well-being.
What if the person who writes up the table of fees and surcharges at the bank were to quit that job and employ the same zeal in writing up rules that regulate pay-day lenders?
What if the person who’s hired to draft the exclusions to your health insurance coverage were to quit that job and make health care work for everyone without forcing employers to manage it?
What if the person who designs your local park amenities that are hostile to people who need to sleep in public spaces were to quit that job and go to work designing bus shelters and bus timetables and bus routes that were optimized for the needs of people who have no other means of transportation?
I assume it must crush the souls of many - if not all - the people whose source of income and prospects for advancement depend on how diabolical they are in helping their employer beat down (and, in the case of Food Lion buggies, beat up) the average American consumer.
Why can’t dignity be done as diabolically as war and oppression gainfully employs those services?