Went to the bagel store - took 10 minutes for the cashier to come up front from sitting on her butt in back (while the sandwich maker was working). She had that special lazy-stupid quality that seems to show up more often now adays - not only did she look annoyed that she had to work, she couldn't seem to remember that I ordered coffee after taking my money for coffee. I'm ok with slow service as long as they're fairly competent when they get to me.

And to make things more interesting this was one of those mornings when people just decide to ignore stop lights - which is another favorite here. Not because the light just turned red (that's more a CA favorite) - but mainly because red is treated like a stop sign. I've been wondering if this is because I'm on the SC border (maybe it's due to different state regulations). Or possibly because of different laws for country roads versus city roads.


So I have a few questions:

1. Are employees getting this bad everywhere in the country, or is it more prominent in NC? Or more prominent in the South? I don't remember seeing the same type of behavior in CA (at least, most sales people seemed to have enough motivation to complete transactions that you started - and they usually didn't take 10 minutes to ring up your order without some reason.) 

There is a percentage of people in NC and SC that all act the same - it's a personality type I just don't remember encountering before. In CA there was a percentage of people that generally acted just as dumb - but all they did was give no effort. In this case they're actually expending more energy to get less done.

2. Is there any correlation between behavior types and unemployment rates?