More on pet peeves

Don’t like self-checkout? What about ATMs?

It’s been two years since I shared my first “pet peeve” column here. Back then I vented about sundry perversities (the root word of peeve from Latin) regarding Chick-fil-A traffic jams, sullen fans of Southwest Airlines, Walmart selfcheck complainers and the never-to-be Keystone Pipeline.

Since enough time has passed and it’s an election year, an update of my irritations is due.

Chick-fil-A, at least on Walton Boulevard in Bentonville, has addressed traffic problems. A months-long, drastic reconstruction was finished to alleviate the peril of driving down the city’s busiest route at meal times Monday through Saturday. A new layout presumably ends the spillover of drive-through traffic causing bottlenecks in the city street. So, pluck this one from my list. Of course, with my eyes rolling and tongue planted in cheek, I’m sure the Sabbath-keeping fast food giant took on these safety improvements because I complained two years ago.

The whining chorus of complaints about Walmart self check-outs continue, even more so as Tax Day approaches. Silly navel gazers question when the retail giant will send them W-2 forms for their work as register operators. Question to those types: Have you also demanded the same income statements from your banks and gas stations for using their long-established self-serve kiosks? I thought not.

Bottom line is that for many, Walmart is the entity they love to hate. And the situation is enigmatic though the transaction is a simple one. Detractors shop there, enjoy generally low prices on basic necessities for the household, then they feel the need to complain, sometimes vehemently, on social media. Walmart is successful therefore it is to be despised.

This is part of a “macro” peeve I’ve embraced: No one is happy about anything.

For example, survivors of a pandemic that took a million lives in this country alone want to return to those days of crisis-driven low gas and grocery prices. When we were huddled in place wearing surgical masks, fearing to go outside to meet the grim reaper, demand was low as were retail prices. No one was spending much except for hand sanitizer and, inexplicably, toilet paper — pure supply and demand economics, the stuff of conservative Republican policy-making. Maybe I’m guilty of over simplification, but given a choice, I’ll take current days, higher prices and all, than those gone by when refrigerator trucks were used as morgues and goofy President Trump was suggesting we try bleach injections or U.V. light to cure the plague. Now his hopeful supporters ready his return to the White House and the good old geo-political days of 1939.

So yes, I’m peeved big time with such perversion.

But I digress from my original list of two years prior. Pettier peeves deserve a check.

Northwest Arkansas National Airport (XNA), in the midst of its biggest facilities expansion since opening, still has no contract with Southwest Airlines. Therefore some in our market don’t feel the “LUV” from our airfield. So what? New facilities, new gates, expanded service from legacy and discount carriers offer plenty of options now and for potential new service. Need a nonstop for business in the Big Apple or LAX Lala land? XNA’s got you covered with Delta and American. An overwhelming desire for beignets or breakfast with Cinderella? XNA has no-frills transport with Breeze Airways and Allegiant nonstops to the Big Easy and the Florida Mouse House. Maybe someday Southwest will touch down at XNA. Until then, head to Tulsa if you’re that obsessed with “bags fly free.”

Finally, I never understood conservative horn blowers so apoplectic about that Keystone Pipeline project. It was never about energy independence for the Lower 48 so much as it was a benefit for the Canucks who’ve elected that liberal pretty boy Frenchman as prime minister five times and counting. Mon Dieu! The project’s demise is a fait accompli. Move on.

Like New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art and the U.K’s Tate Liverpool, I should stage a biennial exhibition: every two years an update of my latest, greatest venting. The Momentary is at hand. I’ll convince museum management that I’m a performance artist like Banksy or Yoko Ono. A shouted program of frustrations and angst shall ensue, echoing through concrete walls in the former Kraft plant on Southeast E Street. If you think that’s cheesy, then I assume you missed Marjorie Taylor Green in her MAGA hat at the recent State of the Union address and Sen. Katie Britt’s response from her Stepford Wives HGTV kitchen.

To paraphrase Lewis Carroll, the world is peevier and peevier.