Why, you ask?
Because it is the only way to ensure that I will never have to hear any breath-takingly stupid bullshit from the public ever again.
Today I was ringing up customers, lost somewhere between the beeping of the register and the smell of burnt cheese, when I heard Marta talking behind me. Apparently, the customer she was helping had just lost a lot of weight because of this "new, homeopathic weight loss drug called HCG! It really works! I took it and suddenly didn't want to eat more than a few bites of food. Amazing!"
Several bullshit alarms went off in my head. Maybe it was the term, "Weight loss drug," and the fact that no "weight loss drug" has ever been shown to work in a clinical trial. Maybe it was the term "homeopathic," a fancy-sounding word that quite literally means "placebo." Maybe it was the way Marta was gobbling up his words faster than a bacon and cheddar shorty with extra cheese. Whatever the reason, I bit my lip, I held my tongue, and I shut the hell up as Marta scribbled down the name of his magical snake oil.
Until.
The customer walked away, he and his obese wife (some weight loss drug, eh?), leaving me alone with Marta. I explained that homeopathy DOES NOT WORK. It has been tested over and over again, and failed spectacularly every time. It's alternative medicine. And alternative medicines have either not been tested, and have been tested and failed.
Of course Roast Beefy turns around to regale the pair with this new found information (phrasing it incorrectly, of course). They waste no time in telling me that I'm wrong, that "antibiotics don't work," and that they are, "really into homeopathy and will never go back to conventional medicine."
There was nothing more I could say. So I laughed. Hard. They left, and I wrote down "James Randi homeopathy speech" on the back of a receipt, and handed it to Marta. She promptly rejected it, saying, "I probably won't take it anyway. I don't like doctors. I don't like pills."
To quote Obi-wan Kenobi, who is dumber, the fool, or the fool who follows him?
Scientific illiteracy kills, ladies and gentlemen. Know your shit. Know when someone is utterly full of it. Rather than asking, "Where can I find these weight loss pills? How much do they cost?" ask questions like, "How has this been tested? How does it work?" Because while weight loss treatments are vain and frivolous, cancer and diabetes are not. And you bet your ass that there are homeopathic treatments for those.
