David McElroy

For several days, I’d been suffering from a mild cold, so I was using NyQuil to sleep at night instead of staying awake coughing. I realized one night that I was out of NyQuil, so I made a quick trip to the Target near my house to get some.

When I handed the 12-ounce bottle of NyQuil (a generic version, actually) to the clerk, she scanned it and asked for my driver’s license. I asked her why. She said it was required by law. I told her it’s not required by law, since it’s not a controlled substance and the law doesn’t require identification or recording of purchases in Alabama. She looked at me as though I was questioning a basic law of nature. She couldn’t understand why I would object to having my personal information stored in a database in exchange for handing her cash for cold medicine.

I left without the NyQuil. I told the clerk that I’d buy it someplace else that doesn’t invade my privacy. I walked out feeling angry at Target. And then I drove to Walmart and bought twice as much of the medicine without any ID of any kind.

Why does Target want to record my information when Walmart doesn’t?

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None of the fast food places near me are shut down because of a growing series of strikes, as far as I know. But if the walkout extends to a McDonald’s or Wendy’s or something similar near here, I might have to eat there — just out of principle — because these misguided workers are wrong.

They’re being led astray by union bosses who want to increase their own power — by bringing more workers under their control — not caring that their actions are likely to destroy the jobs of the people they claim to want to help.

Guided by the union bosses of the Service Employees International Union, these employees are demanding that fast food chains increase their minimum starting pay to $15 an hour. Their pitch to the public: “We can’t survive on $7.25.”

I have no special love for the people who own and operate most fast food joints. With few exceptions, they’re poorly managed and the companies don’t care much about the customer experience or the employees. They tend to sell a sub-par product (which never looks like the product in the commercials). The employees tend to be rude and poorly trained. Management tends to be surly and unprepared. So what’s there to like about them? Simply that they give us quick access to generic, reasonably predictable food at pretty cheap prices (compared to traditional restaurants).

So why are the employees and their union bosses wrong? I could list a number of reasons why they’re wrong, but it all boils down to economics and morality.

The union campaign claims, “We are worth more,” but anyone who understands economics can tell you that’s wrong, for the simple fact that the labor market determines the worth of someone.

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We are strangers, we are aliens
We are not of this world
— “Not of This World,” Petra

Every time I observe groups of teen-agers interact, I’m reminded of why I disliked that period of my life so much. For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt like an alien on this planet, but there was something about those years that made it seem more acute and more painful. It was the start of realizing just how different I am.

For some teens, there’s a casualness to their social interaction that I never felt. I eventually learned to fake it well, but I never quit feeling like a stranger in a strange land.

By high school, I had leadership roles at church and at school, but I never lost the feeling that I was an actor playing a part when I was with others — like some kind of alien wearing a disguise as a human. It was then that I realized I never felt as alone as I did in crowds.

I was thinking about this again recently because of sitting in a restaurant watching a group of teens interact. There’s a part of me that wants to say that they made me uncomfortable with the forced casualness of their time together, but there’s another part of me that wonders if they really are casual and natural together — and it’s the fact that they can do that so easily with random people that makes me uncomfortable — because I can’t.

Maybe it makes me feel this way because it reminds me of just how different I felt as a teen — and how I’ve continued to feel like the alien who’s pretending to fit in here.

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