I've heard the term "Sheeple" before now-and-then, and usually I'd just shrug it off, and continue on my way, but I've been thinking more about it lately.

I think the whole idea behind the term "Sheeple" is that people are becoming more and more prone to being led around by a metaphoric leash, being manipulated into doing anything the manipulators (usually, people in the government) wants them to do, blah blah blah.

I don't know about all of those conspiracy theories, but I will say something that I've been noticing over the last, I don't know, couple years.

It seems to be getting *worse*, too.

What is it with people being absolutely unable to think for themselves, unable to find their own answers to questions/problems, and being unable to reason things out on their own?

Just today, a small little event made me think about this. I was at work (grocery store, remember?) and this customer approaches me.

The ensuing conversation went like this:

Her: "Hello, sir? Do you have any other cheese other than what they sell here at the deli?"

Me: "Yeah, there's some in the dairy section."

Her: "Do you have like, shredded cheese anywhere?"

Me: "Yeah, in the dairy case."

Her: "Where's that?" *she looks around*

Me: "Aisle 5."

Her: "Okay....." *she looks around again, and -then- sees the Aisle 4 sign almost right above her. "Oh!"

She then proceeds to walk 5 feet over to Aisle 5, looks down that Aisle and gets this huge Lightbulb expression on her face... I nearly cracked up laughing.

I mean.... honestly.

I'd just brush this off if this were a freak accident, or a one-time thing, but it isn't, not by a long shot. In fact, things like this happen almost every single day I work.

Now, I would understand it, if it were some obscure item that is difficult to see or find, but come on? Cheese? When I stand there and say "Its in the dairy case"... the Dairy Case takes up 90% of Aisle 5. You really cannot miss it, if you were Trying to, especially since the store I work at only has 6 aisles.

I'd have understood this whole thing, if this were a 70, 80, or 90 year old woman, or perhaps someone with mental problems, or a disabled person, or some-such asking this, but it wasn't. This woman, if I were to guess her age, I'd put her at Late-40s to Early 50s. Her mind should still be reasonably sharp, and given her manner of speech and her clothing, I would have guessed her to be in the upper middle-income bracket.

So this gets me thinking back to the whole Sheeple thing.

Do people honestly have no ability to try to find things on their own these days? Just look at the over-abuse of GPS devices these days, when people use them to travel 5-10 miles away from their home to find something instead of, yaknow, following directions like they did in the Pre-2k years. Or how people need step-by-step instructions that include the most common sense knowledge that any person should have.

I think we're being too handfed (in the information department) to be honest. People need to go back to learning how to figure things out on their own, how to put 2 and 2 together and reason this stuff out. If this continues, I wouldn't be surprised if people just blindly followed whatever they were told, because they don't know any better. Heck, I think a lot of people are already like that....