What pisses me off? Distractions everywhere

An alarming trend has started where breastfeeding mothers are taking their babies to work.   Now the words “breastfeeding” and “work” should never appear in the same sentence – the one is the antithesis of the other.  “Work” requires some effort, physical or mental, attention to detail or attention of some sort to some thing.  That is if you are actually working and not engaged in some facile endeavour like raising or lowering interest rates.  These people may very well be able to contentedly breastfeed while moving the knob up and down – the interest indicator thingy, thank you  – and then quietly settle down for an afternoon nap. “Breastfeeding” simply means giving in to the now and going with the flow.  And I’m sorry to burst your bunny balloon but the Great Wall of China was not built because there were too many rabbits cavorting round the country, but to keep the workers away from the breastfeeders.  The Chinese knew perfectly well all those centuries ago that a woman engaged in breastfeeding would distract workers from their invaluable endeavours.

There was a mother who was enthusing about taking her 3 month old infant to work and waxing lyrical about the “benefits”.  Either that or the Valium hadn’t worn off yet.  And when she was asked,  “But doesn’t the baby distract the other workers?”  she laughed and trilled “Oh no, the baby has a calming effect.”  A calming effect?   “Calm” is not the emotion I feel when I am in the shopping mall trying to enjoy a quiet cup of coffee and valiantly trying to ignore the ear splitting shrieks being emitted by very small people.  Many of the hairs in my ears (well they’re like tuning forks really and they reverberate sound around in your head till you are either soothed to sleep or your eyes cross) turn up their toes – yes toes – and die.  The Department of Occupational Health & Safety should be alerted to this noise pollution.  As well as sleep deprivation, another favoured method of torture is loud and continuous noise.

You would think the managers and owners of shopping malls would be wise to the fact that some people like to shop in peace.  We want it on earth and more particularly in the shopping mall.  We don’t even need the background music which is seriously in the foreground.  Especially at Christmas.  Mournful renditions of White Christmas just make my teeth itch.  There is a fortune to be made by the person who provides a quiet oasis for the prematurely deaf and temporarily disoriented, along with a hot – I don’t care what the barista says – cappuchino.  Glorious Jan’s – whaddayareckon?

Jan Carroll is the author of She Is Heavy, She Is My Mother. The E-Book is available on Amazon for $4.16. You can purchase her book by clicking here.