Marplot is a good word. It means, a meddlesome person who gums up the works—or mars the plot, as it were. I taught marplot to my daughter very early. At four, she was pointing out cars taking too long to get out of a tight grocery-store parking lot. “Dad, is that guy a marplot?”
We need a new word like that: For a person who doesn’t do a thing that most of us instinctively do, which is try to extrapolate what the world would be like if everyone was as high-maintenance as they.
If everyone took that long to decide what goddamn cocktail to order? (The bar would have to employ one bartender for every two customers.) If everyone asked that many questions before making a purchasing decision. (Nordstrom salespeople would be playing one-on-one defense.)
It’s not just customers that are such __________s. It’s businesses too, these days! Did I tell you about the plumber who completed a routine annual inspection and asked that I use his phone to fill out a survey about how great he was … and then asked me for a selfie, because of “a contest our office is having”?
Honestly: Imagine if you filled out every survey that asked you how you satisfied you were with your experience at the dry cleaner, Doordash delivery, oil change. It would be a 20-hour-a-week commitment.
All any of these fools has to do to curb this life-clogging behavior is to imagine for one second what it would be like if everyone behaved as they did.
My motto is, do unto others you would have others do unto you—and just as briskly, too!
Many others simply don’t get that.
Because they are total and complete __________s.
Okay, folks, I can’t think of everything. What’s the word we’re looking for here?
UPDATE: My sister Piper submits, “meanderthals.” Who can beat it?
Solipsores? A portmanteu that combines solipsism (the belief that the only thing that exists is oneself) and sores (as in a real pain).