Ranting guy [at busstop]

[cimorene]

Ranting guy at busstop in Finland is usually a drunk.

Today's guy was not at the busstop, although definitely was that type of guy.

He came into my office at work, where I was alone, and started off incoherently rambling (seemed drunk but not 100% sure if he was), in a mumbly and difficult folksy accent but also missing a bunch of teeth, about a recent unemployment freeze that the asshole government is doing (along with cutting funding to education and all kinds of social services obviously). He did say several times that this government is shit, which is definitely true. But he also imparted all kinds of conspiracy theories, such as:

• The Finnish government is never going to pay any social welfare or support of any kind again to any Finnish person


• But they are going to continue paying large payments to all the Ukrainian refugees specifically, once per year according to him, which is funny because I don't even know where the conspiracy theorists got that; that isn't how the support for them or any other asylum-seekers works


• The reason Finland isn't paying Finns any support anymore is because the EU said they can't


• The EU also said that they have to pay like... a hundred something million euros to the Ukrainian war (how do you pay a war? Who knows?) and uh, sixty million euros per day to Ukraine


• The EU is making Finland join Nato and the US is going to make Finland give all their money to Nato too


• He also led off by asking if I was Ukrainian, so I guess it was good for me that I am not


• Russia is going to conquer Finland apparently???


• Finland is definitely going to suffer because of this and... that's going to take the form of... no more... streets? No more cars on the streets? Not sure, something about the street no more


• Speaking of Russia, Hitler helped Finland because Finland was neutral. (Finland was allied with Hitler in WW2 - uh, definitely NOT neutral, which I actually said at the time, even though by then it was clear that this guy was in aliens territory - because the USSR was engaged in trying to conquer Finland, and Hitler was who was fighting the USSR. But they were both helping each other with that shared goal; there wasn't any altruism involved! This is not an unproblematic issue in Finnish culture and history and I've talked about it before.)

This guy also was under the impression, like so many other people seem to be for some reason, that our office is part of the government. I explained that it isn't several times and I don't think it really got through. "Who pays your salaries then?" "The charity does. This is a charity. It's a volunteer organization." "But who pays your salaries? It's not the USA. It's not Nato." Correct, good sir! It's the charity, like I literally JUST said! And therefore it's mostly donations!

So, anyway, he was there for over an hour, and he was getting pretty worked up and angry by the end, apparently mostly motivated by the unemployment freeze but apparently directed more at ummmmm the EU and Ukrainians??? but he also didn't have a single actual question or request to make, as far as I was able to tell. I couldn't eat my lunch while he was there so I eventually edged out into the main room and said I needed to get on with cleaning, but even THAT did not work until I finally lost my patience and said like five times in a row that I couldn't answer questions about, or talk about, issues of EU or government spending and money, that I don't know anything about it (this part about five times), and that my job is just to sit here and sell cards and answer questions about our volunteer groups, so like, SORRY, but... eventually he left.

After that I was kinda shaky.

My boss has suggested that I go to the little shop next door (we're in a strip mall) and ask if we can exchange emergency phone numbers in case this happens again, so either of us could run next door to help. Not that either of us would be able to eject a weird customer, but I definitely would've felt better. So I'll probably do that tomorrow.

Comments

[wychwood]

That sounds really stressful! I'm glad you're OK now.

[cimorene]

Thanks! Yeah, it's so alarming and hard to know how to cope with a person who seems drunk or erratic in that drunk-like way. You just don't know how to predict or what would be the best way to act.

Love that Lewis chessmen icon!

[princessofgeeks]

I'm so sorry. How scary. I think the emergency contact is a good idea. At least you would have some backup/company.

[cimorene]

Definitely, yeah. I think it would make me feel better for one, but I think it really would be some help just to have two people present even if neither one of them is, like, a security guard.

[stranger]

Sympathy to you for being stuck in what's essentially a customer-service position, in regard to non-customers who wander in to rant at you.
The WWII position of Finland sounds dicey in the extreme, between Hitler and Stalin.

[cimorene]

Yeah, it seems like ultimately they didn't have that much choice. And unfortunately, the entire West was pretty willing to just go with whatever the USSR wanted because they needed their assisstance to fight Hitler. And Hitler didn't really have any interest in annexing Finland, at least, apparently not, although one does wonder why he was interested in conquering Russia either, so perhaps he intended to change his mind later. But regardless, Russia was the hungry bear on the doorstep that had already been attempting to conquer for some time, so any threat from the other side looked comparatively minor to them at the time. But of course this can be true and it can ALSO be true that allying with Hitler was still problematic and that things that happened as a result of that require acknowledgement, reckoning, processing, apology. And culturally Finland is pretty lacking in that; I get the feeling it prefers to try to forget it ever happened, because it clashes with the all-important core self-image of an independent and upstanding citizen-state of The Free West.

[cesy]

That sounds scary and stressful

[cimorene]

Ugh, yeah. Hoping it doesn't happen again.