Recently a friend was telling me about a conversation he had with a demanding customer. She wanted a discount, and my friend didn’t want to give one. The customer made a rude comment and walked away. End of story.
“End of story?” I said, “You didn’t say anything? Tell her she was rude, explain your pricing system, nothing?”
“No,” said my friend, then he uttered the four most popular words in the English language today: “I just don’t care.”
I’m hearing this a lot lately. So much so, in fact, that I’ve come up with a name for it: the I Just Don’t Care defense (IJDC).
When I was younger, “I don’t care” was the dominion of the older set, invoked to justify why they were wearing baggy sweats to the grocery store or running around town with their hair in curlers. I assumed it was their ungraceful way of disengaging with a world they felt was outpacing them.