The Big Apple is now the Big Blunt.
Not just because\u2002decriminalized marijuana led to proliferating mayhem in the five boroughs.
Not just because\u2002stinky smoke hangs everywhere, seeping into subway cars and even Broadway theaters \u2014 the acrid odor I detected in the crowded men\u2019s room of the Majestic Theatre a few weeks ago was not from \u201cThe Phantom of the Opera\u201d smoke machine.
It\u2019s also because of a forbidden-to-utter truth, in an age where raising the minimum wage ever higher has become mantra \u2014 namely, a license to get high has turned service employees into zombies.
I\u2019ve lived in the city nearly all my life.
I never had to repeat my highly complex Starbucks order \u2014 a \u201ctall\u201d coffee \u2014 three times to get a response from the bummed-out barista, the way I do now.
Bob Dylan\u2019s lyric, \u201cEverybody must get stoned,\u201d is now apparently in the employees\u2019 handbook at most every place requiring customer interaction.
My friend Shelley Clark, a restaurant consultant, observed, \u201cToo often, any question or request is met with a vacant look and a very much by-rote \u2018no problem.\u2019\u201d
That\u2019s actually nice compared to the hostile glares I get for interrupting stay-out-of-my-space reveries.
It\u2019s time to lower the minimum wage.
Why not, when many workers in stores, restaurants, dry cleaners \u2014 you name it \u2014 have turned hopelessly stunad, as the Italian people say.
The word means dumb, but sounds eerily similar to so many service employees\u2019 doped-up conditions.
They\u2019re stoned up the wazoo, hollow-eyed, disengaged from their tasks, their breath reeking of weed.
Did GrubHub bring you General Tso\u2019s chicken when you ordered chicken burritos?
Blame the delivery guys\u2019 favorite hangouts \u2014 e.g., the \u201cSmoke & Draft\u201d shop across from my building on First Avenue at East 75th Street, where a sidewalk knife fight recently sent two of them to the hospital.
I gave a guy at Pret a Manger a $20 bill for an $8 cup of soup. I asked for a bag.
He took the $20 and promptly forgot the soup, my change, the bag \u2014 and me. He wandered off, inexplicably waving my Andrew Jackson like a flag, until I appealed to his colleagues.
I haven\u2019t seen so much pot-induced lethargy since my Vietnam-era college days, when so many fellow students were high that their panicked weed-flushing during a rumored police raid overwhelmed the campus pipes.
Now, our whole pot-pickled city is that campus.
At Upper East Side gourmet food emporium Agata and Valentina, one cashier was \u201cso out of it, staring into space while people waited in line,\u201d a bank executive who\u2019s a regular customer there told me.
\u201cShe forgot to give me my change. She closed the register. I had to wait for someone to come with the dreaded key. After ten minutes for a 30-second transaction, she didn\u2019t even apologize.\u201d
Responding to a tweet I posted about discombobulated workers, a follower wrote to say that \u201cThe woman running the service desk\u201d at a major Sunset Park auto dealer \u201cwas clearly high \u2026 had no idea what was going on. Lost my car twice during routine service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n