There are 6.5 billion people in the world. They come in different colors. They come in different shapes. They have different personalities. They have different opinions about themselves and each other. While we agree on a lot of things, there are still thousands of ways to divide us.

One such way is people who pay attention, and people who don’t. That could have a lot of meanings, like who’s a good listener or who reads the newspaper. I like people who pay attention to the other things, those that nobody else notices or finds interesting.

I was walking in Washington, D.C., a few weeks ago with a friend. It was one of those December days where it’s sunny enough to look warm, but just chilly enough to remind you that it’s winter. There were plenty of other people around, businessmen on their lunch break and tourists heading to the White House. As we crossed a street, she pointed out a fire hydrant with a hat.

Undoubtedly, hundreds of people walked by that fire hydrant with a bright orange road cone on top, but how many of them really noticed it? How many of them found a second to laugh at a fire hydrant with a hat? Then there was the possibility that the cone wasn’t a hat, it was a cone that just wanted to make itself feel superior to another nearby cone. You see, the “hat” cone was plain, an orange cone that had been put through a lot and showed its age. The cone next to the fire hydrant was a bright orange, topped with two reflective stripes screamed of a higher status in the cone world. But on that day, it was the old, beaten cone that was best on its hydrant perch.

But maybe asking for people who notice the extra stuff in life is asking a bit much. After all, so many of them are struggling with the obvious.

Take the all-too-often occurrence at the New Balance store in Tysons Corner, Va. This is a store that sells nothing but New Balance products, has nothing but New Balance products and is adorned with an overwhelming number of items possessing the New Balance name. And no, for the thousandth time, they don’t have Reeboks, Asics, or Heelys.

An actual conversation:

Lady: “What brand is this?”
Me: “New Balance, it’s all New Balance.”
Lady: “Oh, is that some kind of new thing, like from Nike or something?”
Me: Bangs head on wall.

At least while I’m there I can notice that very few of our customers write left-handed. All-knowing Wikipedia says 8 to 15 percent of adults are lefties…though it also actually states that a long-term impairment to the right hand is a cause for some people to write with their left hand. I never would have thought of that. Ever.

One thing we lefties apparently have is atrocious handwriting. That’s not everyone—there are certainly some who manage to overcome the institutional barriers to proper penmanship—but many of us struggle to make things legible enough for anyone but ourselves to read. Sometimes even that is tough.

In English we write from left to write. For right-handers, there’s really not much in their way. They can pull the pen across the paper, seeing clearly what they are doing and have no physical impediments to their task.

For lefties, there’s a lot in the way. We have to push the pen, much harder than pulling it across the page. When we’re looking at what we’re doing, we have to sort of hook our hand above the letters as we go or our fingers will get in the way. Try writing sometime without being able to see what you’re doing. Then there’s the smudging. As we move across the page, our hand is moving through what we just wrote. Fountain pens? Forget it. Markers? Not pretty. And then there’s spiral notebooks. As we write on the left side of a page, our hand rests on the stabbing metal coils—not exactly a recipe for success.

But remember, everyone is born right handed. Only the gifted overcome it.

Laziness is all around us. It takes many forms, from people who spend most of the day on the couch to those who put things off to another day instead of putting out the effort right now.

Procrastination is fine, as long as it’s not a way of life and as long as those things eventually get done. Physical laziness, like complaining when an escalator is broken so you have to actually walk up the stairs, is not acceptable.

I answer several phone calls a day asking where our store is located in the mall. Apparently these people have never been to a mall and don’t understand the basic concept. Here it is: Many stores under one roof. It’s a shopping center, not a city.

I want to tell every one of those callers that it’s a mall, there are stores inside and all they have to do is find someplace to park and walk inside. There are thousands of parking spaces, all located within short walking distance of a door that will get you inside the “massive” complex that is the mall.

From there, you are inside, use those two things at the lower half of you body and move them in succession. This is called walking. You can walk at whatever pace you want, from a near crawl to a jog if you wish. Just move those two little guys.

Once this process is started, use the thing on the top of your head. It has many functions, the most useful here being the ability (maybe) to read, and also the swivel function that allows the user to move the range of vision from one place to another. Use these functions to read the store names as you pass. When you see “New Balance,” slow your walking pace (see above) and move the body in the direction of the sign. There is a nice wide door right underneath the sign that allows you entrance into the store.

When your business is complete, simply do the reverse of everything you did getting into the store in order to get home. Note: Please leave out calling us again at the end of this process in order to not waste more of my time.

If this process seems to arduous, then perhaps you should reevaluate your original mission. You do not need athletic shoes. I repeat, you do not need athletic shoes. Go to CVS and stock up on AAA batteries for your remote control. And no, I can’t tell you how to get to a CVS or give you directions to the batteries once you are in the store.

That all may sound harsh, but believe me, it happens all too often for any sort of patience to remain.

Take another example. “Hi is there a Skechers store in your mall.” Yes. “Can you give me their phone number?”

Yes that happened. Someone went through the effort of finding the number to one store in the mall, in order to ask the number of another store in the mall. Sounds like it should have been an easy one-step process of simply finding the number of the store you actually wanted in the first place. Maybe not.

At roughly 7 p.m. Saturday two women came into the store with no shopping bags. One tried on several pairs of shoes. She said she was so tired she couldn’t tie them herself. I asked if they had been shopping all day. No, they just got there. They hadn’t done anything really all day, “Actually I don’t really know why I’m tired, haha.” Don’t worry, I’ve only been on my feet for seven hours–with 3 to go–I’ll take care of the incredibly taxing task of tying your shoes.

On second thought, let me go find a three-year-old kid to follow you home just in case you need them tied again.