Of course the important takeaway is that they could have lowered the beeps the WHOLE TIME.

[raisedbymoogles]

So I caught a clip of John Oliver talking to Seth Meyers about the queen running down the bloody curtain and joining the Choir Invisible, etc, and in it he talks about a supermarket chain making the beeps of the registers quieter out of respect for the dead lady and how ridiculous that was, and I thought, "No disrespect, but you have clearly never worked retail."

See, here's the thing. I've worked as a retail drone for a long-ass time, and the thing I truly feared, more than getting fired, more than socializing with strangers, was the wrath of old ladies. Old men, they'll tell you off if they feel slighted, but then they'll walk away satisfied they've put you in your place; old women, feeling slighted, won't stop until they've destroyed you. The reasons for this are complex. also this is just my own experience and I may well be talking completely out of my ass

Now elderly ladies who are English, they've lived their lives in Lizzie's shadow, maybe even grew up and grew old alongside her or near-enough. And they've also lived through shit like austerity and Thatcher and all the other bullshit in this country's recent history (insert your own Boris Johnson joke here). Seeing someone who looked like them in a position of ultimate wealth and power, when maybe you don't have a lot of power or feel valued in your own life... well, it would be a tempting fantasy to identify with that, wouldn't it? To make the image of Queen Elizabeth II, only the second reigning queen in your country's history, beautiful and beloved and dripping with stolen diamonds, a part of your self-image as well? again, i may well be talking completely out of my ass

So in the mental palaces many of the country's older women, perhaps subconsciously, Lizzie became a load-bearing queen. And now she's dead.

When a load-bearing part of your mental palace crumbles, you're not at your best. Your fuse gets a bit shorter, your pet peeves a bit more irrational. But you still have to go do your shopping, so you go to the store and there's all the other shoppers and cashiers just going about their day like nothing's changed. And the beeps are too beepy and somebody smiles at you hOW DARE GET ME YOUR MANAGER-

It's perfect conditions for an explosion of Karen, is what I'm saying.