People who ask for a cup for water at fast food restaurants and then fill it up with anything but water are the worst type of people in the world.

Yes, offense intended.

In fact, restaurants should make cups with sensors that detect when Sprite or some other water-looking liquid fills the cup. Every time it happens red alarms should go off and a loud, angry voice from the sky should shout, “You are a terrible person.”

These people aren’t horrendous human beings because they’re cheating a restaurant by a couple dollars. That’s certainly stealing and it’s bad and it’s what we all learned not to do when we were five, but it doesn’t justify me calling them abhorrent people.

No, these people are disgusting because they think they’re better than everyone else and don’t have to follow rules.

Like it or not, rules are here for a reason and without them we would surely descend into anarchy. That sounds great in some ways because we wouldn’t have to make up absent days in gym, but history has proven that anarchy is bad.

When people don’t follow rules, it’s sometimes a result of entitlement. They think they deserve more than everyone else. A classic example is when a sign on a road indicates that a lane is closed, but one or two people drive down it anyway. They’re thinking, “I know you’re all probably in a hurry, but wherever I’m going is way more important. I deserve to drive in this lane for two miles, then cut everyone off because I’m the most important person in the world.”

And this entitled, rule-breaking attitude becomes more dangerous when peer pressure is involved: when your friend who likes to steal Sprite makes fun of you because you never do.

Didn’t we all learn better than this when we were packed into the gym in first grade during those Just Say No presentations? Was I the only one who listened? Stealing soda may be a bit less severe than using drugs, but either way we were taught to act like decent human beings from a young age.

When we all break the rules together, we all move toward anarchy together. Stealing Sprite is the first step.