March 12, 2012
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The Daily News
1 I found over the weekend a brief irritation with rudeness. Because the weather was nice, I thought it might be an awesome time to get a jump on the yard.
2 Helene was driving. We were going to go grocery shopping and found ourselves over by Mi Pueblo on Capitol. I was grabbing some cash from the Wells Fargo, and thought perhaps we should stop in at Mi Pueblo and grab some food before hitting a supermarket.
3 Rational idea on an early Saturday morning. If you shop after eating, they say, you spend less money. Logic dictates. We tried easing up to the front of the store when we hit an aisle in the parking lot that suddenly stopped dead. We assumed the guy was waiting for a parking spot.
4 We waited.
5 And waited.
6 After about two minutes of waiting, I looked up to see that there was nobody in the car the guy was waiting for. In fact, there was no evidence of waiting. No taillight cues, no sense of movement, nothing. The guy in front of us was polite, and not honking, but the guy in front of him simply wasn't moving.
7 We finally were forced to back out, and skip the entire thing.
8 We shot across the street to the new Grocery Outlet, where we found easy parking. The second I got in, a rather plumpish lady almost knocked me down. Another guy gave me a surly look, and then decided to follow me down every aisle and get irritated with me. It was almost like the guy wanted to get irritated with me.
9 I wrote a lot of it off as people on a Saturday who hated Monday-thru-Friday, which is a whole lot of people.
10 Yesterday I was the person driving. We were at in a right-turn lane, and the light turned red. The lady in front of us just sat there, even though it would have been swell of her to turn right. No traffic. She just sat there. I gave a little nudge on the horn after about a minute. She still didn't move. When the light turned green, she still didn't move. She eventually drove about three feet into the lane and stopped.
11 I moved around her, trying not to turn into Mr. Wheeler, the character who changes from being the nice, polite Mr. Walker in the classic Goofy cartoon Motor Mania. I mentioned Motor Mania last week, but lived it this weekend.
12 I must admit that when I moved to her left, I thumped the throttle just a little; not so much out of any form of rage, but more from a sense of liberation from stupidity.
13 It's a thin line.
14 Did you ever do that, insist it wasn't a mild form of road rage, and still look in the rear view to see how they were doing?
15 I did.
16 I saw that she was still moving at a snail's pace, finally turning down an adjacent street to pull over and eventually park.
17 I moved on. At one point, I had to stop at some store or other for envelopes. This attractive gal who was about six-foot seventeen was two people in front of me. I stood in line for a while, and the line refused to move. I looked ahead and she had about ten thousand coupons, and was quietly arguing in chess-like silence with the clerk about which coupons were good and which were bad.
18 Directly in front of me was a classic angry white dude who was irritated with the entire world. He had a Merc News. That was his purchase. A dollar-eight. He was seething. He was mouthing the "F" word and muttering all sorts of stuff. His face turned red, and for a second I thought the guy was going to go over.
19 Fortunately, an alert clerk said, "I'll take whoever is next on four!" My eyes shot to check stand four. I then looked at the guy who was now focused on getting irritated with me, so I said, "You can go ahead, man." He walked over. I thought I'd stay right behind Coupon Girl, but when she looked back in her purse and pulled out another handful, I thought better of it. It looked like a game of intrigue. Rita Hayworth.
20 I'm glad I've lived a little, because when I was younger, I would have been Mr. Wheeler on each one of those deals. It was a banner weekend for that sort of thing.
21 We went into a busy restaurant on Saturday, and I ordered a burger and onion rings, which is a fairly unusual order for me. I have held back on calories for around two weeks, so it was time to have a little fun with a bacon/cheese, rings, and a chocolate shake, the kind where they scoop real ice cream and give you the leftovers in a metal shaker. I was starved, because the night before I had behaved and eaten a salad and a little soup for dinner.
22 The food arrived hot and steamy and I tried to be tame. When I'm starved, I don't want anyone watching me eat, because I worry that I might be going a bit to rapidly. I have always been a fast eater anyway, since I always want to get to my deadlines and stuff. Stems from the old theater days, when eating was just fuel, and had to be done quickly so we could get back to building sets under heroic deadlines.
23 So the food came, and I dove in. The burger was huge, complete with onions, lettuce, cheese, and all the rest. The onion rings were a bit crispy, but I don't mind that. I'd rather they be crispy than greasy, so I thought it all perfect. They were gigantic. The shake had whipped cream and a cherry on top. All was bliss.
24 Until a manager came over. "I don't like the looks of those rings," she said, "so I've ordered you some more. They'll be up in a few minutes."
25 I slud down in my seat and said, "Uh...it's okay, it's fine."
26 "I already ordered them. I don't like the looks of those things. You can eat 'em if you want, but I got you some more just in case." A little kid sitting next to me looked up amazed.
27 "No, I'm...really I'm fine." I thought that while waiting for a second order, my burger was going to get cold. I also felt a little weird that the lady was watching me eat, and now both she AND the kid were watching me. I just wanted to eat my lunch in peace.
28 If she had said, "Are you sure?" and then left with a "Well, okay, just thought I'd offer; enjoy your food," it would have been much easier. By insisting, she brought the attention of free food to the kid. Earlier, another waiter came by with some wheat toast, told us the customer didn't want it, and offered it to us for free. We actually took it, figuring the price was right and most restaurants give free bread with meals anyway AND we felt starved. I didn't mind that. Fast drop-off. No focus. No sense of stalking.
30 But that, coupled with the sudden attention of a little kid watching people getting free food right and left sort of felt like the entire world was watching me eat my lunch.
31 On the way out, the guy in front of me at the checkout handed the restaurant a card, which evidently was good only in Philly. The clerk said, "I'll go call our main store to see if we can honor it!" And he took off. I just wanted to pay and leave. It was a much briefer delay than the mysterious tall femme fatale with the coupons, but it was another delay. The clerk never acknowledged me, nor did he announce an apology for a slight delay. He didn't say, "Excuse me folks, but we'll be right with you." Just took off.
The very lovely Rita.Hayworth, femme fatale classique.32 Fortunately, they brought in another clerk to move the line, which now had around four or five other people waiting.
33 On the way home, I saw tons of other people drifting into lanes, texting, and driving with their heads up their collective asses. It must have been Be-Rude-To-a Dude Day.
34 Moving on, Part the First: Bag One: Is anybody else feeling the frustration of forgetting to bring bags into stores? I'm still not quite used to it. Don't get me wrong; I'm all for it; it's just that I keep going into stores and finding myself forgetting, and then buying more bags. I have around six zillion re-usable bags already.
35 It's just that I again found myself in a store, was in bit of a hurry, and had around six small items I had forgotten to get at the other three stores (Seriously! Banner weekend for shopping!) and had enough items for the clerk to ask, "Would you like to buy a bag for fifty cents?" Nope. My own fault, I trust. I should have been environmental long ago.
36 Moving on, Part Two: Don't get me wrong. I don't shop incessantly for two straight days. In fact, I usually like to hit maybe one store on the way home from work to get things that I forgot, and once home, I usually don't wish to go out again.
37 I'm also quite tolerant of human nature. If a guy driving in front of me hesitates at a street corner, I figure he is probably looking for a street sign. If someone makes a mistake in a store, I'm usually pretty cool about it. Yesterday, for example, Starbuck's forgot my order. After watching a couple of people who were behind me get their things before me, I politely said, "Excuse me, but I think you guys might have forgotten my order." Within seconds, they made my Caramel Mach, the guy put whipped cream with lovely crisscross caramal on top, gave me a free drink coupon, and thanked me for my patience.
38 The mystery woman with the coupons certainly could have looked at the line and said, "I'm terribly sorry; I didn't expect this." Or that clerk should have said, "Folks, we'll open another line in a second." Neither did, and I still wasn't that impatient with it. After all, it was Rita Hayworth. I'm quite convinced something more adventurous was going on.
39 The guy in front of me, on the other hand, was turning beet red, cursing under his breath, and was ready to blast me if I ran over to check stand four.
40 So as previously stated, it was a banner weekend for shopping and watching.
41 I'm not sure what the line is on rudeness. I caught myself being somewhat rude when I turned into a mild form of Mr. Wheeler with the lady who just sat there even when the light turned green. I am also guilty of having thumped the accelerator just slightly, and then of peering into the rear view to have a peek at her stupidity.
42 But I think I remained reasonably polite through it all.
43 And I was rewarded with two pieces of toast, a full-sized order of some dandily devine onion rings, and a free Starbuck's.
44 I'm somewhat glad that I kept my Mr. Walker demeanor on while keeping Mr. Wheeler in check.
45 I went home feeling better about all of it.
46 That's about it. I guess this was a Jeckyll/Hyde tale incognito. One told by an idiot.
47 It's the way Rita Hayworth would have wanted it I trust.
48 Have a good one.
49 Peace.
~H~
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