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April 22, 2007
You owe me
If you were in Central Ohio today and if you had a pleasant experience as far as idiots not being around you goes … you have me to thank.
Today, for you my gentle reader, I used my special powers to ensure that each and every idiot in a four-county radius was in front of me in whatever line I was in. And I did it for you.
I'm not certain, but my reach may have extended as far as Florida as one of the idiots I was behind was a 30-ish woman with Florida tags on her car. That may be giving me too much credit. Maybe it was coincidence and, really, the only stupid thing she did was throw trash out her window. What makes a person think, "I've got this piece of trash in my car that I no longer want. Ah! I'll toss it out the window. I am that special. The rules of common courtesy do not apply to me."
My favorite idiot was the guy at one of the large home improvement stores. He was in the self-checkout line and reached the point in his self-checkout where he needed to do something with a handful of loose rubber O-rings.
I assume you know how self-checkout works. You take your items from your cart, scan them, and put them in your bag. Self-checkout is supposed to speed things up for people with a few items. The whole speeding-things-up part is defeated when a goofball shows up with a bunch of loose O-rings. How did he even get them? I thought everything in this big home improvement store was individually wrapped! I'll bet the guy was supposed to put the O-rings in a bag and write a number down on the outside of it.
There was a moment when I wanted to give the guy a round of applause. Somehow he brought up a screen on the terminal that showed a big bunch of (what I think) were O-rings. I had to withhold the applause as he couldn't decide which O-rings he'd purchased and the thought of paying two cents too much screwed with him enough that he had to seek assistance from the employee lording over the self-checkout area. And she was having enough trouble. One of the self-checkout terminals was out of order, though not marked as such so she had to keep telling people it was out of order. Another terminal had some sort of clusterfucky thing going on with it which I honestly think was a user-error of some sort.
This left one terminal that was serving people with any regularity. The woman behind me needed servicing in such a big way that she decided to cut line. I'm guessing she needed to get on the road as she had an SUV full of trash she needed to throw out the window one piece of a time on the way home.
I eventually gave up when a woman got in line behind me and started thinking out loud. It wasn't what she was thinking, just the way she was saying it that got to me. I knew if I had to listen to her too long I'd go nuts. So I returned my two items to their proper location and drove two minutes to the other massive home improvement store.
(Yes, yes, yes. I could have gone to a full-service line at the first place, but the lines were way too long for the piddly little purchase I was going to make.)
At the other massive home improvement store I was in and out in five minutes. I bought the same item I'd had in my hand at the first place. I was second in line at checkout. The store seemed to be primarily idiot free.
As you know my driving skills are second only to yours making the two of us Number One and Number Two in a auto. If you and I were to ever have lunch in a restaurant together I'm certain the waiter, sensing our positions in the World of Driving would affectionately call us Pee and Poo. South of the Equator I suspect we'd be Poo and Pee.
I don't know that I care much for that last paragraph, but it's staying. It sounded funnier (well, funny) as I was riding around on the bike today.
Anyway, on the way home from lunch (At the KFC … and to the idiot in front of me there let me say: It's a frikkin' KFC! Does the menu ever change? Order what you got last time. At the very least read the menu before you get in line. We were the only two people in the store! Would it have delayed you all that much had you said, "I really have no idea what I want, why don't you go ahead of me." I knew what I wanted. It was the same thing I got last time I was there … and the time before … and the time before …).
So, on the way home from KFC I was behind a guy that I knew was going to sit too long through the green left arrow. How did I know? Just before I thought it was about time for the light to change he thought it was time to turn around and face the person in the backseat. You and I, having been blessed with superior driving skills and having a sense of common courtesy as it applies to proper in-an-auto behavior, know that the time to look at the person in the backseat is never. But if you have to do it the proper time is within five seconds of you coming to a complete stop at the red light. The light is red — you know it is going to turn green, it always does — and the longer you sit at a red light the more likely it becomes that it is going to turn green in the next instant. It will turn green, without fail, as soon as you turn around to look at something in the backseat.
Obviously if you have a child in the backseat, or any other thing that could projectile puke without much warning, the rules regarding backseat-looking go out the window. Much like litter does if you are a Floridian.
Rats. There was another moment-of-idiocy that I encountered today.
I've lost it.
Posted by delmer at April 22, 2007 8:11 PM
Comments
So it was March 6, 2006 all over again, you have luck with KFC, it sounded familiar. It's like going to Taco Bell, you know it will take 3 times longer than necessary, it lunch time, there are two people working. What the hell? it's the same time as always! and there are two people scheduled for work at lunch hour??
Posted by: Mikeo at April 23, 2007 12:07 AM
