This is the guy on the elevator or in line at the supermarket/fast food restaurant who talks way too loud about personal matters. These conversations include such things as talking to his doctor about his herpes and accompanying anal leakage (remember that one small subconscious step you took away from the person you believed was mentally ill? When you hear the above conversation on the elevator with this guy, that 8 inch move away becomes Simon Says, “Take 3 giant steps backwards and try to get so close to the wall that you begin to share molecules”). This is also the character that has intimate conversations with his significant other who he self-reportedly is “…going to give it to.” If there is any question as to what “it” is, this less-than-subtle gentleman’s (term used extremely loosely) series of hip gyrations and pelvic thrusts while on the phone provide the audience all the information they need to determine the identity of the mystery noun that “it” refers to. As I got on the elevator yesterday, and pressed my desired floor, I heard the only other gentlemen on the elevator say, “Well, you better get your ass home right away today after school!“ I quickly figured out this was not a typical mentally ill person’s statement, and turned to notice an earpiece plastered to this guy’s melon. I could only hear muffled sounds coming from the other end, and then the guy exploded in a tirade, “I don’t give a shit what your stupid mother said. You are not going to that game. Your ass is grounded from that stunt you pulled last week.” Then there was more mumbling/crying/whining from the other end. And then again another exemplar of fine American family interaction, “You stupid dumbass. You’re just like your mother.” It was like watching an off-Broadway one-man show where the creative artist re-enacts his favorite episode of the Jerry Springer Show or Divorce Court, but you only get to hear one side of the story. Well, sir, this could not get any more awkward for me. Why don't you dial up your priest next and do your phone confessional about your penchant for for latex body suits and being told what a bad boy you are. After the man hung up on what I can only assume was now an emotionally obliterated teenager, I wanted to make at least a feeble attempt at diffusing the tension of the situation by saying something unoriginal like “Kids these days“, but realized this was not only something stupid you would have heard 30 or 40 years ago, but it would also likely incite this guy resulting in his rage turning on me. Or maybe I could have taken on the role of sick and twisted family therapist who motivates parents to destroy the fragile hearts of their children in the most efficient way possible. "Nice work today, sir. Nice work. I really liked how you used curse words to break her down, and then drug in her mother for good measure although she is completly irrelevant to your conversation. Now next time, what I'd like to see, is you ramp it up a bit on the explatives and drop a couple of F bombs. Then, at the moment you sense her weakening and can tell that the first tear is forming in the corner of her eye, you go in for the emotional jugular with a move I like to call the Therapy Inducer. You make the child feel overwhelming guilt about their very existence by saying that you rue the day they ever crawled forth from their mother's rotten uterus. Now, I want you to practice that in the mirror seven times until you really believe it, and I will see you again next week." Instead I decided to simply wait it out for my floor, and quickly made my way away from the tiny metal box of family hatred.
This is the individual who should be providing you with some type of service, but instead continues to talk on their headset despite your obvious presence. And in addition to rudely continuing their conversation, they consider your need for service to be as annoying and unmoving as a serf begging their liege for a scrap of food for their starving family. Today on my way home from visiting my mother (Note to self: pat yourself on the back for being such a good son), I stopped at a convenience store near my house. After picking out a large bag of fried chips and a king size candy bar, snacks sure to clog arteries, expand stomachs and cause all sort of serious maladies, I went to the counter and plopped down my “dinner” before the unsmiling male cashier. I offered up a stereotypically heterosexual male-to-male greeting of , “Hey, how’s it going?” Smiles, as I had sarcastically dubbed him in my mind, did not even give me a token verbal response such as, “Good, how ya’ doin’?” that normal social decorum would dictate, but instead responded with a nod that was completely void of any measurable level of effort and was of such insignificant bodily movement I wondered if it had been a tic in his head and neck area rather than an actual gesture of acknowledgement to what I had said. The cashier then rang up and bagged my purchases with the dexterity and speed of a strung out heroin addict. “I am off at 7:00”, he then said into the air of the convenience store, where his words mingled with the smell of body odor and old rotisserie hot dogs. It is at that time I realized Mr. Social Skills had a glowing piece of plastic on his ear. Despite being finished with the daunting task of bagging my whopping two products, the cashier clamored on with his unseen conversing partner, “Probably doing nothing tonight. Really want to go home and chill.” I thought to myself, “If you mean by doing nothing tonight, you mean not providing good customer service, you are spot on.” I barely resisted the urge to smart off and ask if he was busy next weekend, and maybe we could get together, and he could show me his whole repertoire of discourteous customer service techniques. As I stood there with an expectant look on my face awaiting my total, Captain Charisma then really turned up the a-hole meter by simply pointing to the screen with my total on it rather than vocalizing to me the actual cost of my over-priced items. I then decided to at least give him a little malicious customer behavior as payback for his non-existent customer service just so he would understood I was not pleased. I crumpled up my few bills and some change and laid it on the counter so he would have to put in some effort straightening it out and picking it up. Jerk face then had the nerve to shoot daggers at me like I am the worst customer ever. I should have reached over the counter and planted a perectly targeted 83 MPH backhand across his “minimum wage earning, old hot dog peddling, porno magazine viewing while he is customer-free” face. As he was making change, he told the person on the other end, “Girl, I do want to see you. I am just tired.” I felt like ripping the thing out of the guys ear, and telling the girl on the other end that she is better off without this guy if he treats his significant others with the disrespect he shows to customers. But of course, I did none of that, but instead went home and stuffed my face.
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