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Feel-good moment at the local supermarket yesterday –
I was stuck behind some guy arguing with the checkout girl over the price of a six-pack of beer. The guy was on a mission – goddam it, the sign said the beer cost six dollars and three cents, and he wasn’t about to pay a penny more!
The customer is always right, right? But the checkout girl wasn’t authorized to give him his discount when the point-of-sales system insisted the price was something else.
The guy began to rant and rave.
The checkout girl kept trying to get various assistant managerial types to come over, but they all took one look at the guy – you could actually see the thought balloon forming over their heads: They don’t pay me enough to deal with jerks like that – and ignored her.
This went on for 10 minutes.
Guy was in his second rendition of, “This is how corporations like this make their real money, isn’t it? On the backs of the working poor!” when I finally said, “What’s the difference between what they’re charging you and what you think you should be paying?”
“Three dollars,” said the checkout girl.
“Fine,” I said, whipping out my wallet. “I’ll pay the difference,” I told the guy. “I’ve got too many groceries to load all of them back in my cart and find another checkout while you rally for social justice.”
“I just want to get home and bake my cookies,” said the woman in back of me. “I’ll throw in a dollar.”
“I’ll pony up a buck,” said the burly man in back of her.
And so it went all down the extremely (at this point) long line. Cash contributions were passed on down.
“Here!” I said, shoving the cash at the checkout girl. “Just ring him up.”
“I will not accept your money!” the guy thundered. “This is a matter of principle! I am doing you all a favor to stand my ground!”
“This is a Christmas gift!” I said. “It has nothing to do with principle! Just a tiny ray of sunshine in a dark world, you know? A Christmas miracle! If there were more shoppers like us, Isis would disband, Ebola would disappear, and Cuba would have been recognized 20 years ago when the Cold War ended!”
“You’re all sheep!” the guy screeched. He was very agitated at this point.
And all of us shoppers on line behind him spontaneously broke out into a rendition of You Better Not Pout, You Better Not Cry.
This finally got the attention of the Lord High Manager who came scurrying over to get the guy off the line.
We all got our money back.
We ended up waiting in that line for 20 minutes.
“You should seriously consider firing all those assistant managers,” muttered the woman who wanted to get home to bake cookies. She was seriously pissed.
###
In other news – I had another extremely long narrative dream last night, this one about how people are not reincarnated in any chronological order. Though most of the time, you’re reincarnated in the future, sometimes your subsequent life is deep in the earth-historical past, and sometimes it’s in the same present tense so that the same spiritual being will occupy two nearly synchronous lifetimes in the same continuum. The word for this is redivism and it’s the source of all love at first sight and all those other feelings of strong connection that defy circumstances.
In this dream, I’d happened upon someone in my time span who was close to me on the reincarnative cycle. Guy. Blue collar worker. Big belly. Not my type at all. But we met, immediately went to bed, and had the most amazing sex – I was straddling him on top; every time he thrust, he hit exactly the right spot and I could actually choreograph my orgasms – Not yet, not yet, now!!!!!!!
Pretty hot.
Also, I’ve been watching this documentary called The Story of Film: An Odyssey, narrated by this guy with a strange, deadpan Irish accent. Fifteen single-hour segments that trace the history of movies from Edison’s tiny New Jersey workshop to the multi-million set of Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Well worth seeing – kind of like a survey film studies class. Except that the director has a definite bias in favor of the directors and other cinema types who agreed to let him interview them. Who were mostly second-rate directors and cinema types! I’m sorry, but in no universe can the films of Stanley Donen be called “groundbreaking,” even if Donen consented to sit down and be interviewed.
But the series is particularly strong on cinema outside the Hollywood hegemony, particularly African and Indian cinema, so I now have a ton of new movie titles to check out.
I was stuck behind some guy arguing with the checkout girl over the price of a six-pack of beer. The guy was on a mission – goddam it, the sign said the beer cost six dollars and three cents, and he wasn’t about to pay a penny more!
The customer is always right, right? But the checkout girl wasn’t authorized to give him his discount when the point-of-sales system insisted the price was something else.
The guy began to rant and rave.
The checkout girl kept trying to get various assistant managerial types to come over, but they all took one look at the guy – you could actually see the thought balloon forming over their heads: They don’t pay me enough to deal with jerks like that – and ignored her.
This went on for 10 minutes.
Guy was in his second rendition of, “This is how corporations like this make their real money, isn’t it? On the backs of the working poor!” when I finally said, “What’s the difference between what they’re charging you and what you think you should be paying?”
“Three dollars,” said the checkout girl.
“Fine,” I said, whipping out my wallet. “I’ll pay the difference,” I told the guy. “I’ve got too many groceries to load all of them back in my cart and find another checkout while you rally for social justice.”
“I just want to get home and bake my cookies,” said the woman in back of me. “I’ll throw in a dollar.”
“I’ll pony up a buck,” said the burly man in back of her.
And so it went all down the extremely (at this point) long line. Cash contributions were passed on down.
“Here!” I said, shoving the cash at the checkout girl. “Just ring him up.”
“I will not accept your money!” the guy thundered. “This is a matter of principle! I am doing you all a favor to stand my ground!”
“This is a Christmas gift!” I said. “It has nothing to do with principle! Just a tiny ray of sunshine in a dark world, you know? A Christmas miracle! If there were more shoppers like us, Isis would disband, Ebola would disappear, and Cuba would have been recognized 20 years ago when the Cold War ended!”
“You’re all sheep!” the guy screeched. He was very agitated at this point.
And all of us shoppers on line behind him spontaneously broke out into a rendition of You Better Not Pout, You Better Not Cry.
This finally got the attention of the Lord High Manager who came scurrying over to get the guy off the line.
We all got our money back.
We ended up waiting in that line for 20 minutes.
“You should seriously consider firing all those assistant managers,” muttered the woman who wanted to get home to bake cookies. She was seriously pissed.
###
In other news – I had another extremely long narrative dream last night, this one about how people are not reincarnated in any chronological order. Though most of the time, you’re reincarnated in the future, sometimes your subsequent life is deep in the earth-historical past, and sometimes it’s in the same present tense so that the same spiritual being will occupy two nearly synchronous lifetimes in the same continuum. The word for this is redivism and it’s the source of all love at first sight and all those other feelings of strong connection that defy circumstances.
In this dream, I’d happened upon someone in my time span who was close to me on the reincarnative cycle. Guy. Blue collar worker. Big belly. Not my type at all. But we met, immediately went to bed, and had the most amazing sex – I was straddling him on top; every time he thrust, he hit exactly the right spot and I could actually choreograph my orgasms – Not yet, not yet, now!!!!!!!
Pretty hot.
Also, I’ve been watching this documentary called The Story of Film: An Odyssey, narrated by this guy with a strange, deadpan Irish accent. Fifteen single-hour segments that trace the history of movies from Edison’s tiny New Jersey workshop to the multi-million set of Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Well worth seeing – kind of like a survey film studies class. Except that the director has a definite bias in favor of the directors and other cinema types who agreed to let him interview them. Who were mostly second-rate directors and cinema types! I’m sorry, but in no universe can the films of Stanley Donen be called “groundbreaking,” even if Donen consented to sit down and be interviewed.
But the series is particularly strong on cinema outside the Hollywood hegemony, particularly African and Indian cinema, so I now have a ton of new movie titles to check out.
