So I get off work at 11:00 again this morning, we are on four, four hour days now, yes that is sixteen hour weeks, and the only reason Bill and I are getting that many hours is I had to lay off Karl last week after I just spent six years training him. Try to pay your mortgage, utilities, college tuitions, insurance, car payment and feed your family on that. Whatever, anyway, I head over to the bank to make a deposit and ask the nice girl at the drive up window if I could please have a handful of deposit slips for checking. I like to fill them out before I get to the bank so I'm not sitting in line wasting your time behind me while I fiddlefuck around in an awkward pose trying to write on my lap with a cheap ballpoint. She sends me back one. One slip. Okay, never mind. I'll try again next Wednesday. I go to leave and at the pullout where the six drive up lanes merge into one, some nitwit decides they just have to get out of there before me, even though I am clearly ahead and have the right of way, so she speeds up, nearly crashing into my truck while I slam on the brakes in an attempt to let her have her way, while she blares her horn and throws up her arms looking at me with complete disgust, like I'm the doofus in this particular situation. Whatever, go ahead.
more of my day thus far...
Done with my banking fun I head over to the CVS to pick up a prescription. I wait in line. The gentleman in front of me is a roughly my age, wearing a cheap suit and a ten dollar haircut, with really nice looking clean soft hands. When it is his turn the lady checking him out is polite, finds his prescription, asks him if he has his Extra Care Card, does he have any questions about the medications, any questions for the pharmacist, would he like an extra copy of his receipt, bla bla bla. I just got off work. I work inside and outside. It's cold out. I wear jeans and two layers of shirts with a wool hat (a pretty spiffy wool hat of you ask me) I have a scruffy biker goatee that keeps my face warm, and my hands don't look like I do dishes with palmolive.
My interaction with Mrs. cashier went something like: Name? I tell her and she goes rooting through the appropriate alphabetically sorted bin. She asks if there is another name I go by and I assure her no, thats it. She lets out a big sigh and keeps digging, finding it "way in the back" which she loudly exclaims upon finding it. She then comes over, scans the tags and stares at me. I offer her both my debit card and my Extra Care Card at which point she sighs again because now she has to scan everything again because she never asked me for my super elite Extra Fucking Care Card again and jesus her job must suck waiting on poor fucking slobs like me day after day. Listen up assmunch. I don't expect you to try and climb over the counter to give me a hummer like the polyester suit guy with the clean fingernails, I just want the same goddamn treatment you give everyone else. Do I have a question for the pharmacist? Do I need an extra receipt for insurance? At the very least could you not act like your waiting on me has given you a sudden attack of hemorrhoids?
Just so you know Mrs. cashier Hag, I most likely make more money in my miserable sixteen hours than you do all week you judgmental skank. Whatever.
I leave the CVS and start for home, only about three miles and I am home free. My dogs, my pooties, my family. Comfort.
About halfway there I have to cross the main highway, both the east and westbound traffic can either go straight, turn north or turn south at this intersection. I approach the intersection with my left turn signal blazing away a good two blocks ahead of time indicating I am turning south. The lady in the nice Lexus SUV in oncoming traffic also has her blinker on indicating she is turning north. Imagine my surprise when at the middle of the intersection I notice two things, first she is yacking away on the phone, and second she isn't turning but instead coming straight through, and about to crash my truck for the second time in less than a half hour.
I slam on my breaks, she slams on hers. I look in my mirror and see yet another lady babbling on the phone behind me, about to crash into my truck. She stops in time, both of them start blaring their horns, bitching up a storm at me through the windshield, waving their arms, like I'm a fucking moron.
Now I have to tell you, I am a patient man. I am slow to anger. I lived through eight years of Bush. I watched my meager pension funds lose half their value in six months. Funds I had counted on to retire from the building trades after thirty years of this shit. Thirty years of ass breaking hard work. Bad knees, bad ankles, ruined hearing, bad back, countless broken fingers, toes, stitches, ribs. Whatever, I can deal with it.
Do me a favor if you go out today, could you at the very least pay attention to what you are doing?
Do you really need to be on the phone eighteen hours a day?
People are unconscious today, they don't see others around them. They live in isolated pockets of familiarity.
I get it. People feel safer that way. You go from your to your car, safe behind the garage door, to your daily routines of work, shopping and errands, back to the safety of the garage and home, interacting with as few strangers as possible along the way. No problem, but please, would you stop trying to fucking kill me while you flit about in your dazed existence?
Thanks.