Thursday, January 8, 2004

So I’m standing at Guest Services, gentle reader, innocently filling out compliment cards when a very suburban woman storms up to the counter. She flashes the cashier an angry look.

“Young man, you are a liar,” she says, letting the accusation linger as if it were a Thursday evening theater in the round.

And with that scathing remark she launches into a five-minute screed on panini makers, receipts, return policies, and evil cashiers who jealously guard the TRUE availability of panini makers.

“My son gave me this for Christmas, and I trust my son more than you,” she concludes. “You’ve wasted twenty minutes of my time!”

While only the good Lord and Emeril know what this woman would’ve done with twenty minutes, I’d like to theorize a bit. She would’ve spent those twenty minutes making twenty-five panini to stuff down her grotesquely pasty throat, and you know I’m right.

In the immortal words of co-worker Hooper, “Go back to Schaumburg, bitch!” (Apologies to any gentle readers who hail from Schaumburg, unless you’re a tactless and over-the-hill woman who’s packing away panini after pissing and moaning for twenty-five wasted minutes at a frickin’ Target.)

A Secondhand hats off to beleaguered retail workers the world over–even Thursdays can seem like Mondays sometimes, no?