In the great scheme of things, there are a lot of everyday examples of self-absorption that are more important - letting your dog crap on your neighbor's lawn and not cleaning it up, maybe, or jabbering on your cell during a movie. But this is the one that happened to me most recently...
I'm in the Randall's Grocery by the house today and headed for the checkout line. I've got nothing but a bunch of radishes and a pound of linguine, so I head for the express lane. This skinny blonde swoops in just in front of me, a classic example of her type: she's got straw -colored and -dry yellow hair that Miss Clairol wouldn't admit to, skin the texture of alligator Tony Lamas, and she's trailing a potent combination of cheap perfume and stale cigarette smoke. A cursory glance at her buggy convinces me that she flunked arithmetic in the second grade - though the sign clearly says "Ten Items or Less," she has to be close to thirty (age-wise, she hadn't seen it in years...).
Me, I don't much care - I ain't gonna harangue her for thinking that she's so special that her shit don't stink. Saying something would either mean that she'd fix me with a fuck-you stare and then ignore me, or she'd look up and lie about not knowing that this was the express lane. I know damn well no Randall's employee would tell her to get her butt over to a regular lane, so she gets a free pass. Hell, she probably deserves one - I get the impression that she isn't getting much else out of life.
But while I'm waiting for her to check out - she makes matters worse by sending the checker over to the cigarette rack for a carton of Marlboro Light 100s - I begin to think about it. You know, I'd just love it if a store opened that would punish assholes who "de-express" the express lanes. How about this scenario?
Every person who enters the express lane has to press a button to open a gate, and pressing the button is acknowledgment of the ten-item lane rules. Those are:
- The cash register can only ring up ten or fewer items, and then you have to pay.
- The current customer has to leave the lane before the cash register can start a new order, so if you have eleven items, you gotta go to the end of the line. You can't hand the eleventh one to your buddy who came through with you, either.
- Hey, it's either that or a speaker above the register starts squawking "Shame on you!" when the checker scans item number eleven. Self-absorbed people need to be reminded of their actual lack of importance once in a while...
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