What’s wrong with people?
So I’m at the coffee shop standing around waiting for my drink to be made. The guy who is supposed to make my drink is standing around chatting with this plain-looking girl. He says, “I know! It’s all because I am such a blond!” Actually, he was totally not blond. He had hair like Craig Kilborn. (Eww, how do I know that name? Is that a real person?) Perhaps he was so blond, he wasn’t even blond.
After he started fooling around with the coffee machine — but before anyone had fetched my cheesecake — he noticed me rubbing my forehead. “You got a headache?” he yelled over the din of the grinder. I muttered something about the dry air. Then he took out his hand, and began rubbing the skin between the thumb and forefinger. (No, he did not have webbed hands.) “It’s a pressure point! Rub it! It’s great for your upper and lower intestine and headaches!” Sort of the pull-my-finger approach to health care.
This wasn’t the only retail indignity I had to put up with last weekend. While buying the new Pet Shop Boys DVD, PopArt — highly recommended! Canadian import! — the salesgirl at Sam Goody started telling a highly personal story about some other salesgirl. “You should let her go,” I joked. “Well,” she said conspiratorially, “I can’t. She’s my roommate. And she’s just making some baaaaad decisions. Boy. Bad.” OK. Also notable: Miss Priss at Brooks Brothers, who extremely aggressively continued laying out ties (which I did not want!), suddenly dropped her faux-British attitude and let out, “I’m gonna turn off that damn jazz tape. I can’t take it!” Where is the professionalism with these people? No wonder we have lost three million jobs!
Incidentally, the people at Nordstrom always fawn over me and then they say, “Are you in school, maybe? You look so young…” The bitch at Brooks Brothers took a look at my handwriting and said, “Doctor?”