Sunday, March 05, 2006

Me Láve

I went to the hardware store yesterday. Didn’t need much, just a couple of small items for household chores.

It was going to be one of those quick trips, in the store, grab the items and back out again.

I after I grabbed up my stuff, I did what I always do, I surveyed the check-out lines for the one that is shortest.

Now, we all know the shortest is the slowest. I’ve learned to not get sucked into that mistake! So, I have developed an uncanny ability to survey the lines and pick the shortest AND fastest.

Now, the uncanny ability part applies to the part in which I know the shortest isn’t the fastest, so I make a quick assessment as to which line has both qualities - and uncannily I’m almost always wrong.

A check out line can be speeding right along and the moment I get into the line, it bogs down. It really is uncanny.

So back to yesterday.

I did my thing about picking lines and low and behold there was a line with one person in it. He had a lot of items but they were in the process of being rung up. I quickly got behind the guy.

And waited.

Being me, I wasn’t paying that much attention to the guy in front of me or the people lining up behind me. I was reading the covers of the home decorating magazines and looking over all the impulse purchase items lined up by the register for people waiting to check out.

Do I need a tube of the strongest glue in the world? What about a handy-dandy pocket size measuring tape. Like I said, it was a hardware store.

At some point I started realizing that while standing behind this one person in the ’shortest-fastest’ line, I’d had time to read all the covers of all the magazines and had committed to memory all the items for sale to the suckers forced to wait to buy the stores wares.

So I started paying attention to the guy at the register and noticed the line behind me had gotten quite long.

The guy in front of me had written a check for his stuff and the cashier was all a-flutter. They were waiting.

Finally a supervisor came over. She and the cashier were all a-flutter.

The manager came over and things started happening.

The guy in front of me had written a check for his purchases and was using a Mexican drivers license as ID.

That is the truth.

He was trying to use Mexican drivers license as an ID to purchase a couple hundred dollars worth of items from this hardware store.

I haven’t been able to pass off a check if I’m buying something in a different state - much less a different country!

I couldn’t believe this was even being discussed!

The manager turned down the ID (duh!) and the guy pulled out a wad of cash and paid for his purchase. He was out of the store before you could blink your eye.

Then there was a little pow-wow between the manager, supervisor and cashier. The cashier looked close to tears when I finally put my piddlin’ few items on the counter.

She said something about having a bad day and appologized for my having to wait. She talked for a minute and I realized she was not exactly a rocket scientist so I said something nice to her and just bought my stuff and left.

Then, to top it off with a flourish, as I was driving home, I got behind a very dirty SUV with ’wash me’ written in the dirt in Spanish. Me láve.

I’m am not kidding.

And that, my friend, is the America we live in today.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Violence Worker writes about the Tyranny of the Minority. A Denver worker loses his job for using 'I'm an English Speaking American' on the advertising for his on-the-side lawn business.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Posted by Beth at 3/05/2006 06:34:00 PM
Subscribe to: Comment Feed (RSS)