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| Cast bronze cell phone by Rick Oginz |
The man in front of me has a knit cap pulled down over his greying hair. His casual clothes, his full beard and a tan mark him as one of the early morning surfers I see in the water during my morning commute - or at least I assume that. He's got a package of blueberries and a tall plastic water bottle in front of him on the moving belt. He's holding his cell phone up to his ear and talking, loud.
"Well, babe, see the thing is you want to live in West Hollywood, but I don't...No, babe, it's just that you're into one thing and I'm not. You're not into what I'm into, so that's the way it goes.....well, I don't want to live in Florida, either...."
The cashier scans his items, and he swipes his card and inputs his numbers into the pad while he keeps talking. He never looks at her, not once.
"I'm not going to live my life doing something I'm not into....Well, if it's like that, you should just go ahead and file the divorce proceedings. No, I don't want to go into counseling - we did that last year and look what good it did....well, babe, I don't know what to tell you."
He grabs the handles of the plastic bag, and walks out of the store, still talking. "You do what you need to do...."
The cashier glances at his back, shrugs and then says hello to me and scans my groceries.
It's a peculiar thing. Someone just aired his intimate domestic quarrel with a half a dozen fellow human beings, all the while failing to acknowledge the existence of the person right in front of him.
"Thanks for sharing, huh?" I murmur to the cashier, and she smiles. "Thank you," she says. "Have a good day."
"You too," I say.
When I get out in the parking lot, I see him drive off in a Lexus SUV, phone still held to his ear, still talking.
6 comments:
With ya 100%, as someone who worked part time as a cashier it literally pissed me off when a customer would come in on the phone and not even say "boo" to me. Even worse was when I had to ask a question and they would say to the person on the other end "Sorry, I'm at the Chevron, hold on a sec", answer the question in one word then go right back to their conversation.
Rude and inconsiderate. And they do seem to think they are having a private conversation, even though everyone can hear.
Jerks.
Just when I was almost thinking of maybe finally getting one of them 'sell phones'!
~
One reason I had to find another career besides being a pharmacy technician was that I knew the following would get me in trouble one day.
When a customer was on the phone I would wave the next person in line around to the front. When the phone-talker looked shocked I would say, "Just let me know when you're off the phone and ready for me to help you." They would look dumbfounded and nonplussed, but the did get off the phone.
In my experience, men who call women "Babe" tend to be a little self important. I hate it when people refuse to get off their phone and behave like civilized human beings.
Pat, the cashier at our small Post Office, asks all kinds of annoying questions if someone comes up to her while on the phone. She asks them real slow and waits with a smile until they answer her. If the person continues to talk on the phone she acts as if they are talking to her! She'll say excuse me or I don't know or Yes, you should get a divorce. It's LOL funny
I know that is one of the downs to having too easy access to phones. Once I while sitting in my car at Target I watched a woman walking to her SUV Caddy with two little ones walking close behind across the parking lot with their baby sister in the cart, all the while they weren't singing Wheels on the Bus because Mommy was chatting on her cell and after she continued to chat loaded the children up and as she drove away she glanced up briefly to check the traffic now that she was texting! Oh yeah closeness with Mommy...ouch!
I passed someone talking on his cell the other day, and heard him demand, intensely, "Are you telling me the truth or are you just lying to me again?"
What are the chances he was going to get an honest answer? Or that it would be the one he wanted?
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