Friday, May 2, 2008

Bag boys and drive-thrus

I have a mission. Maybe you can help. I'm trying to find the secret headquarters of an organization whose name I don't know, but which I'm calling the Coalition of Really Annoying People (from whom we buy stuff). I know, not very catchy, but I'm working on it. Like "dark matter," this secretive group is invisible to scientists; however, we can detect its presence by the effect that it has on everything around us, bending light, altering orbits, keeping Dancing With the Stars on the air....

I postulate this CRAP to be responsible for the fact every time I go somewhere to buy stuff, employees uniformly do the same infuriating things to make my life more difficult. I'm picturing a secret underground training facility somewhere beneath the Mojave desert. Row upon row of men and women stand at rigid attention, besmocked, beaproned, and behatted (I'm pretty sure those are words, right?) in the uniforms of their regiments.

A surly, burly, really large man paces back and forth in front of the assembled masses, shouting: "Drive-through privates! Where do you put the coins when you hand change out the window?!" A deafening roar comes back as the pleebs yell in unison, "Right on top of the foldin' money, sir!" He smirks and issues another challenge. "Bag-boy cadets! How do you bag the biggest, bloodiest hunk of meat in the shopping cart?!" From another quarter of the cavernous hall comes, "Right on top of the Wonder Bread, sir!"

The drill instructor walks crisply up to a lone teenager standing at the very front of the room. The boy's body is so bionically stiff that it appears he may actually sprain something without moving. It's clear that this poor soul is on display, an example for the others. The loudest challenge yet is barked, barely three inches from this trembling boy's face. "When somebody asks where to find the sandpaper, what do you do, boy?!" All the color drains from his face, but he musters, "Sir, I say 'Probably over near the adhesives,' Sir!"

"Do you point in the right direction?!"
"Sir, no sir!"

"Do you look in the right direction?!"
"Sir, no sir!"

"Do you you give an aisle number?!"
"Sir, no sir!"

"Do you ever, under any circumstances walk the enemy to the product and hand it to them?!"
A wince and a gulp. "No sir, I do not, sir!"

Having made his point, he turns back to the sea of faces in front of him. "Richards here has bought himself 30 days on bread and water! If I ever catch one of you maggots being attentive, solicitous, proactive, or sensible again, I will personally bust you down to weekend night janitor! Do I make myself understood?!"

The room shakes with the resulting "Sir, yes sir!".

Somewhere else within the labyrinthine complex, a room buzzes with activity. New recruits are role-playing.

"I'd like to get a number one, with ketchup and pickles only, with fries and a Coke to drink."

A tidy, precise woman addresses the room: "What did Chambers do wrong?"

A recruit in front offers "Ma'am, he didn't say anything. He let the enemy get the whole order out. He had no defense."

"Show him how it's done, Barnard. Reich, order again."

"I'd like to get a number one, wi-"
"What would you like to drink with that?"

"Um, a Coke, and I need that burger wi-"
"Do you want me to king-size that for you for only 99 cents?"

"No... um, thanks. Hey can I get ketch-"
"Can I get you anything else?"

"Yeah, ketchup and pickles on that burger, please."
"Okay, two number ones, one with just ketchup and pickles and a Coke to drink. What do you want to drink with the second meal? Do you want that king-sized, too?"

The instructor smiles, "Excellent, Barnard. Now you try it again, Chambers."

The whole huge compound thrums with the evil energies of the unholy service employee indoctrination machine. We must find it and infiltrate it. And destroy it. The scope and reach of this organization must be huge, as they have penetrated all layers of our society and every region of the country. We must... stop... them... Talking like... Shatner.... Please... before it's too.... *gasp*

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey, you shop where I do!

The thing that bugs me the most is when I go to get my haircut, and they require a phone number. Not a big deal, but they can't handle that I don't have a local area code b/c I only have a cell phone. So I every time I get my hair cut at Great Clips, I have to go through this dance where I explain I only have a cell phone and it is an out of state number.

However, it was worse today. I went to Great Clips, and somehow my out of state number disappeared from the system. So they looked me up by last name. They found someone with my last name, although it wasn't me. I said, "Sure, sounds good use that and pretend it's me". He said almost shocked "You want to use someone else's information?".

To which I responded, "I don't care, what I really want is a haircut". He told me he couldn't do that...so he had to set me up again in the system. Apparently they store info about the haircut you get in the system (and probably mention that I'm a bad tipper and have thinning hair too!). Of course, of all the men I know, they've all had the exact same haircut since the day I met them. I do NOT need them to store my haircut information. Let me come in, get my haircut, and pay.

Oh yeah, and get off my lawn!

-Mick