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I'm fairly certain that "you" were the rude one.

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  • I'm fairly certain that "you" were the rude one.

    I had to run into a grocery store to buy a flower arrangement (please don't judge, this was unexpected, I was in a hurry), found something bright and colorful and went to the SCO to check out.

    I fumbled the vase and spilled water on the scanner. Well dang, I turned around and the worker in charge of the SCO's was right there, so I told her that I needed to wipe some water up. She pulled a roll of paper towels out from under her comp and offered me some. I said that I needed more than that and reached for the roll, which she handed to me.

    I went back, wiped up the mess, tossed the wet paper towels in the trash and stuck the roll back where I saw her get it.

    As I went back to finish paying for the flowers, the lady who had just finished up her transaction stopped to say "That was so rude." I didn't think I had been rude, so I said "I don't think I was rude, it might have looked like I was grabbing things out of her hands, but she held them out to me and I was in a hurry to clean up the water before it dripped on the floor."

    The pleasant looking but actually evil person looked me dead in the eyes and told me that the SCO clerk was rude for just giving me the paper towels and that she should have cleaned up the mess so I could finish my transaction. All I could stammer out was something about me making the mess so of course I should clean it up.

    Nothing else was said because she left before I could recover from her rudeness.

  • #2
    "My mother raised me to be decent and clean up my own messes."
    I am not an a**hole. I am a hemorrhoid. I irritate a**holes!
    Procrastination: Forward planning to insure there is something to do tomorrow.
    Derails threads faster than a pocket nuke.

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    • #3
      You can be fairly sure that she's the type of SC who orders a rare steak at a restaurant, get's what she ordered, doesn't like it and then claims "I ASKED FOR MEDIUM!" They never take responsibility for their own mistakes.
      "All I've ever learned from love was how to shoot somebody who out-drew ya"

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      • #4
        I hate situations like that, because I too would be so dumbfounded that all the great and biting retorts that I could've used wouldn't occur to me until much later.
        Customer service: More efficient than a Dementor's kiss
        ~ Mr Hero

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        • #5
          The French call that "l'esprit d'escalier"--the spirit of the staircase. The perfect retort that you think of only after you're walking out...
          “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
          One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
          The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers

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          • #6
            Yeah, as I was standing there all gobsmacked, I could think of nothing to say because I was so stunned.

            Now I wish I had said "I made a mess. I wasn't raised in a barn, MY mother taught me manners and its good manners to try to contain the mess."

            OTOH, I really wish I could have found the words to tell the mother in this story that every thing was OK.

            BG: I am a *cough* few years older than 50 and I use a cane. I am also a big Lovecraft/Cthulhu fan and have a bumper magnet and a Cthulhu fish emblem on the back of my car.

            So, a couple of weeks ago, I walked out of a fast food place to see a young male human, probably about 15-16 standing behind my car with a woman who I assumed was his mother. The kid was looking happy and pointing at my stuff while telling his mom about what it meant.

            I walked to my car and said something about how it was always good to meet another cultist and the kid looked amazed and asked me if it was my car and if I was a Lovecraft fan. Yes and yes.

            Happy kid, indulgent mother and me at this point.

            He asked me when and where I had heard about Lovecraft (I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was totally in love with something new and exciting and maybe forbidden, so I was gentle with him).

            I told him that I had found some dusty old books on the back shelves of the library when I was about his age.

            His eyes got wide and he blurted out something like awesome, that must have been 60 or 70 years ago! That is so cool!!

            The look on his mother's face went from indulgent to horrified. The poor woman had no words.

            Being the mean person I am, I said "you do know that HP Lovecraft did most of his writing before 1920, right?"

            Wider eyes on his face and his mouth opened, then his mother recovered enough to firmly say "No! She did not meet him! Don't ask!"

            Then she pushed him to the door while muttering "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm really sorry."

            After I sat in my car and laughed until I couldn't laugh anymore, I really did think about going in to tell the mom that it was OK, but I was afraid that I would just start laughing again.
            Last edited by Slave to the Phone; 08-18-2017, 03:01 AM.

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            • #7
              Quoth Slave to the Phone View Post

              Being the mean person I am, I said "you do know that HP Lovecraft did most of his writing before 1920, right?"

              Wider eyes on his face and his mouth opened, then his mother recovered enough to firmly say "No! She did not meet him! Don't ask!"

              LMAO! Poor mom.

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              • #8
                Quoth Slave to the Phone View Post
                I had to run into a grocery store to buy a flower arrangement (please don't judge, this was unexpected, I was in a hurry),
                lol, why is running to the store for flowers something judge worthy?

                But anyway, letting a customer clean up water is no big deal (if you had broken the vase that would be different, a company would want to avoid the customer cutting themselves) we let people clean up small stuff like that at the fabric store all the time. People were always spilling their coffees and such. If it was a small spill and especially if we were busy and short handed, which was always, just pull out some paper towels and move on.

                As for the nosy lady... Get a life, that's all I have to say. No idea what I would have said in person, probably even less than you, something like "it's just water..."
                Replace anger management with stupidity management.

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                • #9
                  Yanno, Kitty, in retrospect, I know that I shouldn't have done that. However, I also have to confess that if I had it to do all over, I wouldn't change a thing. It was just too hysterical.

                  As to grocery store flowers, there are a number of good reasons to buy flowers from them. If you pre-order, you will get just what you want and they will be very fresh. If you just want to grab one of those pretty bunches as an impulse buy, they are usually very fresh and always colorful.

                  If you just run into a grocery store to buy a pre-made, what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of floral arrangement for an occasion, I feel that this shows lack of both caring and foresight.

                  Something like those guys who run into a random store at 5 minutes before closing on Feb 14th looking for candy and flowers.

                  Maybe its just me, I am very aware that I am one of "those" people.

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                  • #10
                    Quoth Slave to the Phone View Post
                    If you just run into a grocery store to buy a pre-made, what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of floral arrangement for an occasion, I feel that this shows lack of both caring and foresight.

                    Something like those guys who run into a random store at 5 minutes before closing on Feb 14th looking for candy and flowers.
                    Well -- at least you're trying to do something!

                    For the Lovecraft thing, that one went way better than it could have. The thing is, Lovecraft was deeply racist, and it does show in his work. In recent years, his memory has come under increasing amounts of flak over that. If that had come up, well it would have been even harder to deal with on the spur of the moment.

                    But on the flip side... in the racism, and in other things, he was very much a creature of his time. His work channels the popular fears of his time, and that's where it got its power. The racism was one of those fears -- not just the scary dark people, but the fear of contamination by breeding with them (the Deep Ones). Other elements include: The exploration of distant and hostile places, with the associated fear of "here be monsters" (Mountains of Madness, among others); and the shrinkage of the human world to a small corner of a much larger, darker, and perhaps hostile universe; and more directly, the fear that if we learned the truth of the world, it would be too much for our sanity.

                    Later and modern writers in Lovecraft's vein often bring in the fears of their own respective times; an excellent modern example is Charles Stross' Laundry series, where he brings in the fears of brain damage, of technology used to unwittingly bring doom upon us all. He also keeps some of the fears that have remained -- notably the ideas that probing too far into reality could damage our minds, and that the universe could be full of things that simply don't care about us, and we can't make them care because they're powerful enough to swat us like bugs -- or eat us like popcorn.
                    Last edited by Mental_Mouse; 08-26-2017, 03:13 PM. Reason: stray apostrophe

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                    • #11
                      I saw H. P. Lovecraft in '68...


                      live with The Youngbloods & Buffalo Springfield
                      I am not an a**hole. I am a hemorrhoid. I irritate a**holes!
                      Procrastination: Forward planning to insure there is something to do tomorrow.
                      Derails threads faster than a pocket nuke.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Holy cow, dalesys I am SO totally jealous!!! I used to listen to that song as I went to sleep!!!

                        Mental_Mouse, you are a perfect example of why I am open about my enjoyment of a long dead cult author. I find so many wonderful people in such random places.

                        Lovecraft was indeed very racist. (Heck, he named the cat in The Rats Behind the Walls N****. He was also very sexist and its amazing that Sonia was so independent and a successful business woman. Or maybe that is why their marriage didn't last very long.

                        Lovecraft was also very much a product of his times. As was Shakespear and Asimov. I have reread many of my teenaged fav writers and HOLY COW!!! How could I have missed that??? Well, I was a product of my times and I have changed with the times.

                        But back to what I was really impressed with by your post, you summed up the cosmic indifference to humanity that is part of the mythos so well.

                        To the Others, we are less than bugs unless we annoy them and get their attention. Which would be a very bad thing.

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                        • #13
                          Quoth Slave to the Phone View Post

                          Mental_Mouse, you are a perfect example of why I am open about my enjoyment of a long dead cult author. I find so many wonderful people in such random places.
                          Thanks!

                          Lovecraft was also very much a product of his times. As was Shakespear and Asimov. I have reread many of my teenaged fav writers and HOLY COW!!! How could I have missed that??? Well, I was a product of my times and I have changed with the times.
                          At an SF-based forum where I spend most of my time, we refer to the Suck Fairy... she sneaks into our bookcases to sprinkle Suck between the pages of those books we loved when we were younger. She has several sisters including the Racism Fairy, Sexism Fairy, and so on. There are few authors or works who can survive their attentions.

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                          • #14
                            Ran across an interesting reference... the H.P. Lovecraft Holiday Fun Club.
                            Neil Gaiman, Mary Gentle, Terry Pratchett, etc.
                            Last edited by dalesys; 08-25-2017, 01:08 PM.
                            I am not an a**hole. I am a hemorrhoid. I irritate a**holes!
                            Procrastination: Forward planning to insure there is something to do tomorrow.
                            Derails threads faster than a pocket nuke.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Quoth Slave to the Phone View Post
                              Being the mean person I am, I said "you do know that HP Lovecraft did most of his writing before 1920, right?"

                              Wider eyes on his face and his mouth opened, then his mother recovered enough to firmly say "No! She did not meet him! Don't ask!"

                              Then she pushed him to the door while muttering "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm really sorry."

                              After I sat in my car and laughed until I couldn't laugh anymore, I really did think about going in to tell the mom that it was OK, but I was afraid that I would just start laughing again.
                              "Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn."

                              I love what you did and that is hilarious! I seriously need to get one of those Cthulhu fish car stickers though.
                              Note to self: Hot glass looks like Cold glass.

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