Tis The Season For Some Bullshit

I was at Kroger last night. A gruff older man was standing in the check out lane. One of the workers was trying to get past him to get to another register. She was using all kinds of unorthodox methods (like asking him 'Excuse me' and 'I just need to get through') to no avail. I assumed he couldn't or didn’t hear her, so I told the girl to tap him on the shoulder. It was at that point he turned around and scowled at me. Apparently this guy had heard her, he just had no interest in moving. He had a date with destiny apparently, and it involved a bushel of bananas, pork & beans, and a case of Miller High Life, and there simply was no room for distraction.
    It reminded in this great season of giving just how many jerks out there are not willing to lift a finger for their fellow man, including myself….and you. How many times have you put our hands in your coat, looked at the ground and shuffled past the bell ringers at the grocery store (I do it all time). In fact, I’m kind of afraid of the bell ringers to be honest, with good reason. Back in my hardware days, we had a bell ringer one winter who was, shall we say, a  bit unbalanced. We never knew her name, but simply called her Fish Sandwich Lady. The aptly named Fish Sandwich Lady would take breaks in our tiny break room, using our microwave to heat up these stinky fish sandwiches. Dante Garland accidentally got up from his lunch and shut the lights off, forgetting she was sitting in the corner with her fish sandwich one day and she starting screaming. “Why you cut the lights off on me!!??” But that was only the beginning.
    I usually wore headphones on my lunch, but I never listened to my music terribly loud. I was having lunch with the Fish Sandwich Lady, who was on her cell phone talking about how much she hated the white people in my store, including me, thinking I couldn’t hear her. “They’re all pieces of shit, they won’t let me ring my bell inside the store”. I wanted to rip my headphones off, snatch that disgusting Fish Sandwich out of her hands and tell her to go ring her bell somewhere else.
    The big moment when we had to call the Salvation Army and have her removed was when she got into an altercation with another customer in the vestibule. I’m not sure the context, but here’s some of the dialogue I’m recalling from memory
    “You don’t know what the fuck I’ve been through! You mother fucker, he said he was gonna shoot me in the back of the head! Motherfucker!” It was time for the bell ringer to hang up her red kettle and call it a season. I’ll never be sure if a customer actually said he was going to shoot her in the back of the head, and in her defense, knowing the clientele of that store, I’d say there’s a 70-30 chance it happened.
    The most disgusting people around the Holidays are ‘The Hoarde’. The Hoarde is something that not even George A Romero could’ve invented. Simple, aggressive, rabid mass mobs of shoppers with an extended credit line. Decide you don’t want an item? Just toss it on the ground! Don’t watch for cars in the parking lot, it’s only snowy and slippery, but hey, it’s my right to walk out in front of them! They will tear through merchandise displays like fancy feast for an alley cat. Hey, I know I have 50 items in my cart, but the express line is the shortest, do I have to speak to a manager?
    I have never really enjoyed Christmas shopping. I enjoy buying presents and thinking of things that people will like, but the physical act of shopping is something to make me feel ashamed to be a human being. I never go out on black Friday, I do not condone a day where I might get 15% off a TV if I allow someone to put their boot print in my face at my local Wal-Mart. I also cannot condone sleeping on the cold concrete, to which some homeless Americans are pondering “…And I’m too crazy to own a home!?….Gwar, gwaphanflail, the government!” People are knocking each other out while shopping! I’m sorry, but I’m not a fighter, and if I do engage in fisticuffs, I want it to be epic. I don’t want to tell the police “He took the last digital camera, so I started strangling him.” No, that sounds awful and petty. I was raised that fights are epic, revolving around themes of justice and revenge. “This man, detective, is a Soviet Spy who killed my dog! I had no choice but to slam his head into a toilet” See, that sounds like a fight to me! Forget clothes lining Grandma because she got the air mattress you wanted, go find a Nazi to punch.
    So this Christmas, let’s keep our hands to ourselves, and the fish sandwiches to a minimum, and we may just make it another year. Happy Shopping!