Some repulsive git in a cubicle, a bottom-tier manager with no choice but to be faithful to his wife, or a fraud-secreting affective consultant oozing focus groups decided that patrons entering an establishment should be happy-talked. This is mostly harmless if I want a wood 4x4 and only slightly offputting if I want a giant jalapeno burger. If I am banking I do not want to be surrounded by prattling morons, certainly not on the other side of inch-thick polycarbonate blast shielding.
Thus it was that I strolled into my Wells Fargo bank and was assaulted by a succession of monotonically decremented IQs. A 400 lb 6'8" Samoan is not my idea of a good time chance encounter, either sex. This was a Thursday morning. There was no excuse for optimism for another 31 hours. I made it in front of a teller, put paper through the double airlock, and then some species of blonde-streaked sub-manager in the background said, "What are you planning for this weekend?"
I am possessed of powers and abilities beyond those of moral man. Great was the temptation to melt her eyes out of their sockets with any number of putrescent prospects. Great were the number of video cameras, microphones... and Wells Fargo's reputation for resolving transient perplexities with 10 ga. scatterguns.
Uncle Al, "We are devastating a small Third World country this Saturday. Call it 10,000 instances of collateral damage."
Sub-manager, "I like a structured weekend so everything is in its place and everything gets done."
Perhaps she was a Stepford wife, was processed in a Skinner box, did some time in Manchuria before the Queen of Diamonds surfaced, or was trained by the Ludivko technique. Perhaps she had enjoyed a particularly piquant morning with her box of Black & Decker 14.4V lithium ion battery FireStorm personal toys. Perhaps her multiple physicians had summed to a personal psychopharmacopoeia reaching vastly beyond the disingenuous travesties of television advertising, "I took a pill and the world is saved!"
Perhaps she was an oh so fungible White girl desperate to keep her soon to be restructured job that would no longer require a Bachelor of Arts in 17th century French poetry (François Tristan l'Hermite is my BFF!). She was a hangover, hemorrhoids, a migraine. She was Chlamydia trachomatis filling a sorority house with grey discharges and piscine reeks, a fundie preacher upon whom Christ did not shower shekels, a diverse social advocate hoping to be the 2012 Republican presidential sacrifice.
I looked at the teller and he at me. If the ship sank he was chained to its oars and was guaranteed to drown. She was beating the big drum and might have a flotation device.
Uncle Al, "I prefer entropy to enthalpy. Ketone peroxide trimers deliver diverting disorder without suffering any heat."
That was technically true. Said white solids molecularly unzip with nearly zero enthalpy of reaction. They are rather quick about it, too, blasting holes in walls by virtue of small gaseous molecules occupying more space than big solid ones from whence they originated. Her eyes widened and glazed over. There was blessed silence as my paperwork passed through a $500 tunnel of articulated ballistic polycarbonate.
I loathe the mob. I have endured a life overpowered by mass stupidity. Shellfish exercise more self-awareness than most of my "superiors." I could carve better mentalities out of soap than most of my classmates used for brains. The Media disgorge bellowing minions going grand mal over pituitary-challenged multi-millionaires bouncing a ball back and forth to accumulate triple digit scores two horrible points at a time, or by onesies and threesies. yay.
Who gives a rat's ass?
One suspects a B-School remora odiously desperate to find his shark was touched by a socially orphaned liar in kind, with a box, standing outside a store and barely within the law. As a shopper is seduced by spoiled fruit labeled "ORGANIC" so an unkempt derelict can work the crowd by virtue of being loathsome. Behold the birth of store greeters! "I have leprosy, and welcome to J-Mart! Folks will ease their pain with purchase.
I detest my bank. It fiercely screws me at every turn. I do not activate my Wells Fargo credit card needed to swipe (with PIN, then identity theft) to cash a check. I flash my checkbook and let them hand copy its string of tiny numbers. Wells Fargo pays no interest, it squeals to the IRS, and I get a cavity search if I walk past the front door with a credit instrument in excess of $10,000. Piss on Wells Fargo.
Piss on its happy talk, too.
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