Attendant: “Good morning, sir.”
Customer: “Yeah? Whaddaya want?”
Attendant: “For you to be wearing your mask while you’re here.”
Customer: “Argh. You sheeple should be whying these damned masks!”
Attendant: “Ours not to reason why, sir. Ours but to do what the rules tell us. And make sure our customers do the same. Kindly take that foreign object out of the pump handle.”
Customer: “What foreign object?”
Attendant: “That wrench or whatever you’ve got stuck in there.”
Customer: “I will have you know, sir, that that wrench is not a foreign object. It was proudly made in the USA and is plainly so stamped on the handle. Are you un-American?”
Attendant: “Neither the gas pump nor I care where it was made. It is not part of the pump handle’s standard equipment, it is therefore a foreign object, and I want it out of there!”
Customer: “You expect me to just stand here squeezing this handle like a monkey? I got things to do!”
Attendant: “Like flapping your gums at me?”
Customer: “I should show up here with a wrist injury. I’ll bet a smart lawyer could shut you and your whole business down for insisting on this ridiculousness. Violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act!”
Attendant: “As if you could afford a lawyer, never mind one who stood a chance of winning your case. As for the wrist injury, that’s why I’m here, to assist those whose hands won’t let them help themselves. If we have to worry about those whose brains won’t let them help themselves, the whole country’s going to go bankrupt. Get out of here before I call the cops – who, in case you haven’t noticed, haven’t got a whole lot of patience with cretins like you right now. Not if they want to keep their jobs.”
I sure hope that you’ve never witnessed anything like this!
A work of fiction, Nathalie. Though I shudder to think what the reaction would be if I showed this tale to a real filling station attendant. “You think this is bad. Let me tell you …” I showed up at Costco that morning to satisfy my car’s need for petrol, saw the notice regarding ‘foreign objects’, meditated briefly on the meaning of ‘foreign’, and the post wrote itself.
You have an amazing mind. Pretty twisted sometimes of course. But that’s why you’re interesting.