This is what happened yesterday at a local entertainment store: To set the scene, a 3-foot wide rolling cart of $1 clearance CDs is in the lobby of the store, which serves as the one-way entrance into the business. (In other words, I could not re-access the cart except by leaving the store, going outside, and re-entering.) A large, not obese, but broad, 50-something woman is blocking the CDs. I know exactly what CD I want and just need to find it. My very patient, very tired girlfriend who has just gotten off work is also waiting for me inside the store, and I still have several shelves of clearance books and another display of CDs to examine inside the store. However, the b-word is complaining that I am disturbing her by reaching around and over her slow, methodical stacking of the CDs, and is telling me that I should wait until she is finished to examine anything on the cart.
Rule #1: Life is not slow. It is fast. I work in retail. I know this for a fact. It is my livelihood. My personal avatar has become My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic's Rainbow Dash. I just won a contest at work this weekend for performing my job the fastest. In fact, it was also my livelihood when I was a journalist. Lead, follow or get run over. Being leisurely is wonderful at home or on vacation. Otherwise, get outta the way.
Rule #2: Cut your prissiness and deal with reality. All I want is one CD. Deal with it. You could never survive at used library book sales where there's 4-5 people reaching over each other to claim their literary finds; the same library book sales that turn my elderly bibliophile mother into a roller derby ninja with a wheeled cart.
Rule #3: And the #1-with-a-bullet rule to get along with me: Never, EVER lecture me, especially if you are a stranger who doesn't know me. When you tell me what your little pea brain with its outdated morals thinks I "should" do, you trigger flashbacks to my Pink Floydian nightmare teachers with their dogmatic b.s. that made me the passive-aggressive creature I am today. Especially after I have tried to reason with you with logic and have expained that it would be difficult to re-enter the store again after your slow, pathetic rear end has finished. Not to mention that you, wearing your formal clothes, obviously spent the day in a lovely church service while I was stressfully working my butt off and contributing to the survival of the American economy.
Oh yes, and I simply found my CD and left. Although I was fired up within, I took the higher ground and did not have any further exchange with her other than "Here's CD I want. Bye!" However, needing away to blow off steam to cool off my inner seething, I cranked up Fire Inc.'s "Nowhere Fast" (from the film Streets of Fire) on my mp3 player. I highly recommend it for dealing with such occurrences, and it also makes a great driving song. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8knq1RLWEgo