A.L.: Alright, so I’ll email you or call you on October 25th about the results of the meeting.
K.T.: Cool. I should have dropped out of law school by then, so I’ll be free.
A.L.: What? No. Are you serious?
K.T.: No. Sorry.
A.L.: Okay, you’ve said it so much over the past few years, I almost thought it was true.
You’d think I’d learn by now that belaboring a joke leeches the humor till it hangs lifeless from your damned repetitive tongue.
***Grocery shopping, ten items or less aisle, people up front had flatbed full of shit. Why do we all agree to follow the rules, when we ourselves can benefit if we do not? Modified version of the prisoner’s dilemma. Compare grocery stores and malls to prisons somehow.
Warehouse clubs are the greatest invention ever. Who doesn’t want to buy thirty-six rolls of toilet paper at a time, or eighteen giant rolls of paper towels? Seventy-two fluid ounces of bath soap something you need? Visit a warehouse club. Ten pounds of oranges to repel that pesky scurvy outbreak on your fourteenth century sailing vessel? They got you covered. Need remaindered books at low low prices? Hit them up. I bought four pounds of butter more than a year ago, and there’s still at least two pounds left. Clearly the height of western society and capitalism, without those annoying plastic bags to carry your stuff in. Note that you’d never be able to fit most of these giant items into plastic bags anyways.
I went for supplies a few days ago, obtaining 192 fluid ounces of orange juice, among other things. The great thing about Sam’s Club is that the cigarette sales area (all cartons at low low prices) also doubles as the express lane. Somewhat oxymoronic, since the very nature of beast almost requires you to spend at least two hundred dollars per visit every three weeks, but really, didn’t you need ten pounds of precooked shrimp? Now, the express line only works if you really do have ten items or less. I have no problem if you’re one or two things over. After all, its one of the few places that have new video games cheaper than the requisite $50/$60 price break points.
But, this dark Saturday, this dark dark Saturday, a nice couple with their toddler were making a purchase in the express lane. Lo and behold, they did not have ten items, they did not have eleven items, they certainly did not have twelve items. No, their flatbed shopping cart was stacked higher than the toddler herself. This cart had the same footprint as a forty-inch television, and was stacked full of boxy items, twenty-four packs of soda, sponges, various boxes I could not identify. They exceeded the tolerance of the express lane. If Sam’s Club were the
They broke the unspoken rule. Let me repeat that. They Broke The Unspoken Rule.
Based on past experience, I am prone to irrational and unpredictable bouts of anger and hatred (see trip to Vegas when I woke up mid-flight and started semi-berating the flight attendant). Thus, it shouldn’t come as a surprise when I shot those two (not the child, no, never the child) fiery-hot gazes, gazes which would wither redwoods, which would subdue stallions, which would convey my anger at their breaking the rule. Perhaps a rule they didn’t know, sure, but even more insidious, a rule they knew and chose to violate.
Willing violation. Oh dear heaven above, what sort of monsters are we dealing with here? Someone bring me my holy water, we’re going vampire hunting.
What does it matter? Let’s say it was a willful violation. What was lost? My time, and the time of everyone else behind them in the queue. If they’d paid me five dollars, fine. According to Cecil Adams, writer of The Straight Dope, picking up a penny, a five second act, balances out to making upwards of $7 an hour when you calculate it out. So, for an extra ten minutes, that five dollars would more than reimburse me. So pay me next time.
Moreover, it angers me that they just didn’t give a damn about others. As Prof. D.G. taught us, the law is blind to moral obligations. I can’t sue them for being inconsiderate (and the fact that that crossed my mind means I’ve been in school too long). I can get mad at them. Like the age-old Prisoner’s Dilemma, you work together, both of you go free. Or, you can be greedy, and get yourself out, screw the other guy over. I know that there’s no need to help others, and if you want to maximize your own enjoyment, f the other person unless it can help you directly.
Still, that’s a horrible way to go through life, at least in the aggregate. Sure, your life is great, but what about the lives of everyone around you? Look at Bill Gates. Yes, he is head of Microsoft, wealthy beyond avarice’s deepest dreams, and considered by many the head of an evil empire. What never gets any burn in the media is his philanthropic work, especially the funds he sinks into his charity foundation. Does he have to do that? No, he can continue to wipe away his feces using hundred dollar bills, then flush them down the toilet. But he’s giving back in his own way, helping others, rather than keeping all his money to himself.
Not all of us can drop billions into our own charities. Hell, most of us don’t want to spend money on charity. Fine, no one says you have to (see earlier reference to impassive Lady Justice). But at least be a little kinder to others. Think about others before you do whatever it is you are going to do. It doesn’t have to be profound, it doesn’t have to be earth shattering.
Just stay out of the express lane if you have twenty-nine items.
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