I was:

Are We Done Yet?

December 9, 2006

Clerks are jerks.

I mean honestly. You take normal, average people, stick ‘em behind a counter, and suddenly they’re complete jackasses.

You know what I’m talking about.

You’re trying to buy a cage for your demented hamster, submit a medical/death release form so you can learn to jump out of a plane, or check your cat into Addicted To Catnip Anonymous and you have absolutely no clue what the procedure is in this situation. After approximately 73 minutes and 24 seconds of dealing with this person, it becomes unmistakably clear that the person-behind-the-counter-who-does-this-all-the-time has no absolutely no intention of telling you what it is.

The DMV loves this.

The guy’s standing behind his all-mighty shelf of fabricated jargon (counter) as though it’s some sort of industrial throne. He seems somewhat surprised when you don’t bow down and kiss his feet, but you’re not quite sure how to do that since there’s a freaking counter in between you. He’s got a fancy job title like “Official Crowd Response-iologist” in order to make him feel good about his crappy job. Incase you haven’t realized this yet, anytime somebody introces themselves along with a title ending in “-iologist,” that means that their job is bad enough where they had to be given a special title to make them stay.

But back to the issue at hand. You just want to get outta there ASAP, but they’re not going to let you do that. See, the longer they can keep you there, the more it looks like they’re actually doing something.

They’ve got this whole procedure down in order to get everything to take as long as possible, too. After he finally “understands” your question, he then needs to confirm the answer with somebody in the very back of the building, which will take roughly another 12 minutes and 14.7 seconds.

And they will never, and I mean never, tell you when the procedure is complete. No, that would be far too easy. Instead they just give you “that smile” as if to say, “Why the hell are you still standing here?”

When a clerk smilies at you…get outta there ASAP. There’s really only two things that it can mean: One, this conversation is over and the person behind you is getting impatient, or two, “Would you like to sign up for a ____ Card and waste another 20 minutes at our store save 15%?

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