I walk up to the butcher. He's a middle-aged bald guy with a ragged beard. His fingernails are that bruised sort of blue that comes from repeated injury or poor hygiene. He sort of looks like a serial killer. "Can I help yah?" he mutters, and I order my meats. While I'm waiting, an old fucker with considerable jowls (he resembles the Gungan King from The Phantom Menace) meanders up to the counter and asks "Did you watch your girlfriend last night? Cam-al-a?"
"I didn't even bother," says the butcher.
"You know it was a coup, don't yah?"
"It wasn't very democratic, her replacing Biden. That's what gets my goat."
"You know the military's gonna put Trump back in?"
They talk about election conspiracy theories too stupid to comprehend. I take my meat and flee.
The store is full of the elderly and people who seems to be operating at a frequency well-below optimal. Their movements are lugubrious, ponderous. They take the steps of people who do not plan to step much longer. I try to keep my impatience in check, but it is a real struggle not to swerve past every old biddy that stares vacantly down the aisle, blocking my path as her CPU stalls, no longer capable of multi-threaded operations.
In the check out line, I ask for paper bags. The bagger sighs and says "I guess. They always rip."
"Don't overload them," says the cashier.
He overloads the bags to prove his point, and they do rip, as he predicted.
I pay the cashier in fives. She miscounts them three times. In my impatience, I correct her on the third try, and she gives me a dirty look.
"That's how they try to get you. By interrupting your count. I used to work at the casino. I don't care, I just count it as many times as it takes."
"Is that what they do?" I say. She still hasn't counted the money right, but she shoves it in the drawer all the same. I briefly contemplate going on a tirade about how she's caught me red-handed, that I'm trying to quick change her and save five dollars, but I don't, because there's no reason to argue with stupid people, and I'm trying not to be an asshole.
The parking lot is full of pickup trucks so humongous that if they ran you over, they'd never realize it until they pulled up in their driveway and found the splattered giblets of your mortal form. What the fuck am I doing at this place? Isn't there somewhere else to be?
Aldi's? Wal-Mart?
I shudder at the thought. At least no one dropped a deuce in the aisles.
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