Skip to main content

Cocaine in the Water Cooler

I don't know what it is about certain service workers. Whether it's the deli woman who's far too enthusiastic to take your order of turkey on rye or the Mastercard phone rep who seems to be doing speed as he's talking to you, they are veritable beacons of over-cheer in a land of Just Trying To Get Through The Day With My Dignity Intact.

They must put cocaine in the water cooler or something. Maybe their bonuses are based on serotonin levels?

It's much worse when they interacts with you on a daily basis. That overly cheerful barista who must come from the land of Sunshine, Lollipops, and Electroshock Induced Happiness in order to maintain a level of blithe joy is a daily attack on my attempt to keep my head down and plough through the day.

They must have watched, and taken to heart, every movie with Robin Williams where he keeps a child-like innocence about the world and admonishes the stuffy authoritarian figures 'that if they just let their inner child laugh and play, if they just smell the roses once and a while', everything will be fine. Never mind that they'd put you in a mental institution before you could say Lithium or "I have a slight aversion to bovine tranquilizers".

It takes a measurable amount of energy out of me to even look at them, much less talk to them; energy I'd much rather put into thinking about "what the hell I'm going to blog about next", or "how much coffee would create a lethal caffeine blood level?". They are energy vampires. They must take pleasure out of culling from their customers every line of cheerful pitter patter, every last ounce of Disney-inspired goodwill towards men and small forest animals.

Maybe they are really soulless harpies who realize the amount of subtle pain they inflict on their customers and take a secret glee each day in extracting the hidden wince and under the breath groan. After all, it's good to be cheerful right? Enjoy your job, bring joy to others? That's the current train of thought anyways.

Personally, I'd be much happier if we could just buy everything out of vending machines. At which point, of course, I'm sure the vending machine technicians would start getting on my nerves.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Learn A New Thing...

Man, you really do learn a new thing everyday. There have been a few shocking realizations I've had over the past month or so: -bizaare is spelled bizarre (how bizaare) -scythe is pronounced "sithe", not the phonetic way. Which is the way I've been pronouncing it in my head for my whole life. My entire youth spent reading Advanced Thresher Sci-Fi and Buckwheat Fantasy novels, for naught! -George Eliot was a woman, real name Mary Ann Evans. -Terry Gilliam is American. -Robocop is a Criterion Film. I shit you not . -Uhm, oh damn, just after I post this, I find that, this movie is a Criterion film as well . Maybe I don't know what being a Criterion film really entails.. Alright all (three) readers of my blog, post and lemme know some earth shattering facts you've learned recently.

Insults From A Senile Victorian Gentleman

You SIR, have the hygeine of an overly ripe avocado and the speaking habits of a vaguely deranged chess set. I find your manner to be unctuous and possibly libelous, and whatever standard you set for orthodontal care, it's not one I care for. Your choice in news programs is semi-literate at best and I do believe your favourite news anchor writes erotic literature for university mascots. While I'm not one to point out so obvious a failing, there has been rumour that the brunches you host every other Sunday are made with too much lard and cilantro. If you get my meaning. There is something to be said about your choice of motor-car fuel, but it is not urbane and if I were to repeat it, mothers would cover their children's ears and perhaps not a few longshoremen within earshot would blush. How you maintain that rather obscene crease in your trousers and your socks is beyond me, perhaps its also during this time that you cultivate a skin regime that I'm sure requires the dea...

Art & Crap

There's a fantastic book out there that I've been meaning to get, Art & Fear . It has great anecdotes and advice about making art, or Art. I have a few nonfiction books to work through, so I'm not overly concerned about getting it just yet, but the book certainly comes to mind now and again. Mainly when I'm writing stories. It came right to the fore when I was slogging through the 30 Days Project . Hell, or hell-like. Certainly reminiscent of brimstone and repurposed Pan imagery, anyways. Because, as you'll notice, through my thirty posts (15,000+ words(!!!)), and to be fair, through almost every other participants thirty posts, there are nearly no comments. Which, I assumed, was one of the draws of the 30 Day Project. Get feedback, support, community of artists, etc. Poor naive me of thirty plus days ago. The whole process helped me with come up with a revelation I call "Art & Crap". Which is tangentially related to the bits of Art & Fear I...