don't speak

I do my very best to have little to no interaction with my co-workers. After countless jobs at a vast number of different places and interactions with hundreds and hundreds or co-workers, I like to just go in to work, silently do my job, collect my paycheck and go home. Sometimes, I can't avoid it, but for the most part, I quietly just do my work.

Plus, the overwhelming majority of my co-workers are idiots. 

There's a guy at work who fits that description perfectly. I have written about in office antics before. I am not quite sure what his actual job is, but if you were to observe him on a typical work day, you'd think he was hired to wander the halls, loudly sing the wrong lyrics to classic rock songs and sit in his office and sneeze at top volume. 

For the past five years, I have done the layout and design of advertisements for a chain of supermarkets in the New York/New Jersey area. I work exclusively on their in-store ads. Nothing else for them. They do other promotional pieces — I suppose — that I have absolutely nothing to do with. At least once a month, this guy asks me if I received any of this supermarket's postcard layouts. I explain that I do not do their postcards or any other of their promotional work... just the ads. He asks if I saw any postcard designs on their FTP site and I tell him that I do not access their FTP site. Ever. He then confirms that I have not received any of the postcard designs and I tell him I have not. This week, we had our monthly conversation regarding this market's extraneous promotional materials, except instead of postcards, he asked about calendars. I offered my standard reply — substituting "calendar" for "postcard" in this case. He nodded as though we have never had this conversation before and walked away from my desk singing incorrect lyrics to Heart's "Magic Man."

During the week, I overheard this guy talking (loudly) to a woman who works in my department. They were discussing an unusual amount of large trucks with movie equipment in the Philadelphia area. This guy said he heard that they were filming scenes for the second season of the HBO drama series Task in the area. She said she had never heard of the show. He proceeded to get her up to speed...

"It's that show with that guy. You know, that guy who was in that Hulk movie. You know that guy. Did you see that show Mare? You know, that Mare show?"

"I don't know that show either.," replied my department co-worker.

He continued to enlighten her. "It was that show about people talking with a Philadelphia accent."

Mare of Easttown starred Kate Winslet and Jean Smart. It was a gritty, graphic police procedural series of which Task is a loose continuation. Mare of Easttown followed the interwoven tale of a police detective investigating a murder in her small Philadelphia suburb while simultaneously dealing with troubles in her personal life. When it premiered, it received a lot of buzz locally due to the publicity surrounding British-born Winslet learning and perfecting a very difficult Delaware County accent. Although it was an added novelty among those of us in the Delaware Valley, it was hardly a plot point for the rest of the country who tuned in.

But it wasn't lost on this guy.

And... once again... this is why I don't talk to my co-workers.

 www.joshpincusiscrying.com

new to me

Have you ever been in a public place and you hear someone's voice rise above all ambient noise? Someone speaking loudly, way too loud for the surroundings? Someone who doesn't know how to use their "inside voice?"

As long as I am asking questions.... have you ever encountered an idiot? I mean someone who says something so stupid that it makes you wonder how they make it through an entire day without injury?

Well, I just experienced both of those in Aldi this afternoon. Kind of like a "two-for-one" special.

I was standing in a rather lengthy checkout line in Aldi with under a dozen items in my shopping cart. I was about five or six shoppers back in the line, still a few checked-out orders away from putting my items up on the conveyor belt. Suddenly, a very loud voice bellowed out, filling the front part of the store with tones that rose above and blotted out the piped-in music and quiet conversation among the other customers. I quickly scanned the checkout area and zeroed in on the source of the voice. It was a security guard, all decked out in a very official-looking jacket embellished with official-looking patches representing the contracted security agency which supplied Aldi with fearless protection from baked goods pilferers and parking lot loiterers. His ensemble was capped off with a very official-looking military style hat that sported some kind of shiny badge just above the lacquered brim. He was engaging in conversation  with the customer at the very front of the queue. When I began to hear the actual words he was speaking, rather than just the loud, cacophonous tone of his his voice, this is when I heard....

"I never even heard of them! What are they? Nectarines?!? What are nectarines? I never heard of no nectarines!" I looked to see that he was holding a clear plastic bag filled with nectarines at eye level, examining the contents of the bag as though it contained an alien life form. "What are they anyway?" he continued, "I heard of peaches, but I never heard of no nectarines!"

This fellow was easily in his middle twenties. He could have been thirty. And, according to his booming public confession, he had never crossed paths with a nectarine in his entire existence on earth. He expounded on his doubt that something called "nectarine" was even real. I would say, if the security company that employs this guy goes searching among their ranks for someone to take duty at Fort Knox, they will be recruiting from a different division. I'm not so sure that he was qualified to handle someone shoving a Twix bar in their pocket at the checkout counter.

Oh... but he was not finished. He elaborated on his vast knowledge of the produce world as well as his capacity for dialects, colloquialisms and regional nomenclature.

"Nectarines? Hmmm... Maybe I know them by a different name. Y'know like some people say 'sesame seeds' and some people say 'poppy seeds.'"

It was right then and there that I stopped listening.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

the sound of silence

After I got my haircut, I ran over to Walmart to pick up a few things from their grocery department. I have a "love/hate" relationship with Walmart. I love their prices and I hate everything else. But, honestly, their price on most grocery items are so cheap, I feel stupid buying those items anywhere else. The problem is, you have to go Walmart to get those prices and, sometimes, going to Walmart is a chore.

On this particular day, I just needed a few "fill in" things. This wasn't going to be a full-blown, "we're out of everything" shopping trip. I saw that were were down to our last few bags of frozen vegetables and I was running low on cereal. That's all I had to pick up. Otherwise, our shelves and refrigerator were pretty well stocked. 

I parked in Walmart's massive parking lot. Every time I go there, no matter what time of day or day of the week, Walmart's parking lot is packed. I found a spot quite a distance from the store. I didn't mind the walk and I grabbed a shopping cart from one of the corrals on my way in.

Once inside, I headed to the cereal aisle and selected a box of store brand Honey Nut Cheerios (or "Honey Nut O's," in this case). I also grabbed a large box of Kellogg's Rice Krispies, because, even though I have no issue with buying store brands, Walmart hasn't quite nailed down the same quality and consistency in duplicating the Kellogg's product. My next stop was the frozen food section were I filled my cart with an assortment of frozen vegetables. In this case, Walmart's own brand would be just fine and at 98¢ a bag... well, how much better could the the most expensive, national brands be? I mean — come on — vegetables are vegetables. When my shopping cart was sufficiently filled, I made my way up to the self-checkout lanes.

I lucked out. I had my choice of open self-checkout lines. This Walmart location recently remodeled to add almost double; the amount of self-checkout cash registers than they offered previously. I parked my shopping cart alongside an open register and began to unload my items, scanning each one and placing in the designated "already scanned" area. When I finished, I filed the reusable tote bag I brought in with me with my purchased items. (As is the trend in a lot of municipalities, this Walmart is in a geographic area that has outlawed single use plastic bags. Customers must either bring their own bags or purchase paper bags at a dime a pop from Walmart. Or, of course, you can go bagless and juggle your purchases — unencumbered — to your car.) I placed my laden bag into the cart, swiped my credit card, grabbed my receipt and headed out of the store. 

Usually, there is a Walmart employee stationed by the exit. This persons job is to stop customers and scan their receipt before they leave the store. Walmart will trust customers to check out their own purchases, but then — moments later — that trust disappears and they need to make sure that everything is paid and accounted for. However, this morning, no one had been assigned to this duty. The exit was wide open and there was not a Walmart blue vest in sight. I breezed through the exit and strolled to my car. I transferred my bag from my cart to the back of my car. I returned my cart to the corral in the parking lot, got into my car and drove home.

What was the best part about this Walmart experience? I didn't speak to or have any interaction with another human being. While there were certainly other people in the store — several of whom I passed and navigated my shopping cart around — I did not encounter anyone blocking the Item I want to get. No one was standing  — smack-dab — in front of the freezer section doors. The cereal aisle was empty, except for me and a zillion boxes of breakfast staples. The checkout lines were free of folks who had never operated a self-serve cash register. All of my items scanned without a hitch, so I did not need the assistance of an employee to amend my running total. And, as I just noted, there was no one at the store's exit to make sure I didn't steal anything.... thank you very much.

If I could be guaranteed a repeat of this experience every time I come to Walmart, I would come to Walmart more often.

Who can I not talk to about this....?

www.joshpincusiscrying.com