spent the morning putting a new set of saddlebags on my bicycle, with that nest of strange tools required for such work. This runs me late. Fifteen minutes later, precisely between either destination, I get a flat. The trouble starts here.The good news is I am right across the street from Lee’s bicycle shop, where I’ve spend more than my bike is worth in the last six months. Bad news, it is the weekend and all the men are super busy in the back area. I bought a repair kit for $3.99 and turned my bike upside down. Oops, the stem is cracked; cannot repair that. So I went to the counter to return the kit and buy a new tube. So far so good.
However, there was a thirty-year-old “big-boned” girl working the till. A crow. I was perfectly polite but I was also seventy-four cents short for the tube. Now ask yourself, what would a man have done? Don’t dodge the question, everybody else in the store was a man. I believe he would have said, “Give me your six bucks and forget the seventy-four cents”, or maybe “come back tomorrow and shoot me the difference”.
What do you suppose the woman did? She held her arms either akimbo or folded defensively across her chest. She explained to me that I could buy a temporary repair [which I did not want to do, as it would have involved removing the rear tire twice instead of once] or enter into some complicated credit agreement. I even went to the back to see if I could catch the eye of one of the men to borrow the cash, but they were too busy.
No, I did not offer the crow my wristwatch for collateral. Any creature, even a dog, would have helped out, but not that woman. She was just “doing her job”. Yeah, right. I went to walk out and she hollered what to do with my credit of $3.99. I told her to keep it. All I said was that “In my life I’ve helped out a hundred people in these circumstances, but I see that is not going to happen this time.”
She acted miffed. Anybody who cheaps-out over seventy-four cents with a man wearing a tie on Sunday needs the money worse than I ever will. I stress to you, it was not Lee’s, but that battleaxe of a loser woman behind the counter this day. I walked the remaining three miles into the shop and was over an hour and a half late. That will be the day when I make another man, even my enemy, do what this woman did to me. I guess I must be sexist. Once I got there, it was a simple matter to switch over to my $300 other bicycle and bring it back to do my chasing around. See, she knew I’d work something.
On the way over, two things. One, I saw this laundry offering free wireless Internet. Now you can tell them you are young and pretty while you are doing your illegitimate kid’s washing. Seek your soul mate while your soak your socks. Play Zoids to the hum of the tumbler. The other thing is Coffee Time has been sold.
The new owners are two Russian ladies who have no hesitation introducing themselves as such. Must be something they teach them to do in whatever replaced Ellis Island. How did I just know her name was Olga? This means Legs is gone, never to return. That business was just too unique to repeat itself anywhere on this area. Sigh.
The shop was quiet, but Damian came in to liven things up. He has a keen sense of what things should be priced at. That sense is “expensive”. Odd in my opinion, he knows very little about the methods of selling and advertising on-line, or on the computer in general. It hit me that although he’s probably made twice as much as me on the Internet, it also took him three times longer. I always find the perspective of younger people interesting on this point.There was also a Jewish guy “sixty-five years old” (he kept saying) who failed in over an hour to catch me on a single punch line or poem that I hadn’t heard before. That’s okay, he was the biggest sale of the day – the type of thing that happens when you try to go intelligent on me. He flopped because his mentality seemed to be identical to what mine was when I was fifteen years old, same jokes, same lead-ins, same attitude. I remember this age particularly well, because I was surrounded by people so far behind they thought they were ahead of me, since I didn’t always respond [out of disbelief]
Back to Damian. He was into brand names. I don’t know Hartmann luggage and so on. Mark it with a price tag and spare me the lecture, it has already been a long day. Damian is also one of those people who thinks you can look up anything on the Internet. Yes, Damian, it makes a huge difference whether you know if the other person called it a turntable, a record player or a phonograph. That is three searches, not one.
I spent another hour with Greenday, the band. Whoever writes their material is a techno-type. It is almost as if the chords are written to some algorithm. The music is very tight and technical, but after that, 100% programmed and unoriginal.
