How to be an asshole, the baby steps

It’s easy to be an asshole.

Here’s a quick how to guide.

And none of this required repeated viewing of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the final episode of Seinfeld, any episodes of the Ali G show, or visits to the in-laws.

Go to the supermarket. Buy a lot of stuff. A lot of heavy stuff. Big jars and bottles and things. Don’t complain when the checker, a guy who looks like he just was cut from an NFL training camp, overstuffs each bag. Try not to exhale when pushing the cart out the door, even though it’s probably the most weight you’ve moved in a few months. (There’s extenuating circumstances there, but not for this post.)

Leave the cart while retrieving your car (remember the upscale neighborhood post from earlier this summer? It applies here. No one will steal your groceries in Bethesda. It’s my litmus test, and it works.)

Now here’s the thing. For the roughly 15 years I’ve lived in this neighborhood, and shopped at this one grocery store, on the trips in which I’ve used my car, I’ve just about always left the cart at the door, retrieved my car, and then loaded up the trunk with the food and stuff purchased.

Well, out of nowhere pops up miracle parking area bag supervisor boy extraordinaire. He’s wearing a Safeway shirt, perhaps even a nametag with the moniker provided by his parents some twenty years ago.

Now I don’t recall seeing this guy anywhere before. Not when I left the store a moment earlier. Not when I walked through the door 20 minutes earlier. Not on any of my hundreds of visits to this store.

But here’s miracle parking area bag supervisor boy not only ogling my bags, but beginning to fondle them, seeking out somewhere to take them, to place them, so the bags and the contents could have a good home until they would be consumed and properly disposed of.

So this is his job, right? I mean, where else, even these days, can a down’s baby get a responsible job, one that’s challenging. It’s really going to be bag checker, or bag loader. Something with bags, unless your mom was the Governor of Alaska, I suppose.

Again, I didn’t ask for miracle boy to appear, wasn’t offered the services of miracle boy, wasn’t asked if I needed assistance with my bags (a polite offer often made at the checkout at this store, but not made by the former NFL wannabe at checkout.)

So what did I do? I accepted the non-verbal offer of services by miracle boy, I opened the trunk, helped to organize a fire line of the bags from the cart from the wonder boy to me so at least these overstuffed bags could make it into the trunk before exploding, as opposed to landing on the stained and already pungent once dark asphalt tarmac of the parking area space I was temporarily using. This worked, everything made it into the trunk, organized as if it were luggage in the belly of a jet, and with a swift move, I closed the trunk, and made way to the driver’s seat.

Now, here’s the instant asshole part. I didn’t tip the kid. Didn’t even take the time to seek out a nametag, or say anything other than thanks.

Partly this was because all I had on me were a pair of twenties, obtained at the register checkout. I’m not one for cash, and I usually have a few bucks on me, but not at this time.
What to do? Get change somewhere? Be a real big asshole and ask for change for a twenty? Tip him a twenty? Blow him off? Thank him, and wish him well?

There’s no winning this, is there. And it’s even more troubling when you have the look of the bag boy in your eyes, like the last thing you see before you die, or blog, whichever comes first.

Does it matter in any way to hear that miracle parking area bag supervisor boy was a down’s child? Was he let down further by my behavior, or just accustomed to the rudeness of early 21st century life in the important Washington suburbs. At least the car he helped load the stuff into was a modest old Toyota, not some fancy new thing, one that cries out “tip me, motherfucker, or this car loses, now.”

But, still, it’s easy to be an asshole. Just see. Your time will come. We all have it in us. Some more than others.