The bakery is one of the only places open in the food court early, so I order a banana muffin and tea. The young lady working the counter is very courteous and friendly, and not the usual bitter troglodyte you expect to get in this sort of transaction. It’s so surprising in fact, it catches me a bit off-guard.
“How’s your day going so far?” she asks. It’s scripted patter, but there’s at least a veneer of genuine interest.
“Pretty good,” which is my scripted two word answer for “well, there are a lot of things in my life I’d like to accomplish but haven’t yet, but I’m here in America and I can order tea and muffins of my own free will, so it’s not all bad.
As we are transacting, a young man with dark hair, a severe expression, and a black hoodie adorned with patches and spikes shows up for work at the bakery. He wears a little metaphorical storm cloud like you would wear a necklace or hat.
“What is this?” he asks the nice lady, gesturing down the hall.
“Oh, it’s for the Apple Store. The new iPhones come out today.”
“All these people… are here for iPhones?”
“Yeah. Some of them got here at 6 AM!”
A brief pause.
“Disgusting.” He disappears through the kitchen doors.
“Ha ha!” says the nice lady with a horrified expression, as her perfect customer service experience zeppelin goes all Hindenburg with that one word, then turning back to me, “You’re not in the line, right?”
“No.”
I tell her this lie because she has been nice to me and I don’t want her to feel bad about that bit of unpleasantness. And to be honest, I do feel maybe a teensy bit disgusted with myself. I mean, it’s not going to stop me or anything, but you can’t deny that when you are on the outside, buying muffins, looking in, the spectacle has a certain ugliness to it.
“Have a nice day!”
And so I did.
