Miss.
I'll have you know that it took me a great amount of woo-sah for me to fix my face and keep #84 of my many plastered situational smiles together when it so behooved you to walk all the way from wherever you were in the store, down to this here music/DVD department to ask me to stop playing the CD that was currently in rotation. Apparently Dee Dee Bridgewater's new album was interrupting your precious reading. I had things I wanted to say and looks I wanted to give you in return, but I held them in and said in spite of myself, "Okay. I can change it." (Now, it's possible that my eyes may have been glaring at you while my mouth was smiling. I don't always have complete control of my facial expressions, especially when I'm agitated. And sleep deprived. BUT my point is, you presented a "problem", and as the bigger person/a proper agreeable salesperson, I told you I'd fix it.)
"Okay", I'd said. You could've walked away then, hurried along back to your sacred and direly compromised reading, leaving me in peace so my face could thaw while I begrudgingly switched to the next CD in the queue. What you did not have to do, however, is exactly what you ended up doing.
What you did not have to do was 1) continue standing there and proceed to explain to me how, in which way, and in what state or quality of being the album disrupted your concentration. You did not have to 2) include how you had to keep painstakingly starting over from the same spot in your book, as if being distracted while reading is a criminally cruel grievance that no one else has ever endured before. You did not have to 3) lower your voice to conspiratorially gripe that, "I hate to say this [No you don't], but big band is for old people", as if I would agree with you. Especially since I don't (respectfully reminded you that plenty of young people like jazz); there was no one else in the department to hear your slight, much less care; and the styles of jazz graciously offered to us on Dee Dee's Feathers aren't even (consistently) big band! You did not have to 4) meticulously describe how listening to this album makes you feel like you're outside with birds mercilessly squawking overhead. You did not have to 5) ask me, "I mean, do you actually like this stuff?" when you yourself started your complaint with the assertion that another salesperson had told you yesterday that we control the music played in the store. Of course I like this "stuff"! There's no one else standing behind this counter; who do you think played it?! You did not then have to 6) suggest I play something else, preferably not something everyone knows because then you'd just haaave to sing along, and then you'd just be distracted from reading all over again. Does this look like a DJ booth that takes requests to you?
And you most certainly did not have to 7) keep profusely apologizing and saying you didn't mean to be a b*tch throughout your extended complaint. Because if you're so sorry, why are you still in my face right now? Why are you still forcing this conversation along when I clearly said "Okay" three minutes ago, if you're so embarrassingly sorry for inconveniencing me? If you indeed feel sooo bad about not being able to appreciate an art form that you don't understand, then why aren't you asking me questions to learn more about it instead of asking me to turn it off?
[Not done yet. Still a bit on my mind that shall be expressed. Proceed to the second part HERE.]
No comments:
Post a Comment