November 16, 2012

I’m a judgmental prick. I have the afternoon off from work today. I was going to enjoy a nice lunch at Panera, but when I saw the line nearly extending out the door I decided to skip the experience. So I am sitting at the neighboring Barnes & Noble cafe enjoying a prepackaged lunch that is way too high in the way of calories. I ended up throwing half of it away so that I could stay within my personal calorie budget.

I’m a judgmental prick because I have decided that I don’t like these chain eateries that people seem to gravitate towards in this area. There have been a smattering of locally owned coffee shops and cafes over the past couple of years but they haven’t been successful in staying in business. This is unfortunate, because I would rather support the local economy instead of feeding bucks into a corporate conglomerate. But when chains are all you have, you make do with what you’ve got.

I couldn’t bring myself to go into Panera because our local location has turned into a ghettoized version of what the corporate lords of Panera probably envision their stores to be. It’s fancy fast food, I’ll give you that, but at this particular location people are afraid to get anywhere close to one of the registers until someone screams at them. They have no idea what’s on the menu, they’re confused by the numbers to the right of the prices (calorie counts are listed) and quite frankly people freak out because they do not have fries on the menu. “Would you like an apple or chips?” “I want fries.” Please go yell into the clown’s mouth and get the hell away from me.

Here at this Barnes and Noble cafe there are several people here that are just ticking me off for no reason. This is where the judgmental prick in me comes out. There is a bullhorn of a woman with red hair and heavy makeup (though she looks nowhere as classy as Endora) talking about her Christmas tree and how she is putting it up this weekend. Yay for her. I’m guessing it’s aluminum and it has one bulb with a spinny colored thing shining festive hues on the shiny tree. Pretty. She’s going on and on about the holidays and how she has to go to Wal*mart to pick up the wine for dinner.

Again, judgmental prick kicks in. What kind of asshat buys their wine from Wal*mart (Always White Trash, Always)¹ and quite frankly I didn’t think that grocery stores in New York State could even carry wine. Maybe Wal*mart gets a special dispensation because they’re Wal*mart and the Muggles in this area think they’re the closest thing they’re ever going to get to a second coming.

There is a man with one of the loud, tuberculous type coughs hacking away at the table next to me. He is hunched over a computer running Windows (I keep hearing the cutsey sound effects that Microsoft thinks are fun!). His elementary aged daughter (I’m guessing 5th grade) is trying to eat her lunch and read a book while he pecks at his keys. Why is he at Barnes and Noble hacking away in such an uproariously manner? Why is the girl not sitting in a classroom or perhaps even enjoying recess with her classmates? Why are they invading the space I have eeked out for myself in this chain operated bastion of hell and not keeping to themselves?

Yep, I’m a total prick.

The Wal*mart Wine crowd have all pulled out iPhones and are using their Facebook app. Isn’t that sweet. There’s a loud voice in my head screaming, “You don’t deserve iPhones! You don’t deserve Facebook! Go back to your Winnebago!!!”. At least I hope it’s my inner voice because otherwise it would be quite embarrassing.

Woman behind me is totally reading over my shoulder. Please excuse me for a moment while I bring up a photo for her to enjoy.

I’m back. She turned away when I brought up the photo of the naked man shaving. I’d share it on the blog but then y’all would blush. Besides, I’m not authorized to share it.

A guy just walked in and began a conversation with his girlfriend as he walked into the cafe area. She was seated, he was making his way to the table and began dropping f-bombs five tables away as he made his way to the seated girlfriend. I find this to be totally inappropriate. Why do people use such salty language these days? Now, I know that I can swear up a blue streak when suitably motivated, and I know that I occasionally curse in my blog, but I am not foisting such language on people that didn’t choose to listen or read it. It’s not like he has Tourette’s Syndrome or something like that. That’s just the way he talks, apparently. It sounds very uneducated to me. It’s bad enough that we had to listen to a table of grown men talk that way at dinner the other night, but must every nook and cranny in the world be filled with stupid people?

Yep, I’m a total snob.

I want to whack the guy that’s coughing with my laptop in an effort to put him out of his misery. That’s would probably be mean.

Perhaps I’ll convince the non-classy Endora to give him some Wal*mart Wine to soothe his throat.

¹ I must confess that I went to Wal*mart yesterday because they were the only game in town that had what I was looking for. And I found that fact to be very, very, very disappointing.