The Rape of Mr. ABCnSane

 

 Is the Universe trying to tell me something? Must I be bombarded with the same in-your-face annoyance time and again? Really. I just want to buy a bottle of shampoo. I know. I know, my Bloggy People. You are sick and tired of this little drama. And yet, it continues to plague my shopping self wherever I go. Let me warn you that I may, in fact, raise my voice with the subversive use of intended capitalization complete with arm flinging and punctuated looks of confusion aimed at anybody who happens by to read today. Don't take it personally. I just need to blent. That's blog + vent for all you non-blog readers.

I was tired after work today. Very tired. All I wanted was a bottle of my too expensive luxury salon shampoo with matching conditioner, six bananas, Valentine stickers to wear on my face tomorrow and a huge box of chocolate for Baby Boy. Latter mission accomplished.

Hush Homer, I'm trying to write a blog post.

Let us recall the last time I visited said shampoo supplier. The gentleman behind the counter was soooo insistent that I provide him with my personal personal details. He got a little huffy. I got a little a lot irritated. Let's say I made it my mission to avoid him thereafter. But today, I was stuck again with the very LOUD manager who announced to the customer before me that he likes to "play by the corporate rules and run his shop by the book" when dealing with "policies." Oh, great. Here we go again.
Perhaps I should just leave now before somebody's shampoo gets hurt.


I was too tired to travel way into the next town for my special shampoo, so I thought...hmmm...I can handle this. I'll just give him a fictitious phone number when he asks and be on my way. And then it happened. I couldn't help myself.


"Will that be all, Sir?"

"That'll do it."

"$40.36 is your total today. Will that be cash or charge?"

"Debit card."

"Phone number?"

**This is precisely the point when the uncontrollable eye-rolling began.**
 Read, Mimi, read. Ignore, Mimi, ignore.

"381-227-8765"

**NO HE DID NOT. That was precisely the point when the uncontrollable head-shaking began.**

"I'm sorry, Sir, that seems to be an invalid number."

**YES! Dear Mr. Customer has seen the light and has taken the low road called lying-about-your-phone-number-in-public. I so love him!**

"Oh, sorry. I said 381-227-8769."
 **banging head on shampoo shelf and groaning. Out loud**

"Email address?"
"Sure!" abcperson@yahoo dot com."
"Home address?"
Home addreessss?? Reeeeaaaalllllyyyy??
And of course, he gave it to him right down to the apartment door number.

This is precisely the point when I uttered and muttered "Oh, dear LORD...." It just slipped out with copious amounts of dual head-shaking and eye-rolling and fingertips to temples dramatically anticipating a sudden migraine episode or otherwise consumer head explosion. I was standing only three feet away when the dear Lord fell out of my mouth.

When did compliance become so common?

 I wanted to bang my head on the shelf in front of me. Or better yet turn around screaming, "Are you all INSANE??!"  Instead, I did my best to pretend to pretend to read the fine print on the back of the bottle and control myself  while he completed the financial and personal violation of  Mr. ABCnsane.

Happy Perky Manager was delighted with this intimate exchange of social chit-chat at the ch-ch-ching counter. Giddy even!

I was a tad nauseated.

Does anybody else find this to be inSANNNNNNNE??! I know what you're thinking, my friends. Why does this bother her so? Why does she go on and on and on about this yet again? Can't she find something else to write about? Of course I can. But this DOES bother me. Not so much Mr. Manager's persistence....he's just doing his bubbly job.

It's the rest of humanity I'm worried about. You. Me. All of us.

One by one people wandered in from the sidewalk Mall of America and gladly handed over whatever information was asked of them. Without so much as a pause. Blindly. Without objection. No questions. No hmmmpfffs. No crooked looks. No 'who's asking' asking.  Nothing. Nada.

Just acquiescence.

And I wondered....is it just me? Or do you, too, feel that somehow all this privacy hording and swashbuckling deception of our national privates has gone too far? Who was watching when no one was watching? Why wasn't I watching?  What was I doing while the country went to hell in a handbasket? Twirling my curls?

You might think it's a small thing to self-induce a migraine over shampoo buying.
But I do not.

It bothers me that in the United States of America I cannot walk into a public store and take a hair product off the shelf of my America, place it on the counter, whip out some cash, credit or Monopoly money, pay for it and take it home without someone asking me the color of my underwear. It angers me. It causes the pampered locks on the back of my neck to want to stand up and scream "Enough!"

I pried my white-knuckled fingers off the pocketbook-that-would-not-talk and left - without the promise of hydrated hair on Valentine's Day morning and Baby Boy's predictable chocolate peeking out from the bag as if to say,"Did ya really have to make a hand-wringing scene, Mimi?"

And the answer, Baby Boy, with your face full of chocolate smudges, is YES. This is scene-worthy and don't you forget it child. I don't want you silently wandering through life with the herd.

What bothers me more than anything is not so much the asking - but the answering.

Now, please pass the chocolate.;

**Images public domain**

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